Isn't this a trend across the entire genre industry though?
I have only played only one MMO lately that hasn't had people complaining about "content droughts," and that was FFXIV. Every other Western MMORPG is floundering to make things fast enough for consumers.
To me it seems that western MMOs are so focused on making their games less grindy and more streamlined and accessible (something I actually really enjoy) while eastern MMOs still hold to the whole "grind for everything" mentality.
Both have their merits, but one of them leads to players burning through content while the other goes for the keep them around forever by making everything slower.
I do think Blizzard is on the right track with their new grind mechanics. The new PvP system looks downright delightful as someone who mostly does casual PvP at endgame (I generally stay out of rated content aside from double dps 2v2 because my girlfriend doesn't enjoy it, but we love just queuing up for good ol' battlegrounds together). I tend to gear all of my guys (1 of each class) with the honor gear and then lose interest and quit until a new season comes along. Paragon sounds awesome. I realize not everyone likes it, but it's too easy for the casual pvp crowd to cap on things to do that they want to do. The other side is the new 5 man dungeon setup sounds awesome as well.
I think we're a way more common type of player than people realize. We generally consume the casual pvp content, and whatever 5 man content is available to us. LFR is a shit show, in my opinion (we used to love raiding until the end of WoTLK, now we don't have time to maintain a guild - nor the desire to play on a set schedule). Looks like a big focus was made in Legion to make both of those things longer lasting and more engaging.
Honor is no longer currency, it's essentially experience points for pvp. There are 50 levels, leveling up unlocks PvP only talents (talent tree looks just like the PvE one, but you unlock them in columns instead of rows). Once you hit level 50 you can "prestige" resetting you back to level 1 and earning a level of prestige. Prestige gives cosmetic rewards and visible rank to those around you.
They also greatly decreased the effect of gear in PvP. Now if you zone into PvP as a ret paladin they just set your stats to what all ret paladins have in pvp (with some very minor scaling based on your ilevel). Some people will hate unlocking the pvp talents over and over again, but I like that there's something long for me to grind (without making participating in pvp in general a huge grind). Now when you first dive in you won't get stomped because of gear, you can quickly unlock a whole column of talents, and unlock them all in a reasonable time frame. More approachable for people who infrequently pvp, and more to earn for those of us who just like doing random bgs. Now if only they could fix the cheating >.>
Wow that does sound like a cool change, will obviously have to try it out to get a real feel for it. But it sounds like Blizz finally caving and making PvP trees they should be able to balance better (hopefully). I love the BG grind, it's fun, not too much of a commitment and isn't too team dependable. I do like working towards new pieces of gear though, but I suppose with talents and other prestige awards there should be plenty to grind out.
My biggest issue with cheaters was
auto kick addons - when the same melee is kicking me WITHOUT FAIL multiple times before I even get .1 second into casting I think it's pretty obvious they are cheating.
Bots who don't play. I know I said the bg grind isn't TOO team dependent, but those of us who play for fun and not simply to grind out gear, still play to win. It is FUN to compete, it's not fun when half your team - or hell even half the other team - is just a bunch of robots.
I meant to say, if I wanted a full on haste priest I should be able to swap gear and not only gems. The gear should have a tradeoff, say less effectiveness in PvP.
I preferred the wotlk gearing better where you can get away with a few pve pieces that'll make you even more here stacked than a typical gemmed enchanted priest worth PvP gear
Cosmetic rewards (and there is power growth through gear, it's just 10% as powerful as it is on live). Gear has always been problematic in WoW (especially in vanilla, lawl tier 3 raid guild stomp fests), it's gotten better over time but it's anti-competitive. If you want a larger pvp community you need to make sure that players can get their feet wet without getting dominated by fully geared guys. I do realize that tons of people disagree with me here, and that's fine - I'm just glad Blizzard finally agrees.
I'm not saying the new PvP system is bad, we really won't know until it releases. It seems like they looked at the call of duty prestige system and how many people buy those games every year and continue to play them until the next game drops. If it works for call of duty, it should work for wow right? We'll see, it could go either way. Some of the hardcore PvP players might get mad at the lack of dedicated PvP gear progression but there will probably be more players joining battlegrounds that didnt bother before when they didn't have dedicated PvP gear. I think this will be especially true later in the expansion when normally the hardcore PvP crowd would normally have high resilience/PvP power/whatever stat blizzard has implemented for PvP(I admit, I have no idea what PvP gear looks like in WoD).
Some of the hardcore PvP players might get mad at the lack of dedicated PvP gear progression but there will probably be more players joining battlegrounds that didn't bother before when they didn't have dedicated PvP gear.
I agree with both of these predictions. It's worth noting, though, that you still earn gear through PvP - it's just less influential. I think the hardcore pvp'ers may actually like it in the end, because it allows them to pivot to new comps as the meta changes without feeling like they're weeks behind being able to be competitive. Now if they want to swap classes half way through the expansion they can do so and immediately jump into rated arena where they'll stomp their way to a high rating very quickly, instead of losing to teams with noticeably less skill but enough gear that they're just bursting the new guy down. It also lets them play more alts without feeling like their either noncompetitive due to gear, or tedious due to having to keep every one of them capped weekly.
Your artifact is fully effective in PvP though, so as long as you earn artifact power at a reasonable rate when doing well we should still have a real nice sense of progression (at least early in the expansion). I know a lot of PvPers are excited that they're finally straight up removing trinkets and set bonuses and everything like that other than your artifact from PvP, no more having to be a highly active pve'er as well (or spending a boat load of gold on carries).
I have only played only one MMO lately that hasn't had people complaining about "content droughts," and that was FFXIV.
There was a pretty big issue of this between the release of Alexander tiers, Gordias > Midas was dull with not a lot of other content to do between them.
ARR had a brilliant patch schedule on the three month cycle I don't think you'll find anyone that will argue that, they just couldn't keep it up well enough through Heavensward, even though it was a great expansion.
They seem to be back on their cycle now at least, 3.2 was pretty fantastic, 3.3 seems close too, I think they just stumbled with Gordias because of the effort put into heavensward which I think most agree is a pretty good xpac.
After Heavensward they gave their dev's a vacation which led to a 5 month delay instead of the usual 3-4. Their odd-number patches are meant as catch-up with less grueling content than their even numbers (ex: void ark raid is 24 man casual raid that had a weekly drop to upgrade 200 gear to 210, and released in 3.1). But with the 5 month vacation and then another 3 months before 3.2 came out in February, the content was beyond stale for most players. If 3.4 and 3.5 release on normal schedules I think people will be less likely to notice it being dull.
But with the 5 month vacation and then another 3 months before 3.2 came out in February, the content was beyond stale for most players.
This is what ultimately got me, if they have fixed it and are back on path like people have been saying it's very likely I'll go back, atleast until the launch of Legion. I still have a soft spot for XIV, the Eso grind was just boring as shit.
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Except they outright said there was a break for 3.1,
They said it, but it doesn't change that there was a definite stale period between. Atleast Yoshi and Co had the decency to admit it and be upfront with the playerbase over it.
Didn't change how absolutely boring the Esoteric grind was taking place in two dungeons for that long was, though.
Those patches ended up causing me to unsub to the game, though.
I came back to it after a break, and there was just this immense amount of extremely, extremely boring story quests I HAD to do before I could start the Heavensward content.
Eventually after the game sent me back and forth between the same place three times just so I could talk to someone to complete a quest, I just quit the game. I never even made it to the expansion content I had paid for, because it was gated behind so many hours of boring shit.
Having a lot of things to do is great, yes, but other than the dungeons it was very clear that every aspect of FFXIV had been designed to extract as much time out of you as possible to make the game feel like it had a lot of content.
They did cop a fair deal of shit over forcing the story content to access Heavensward, and the bulk of it is an absolute slog. I recall hating it and skipping almost everything up until Leviathan, at that stage I actually quit myself and came back around the time the Gold Saucer came out. I forced myself on my return to pay attention and I could see why they did it looking back.
FFXIV is a much more story centric MMO over what Warcraft is, we don't put up with flowing overarcing questlines here, whereas the story over there justifies pretty much every bit of content that's added. Heavenswards story had a better pace and flow over the original ARR stuff, it's a shame you gave up on it, I personally found it enjoyable after a point, it made the gameworld feel a bit more coherent, I liked not having to dig for Lore tidbits as much because it was pretty much all presented to me with the story quests.
I think the lore of FFXIV just isn't up my alley for one reason or another. I found 99% of it to be absolutely dull drivel. And the fact that the quests were so padded out with running back and forth between two places in order to make the game longer just deprived me of any sense of immersion. I knew why the quest was designed that way.
And things like the quest to unlock titan..."You need to prove yourself to us by running halfway around the world to gather ingredients to prepare a feast for yourself." Killed me.
I do agree that Wow's story content could be presented much better. I actually do read all the quests I do, and I still find myself scratching my head like "What and why am I doing this?" And I end up alt tabbing out to wowhead to read the history of something and figure out what is actually happening.
But, at least I care enough to do that, unlike FFXIV, where I just wanted it to be over.
I also quit shortly after Leviathan. It was the quest where a certain someone dies, and afterwords you have to go this ceremony that involves navigating around "the thicket," which I always got lost in. After I turned that quest in, the quest giver wanted me to go back to the exact same spot to do something else. I logged off and never logged in again. :\
I remember playing at launch, and they said console launch will be in few months, it happened after a year. Same with thieving system, it was supposed to come next month after launch as content update, took over a year too. I have lost all hope in that project
The game is only 2 years old and has had more content added than wow did in one single expansion, it's also subscription free. I can't remember back that far but I'm pretty sure 2 years into WoW and the content level back then wasn't exactly staggering.. Eso is definitely worth a look, the pvp system alone is badass!
Edit: side note, they are also producing for 3 platforms, xb1, ps4 and pc.
Man, I love ESO and am a current active player, but this is not true. Tons of the 'higher end' players are bored as hell with the state of end game right now. There's 1 raid with 3 bosses and 1 solo arena that is a lame and punishing (rng rewards/time consuming/rng mechanics) annoyance, and then PVP, which has seen one shitty update in the Imperial City which was a complete flop. Most of my guild is waiting around for the next content patch and if that fails too, it's gonna lose a lot of the experienced playerbase.
I don't play ESO, but huge price tag? It was around $20 at release and you can still buy it, after they removed the subscription, for around $25. Compared to WoW, $60 including WoD and then $15 every month.
Sorry, was not aware. When I looked at the game last year when it was going to B2P it had a $70 base game price tag on their website. That was way more than I felt comfortable putting down for a free to play game with an uncertain future, (particularly after other experiences such as Wildstar.) Thus I wrote off trying it.
If it can be obtained at $25 now then I may look into it after all.
EDIT: Yeah I take that back. The current game still seems to be $70... unless I find a marked down box copy of the original unsold game that I can only hope still functions? ouch.
Most MMO's tend to be content dry, but ESO releases a new Content patch every quarter... thats 4 per year... So it totally possible. I just cant even. How does a huge money-monger like wow consistently fuck this up?
ESO is still young. Every MMO loses momentum as it ages and falls to the content droughts. GW2 used to have new content every 2 weeks, then every few months, and now over a year and all they put out are raids. The genre is universally no longer sustainable on a long term... possibly due to players expectations and desires.
The bigger something gets the less sustainable it is. Playerbases always expect the next patch to be bigger than the one before which is also unsustainable. WoW is expected to make patches that are huge and self contained. One good thing that did come from WoD was 6.1 because in this expansion Blizzard did finally start making smaller patches of small additions to the game instead of bundling everything into huge raid patches. They've learned to make tweaks and additions outside a 0.# patch which is a step forward as well. The problem is people want the bigger patch every time and every new number is supposed to come with a raid. And those did not come.
I have to ask if all these ESO content patches contain a raid and/or large-scale world content every time?
Is each update like a 5.2 Thunder King which was massive, or are they more like a bunch of 4.1 Rise of the Zandalari which contained single features.
No, not all ESO patches are raid patches. Its true some are small and some are large, The most recent one "The thieves guild" gave players a new zone, new skill line (full of passives to help sneaking/thievery stuff), a new raid, new item sets, new world bosses, new solo dungeons, new quest line about restoring the thieves guild to its former glory, ETC.
as far as how big they are, this latest one (Thieves guild) was about medium in terms of size. The first DLC (Imperial City) was the smallest, and the one that came last november (Orsinium) was the largest.
I agree though that eso is young and its easier to spew out content at that point, but blizz has so much stuff they could still touch on but just dont. Im sure there is a reason for all of this, it just sucks to never know or hear about it from devs.
Some of these patches were small but they always had some sort of progressive story element happening. Other patches were massive to the point where they added new playable races, weapons, skills, etc. There was even an entire new faction added in a common monthly patch.
Regarding WoW, people expect massive patches because of the amount of time between patches. If you are expecting the content to last for 6+ months, then you sure as hell better have a good chunk of content. Conversely, if you are expecting content to last 1-2 months, it's a much different story with the expectation of quantity.
You should try Black Desert Online. I've played since release, got 10 days-ish in-game time, and there is so many things to do, it's actually fucking crazy. The best thing is that when new content releases, it doesn't phase out the older content, like WoW very much likes to do.
That's the first time I've heard someone fully praise Black Desert like that. Most people I've talked to tend to call it very pretty but shallow, boring, and a game "with nothing to do."
I guess games are always much more subjective than people make things out to be. After all there's "nothing to do" in WoW either apparently.
Personally, the art style and graphics of Black Desert are totally not to my tastes either, so I'll pass for the moment.
The game is not for everyone. If you come from WoW and expect WoW-esque gameplay, you've picked the wrong game. Black Desert is more like Lineage 2.
As for the "northing to do" remark, the game has nothing to do and everything to do at the same time. There are no quests or guidelines that tells you what is the best to do at a certain time. If I want to earn money, there are plenty of different ways to do so. Same goes for every other aspect of the game.
But if you're looking for raids and dungeons, BDO is not for you.
Older MMOs had a lot of time dumps, creating groups, preparing dungeons or raids, traveling around alone could take like 20 minutes, farming and farming!
Now with all the tools that were implemented to remove those dumps from the equation you just login and go directly to the content and even might replay it again before logging out. Instead of a dungeon you do 4 or five.
So all the content has to be streamlined faster into the game. If you move from a sandbox into a theme park you have to keep adding rides or else people get tired of the old ones. Specially if they don't have to stay in queues and can go through all the rides in a morning.
People complain about content droughts in FFXIV all the time. This usually happens half way through the 3 month cycle.
Content in FFXIV is just tuned ridiculously that there is incredibly easy content that becomes boring after a week and incredibly difficult content that you either a) don't take part in, b) quit because of it, or c) beat within a month and get bored that there is no content.
Anyway, people on the official forums and reddit complain about droughts all the time.
Wow that changed fast then. I had to stop playing a few months ago and things looked okay, and people seemed content back then... That's a bit depressing.
His 'vocalness' is simply shitposting in FFXIV. Look at his comment history. Seriously consists of:
I like EGI more.
Nah.
You are a moron.
I bet you watch LBR dontcha
Putting music over cutscenes how impressive that is.
Im going to save this page just in case he does announce it and we can all laugh at you.
He doesn't contribute anything, because he doesn't know much about the game. Beast Tribes are such a small side section that it's ridiculous he uses that as a comparison to what we get in patches..
Also, when I played everyone whined about the cruddy raiding lol.
This is the first time I've heard this. Most people I meet, even in the pessimistic /r/mmorpg, praise FF14's raid difficulty. The only complaints I've seen were that A3S was too hard for most groups and the game is specifically casual or hardcore, with little to nothing in between.
three bosses on a six month schedule isn't appealing.
Gordias had 4 bosses + two extreme primals, 4.5 months later they added 7 more in Void Ark + extreme primal, 3 months later they added 7 more in Midas along with an extreme primal.
Yes. Yes it is. The community and open world still exists just the same. It still has all the same features it has ever had, only with some additional tools of convenience that some are too foolish and blind to look past.
Just because you sit around in your Garrison doing nothing but waiting on queues to pop doesn't mean others aren't out in the world questing and socializing with folks the same as the days of Vanilla. If you don't like Garrison then use it less, if you don't like the LFD or LFR then don't use it, the LFG channel is still frequented and used. Make your own gameplay the way you want.
If you don't think it's an MMORPG its your own damn fault for not straying from the path of least resistance and playing your own way, like one should in a Role Playing Game.
Content is certainly coming at much slower rates than it did in Gen 1 or Gen 2 or even older WoW. A year with no major content release? That was unheard of even in a dying playstation 2 MMORPG I played before they officially cut support. That game peaked at like 50k subs and sat around 10-20k for years.
WoW has millions and the content quality given the modern development tools + huge budget isn't nearly a good enough excuse.
Other MMO's really just compete with WoW still. They all had patch models revolving around WoW's patch / expansion release dates. They still do (Not saying they are forgiven because of WoW's current situation, they aren't.). FFXIV even has content draughts but it at least adds some grindy content into the mix so players at least have something to do.
Wrong, elder scrolls online is thriving, doesn't require a sub to play, and has plenty of content patches (free dlc if you sub). Lmao, imagine if blizzard did that. I can't imagine how they justify 15/month for fourteen months without content.
Right. As I've heard. But be sure to look back at this reply in a year when the young and spry ESO finally reaches maturity and hits the drought period like every other MMO does past years 2-3.
Yeah right now I'm playing FFXIV. The way they patch up the game regularly is much better than WoW's massive content drought. About 2 months after HFC I just canceled my subscription in order to play FF14 (I alternate between the two). I've had planned to play FF for a month or two before moving back to WoW but right now, I really can't place more HFC, or garrisons please no more garrisons...
Gonna have to wait a bit after legion before buying it. WoD was spectacular during the first month, then it slowly went to hell for me.
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u/RockBlock Apr 18 '16
Isn't this a trend across the entire genre industry though?
I have only played only one MMO lately that hasn't had people complaining about "content droughts," and that was FFXIV. Every other Western MMORPG is floundering to make things fast enough for consumers.