Casuals hate hardcores, hardcores hate casual, min maxers getting heat, RPers getting high and mighty, pvpers hate everyone because they get no dev time, forums all hate each other, people hate blizzard, people hate people who hate blizzard.
What’s going on here? Who is to blame?
Was forcing everyone into everyone else’s content a bad design choice?
Players not depending on other players anymore?
Cross realm doing its part? Lfg systems breaking down community ties?
Covid getting people down
How do we turn this around and learn to live with one another?
Ion gave some people fuel by calling people good at the game “degenerates” which made a spiteful demographic feel empowered… but then he proceeded to give those degenerates all Beta invites and the spiteful demographic is stuck trolling GD
If we are going to have some real reflections on this I’d say it’s more just GD being completely insane and most the issues we face are blown up here way worse than they really are
My opinion is that it’s because Blizzard is looking to try a few different things and people are very invested in each side of very hard to compromise debates.
This is nothing new. Everyone hates everyone else and everything they disagree with. My solution is simple. PvP with your favorite character, farm those honor levels, try to avoid concussions while griping, and go get 'em!
I think he called the gameplay degenerate, not the people who do it. In fact he seemed to perfectly understand why they would play in that way since it was advantageous and the game allowed them to do it. But it was degenerate in so far as the design itself accommodated it. Basically its this:
DG is an incredibly useful term, because it describes (as I understand it) a situation in which the incentive structure of a game mechanic is flawed. DG, as I’ve seen it used, describes game mechanics that lead players to take actions that would be absurd or ridiculous within the context of the game world because of metagaming concerns. Rest-spamming is a classic example. A properly designed game reflects the in-universe incentives to the player as game incentives, leading them to act in such a way that the optimal course for the player is similar to or identical to the optimal course for the characters in the game world (if you were reading a story or something). DG occurs when a game mechanic is poorly designed, incentivizing the player to do something that would be absurd within the context of the game world or story. Such as stopping for an 8-hour nap every 5 minutes.
So far from it being an attack on the player or even the action of the player, its rather an attack on poor game design.
Unfortunately how things are said are not always how they are interpreted. Since the Preach interview, there is a very aggro group on the GD running with Ion quotes taken out of context
Aside from that half those groups have hated on each other since the dawn of time, Blizzard made a change that polarized the community and Ion’s comments have more or less been throwing fuel on the fire.
This also always happens whenever Blizzard tries to scale back on how convenient things in the game have become. People freak out over it and want them to revert it immediately, and other people like the change. The two sides never get along.
Though this one is lasting because it’s a core feature to an expansion, not a couple of portals or leveling being made kind of slower(before being made a lot faster in a few months anyway).
community up until league of legends we hope you enjoy your stay