Rule of thumb: if you are mad at the way other people are playing a game, the problem is yours, not theirs.
(or let me put that a different way to the people who are upset at a buff: if you were randomly teamed up with some people who make a few more mistakes than the raid can survive, how are you going to treat those people? Are you going to work with them or are you going to throw a temper tantrum and quit/kick? The way I read that concept, the buff isn't about the people who cause the wipe - the buff is about the people who don't want to be teamed up with anyone who is still new to raiding)
Given that most raiders are using something like Deadly Boss mod (with all its alarms, alerts and such) those who still can't make it through the basic raids, are a demonstration of how the gaming demographic has changed (for the worse) over the years. But I can't say I'm surprised, given how things have been going.
almost all the readers of these columns (and those who frequent these forums) will find this kind of mechanic objectionable. however, unfortunately, Blizzard still has a significant percentage of 9+ million players that need to be placated/encouraged to keep playing.
i don't believe many games will employ this kind of development unless it has far more to lose than gain...and only MMO's that actively cater to the most casual of players would even consider it.
Originally posted by Anthur I am just glad this doesn't work in real life. Or I would have serious concerns about the future of human race.
You obviously aren't involved in Silly-con Valley entrepreneurial culture with it's "fail early fail fast fail often" emphasis. Seriously, just Google that. It's...abused as a concept.
"I personally think addressing failures in the manner done by Blizzard is inherently silly."
I agree with the Advocate on this one, only I think 'silly' is a very kind word for it I'd use 'stupid', but I'm just an outsider since I don't play Blizz.
This idea is totally contradicts the whole point of learning through failures. True, it's an important part of the learning process to handle failures (let it be defeat to an opponent, loss in a race, or in case of mmo's a wipe). Failure urges you to think, learn, revisit your strategy and come up a new one, adapt to the situation or to the opponent. All these aspects are nullified if someone from outside reaches in and starts to fiddling with the situation... Why bother with any brainwork, if next time (and the next, and the next) the challenge will be weaker and weaker? Let's just tank'n'spank until we got so many buffs we ultimately succeed...
Wraithone mentioned Idiocracy (liked it as well, pretty dull movie but definitely has its moments ), in it there's a scene of an "IQ test" with a peg game and the dude tries to sqeeze a sqare-shaped peg in a star shaped hole, without much success of course So Blizzard now says: don't let him think and come across some new ideas, let's dumb things down and switch his peg for a softer one, then rinse and repeat. By the time they reach to a sqare peg made of clay, he will be able to sqeeze it through the star-shape hole... Is it a success? Hardly. He won't learn anything this way (except that musclework sometimes beats brainwork... lol) But it sure will help to keep the frustration level down - with the IQ level as well
Edit: khm... it's a shame, all this talk about learning and IQ, and it turns out it wasn't a star-shaped hole, it's a circle my bad... seems my memory is not in top shape anymore. See, that's why we need to urge players to use their heads more often and not spoon-fed them with easy success and dumbed down gameplay
Why bother with any brainwork, if next time (and the next, and the next) the challenge will be weaker and weaker?
You feel that there will be no sense of pride in defeating a boss at higher and higher levels of difficulty? You believe that the player culture will decay into a pattern of not even attempting the boss? Simply wipe-reload-wipe-reload until fully buffed without even trying and that this will trump any sense of pride in defeating bosses through a progression of smaller and smaller buffs?
(I find this to be an interesting point, almost lost in all the painful polical/generational ranting in this thread)
It's not Idiocracy. And it's not No Child Left Behind. It's an avenue for Blizz to ensure the people that are paying $15/mo can see the same content built for the hardcore raiders. The gear isn't the same for the LFR 'scrubs' compared to the real raiders. Not even the fight mechanics are the same.
I started playing wow back in December 2004. I miss the timesink that vanilla was with the LBRS to UBRS to MC progesssion. It was great, and gearing me and 39 others was a great feeling of pride. We were part of a small percentage of players that saw almost everything in the game.
When BC came out, Blizz made a big deal about only 5% of players seeing Naxx in vanilla. That is a huge development effort put forth by the company for such little exposure. I believe that drives some of the decisions they make about raid buffs, LFR mechanics, etc.
And I think that they like to accommodate as many users as possible now. I'm an old man now with two kids and a wife I adore. I take time and say goodnight to my family now. In vanilla, I often skipped that ceremony because we were raiding. I can jump into wow today, do my 400 dailies, find an LFR group once or twice a week and see the bosses. I know it's a shadow of my days 8 years ago, but it's the time I can afford now. And for you to belittle someone for that is sad.
And to refer to the people who don't use Mr Robot or DPS optimize at a training dummy as though they were retarded or challenged is ignorance and arrogance. You want to be hardcore? You can do that in wow, or just about any other mmo. You can reach the heights of digital greatness and join the pantheon of the hardcore.
I'm betting Blizz sees it my way too. There's a reason that wow is the most successful game ever made. And if it takes a change to help the carebears see the content, they will make it. 9 million subscribers after 8+ years. And you treat it like a cautionary tale, not a monumental triumph.
Originally posted by Psychow Sounds great. Most serious raiders raid on Normal or Hardcore, so I do not see any issue with giving the semi-casuals a little help to complete the content they are interested in.
I agree.
Don't know why so many complains about this, raid finder was never meant to be the ultimate challenge. Normal and HC modes are, afaik, completely unaffected by this, so the whine from those who raids "normally", is childish as best.
I get their thinking... trying to get people to raid ..ie use content they wouldn't otherwise use. They are making a "safety net" so first timers or those timid of temper tantrums will take a chance and go raiding.
What many of you don't get.. the 133t players are so obnoxious that Blizzard had to add a feature in to get people to play with them, that a wipe doesn't cause "n00bslaya123" to have a stroke and go on a 4-hour rant on why all casuals should kill themselves..
The biggest problem with MMOs is the core audience, they drive off normal people, they make the game unfun for normal people.. Blizzard is trying to come up with a solution for that issue.
I get their thinking... trying to get people to raid ..ie use content they wouldn't otherwise use. They are making a "safety net" so first timers or those timid of temper tantrums will take a chance and go raiding.
What many of you don't get.. the 133t players are so obnoxious that Blizzard had to add a feature in to get people to play with them, that a wipe doesn't cause "n00bslaya123" to have a stroke and go on a 4-hour rant on why all casuals should kill themselves..
The biggest problem with MMOs is the core audience, they drive off normal people, they make the game unfun for normal people.. Blizzard is trying to come up with a solution for that issue.
i just heard that AC Milan and Barcelona are starting use that system also,because its for normal people.
I heard that next time if they lose a match then their players get a skill buff.
Yes. But gamers don't tend to be long on...social skills.
(They're only "lazy and disconnected" because you choose to assign those terms to your man of straw. Having never met them, I can't really guess their motives or habits as individuals.)
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
So, this only applies to raids put together via the raidfimder tool? I can see it now, people telling their guild raid leader they aren't coming to tonights raid because it well easierand faster to complete it with a PUG group than to struggle through it with the guild. I hope the decide to Nerf the rewards or something or I can actually see this scenario happening.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
What I don't understand is how people can level up a character to max level and do the normal dungeons without learning the basics of how to play their class. Actually I can sort of understand it now, seeing how childishly simple the dungeons in the panda expansion are.
Raidfinder is already extremely simple, all it takes is that everyone knows the basics of their class to complete it even before this change. The difficulty gap between raid finder raiding and "real raiding" will only increase, so it won't be a good stepping stone for the real thing anymore if you make it too simple.
Isn't the leveling up and dungeons enough of a learning process to teach players the basics? Should endgame also be about teaching players the basics of how to play their class?
When will the casuals be satisfied? When the whole game is lowered to their level and hardcore players have nothing left to do?
Whining from casuals ruined what I liked best in WoW, challenging heroic mode 5-man dungeons. By the looks of it raiding is heading in the same direction, they won't stop until there is no challenge left. Soon noone will fail in Wow, everyone is a winner.
They're right about one thing; failure+raiding is a complex issue, particularly with so many veterans who clearly invested so very much ego in their l33tness, for as long as game(rs) have been around.
Responsible for more hate (towards other gamers) and more smarmy insults with our own custom slang than, well, anything.
The last few people who still took raiding in wow seriously will doubtless be leaving the game.
The bad new is, the old-fashioned Hardcore/Casual War (which was actually dying out of everyday forum conversation a bit, after more than a decade) is coming back with no doubt full hurricane strength.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
They're right about one thing; failure+raiding is a complex issue, particularly with so many veterans who clearly invested so very much ego in their l33tness, for as long as game(rs) have been around.
Responsible for more hate (towards other gamers) an more smarmy insults with our own custom slang than, well, anything.
The last few people who still took raiding in wow seriously will doubtless be leaving the game.
I think the rationale was to implement the 'challenge' mode for the hardcore and the buff for the kids.
To an uberl33t trying to break challenge records, this buff mechanic is completely inconsiquential. What I think may force the uber's hand is if enough recognize that with the challenge mode, Blizzard changed the challenge from 'can we beat it' to 'how fast can we beat it'. Those are two different games imo.
I think far more than the fast xp, dumbing down of old content, and changes to the talent system:
the challenge mode combined with the wipe buff shows that Blizzard has removed the question:
"Can it be done?" from the philosophy of the game.
The new philosophy seems to be, "You know you won't fail, so challenge yourself to go faster".
This is ironic. I just read an article on another site blasting the fact that WOW did not get easier!
Actually "the wipe to get ahead" idea sounds interesting if I ever returned to WOW, but that will not be in the forseeable future. This idea is no where near what it would take me to return.
I think that the posters are missing one important point. From what I remember in WOW your armor deteriorates when you fight and/or get killed. You will be paying a boatload of gold if you wipe 10 times.
The new philosophy seems to be, "You know you won't fail, so challenge yourself to go faster".
But why would we want "fast"? It's just taking the heroic gogogogogo and pushing it up a level. :shake head:
Strikes me that "get the damn raid over and get my ass out of this chair after six hours" is enough motivation for that.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Heroic 5-man dungeons at the start of Cataclysm used to be challenging and fun for me. Then casuals started whining because it wasn't enough that normal mode was easy, heroic mode needed to be easy aswell. So Blizzard crumbled under the pressure of the casuals and challenging 5-man dungeons were nowhere to be seen.
The challenge mode 5-mans in Pandaland without rewards, where the challenge lies in doing things fast and using an invisibility pot at the right time are a poor replacement for the once challenging heroic 5-mans in TBC and start of Cata.
Thats pretty screwed up, I could pick up a game for my 6 year old daughter and 'go fast' in it while my daughter goes at her pace, or I could but a game for her and a game for adults. Sounds like blizzard designers have lost the plot.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Comments
Rule of thumb: if you are mad at the way other people are playing a game, the problem is yours, not theirs.
(or let me put that a different way to the people who are upset at a buff: if you were randomly teamed up with some people who make a few more mistakes than the raid can survive, how are you going to treat those people? Are you going to work with them or are you going to throw a temper tantrum and quit/kick? The way I read that concept, the buff isn't about the people who cause the wipe - the buff is about the people who don't want to be teamed up with anyone who is still new to raiding)
All I have to say is; Welcome to the Idiocracy....<face palm>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
Given that most raiders are using something like Deadly Boss mod (with all its alarms, alerts and such) those who still can't make it through the basic raids, are a demonstration of how the gaming demographic has changed (for the worse) over the years. But I can't say I'm surprised, given how things have been going.
almost all the readers of these columns (and those who frequent these forums) will find this kind of mechanic objectionable. however, unfortunately, Blizzard still has a significant percentage of 9+ million players that need to be placated/encouraged to keep playing.
i don't believe many games will employ this kind of development unless it has far more to lose than gain...and only MMO's that actively cater to the most casual of players would even consider it.
Blizzard have stated that with this new system in place they will aim to make LFR less trivial and the boss mechanics in LFR more meaningful.
This is exactly what many have been asking for. If they deliver on this then the change will eventually be seen as a good one.
You obviously aren't involved in Silly-con Valley entrepreneurial culture with it's "fail early fail fast fail often" emphasis. Seriously, just Google that. It's...abused as a concept.
"I personally think addressing failures in the manner done by Blizzard is inherently silly."
I agree with the Advocate on this one, only I think 'silly' is a very kind word for it
I'd use 'stupid', but I'm just an outsider since I don't play Blizz.
This idea is totally contradicts the whole point of learning through failures. True, it's an important part of the learning process to handle failures (let it be defeat to an opponent, loss in a race, or in case of mmo's a wipe). Failure urges you to think, learn, revisit your strategy and come up a new one, adapt to the situation or to the opponent. All these aspects are nullified if someone from outside reaches in and starts to fiddling with the situation... Why bother with any brainwork, if next time (and the next, and the next) the challenge will be weaker and weaker? Let's just tank'n'spank until we got so many buffs we ultimately succeed...
Wraithone mentioned Idiocracy (liked it as well, pretty dull movie but definitely has its moments
), in it there's a scene of an "IQ test" with a peg game and the dude tries to sqeeze a sqare-shaped peg in a star shaped hole, without much success of course 
So Blizzard now says: don't let him think and come across some new ideas, let's dumb things down and switch his peg for a softer one, then rinse and repeat. By the time they reach to a sqare peg made of clay, he will be able to sqeeze it through the star-shape hole... 
Is it a success? Hardly. He won't learn anything this way (except that musclework sometimes beats brainwork... lol) But it sure will help to keep the frustration level down - with the IQ level as well 
Edit: khm... it's a shame, all this talk about learning and IQ, and it turns out it wasn't a star-shaped hole, it's a circle
my bad... seems my memory is not in top shape anymore. See, that's why we need to urge players to use their heads more often and not spoon-fed them with easy success and dumbed down gameplay 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJIjoE27F-Q
MMO dumbing down battle.
Blizzard 2 - 1 ArenaNet
Whats ArenaNets answer? PvP wipe boost ? exciting times.
Let's internet
You feel that there will be no sense of pride in defeating a boss at higher and higher levels of difficulty? You believe that the player culture will decay into a pattern of not even attempting the boss? Simply wipe-reload-wipe-reload until fully buffed without even trying and that this will trump any sense of pride in defeating bosses through a progression of smaller and smaller buffs?
(I find this to be an interesting point, almost lost in all the painful polical/generational ranting in this thread)
It's not Idiocracy. And it's not No Child Left Behind. It's an avenue for Blizz to ensure the people that are paying $15/mo can see the same content built for the hardcore raiders. The gear isn't the same for the LFR 'scrubs' compared to the real raiders. Not even the fight mechanics are the same.
I started playing wow back in December 2004. I miss the timesink that vanilla was with the LBRS to UBRS to MC progesssion. It was great, and gearing me and 39 others was a great feeling of pride. We were part of a small percentage of players that saw almost everything in the game.
When BC came out, Blizz made a big deal about only 5% of players seeing Naxx in vanilla. That is a huge development effort put forth by the company for such little exposure. I believe that drives some of the decisions they make about raid buffs, LFR mechanics, etc.
And I think that they like to accommodate as many users as possible now. I'm an old man now with two kids and a wife I adore. I take time and say goodnight to my family now. In vanilla, I often skipped that ceremony because we were raiding. I can jump into wow today, do my 400 dailies, find an LFR group once or twice a week and see the bosses. I know it's a shadow of my days 8 years ago, but it's the time I can afford now. And for you to belittle someone for that is sad.
And to refer to the people who don't use Mr Robot or DPS optimize at a training dummy as though they were retarded or challenged is ignorance and arrogance. You want to be hardcore? You can do that in wow, or just about any other mmo. You can reach the heights of digital greatness and join the pantheon of the hardcore.
I'm betting Blizz sees it my way too. There's a reason that wow is the most successful game ever made. And if it takes a change to help the carebears see the content, they will make it. 9 million subscribers after 8+ years. And you treat it like a cautionary tale, not a monumental triumph.
I agree.
Don't know why so many complains about this, raid finder was never meant to be the ultimate challenge. Normal and HC modes are, afaik, completely unaffected by this, so the whine from those who raids "normally", is childish as best.
I get their thinking... trying to get people to raid ..ie use content they wouldn't otherwise use. They are making a "safety net" so first timers or those timid of temper tantrums will take a chance and go raiding.
What many of you don't get.. the 133t players are so obnoxious that Blizzard had to add a feature in to get people to play with them, that a wipe doesn't cause "n00bslaya123" to have a stroke and go on a 4-hour rant on why all casuals should kill themselves..
The biggest problem with MMOs is the core audience, they drive off normal people, they make the game unfun for normal people.. Blizzard is trying to come up with a solution for that issue.
i just heard that AC Milan and Barcelona are starting use that system also,because its for normal people.
I heard that next time if they lose a match then their players get a skill buff.
Let's internet
Yes. But gamers don't tend to be long on...social skills.
(They're only "lazy and disconnected" because you choose to assign those terms to your man of straw. Having never met them, I can't really guess their motives or habits as individuals.)
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
What I don't understand is how people can level up a character to max level and do the normal dungeons without learning the basics of how to play their class. Actually I can sort of understand it now, seeing how childishly simple the dungeons in the panda expansion are.
Raidfinder is already extremely simple, all it takes is that everyone knows the basics of their class to complete it even before this change. The difficulty gap between raid finder raiding and "real raiding" will only increase, so it won't be a good stepping stone for the real thing anymore if you make it too simple.
Isn't the leveling up and dungeons enough of a learning process to teach players the basics? Should endgame also be about teaching players the basics of how to play their class?
When will the casuals be satisfied? When the whole game is lowered to their level and hardcore players have nothing left to do?
They're right about one thing; failure+raiding is a complex issue, particularly with so many veterans who clearly invested so very much ego in their l33tness, for as long as game(rs) have been around.
Responsible for more hate (towards other gamers) and more smarmy insults with our own custom slang than, well, anything.
The last few people who still took raiding in wow seriously will doubtless be leaving the game.
The bad new is, the old-fashioned Hardcore/Casual War (which was actually dying out of everyday forum conversation a bit, after more than a decade) is coming back with no doubt full hurricane strength.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I think the rationale was to implement the 'challenge' mode for the hardcore and the buff for the kids.
To an uberl33t trying to break challenge records, this buff mechanic is completely inconsiquential. What I think may force the uber's hand is if enough recognize that with the challenge mode, Blizzard changed the challenge from 'can we beat it' to 'how fast can we beat it'. Those are two different games imo.
I think far more than the fast xp, dumbing down of old content, and changes to the talent system:
the challenge mode combined with the wipe buff shows that Blizzard has removed the question:
"Can it be done?" from the philosophy of the game.
The new philosophy seems to be, "You know you won't fail, so challenge yourself to go faster".
Blech.
_______________________________________________
This is ironic. I just read an article on another site blasting the fact that WOW did not get easier!
Actually "the wipe to get ahead" idea sounds interesting if I ever returned to WOW, but that will not be in the forseeable future. This idea is no where near what it would take me to return.
I think that the posters are missing one important point. From what I remember in WOW your armor deteriorates when you fight and/or get killed. You will be paying a boatload of gold if you wipe 10 times.
Strikes me that "get the damn raid over and get my ass out of this chair after six hours" is enough motivation for that.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Heroic 5-man dungeons at the start of Cataclysm used to be challenging and fun for me. Then casuals started whining because it wasn't enough that normal mode was easy, heroic mode needed to be easy aswell. So Blizzard crumbled under the pressure of the casuals and challenging 5-man dungeons were nowhere to be seen.
The challenge mode 5-mans in Pandaland without rewards, where the challenge lies in doing things fast and using an invisibility pot at the right time are a poor replacement for the once challenging heroic 5-mans in TBC and start of Cata.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D