If you continue to dumb down the game, you will lose half your player base

This is the type of thing I'm certainly keeping my eye on because I refuse to watch yet another MMO die a slow painful death due to not learning from the mistakes of others. If I see the same old trends from other games propagate here, I won't make some grandiose post about "I'm leaving because blah blah blah". I'll just leave. I'm hardly alone in this, and eventually you'll end up with nothing but an echo chamber of people saying "this is fine" while the whole thing burns down around them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ransu

WoW's problems were content and a myriad of other things, not "simplification."

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roflcopter

Have you ever played wow? It had nothing to do with pruning.

---

Except for the years of constant feedback from players that hated the prune all the way up to the director of the game himself admitting the devs were wrong and reversing course. :rolleyes:

Quote:

---

In last week’s Dev Insights video, Ion Hazzikostas confessed that Blizzard went “too far” on class balance and pruning in the past few expansions. There is clearly some regret over various abilities that were either watered down or removed from the game entirely, and Blizzard may be restoring these in the future, offering more options for hybrid play and stronger class identity.

“A consistent point of feedback has been the concern that we’ve gone too far,” Hazzikostas said. “And after a lot of reflection and ongoing discussion, ultimately I would like to say that we agree with that feedback. There are places where in Warlords and Legion we were probably too focused on button count as a measure of complexity. There’s a lot more nuance to it than that.”

---

Source: https://massivelyop.com/2019/06/22/b...-gone-too-far/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roflcopter

Every time WoW tried to go a more hardcore high end player route, it lost massive subscriber numbers.

---

As long as you ignore the 12 million subs they amassed during their most "hardcore" era.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roflcopter

It didn’t even work in TBC where 80% of the raid content was locked to 1% of players. TBC probably hurt their growth more than it helped.

---

WoW gained 2.5 million subs during TBC.

I'm pretty sure Yoshi P said that the limit to buttons per job is almost reached and therefore condensing actions into a single key to make room for more skills?

I assume if each expansion gives one or two abilities, that might be an easy 10 additional skills in the next 10 years.

You mean the time when it was the most casual game on the market by a longshot? I came from EQ and EQ2. WoW was candyland in comparison. WoW built a massive game community by being casual. That is a fact.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roflcopter

Have you ever played wow? It had nothing to do with pruning. It had everything to do with cultivating toxic group play and linking progression to endless daily treadmills for artifact power that didn’t transfer to alts.

It really shit the bed while jumping the shark when they tried to turn it into an esport with excessive mythic+.

Every time WoW tried to go a more hardcore high end player route, it lost massive subscriber numbers. Cataclysm, WoD, BfA, Shadowlands. It has never worked for them. It didn’t even work in TBC where 80% of the raid content was locked to 1% of players. TBC probably hurt their growth more than it helped.

---

Lol

But really. Lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MisterNublet

Lol

But really. Lol

---

How am I wrong? The majority of raiding content past T4 wasn’t experienced by a huge majority of the player base. Subs didn’t grow nearly as quickly as they did in classic. The same is true for their classic reboot. TBC just isn’t as popular. Most people in classic at least got to see up to AQ20. Most didn’t see Naxx and that was all. Very few in TBC saw beyond Kara.

Except XIV so far is seeing the opposite when they reduce Tanks/Healers stances/buttons we seen only increase in numbers similar with SMN I've only seen way more summoners with it's button reduction.

I'd further add more buttons does not = complexity, complexity is being able to completely change a role & put in multitude of inputs like a fighting game despite so few buttons they can be used in way for very complex outcomes. XIV is not you press the same buttons over & over with almost zero change fight to fight to fight XIV has never really been a complex game in it's battle system & just mostly bloated it's fine to remove the bloat. Further add Stance Dancing wasn't complex because outside of maybe Cleric it didn't matter if weren't terrible you stayed in DPS stance for 99% of the fight never needing go back to Tank stance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roflcopter

How am I wrong? The majority of raiding content past T4 wasn’t experienced by a huge majority of the player base. Subs didn’t grow nearly as quickly as they did in classic. The same is true for their classic reboot. TBC just isn’t as popular. Most people in classic at least got to see up to AQ20. Most didn’t see Naxx and that was all. Very few in TBC saw beyond Kara.

---

Played WoW, still regard TBC as one of the best early expansions. Vanilla WoW finished off with 8 million. The fact that TBC still gained over 3 million subs is absolutely insane. TBC had an easy entry into the raiding scene, starting off with the 10 man Karazhan. TBC's 25-man raids made it even easier for people to continue up the raid tiers which saw a lot of people raiding.

Quote:

---

Lol

But really. Lol

---

https://dotesports.com/news/nearly-1...illion-in-2021

the easier the mastery barrier seemed the more profitable is it. Complexity in games is a thing of the past as corporations wanted the biggest share of the market . Difficult games are a labor of love and from what I heard, FF14 isn't going the way of min max profits, I think the current outrage on button condensation is a knee jerk reaction as devoted players have their muscle memory trained but assuming the trend of skill per expansion, we should be getting like 10 new skills in the next 10 years xD

Although its worth noting that age of the WoL supposedly reflect the playerbase average age. I'm not sure If I can play Apex as well rn when I'm 40 xD but fr, the skill condensation will allow a better impact on play and easier on the more senior gamers :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MisterNublet

Played WoW, still regard TBC as one of the best early expansions. Vanilla WoW finished off with 8 million. The fact that TBC still gained over 3 million subs is absolutely insane. TBC had an easy entry into the raiding scene, starting off with the 10 man Karazhan. TBC's 25-man raids made it even easier for people to continue up the raid tiers which saw a lot of people raiding.

---

so what you're saying is. TBC had an increase because it was easy to get into. Hmmm