From what I've seen watching Preachs vids, is that they are trying with classes and dungeons. (Would advice anyone to watch them as he goes into massive details on each) Some of the classes feel really unique, example, DPriest having to full on dps to get the best heals out or DemoLock having summon a fuckton of demons and buff them, he said some feel so shit and nothings changed or some are amazing. This also goes for dungeons, some feel boring and other have some really good old school WoW mechanics requiring the group to work together and not mass pull.
So far it seems to be hit or miss, but the bread and butter I think the majority are waiting for is, what's content like outside of raiding and dungeons? If Crafting goes as they plan, that will add a nice chunk of endgame for people, but A lot more is still needed. Raids and dungeon shouldn't make up 70 - 80% of the endgame like in WoD, because once people have run as much as they're allowed to or received all they need, what do they do next? If you have everything placed on a timer or make it faceroll, the only options you are giving people is to log-off or unsub until something comes along. Players should be be thinking
"Done raiding. Hmmm, what can I do? Where do I start? I can spend an hour doing crafting, can spend an hour doing this or that, spend an hour earning those or these. So much to do, won;t have enough time in the day"
Right now you can do everything you need to in an hour or two as it has a stupid timer or doesn't require the player to even be online.
Overall, so far looks much better than WoD, but what I mentioned above is vital imho if they don't want their playerbase to free fall as it did with WoD
WoD broke the community?? Uhmm Cata broke the community and it has been broken since. If it really took them this long to figure it out, that doesn't bode well for any changes they will make to address it.
It seems like post Cata they have been in panic mode, and just throwing stuff at the wall and praying that something sticks. Desperation doesn't breed good game design.
I really hope they aren't planning on going back to the days of bring the class, screw the player. Having class identity is great, but don't design shit around groups having certain abilities and then not give those abilities to some classes. If you can't guarantee a group will have an ability then don't severely handicap groups that are missing the "correct" class.
ANd this guy above is why WoW sucks nowdays
SO whats the freaking point of 10 druids doing 10 man raids.This is an MMORPG class diversion is the most important thing.Each groups can compensate in different way, enh shamans were sort of useless in PVE back tov anilla but we always picked 1 or due to their enhanced totems talent and we put em in the melee group, it wasnt just ''whos the most op class''. This diversion was the beauty of the game, no 10 freaking classes having the same buffs as it is now, which is beyond pathetic
EVeryone was feeling sort of special because it had some unique abilities. ''bring the player''? THere is no such thing as hard mechanics, its all about raid coordination and synergy between a raid, mechanics/reflexes is the CSGO
Apparently you weren't around in vanilla when they literally brought some classes to raids only for the buff. The player couldn't really contribute in a meaningful way. This design sucked, and they changed it. They hyped up what they called "bring the player, not the class". For mythic raiding you are expected to have all the buffs and that is fine. But like for example for 5 mans in Cataclysm you really need 2-3 CCs in your group to match the type of mobs you got in the dungeon and LFD regularly put you in groups without the required CC. That is just poor design. Either you design your content so you don't need it, or you make sure the groups going in will have it. They are basically going back to a design that already failed.
Not really a fan of Blizzard's current less is more attitude. Think of what WoW could turn into, if only they dropped some of those billions into it instead of purchasing King games.
Not really a fan of Blizzard's current less is more attitude. Think of what WoW could turn into, if only they dropped some of those billions into it instead of purchasing King games.
Activision-Blizzard bought King Games, not Blizzard Entertainment. That billion is not from Blizzard Entertainment's pocket.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
Not really a fan of Blizzard's current less is more attitude. Think of what WoW could turn into, if only they dropped some of those billions into it instead of purchasing King games.
Activision-Blizzard bought King Games, not Blizzard Entertainment. That billion is not from Blizzard Entertainment's pocket.
Either way you slice it, it's a parent company deciding where funds should go, and instead of bringing WoW into 2016, they decide to purchase king games.
WoW is a big game, Social aspect is more on the community side of things people are toxic all around, and people like to avoid it. Just blaming only on LFD will not save any problem just add to it. If blizzard trying get more people back in the game, they need people playing not standing around for 2 hours thinking that makes things social. Just add more less needed spam.
This is were you are 100% wrong and wearing rose tinted glasses kid. The community is Toxic right now it started when LFD happened. It was never to this point in Vanilla or TBC. Yes you had groups of ass holes on your server, I know on mine they all ended up in their own guild because no respectable guild would let them in. The difference is you didnt group with this people but a few times and learned who they were and stayed far away from them. Today they are all over LFD and you are forced to group with them and Toxic players breed Toxic players.
As for 2 hours standing around. That is only if you are not willing to learn how to make friends period. I never had that problem because I always made friends. Hell I was in a MC guild and I had friends who were clearing Naxx during Vanilla. If I was looking for help in a 5 man they would gladly help. I had well over 100 friends on my friends list and was in an established guild. It didnt take much to get groups accept like I said at 2am.
Now could WOW have had a better Raid browser? Yes they could of and thats really all they needed was a better grouping tool but they didnt need LFD which ruined the community. It is widely supported that LFD killed MMOs because it killed the social aspect. You might say how widely how do I know. Well guess what I still talk to many of the people I played WOW and other MMOs with. Near 50 people. ALL of them agree LFD is bad, they have friends that all agree LFD is bad. Yet maybe 3 ever posted on an MMO forum. ALL of them voted with their wallet and quit WOW and have put in the survey that LFD\LFR is the problem. How do I know? because I talk to people even though in real life I am a bit anti social.
So yes LFD is the problem and is why the community is Toxic. If Blizzard removed LFD and LFF, maybe did server clusters so 1 cluster of 4 or 6 servers players could be in the same guilds and stuff you wouldnt need LFD/ LFR at all unless you are not the type to make friends. At that point its not any developers job to get you to or get you to get into the content, that is your job.
They are still missing the mark which I guess isn't surprising when you invite the same people to alpha over and over.
Every expansion runs into the same problem, no endgame. Legion should focus 90% on loading up the endgame content. None of this single small raid BS every expansion has been launching with. Stamping a heroic and mythic sticker on everything is NOT a replacement for content. Yes garrisons were a bad MMO idea. Sure classes are too self sufficient. Yes the world pvp was garbage yet again. None of that would have mattered if it was packed with content but it never is. Hell you couldn't even explore the entire tiny map until a year post launch.
You know what. There is this one person who ran about 40 instances since she started playing WOW in Cata. 40 instances. She was in the last beta and she is in this Alpha. Yet Blizzard listened to her about not having CC in any instances because it was too complicated. I mean WTF I from Vanilla to Cata ended up running well over 500 instances played a lot during the Vanilla TBC days and had no problems with CC and teaching players how to play. Yet Blizzard listens to people like her because she wants solo content and all that. WOD came out and I in the Beta forums if they launch it like it was that it would quickly loose subs. I was thrown out of beta because I liked needing to use CC when beta started and guess what WOD has less subs now than MOP did.
Truth is the vocal minority is why Blizzard is the way it is today yet Blizzard cannot seem to figure this shit out. Most people just stop playing. Thats what happened with UO and Pub 16. Players didnt bitch on the forum then they just cancelled subs.
Typical present day developers, they go from one extreme to another. For example, we have too many abilities, so now they cut it down to just a few. LOL! No such thing as being careful. Who taught these idiots game design?
I'm perplexed by forced grouping while leveling. That one thing pushed me away from the GW2 expansion more than anything else. Group hero point unlocks was hard after starting a month late and by the time i found out there were some sort of group finders to help do them i had already uninstalled the game. It didn't help that the final boss fight of the story glitched and they didn't have checkpoints after the two long fights preceding it.
Its an MMO and working with other people as well as social skills are needed in the game. Anything else would just be a single player game like countless other MMOs out there. If you dont learn how to group as you level then when you get to end game and want to group you will be clueless. Why do you think FFXIV is going strong compared to every other MMO out there? YEP they force you to group up as you level so you learn your role as you level. This is where MMOs need to separate themselves from single player games as well as separate themselves from players who do not want to play together. Not every game should be everything to everyone and that is WOWs massive mistake.
Typical present day developers, they go from one extreme to another. For example, we have too many abilities, so now they cut it down to just a few. LOL! No such thing as being careful. Who taught these idiots game design?
The Market Managers who are just counting pennies. The Market Managers want simple game play to make more money because dont you know easy = more people? /sigh That is close to the truth which is not funny.
I'm perplexed by forced grouping while leveling. That one thing pushed me away from the GW2 expansion more than anything else. Group hero point unlocks was hard after starting a month late and by the time i found out there were some sort of group finders to help do them i had already uninstalled the game. It didn't help that the final boss fight of the story glitched and they didn't have checkpoints after the two long fights preceding it.
Its an MMO and working with other people as well as social skills are needed in the game. Anything else would just be a single player game like countless other MMOs out there. If you dont learn how to group as you level then when you get to end game and want to group you will be clueless. Why do you think FFXIV is going strong compared to every other MMO out there? YEP they force you to group up as you level so you learn your role as you level. This is where MMOs need to separate themselves from single player games as well as separate themselves from players who do not want to play together. Not every game should be everything to everyone and that is WOWs massive mistake.
Forced grouping is ass during leveling. I hate waiting 30 minutes to spend 15 minutes doing piss easy content so I can progress the storyline in FFXIV. It was even worse before dungeon finders became a thing. As a DPS in FFXI, where forced grouping was very much a thing, and when I was a kid with zero responsibility, waiting around for a PT was okay. Now? Not so much.
I'm perplexed by forced grouping while leveling. That one thing pushed me away from the GW2 expansion more than anything else. Group hero point unlocks was hard after starting a month late and by the time i found out there were some sort of group finders to help do them i had already uninstalled the game. It didn't help that the final boss fight of the story glitched and they didn't have checkpoints after the two long fights preceding it.
Its an MMO and working with other people as well as social skills are needed in the game. Anything else would just be a single player game like countless other MMOs out there. If you dont learn how to group as you level then when you get to end game and want to group you will be clueless. Why do you think FFXIV is going strong compared to every other MMO out there? YEP they force you to group up as you level so you learn your role as you level. This is where MMOs need to separate themselves from single player games as well as separate themselves from players who do not want to play together. Not every game should be everything to everyone and that is WOWs massive mistake.
Forced grouping is ass during leveling. I hate waiting 30 minutes to spend 15 minutes doing piss easy content so I can progress the storyline in FFXIV. It was even worse before dungeon finders became a thing. As a DPS in FFXI, where forced grouping was very much a thing, and when I was a kid with zero responsibility, waiting around for a PT was okay. Now? Not so much.
I agree @simsalabim77 ; - I simply don't have time to stand around in Dalaran screeching for a tank or a healer or waiting/hoping to be "chosen" for a dungeon or raid. I have so many other things IRL that demand time. I like to be able to get into my MMO, play a bit, accomplish a bit and get out so that I can get on with the other stuff.
Sure, I know the easy answer is, "Find a guild" but that honestly doesn't make it much better. I want to see the story and move on doing the things I want to do without being forced to be in a group to do it. I have a couple friends and we like to hang together to complete content. That's plenty for me.
Inb4 someone says "play Diablo 3". I do.
The bottom line is that Blizzard understands its subscribers - a probably largely "older" audience of gamers who have real life commitments and not the same number of hours of time they had 10 years ago. When you're a teen without anything to do, it was great. With kids, a full time job, ailing parents or whatever, the ability to stand idly by waiting around is gone and not a desirable game feature.
Forced grouping is ass during leveling. I hate waiting 30 minutes to spend 15 minutes doing piss easy content so I can progress the storyline in FFXIV. It was even worse before dungeon finders became a thing. As a DPS in FFXI, where forced grouping was very much a thing, and when I was a kid with zero responsibility, waiting around for a PT was okay. Now? Not so much.
I agree @simsalabim77 ; - I simply don't have time to stand around in Dalaran screeching for a tank or a healer or waiting/hoping to be "chosen" for a dungeon or raid. I have so many other things IRL that demand time. I like to be able to get into my MMO, play a bit, accomplish a bit and get out so that I can get on with the other stuff.
Sure, I know the easy answer is, "Find a guild" but that honestly doesn't make it much better. I want to see the story and move on doing the things I want to do without being forced to be in a group to do it. I have a couple friends and we like to hang together to complete content. That's plenty for me.
Inb4 someone says "play Diablo 3". I do.
The bottom line is that Blizzard understands its subscribers - a probably largely "older" audience of gamers who have real life commitments and not the same number of hours of time they had 10 years ago. When you're a teen without anything to do, it was great. With kids, a full time job, ailing parents or whatever, the ability to stand idly by waiting around is gone and not a desirable game feature.
Lets get this straight right now. I am almost 36 years old now. Have 3 kids, 2 of which are younger than 4 and need a lot of attention. I am Married to a wife who needs a lot of attention. I also work on average 50 hours a week. I understand the need to not waste time. However 10 years ago I was actually busier, worked nearly 80 hours a week as an IT consultant and spent time moving datacenters from 1 part of the country to another, plus I was working on a degree. I also what helping a friend and his mother who was going though melanoma during this time. Yet I managed to still complete every instance in vanilla WOW and TBC long before LFD. I did the heriocs in TBC too.
How is it that I managed all of this during a time you say that we were not as busy yet, I was busier than most people? Did I get to Naxx, NOPE did I get to Sunwell or BT? NOPE. Yet I completed a lot of content, did at least 10 to 15 instances a month non raid. I used my time management skills and I also made a lot of friends whom I would call or text days a head of time if I seen an opening in my schedule.
Today people think, THAT SUCKS and I NEED TO RUN THIS INSTANCE RIGHT NOW! That is the core problem with MMOS. You look at MMOs as something you need to complete in 1 or 2 months. Yet this view has caused people to stop playing MMOs because they are boring and only have a month or 2 of content. Why? Because we think about the game right now not in a few weeks I will be doing X event.
As for blizzard understanding his subscribers then why is WOW Bleeding subs? They do not understand its subscribers because if they did they wouldnt be bleeding subs. They would also know things like 2 healers I played with in the 40 man Raid days were both teachers and they had little kids and a baby at the time. Yet will all the work they had they both manage to be on a 40 man raid team 2 days a week and raid for 6 to 8 hours a week. They also did instances all the time too. Yes they were not as active as our friend Tim who was 19 at the time if I remember correctly. But the point is Blizzard does not know the audience if they did they would know that the few people who talk about having "Busy Schedules" on the forum often do but dont have the best time management skills. For example my 2 friends that were teachers spent all day Saturday and half of Sunday taking care of their students work\test, they had a nightly routine for their kids this is how they managed to play.
The real problem is what you dont bring up but it does go with having a lack of time. Its how fast we chew through content to keep up with raiding curves or end game curves. Today once a group passes a set of content they dont go back to it because you have LFD for players to go back through old content. Yet Pre-LFD there were guilds that focused on behind the curve content. For example my guild that I created near the end of TBC around April May before WOTLK came out, my guild did Kara and ZA. People who just got into raiding or were behind the curve joined my guild to do Kara and AZ. There were other guilds out there like mine. You could not just randomly join a guild and it would get you where you wanted to go. You have to join a guild that was doing what you wanted and needed to do plus you took in the social environment. Without LFD tools you would have stronger guilds outside of the massively large guilds and top tier raid guilds. Only you would be responsible for finding the right fit.
There is 1 more issue that comes with end game curves and lack of time. Today Xpac come out every 2 years or so. With us getting older yes we dont want to be in game as much as we were 10 years ago. That is more truer of a statement than we dont have time. We do have time if we manage our time well, we dont have time if there is a major crisis in life. The problem is people like us SBFord want to when we get into game we dont want to get so far behind its hard to catch up with out a LFD tool. Or we want to use our time efficiently. The problem is that the expansion goes by so fast at a 24 month rate if we moved that to a 3 year rate but added more content throughout the current expansion people like us if we didnt have a LFD tool will not feel as left behind as we did in the old days. I was left behind in TBC because 3 months I didnt play at all and for another 3 months I could hardly play. I did still play some but not enough to keep up with the raiding curve. If the current content lasted longer I feel that curve for gear wouldnt be as bad to people plus having some catch up mechanic that people would be happier. Plus have tiered 5 man content that helps catch up faster.
So no its not LFD is important to an MMO for older people. Its not thats just what people are use to now because what LFD did to MMOs. It was a quick fix to a much larger and more complex problem that would take several little things that would focus on different aspects of the game.
If you want to stand in Dalaran and yell for compatriots to run dungeons? Go for it! I see people doing it all the time. I hate raiding and most dungeons unless it's with my small group of friends. I don't care about gear or anything else, hence no raiding. What I get, I get through Tanaan or through PvP or whatever. I don't wear a single piece of raid / dungeon gear on any one of my 8 characters. But I do like convenience. That doesn't make me better or worse than you, @danwest58 , just different. That there are choices people can make is better for everyone. Want old school non-LFR or LFD? Go for it. No one's forcing you to use it.
If you want to stand in Dalaran and yell for compatriots to run dungeons? Go for it! I see people doing it all the time. I hate raiding and most dungeons unless it's with my small group of friends. I don't care about gear or anything else, hence no raiding. What I get, I get through Tanaan or through PvP or whatever. I don't wear a single piece of raid / dungeon gear on any one of my 8 characters. But I do like convenience. That doesn't make me better or worse than you, @danwest58 , just different. That there are choices people can make is better for everyone. Want old school non-LFR or LFD? Go for it. No one's forcing you to use it.
While I will agree with you that Raiding people can take it or leave it. There are other methods for people like you to advance. Lets take TBC for example. What if they put in 1 year after release another 5 to 8 dungeons that were a normal and Heroic version that the normal's were almost as had as heroics but gave you better gear and the next tier was heroic with better gear then the normal version. That would be some real nice progression content for you and your friends. I would like this too. This would keep your small group of friends together and would even likely get your group to send you a text saying "Hey what about Twin Vipers heroic on Saturday at 9pm MT" That is a hell of a lot better because the instances can be tuned for Pre-mades and maybe make you want to stick around longer because you are having fun?
SBFord also people do force you to use LFD/Duty Finder (Because I play FFXIV now) For the last 8 years people have told me time and time again in every game I played to just queue up when I ask in any general or group chat. Or in Guild or FC chat, or in Linkshells in FFXIV. Why? because its more convenient then trying to get people together and unless they are ready to do something right now its better for me to queue. So no you cannot ignore the automated grouping tools today because the vast majority feel you need to use the more efficient methods of playing, just like people forced people in Vanilla WOW to have cookie cutter specs. While I agree we are different the problem still remains with the LFD tools of today killing MMOs.
Again there are 10 times better methods of dealing with grouping without LFD. At least with the Party Finder tool in FFXIV I get better quality groups than I do with Duty Finder. The problem is such a small group of people using the PF sometimes groups (8 mans mainly) dont ever get off the ground. However if DF was not active in FFXIV I can tell you that PF would be a hell of a lot more active and people would have a fairly easier time finding a group and often times having a better environment to group in.
I understand where you are coming from. However I disagree with you because you look at this as a fix all but I am telling you if other aspects of WOW or any other MMORPGs were worked on, LFD\LFR wouldnt be needed outside of those people who want to be true solo players.
Its obvious that Blizzard has learned little or nothing from the failures of other MMO's. The old formula is LONG past its best by date, and that, more than anything else is why MMO's are in decline.
Forcing people to group has been tried... It failed, and in some cases failed BADLY. There are various reasons that more and more people dislike interacting with other players. Add in simplistic design, and forced grouping, and I'm betting that Legion will see worse drop off numbers than WoD did.
If you took all the other MMO's in existence and scraped all the players for those games together, you'd sill have far less players than WoW has left.
So with numbers that still make other games jealous, what are they supposed to do? Abandon their age old formula and run off the last few million who like it, or change the game completely and never hear the end of NGE! NGE! claims for the rest of gaming eternity?
No, I think they're doing what's right for WoW, if we don't like grouping, then we have pleeeenty of games that don't force it or need it.
At this point I don't think WOW necessarily bleeds all of its losses to other MMOs. I think a lot of them turn to entirely different genres of games. The evolution of MMOs is a slow thing these days and people are tiring of the repeat performances.
I didn't see any mention of crafting. Warlords of Draenor completely ruined crafting. Just ruined it. And at this point I think it's probably beyond fixing. Regardless of whatever else Blizzard does with Legion, I don't think they're ever getting those players back; the ones that enjoy crafting.
I want crafting to be fun and important as well. Having said that I have never found crafting in WOW to be very engaging and I haven't found it overly useful since Lich King.
@danwest58 ;I played WoW since Vanilla and was a hardcore raider from BC until Cata. I played FFXI from NA launch until mid-way through ToAU and was in an endgame linkshell. My LS leader would call me at 3 a.m. to go and camp a boss. There were times when I couldn't find a group to XP with for DAYS. All that stuff was okay at the time, but I will simply never go back to a game that does not have some system that facilitates quick and easy grouping for content. You might personally be okay with working 50 hours a week and taking care of a family while dealing with finding a group for content, but I will never go back to that again. It's much more relaxing for me to hop into a queue, and go kill some bosses.
It seems that the market has spoken and they want LFD in their games, and I honestly couldn't be happier because if it weren't for things like flex raiding, LFD, cross-server raids, etc. I would not be playing MMORPG's today.
Nothing pisses gamers off like success. Once a title becomes successful, gamers bitch and moan over it. If you don't like the title, don't play it. Stop being a 5 year old and crying about games you don't play.
For being a complete 1st world leisure activity, no group of people cry more than spoiled rotten gamers. I love gaming but can't stand the never ending cries of INJUSTICE and the victim mentality that gamers abuse them selves with.
The ultimate solution to the constant bitching about gamers is to start you own company and put out the games you like.
@danwest58 ;I played WoW since Vanilla and was a hardcore raider from BC until Cata. I played FFXI from NA launch until mid-way through ToAU and was in an endgame linkshell. My LS leader would call me at 3 a.m. to go and camp a boss. There were times when I couldn't find a group to XP with for DAYS. All that stuff was okay at the time, but I will simply never go back to a game that does not have some system that facilitates quick and easy grouping for content. You might personally be okay with working 50 hours a week and taking care of a family while dealing with finding a group for content, but I will never go back to that again. It's much more relaxing for me to hop into a queue, and go kill some bosses.
It seems that the market has spoken and they want LFD in their games, and I honestly couldn't be happier because if it weren't for things like flex raiding, LFD, cross-server raids, etc. I would not be playing MMORPG's today.
If the community has spoken why has ever MMO failed since WOTLK? Because they put LFD into their games and people hate it. They get bored of the content and leave the game. Dont believe me? Then why are all the kickstarter games have large communities and developers that will never implement LFD tools? Because it Killed MMOS. While I agree that the old times did have its down falls like FFXI where it might take you time to find an XP group. The problem was solved in WOW by allowing you to have a lot of solo content. Now they needed to take helping finding a group 1 step and that is with Party Finder tools like FFXIV's Party Finder.
While I agree that old days were a bit chaotic I disagree that LFD was the answer. Its oblivious because how many people hate it and what it has done to MMOs. A Party Finder tool is a hell of a lot better answer.
@danwest58 ;I played WoW since Vanilla and was a hardcore raider from BC until Cata. I played FFXI from NA launch until mid-way through ToAU and was in an endgame linkshell. My LS leader would call me at 3 a.m. to go and camp a boss. There were times when I couldn't find a group to XP with for DAYS. All that stuff was okay at the time, but I will simply never go back to a game that does not have some system that facilitates quick and easy grouping for content. You might personally be okay with working 50 hours a week and taking care of a family while dealing with finding a group for content, but I will never go back to that again. It's much more relaxing for me to hop into a queue, and go kill some bosses.
It seems that the market has spoken and they want LFD in their games, and I honestly couldn't be happier because if it weren't for things like flex raiding, LFD, cross-server raids, etc. I would not be playing MMORPG's today.
If the community has spoken why has ever MMO failed since WOTLK? Because they put LFD into their games and people hate it. They get bored of the content and leave the game. Dont believe me? Then why are all the kickstarter games have large communities and developers that will never implement LFD tools? Because it Killed MMOS. While I agree that the old times did have its down falls like FFXI where it might take you time to find an XP group. The problem was solved in WOW by allowing you to have a lot of solo content. Now they needed to take helping finding a group 1 step and that is with Party Finder tools like FFXIV's Party Finder.
While I agree that old days were a bit chaotic I disagree that LFD was the answer. Its oblivious because how many people hate it and what it has done to MMOs. A Party Finder tool is a hell of a lot better answer.
Is that your own pet theory? That MMORPG's are failing (they're not) because of LFD? I'm going to have to disagree with you. There are loads of MMO's that are doing just fine. You may not enjoy them or think they're as successful as they should be, but that is an opinion. Saying MMO's have failed (again, they haven't) because of LFD is just silly. MMO's fail because they don't have enough content, or the content is bugged, or there's unplayable lag. They don't fail because people supposedly do not like LFD.
@danwest58 ;I played WoW since Vanilla and was a hardcore raider from BC until Cata. I played FFXI from NA launch until mid-way through ToAU and was in an endgame linkshell. My LS leader would call me at 3 a.m. to go and camp a boss. There were times when I couldn't find a group to XP with for DAYS. All that stuff was okay at the time, but I will simply never go back to a game that does not have some system that facilitates quick and easy grouping for content. You might personally be okay with working 50 hours a week and taking care of a family while dealing with finding a group for content, but I will never go back to that again. It's much more relaxing for me to hop into a queue, and go kill some bosses.
It seems that the market has spoken and they want LFD in their games, and I honestly couldn't be happier because if it weren't for things like flex raiding, LFD, cross-server raids, etc. I would not be playing MMORPG's today.
Most of what you said only applies to FFXI. That whole linkshell system was awful as was the LFG system and half the classes were useless in groups, same with Everquest. But Vanilla WoW was super easy to group even before dungeon finder. The problem has always been with lack of quality LFG tool. Don't cater to brainless autodungeoneering, it destroys community & immersion.
@danwest58 ;I played WoW since Vanilla and was a hardcore raider from BC until Cata. I played FFXI from NA launch until mid-way through ToAU and was in an endgame linkshell. My LS leader would call me at 3 a.m. to go and camp a boss. There were times when I couldn't find a group to XP with for DAYS. All that stuff was okay at the time, but I will simply never go back to a game that does not have some system that facilitates quick and easy grouping for content. You might personally be okay with working 50 hours a week and taking care of a family while dealing with finding a group for content, but I will never go back to that again. It's much more relaxing for me to hop into a queue, and go kill some bosses.
It seems that the market has spoken and they want LFD in their games, and I honestly couldn't be happier because if it weren't for things like flex raiding, LFD, cross-server raids, etc. I would not be playing MMORPG's today.
Most of what you said only applies to FFXI. That whole linkshell system was awful as was the LFG system and half the classes were useless in groups, same with Everquest. But Vanilla WoW was super easy to group even before dungeon finder. The problem has always been with lack of quality LFG tool. Don't cater to brainless autodungeoneering, it destroys community & immersion.
How does shouting in chat for what can amount to hours break immersion and community anymore than queuing into LFD? I played Vanilla. I was a Rogue. It was not easy to find groups. You either got accepted into a guild and hoped the run had room for you or shouted in chat. I finally started raiding hardcore in BC, and I spent well over half of the expansion just doing heroics, Karazhan, and failed ZA bear runs. I finally got accepted to a raid guild after pugging a ton of Kara and ended up doing progression. It took an enormous amount of time to get to that point. I much prefer LFD.
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So far it seems to be hit or miss, but the bread and butter I think the majority are waiting for is, what's content like outside of raiding and dungeons? If Crafting goes as they plan, that will add a nice chunk of endgame for people, but A lot more is still needed. Raids and dungeon shouldn't make up 70 - 80% of the endgame like in WoD, because once people have run as much as they're allowed to or received all they need, what do they do next? If you have everything placed on a timer or make it faceroll, the only options you are giving people is to log-off or unsub until something comes along. Players should be be thinking
"Done raiding. Hmmm, what can I do? Where do I start? I can spend an hour doing crafting, can spend an hour doing this or that, spend an hour earning those or these. So much to do, won;t have enough time in the day"
Right now you can do everything you need to in an hour or two as it has a stupid timer or doesn't require the player to even be online.
Overall, so far looks much better than WoD, but what I mentioned above is vital imho if they don't want their playerbase to free fall as it did with WoD
Apparently you weren't around in vanilla when they literally brought some classes to raids only for the buff. The player couldn't really contribute in a meaningful way. This design sucked, and they changed it. They hyped up what they called "bring the player, not the class". For mythic raiding you are expected to have all the buffs and that is fine. But like for example for 5 mans in Cataclysm you really need 2-3 CCs in your group to match the type of mobs you got in the dungeon and LFD regularly put you in groups without the required CC. That is just poor design. Either you design your content so you don't need it, or you make sure the groups going in will have it. They are basically going back to a design that already failed.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
This is were you are 100% wrong and wearing rose tinted glasses kid. The community is Toxic right now it started when LFD happened. It was never to this point in Vanilla or TBC. Yes you had groups of ass holes on your server, I know on mine they all ended up in their own guild because no respectable guild would let them in. The difference is you didnt group with this people but a few times and learned who they were and stayed far away from them. Today they are all over LFD and you are forced to group with them and Toxic players breed Toxic players.
As for 2 hours standing around. That is only if you are not willing to learn how to make friends period. I never had that problem because I always made friends. Hell I was in a MC guild and I had friends who were clearing Naxx during Vanilla. If I was looking for help in a 5 man they would gladly help. I had well over 100 friends on my friends list and was in an established guild. It didnt take much to get groups accept like I said at 2am.
Now could WOW have had a better Raid browser? Yes they could of and thats really all they needed was a better grouping tool but they didnt need LFD which ruined the community. It is widely supported that LFD killed MMOs because it killed the social aspect. You might say how widely how do I know. Well guess what I still talk to many of the people I played WOW and other MMOs with. Near 50 people. ALL of them agree LFD is bad, they have friends that all agree LFD is bad. Yet maybe 3 ever posted on an MMO forum. ALL of them voted with their wallet and quit WOW and have put in the survey that LFD\LFR is the problem. How do I know? because I talk to people even though in real life I am a bit anti social.
So yes LFD is the problem and is why the community is Toxic. If Blizzard removed LFD and LFF, maybe did server clusters so 1 cluster of 4 or 6 servers players could be in the same guilds and stuff you wouldnt need LFD/ LFR at all unless you are not the type to make friends. At that point its not any developers job to get you to or get you to get into the content, that is your job.
You know what. There is this one person who ran about 40 instances since she started playing WOW in Cata. 40 instances. She was in the last beta and she is in this Alpha. Yet Blizzard listened to her about not having CC in any instances because it was too complicated. I mean WTF I from Vanilla to Cata ended up running well over 500 instances played a lot during the Vanilla TBC days and had no problems with CC and teaching players how to play. Yet Blizzard listens to people like her because she wants solo content and all that. WOD came out and I in the Beta forums if they launch it like it was that it would quickly loose subs. I was thrown out of beta because I liked needing to use CC when beta started and guess what WOD has less subs now than MOP did.
Truth is the vocal minority is why Blizzard is the way it is today yet Blizzard cannot seem to figure this shit out. Most people just stop playing. Thats what happened with UO and Pub 16. Players didnt bitch on the forum then they just cancelled subs.
For example, we have too many abilities, so now they cut it down to just a few.
LOL!
No such thing as being careful.
Who taught these idiots game design?
Pandering to solo play was a waste as well. 5 man was where it is at. Vanilla wow had its bugs but at least we could have world open pvp.
The Market Managers who are just counting pennies. The Market Managers want simple game play to make more money because dont you know easy = more people? /sigh That is close to the truth which is not funny.
Forced grouping is ass during leveling. I hate waiting 30 minutes to spend 15 minutes doing piss easy content so I can progress the storyline in FFXIV. It was even worse before dungeon finders became a thing. As a DPS in FFXI, where forced grouping was very much a thing, and when I was a kid with zero responsibility, waiting around for a PT was okay. Now? Not so much.
Sure, I know the easy answer is, "Find a guild" but that honestly doesn't make it much better. I want to see the story and move on doing the things I want to do without being forced to be in a group to do it. I have a couple friends and we like to hang together to complete content. That's plenty for me.
Inb4 someone says "play Diablo 3". I do.
The bottom line is that Blizzard understands its subscribers - a probably largely "older" audience of gamers who have real life commitments and not the same number of hours of time they had 10 years ago. When you're a teen without anything to do, it was great. With kids, a full time job, ailing parents or whatever, the ability to stand idly by waiting around is gone and not a desirable game feature.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How is it that I managed all of this during a time you say that we were not as busy yet, I was busier than most people? Did I get to Naxx, NOPE did I get to Sunwell or BT? NOPE. Yet I completed a lot of content, did at least 10 to 15 instances a month non raid. I used my time management skills and I also made a lot of friends whom I would call or text days a head of time if I seen an opening in my schedule.
Today people think, THAT SUCKS and I NEED TO RUN THIS INSTANCE RIGHT NOW! That is the core problem with MMOS. You look at MMOs as something you need to complete in 1 or 2 months. Yet this view has caused people to stop playing MMOs because they are boring and only have a month or 2 of content. Why? Because we think about the game right now not in a few weeks I will be doing X event.
As for blizzard understanding his subscribers then why is WOW Bleeding subs? They do not understand its subscribers because if they did they wouldnt be bleeding subs. They would also know things like 2 healers I played with in the 40 man Raid days were both teachers and they had little kids and a baby at the time. Yet will all the work they had they both manage to be on a 40 man raid team 2 days a week and raid for 6 to 8 hours a week. They also did instances all the time too. Yes they were not as active as our friend Tim who was 19 at the time if I remember correctly. But the point is Blizzard does not know the audience if they did they would know that the few people who talk about having "Busy Schedules" on the forum often do but dont have the best time management skills. For example my 2 friends that were teachers spent all day Saturday and half of Sunday taking care of their students work\test, they had a nightly routine for their kids this is how they managed to play.
The real problem is what you dont bring up but it does go with having a lack of time. Its how fast we chew through content to keep up with raiding curves or end game curves. Today once a group passes a set of content they dont go back to it because you have LFD for players to go back through old content. Yet Pre-LFD there were guilds that focused on behind the curve content. For example my guild that I created near the end of TBC around April May before WOTLK came out, my guild did Kara and ZA. People who just got into raiding or were behind the curve joined my guild to do Kara and AZ. There were other guilds out there like mine. You could not just randomly join a guild and it would get you where you wanted to go. You have to join a guild that was doing what you wanted and needed to do plus you took in the social environment. Without LFD tools you would have stronger guilds outside of the massively large guilds and top tier raid guilds. Only you would be responsible for finding the right fit.
There is 1 more issue that comes with end game curves and lack of time. Today Xpac come out every 2 years or so. With us getting older yes we dont want to be in game as much as we were 10 years ago. That is more truer of a statement than we dont have time. We do have time if we manage our time well, we dont have time if there is a major crisis in life. The problem is people like us SBFord want to when we get into game we dont want to get so far behind its hard to catch up with out a LFD tool. Or we want to use our time efficiently. The problem is that the expansion goes by so fast at a 24 month rate if we moved that to a 3 year rate but added more content throughout the current expansion people like us if we didnt have a LFD tool will not feel as left behind as we did in the old days. I was left behind in TBC because 3 months I didnt play at all and for another 3 months I could hardly play. I did still play some but not enough to keep up with the raiding curve. If the current content lasted longer I feel that curve for gear wouldnt be as bad to people plus having some catch up mechanic that people would be happier. Plus have tiered 5 man content that helps catch up faster.
So no its not LFD is important to an MMO for older people. Its not thats just what people are use to now because what LFD did to MMOs. It was a quick fix to a much larger and more complex problem that would take several little things that would focus on different aspects of the game.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
While I will agree with you that Raiding people can take it or leave it. There are other methods for people like you to advance. Lets take TBC for example. What if they put in 1 year after release another 5 to 8 dungeons that were a normal and Heroic version that the normal's were almost as had as heroics but gave you better gear and the next tier was heroic with better gear then the normal version. That would be some real nice progression content for you and your friends. I would like this too. This would keep your small group of friends together and would even likely get your group to send you a text saying "Hey what about Twin Vipers heroic on Saturday at 9pm MT" That is a hell of a lot better because the instances can be tuned for Pre-mades and maybe make you want to stick around longer because you are having fun?
SBFord also people do force you to use LFD/Duty Finder (Because I play FFXIV now) For the last 8 years people have told me time and time again in every game I played to just queue up when I ask in any general or group chat. Or in Guild or FC chat, or in Linkshells in FFXIV. Why? because its more convenient then trying to get people together and unless they are ready to do something right now its better for me to queue. So no you cannot ignore the automated grouping tools today because the vast majority feel you need to use the more efficient methods of playing, just like people forced people in Vanilla WOW to have cookie cutter specs. While I agree we are different the problem still remains with the LFD tools of today killing MMOs.
Again there are 10 times better methods of dealing with grouping without LFD. At least with the Party Finder tool in FFXIV I get better quality groups than I do with Duty Finder. The problem is such a small group of people using the PF sometimes groups (8 mans mainly) dont ever get off the ground. However if DF was not active in FFXIV I can tell you that PF would be a hell of a lot more active and people would have a fairly easier time finding a group and often times having a better environment to group in.
I understand where you are coming from. However I disagree with you because you look at this as a fix all but I am telling you if other aspects of WOW or any other MMORPGs were worked on, LFD\LFR wouldnt be needed outside of those people who want to be true solo players.
At this point I don't think WOW necessarily bleeds all of its losses to other MMOs. I think a lot of them turn to entirely different genres of games. The evolution of MMOs is a slow thing these days and people are tiring of the repeat performances.
I want crafting to be fun and important as well. Having said that I have never found crafting in WOW to be very engaging and I haven't found it overly useful since Lich King.
It seems that the market has spoken and they want LFD in their games, and I honestly couldn't be happier because if it weren't for things like flex raiding, LFD, cross-server raids, etc. I would not be playing MMORPG's today.
The ultimate solution to the constant bitching about gamers is to start you own company and put out the games you like.
Said with much love. :P
While I agree that old days were a bit chaotic I disagree that LFD was the answer. Its oblivious because how many people hate it and what it has done to MMOs. A Party Finder tool is a hell of a lot better answer.
Is that your own pet theory? That MMORPG's are failing (they're not) because of LFD? I'm going to have to disagree with you. There are loads of MMO's that are doing just fine. You may not enjoy them or think they're as successful as they should be, but that is an opinion. Saying MMO's have failed (again, they haven't) because of LFD is just silly. MMO's fail because they don't have enough content, or the content is bugged, or there's unplayable lag. They don't fail because people supposedly do not like LFD.