Rise of the Gamers: The backlash that is hitting the gaming industry

Community General Discussion
1

I think its safe to say looking at the stocks of triple A gaming companies that we’ve had enough. Players are sick of content being locked behind cash shops, expansion packs, DLCs, and loot boxes.

They say that if you stick a frog in boiling water, it will simply jump out. Turn the heat up gradually over time though and the frog wont realize until its too late that its being boiled alive. But that’s not the case with the video game industry. They tried to pull that crap on gamers and I think the stock market is reflecting that we aren’t gonna have any of that.

When we buy a game we shouldn’t be locked out of content only to have to buy it at a later date (usually around a month later). Activision/Blizzard I beg of you, be better than your competition. Look back at the sub numbers of wrath and the population on servers back then. You used to make GREAT games!!! I’m not sure whats going on lately at the company but you guys are definitely on the same boat as the rest of the Triple A gaming companies.

There used to be so much passion and effort put into your games. Don’t get me wrong, I still love wow and I think the art department does a phenomenal job designing the world we play in. That is far from the reason your players are not enjoying the game. The problem is content and reward systems at this moment. People HATE RNG. We all know what it is Blizzard. It’s your lottery system that is designed to keep people logging in. If you made a great game again you wouldn’t have to design such systems. We dont want this RNGfest. Get…It…Through…Your…Head…

Bring back badge and honor vendors. Allow people to target the gear they want by participating in the content they want. Below I’ll post a list of ideas that I think would make the game fun and interesting. I really hope you as a company can see the darkness you’re headed towards and steer away from it.

As always you (the community) are more than welcome to input feedback.
I realize I’ve posted this list before. In before someone states the obvious. I just like discussing it =D

Ideas to improve
Bring back challenging dungeons. M+ can stay in the picture for people who are interested in doing them but dungeons shouldn’t be an AoE slaughterhouse where tanks pull everything. Remember when you actually had to CC in dungeons? Bring it back.

Bring back Honor and Conquest Vendors . The current PvP reward system is garbage. Random BGs are a mystery as to how the gearing system works. Do I get a piece from a win or nah? Allow players to save up their PvP currency and target the gear they want to purchase. I have no idea why this was ever changed.

Make PvP and PvE seperate. Gear from PvE should not be amazing in PvP and vice versa. Seems pretty self explanitory.

Add a Badge system and get rid of RNG and not have it time gated leaving players to farm 5 months for 1 piece of loot, which we have now. I think one of the reasons Legion took off as well as it did was due to the implementation of the nethershard vendor. This allowed players to farm a currency and obtain gear.

Add Armor/Gear Increase similar to some Free to Play games; armor or weapons go up to +15. While I dont want it to go that high we can do something with it. We had this before where armor can be increased from 2/2 or 4/4. Bring it back.

Get rid of the current Talent Tree style. This system proves to be hindrance leaving players limited when it comes to chosen abilities that have no synergy or doesn’t help the spec/class at all.

Bring back the old Tree system and build up on it like Path of Exile giving players “freedom” to breath and explore options.

Bring back all Abilities that were taken away by Devs because they wanted to create a “new” experience per expansion when in fact it created nothing but neglected classes/specs from PvP/PvE content until needing buffs. The Azerite could have fit well here buffing certain abilities players “choose”.

Add Player Housing . We have NPC housing in Major Cities and Zones and nothing for players to call home except for an Inn shared by players or players staying in the current expansion zones.

Add Guild Fortress . Class hall did pretty good holding many players, so why not introduce an instance for Guilds to build upon with cool options and features. You can even have Guild battles allowing guilds to go into pvp mode to fight other Guild Fortresses.

Bring back Quivers, relics, etc . We were supposed to have these implemented in WoD. They were supposed to be unique to classes. This would create more immersion in classes.

Bring back Reforging . This allowed players to switch stats on their gear and gave players more unique customization with their characters.

Add a better system for Professions . Make them relevant even in end game.

Add the ability to Transmog Legendary gear/armor players worked hard to get.

Add more Open World content. The “invasion” in 8.1 is ok but could be longer or more could happen around the zones. Not wait 8-10 hours for another one to pop up. Keep people engaged. Add more stuff for players to do like Wave dungeons or treasure hunting on Azeroth. Warcraft has so many zones, yet a lot of them remain empty due to the lack of open world engagement/content. It would’ve been cool to see Legion invasions happen all over Azeroth instead of just the broken isles.

Add a system that allow PvPers to attack Major cities and get loot from them. GW2 has a system with walls breaking as well as AION; upon control in AION you can do dungeons for loot until it becomes “contested” again. We had this before with Tol’barad, Wintersgrasp, and Ashran. They just needed more work done to them to add more polish. This is what Warfront should’ve been.

Add more Character Features . Cuts, scars, more detail, height, weights, etc.

Add better and more Effects to armor and weapons; better cool looking enchanted bows and have arrows use enchants.

Bring back Glyphs and cool looks Affliction Locks had with the orbs, etc.

Give Druids more Moonkin form options and Resto form options.

Add Hunts . This could be one of the forms of content that I mentioned above to get players back into the world and to engage in the world. There could be quests available on the Hero’s Call Board (the board in major cities you can click on and it sends you to appropriate zones) that send you to fight unique and challenging monsters across Azeroth. Said monsters can range in difficulty form solo-able to 5 man content. These monsters would have unique mechanics that make themCHALLENGING for players as well as having a retreat mechanic which would allow them to retreat to another part of the zone, requiring you (and your group if its harder) to track them and hunt them back down. Said bosses could reward unique xmogs for said monsters slain that made you look like a monster hunter. This could bring back some of the thrill and adventure back to WoW.

Give Enhancement Shamans full control allowing them to maintain their Flametouge and Frostband like how they use to for 1 hour on w/e weapon. Same could be said for Retribution Paladins and their seals. Buffs added a lot of immersion into peoples classes. Not sure why this was ever removed.

Give 2 Handed-Weapons to Enhancement Shaman and Frost Death Knights. Also 1 Handed-Weapons to Fury Warriors.

Bring back and add Bleed/Poison/Burning/Slow frost/Plague/Electricity, etc effects on NPCs/Players for 5-10 seconds and have Arrows stay on NPCs/Players for 5-10 seconds.

Remove Pathfinder or at least change it. Allow players the choice to complete pathfinder and unlock flying account wide or pay for flying on that single character.

Put a little more love into your Holiday Events . Wildstar did a better job at this than WoW currently does. A couple decorations here and there are meh. Go nuts redecorating major cities. Blizz has an AMAZING art team. There is no reason this cant be done

Actual Weather. At the moment all we get is rain every once and a while. Would be cool to see it snow in relative climates. Also would be kind of cool to have the weather actually affect the environment.

136 Likes
2

I like quite a bit of the ideas, don’t mind a few others, disagree with some. And they’ve all pretty much been discussed on the forums already. I feel like you’re just beating a dead horse with this post. You’re not really bringing something new to the discussion to really warrant a new post, you know?

16 Likes
3

I understand where you’re coming from bud. But maybe if its repeated enough they’ll start to take notice. Ya never know.

What ideas do you enjoy and not care for?

12 Likes
4

Unfortunately, the people that need to read it won’t and will refuse to unless a gun was held to their head. Those people care only care about growth, not even profit.

13 Likes
5

If they cared about growth then all the more reason to read it.

7 Likes
6

If it doesn’t make them spend less and make all the money, then they don’t care. >.>

9 Likes
7

There’s almost too many problems. Some are easy fixes, others will require work. Something they dont want to do. When they botch the UI after 14 years and force windowed mode it’s hard to trust them when they screws up simple things.

12 Likes
8

I don’t particularly like this idea, because it causes PvP success to favor first-comers of a season/expansion in the PvP scene. The way it is now is better, as it allows people to get into it without worrying about being out-geared by those who started earlier than them. As long as you can play your class, geared yourself properly, you should be fine. The rest should be skill/strategy.

6 Likes
9

I understand that. The way it is now isn’t terrible. I just dont think raiders with BiS gear (good luck getting it with RNG) should be able to dominate people in PvP. The scaling in random BGs helps a lot with that at the moment so it’s not really a necessity I suppose.

2 Likes
10

Realistically speaking, yes–there’s a certain percentage of gamers that are very tired of the financial models being used at the moment. And there’s a much larger percentage of players who swallow them whole and persist in encouraging those same models.

We have a significant number of players out there who will happily pay to succeed in a video game. Whether that’s through loot boxes or P2W models or even 3rd party cheat systems, they only “win” when they’re at a point where there is no competition. They’ll pay literally thousands of dollars to get there. This is beyond the “whales” that inhabit P2W mobile games. We have them here in WoW–otherwise we wouldn’t have gold sellers, real money raid slots, etc.

It’s nice to say “hey, I’m sick of this” and tell the companies out there they have to change. But the dollars they’re getting tell them to keep going.

31 Likes
11

Actual Weather. At the moment all we get is rain every once and a while. Would be cool to see it snow in relative climates. Also would be kind of cool to have the weather actually affect the environment

Cant ever see this happening.

12

I actually like it in Diablo 3. Just not in wow. I don’t know why.

3 Likes
13

Probably because D3 showers you in loot and there’s a variety of builds based on gear and set up.

9 Likes
14

So when I goto McDonalds and get a number 1 for myself and 7 for my wife it cost about $14 with tax.

I get less out of that $14 then with my WoW sub. You do not see me posting on the McDonalds forums that their meal needs to make me feel better and my $14 needs to include more content.

I enjoy what I ate and if I do not like it I go somwhere else.

8 Likes
15

McDonald’s gross.

Fair point but while wow may have its faults it’s still one of the best in the genre. It wont be if it continues down this slope.

7 Likes
16

Here’s the funny thing about the AAA assessment

Instead of actually doing meaningful content to get more players, they would just introduce more micro-transactions to milk the existing players :smiley:

4 Likes
17

How can you say he isn’t bringing anything new to the table when he told us about frogs and boiling water. :grinning:

Gaming companies have always been about money but before they also cared about the game. Now it just seems like money is all that matters no matter if the game sucks or not.

9 Likes
18

Who is the sucker that bought the game and subscription?

19

You, apparently.

6 Likes
20

I think a TLDR would be in order.

3 Likes