Plan to resolve WoW dungeon issue casual vs raider

[Elerion]

Thank fucking christ people are starting to pick up on that.

People need to stop thinking Blizzard are out to make all their customers super duper happy. They aren't. They're trying to keep as many people playing as possible while spending the least amount of resources to keep them. If keeping a customer costs more than losing him would, guess what, you're fucked. Game companies are trying to make money just like everyone else. If you're the kind of customer that requires a lot of resources to keep playing, yet you're part of a small customer group, you aren't going to get your way. Ever. Bob and all his other 5-man gobbling friends are exactly those customers.

[Froofy-D]

Three months into World of Warcraft Bob is level 60. He spends a month doing strath/spires/scholo runs and his character is decked out in all the best blues. PvP is still pointless at this time.

PVP pointless? The BG faction epics are on par with MC/BWL stuff. Throw in Dungeon 2 set, AH epics, craftable epics, Darkmoon Faire, new dungeon epics, etc.. and you can be in full epics without doing anything more than BGs and UBRS. If you are in strath/scholo/DM blues you are not "maxed out without raiding", not even close.

Not sure about other classes, but as a Warrior you can never set foot in ZG/MC/BWL/AQ20/AQ40 yet have epics in nearly every slot, 23.3% crit in Battlestance, 5.6K HPS, and over 1k AP with Battle Shout.

http://ctprofiles.net/301367

And this is before the rank 10 PVP sets get buffed next patch where many pieces will be as good as MC/BWL gear (for some classes). Not to mention the new WSG legs are nearly AQ40 loot.

[Jabberwhacky]

Where did this 100k number come from? You guys are tossing it around like it's Blizzard own figures drawn directly out of the subscriber base.

All I have to contribute is this:

I played EQ for like ~4 years and got burned out. I didn't run out of things to do (thanks expansions every 6 months and AA grind).

I played WoW on and off for a little over a year and got bored. There was nothing to do except jerk off while me and 38 other people got told to move to X location during Y event.

[Elerion]

As opposed to jerking off while pulling a vann tyv #2384?

[Etadanik]

Originally Posted by Elerion

Thank fucking christ people are starting to pick up on that.

People need to stop thinking Blizzard are out to make all their customers super duper happy. They aren't. They're trying to keep as many people playing as possible while spending the least amount of resources to keep them. If keeping a customer costs more than losing him would, guess what, you're fucked. Game companies are trying to make money just like everyone else. If you're the kind of customer that requires a lot of resources to keep playing, yet you're part of a small customer group, you aren't going to get your way. Ever. Bob and all his other 5-man gobbling friends are exactly those customers.

Five-man Instances, I think, are a bad idea. However, that doesn't mean you ignore 75%+ of your player base and focus the bulk of your content development on keeping the raiders - people who fall neatly into exactly the kind of high maintenance customer you're raging about. Truth is, if Blizzard wants to spend the money anywhere, it should be spent on storyline advancing world events that last a longass time and affect everyone. Bosses shouldn't just sit in dungeons with dick in hand. They should be out leading armies and raiding towns, or performing whatever the hell their sinister designs dictate. Want Kel'Thuzad to matter to the average joe? Have him and a dozen frost wyrms attack Orgrimmar or Stormwind.

Or, if you're deadset on raiding content, make it easier for players without 3-4 hours to blow every night to engage in that content. How? There are plenty of ways, from BG-like matchmaking systems for pickup raids to smaller raid sizes. Oh, and streamline the whole guilding process, instead of producing raid content in an ivory tower and expecting players to demonstrate initiative. People these says state all the time that things like EQ death penalties and forced grouping are obsolete, so why should EQ forced raiding and forced guilding remain?

[Pilsbane]

Originally Posted by Froofy-D

PVP pointless? [more derailed stuff]

You missed my timeline. At 4 months into release PvP was pointless in WoW. Battlegrounds weren't added until later. That's all the "pointless" comment was about. I wasn't implying that PvP is still pointless.

As for Bob, I wonder how many Bobs are really out there. I'm sometimes a Bob when real life gets in the way of raiding. Recently (the last couple of months) I haven't been able to raid. It wasn't until I stopped raiding that I realized how little there is to do in WoW at 60 if you already have pretty good gear. My options are:

1. Rearrange my real life so I can return to raiding
2. Continue playing, but with 0 character progression
3. Start another character
4. Cancel account

Maybe I'm just the wrong kind of player for World of Warcraft.

[Zawicki]

Originally Posted by Tuivian

Step 2: create a formula that takes the Item level average of the *highest item currently equipped or in inventory for the entire party, this then would place your group into a category based that can scale with the difficulty and loot of the dungeon upon zoning in.
Many issues can arise with attempting to exploit this scale i.e. zoning out and changing equipment. If upon entering again, it re-calculates your Item level average, if that average goes up the difficulty of the dungeon is increased while the loot stays the same, so in turn it just made the dungeon harder for easier loot. (The dungeon would never scale down once created to prevent exploitation)

In example... an entire group of players are equipped with blues averaging a total of Item level 60 for all pieces. The difficulty of the dungeon would scale on creation to be suitable for that degree and loot would be on par to I62-64. That way the items are an upgrade.

If the group is composed of all purples and their Item level average equates to 75, the enemies would scale accordingly and drop loot around Item level 78.

Obviously the #'s can be toggled to get the right fit, but this delivers to every group.

Thought on the mind boggling theory of creativity?

Here is a serious flaw with this "suggestion". Mainly with the part in bold.
You get your dungeon with everyone having an average level item of 75. Run through the dungeon and get an upgrade better than level 75...say 77 for 2 people. Zone in with the SAME group and your average is now higher...you run through this slightly harder dungeon and get 2 items lvl 77 and 78 for 2 people. You now have 3-4 people among this group that have upgrades. The SAME group goes in again and boom higher average level again.

Do you see the Cycle? You'd have people with Demi-god gear in a matter of a week or 2. This is an absurd suggestion, not even close to bridging the gab between casual and hardcore.

The casual gamer just wants the hardcore gear for a pentance of the difficulty that the hardcore goes through to get it. Life don't work that way bud. Doctors get paid a shit-ton of money because they worked their ass off in school and then "paid their dues" in residency. A fast-food worker shouldn't get the same pay as the doctor because he made the Big Mac well 10 times, then moved up to the Whopper.

What is the answer to bridge the gap? You Don't. It's a shame yes, but no amount of small raids should lead up to gear that it takes an insane amount of time, teamwork, and resources to accomplish. PERIOD.

*This is coming from someone who was an "End-Game" raider. I gave it up because of the timesink it was. I love raiding, I love the teamwork involved, and I love the sense of accomplishment when you rip thru that boss that has been a pain-in-the-ass for 3 weeks of every night raiding it. I gave it up, but wouldn't expect to restart playing and do a few small raids to get insane gear.

You want better gear for your casual gamer? PAY THE PIPER and adjust so you can raid. Or option 2 (and my personal favorite) Learn to enjoy the game that is presented to you without "being uber geared". Droip the jealousy/envy (that is all this argument is) and play the game you have time for, or quit and stop whining, because no one fucking cares to be honest...except those with the same penis-envy "we should have uber gear for nothing" attitude.

[frott]

Uhh, avg level of 75 = 16 x 75 x 5 = 6000 total item points (assuming 2h)

After one clear you have 2 items that are 77 brings that to a whopping 6004, or 75.05 avg level.

20 clears to pull up from avg level 75 to avg level 76. Set the dungeon on a 3 day timer timer and that's 2 months to creep up a whopping 1 iLVL.

An average MC guild gains more than an iLVL in a single clear, 1 week.

[Zuuljin]

Originally Posted by Zawicki

The casual gamer just wants the hardcore gear for a pentance of the difficulty that the hardcore goes through to get it. Life don't work that way bud. Doctors get paid a shit-ton of money because they worked their ass off in school and then "paid their dues" in residency. A fast-food worker shouldn't get the same pay as the doctor because he made the Big Mac well 10 times, then moved up to the Whopper.

No, the casual gamer wants hardcore gear for the same time invested as a raider puts in. Raids arnt "harder", they just require a greater time commitment, and it doesnt seem fair that just because your work schedule is different then someone elses, they get better loot then you.

I always thought a way to solve this is to give both people uber items, but make each slot require a different playstyle. Like the BP of the game is obtained through raiding. The uber arms are obtained through a long ass solo quest. The uber legs are obtained through a long group quest etc etc. That way, it forces raiders to change their playstyle too so you dont have "hardcores" and "casuals", you just have everyone on the same level, with some playing more than others.

[Kolle]

nothing is pointless if you're having fun. That's the point of playing WoW. If you're not having fun then what the fuck are you doing? Stop playing.

For me pvp is fun with or without rewards. I definately love getting rewards, but even without them pvp is more exciting than raiding aside from first kills. When you kill rag or nef the first time I imagine it's a good feeling. After that.../yawn other than getting yourself upgrades.

[AngryGerbil]

Originally Posted by Zuuljin

No, the casual gamer wants hardcore gear for the same time invested as a raider puts in. Raids arnt "harder", they just require a greater time commitment

Ugh.

When will people learn that the difficulty in raids isn't about what buttons you push in-game ("Sundering a lvl 50 mob is the same difficulty as sundering a lvl 64 elite mob, I just hit my hotkey!!!!111one11") so much as it is all the background work associated with getting 40 people to all push those buttons at once?

Not to mention organization, recruiting, message boards, scheduling, consumables, guild banks, server politics, the inherent drama of putting 40 different people in the same room, determination, keying, the list goes on and on.

It's not the difficulty of the task, it's the enormity of it. As an offtank for Vael, if you aren't paying %100 full attention when the MT finally dies, you may have just cost 39 other people a few gold in repairs. (Learned the hard way one night when the "You really are a funny guy!" part of Goodfellahs was on tv during Vael, weee).

Also, I propose that there isn't a properly tuned 5-man boss that you could possibly come up with that will keep those 5 people stuck on him for weeks at a time without adding so much twitch that the game ceases to be an RPG and becomes an FPS. But that's just a hunch of mine.

Also, in my humble opinion, by having casual "5-man" ubers, the game ceases to be an MMO. I think it is very obvious that there are quite a number of people that rather enjoy the "MMO" part of MMORPG. Where else to "raiders" get to go? If you want to be the coolest paladin possible in your game using only 5 people, there are always NWN servers.

And if you play a million hours a week just not during raid times, join a fucking Euro guild ffs.

[Daeos]

This whole discussion is tired and old, rickshaw this bullshit already.

I know all of us people that actually participate in the high end game are oppressive assholes pissing on the average players good time with our "uber lewtz!", but tough shit. Everyone wants access to the same loot and experiences except it needs to fit their own little schedule as opposed to the people who actually make their own little schedule fit WoW.

Competition is the motivational driving force for some people to play, the day that everyone walks around in the same exact gear is the day that I quit WoW; I say the "same exact gear" because that's the only way the snot-nosed "casual" shit-heads are going to stop crying. No matter how hard you try or what you do there's always going to be bottomfeeder Bob who just can't keep up with the rest of the population and works himself into a frenzy on a daily basis spamming the Blizzard forums with equality rants about "Casual vs. Hardcore".

The whole issue here is indeed equality, except there's no such thing as "true" equality so either Bob should go make his own MMoRG and show us how it's done or quit bitching.

[Quineloe]

Originally Posted by Elerion

Thank fucking christ people are starting to pick up on that.

People need to stop thinking Blizzard are out to make all their customers super duper happy. They aren't. They're trying to keep as many people playing as possible while spending the least amount of resources to keep them.

A common misconception about economics. You either try to keep as many players as possible OR you use the least amount of resources possible. You don't combine both.

[Zawicki]

Originally Posted by frott

Uhh, avg level of 75 = 16 x 75 x 5 = 6000 total item points (assuming 2h)

After one clear you have 2 items that are 77 brings that to a whopping 6004, or 75.05 avg level.

20 clears to pull up from avg level 75 to avg level 76. Set the dungeon on a 3 day timer timer and that's 2 months to creep up a whopping 1 iLVL.

An average MC guild gains more than an iLVL in a single clear, 1 week.

Ok let's break down your reasoning on this:

- You make the math so it takes 20 clears to pull up the average level. You make it so it takes 2 months to do this by putting a timer on the dungeon. Now you have an issue with the "casual" gamer again, as it'll take them years to get geared up this way also. 2 months per upgrade? That is given that the drop rate is favorable and they actually see an upgrade during that time...

Yeah that'll work for the "casual" gamer. The thing is, there is already something kinda like that for them...called ZG and AQ20.

Again you miss the real issue. The casual gamer has only X hours to play per week. The hardcore gamer has an abundance more. So if you set something up for the casual gamer, the hardcore gamer is going to take advantage of it because they have the time to get what they want out of it.

What else are you going to do? Make a dungeon that you can only get epics out of if you play less than 20 hours per week? If you play over that it locks you out? Get down from the moron tree, wake up and realize the facts about the game(s) you play.

[Froofy-D]

Originally Posted by Zuuljin

Raids arnt "harder", they just require a greater time commitment,

Lol ok. Go do "LF40M AQ40" in Ironforge on your next Saturday off work and get back to us when you kill C'thun. Raids are no harder right? Since you can PUG UBRS then surely you can PUG AQ40.