GD: Discussion: Skill-Based Difficulty, Time-Based Difficulty, and Value Preservation

Näamah-ragnaros · May 23, 2022, 2:05pm

Value is relative, WoW players are just at the mercy of the developers, they left X-45 Heartbreaker uncheck for several years and i don’t know if Qyune miss the post but next year it’ll have some changes as mentioned during the last event.

There’s players among the community that care about some cosmetics and others not, I’ve the 4 MoP WorldBoss mounts via drop and I don’t think the current argument that BMAH works as bad luck mechanic is a good one, besides those mounts just being recolors, It took me 8k attempts for the Sha and the BMAH usually doesn’t provide those mounts for weeks/months that’s why there’s a community that provide gold swaps for the BMAH items in another less populated realms.

Well players just depend on the reward design approach, for example the last anniversary introduced a mount via the world boss doom walker, we don’t know the previous drop rate but it was changed to 100%, maybe the change was drastic but before that change i did 72 attempts between 2 days which means that a player with a single character may try this drop for 5 years…I really like 9.2 approach because most of the mounts from the creation catalyst doesnt require an army of alts to do multiple attempts, almost all the mounts can be created by a single character and most of the drop rates are good.

The value is just a personal concept, I prefer the mounts that imply a challenge and are always available in the game like the new mage tower tome compared to really low drops , for example the Mechadone achivement, it had really low drops and Blizzard changed it in the middle of shadowlands, I already got it before those changes, so i got mad that for a lot of things in the game its better to wait that waste your time when its current, becuase in later patches its going to change, however we don’t know when this will happend, Devs should focus on create rewards like 9.2 that are not just a waste of time or that’ll require massive changes later, players should raise those concerns to get a proper hotfix ASAP (Like the genesis mote farming on 9.2 that still require changes), some players will cry about a Siege of Orgrimmar skip now but it’s something that a lot of other players require and even some players that already wasted time on those runs will support the idea of a skip even when they don’t longer require it, because their value isn’t about being selfish but also improving the game.

Qyune-exodar · May 26, 2022, 12:20am

Hi, Naamah! I have been keeping up with responses where I can, and I felt like your post just happened to be missed. So, I wanted to reach out and say I appreciate the response. We might disagree, but I appreciate the time and effort you placed into you post, and I wanted to clarify a few misconceptions.

So, first off, let’s specify value. When I initially said ‘value’, there was some confusion between personal value and communal value. So, modified my terminology for addition clarity:

Discussion: Skill-Based Difficulty, Time-Based Difficulty, and Value Preservation

The communal value is designed to summarize the overall community’s value of an item (or content). And this value is designed, adjusted, maybe re-designed, and finally set while it is part of current content. If you would like an example of this, please look at the Glacial Tidestorm in the first post. Ultimately, through development’s design and the community’s gameplay feedback the communal value for an item is finally set in stone before becoming legacy content. Keep in mind, outliers exist, but we are speaking in general terms for the vast majority of content.

This should answer the question, “Why do we need a communal value?”. In short, it is the closest we can get to an unbiased assessment of how much or how little the community values a specific item or content. This is necessary in order to preserve this value for the rest of the life of the game. Naturally, things may come that make it slightly easier (50% rep buff during Time-Walking) or more difficult (finding people for BfA legacy raids on LFR difficulty until becomes quickly soloable), but overall it remains the same.

As far as the developers post regarding the X-45 Heartbreaker, yes I am very aware of their post, its implications, and the community’s immediate response to it. I believe I made a reference to it in an early post in that same thread. If I find it, I will link it below.

Discussion: Skill-Based Difficulty, Time-Based Difficulty, and Value Preservation

As with anything regarding the future, it is impossible to predict. However, I would be very hesitant to change the communal value of items and content randomly, due to the potential negative shift in the playerbase’s mindset. People see their skill and time as investments, even in playing a game. And even though some of them may say, “Lol, imagine thinking of your time in a game as an investment.”, they say this while they look up what the best talents for the class or the fastest way to level up a character.

My concern is that if the value of something is forcibly reduced like reducing the drop rate of the Love Rocket or making Balance of Power account wide, then the playerbase will be more apprehensive to spend any amount of significant time on a more difficult item – reducing the overall participation levels. The Love Rocket is a good example, because as soon as there was an announcement that this wasn’t fun for the developers either and they were going to look further into it, many people stopped running the content. Think about that. Just the potential of something being devalued in the future caused many players stopped participating in that content now.

When it comes to bad luck protection, that is one of three situations outside of the scope of what the communal value is useful for assessing. In other words, that is a different topic for a different day. Here is the reference below:

Discussion: Skill-Based Difficulty, Time-Based Difficulty, and Value Preservation

So, let’s stop here for a second and specifically talk about what this communal value cannot be used for:

Items / content removed from the game

Items / content adjusted for engagement purposes

Bad luck protection

1) Items / content removed from the game. You cannot preserve the value of something that no longer exists in the game. I will cover removed items in a later post.

2) Items / content adjusted for engagement purposes. Let’s use two examples here. The first of which will be the reduction / removal (I forget which) of reputation requirements to gain access to the original Allied Races. Since I am not on the development team, I don’t know the internal metrics, but it could have been possible that they found the initial requirements too much for the playerbase. Potentially, the number of people leveling Allied Races were too low at the time. So, maybe lowering the requirements gave more players a reason to level alts – another reason to play the game. In other words, due to potentially low participation levels, they found the initial requirements prohibitive to leveling gameplay and the subsequent continued gameplay. So, they removed some of them – benefitting the game as a whole (the overall community).

Another example is allowing players to simply have WoD and Legion flying. In a few of the comments in the thread linked (Balance of Power Acc Bound ), someone stated that we should not care what other people feel about the time and effort it took to earn something, because Blizzard did not care about them when WoD and Legion flying requirements where removed. However, in full context, the game was being adjusted so that you can freely choose between all expansions equally as possible to level alts. If you were not able to fly in WoD or Legion, then the playerbase would likely always skip that content. So, it would devalue the choice between expansions. So, yes, maybe it did hurt some feelings that this was given away, but it was for the benefit of the game as a whole (the overall community).

The important thing with both of these changes is that while they made certain things easier to acquire, it was done because it improved the quality of the game and the overall community. Conversely, simply getting another 11 Class’s Balance of Power appearances only benefits the individual who found them not worthwhile to earn anyway. If anything, it negatively impacts the game. For example, if someone isn’t working on the Balance of Power appearances, then giving them the rest of the appearances for all classes isn’t going to change that. It is taking a player that is not participating in content and giving them 11 additional reasons not to.

3) Bad luck protection. While it is definitely possible to preserve the communal value of an item through Skill-Based and Time-Based Difficulty, there is and always has been a vulnerability with RNG. This vulnerability is that a person is limited to how lucky they can be, but they are unlimited in how unlucky they can be.

For example, you will never log into the game and have Invincible just fall into your bags. You will always need at least 1 attempt by clearing ICC. So, you can never earn the mount with 0 attempts; there is a hard start at 1. However, some people may need 1,000 or more attempts in order attain Invincible. Do I consider that potentially unfair? Yes, but that is not what we are talking about here. We are discussing the standard bell-curve of odds to 2 or 3 standard deviations. Outliers will be addressed in the future in a separate post. However, this tool, the communal value, cannot be used to address that problem.

As far as the Black Market Auction House, I agree - it is not bad luck protection. We touched on this briefly, but I recaptured it below:

Discussion: Skill-Based Difficulty, Time-Based Difficulty, and Value Preservation

If there is ever a rare drop in the game (or something just difficult to earn), then you don’t want the BMAH to become the better source for this item. The intent for the BMAH is to give players an additional chance at the item – not a better chance.

This is exactly my concern for the game. Here is my summary of that below:

Discussion: Skill-Based Difficulty, Time-Based Difficulty, and Value Preservation

As with anything regarding the future, it is impossible to predict. However, I would be very hesitant to change the communal value of items and content randomly, due to the potential negative shift in the playerbase’s mindset. People see their skill and time as investments, even in playing a game. And even though some of them may say, “Lol, imagine thinking of your time in a game as an investment.”, they say this while they look up what the best talents for the class or the fastest way to level up a character.

My concern is that if the value of something is forcibly reduced like reducing the drop rate of the Love Rocket or making Balance of Power account wide, then the playerbase will be more apprehensive to spend any amount of significant time on a more difficult item – reducing the overall participation levels. The Love Rocket is a good example, because as soon as there was an announcement that this wasn’t fun for the developers either and they were going to look further into it, many people stopped running the content. Think about that. Just the potential of something being devalued in the future caused many players stopped participating in that content now.

I understand for you skill-based challenges are fun. However, there needs to be some content out there for people who find the slot-machine style of RNG fun - take a look at DataforAzeroth for collectors. The whole point of the communal value system to preserve the value of items / content in the game, by taking into account all playstyles.

Discussion: Skill-Based Difficulty, Time-Based Difficulty, and Value Preservation

There are millions of players who play this game. Each with their own level of skill, gold-making ability, preferences of types of content, and availability of time. Whenever the development team designs a Mythic-level raid, they don’t center its overall design around the player who has an LFR level of skill. In fact, they don’t even design around the average player’s skillset. However, the opportunity is still there for players to push to a Mythic level – if they want to. Also, the transmog appearance specific to Mythic is only available from Mythic-level difficulty. This content becomes available to most others around 2 – 3 years later when the content is soloable. This is your preservation of communal value transitioning from Skill-Based Difficulty to Time-Based Difficulty.

The same is true for players who really enjoy the slot-machine style of RNG. This type of hunt on this level is content that is enjoyed by some within the community. I believe Mythic raiders make up 1% - 2% of the community, and yet there is an entire tier built specifically for them (and anyone who want to go to that level). So, it completely reasonable that a handful of mounts require an extraordinary amount of effort for those wanting to put in the effort. However, as opposed to Mythic-level raid transmogs, this content was available to everyone from Day 1, because it is Time-based content outright. So, the communal value is preserved because its Time-Based difficulty that isn’t forcibly changed. The compromise here is that there are 800+ mounts currently in the game for those who find the MoP WB mounts and X-45 Heartbreaker excessive.

Again, this is all for the standard bell curve to 2 – 3 standard deviations. We will cover bad luck protection later. I just want to focus on value preservation more than anything.

Discussion: Skill-Based Difficulty, Time-Based Difficulty, and Value Preservation

Also, what is fun will not only change from person to person, but from one type of activity to another. If I enjoy a soda, then that doesn’t mean I had fun drinking a soda. If I had fun competing in a race, then that doesn’t mean I enjoyed every footstep of the marathon. Furthermore, one cannot say that I hate sodas, because it wasn’t fun to drink it, nor can they say marathons are not enjoyable, because each step wasn’t a surge of fun. The same is true with various forms of content within WoW. While running the same dungeon, raid, or MoP World Boss doesn’t have the same intensity as pushing a new M+ high, it is still fun and enjoyable to many. Fun and enjoyment can come in many different forms and intensities. However, they are personal and not suitable for adjusting the communal value of an item / content.

Discussion: Skill-Based Difficulty, Time-Based Difficulty, and Value Preservation

Let’s see if we can rephrase this a few other ways to gain perspective. For PvE, what if we said, we should remove Mythic raiding tier or reduce its difficulty to the general community’s skill level? What about reducing the KSM mount to the average successful M+ completions over the season? For PvP, what if we said that the difficulty of the gladiator mount is reduced to Vicious Saddle level? The mounts and rewards like this are the crown jewel for people who like the type of content they participate in. The only difference is that you will never acquire a gladiator or KSM mount by accident, because that requires skill. At least with Sha, if you trip and fall on him on your way to Mogu’shan Vaults, then you have a small chance of getting that mount, because this is Time-Based Difficulty. Same thing with the Love Rocket. However, if you are making 50 characters or spending 2,000 hours to farm these mounts, then you know exactly what you are signing up for.

So, why is it that there is a heavily resistance against reducing the ease of Skill-Based Difficulty content, but some are willing to allow a pass for Time-Based Difficulty content? Let’s just answer the first half the question first. In short, if you make something easier, then you devalue not only the item / content itself, but also the individual and communal time and effort to acquire that item. And there may be some people who don’t care about other people’s time and effort, and they want that item now without the skill.

However, we protect these items from that mentality by having set minimal skill requirements for certain rewards while they are current. If someone wanted Heroic Castle Nathria gear the day it came out, then they needed quite a bit of skill. If they want that same set now, then they may be able to go in there with the same amount of people with ilvl 260 gear and a little less skill. However, they had to wait (the Macro-level subcategory of Time-Based Difficulty content), so the communal value is still preserved.

The same thing is happening to content whose difficulty is Time-Based. If the drop rate is reduced, then the value of it is also reduced because its difficulty is related to its rarity which is directly related to the amount of time it takes to earn that reward. I believe a lot of players are unaware that many others within community find this type of content fun and enjoyable. And they may be unknowingly gutting content for players who may not be able to focus on solely Skill-Based Difficulty content. Additionally, there is an assumption by some that skill is the only scale of value, and therefore, anything that doesn’t require skill should take no time. However, this is simply not true, and we protect against this mentality by preserving the communal value of the item.

I hope this clarifies 1) what communal value is, 2) how it works, and 3) why it is necessary.

Näamah-ragnaros · May 26, 2022, 1:09am

My concern with your communal value is that it’s not defined by anyone, we don´t have a measure provided by Devs , it´s just like personal value but you’re refering to it as overall community when we don’t have a concensus on something that it’s cosmetic, some players care a lot to reach some degenerate behavior (just like Ion mentioned about master loot and RWF), I did 10 DHs between December/Jan just to prepare 50 characters for X-45 Heartbreaker.

For example, the community could go to the extend of comparing when you get an item or achievement, it’s like that i compare that my mechadone mount has more “value” compared to the players that got it now, or that the X-45 Heartbreaker before Legion has less value because it was easier and then every expansion got harder to get because you must reach a new minimum level with all your alts.

X-45 Heartbreaker just became over the years on the worst RNG implementation, you don’t only have a mount that changed from spam with a single character the dungeon to lvl 15 as minimum to attempt it and then a constant change of the minimum level to get the epic box.

Blizzard doesn’t care about collectors, last mount achievement was added 4 years ago during BFA prepatch, if the amount of mounts for the achievement is a barrier is because a lot of the mounts acquisitions methods doesn´t appeal to players because when someone ask me, How did you get that? and I respond " well I created 20-50 characters to farm this daily"…that’s a big wall for a lot of players, while other games have a more friendly approach, protoform synthesis already shows some improvements and the Dev in charge asked for feedback via twitter not only to the council but a bigger sample of players.

Also as mentioned before, Implement rewards thinking from a perspective of 1 character to multiple, taking on consideration new players, we don’t have to remove the RNG element but it shouldn’t be like the philosophies that Blizzard had for years which created MoP Worldboss drops and X-45 Heartbreaker, that’s why the last anniversary Devs changed Doom walker mount in the middle of the event from a low drop to 100%.

There’s another MMOs on which there’s also value on cosmectics and it’s handle in a way on which the RNG element doesn’t involve changing the game into a sloot machine that have players for years trying something, as you mentioned you can check DataForAzeroth and there’s a ton of cosmetics that the only less that 5% of the players have and in my personal opinion those numbers should be higher because it’s a game that should feel rewarding, I think more players will have the prestige honor system mounts if there was more rewards compared to now that there’s gaps of 100 honor levels without a new reward on a system that the grind is really tedious.

A lot of things regarding WoW Development should be designed with a good approach since day 1, so we won’t have this concern that is better to wait for the game to diminish the “value” with fixes to the design, but Blizzard can create a community that promotes mount collection and help others, just like the communities that are doing meta achievements while the game doesn’t provide content.

From my perspective, Devs are looking to change a lot of the philosophies from the old school around cosmetics rewards into a better field, hopefully they keep adding mounts with a RNG value that respects players time.