Originally posted by Amsai

WTF?.....

For Christ's sake Blizzard, no wonder everyone on this site thinks sandbox and FFA FULL LOOT PvP are the only wat to go. With this information I kind of dont blame them.

 

Ill play Devils Advocate to the above real quick though. Have any of you noticed that the quality of gamer has gone down in the last few years? I recently tried doing raids with a new guild  for a newish game, and for one dungeon it was 2 straight weeks of abysmal fail. I knew what was going on and I knew who all was dicking it up. I tried to be gentle and used constructive criticism, but it was like talking to a wall (fyi, Im not even that bad ass of a player imo). I dont know if its a lack of skill due to newr games babysitting, or social media and TV destractions, or if they just dont give a shit enough to put in siginifcant effort.

All I know is that after that I left for another guild and it was pretty much the same thing. Thats not to say there werent any good players, but when half the raid team has to carry the other half, its pretty bad. That leaves me with 2 options, go play single player games so I dont have to put up with the lazy/stupid/uncommited, or form a group of only highly skilled players which makes me an elitest asshole. But in social games like this its hard for me to turn someone away, then again I never had too in the old days. If I did it was because of drama (easy to kick out drama queens) and not becuase of skill.

Which I cant believe Im saying this but almost makes me understand having such a system in place. I want to play MMOs, I want to play with friends, I dont want to have them leave or have to ditch them because they suck. God Im just so disgusted with the whole thing.....

OK just gonna have to wait and see on upcomming games. And there is always Pathfinder Online!

Well funny thing with the human brain is that is u dont use it you dont get smarter and people playing games for the last 7 years or so have had use no thinking power at all and now its even less thought required in games so it doesnt surprise me gamer quality is going down hill. Bring back the older style of games where they were challenging and require thinking process will improve gamers substancuialy :P

WoW has long been about rewarding players for spending enough time, even if they're awful at the game.  This just makes it official.

Still, it's an interesting solution to the problem that if you design a raid to require coordination and randomly match players together, you're necessarily making a group that isn't terribly coordinated for an area that requires it.

Originally posted by XAPGames

So instead of death penalty, it's death reward?

 

Ya know, I bet they'll love it.

 

Then combine this with GW2's anti-griefing and auto-grouping policy, and god knows where we'll end. 

IMO.

The only way to get better is with experience.

When you fail you experience what you did wrong, and come up with new ideas .

Dumbing down something becouse you "failed" to much, is plain stupid and brings up a breed of players we have now days.

Nothin better than defeating or figuring out how to defeat a hard adversary , in any game MMO or not.

Beating it becouse the game feel sorry for your lack of evolution,i dont think is in any way a good idea.

Rule of thumb: if you are mad at the way other people are playing a game, the problem is yours, not theirs.

(or let me put that a different way to the people who are upset at a buff: if you were randomly teamed up with some people who make a few more mistakes than the raid can survive, how are you going to treat those people?  Are you going to work with them or are you going to throw a temper tantrum and quit/kick?  The way I read that concept, the buff isn't about the people who cause the wipe - the buff is about the people who don't want to be teamed up with anyone who is still new to raiding)

All I have to say is; Welcome to the Idiocracy....<face palm>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

Given that most raiders are using something like Deadly Boss mod (with all its alarms, alerts and such) those who still can't make it through the basic raids, are a demonstration of how the gaming demographic has changed (for the worse) over the years.  But I can't say I'm surprised, given how things have been going.

almost all the readers of these columns (and those who frequent these forums) will find this kind of mechanic objectionable. however, unfortunately, Blizzard still has a significant percentage of 9+ million players that need to be placated/encouraged to keep playing. 

i don't believe many games will employ this kind of development unless it has far more to lose than gain...and only MMO's that actively cater to the most casual of players would even consider it. 

Blizzard have stated that with this new system in place they will aim to make LFR less trivial and the boss mechanics in LFR more meaningful.

This is exactly what many have been asking for. If they deliver on this then the change will eventually be seen as a good one.

Originally posted by Anthur
I am just glad this doesn't work in real life. Or I would have serious concerns about the future of human race.

You obviously aren't involved in Silly-con Valley entrepreneurial culture with it's "fail early fail fast fail often" emphasis.  Seriously, just Google that.  It's...abused as a concept.

"I personally think addressing failures in the manner done by Blizzard is inherently silly."

I agree with the Advocate on this one, only I think 'silly' is a very kind word for it :) I'd use 'stupid', but I'm just an outsider since I don't play Blizz.

This idea is totally contradicts the whole point of learning through failures. True, it's an important part of the learning process to handle failures (let it be defeat to an opponent, loss in a race, or in case of mmo's a wipe). Failure urges you to think, learn, revisit your strategy and come up a new one, adapt to the situation or to the opponent. All these aspects are nullified if someone from outside reaches in and starts to fiddling with the situation... Why bother with any brainwork, if next time (and the next, and the next) the challenge will be weaker and weaker? Let's just tank'n'spank until we got so many buffs we ultimately succeed...

Wraithone mentioned Idiocracy (liked it as well, pretty dull movie but definitely has its moments :) ), in it there's a scene of an "IQ test" with a peg game and the dude tries to sqeeze a sqare-shaped peg in a star shaped hole, without much success of course :) So Blizzard now says: don't let him think and come across some new ideas, let's dumb things down and switch his peg for a softer one, then rinse and repeat. By the time they reach to a sqare peg made of clay, he will be able to sqeeze it through the star-shape hole... :) Is it a success? Hardly. He won't learn anything this way (except that musclework sometimes beats brainwork... lol) But it sure will help to keep the frustration level down - with the IQ level as well :)

Edit: khm... it's a shame, all this talk about learning and IQ, and it turns out it wasn't a star-shaped hole, it's a circle :) my bad... seems my memory is not in top shape anymore. See, that's why we need to urge players to use their heads more often and not spoon-fed them with easy success and dumbed down gameplay :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJIjoE27F-Q

MMO dumbing down battle.

Blizzard 2  - 1 ArenaNet

Whats ArenaNets answer?  PvP wipe boost ?  exciting times.

Originally posted by Po_gg

Why bother with any brainwork, if next time (and the next, and the next) the challenge will be weaker and weaker?

You feel that there will be no sense of pride in defeating a boss at higher and higher levels of difficulty?  You believe that the player culture will decay into a pattern of not even attempting the boss?  Simply wipe-reload-wipe-reload until fully buffed without even trying and that this will trump any sense of pride in defeating bosses through a progression of smaller and smaller buffs?

(I find this to be an interesting point, almost lost in all the painful polical/generational ranting in this thread)

It's not Idiocracy. And it's not No Child Left Behind. It's an avenue for Blizz to ensure the people that are paying $15/mo can see the same content built for the hardcore raiders. The gear isn't the same for the LFR 'scrubs' compared to the real raiders. Not even the fight mechanics are the same.

I started playing wow back in December 2004. I miss the timesink that vanilla was with the LBRS to UBRS to MC progesssion. It was great, and gearing me and 39 others was a great feeling of pride. We were part of a small percentage of players that saw almost everything in the game.

When BC came out, Blizz made a big deal about only 5% of players seeing Naxx in vanilla. That is a huge development effort put forth by the company for such little exposure. I believe that drives some of the decisions they make about raid buffs, LFR mechanics, etc.

And I think that they like to accommodate as many users as possible now. I'm an old man now with two kids and a wife I adore. I take time and say goodnight to my family now. In vanilla, I often skipped that ceremony because we were raiding. I can jump into wow today, do my 400 dailies, find an LFR group once or twice a week and see the bosses. I know it's a shadow of my days 8 years ago, but it's the time I can afford now. And for you to belittle someone for that is sad.

And to refer to the people who don't use Mr Robot or DPS optimize at a training dummy as though they were retarded or challenged is ignorance and arrogance. You want to be hardcore? You can do that in wow, or just about any other mmo. You can reach the heights of digital greatness and join the pantheon of the hardcore.

I'm betting Blizz sees it my way too. There's a reason that wow is the most successful game ever made. And if it takes a change to help the carebears see the content, they will make it. 9 million subscribers after 8+ years. And you treat it like a cautionary tale, not a monumental triumph.

Originally posted by Psychow
Sounds great. Most serious raiders raid on Normal or Hardcore, so I do not see any issue with giving the semi-casuals a little help to complete the content they are interested in.

I agree.

Don't know why so many complains about this, raid finder was never meant to be the ultimate challenge. Normal and HC modes are, afaik, completely unaffected by this, so the whine from those who raids "normally", is childish as best.