Don’t tell me what to do.
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Don’t think that the team is focusing all that much on the player character as the heroic saviour.
It might feel as such, given the fact that they are driving the plot towards such a high fantasy levels, that even mundane tasks seem as some heroic feat.
But if you look closer, the story is no longer about the PC. It’s about him bearing witness to the ascension (or downfall), of certain NPCs.
The hero that will ultimately save the day will be Anduin, Sylvanas, Saurfang, Malfurion, Jaina, Illidan, Thrall or Velen.
Not us.
You may find different opinions regarding this.
I personally thought Nathanos was quite refreshing to have around. But others seemed bothered by the fact that some “newly” introduced character didn’t bent over backwards to appease their inflated character ego.
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The problem is that while the narrative tries to glorify you and make you the biggest champion of the world…the truth is that the story barely acknowledges this achievements which in turn become completely hollow. You are not a part of the world, you are a walking camera who tags along the other main characters.
Let me give an example to make this more clear, and I know this is overdone but it’s also the best example out there: Final Fantasy XIV has you play as the Warrior of Light. You are an integral part of the story and without you the story falls apart, but the world also treats you like this. Characters acknowledge your existence, they even ask you about your opinion in certain matters, and they acknowledge you as their friend. And when you do the Dark Knight quests you realize that all of this world saving, the losses and helping actually has become pretty tiresome for the Warrior of Light.
However, at the same time you’re not the complete center of the universe. Other characters do their own stuff, make their own plans, and advance the story in other directions while you are busy dealing with other things. You are an integral part of the world yes, but that world is also alive and continues to do its own stuff.
This doesn’t happen in Warcraft. Want a good example? Stormheim: Genn versus Sylvanas…what is your character doing in the meantime while these two fight it out? You wake up in the same tent as Genn later one, but how did you actually end up there? What happened? It’s never explained and you’re not even acknowledged anywhere. So I helped out Genn and then in his fight against Sylvanas…I ran into a wall and knocked myself out or what?
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In support of the argument of the hero becoming more simplistic, I don’t think anyone here is asking to be treated as Bob the Level 1 Adventurer after killing the next big bad.
What’s being argued here is the over-centralization of the player’s character without any backlash, question of genuity or some kind of pressure that makes the achievements you get … actually feel like achievements. Often enough, you are put in these situations that you automatically solve by proxy of being yourself as the stellar champion that would have surely spelt doom for that task had you not been there.
Which should never have been the case. Aside from moments of key storytelling where it does make sense to have the hero present, the otherwise omnipresent charisma the player character seems to radiate out of every orifice gives off an overdone, exhausted feeling.
To go back would simply be asking of simple steps that some posters have already said:
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Don’t make it feel like the World can’t survive without the player. There is always a need to be that ‘One Hero’ as every fantasy story tells, but not always.
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NPC’s and individuals have a soul even when the spotlight does not serve them. We see heroes like Jaina, Anduin etc. yes, but why do they need to suddenly curb towards you but instead have a damn normal conversation?
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Explore avenues that need a story, not automatic skip content. This was the case with a lot of previous expansions and it frankly removes some of the soul of the world around the player.
There’s a reason why FFXIV is an overdone concept when comparing to WoW. A lot of it is scarily true.
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I think it’s better to gatekeep what’s left of the MMORPG genre
Nah, you are super powerful. But just a tool. You don’t drive the story, ever, you are just used to smash the baddies that might have emotional significance for others, but certainly not for you. You are an extension of the will of characters like Thrall, Anduin, Sylvanas and Jaina. And if you weren’t there, the story would still be the same, with the named characters filling the space that is left open for you only because the player has to have something to do. You are still insignifcant.
The world hasn’t become insignificant because you became to important. The world has become insignificant because the writers became bored by the world that the writers that came before them created. That’s why they focused on new cosmic stuff that they think is cool, and supposedly epic character arcs. Azeroth just got mostly left behind. But if they want to, they can just go back any time they want. They surely have no qualms sending you out to gather onions, right after you slew a titan.
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I think I never agreed that hard with a post. Who wants to be a hero in World of Warcraft ? Being a hero is freaking lame. Isn’t it true that what we want when we play WoW is to get lost in it ? To be part of something ?
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I agree and I think if blizzard wants to save their game they should make changes that are similar to how the world works in Elder Scrolls Online:
- mobs always scale with the lvl of the player, regardless of the continent
- So does loot
→ The entire world would be buzzing with players rather than just the zones of the latest expansion.
I understand that implementing such a change would have numerous considerations to take into account, e.g. would you then farm old mythic+ for loot? Would you still be able to hack and slash through old raids for tmog?
However, I am sure there would be many good fixes to tackle these things too. E.g. 1) making the ilvl drop from old content to never be higher than the current normal raid. 2) giving players an option to enter dungeons/raids and not scale with the level of the player, including loot. Obviously, these suggestions are quite arbitrary and written from the top of my head, but you get the idea.
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You forgot that it takes away the feeling of “making your character stronger” as a result. If everything scales, what’s the point of you getting a higher level.
Also, scaling is a boring feature. It’s also lazy, because everything is an automatic, calculated mess and things can go from beyond silly if you do not continuously check it. (BfA PvP)
Scaling has no place in an RPG
Ah that game… i was wondering why the levelling was so boring. I think I made it to about level 10 before I dozed off and uninstalled it. There’s no point in levelling if everything scales towards you.
Very eloquently put! I do genuinely wonder how brand new players that aren’t very familiar at all with the lore and what has happened before feel about the game. Must be very strange, a bit like that warcraft movie which explained nothing so all those who’d never played the game were utterly confused.
I feel like it should go back to set NPC characters actually be the drivers of the story and we’re just there to help. Think about Tyrion and the Lich King saga, he dealt the killing blow, it was his army that pushed forwards and we were just the “brave adventurers” that decided to help. Sure it was a bit clunky that he was basically afk until the end, but that shouldn’t be too hard to improve as fights become ever more complex and interesting.
Further, there must surely be a way to simply recognise the achievements of older players over newer ones, beyond a basically invisible AOTC or CE achievement. Something more visible, like having guards greeting you differently or getting different flavour text, some form of acknowledgement. At the bare minimum make older raid titles not obtainable at the launch of a new expansion. We don’t need to be upgraded to the status of “The One” or other overtly heroic status like that.
Following from above I find that scenes like this one could be so easily rejigged to make them less player centric and more character driven. Jaina, Thrall etc put their strength together and manage to activate the macgaffin, but they can’t go through themselves because they’re too busy keeping it open and fighting. Thus we have to go. Same outcome but now we feel like we actually owe them a debt and want to go save them because they saved us first. We’re important and driven, but not “special super unique mega hero deus ex machina plot solving powers” important.
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Scaling is not perfect but taking it away would deepen the gap between old and new zones even more. To me having low level zones and high level zones completely annihilates the game’s ability to feel alive and in movement
I’m personally fine with the Chromie system. I say let’s exploit it so they can update zones that desperately need it but still allow people to (re)do old quests. And pretty please add some diversity to starting areas (and I don’t mean 5 minutes and you’re off to Orgrimmar lmao)
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Well doesn’t scaling annihilates the sense of progression completely?
Why can’t the devs just go back and admit their misstake that the powercreep of expansions is so big?
People were still doing Naxxramas, AT LEVEL 70 in TBC because the raid gear was still so good, hell Thunderfury was still BIS all throughout TBC.
Exile’s reach is just stupid, but I don’t get what you mean here
I didn’t really elaborate on this when saying how I’d prefer scaling to work. Generally it means that all content would scale to your lvl, but not in terms of difficulty. For instance, at the moment mobs have like 14k health in shadowlands? In many zones in old content mobs would still be lvl 60, but they would have something like 6k hp and deal less damage.
You would still feel empowered, but no you wouldn’t be able to pull 200 mobs and dodge every attack.
My point is, it is possible to make mobs scale to your lvl, while also making players feel more powerful.
I am obviously not a game developer, but there are numerous ways to do this as shown in other games.
This is the problem I have with WoW today.
Another ‘solution’ would be to have something similar to WM off and WM on, but with scaling so you can play ‘both’ versions of the game. Personally, I think it would be cool if you could get some starter gear from doing old raid, mythics and quests and not just farm the newest content. As long as you but a cap to the ilvl, so that you wouldn’t be forced to acquire BIS gear from old content… and even if you could, I don’t see it as very problematic.
EDIT: This type of scaling would also provide much more content for players that haven’t played all the previous expansion. I think it would be fun to go back and do e.g. Black Temple in a raid with a degree of difficulty and also get some OK gear from it.
Scaling doesn’t work. It has shown with the way how many bugs and glitches the game brings whenever a “squish” pops up and that it still does not get fixed well into the expansion.
Scaling is not the way an RPG should be defined. It’s really just a automatic calculation slapped onto the game based upon % numbers.
That’s not real. That’s too limited. We need manual put numbers, simple as.
That scaling is buggy is a developer issue, but not one that can’t be fixed.
That scaling is not the way that a RPG should be defined I think is hard to argue for. How realistic is it that you can pull an entire dungeon, not get hit by a single attack and kill everything in a single blow?
You don’t convince me.
I mean geographical diversity among starting areas. Idk about the Alliance but 4 Horde races start in Durotar (in or around Orgrimmar) - I’m particularly bitter about Vulpera spawning in Org when Voldun would have been so exciting. The rest either start in their native region just to get asked to go to Orgrimmar or start in a completely outdated zone.
As a new player who mostly got into WoW lore with BFA, rolling a Troll led me to believe that Garrosh was the current warchief due to the constantly-playing cinematic in Vol’jin’s hut lol. Then I found out not only that Garrosh was no longer Warchief but that Vol’jin was actually dead. That was pretty intense
EDIT : scaling does greatly reduce the feeling of progression, but I’d rather have that than making half of the map literally irrelevant past level 30. Though I completely understand that not everybody feels the same
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Well, you’re not really listening to what I say.
I say Blizzard should adress the powercreep present into the game.
Yes a level 60 can solo an early dungeon like Deadmines in Classic.
But he can’t pull the entire dungeon, or more than a few mobs before getting overwhelmed aswell.
I gave you an example of TBC where people went back to Classic raids to get gear there because, like you so put it, you shouldn’t one shot entire bosses.
No, actual vanilla gear, was still good to delve into TBC raids.
I don’t need to convince you, since your standpoint on scaling is pretty clear, but scaling is a cancer.
Many, many TES fans think Oblivion was a great game, except that bandits scaled to your level and you suddenly encountered bandits wearing the most powerful gear everywhere.
Does that make more sense to you? That that same rat you killed when you first took in your baby steps can do the same damage when you’re at a high level.
Scaling = cancer, doesn’t belong in an MMORPG, or an RPG for that matter. The sense of progression is gone and what you’re describing is an action based game.
I agree, that’s a mess.
I don’t see how this is very different.
This is exactly one of the issues that they can still fix with scaling, making the difficulty of mobs in certain zones much easier, but still scale to the same lvl.
I am not saying that you shouldn’t progress and get a sense of empowerment and if you got that out of my post you should re-read it. What I am saying is that it is dumb how a lower lvl mob cannot attack you, at all. It will miss 90% of the times and hit you for a fraction of your health.
Sure, but this would only make the current and the previous expansion relevant, but not the other expansions.
Because you artificially want to solve things that should be adressed differently.
Scaling doesn’t fix much at all.
Why?
This wasn’t present until later expansions though?
Not necesarily.
Another issue, that stems from original problem you’ve mentioned is mmo aspect of the game. Right now despite there being milions of other players each one of us is THE chosen one. To the point it becomes unimmersive. How many Ashbringers there were?
In my opinion story and our role in it should reflect massive amount of players. Afterall it usually takes whole raid to take down the main boss. We can see a bit of it in Shadowlands, other Maw Walkers take care of truble in the rest of covenants after we chose our one. So we arent the only ones doing something.
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