Please implement something to teach players how to play

[kaynide]

A. Well-crafted. Difficulty. Curve.

Who says it isn't well crafted? I find it perfectly fine for what the game is trying to be, and for who the game is designed for. I've yet to really see huge spikes in difficulty outside of the obvious hardcore content, which is itself niche content.

[Shurrikhan]

Who says it isn't well crafted? I find it perfectly fine for what the game is trying to be, and for who the game is designed for. I've yet to really see huge spikes in difficulty outside of the obvious hardcore content, which is itself niche content.

"Except for the parts that don't work, it works fine."

That's... literally 25+% of an expansion's patch cycle contents you've excluded there.

Remember, at least in NA, even the easier Savage tiers are "obviously niche hardcore content". And there are plenty who don't even step foot among Extreme trials.

[kaynide]

"Except for the parts that don't work, it works fine."

That's... literally 25+% of an expansion's patch cycle contents you've excluded there.

Remember, at least in NA, even the easier Savage tiers are "obviously niche hardcore content". And there are plenty who don't even step foot among Extreme trials.

And if players don't want to engage in that 25%, isn't that fine? "Working as intended"?

Shouldn't you be glad that the devs even give 25% to content for stuff that (according to you) isn't even used by a large amount of players? If nothing else doesn't that say the devs are listening and creating content for a niche group of the player base?

...wouldn't that suggest that "hardcore players" are the exception and not the norm?

[Shurrikhan]

And if players don't want to engage in that 25%, isn't that fine? "Working as intended"?

Shouldn't you be glad that the devs even give 25% to content for stuff that (according to you) isn't even used by a large amount of players? If nothing else doesn't that say the devs are listening and creating content for a niche group of the player base?

...wouldn't that suggest that "hardcore players" are the exception and not the norm?

(Why the assumption that I'm trying, above all, to defend "hardcore" content at the expense of non-hardcore players, here? I'm not a hardcore player, myself. Heck, this character has barely touched Savage this whole expansion.)

Across particular (but fairly wide) threshold, casual content can still be interesting to hardcore players, provided there's enough "stuff", gameplay-wise (moment to moment decisions, pacing, awareness, etc.) to be done in said content. The problem is those things won't actually appear as mechanics if there's no place in which they feel intended or pertinent. Hence hardcore content. It is the logical capitalization on the "stuff" which can fill out combat content, which is still 90% of the game. Even if you do not take part in it, it sets certain end-goals and thereby makes that "stuff" of combat meaningful.

Maybe there are other routes they could take to capstone the various mechanics and intricacies available to combat -- I sure as heck like more than just depleting a cylinder's HP value to 0 while dancing about a perfectly rectangular or circular room -- but a capstone will remain largely necessary.

But then that begs the question: why the heck wouldn't we want to facilitate the paths up to that content so that player could benefit directly from them as well? It's not a question of "hardcore" or "casual" so much as simply investment and payoff. You can't let go of the capstone span of content without the substance beneath it falling apart for lack of pertinence, but the capstone span of content isn't itself made accessible (by bringing players up rather than pulling it down)... that's a huge waste.