World of Warcraft: Current Year

Chris

Potato del Grande
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This is the crux of the current failure of WoW. The player is the "hero of ages" who has managed to defeat gods and save the planet many times over...but is also some schmuck that perpetually takes a back seat to the narrative of a bunch of twats from a 20 year old game.
FF14 actually had you play as supporting characters a 2-3 times in the last expansion. Either because your character was incapacitated or elsewhere.

Puts their abilities on your hotbar which are a simplified version of their class rotation.

Ironically WoW had this in WotLK and had you fight as Arthas vs Illidan in a flashback vision.

Imagine how epic it would be to fight as Tyrande, perhaps with some sort of reward for how long you can drag out the battle before you lose.

You'd have Sylvanas Black Arrow your character to disable you, not just have you watch like a dork, then a follow up could be that move being something to avoid in the raid.
 
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Burns

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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FF14 actually had you play as supporting characters a 2-3 times in the last expansion. Either because your character was incapacitated or elsewhere.

Puts their abilities on your hotbar which are a simplified version of their class rotation.

Ironically WoW had this in WotLK and had you fight as Arthas vs Illidan in a flashback vision.

Imagine how epic it would be to fight as Tyrande, perhaps with some sort of reward for how long you can drag out the battle before you lose.

You'd have Sylvanas Black Arrow your character to disable you, not just have you watch like a dork, then a follow up could be that move being something to avoid in the raid.

That's a vehicle fight and there are plenty of the them in WoW.

Vehicle fights suck, fuck you.
 
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Cybsled

Avatar of War Slayer
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Point remains that you always feel like just an observer of the story vs. an actual participant in it.
 
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Warmuth

Molten Core Raider
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493
One example is Halkias in Halls of Atonement: In Mythic he gets "Light of Atonement", where you have to stay inside at all times. Casuals did not see this in normal and heroic, so they mostly have no idea that this was ever going to happen.
They'll learn it when they wipe and it won't matter since there is no timer. Id be fine with dungeon finder for M0, it has nothing to do with M+.
 

Neranja

<Bronze Donator>
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They'll learn it when they wipe and it won't matter since there is no timer. Id be fine with dungeon finder for M0, it has nothing to do with M+.
We were talking about casuals here: They have formed a group manually for this, which already increases the stress level for casuals, as it makes them feel personally responsible for the success or failure of the group. This is already not fun for them. Also, everyone new to it is too afraid to admit they are doing it for the first time, for fear of being kicked from the group. No one is asking questions, so when they wipe the casuals just leave before anyone can blame and flame them. Because they expect this kind of toxicity from the other players.

"But, we did it fine with manually grouping for years in other MMOs before dungeon finder?"

Yeah, that was years ago. But this is how WoW tought it's ... I think they called it "Wrath babies" back in the day? If you look outside of MMORPG games, gaming as a whole has moved to automated and curated matchmaking, and that is what people expect nowadays. This is why the casuals are asking for a M0 dungeon finder, and why they want an arena solo queue, because they expect the game to find them people to play with without feeling responsible for the group. Not necessarily to carry them, but just to play.

It's not just WoW, many games have killed social grouping interactions and funneled them into automated systems, and then design the game for a more "curated" player experience.
 
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Warmuth

Molten Core Raider
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Sure, throw them in a queue for it, it really doesn’t make sense not to. It doesn’t get them anything though which is likely the real problem, ilvl 197 is free so to speak. There’s a sad soul or two which might make it into keys by way of running auto queued M0 but the rest are gonna hard cap there.
 

Qhue

Trump's Staff
7,476
4,420
That's probably fine. I can assure you that I have no desire whatsoever to 'make it into keys' as running timed dungeons with a bunch of randos after spending a few hours trying to claw my way into a group sounds pretty damn terrible and not at all entertaining. If anything it sounds more like a job than something relaxing.
 
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Neranja

<Bronze Donator>
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On another note, I feel that the ingame cutscenese are getting worse. Worse than FFXIV in ARR, but they are still pushing them to tell a narrative. Is this the interns doing all the work because no one is left to oversee them?



EDIT: What is going on with the eyes?
 
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Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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This is why the casuals are asking for a M0 dungeon finder, and why they want an arena solo queue, because they expect the game to find them people to play with without feeling responsible for the group. Not necessarily to carry them, but just to play.
And the corollary, since you've invested "nothing" into making/joining the group, is that you feel no obligation to other players. You have the same emotional response and patience with them as you'd have to NPCs.

That is the endpoint of that type of design: the other player as a NPC. The "other" is no longer there to play "with", it's there to let "you" play. Because that's how the game frames it.

And that's sad.
 
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Neranja

<Bronze Donator>
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And the corollary, since you've invested "nothing" into making/joining the group, is that you feel no obligation to other players.
I think this is only in a big cross-server pool, like basically all modern games implement. If you have a small, server-only queue, then you'd have to face consequences about your reputation.

Also, players from other realms are worth less than NPC's, because the NPC is predictable, while other players can fuck up in all kinds of ways.
 
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Malkav

French Madman
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Aaand they just released a new 6 months sub mount.

It's rather comical how predictable they are.
 

Araxen

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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It's two mounts. One for Retail and one for TBC Classic.

1625175058220.png
 
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Cybsled

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Honestly it is fitting: It is an already released item, being released to people playing a previously released expansion.
 

Happysmiles

Trakanon Raider
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We were talking about casuals here: They have formed a group manually for this, which already increases the stress level for casuals, as it makes them feel personally responsible for the success or failure of the group. This is already not fun for them. Also, everyone new to it is too afraid to admit they are doing it for the first time, for fear of being kicked from the group. No one is asking questions, so when they wipe the casuals just leave before anyone can blame and flame them. Because they expect this kind of toxicity from the other players.
I think this hits it on the head. I played EQ back in the day and dealt with grouping and raiding and corpse runs. I just don't have 6+ hours to devote to a game anymore. I like to see the content, feel some challenge, but not have my blood pressure rise for not studying all the fights. I enjoyed LFR to jump in and kill Jaina or save Kael or whatever. But reviewing io ratings plus required discord plus having the group/raid give shit for being lower dps/heal than someone else? No thanks.

Oh, and also the Shadowlands content was a boring chore at every turn. Nothing that I wanted to do for fun, but a lot of mandatory work to get the resources for that specific patch.
 
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