|
|
United Kingdom20172 Posts
People just chose to use it less because they are no longer forced to.
Path of least resistance
If the path of least resistance leads to failures in gameplay (lvl 2 maw spam) or socialization then it's a problem with game design, not with the players
unless you have an MMO which does not value socialization on purpose which is a weird place to be IMO
|
On December 05 2017 07:17 Cyro wrote:Path of least resistance If the path of least resistance leads to failures in gameplay (lvl 2 maw spam) or socialization then it's a problem with game design, not with the players unless you have an MMO which does not value socialization on purpose which is a weird place to be IMO Yeah that is very much your opinion that more need for socialization is a good thing. I am so glad to be rid of it. Still makes me shudder to think about all the awkward drama I witnessed back then.
|
United Kingdom20172 Posts
I don't think it's a particularly controversial opinion to think that an MMO should value cooperation between players
|
Yeah but you just used a different word. Noone minds cooperation within gameplay. But there was so much stuff going on beyond the game which I find completely unnecessary and often annoying.
|
I dont see how being forced to socialize promotes a healthy environment any more than not being forced to. If anything the latter is more organic. My relationships with people back in the day are significantly more robust and endearing than anything ive had since Ive come back to the game. But I certainly dont credit the game for that. If it was something I was forced into that would have been terrible.
Its simply because I had more time to invest in those relationships by spending more time playing the game. It has nothing to do with being forced to cooperate with people. And that facet still exists today. Its just that on average people have less time and there are just less people. I imagine it would have been way worse had those QOL changes not taken effect.
The choice of how much cooperation and socialization you need to deal with is directly related to how much you want to extract from the game. Before that choice was more limited. Now that choice has expanded. I dont see how thats not better.
|
It's not about promoting a "healthy environment", it's about creating situations where social interaction matters. You can invest a hell of a lot of time into Legion without doing anything that actually requires or encourages social interaction. It's not until you start doing higher level M+ or Heroic Raids that you even need to communicate with other people in the slightest.
The ways in which Vanilla created those situations were largely bad, existing mostly because of the sheer inconvenience of the related game systems. The QoL changes we've had over the years were entirely warranted, the issue is that Blizzard has never found good replacement mechanisms for encouraging the social aspects of the game.
|
On December 05 2017 15:18 Seuss wrote: It's not about promoting a "healthy environment", it's about creating situations where social interaction matters. You can invest a hell of a lot of time into Legion without doing anything that actually requires or encourages social interaction. It's not until you start doing higher level M+ or Heroic Raids that you even need to communicate with other people in the slightest.
The ways in which Vanilla created those situations were largely bad, existing mostly because of the sheer inconvenience of the related game systems. The QoL changes we've had over the years were entirely warranted, the issue is that Blizzard has never found good replacement mechanisms for encouraging the social aspects of the game.
Wait so an environment where social interactions matter isnt healthy ? Describe it as you will. The point still stands. There is no replacement mechanism for peoples time and the generation the game peaked at moving on.
|
US Guilds going pretty fast, already 4 bosses down.
Surprisingly, Eonar is left for last. I really hope that boss isn't difficult, I really don't enjoy the tower defense design.
|
United Kingdom20172 Posts
Dream is alive though undocumented!
|
On December 06 2017 01:42 Noocta wrote: US Guilds going pretty fast, already 4 bosses down.
Surprisingly, Eonar is left for last. I really hope that boss isn't difficult, I really don't enjoy the tower defense design. 4 bosses down already isn't that special. esp in an 11 boss raid. the first bosses are never hard enough for these good mythic guilds.
|
Well 5 down but looks like Imonar is taking little longer than rest of the pulls.
Will be interesting to see how far they get today before EU even gets a chance.
edit: as i say that Limit goes 6/11
|
On December 05 2017 16:35 Rebs wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2017 15:18 Seuss wrote: It's not about promoting a "healthy environment", it's about creating situations where social interaction matters. You can invest a hell of a lot of time into Legion without doing anything that actually requires or encourages social interaction. It's not until you start doing higher level M+ or Heroic Raids that you even need to communicate with other people in the slightest.
The ways in which Vanilla created those situations were largely bad, existing mostly because of the sheer inconvenience of the related game systems. The QoL changes we've had over the years were entirely warranted, the issue is that Blizzard has never found good replacement mechanisms for encouraging the social aspects of the game. Wait so an environment where social interactions matter isnt healthy ? Describe it as you will. The point still stands. There is no replacement mechanism for peoples time and the generation the game peaked at moving on.
My point is time commitment doesn't matter, mechanisms which make the players you meet important do. WoW doesn't have much of that right now, so no matter how much you play you probably don't care about anyone you meet. Vanilla/BC had these mechanisms (in deeply flawed forms), to an extent that even casual players formed strong bonds (not all WoW marriages were between hardcore raiders playing 40+ hours a week).
Yeah, lots of us are older and play less, but as long as the game encourages us to treat other players as disposable instead of indispensable, it really doesn't matter how much we play.
|
|
Again annoyed by M+ and that weekly chest. New max for loot is just jumping to +15 and already seems so easy. Pretty sure it has continuously become easier to get to max chest ever since M+ started. Just makes no sense to me that I get my highest lvl item from this crap, and on top of that it is completely random what it will be.
|
On December 06 2017 04:18 Seuss wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2017 16:35 Rebs wrote:On December 05 2017 15:18 Seuss wrote: It's not about promoting a "healthy environment", it's about creating situations where social interaction matters. You can invest a hell of a lot of time into Legion without doing anything that actually requires or encourages social interaction. It's not until you start doing higher level M+ or Heroic Raids that you even need to communicate with other people in the slightest.
The ways in which Vanilla created those situations were largely bad, existing mostly because of the sheer inconvenience of the related game systems. The QoL changes we've had over the years were entirely warranted, the issue is that Blizzard has never found good replacement mechanisms for encouraging the social aspects of the game. Wait so an environment where social interactions matter isnt healthy ? Describe it as you will. The point still stands. There is no replacement mechanism for peoples time and the generation the game peaked at moving on. My point is time commitment doesn't matter, mechanisms which make the players you meet important do. WoW doesn't have much of that right now, so no matter how much you play you probably don't care about anyone you meet. Vanilla/BC had these mechanisms (in deeply flawed forms), to an extent that even casual players formed strong bonds (not all WoW marriages were between hardcore raiders playing 40+ hours a week). Yeah, lots of us are older and play less, but as long as the game encourages us to treat other players as disposable instead of indispensable, it really doesn't matter how much we play.
I disagree, there is plenty to do in the game. Most of it requires some degree of social integration to be enjoyable. I cant see anyone playing more than 20+ hours a week + Show Spoiler +(i play like 8-9 now and heck I spend most of it with my guild who probably average 30-40 including raid time) not having incentive to form bonds with people even today . You can only really extract enjoyment from the very basic activities on your own. Obviously there are exceptions but thats certainly not the rule as you are implying.
The elements that you consider to be ones that make players disposable I find an added convenience.
|
On December 06 2017 06:14 Rebs wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2017 04:18 Seuss wrote:On December 05 2017 16:35 Rebs wrote:On December 05 2017 15:18 Seuss wrote: It's not about promoting a "healthy environment", it's about creating situations where social interaction matters. You can invest a hell of a lot of time into Legion without doing anything that actually requires or encourages social interaction. It's not until you start doing higher level M+ or Heroic Raids that you even need to communicate with other people in the slightest.
The ways in which Vanilla created those situations were largely bad, existing mostly because of the sheer inconvenience of the related game systems. The QoL changes we've had over the years were entirely warranted, the issue is that Blizzard has never found good replacement mechanisms for encouraging the social aspects of the game. Wait so an environment where social interactions matter isnt healthy ? Describe it as you will. The point still stands. There is no replacement mechanism for peoples time and the generation the game peaked at moving on. My point is time commitment doesn't matter, mechanisms which make the players you meet important do. WoW doesn't have much of that right now, so no matter how much you play you probably don't care about anyone you meet. Vanilla/BC had these mechanisms (in deeply flawed forms), to an extent that even casual players formed strong bonds (not all WoW marriages were between hardcore raiders playing 40+ hours a week). Yeah, lots of us are older and play less, but as long as the game encourages us to treat other players as disposable instead of indispensable, it really doesn't matter how much we play. I disagree, there is plenty to do in the game. Most of it requires some degree of social integration to be enjoyable. I cant see anyone playing more than 20+ hours a week + Show Spoiler +(i play like 8-9 now and heck I spend most of it with my guild who probably average 30-40 including raid time) not having incentive to form bonds with people even today . You can only really extract enjoyment from the very basic activities on your own. The elements that you consider to be ones that make players disposable I find an added convenience.
It's not until you get to the Heroic/7+ M+ range that the other people you encounter become important enough to matter, and only a small sliver of players go that far. Most of the playerbase don't leave the world of LFD/LFR/WQs/Invasions, and even if they do venture into Normal PuGs or low rank Mythic+ other players are still highly disposable.
You can have meaningful social encounters, but they are in spite of the game, not because of it. Blizzard's biggest failing since WotLK wasn't implementing QoL improvements (which were incredibly necessary), but failing to find a way to capture the social bonding that happened in Vanilla/BC without recreating the onerous systems that encouraged it.
|
But there will never be that social bonding again man, no matter what blizzard does. Thats the fucking point. I do not want to play with 99% of the people who play now. It wasnt that bad in classic because the skillgap was tiny and no one knew what he was doing anyway. And even if there was no LFG/LFR right now i wouldnt spam in motherfucking /2 trying to find people for a dungeon. There are discords now. And battletag friends. and Friends of friends.
The low difficulty content that is possible with randoms automatically assigned to you is ADDITIONAL OPTIONAL content. Fro the content that matters you still have to socialize, but in 2017 this isnt done ingame anymore.
|
United Kingdom20172 Posts
On December 06 2017 06:07 Redox wrote: Again annoyed by M+ and that weekly chest. New max for loot is just jumping to +15 and already seems so easy. Pretty sure it has continuously become easier to get to max chest ever since M+ started. Just makes no sense to me that I get my highest lvl item from this crap, and on top of that it is completely random what it will be.
The +10 for the second half of Tomb when they buffed it to 935 was the easiest by far IMO. Getting 15's done this week is way harder by comparison, as in not at all too challenging for a mythic guild to put on their alts or heroic raiders to achieve on mains but i've seen more than a few PUG's disbanding because the group was not vetted strictly enough and many people refusing to run a quarter of the keystone options even though they're not that much harder just because they're percieved as suboptimal
I don't like the extent of the randomness
|
On December 06 2017 07:29 Warri wrote: But there will never be that social bonding again man, no matter what blizzard does. Thats the fucking point. I do not want to play with 99% of the people who play now. It wasnt that bad in classic because the skillgap was tiny and no one knew what he was doing anyway. And even if there was no LFG/LFR right now i wouldnt spam in motherfucking /2 trying to find people for a dungeon. There are discords now. And battletag friends. and Friends of friends.
The low difficulty content that is possible with randoms automatically assigned to you is ADDITIONAL OPTIONAL content. Fro the content that matters you still have to socialize, but in 2017 this isnt done ingame anymore.
Yeah I am still trying to grasp this magical social bonding that somehow got banished because of what Blizzard actively did to undermine it.
So if most of the playerbase doesnt want to do all of those things that require being more social the complaint is we should effectively "force them to do it" but by using creative methods that dont seem like we are forcing them. I dont get it.
|
United Kingdom20172 Posts
Nerfing the crap out of maw so that the path of least resistance to play the game wasn't to spam only maw 200 times was definitely the right thing to do IMO.
People didn't want to run other dungeons or content for AP - otherwise they would have just gone and done it instead rather than spamming maws - but they were forced to do so after those hotfixes; as a result both the health of the game and player enjoyment were improved significantly IMO.
People are highly driven to follow the path of least resistance especially in an MMO and it doesn't neccesarily allign with player enjoyment or good game design, forcing them to match up or at least come close together can often bring huge improvements.
Likewise quest/monster exp 1-60 is shit at the moment, zone flow doesn't work well so the path of least resistance by far is to dungeon spam on every character. A lot of people do that even though they would enjoy questing through zones far more if the rewards were similar; the 7.3.5 patch is largely focused on addressing that, making the path of least resistance one that is fun for a lot more of the players and healthy for the game.
It's all the same player psychology vs game design issue.
|
|
|
|