Is it? Look at the sub numbers, but still the amount of threads in this forum. Tell me anyone who enjoys this season? Sure, you will always find some noobs who think its perfectly balanced if their class is totally overtuned so they finally can achieve something which they dont deserve. But the absolute majority is against it, so Blizz should react.
Sure, but we can also all just quit the game, at least the PvPers, which they are trying to achieve since years it seems and they having more and more success with it. If thats really their goal, good job! But I doubt it, because also PvPers are paying for this game and its all about the money.
They cant be happy to drop down to maybe 2 mio real active retail subs (if at all) when they had 10+++ mio in the past. If they would make PvPers happy, they would most likely not get the 10 mios back, but deffo 1+ mio more which is in the current state an increasement of 50%.
Yes and no. As I have said, you will always find some idiots who enjoy it, as much as you always will find some idiots who think Donald is a smart guy who can be taken serious and is doing a great job. But that are times where we should listen to the majority: “Should we continue the way we started a few years ago? Is it the right direction? Or did we get lost somewhere?”. 5% may say its the right direction but 95% will say they got lost and should return back to something like MoP! So you may call it preference, but in this case the preference of the majority should matter the most.
I am not a business intelligence analyst, so I wouldn’t presume to know. Too much unknown cause and correlation.
But to entertain your premise, I’m not sure it’s the desired cause and correlation.
I mean, WoW’s subscriber numbers went up until late WotLK or early Cataclysm.
Blizzard started making PvP balance hotfixes in MoP.
So stupid cause and correlation would infer that the early Arena Seasons (TBC, WotLK, Cata) where Blizzard only made balance changes in patches prior to the start of a Season, was more popular than the later Seasons (MoP to BfA) where balance changes have largely been applied through intermittent hotfixes.
But cause and correlation isn’t that simple, so it’s silly to entertain it.
I honestly don’t care.
I don’t understand why players reason their own enjoyment based on what might be beneficial for Blizzard’s bank account. Who cares about how many subscribers Blizzard have or how much money they earn? Bobby Kotick’s bottom line is the last one in the world I’ll ever be worrying about.
Players should just say what they like and what they want, regardless of whether it’s popular or profitable. We’re all paying for our own enjoyment, so it’s okay to be egoistic and selfish in our wishes and desires.
No one person’s fun is worth more than anyone else’s.
Everyone pays the same, everyone has the same right to an enjoyable game experience.
You can’t say some people’s notion of fun is worth less than yours because they’re idiots.
Again, Blizzard’s finance department might make that line of reasoning. But I fail to understand why individual players would disregard their own selfish enjoyment whenever it doesn’t align with the majority.
Everyone should always argue what they personally want and think is fun, regardless of what others think or feel.
It’s Blizzard’s problem – not the players’ – to figure out what to do about all those conflicting ideas and suggestions and wishes and desires. That’s why they get paid and we don’t.
It is, if you take the remaining feedback and the general mood into consideration. And not to forget that if people who played actively pvp over a decade suddenly leave the game in great numbers, it could also be seen as a sign that something is going terrible wrong in their aspect of the game.
Its called common sense or also statistic. If you change something (new addon) and something else is changing at the same time (massive drops of subs) you can make a significant connection! In this case: New expansion + massive dropping sub numbers = expansion most likely not enjoyable. The reason why its not enjoyable you get from the feedback and forum threads.
Blizzard obviously. Therefor they should do what the players want to play, not what they think is good for the lore and other stupid arguments for changes they brought in the past. Easy as that again. Bring back enjoyable gameplay, deeper class design and balance and you get more subs because the pvpers are busy enjoying the game.
But I havent said that: I said if 95% agree that its unfun, the 5% doesnt matter for the company. I called them idiots for the reasoning why they might think its fun. Some people also think it is fun to torture, bully, etc. I think these are idiots and the majority of people would agree with me, wouldn’t they?
Definition of idiot: “Someone whose conduct is considered to be annoyingly stupid or similar.”
Is it therefor not a viable argument? If I think something is bad and a lot of others have the same opinion, isnt it in the interest of the game developer to change it into the direction the players are asking for?
I dont let someone else decide what my opinion is, but if many people have the same opinion, its in the greater interest to change things what they are asking for. Easy logic again but seems like, you dont enjoy easy stuff to understand.
Edit: Not to forget that the sub numbers in a mmo do matter. You cant enjoy arena alone, so the more people quit the game the less mates you have to play with, the more likely you are going to quit as well. Especially if your own mates quit, or just because you are frustrated because you cant find mates in the tool, or just because you dont want to play a game thats not “hip” enough anymore, or just because its the current “anti hype” (“wow is so bad, I quit!”, if that do enough, it becomes a hype to do it as well).
Should actually be very obvious if you think about, or not? Community is a very important, if not the most important aspect for fun. Its the human nature, most of us are just pack animals. How many people would do competitive sports, if they neither have people to play with nor opponents to compete with?
Cause and correlation is rarely that simple.
As far as subscriber numbers are concerned, then they can decline for a number of external reasons that have nothing to do with WoW’s design decisions at all.
Let’s go through some examples.
Economic stagnation, increased inflation, growing unemployment, or other socio-economic effects that could cause a general population to have a smaller disposable income.
Shifting trends in technological preferences and forms of entertainment in younger generations, i.e. mobile platforms versus PCs and TVs.
Increased competition in the video game market since 2004, and increased competition from new emerging markets such as film & TV streaming, social media platforms, and traditional toys with digital aspects.
Lower customer retention in established customer segments due to age, employment, relationship, or similar.
Business model incompatible with potential new market segments, i.e. upfront cost and subscription versus prevalence of free-to-play and microtransactions.
Increased hardware requirements alienating customers with limited access to internet, limited harddisc space, mouse & keyboard, etc…
Local business relations failing to meet market expectations, i.e. operating partners in Asia and south-east Asia.
Local laws and jurisdiction slowing, halting, or otherwise making a product release problematic due to censorship, translation, or other inability to comply with individual laws.
And so on.
It’s very arrogant to sit there and say that a specific thing within the game is the reason why millions of people across the globe have quit over the years. Especially when that specific thing is your own point of complaint.
The confirmation bias is off the scale on that.
It’s a common form of rhetoric on the forum, but it’s dumb as hell. Don’t do it.
There are major consulting companies like McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and so on, that hire the smartest people in the world to figure out these cause and correlations for large companies like Activision Blizzard that are willing to pay a lot of money for their service.
If that area of expertise was so easy that random people on a video game forum could figure it out by going: “Duuh, I play Arena and it sucks, so that’s why everyone’s quitting!”, then we should all be rich consultants by now. But we’re not. Because it’s not that easy.
In this case it is and I told you why. All your examples only take affect in a longer duration, statistically over the years. But if something happens quite rapidly and come along with a special effect/event ingame like a major patch, a new xpac, et cetera then the significance is undeniable.
ill be honest with you, i had to search what simp behaviour means.
with that said, i do not defend Jito. I am aware of the kind of post he/she does, but overall they are objectively driven.
now regarding the part you quoted: “Likewise, I don’t think it makes sense to devote much attention to Arena when the playerbase seems to fall into two categories; those who don’t do it, and those who complain about doing it”
to an extent he/she aint wrong, imagine this: you are a dev and you are super proud of your newest patch, the marvellous/the biggest one yet guys/a work of love Patch 8.3. Shortly after release you come to the forums and well we know how they are, specially the PvP part, all this person will see is complains.
every.single.patch
all the pvp community does is complain. go ahead, check these forums.
Jito is an outsider, he is as clueless about PvP as i am about cooking.
but tries to keep a levelled head about the issues, and simply because he/she does have very little/none experience in PvP doesn’t automatically dismisses everything there is to be said, this applies to everyone ofc.
hope this clarifies what i meant, my goal is simply to have a nice discussion about topics without going straight to attacks, not saying you did it in particularly.
Just take a step back, try to see what people mean, with their input, and the kind of answers we are giving.
thank you and i hope you understand what i mean with this man, peace
People on forums will always complain about stuff they’re unhappy about in the game they love to play.
People will complain even more if the implemented systems/design etc is even worse than what it was in earlier patches/expansions. Blizzard themselves have reacted on this feedback from players at times.
Sometimes they’ve dealt with it in the wrong way, recent example - listened to the feedback that titanforging etc was bad for the game, while thereafter implementing an even worse system - corrupted gear which affects your gameplay even more, with even heavier RNG involved. The backlash was huge.
Sometimes they listen and actually deal with it correctly - for example bringing back PvP vendors, and also making loot just loot in Shadowlands. That makes it more fair for PvP players again. Now it’s just class balancing left to deal with, instead of class balancing + tons of external expansion/patch features that affect PvP heavily.
Players get frustrated about stuff they don’t like and write about it on the forums/ on their streams etc. It’s not unique to PvP players. You should see the m+ crowd.
Just think about this for a sec;
PvP used to (in many prior seasons) be about getting your weekly gear from vendor or through drops and then it was normalized (like in Legion). When you stepped into arena, you knew you had about the same prerequisite as the players you were up against. You were on the same feet. It felt fair. The only thing that was unfair was some bad tuning. Legion also had the problem with fixed secondary stats which felt clunky to many players.
In a few seasons, there were also a couple of PvE items that were good.
Now it’s not just bad tuning.
RNG corruption drops heavily affect if you succeed or not too. Essences affect you. Azerite traits affect you. PvE trinkets affect you and so on.
Jito also has flaws in his/her posts.
He/she writes:
“But if people want an actual competitive Season where the progress and results derive entirely from the players’ own skill, choices, and capabilities, then the desire should be that Blizzard don’t make any changes once the Season begins.”
People want a competetive season, where the results derive entirely from the players’ own skill. That would be the case if there was actually balance in the first place. Then there would be no need for changes DURING the season.
He/she also says “you’re speaking for everyone, be careful with that.” when you make a generalization, while Jito him- /herself writes “In PvE this is the balance approach the competitive community prefers.”, while also saying that me having top PvP players as an example for the competetive PvP community is not good. I’m also not allowed to say what “we” here prefer, but he/she can say what the PvE community prefers. Hypocritical much?
Also; lots of players queue hours in-game to get invites to m+ groups to push, but won’t get an invite because they’re not playing a meta class. The meta is ultimately formed as a result of the bad balancing and class design.
Jito writes that top streamers are not good examples to use when it comes to players who voice frustration about the lack of balancing, because they also have an interest in those classes remaining relevant and viable. These players are top players. These players who voice frustration compete, and they competed before PvE competition with prize pools was even a thing.
Most of us have interest in our classes remaining relevant and viable, just like the top players. We want balance. We don’t want only our class to be viable. We want the majority of specs to be viable, because that creates diversity in matchups and makes the game more fun for all of us queueing arena.
Most players commit to their main. There is a reason why they chose that class. That’s why they farmed non-accountwide achievements, titles, mounts etc on it.
Then he/she writes “It’s peculiar that in PvP the preference seems to be that Blizzard should interfere constantly during the on-going competition.”
It’s just common sense that people prefer balancing mid-season as long as Blizzard won’t even balance well between seasons.
HERE IS THE THING THOUGH: If Blizzard actually balanced the game in the first place, people wouldn’t complain as much and people would not ask for changes mid-season any longer.
How hard is that to grasp? It’s just common sense.
Also;
Mythic raid content is beatable with every single spec in the game no matter the poor balancing. The dps is not that far off from top to bottom for it to matter enough. So no matter what the top raiders play for world first, they can easily clear the content on their mains thereafter.
Top ladder spots in arena is not doable with every single spec in the game. You will always be unfavorable and play against other players. Not a fight with set mechanics.
You can’t compare the two parts and say “x community prefer this, it’s peculiar the other doesn’t”.
In the majority of PvP games, balance and fairness is heavily focused on.
The majority of PvP games are about skill and the competence of the player.
Some PvP seasons addressed this well, other seasons are far off (like the majority in BfA with the problem of class balancing AND PvE effects).
In some PvP games there is a SLIGHT undertuning and/or overtuning to certain heroes/characters, but in those games you can easily just switch.
In WoW you commited to your main. Your achievements. Your titles. Your mounts. Your bond. This is an MMO at the core. Get this in your head and you will know why players are so damn frustrated.
I’ve played this game long enough to see why many players I know and had on my friend list quit the game.
Bad balancing in PvP and bad class/spec design are the main causes.
It’s not fun to play a game where you lose against players when you punish their mistakes, simply because they play a certain said class/comp, or you happen to play a heavily undertuned class/spec and are stuck with that for the whole expansion.
Another big cause for friends not bothering with coming back to play arena is also the amount of farming you have to do before being able to enjoy it.
I bet this is true for many others out there.
It’s good news that Blizzard finally backed off with this and return vendors in Shadowlands though. It’s also good news that they return to loot being just loot.
Don’t get me wrong here though. BfA could’ve been awesome in a way, if they had just balanced specs and expansion features better. They don’t seem to be able to do that, though.
Yo Jito, can I ask you offtopic question? What do you think about post MoP Blizzard narration and storytelling?
Don’t you feel it’s also worse than it was. I feel that enemies like Burning Legion and N’Zoth were completely wasted. We didn’t even fight Sargeras and he is imprisoned and one of the most dangerous armies in the Universe was defeated in one expansion while allied army of orcs, humans and ne couldn’t even bit Archimonde…
N’Zoth - hyped since Cata - defeated in one patch. An Old God?! Something that Titans decided that shouldn’t be killed because it can damage Azeroth. We figured how to kill it in one patch.
Also plenty of narration saying that released Old God would be the most powerful thing we ever fought… Still defeated in one patch. Don’t you think that Blizz is cutting budget on everything? Maybe Ion isn’t even that bad but they gave him such limited resources that he is bringing the best thing he can.
N’Zoth death cinematic… I’ll leave a chance to comment on it for you and I just don’t want to swear.
What I’d do if I were a writer. Firstly I’d make us stop Legion invasion but not defeating them on Argus then I’d make us fight N’Zoth in 8.3 but losing at the end so we need to go to Shadowlands to find a way to beat him. Then there might be a patch where we try to convince Legion to help us fighting N’Zoth or maybe us fighting Sargeras in the future so we could lead Legion in fight against Old Gods. Other option is that N’Zoth could be trying to release all old gods so we could have real Old God expansion with real N’yalotha raid where we would fight all Old Gods as different bosses. That would be massive and epic. Instead characters were wasted in poorly written simple story. Shadowlands instead is filled with old characters comming back. For few expansions Blizzard struggles with introducing new characters that might carry WoW story on their own without “refrosting food” - Warcraft 3 heroes.
It’s not, I’m just tired of talking to a wall. I made my PoV very clear, supported with a lot of “easy to understand” arguments. You might agree or not, I really dont care.
But to state “Despite all the powerful evidence, logic and common sense, you cant say with 100% certainty that it is true.” is from my PoV just dumb and ignorant.
Numbers don’t lie, everything else is maybe interpretation, but if a game suddenly has fewer players, even though the number of players across all games is increasing overall, then I would look for the problem in the game itself and not ask for other excuses that are very unlikely.
Isn’t one of the first sentences in medical school “When you hear hoof sounds, think of a horse first, not a zebra!”? In other words: Keep things simple and check the most obvious reasons first.
With the exception of WoD, I think Blizzard’s storytelling and narration has only improved over the years. Pretty much in a linear fashion. I find myself more interested in the story and lore as each expansion has come and gone.
I suppose it’s fair to raise some eyebrows about the fact that the heroic adventurers keep being able to kill off whatever foes they’re presented with and save the world for the 25th time in a row. I sometimes kind of wish that the outcome was different.
But the gameplay kind of necessiates that story format, and I personally find it compelling regardless of some raised eyebrows here and there.
The problems is that we aren’t privy to the numbers. We’re guessing.
If you take the subscriber numbers, then it consists of two hidden numbers:
The outflow of old subscribers.
The influx of new subscribers.
Players always assume that a decline in subscribers means that everyone’s quitting the game. But for a game like WoW with millions of subscribers, then every day is a day where some people quit. And every day is a day where some new players start.
So the development of the subscriber numbers is a function of the outflow of old subscribers versus the influx of new subscribers. And we don’t know what that is, because we’re not privy to Blizzard’s data. We can’t say anything informed about it. We assume. We assume that a lot of old subscribers are leaving, because that fits with the conclusions we often want to establish (Arena is dead, class design is terrible, story is crap, etc.). But it may as well be that the amount of old subscribers who leave the game is steady and it’s in fact the influx of new subscribers that has come to a halt (because young people would rather play Minecraft and Fortnite, because WoW is too expensive, because the game is too big and complicated and intimidating, because…).
We don’t know. And making assumptions and drawing a bunch of ground-breaking conclusions on uninfomed assumptions is just not commendable.
Like I said, this is an area of expertise that very smart people get lots of money to figure out, because it’s not so easy or simple as it appears.
If Blizzard has a problem with old subscribers leaving, then that would inform a business strategy revolving around customer retention. If their problem is a lack of new subscribers joining, then that would inform a business strategy revolving around market penetration and expansion.
And it could be a combination of all, to variying degrees, depending on the cost/benefit of each customer segment.
Again, it’s not simple, so it’s silly to make it appear as if it is.
We maybe dont have the exact numbers, but we all can say without a doubt that retail has as less player as never before.
And even when Blizzard is not publishing real sub numbers anymore, they have in the past. Combined with the other numbers from back then, we have enough data to get an accurate estimation → https://i.redd.it/b0j1aag43j821.jpg
This graph estimated 2 mio subs for Decemeber 2018 for retail. Even when 8.3 brought back some subs for PvE as every content patch is doing, a lot of people cleared the content (at least on heroic), saw the storyline and are not interested in farming 24/7 every day, they quit again until SL.
So I think 2 mio subs right now is around the maximum of sub numbers for retail we have. Its probably even lower so 2-3 mio is the overall number if you take the classic numbers as well (the hype is over there as much as Ive heard).
Indeed, but obviously more player quit than start playing. In a market that has very high numbers since years (in north and western europe, its > 1/3 of its population that are playing online games) and the fact that the average age of online players is getting older, we can come only to the conclusion that the game has become bad.
How else is it possible that other pc games gaining more and more players, even when every game has its high and down phases and wow is dropping more and more?
Im pretty sure you will try to find other excuses again my dear Donald or call me biased, but I just follow the numbers and pair it with common sense and dont follow your biased pro Blizz attitude combined with naivety.
It is that simple, if you stop trying to find possibilities when there arent any. And a rapid drop of sub number that are way out of the normal variance are always an indicator that something happend. If you can combine that with an ingame event, you have usually the reason for it.
How for example is it possible, that we dont have a lot more players right now, even when most people are forced to stay at home, while other games are reporting insane player growths. You can take twitch statistics as an indicator!
So that is the answer we get when you get out of stupid arguments? I expected more tbh. You refer to what you said earlier? For example
? How does that fit with constant high numbers of people who are playing online games? It doesnt! And pre corona the economic data were looking promosing and constantly growing in the regions where WoW is published!
And the conversation has been off topic since 20 posts ago or something. Really weak shot here as well!
No, that is the answer you get when I feel the discussion has left the realm of reason and intellect.
I’m happy to discuss any subject or topic so long as the premise is reason and logic, not conspiracy and agenda-driven pseudo-facts.
We’ve had a long and interesting discussion, and I have enjoyed it. But now it’s over. I’m not going to sit here and entertain something I think is dumb. Discuss it with someone else.
Interesting reasoning when you are the one who makes completely absurd arguments for decreasing player numbers and rejects the most likely reason for it.
Do you call that reasonable or even intelligent? I would call it rather biased and stupid.
Lol, your name is Donald, I knew it. News against your favor are fake news, right? I think you have a totally warped view of what logical is. Logical is if 1+1=2 and 1+1+1=3 then 1+1+1+1=4 but fir you its x for some inexplicable reason.
Im not discussing, Im explaining the basics over the last 10 posts it seems. Come back when you are on an unbiased and adult level of intelligence so we can really discuss.
P. S.: If your monitor stays black, then you change the monitor to check and its showing the normal picture, would you also think that something in your computer is broken? Because most of us would buy a new monitor since its the most logical thing to do!
Me: “This is complicated and we’re not privy to the data, so it’s baseless speculation at best.”
You: “No you’re just stupid and can’t put 2 and 2 together. I have it all figured out and it totally explains why the game is bad. Coincidentally it also affirms my subjective opinions.”
Like I said, I care not for it.
I’ve enjoyed what else we’ve discussed and it’s been great and insightful and I think you’ve made a lot of great points that have had me thinking and reflecting quite a bit. So awesome and great and thank you for that. But we don’t have to discuss everything, and this is one of those things.
You: “But you cant be sure because Blizz hasnt told you so its all speculation. It could also be x, y or even z.”
Me: “I can because we have accurate estimation as already shown and your reasonings doesnt fit because x would only show up in a longer term, not changing something rapidly, y is not viable since the player numbers in general are not decreasing and z is also not viable because if at all we had growing economic data until the corona breakout. So the reason is most likely the game, nothing else!”
You: “You are dumb.”
Me: “Ehm, okay. Whats wrong with what I have said?”
You: “Everything but Im not going deeper into it because its not logical.”
And you say you arent biased and are trying to have a constructive and intelligent discussion.
