Measuring Fun in WoW

Im not in the love islands, emissaries and unfun grind camp. They provide little challenge and little rewards and are not engagin or fun. I have said before and Bellular has also indicated in several videos that the open world and world quests are not fun yet we do these to stay relevant in the game. Whats annoying and frustrating is that blizzard looks at us participating on this as a success of their systems.

I would prefer world bosses being the only type of combat world quests. One or two per zone. Instead of 4 seperate small nitty girty cringy quests.

I would prefer islands to have stories associated with them and a mode that lets you feel like the azerite you are collecting is being absorbed to your own heart, such as an endless wave challenge mode with each successive wave bringing harder and more challenging mobs that give you more AP per wave completed.

I Would prefer an Open Mythic Cross Realm Raiding community from the raids release so I can play with friends across many servers.

These would make this game fun and worth it. The current systems are just meh. I have 5 characters at over 400 at this point and i do not see any challenge anymore.

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Agree that “participation” is a poor metric to judge the “success” of a feature. I do one Warfront for the quest every time it’s up…does that mean I’m enjoying it and want moar?

Not necessarily.

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They aren’t just looking at participation, they are also looking at participation after goals are met. Just because you, or I, may not like them that does not mean that there are not a lot of other people who do.

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What they need to do for World Quests is throw in actual story-driven questlines at rep thresholds like they did with Suramar in Legion and the War Campaign now. I understand that’s more work for them, but ripping quests from leveling and having us repeat them ad nauseam as World Quests is just so terribly lazy. Like holy hell. No.

I just don’t do them. Ever. Because they’re so dull. Even with scaling, nothing in the world is challenging. It’s just something to waste your time.

If I wanted to mindlessly grind mobs that have no chance of hurting me, I’d go play BDO where the combat is fun all on its own.

Even if they don’t do story-driven world quests - though, honestly, I think that would be a GREAT idea, keep the stories for the zones expanding through the entire expac, maybe in conjunction with paragon caches - they could at least offer us more variety in our world quests. I feel like BfA has less than half the WQs Legion had.

I wish they wouldn’t gate content behind rep and gate rep behind time.

I enjoy the game but the fun stops when they make me stop and that’s what i struggle with this expansion.

I know their trying to please everyone but if someone wants to farm rep for 20 hours straight and be a hardcore little thing they should let them and let them be rewarded for it.

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Facts are playing is greater than not playing.

But they are conscious of that concept. For example, they “know” how many folks are running, say, Island Expeditions after they’ve got their weekly bar filled.

They probably have metrics (to some extent) on folks doing something more “cuz they want to” than “have to”.

I think the more difficult thing to contrast is rating “fun” vs, simply, “worth doing for the reward”.

How many folks are running IE’s solely for a mount drop. Basically, it’s not that IE’s are “fun”, but, rather, “they’re worth doing because getting the mount is fun/rewarding”.

I’m honestly to the point where I’m not sure if I do much of anything that doesn’t have direct, character empowering reward.

That’s the whole “login, do the emissary, refresh the mission tables, advance some other weekly agenda”.

It’s not quite “chores” to the level that the Garrison was for me. That was a freaking trap. Log in, tend to the Garrison and…gah…no energy. When I decided to let my mine, and herb gardens rot, WoD got much more interesting.

But right now, emissaries (for me) are hard to pass up. I still have a piece or two under 385. When I ding Level 43 AP, I think I can step back (I don’t have any gear farther along than that). I’d really like to get back to my horde alt, I found the Zanadlar story fun.

You cannot measure fun.
Fun is subjective to each person individually.

What can be measured is player activity.
How many do WQ’s and how often.
Raids, mythic dungeons. Are these repeated a lot or a little.
Stick with one or two characters or level up tons of alts.

These and other activities can be measured.
But they would never know if players are doing these for fun or because they just feel “they have to do them” for other reasons (like not “falling behind”, or grinding for some end result like an achievement or a mount).

Fun cannot be measured, just actual activity.

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Im kindof in the boycott all this non fun stuff. Many people already have by just unsubbing. There are many players that just want a challenge like myself and everything else is just a pointless grind. I would much rather dedicate that time to overwatch or dota 2. Games that give you a fun and engaging experience. I feel half asleep through most of what Blizzard considers a successful fun activity. I fall asleep with everything thats not mythic plus or raiding. And even raiding gets boring and repetative.

Usually my play time is split 80/20.

80 for content I like (raid, M+, gather herbs, run low level content for transmogs, SOME of WQ)

20 for content I don’t really like, but still do (WQ, if reward worth it, 1 battle front a week, LFR for runes)

0 for content I dislike (Island expeditions, pet battles, leveling alts)

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If people have fun in a game, they are willing to pay for it. When they don’t, they unsubscribe.

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Them measuring fun by time spent playing and doing content is a poor way to measure it.

If we presented our customer satisfaction metric pulled solely from time spent on calls and issues resolved we’d be written up.

You can’t get a true sense of customer satisfaction without surveying a random sampling of users.

With the changes (removal or portals) and unreleased QOL features (flying) the play time metric is already skewed in favor of “fun”.

WFs are incredibly boring but an easy source of gear for alts. It being run regularly by the community doesn’t mean it’s fun.

Saying you’re going to measure ‘fun’ by time spent is like saying you’re going to measure weight loss by time spent IN the gym but not necessarily using it.

They said in the QA that the fun measurement system is:

  • How frequently do you log in?

  • How long do you log in for?

  • What activities do people do?

If the answers are:

Often

A long time

and doing the same thing every time, then they know that thing is fun. Otherwise, their logic is that people would not log in often to do it, or spend long amounts of time doing the same activities unless those were “fun”.

For me it works like this beginning of expansion, I come in and play until pathfinder 1 is done. Then, I do not log in for months - this time it will be pretty close to a year before I play again (it appears). Then, the “.2” version of the expansion releases and I get flying. THEN I level all 30 of my alts. This is the cycle of my playing since, for me, fun is leveling alts and flying. I made a quasi exception this time because I wanted a Zandalarian Paladin, so I made one and got it to BfA level and will not finish leveling until flying is unlocked in BfA.

So, they can potentially get me back for allied races as I will register on their “funometer”, however, this only applies to trolls. So, if they make new trolls playable, or if they do my idea on the link, then I will log in to level several versions of those troll types. Otherwise, it’s back to the cycle of “The game has what I want when I can fly”. This works for anyone in their play style. Obviously, no one will log in to do stuff they do not find fun.

Troll Unlock Idea

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I’m still having fun, but I have to say I’m more bored than I’ve ever been playing the game.

Being close to invincible contributes to that, in PVE I mean of course. As a hunter I should be trying to maintain distance, and rarely pull more than one or two mobs…but the way the game is now, I can just stand there and get beat on to no real effect.

When Classic hits I’m going to need to re-learn being quite a bit more cautious.

Are we talking BM or MM or survival? World mobs or instance mobs like island expeditions? Cause in heroic IEs I can do pretty much whatever I want in BM with a pet to tank, but as MM there is s good chance if I pulled that much I will get stunned and die. It is relative to what one is doing.

Ever hear the phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder?”

Fun is subjective on a person-to-person basis and anyone who claims they can measure it when indirectly dealing with a large group of people are either deluded…or dumb.

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It’s all about that E N G A G E M E N T

Those first two points of measurement really sound like a “Time Played” Metric.

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[Time played - (time afk + time jumping around)] * amount of times you repeat “x” content = “Fun”

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