Is WoW out of touch with it's core audience?

Community General Discussion
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Sure, the way they keep revenue up is by keeping players engaged for a longer duration and by premium services… but does this decision make sense if that is the goal?
What would make much more sense is if that one player had to systemically grind out time-gated rep with each covenant in sequence to get the “full” story (similar to the argent tourney back in wrath). Thus giving a longer duration to the content and maximising the sub life… not front loading 4 concurrent story lines that block out 3 from the player…

I mean its possible this is an attempt to manage the heavy play time subs by making them level 4 toons (and do everything 4x) at release, then in a later content patch open up one character to do every covenant in sequence (since lower play time subs wont alt as much because they do not exhaust the content). That would make sense since the lower play times would not be intimidated by the sheer mountain of content and the heavy players will keep going as the goals posts are moved further back anyway.

If it is that is some 4D chess.

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Why is it that they need so much more money when we’re getting less and less content? It makes no sense to me and feels like they’re milking this cash cow to death to fund other projects or to line the pockets of a few people at the top.

Like seriously why don’t we have better more fun and engaging content? We get a raid, some quests and hand full of dungeons. We get no new BG’s or gametypes, the torgast tower will be the first original thing added to the game since island expeditions which was a really weird use of resources, I hope we get new content with the AI systems they’ve developed. I would say the visions were just reused art assets with some original pve elements that were half baked and thrown together on a shoe string budget.

What are all these store mounts/pets/services paying for? It sure isn’t for gameplay or developing new content.

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Its just business, when Activision bought blizzard they became a publicly traded company, as such the prime responsibility is to the shareholders (often achieved through delivering value to the customers).

As customers we have a delusional concept of ownership “we pay for this so we should get a say in this” <-- while this might be an appropriate management style to get customer feedback and make us feel valued, it is NOT accurate to assume ownership or dictate how the business operates (ours is only to spend or not spend). Thus we can give feedback on what we enjoy/do not enjoy and its up to the management team at blizzard to act or not act on it.

I would say we do if you compare to historically what has been delivered (in terms of raids, story wise I have explained previously why I hate it). If you compare to the idealised concept of content in your head then its not really achievable.

There is no common consensus on what is better content or worse content, even out opinions have been shown to differ. If you had to pick the best raid tier which would it be and why and what is it that makes a good raid tier?

Islands were a failed experiment sure but you left out visions. For me 5 masking was probably one of the most fun things I have done in wow since the mage towers. They were a nice mini piece of content I could challenge myself with (they were certainly not perfect and I am glad they are over but they were fun to progress through).

Torghast I am reserving judgement on, I watched a streamer talk about how far removed they are from their origins of being a roguelike by retunning.

And I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of them and learning all the mechanics, I don’t care how expensive or inexpensive content is to produce, for me I judge by level of fun I experience, wows entire purpose in my life is a hobby/entertainment.

I think there is a class of player (I have often filled this role), who enjoy wow purely through the lens of solo content and I think AI could vastly improve this play experience.
The lowest rung of content should be AI assisted:
E.g LFR with AI bots, normal dungeons with AI, BGs vs AI - these modes should offer extremely base entry level gear but should let a player see the story. They could even add layers to it by tying this into a recruitment/table mission system where you can send them off alone or go along with them (increase their power/ilvl by giving them equipment/experience of some kind)… basically it just gives a lot more breadth of gameplay to a certain type of player.

I also am really disappointed they didn’t continue the bodyguard system from WOD, that was one of my favourite features (getting the ogre with the massive sword following me around and assisting me).

Edit:
I am hoping the maw is an extremely dangerous area that will be assisted by bodyguards and AI allies, it adds to the immersion “its dangerous to go alone take this”.

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365

I’m not sure what this question is but I think the best raid was Throne of Thunder.

I hope they reuse the AI system they developed for islands, I also mentioned how visions were reused assets with the bare minimum pve systems implemented. I get that they were trying to make another mage tower with the visions but it failed miserably. If it had some cosmetics you could have earned by completing it then it would have had some replayability.

Likewise, I hope it’s similar to Dead Cells. I love that game and so does my nephew.

I just tried it on a whim one day and one shot it on my first attempt, I found the content to be boring and tedious personally.

I think doing qued scenarios with AI teammates could help those with anxiety and fear of ridicule to get into PVE content. I imagine if you gave lesser quality gear to those people it could help encourage them to do group content. With the game the way it is now there’s virtually no challenging content. Quest’s are face roll and require no skill or causes you to use your mind and read your abilities tool tips to figure out how to overcome a challenge.

Legion had that for but it was rather pointless. I like having a NPC follower just like in Diablo 2, it’s a shame that D3 ruined that system.

It’s looking to be only a pseudo challenge where if you stay past the time limit you’re one shotted instead of the area being extremely challenging and rough. It’s super artificial and feels bad. They refuse to add actual challenges into the game and allow skilled players show off their skill. At least this is how it feels to me. It feels like everyone is being brought down to the level of the weakest link, much like how communism works. It’s easier to push everyone down than it is to raise the people at the bottom to a higher standard.

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But I love it so much when all my top parses come purely based off td rng. /s

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Who will you show off your skill to if the majority of players are blocked from all progression because of what is, to them, impossibly difficult challenges?

That’s not what communism is.

Blizzard has never made any effort to help people with low skills get more skilled. That won’t change. Raising the bar to entry means you’re pushing people out of the game forever.

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the title of this thread should be:

“are dev’s out of touch with players?”

yes, they are.

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I have a high parse on my DH only because infinite stars proc’ed a lot and fast on mythic shad, I find it crazy that passive abilities are doing so much damage/healing in this game and needs to be removed and never brought back.

We need more player control when it comes to doing good dps/healing and they seem to want to make everything super dumbed down and passive to make it so even your grandmother can play the game at the end game and I hate it.

This is not good game design. This is the exact same stuff that runs a lot of normal people away from this franchise. They simultaneously want e-sports but also be ultra casual and give the players the illusion of difficulty, boggles the mind don’t it.

I think the money people are putting their thumbs on the scales in favor of more anti-player systems that increase their revenue. They’re trying to kill the goose that lays the golden egg because their avarice knows no limits.

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I have halfish top 200 parses the difference between them and the 1000s I also get is literally just td procs it’s dumb.

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Which bosses? I imagine Vex personally.

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Nzoth, vex, carapace, drest, shad, raden are top 200. Rest are 95 plus except for hive where I can’t get a good proc lineup to save my life.

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I haven’t even bothered trying to parse this patch because I came back so late and didn’t have all the passive buffs from corruptions to even aim to parse. It feels really defeating and out of my control to rely on passive procs to parse high. It feels like what little control I did have over my parses have been removed with BFA.

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Yeah it’s let’s just go with frustrating and leave it at that.

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If I had to deal with this audience I would throw in the towel too. I could only handle being told how to make video games by people that work at Long John Silver’s for so long before I phoned it in.

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You know that’s a fallacy right? You don’t have to be an expert at something to point out the flaws in a system. This is why having immigrants come to other countries can point out the hypocrisies in systems that citizens are inundated in, you need outsiders to point out things you’re blind to.

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So like mythic+ and the timer associated with it pushes people away from doing m+.

Everything should be a challenge, even a personal challenge. Quest’s should be hard to accomplish alone and thus encouraging teamwork, ya’know MMORPG.

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If people can’t play when they want to play because of arbitrary restrictions designed to keep raid loggers satisfied that casuals are being forced to work hard enough, they will give up rather than invest more time in a game that appears intended to keep them from playing.

Wanting to make leveling a challenge for the most skilled players means locking actual new players out of the game.

There is no one in some of these old leveling zones. There is nothing more interesting to do there than more of the same fetch quests. Putting in mandatory difficult group quests in a zone you never intend to visit again isn’t going to do anything positive for the game, because it’s all about punishing new players and pretending that you know how to make friends and they don’t, so you should force them somehow to conjure “friends” who want to do Swamp of Sorrows with them.

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I think your perspective is wrong there, it’s about teaching you how to play your class by giving you more skills and challenges so you’re forced to adapt instead of facerolling your keyboard to completion.

Making quest’s so you’re just barely able to finish them alone will encourage teamwork so you have an easier and more effective use of your time. That same teamwork will encourage you to make friends and interact with people in a MMORPG instead of a shared world you’re the champion of all and never need a reason to speak to anyone or ask for help. It’s for the health of the game that you need challenge to over come and real strife to encourage you to get better at the game.

Humans will always do the bare minimum if they’re allowed to, this is why you put obstacles in their way to give them a sense of accomplishment.

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There is no teaching component in the game. Throwing players who barely know how to use basic movement functions into difficult content that requires abilities they don’t have teaches them only that the game is out of touch with the needs of levelers and they can’t survive.

LOL. Leveling is designed for beginning players. Making it challenging is already an issue in zones where the conversion from “do x quests to complete the zone” to “complete all storylines” has resulted in players having to abandon zones where a really important storyline quest, the kind that is designed to satisfy you that new players are being worked hard enough at low levels, where they are required to have aoe or interrupts that they don’t have and won’t have for many levels.

Sure. You’re the only one in the Swamp of Sorrows, and you have to do an elite group quest. Right.

Because new players don’t know how to make friends. They never had a friend in their lives, and now it’s time for you to force them to make the exact friends you want them to make so they can always play the game as a job rather than for fun. I’ve certainly heard elite players who put together work groups to complete content complaining enough that casuals won’t make work group friends instead of the people they like to hang out with.

If you think you have thousands of friends, you don’t. You probably don’t have any, because you have no idea what actual friendship is.

No. This is why we have developed civilization, which is all about finding easier ways to do things so we can get better stuff and get more stuff done. Arbitrary pointless restrictions have nothing whatever to do with self-improvement.

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I’ll never understand this arguement. Why do you want to be some random adventurer nobody who has no name? It’s not realistic. Period. Like, after everything our characters have been through, like… If it were the opposite, I’m sure people would whine about that too “Why am I not being recognized for my great feats and accomplishments?”.

Also for the record, WoW’s core playerbase is not the vanilla crew. The whiner’s club died off (metaphorically) ages ago. “Mah wPVP flying mounts how dare you!” We went from being some rando back in Wrath. So technically it’s more in tune with the core playerbase and you’re a dwindling minority considering the “hero” player character has existed for longer than it hasn’t existed in WoW. If you’re itching to play as a random nobody who is less than dog crap then you’re more than welcome to go to FFXIV or ESO.

Having been part of the WoW community since TBC, I’m glad that WoW has taken the direction that it has, storywise. Fail to adapt and you get left behind. All there is to it friend.

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