We loved climbing Torghast together, and these days run normal dungeons with followers to fill out our groups. Delves are basically built for us, as is story mode raiding and the continuation of follower dungeons! We met in WOTLK and enjoyed those heroics a lot but now there’s generally only 3-4 of us around at a time. That’s why I feel so strongly about 1-5 player content.
I disagree with a lot you’ve said in this thread, but I think the above quote would actually serve as a much needed TLDR to my OP, because yeah… the formerly “low end key” demographic’s intended content is quite possibly, from the devs’ perspective, meant to be the (eventually) very queueable “relevant heroics” of Dragonflight season 4 and onward.
Do you have a quote from someone being flamed for not liking M+? That phrase gets thrown around a lot, but usually when asked to provide a quote, none is provided.
Sure, but where are their issues that people dislike M+? Most of the criticisms of M+ misrepresent something significantly about the mode or try to speak for a large group of people they can’t possibly speak for.
I have never tried to convince someone who dislikes M+ that they’re wrong somehow. But I’ll frequently jump in to correct misconceptions or outright lies. Which constitute by far the most common complaints of M+.
This is something I think about a lot in the vein of this thread.
Friend of mine recently got curious and did a once ever keystone master (my circle of WoW friends have been around for pretty much every expansion/era), just to see what all the hype was about, and ran into this wall that “the community doesn’t support” someone coming in late and doing low keys in an honest effort to climb. It proved neither time efficient or effort economical like upper keys (where “everyone is at”) are, so this friend… threw gold at the problem, and then broke into “where the community is” and it was a vastly different, more consistent game, albeit miserable as a PUG.
The point of this thread was to make visible the idea that “folks, heroics and delves are real alternatives as M+ gets redefined,” because yeah… some people who hung around the “2-9 range,” as you say, are probably “meant to” do heroics or delves a bit longer, if not stop there.
I probably could have done it with fewer words, but all I wanted was some degree of community visibility on the issue, and I got that, so I’m pleased.
Engagement metrics put games into even more of a downward spiral than Trent Reznor in a surprisingly rapid time, usually before you even realize it’s happening.
It may have been doomed the moment Ion (or even his predecessor?) decided to attach player power to content players hated. Ion was always a hardcore gamer; hardcore gamers are different from hardcore businessfolk - a factor that’s always been very noticeable in the industry when the latter started taking over en masse - and it’s easy to imagine this was first done without even thinking about how it would go over with Biz.
But of course the moment you do something like that, the players suck it up and do it anyway because they’ve been acculturated to the idea that skipping out on any player power for any reason is “not putting in the effort for the team” (there’s also been a steady shift away from groups and to teams in this game; this is another subtle but insidious thing that rots away a lot of the fun before you know it) and therefore should be shunned for laziness rather than praised for principles (there’s also the fact that relevant content has tended to have less and less and less wiggle room over the years so performance sacrifices make more of a difference at a level that actually matters).
And then Biz only sees the engagement figures, heck half of them probably don’t even game (didn’t Kotick even brag about not being a gamer? ). To them, THE PLAYERS LOVE IT. ADD MORE. And coming from Biz, that’s NOT a friendly suggestion.
And next thing you know the whole game’s infested with things you hate but have to do to please the community, and can possibly even have to do just to be strong enough to clear content.
I don’t think Garrisons helped either. Besides the rampant gold inflation (which many players have even wondered if was a deliberate measure to push prices out of control so new and returning players would feel obligated to purchase the Token, especially when the gold spigots were massively turned down after … some dismiss it as a conspiracy theory, but it also seems like pretty good business, and pretty wily of Blizzard to do it during an expansion where a lot of people weren’t really paying attention to the game while preparing - Legion WAS known to have been being prepared ahead of schedule, it’s why WoD’s patch content was so spare - a knock it out of the park xpac that people WOULD come back en masse for!), there was that whole “play from your phone” app bit that I found especially clunky (especially if you used Garrison addons, since any activity from the app wouldn’t be recorded in the addons).
If I’m not mistaken, he might be a rare example of the one guy who could possibly overlap with both fields… but I do think his influence on the game has hurt it in many ways, largely because it seems to have largely doubled-down on a lot of these endgame-focused systems because that’s what works for him.
That being said, WoW’s runaway-success during the early years was definitely one of the biggest causes for “big business” getting involved in the industry. In retrospect, it was more of a “stars aligning” situation that led to the mythical 12 million subscribers, but it was something that caught the eyes of big business.
I recall seeing an old - really old - article with Kotick claiming he wanted to take the “fun” out of game development. From a strictly business perspective, it would come down to cutting back on wasteful expenditures… but yeah, that generally doesn’t bode well for the actual quality of the products.
Anyhow, they rely on metrics to decide the direction of the game. They’re also very well aware of the principles of “Skinner Box” design, and abuse it to hell and back to achieve short-term results.
… which, if you step back and think for a moment, a simple realization occurs:
Skinner Boxes create false positives in metrics.
Players don’t love doing these types of activities. In fact, I’d argue only a very small set of them actually do. Everyone else is tolerating them because they are good for obtaining the desired results. From a metrics perspective, the data is only saying players are doing the content, not if they’re actually enjoying it.
But to a business exec without any actual context, it would appear to be a positive to them.
But it’s a house-of-cards, one which is very liable to collapse (almost instantaneously) as soon as the reward loop loses its appeal.
A good, old adage: “Do not attribute to malice that which can adequately explained by incompetence.”
I don’t think it was intentional (of course, I’ve also never bought a token), just a comedy of errors.
… though I would not be surprised if some of the later decisions to encourage further token sales is just Blizz being opportunistic and greedy buggers.
This is actually something the community could push back against, but for some reason we can’t get it to.
As I noted before - a big part of the reason this works, is because the community permits it to work.
If you refuse to do the unfun content that has a big enough shiny, you’re not rewarded for it - instead, you’re shoved further into Declinesville because “your ilvl is kinda low/you aren’t putting in the effort/etc.”
Then there’s the definition of effort. Anything short of pouring your entire heart and soul into the game is now considered “no” effort. Not “less” effort, or a “reasonable” effort (which is what it probably ought be seen as given how much extra goes into eking out even small increases after a point) but literally “no” effort.
In fact, I’ve even seen plenty of people that think it’s perfectly acceptable to expect people to even spend money on Tokens to get boosts, if they’re far enough behind the gear curve due to when they hit endgame that xpac/that character, and that if you aren’t able or willing to afford those Tokens then you need to get off the game and go focus on improving your career until it’s pocket change enough that you can suck it up. Yep, now even your real life situation is considered part of game effort. Remember when we were making progress on the whole “you shouldn’t revolve your real life around a video game” issue? Now it’s like it’s rubber banded all the way back.
The main thing I fear is if the game design has shifted enough that it’s materially too late to do that - as in “being the change you want to see” via your own groups is no longer feasible due to the numbers demands that are baked into the goals themselves. I.e., the only reward for attempting to do that is “you fail and get laughed at” (I can hear New Order’s lyrical taunt … In the end you will submit, it’s got to hurt a little bit)
In SL S1 I tried being the change I wanted to see, and it resulted in struggling to even get past 4-5 … and it also might be noted that SL had several uncomfortably tight timers even at low keys, usually because of most of it being eaten up simply by getting around the place so even efficient combat didn’t shave off as much as you wanted. (The absolutely miserable affixes SL threw at you even as soon as +4 many weeks weren’t helping either. If there’s one silver lining to Mythic being kicked upstairs ten levels, at least that means the affixes don’t set in till even higher …)
(By comparison FFXIV isn’t too much better (if better at all) in terms of tight non-negotiable game performance demands, but on the other hand, at least ilvl is far far easier to get, only specific side content like Eureka has special gear (Relic weapons are catch up/cosmetic oriented gear, not semiforced progression), and only Ultimates and Criterion Savage dungeons really expect you to have it fully maxed going in. Plus those are “evergreen” content that scales you down if you tackle it in the future so seasonal pressure is that much less)
Arguably a group game that gutted out its grouping process so badly over those 20 years (compare how much more freely people group nowadays in Classic Era) that it’s basically had to add solo options just so most people have enough to do to justify a subscription.
Consider that you’re not even guaranteed to get to play the game, because of the whole competition/declinesville/etc. thing and for this you’re paying a monthly subscription, whereas most of the multiplayer games industry either doesn’t have a sub to pay, has better matchmaking so you have an escape valve from wasting the night being declined AND/OR doesn’t require you to go to all of the effort to build a character up just so you can get shot down over and over because it’s not built up as much as other people’s so so sorry …
… and solo options suddenly become that much more important.
At least FFXIV has robust cosmetics crafting and various forms of interesting side content (I know players who basically unlocked the Gold Saucer and then just mostly forgot about the rest of the game, LOL), even if it’s basically eternally WoD levels of anemic when it comes to endgame combat content release pace.
While WoW didn’t even used to have much of this. Even Pet Battles and getting Xmog at all were revolutionary (they had always made excuses about Xmog in particular, usually some prattle about PvP power recognition through gear appearance) and any request for something fun would get slapped back with “well, you can have a raid tier or XYZ” - if they had kept up with that, I’m not sure the game would really have anywhere near the following it still has (a lot of Big Friendly Guilds are propped up primarily by transmog and timewalking runs).
Im not doing anymore keys, cuz i dont get invs with appropriate ilvl and io, and the only way i can get and inv is if im 20 ilvl over the content, so i gota run my own keys which i only get one key, and im not doing a whole bunch of keys to get the key i need
All end game is focused around groups. Always has been. Its a group based game with solo options
You must be a one and done kind of person. Im running.keys with 470 ilvl toons and sure i get declines from people wanting to be carried, but i still get invites.
Every patch and content is released with the intention that youve already done the prior content.
Low ilvl and awkward key level when most people were farming 16s around that level. Not to mention outlaw and sub were far superior for that key range as well.
A little biased, isn’t it? BG and Solo shuffle are just as “accessible” and yet barely have a sustainable population. At all.
People who don’t get it are up in arms, maybe. It’s not like people are losing their minds about it. Just a general “meh, that’s not exciting”, which is what everyone was asking for: passive kiss/curse affixes. Replaces all the ones that needed any counter play personally.
You mean YouTube content creators are capitalizing on a minor controversy? You see why that may not be the best gauge of sentiment?
). To them, THE PLAYERS LOVE IT. ADD MORE. And coming from Biz, that’s NOT a friendly suggestion.
)