I was having a discussion with some of my friends about the difficulty level of Wow. Some said they thought the game was way too difficult and time consuming making it even harder for the new player just starting out who might feel overwhelmed. Leading to discouragement.
Others said that Wow had turned into easy mode and had lost it’s challenge in most aspects of game-play. Becoming boring. I’m a casual player but I really don’t know? So I come to the forum for answers.
What do you think? Is Wow balanced more for the casual player? Or is Wow balanced more for the hardcore player? And which difficulty level of balance do you think would be best going forward?
The core of the game is built towards retaining the hardcore audience… and nudging everyone else towards that style of play, the hopes they’ll become hardcore players.
“Casual” offerings are either token activities or “hardcore-lite” while quietly pushing the players towards straight-up hardcore play.
And being frank, I think there’s an element to encourage whatever WoW’s equivalent to conspicuous consumption.
I’m not sure that you are asking the right question. Those who choose to be challenged are and find ways to do that. There are a bunch of people in my guild who only play weekends, they run the content and the campaign and sometimes get achievements. I guess I’m saying that there is something for everyone and with some imagination, all can be entertained.
I think the idea is to let players be able to do what they want to do, while offering incentive to challenge themselves if they want.
I dedicated two seasons of pushing M+, and I did so in PuG form. It was stressful and I realized I wasn’t having too much fun playing like that. Same for when I really started to push for PvP when Solo Shuffle was first announced.
I do Delves, I want to beat Tier 11 soon (as soon as it stops placing the spider minibosses in the literal worst spots…), random BGs and some Solo Shuffle, want to break at least 1800. That’s as far as my ‘hardcore’-ness goes.
I have plenty of games to play if I want a challenge. I don’t really want WoW to be that for me, so I don’t.
I feel like open world content and story content should be trivial or slightly above. Some people come to WoW to chill and enjoy the game with minimal challenge. No reason to make everything hardcore. Dungeons should be a step above world and story content with M+ and raids progressively getting harder with multiple versions to challenge even the most hardcore of players.
Pre-2012 I used to do Heroics and BG’s often and raid occasionally. Now I don’t even do normal dungeons that much and rarely PvP. I have too much old content catching up to do that I don’t even do anything relevant except world and story content. The game is best if it has something for everyone and every type of skill from casual to hardcore. The more options the better.
I’m surprised to hear this. From what I saw of RWF, if anyone sees WoW as easy mode there is tougher content that they could try.
Raids too easy, try for Mythic CE.
CE too Easy, try for HOF.
HOF too easy, try for World First.
World First too easy, wipe the smirk off Liquid & Echo’s faces.
There has always been a split in player skill level.
Leveling is a means to an end now anyway.
Frankly the raiders and hardcore will always want to fly through the easy parts asap. It’s why stuff is time gated as those players will gobble up the content to get to progression content quickly.
The game is more accessible now than it ever has been.
You can enjoy the game fully while ignoring hardcore content now, that never used to be the case.
You’ll still always have player peons and the royalty with all the latest flashy gear, but the game is still able to give both content for their level of skill.
There’s plenty for casual players, but if you’re really new, it’s hard to figure out what you should be doing, because there’s just so much. I don’t even know if there’s a reasonable guide out there. There might be, but when I started playing again earlier this year, I couldn’t find one.
I can agree with this statement. I managed to skate in a 10 because that boss was in an area I could see but didn’t have to go to. But an 11. They put it in the worst spot ever.
Thing is everyone plays for like 2 months to clear / gear content, then if you still wanna do content its all casuals trying to do content cuz they are behind
The actual divide is loot acquisition. If Mythic gear exists, everyone wants it, but not everyone is good enough to get it. This leads to negative feelings.
I’ll preface that the biggest issue to these types of conversation is what players define as “Casual” is very relative to the person based on what content they do. A high key pusher doing 16s and higher might look at myself who pretty much only does 8 +10s a week as a “casual” M+ player whereas somebody who only does delves would see me as more “Hardcore”. I might view a 2 night a week Mythic raiding guild as more casual than my guild that does 12 hours a week, where as I see the top 50 Mythic raiding guilds as being “hardcore” beyond what I can imagine. “Casual” and “Hardcore” are less defined boxes and more like 2 ends of a spectrum. And it doesn’t matter if you’re more “Casual” or more “Hardcore”, so long as you’re not being a jerk.
As to your question, it is kinda interesting what they said in interviews recently. Max and Scott from Liquid interviewed the Lead and Senior Raid Encounter Designers is that they will generally design bosses starting at Heroic and then will subtract stuff for LFR and Normal versions and add stuff to create the Mythic version (though they did state they sometimes end designing a fight on first draft thats more akin to mythic). They stated that they feel like Heroic Raid basically encapsulate all the game play hooks. That said, they have shifted their design to more skill oriented and on the ball reactive play. A lot of raid fight at mythic are pure “play the game and use your eyes”. Even WA heavy fights like Mythic Ovinax and Mythic Court still need to fundamentally understand every mechanic, how it works, and how to play around them in different ways.
For M+, they kinda of use their reward structure to kind signify benchmarks. In the past M+ was pretty much designed and balanced around where ever the rewards stopped. So for season 3 of DF, that benchmark was +20 since it gave the highest vault reward and anything beyond that is you willing punching yourself for fun.
I started back up at the end of BFA so I know the feeling. Luckily I had some friends that gave me a metric ton of guides to review and advice. But even now I’m still learning every day.
It’s balanced for casual players without question. Hardcore players only do a more difficult version of everything a casual does. Casuals are able to play every form of content.
On the contrary, WoW has managed to be both “too easy” and “too hard” at the same time because of how the game is structured.
Leveling & questing are all too often “too easy” - and as such, are unsatisfying experiences. The trouble is that quite a few players, probably the thing closest to what could be called “casual players”, would prefer this to be their main mode of content. For it to be a joke just harms their enjoyment of the game.
Conversely, high-end raiding is so difficult and time-consuming that players will take one look at it and promptly decide it’s simply not for them. Because spending hundreds of attempts trying to down a single enemy isn’t fun for them, it’s stubborn stupidity that they want no part of.
You’d think players would gravitate to a difficulty of content they’d enjoy… but more often than not, they don’t. Especially when their ideal difficulty is widely regarded as a “stepping stone” to harder content they often don’t enjoy.
It is exceedingly rare to see players find the “happy medium” unless it’s one of these:
Heroic Raiding
Mythic Raiding
Higher Mythic+ Dungeons with a steady group
There’s always a few transient players trying to move up through these groups, but they seem to be the only logical end-points for WoW as a whole. Never mind that players may simply not enjoy that TYPE of content.
So for everyone else, what’s left is just unsatisfying.
Hell, even those who prefer solo play are often left wanting because even soloing old content has been rendered a joke thanks to absurd level-based damage scaling added in WoD.
If I’m being honest, I would could every single activity mentioned “hardcore”… but I’ll admit, it’s not a great definition. But the bar I’d prefer to set is ANYTHING requiring a pre-made and coordinated group to complete. There’s a broad range within that category, but it’s pretty safe to say you’re past “casual” at that point.
Conversely, anything doable solo or via a queue is “casual content”… and for WoW, they seem to try and idiot-proof that type of content. WoW’s structured in a way to get players finished with that type of content ASAP, so that they can get into more coordinated types of content. And quite frankly, I think that’s where casual players want to stay if they can… though I suspect they wouldn’t mind the difficulty being upped somewhat so that they aren’t falling asleep while playing. I certainly wouldn’t mind.
