Ion Hazzikostas vs. MMO Game Design 🤦‍♂️

[Blinkrush-magtheridon (Blinkrush)]

@Exilium-tarren-mill

There is a reason to increase levels. It motivates people to do content to get better gear to further progress harder content. Game would die if everybody would be on an even playingfield powerlevel-wise.

There are many things that motivate people to play the game and do the content. Vertical power gain is not most important nor even required for people to want to play and enjoy the game. If pure power gain is replaced with power gain in form of a variety that brings more depth to gear and class gameplay then people would be even happier than they are now.

You clearly fail to understand that people are on more or less even playing feels a lot of times in WoW and what makes them play more is the personal skill and how they can use it or learn to use it, not power itself.

Besides, the constant power imbalance is one of the main reason why people are mad at WoW as it is now

[Razien-quelthalas (Razien)]

@Gerikee-ragnaros

So good we have this forum filled with great MMO Game Designers

I don’t need to be a mechanic to know that a car without an engine won’t start.

[Blinkrush-magtheridon (Blinkrush)]

Shh, don’t destroy his delusional world view

[Razien-quelthalas (Razien)]

@Blinkrush-magtheridon

Shh, don’t destroy his delusional world view

My bad. /10char.

[Icepole-bloodfang]

Back in the day wow had simple vertical design which swept away virtually all competitors. It still has in my view, the best infrastructure, the best and smoothest gameplay and a huge variety of things that players can do.

I feel that in the last couple of expansions though, that wow has lost its way. Swapping from vertical to horizontal will not fix this. Getting back to basics will.

[Ilyon-silvermoon]

I’m gonna make it very simple, gw2 is practically pure horizonal progression.

What you are describing is not horizontal progression, but rather both horizontal and vertical.

[Exilium-tarren-mill]

Vertical power gain is not most important nor even required for people to want to play and enjoy the game.

I do like how you seem to be speaking for the whole of the playerbase here while this view is supported only by part of it.

You clearly fail to understand that people are on more or less even playing feels a lot of times in WoW and what makes them play more is the personal skill and how they can use it or learn to use it, not power itself.

Besides, the constant power imbalance is one of the main reason why people are mad at WoW as it is now

And then you proceed to straight up contradict yourself.

Vertical power gain is essential for a large part of the playerbase. They want to feel more powerful as they progress or else they would see no point in playing. Let’s assume that everybody does the same amount of damage. There will obviously be variance between players as skill does play a large role in it. But it’ll also get boring extremely quickly for a large part of the playerbase since min-maxing and getting better gear is how they have fun in the game.

If you take a skill A replace it with skill B, which is more fun to play with for the spec (personal opinion here) sure people will be happy for a bit but it’ll all get extremely mundane since even if the skill is more fun it still performs on an equal level to A.

Without vertical progression WoW will die. Like I said, MMOs like GW2 exist and if you wish to play a game that you describe please feel free to try your hand at it but don’t mess with WoW and ruin it for others. It’s free and decently fun from what I’ve played it. But it didn’t hold my interest since it was all horizontal progression. I could care less for transmog farming and things like that. I’m here for challenging bosses and mechanics. And so is a large part of the playerbase.

[Assbringer-arathor]

If you compare bfa s4 gear to sl fresh gear and main thing I can see that coz of the lvl downgrade we only lost out main stats like crit,haste etc that the new gear gave back but with much less stamina and we are actually working toward now to regain and this is why this expansion is ,if you just put on azerite neck you still get like 5-6k up more from a 150 ilvl then what you get from a 226 neck,at this point I m thinking to quit the game as well,all my friends did,I stayed for m+ what I loved in legion,bfa but now it’s a total disaster,boring,blank after supporting woe since 2006 I’m leaving this game end of this month,rather spend that 9.99 on something else

[Gerikee-ragnaros (Gerikee)]

@Razien-quelthalas

I don’t need to be a mechanic to know that a car without an engine won’t start.

But you need to be a mechanic to know why the car won’t start if the engine is in place.

[Ilyon-silvermoon]

Vertical progression is just as important as horizontal progression, probably even more.

You shouldn’t forsake one for the other, but rather develop both.

[Exilium-tarren-mill]

And I’m not advocating for pure vertical progression. I’m advocating for not removing it from the game.

[Razien-quelthalas (Razien)]

@Gerikee-ragnaros

But you need to be a mechanic to know why the car won’t start if the engine is in place.

In this case the engine isn’t in place.

[Ilyon-silvermoon]

That was the point, i was agreeing with you.

[Exilium-tarren-mill]

Ah fair enough, misunderstood your message

[Allarion-ravencrest]

Elder Scrolls Online does this for it’s entire run.

Expansions don’t add levels. They just add CONTENT. New quests, adventures, NPCs, maps, dungeons, raids, armor sets (both visual and set bonuses).

They just keep shuffling the balance a little patch by patch, balancing item sets (which you can mix-match)

The gameplay is a bit simplistic since it’s a cross platform game (and thus must be playable comfortably by a console controller), but it kinda works.

No power creeping, no stat squishes, no sudden power loss every time new content comes out… and BEST OF ALL - you can reach your maximum potential by sheer stubbornness, instead of being limited to 1% of the best players (as you can upgrade all gear to maximum quality by yourself through your professions)

Meanwhile in WoW - the “unwashed masses” can only stare in awe at the 1% elites knowing that the skill required to get the top gear through raiding, m+ or PvP is so high that most people are locked out of it by the sheer reaction time required for it.
Got slightly bad hand/eye coordination? Tough luck. Can’t remember every one of your 25+ keybinds within 0.2 seconds? Tough luck. Don’t have guild? Lol wut are you doin in dis game, m8?
And at the end of the day, if you either play a meta build of meta spec of meta class, or willingly cripple yourself, because EVERYTHING in the game is designed based on the numbers crunched by the top 1% most skilled people.

It didn’t use to be this way. Content was reasonably hard for most people, and for the “legendary feats”, the hardcore stuff, you had ACHIEVEMENTS. Then the mythic crowd decided that hardcore achievements weren’t good enough, and Blizzard had to create entirely new raid tier, which, with WoW’s exponential power creeping, means that mythic (or equal ilvl) geared person is often doing as much as two people a raid tier below. And that’s just INSANE.

And then, to add insult to injury, a few months later Blizzard graciously nerfs the content, when it’s no longer relevant, to allow the unwashed masses of average players to be able to go through it… when it no longer holds any value besides literal sightseeing.

#givehuntersajobagain
#buffnecrohunters

[Sholah-hyjal]

@Blinkrush-magtheridon

And yet you fail to list even one and explain why it’s a no go

You just had to read a few lines below, but guess it was too much to expect.

Alright here’s an easy one : You’re a new player coming to the game, and are offered a dozen different progression paths. Seeing blizz track record only a few of them will be viable, and by the time you realize you picked the “wrong” one you’ll have wasted hours because you just decided to pick the first one that caught your fancy.

The new player experience would be a massive mess if you have 15 years of consecutive designs all active at the same time. Iirc Destiny 2 devs decided to lock part of their content for this reason.

@Blinkrush-magtheridon

Ok, so you clearly are clueless about what I was talking about.

Am I ? Or are you just unable to understand how the WoW playerbase works ?

@Blinkrush-magtheridon

Horizontal development doesn’t mean that new content e.g. dungeon or raids isn’t produced.

No, it means that every content will be relevant. It means that there’ll be a “best raid” or dungeon, with the “most efficient” instance for farm, there’ll be a mathematically right decision for every spec and as a result most of the content will be ignored in favour of the optimized path widely accepted by the playerbase.

That’s the reality of the WoW playerbase : The path of least resistance, as well as a highly competitive scene at the highest level which has a massive influence over the playerbase as a whole through their guides and videos.

So once again i ask you :

@Sholah-hyjal

How long do you expect players to go back to the same dungeon before they get absolutely sick of it ?

Because the established “Best gear” will drop from a given instance and instead of being relevant for only 6 months it’ll be farmed and grinded for a decade. Regardless of the actual quality of the content, just because the drops are better.

@Blinkrush-magtheridon

It means that power increase is replaced with power variety i.e. instead of getting an item and throwing it away for a stronger one you obtain an item and it’s viable all the time while you can modify its power to achieve different outcomes during gameplay.
As new content comes out there are new items being added and they all have some more or less unique abilities and ways of being modified.

Unique is yet but another word for unbalanced. Which is equally dangerous as homogenization imo but it doesn’t change this issue : You’ll have a massive mess of “unique” stuff which will mostly be useless outside of a lucky few items which will be worth looking for.

@Blinkrush-magtheridon

Power Increase < Power Variety

Power Increase gives you basic items which you throw away and forget.

Power Variety gives you items which are always viable and you can modify and use them whenever you feel like it or when content requires you to use them.

Power increase means an easier progression for your average player.

A huge variety of usable items also means a much higher time investment required to be “viable”, which means the game will be much less alt / spec friendly and much harder for new players to catchup.

It’s clearly not the utopia you make it out to be.

[Fistron-blackmoore]

Take a bad car as an example. It drives like a brick, the handling is bad and the heater breaks every two weeks. You can’t tell people, who call out these issues, to design a better car.

[Exilium-tarren-mill]

Holy moly the amount of martyrism in this comment LMAO.

Guess what, just because a person pays 13 euros per month to play a game called World of Warcraft doesn’t automatically entitle them to be able to experience and beat all the content the game has to offer. If you don’t want to improve to take on harder content then that’s on you and not on the game.

Guilds are a pretty central part of an MMO and they do make playing the game easier but first of all way more fun. Even then, heroic is easily puggable as is KSM. You just have to put the effort into it and not expect a magical invite to a +15key or a sire kill as you happen to log on. MMOs require effort to progress to the top and if you’re not willing to put in the effort then you’re SOOL and should maybe consider a singleplayer game.

And then, to add insult to injury, a few months later Blizzard graciously nerfs the content, when it’s no longer relevant , to allow the unwashed masses of average players to be able to go through it… when it no longer holds any value besides literal sightseeing.

Then maybe git gud and clear it while it’s difficult if that’s so important to you?

[Fistron-blackmoore]

@Allarion-ravencrest

Elder Scrolls Online does this for it’s entire run.

ESO has a broad casual content but the trifecta run, especially on the DLC dungeons and arenas, and Vet trials require to be invested into the game skill and equipment wise. MMO should always be about group play.

[Allarion-ravencrest]

To use an analogy even a person like you could perhaps understand, though by the sheer elitism I could almost hear from your post, I doubt it.

It’s like all car companies suddenly deciding to only manifacture their most expensive model, and from them on only create faster, stronger and generally even more expensive models.

Rich people rejoice because they found a new hobby - buying a new top of the line car every time it’s released.
Middle class struggles to buy ANY car at that point and a lot of them are desperate enough to sell their kidney, lung and nut to get it, like 97% of them just give up on cars and ride the public transports.
Worker class gives up before they even start because they don’t see the point in working 100 hours a week just to arrive too late to a sale, and so they settle of riding a bicycle while enjoying the sights.

Balancing around 1%, when even that 1% doesn’t even cover all your classes and specs for proper representation of each, is just not sustainable. People buy a new expansion, play for 2 weeks, and leave for something else thinking “why did I even bother, it’s worse every xpac”