Do not feel bad you did not get to watch it. I did, just more lawyer speak from Ion that never really addressed the issues in the current game. You can watch it on twitch, as well currently. Still up on the site. Myself I would say do not waste your time. Although it is funny watching Ion cringe before answering every question.
Not really. People will log in and socialize with people they know in the game. A good metric to look at might be idle time (or time hanging out at the main base). If there were fun activities to do, then people wouldn’t just hang around doing nothing. However, this would be difficult to measure because how many of those people are queued for trial of style?
Ok so maybe we can’t use a blanket statement for “rewards”. Disproportionate rewards would be a better term. Giving heroic raid loot for afk’ing, giving 2500 AP for running around killing stuff for 5 min, 6 times a week, 1900AP and 385 gear for 5 min of world questing.
These are disproportionate rewards based on the effort needed. Considering you get 300 AP from a +15 M+ that takes 30-40 min, and 450AP for killing a mythic boss with 19 other people.
So maybe let’s not talk about taking away rewards completely, but if these activities gave rewards that were on par with the effort required, would people still do them? Like if the weekly warfront gave 350 gear for the quest and 325 for completion, would people still do it?
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Most likely not, Heck I stopped doing it and unsubbed, because who cares about the rewards, if the game is just stupid boring and unfun.
I just want to submit that just looking at if people are doing something, and how long they spend doing it, does not necessarily equal fun, and if they’re counting “look at how long people spend in game” as an internal gauge of how much players are enjoying content it’s no wonder they’ve made a lot of the terrible decisions that they have.
Broken down in terms of corporate structure, how that ends up looking is this:
Actibliz CEOs: “We want to know how much people are enjoying the game.”
Lead Developers and Managers: “Well…here’s how long they spend doing things, so they must be enjoying them?”
Actibliz CEOs: “Good, okay. Make people spend longer in the game.”
Lead Developers and Managers: “But…I mean…just making them take longer won’t…”
Actibliz CEOs: “WE NEED GROWTH IN OUR NUMBERS TO SHOW INVESTORS. If you can’t deliver more of this you’re fired.”
Lead Developers/Managers: “…right. Okay. Guys? We’re going to shoot for players spending more time in-game. By the way your bonuses and evaluations are tied to this metric now.”
Midlevel Developers: “…wha?”
Lead Developers/Managers: “DID I STUTTER? GO!”
Midlevel Developers: “Okay, so I guess we just…make everything take…longer? What makes things fast?”
Low Level Developers/CMs: “Flying. Portals. Outgearing content.”
Midlevel Developers: “Whelp. Guess we’re gonna lose all that stuff.”
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These metrics dont really work in a game as large as WoW, at least not the first two. I log in all the time but the most I see of current content on most toons is Boralus and maybe a WQ or two if the mood strikes me but im so dissatisfied with the current story/azerite system/features that most of my time is spent enjoying older content or RP.
But RP isnt a noticible metric unless they start tying in chat as part of their metrics. All they would see based on the listed metrics is I log in often, stay a long time, and tend to idle at various locations around the game.
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Probably not with rewards that bad.
It’s a balancing act, and I feel BfA has really dropped the ball with rewards relating to difficulty.
I view the content in terms of “tiers” and feel rewards are WAY out of line even when accounting for infrequency of availability.
Tier 4 - (370) no interaction content.
This would include LFR, emissaries, mythic0, and world bosses.
Tier 3 - (385) Casual interaction content (beer league).
Primary methods of acquisition require player interaction and execution of basic mechanics. Very slowly over the patch cycle Tier 4 players will get a few tier 3 items.
Normal raid, mythic+ 2-6, warfront quest only, weekly event rewards like time walking and m0 x4.
Tier 2 - (400) Cordinated content
Primarily aimed at relaxed raiding guilds and good/selective PuGs.
Heroic raid, mythic+ 7-10 keys
Tier 1 - (415) Cutting Edge
Mythic raiding. Possibly a slow acquisition rate from very high mythic+ keys but I’m not sure how to weave it in.
Of course no titanforging. I can live with warforging.
You would argue against anything that makes ActiBlizz look even slightly bad.
/facepalm You may want to re-phrase that question.
Semper Fi! ![:us:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/us.png?v=6" ":us:")
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Nope. Its worded fine. What do you feel is wrong with it?
Nope. I have regularly talked about things they did I don’t agree with.
Some time ago they mentioned that they knew it was fun to play a toon that was overpowered. They know that many many people find this concept fun.
If I can go to an old dungeon or quest or world boss and be a high level and lay the smack down on a mob that gave me grief when I was Level 1 (I am looking at you Hogger!), then this feels fun.
Back in Classic, you used to have Orange, Yellow, Green, Grey quests. When you were undergeared or clueless you just couldn’t do an Orange quest, and as you got better gear or skills you could then start to do them, or you could focus on Yellow quests.
It felt fun to be able to complete an Orange quest. But guess what is more fun? choosing when to do that harder content
And this is where they are failing. They are trying to stuff fun down people’s throats, when all people want is really just choice.
Don’t remove portals
Don’t remove skills and talent choices
Don’t remove options
If you have a system of gaining AP, have that system be something different. Have it be a choice, something like:
- Gain a maximum of 3 neck levels per week.
- Gain a neck level for any of the following weekly activities: PVP battlegrounds, PVP WQ, PVP arenas, PVE raids, PVE M+, PVE heroic dungeons, PVE WQ, etc etc
Give people choices for what to do, give people agency, and that will give people fun.
Instead what we have is a neck level that never ends until it is capped at 50. As people hit 50, what do you think people will do? No wonder people are bored, there is too many things to do, and no choices.
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Remember the good 'ol days…
when the more players that played your game meant it was a better game than a game that had less players? All of a sudden less players may mean the game is better than games with more players. lol
“Time played” said in 500 words.
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But fails to say that is what they have to take into consideration by force if necessary as they ultimately control the direction of the company and therefore the game.
What is a Monthly Active User (MAU)
Monthly Active User (MAU) is a [key performance indicator (KPI)] often used by online games, mobile apps and [social networking sites]. MAU is calculated by counting the number of unique users for a 30-day period. Calculating MAU helps determine the value of a company and finds the number of users who participate with and return to the site on a monthly basis."
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BINGO.
And Ion has no backbone to actually do things like put rep tabards back in the game because if he did NOBODY would do their garbage world quests.
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I’m having a hard time wanting to do them or emmisaries or incursions or even LFR.
I could try doing normal or higher raids but only like doing them with guildies and work schedule makes it hard to do . So right now most of my time is spent leveling low level alts for a bit and coming in here.
I do enjoy the game over all but I’m not enjoying playing it so much right now.
I kind of look at it as when a female tells a guy I love you but I’m not in love with you type scenerio with the game right now.
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That would require them to actually carry through on what they have been saying they would do over the last 2.5 expansions and that is improve communications.
Some people find cheevo hunting fun
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I get a weekly email detailing how much time i have spent in the game each week from Blizz. But its skewed as heck, it actually has a disclaimer. It says along the lines, Please allow 5 minutes between your log out time, and the time your character is actually logged out. So basically on my reports, because i have kept track myself for a week, they add an extra 5 minutes after you log out of a character. So my actual time played is pretty skewed.
My actual minutes played is always 300-400 minutes less than how they are using their extra 5 minutes skewed tracking. So they are adding 5 minutes every time you log out of a character, and then directly log into and alt. Log out of the alt to another, and they add another 5 minutes.
Thats just crazy. Talk about padding.
You can have reports sent to you to if you opt in to Parental Controls.
I don’t think they see it that way, but I absolutely agree. Letting people choose between green/yellow/orange/red not only provides some progression as the mobs work their way down from red to green, it lets people decide what they’re up to that session, and it also allows people of different skill and experience levels choose what they are capable of. Maybe that preteen can only do green quests, but maybe if you get him interested now, you’ll have a customer for 10 or 20 years.
I just wanted to point out the irony of the log in every day metric.
They’re trying to accomplish this by removing content. So we better log in and play before the content is gone.
Except after things have been removed, we have fewer reasons to log in.
Some metrics might work in the short term, but in the long run it will cost you subs.