Ion listed in one of his examples, a solution the team used in burning crusade to the player behavioral problem of all players running only Mechanar because it was the fastest/easiest way to get badges. They added a quest to do random other dungeons for badges, incentivizing players to play other content by making the rewards occasionally better than Mechanar.
This is a positive reinforcement behavioral solution. All of the behavioral solutions in recent memory have been punitive to players. They have disabled the ability to engage in previously lucrative behavior when a particular reward structure is out of line and thus the player base feels they have been robbed. Why does the team feel the need to use punitive solutions everywhere? Why do they accept situations that they admit feel bad for players instead of searching for incentives to correct behaviors that are unhealthy for the game?
Further to this question: In almost the same breath Ion indicated both that getting new gear without traits unlocked feels awful, and that allowing dedicated players to start season 2 with all their traits unlocked would be a bad thing. How does the team reconcile these behaviors. Can you articulate what disaster would occur if people could fully use the gear the drops for them right away? That seems to have worked pretty freaking well for WoW over the past 15 years.
Second unique question. Every time the team makes a change to how power is accrued by characters, be that expansion to expansion, season to season, or hotfix to hotfix, one constant can be observed. The overall rate at which power is accrued will be slower than it was before. Why does the team repeatedly feel it is necessary to dial back the rate at which players progress through the game? This is immeasurable disheartening and drives many to quit, because every time the patch notes change, your monthly subscription buys you less than it did before. It feels like being robbed every time I log in after a patch or hotfix. That is an overwhelming negative experience and has led me to a steady decline in my play time and many of my friends to quit. It feels like being robbed very slowly.
It seems to me like they are more invested in making a psychological mind-trap that keeps you playing than making a fun game.
Positive reinforcement like what you mention would be much more enjoyable for the player, but isn’t as effective at keeping you playing as is a mixture of carrot and stick- and more stick than carrot.
I would also ask what is being done to fix the “pacing” of old world content . Prior to sharding/shared world server experiences, There was a natural server “bed time” during this time you could hunt rares/do old content much more easily than fight the server camping something. With sharding you arent fighting ONE server for a spawn, you are fighting all 100+ servers, and their shards meaning there is no “bed time” and doing old world content is a literal waste of time. I think there is a relatively “easy” fix by changing the spawn timers for all rares on all previous expansions to be similar to argus. Either add is up for the day or not, but give everyone a chance to kill it/tame it, loot it
Maybe fiddle with some of their drop rates to keep their rarity(timlost protodrake example. Right now though i cant stomache to even go to places like timeless isle and afk at a “rare spawn” for hours to maybe get the first in or not , its just bad gameplay if you want to even call it that.
Small little details like this and the original posters questions are why i think bfa devs are out of touch, and not listening to feedback. Everyone is saying DO this or this or this, when really all it takes is just doing better in general for the game(play) as a whole.
Aside to say something positive i love all the toys/pets/mounts that have came out the last two expansions, really top notch there, but i always think the art in this game is really well done lately
I agree with the original poster fully. From what I see everything good is nerfed and everything that is annoying is increased and expanded upon. I like wow a lot, but in no way in good conscience can I tell my friends, “hey comeback wow is better then before!” when that is not the case.
I enjoyed farming with my friends in legion the first 54traits of my artifact weapon(the 300+ darkheart thicket mythic+ carries) because it had an end and it felt so good to finish. Now when I see AP I think I have to farm it for my locked traits instead of I get to farm it for my new traits.