I’m glad to hear folks like you don’t have to suffer that garbage in their other games. Who knows what the problem is? …but it’s so amazingly terrible and I’ve never seen anything like it before in the entire industry.
Well, not everyone is rolling multiple accounts. I can see a person doing that if they have multiple accounts. I only have one. So Portals are only really useful for my mage or when guildies are on and need to travel.
Who is going to roll multi accounts just to port your own non mage around this is just stupid game design.
And your having a repeat of 4 expansions ago where your spamming trade chat looking for a mage port.
Exactly this. I tab out, get distracted by something else, and either just close the game or afk out.
Also tabbing out is not game content and or exciting.
Your not enjoying Azeroth watching YouTube.
Like a lot of the other BFA decisions that players have been against - this reeks of change for the sake of change, and game design with a spreadsheet.
Stating your design principles of making the world feel bigger doesn’t help make your design any more enjoyable for the players. These changes have done nought but increase tedium. Going AFK for minutes at a time as I take a flight path through old, sterile worlds doesn’t increase my engagement, make me feel immersed or increase fun. What it does is show your contempt for my time in the game. If you think I should waste my time flying over neglected content then give me a reason to be there.
Perhaps try changing the game design according to what’s enjoyable, not what fits your spreadsheet or arbitrary principles.
I hope whoever is in charge of the next expansion’s development is smarter with where they assign resources and instead addresses things that matter.
I have been reading through as many responses as I could to this and wanted to add my own thoughts, which I am sure mirror many others.
My summary of the blue post is as follows, along with some comments of my own.
- We read most everything posted here & elsewhere and “we can’t help but be impacted” ( How exactly is this impacting you? )
- So, here’s the answer to the question ‘why’ ( I think there are more things being said by the player base than just ‘why’ actually but anyway… )
- One of our “guiding principles” has been “don’t overuse portals” because shortening distances can diminish the sense of world size ( the number of quests completed across my levelling experiences for the past decade beg to differ here and actually, it diminishes not how I view the world but how much quality time I can have playing ), BUT
- “don’t make it too inconvenient” ( can we explore your definition of inconvenient vs ours? )
- It’s a tradition for us to remove previous portals from previous expansion cities
- Except….we didn’t do that for the last expansion
- Or the one before that.
- And regardless of the reasons why we didn’t, we are “correcting” that. Now.
- So, what you have now will be
- Portals to a “full range” of cities & Silithus & Cata zones
- Other modes of transport & trinkets & things you might have (or not)
- And don’t forget boats, and zeppelins! ( and run, I guess we could run )
- And finally, our own game updates/design have resulted in chaotic portal placement so we may as well tidy all that up at the same time.
- We’ve processed a lot of feedback, followed that feedback and what is on PTR is what we have come up with ( whilst not actually leaving the portals that the player base would like left? )
- What you have left (see previous means of transport including trinkets and things you might have [or not]) make most locations “reachable”.
- Let us know if there is anything that might become “unreasonably inaccessible”, we are “open” to adding additional means of travel in the future.
I am curious about the definitions of “most locations”, “reachable” and “unreasonably inaccessible”. I love to revisit old content. I probably spend more time in old content than new after the initial excitement of a new expansion, and that is my play style of choice.
TLDR: So far, all I have read from this lengthy blue post is: – Player discontent is all over the forums (and elsewhere) so we thought we should say why we are doing this. So, we are doing this because we a) want to tidy our previous design mess and b) it’s a guiding principle that, well, didn’t actually guide us because well, we didn’t do it for the last two expansions. Oh, and we don’t want you thinking the world isn’t big so we will show you by making you spend a lot more time in it. Ok, well, not really in it, just more time flying, riding, walking, running, sailing, and using trinket-thingies in it. There we are. Now we are all guided by the same principle.
Sweet.
Nope, not happy.
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Stop asking for our feedback and dismissing it. You wanted feedback, it doesn’t suit your “vision” for the game, and so it is deemed wrong DESPITE the clear argument against it. Keep digging your own grave.
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Spend time making the game more fun, rather than removing options.
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Just another case of Blizzard completely ignoring the paying customers feedback.
I’m all for consolidating the portals, in fact I really like the looks of the new portal rooms, but why not keep portals to the shrine & caverns of time etc. Just add them to the new portal rooms.
Taking things away from us because of some stupid “design philosophy” isn’t a good way to keep your customers happy especially when these portals have been around for years and years.
This just makes traversing your cavernous empty world more of a slog. It’s not going to create more social interaction, you guys have done plenty to kill that with LFG/LFR/Cross server play already.
Please stop with bad change after bad change, haven’t you driven away enough players already?
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Because they’re led by Jeff Kaplan and he’s a G. Every designer I know that has worked with him has respected the heck out of him and he actually listens to feedback and cares enormously for both his project and his team.
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None of these feedbacks is going to matter. 3532 and 5251 that is 8,783 total post about this issue on both threads. Is any of it being read and taking in consideration?
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Anytime somethings happen that has had the community up in arms… I’ve never been bothered by any of those situations. But this has got to be the dumbest change ever happening to this game… Been playing off and on since day one launch of wow back in nov 2004 too
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Please put the old portals back.
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Likely not since they aren’t losing that much money for making this mistake yet. They might reconsider when they realize it’s only hurting their wallets.
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Seriously. Ion could be totally dismissive of players in private and think we’re all stupid and have no idea how the game works and I would not care. But he’s like that in public when he’s answering questions and isn’t transparent at all about how they plan to fix things, if he even acknowledges players’ complaints about something as a problem instead of just dismissing it with “we don’t think it’s a problem, deal with it”. Jeff Kaplan could rightly think Overwatch players are whiny and stupid in private, but he never says that in public and is super transparent about how they’re going to fix issues that are often brought up and at least acknowledges that people view them as problems. That encourages trust in the development team that they’re actually listening and care, and it quells peoples’ anxieties to still stick with the game even if it’s currently in a poor state because it makes them feel like there’s hope for it to get better in the near future.
And it’s not just one problem that Ion has said “we don’t think it’s a problem, deal with it”, it’s like a whole mountain of them and it’s starting to add up. At some point you’re like “if I’m just supposed to deal with all these problems that make the game bad, I’m just gonna play something else then”.
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The way he is in Q&A’s is apparently how he always is internally. He’s a decent designer (at times) but just IMAGINE having a leader that talks the way he does. How can anyone learn from him? He lets his own ego get in the way of making the right call.
I’m sure his job is hard and all, but they seriously need new blood in there.
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I swear the other day this sentence was:
“don’t make it too convenient to get from most places to most other places”
So they edited the text without letting anyone know? That one word makes a big difference.
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Removing old portals really does nothing for them but make us waste the occasional few minutes when traveling though old zones maybe for mog/mount runs.
I can see no good reason to do this. Only way they benefit is they slightly increase a time played metric to show investors that people are staying logged in the game longer.
1 Like
I nearly ended up spewing my drink all over my monitor. Thank you to both of you.
Meanwhile, a Gnome on a Turbo-Charged Flying Machine zooms by. Trailing off in the distance he can hear a Pandaren say, “Slow down.”
3 Likes