TLDW; developpers add systems into the game that do not add anything. That if they were removed, the game would still have been the same. Developpers do this because adding ontop of the core system is hard so they will add “borrowed” systems that they can throw away and remake every once in a while.
K
/10 chars
The borrowed power thing was always in the game since set bonuses.
The problem isn’t borrowed power itself. The problem is:
Get rid of excessive time-gating and friction to allow the player more freedom in using the systems and actually bringing alts up-to-speed in much less time than now, only gear acquisition should be the power gating for alts.
No, the real reasoning for these systems is they want to bait the players with psychological skinner box manipulation to each new month for another sub fee.
And to cut down development costs (extra staff to produce content in quick time) to maximise profits to be spread among acti-blizz employees and shareholders.
Are WoW players unable to see the real reasoning for all this; you think devs just go dumb and dish out bad systems? No. See the above two reasons. Systems are quicker and cheaper to produce and they can abuse time gating (again for the above two reasons).
That’s it.
Do you really think Acti-Blizz doesn’t have a marketing team or a bunch of psychologists? Please, they and developers are made to converse to make these systems. Hundreds of millions of dollars at work here. They’ll use all sorts of tricks to weed money from your pocket. Mobile gaming preys on the youth for example, as well, they’ll make the starting characters dull and the ones you’ve got to pay real money for, really really cool. It’s extremely basic money baiting.
I feel like there is some willingness in the WoW community to blind themselves from this truth, they have rosy goggles for the game and Blizzard. Well it ain’t like that, definitely not now. These wilfully blind players put the time in the game and don’t want to tie their ego/personality/identity to a game that has a lot of design elements born from shareholders wanting to milk you (yes some people gain an ego, an identity or even a personality based from video games, sad isn’t it), it humourises their time and ego and so will reject notions of any element in the game being tied down pure monthly sub baiting. They’ll rather shout at devs when devs are minions to the marketing/psychologists/shareholders.
This won’t end, and hasn’t ended for the years the system stuff got real heavy.
Hundreds of millions of dollars revenue verses screaming Timmy’s WHO also put their head in the sand (or are totally clueless to psychology manipulation or profiteers in video games) against the real reasons for these systems and put the blame in the wrong places for these systems; that to me spells all green lights staying on for these heavy sub baiting systems in shareholders minds - you’re either clueless to the real reasons, you ignore it and/or put all the blame in the wrong places. ‘Bingo!’, the shareholders would say, and would also say:
“Let’s fire some of these devs, make a media circus of it, change the systems slightly, make a good PR campaign for it and watch the kids play to that slither of positivity, make them feel like they’ve achieved something in making the game better! It will hush them for a good number of sub months, create a positive bandwagon effect for our game to bring in more subs, but obviously, yoyo them in this new found positivity whilst we maintain this time gating, we can’t have them growing bored of this tiny slither of eased game play we gave them. Change the systems more down the line, to cancel staleness somewhat, that’ll be cheap to enact, cheekily add more time gate than usual but be quick to retract to resemble our feedback willingness and create a stronger sense of dev-player relationship - in which they thought devs were the only ones responsible for the game, so we can keep them in that false sense for even longer. The psychologists would have a field day setting this up!”
And yes, this is what shareholders do, they give advise to companies based on their wide breadth of marketing knowledge, psychology on a given industry like the video game industry. They’ll even give stories for the companies to play a tune to, stories crafted so it goes under the bogus radar by playing to cultural ideals, industry perception etc. and making sure this ‘story’ works well for their wallets.
And they’ll fine tune the companies products, maximising profit with efficiency that doesn’t mind standing on a few guys or vocal minorities in order to milk millions.
Until the WoW community becomes aware of all this in greater numbers, then they’ll just keep dangling a carrot in front of us. It’s got worse over the years.
Awareness on a large scale of this obvious c**p does help, CoD players in BO4 managed to get Activision to provide duplicate loot protected boxes for example.
Command Table 
Offbrand mobile game added as a “system” to the PC MMORPG because dev’s lack creativity and couldn’t figure out anything better.
Designed to buff engagement statistics for investors, and serve no other purpose while only detracts people from engaging with the open-world while also leaching rewards from the game which makes the open-world experience even worse than it’s already is.
The video seems flat out wrong with regards to World of Warcraft.
The core gameplay of World of Warcraft is playing and progressing your character.
Stuff like The Heart of Azeroth or Covenant Soulbinds is NOT parasitic design, because it does in fact compliment the core design of playing and progressing your character.
The fact that it is temporary and expansion-specific does not detract from the design intent. The reason why most systems in World of Warcraft aren’t baked into the core design is to alleviate the complexity and reduce the accumulating power creep.
An example of parasitic design in World of Warcraft would be vehicles.
You substitute playing your own character for an arbitrary construct built for the occasion (usually a quest or encounter).
It is hardly a cause for concern though, because Blizzard’s use of vehicles in World of Warcraft is fairly limited, because they probably do recognize - as do the players - that the enjoyment of the game stems from playing your own character.
Bad video. Bad analysis. Wrong conclusion. And I’m annoyed that YouTube videos are given a false degree of factuality and authority just because they are videos on YouTube presented in a professional manner.
It can still be a pile of poop - as it is in this case.
Poop video.
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.