#52 - Feb. 7, 2013, 5:09 p.m.
Complexity gives people more to learn, thus prolonging the life of a game because every time you think you've mastered something, there's always something new to learn.
Throw too much complexity to a game, and then suddenly you're not prolonging its life, but rather, overwhelming newcomers.
The people that are usually the most adamant against complexity are the ones that don't have the patience to learn something properly and demand that it be lowered to their level so they can "enjoy everything right off the bat".
As long as you have a challenge at some level on the game (for some it will be Heroic Sha of Fear, for others it will be Shado-Pan Monastery Challenge Mode trying to get gold, for others it'll be Garalon Normal, for others getting to 2.5k rating on PVP... I could go on) what's the harm if things are made more accessible to other players? (As long as you have your challenge)
The LFR is a great example of this, instant gratification with absolutely no commitment required. No preparation required, no need to know what the bosses do, no nothing. Just go in, spam 3-4 buttons and you're done.
And you want this to be encouraged? Christ, modern gamers make the mind boggle.
It's not quite instant gratification (you have to defeat the boss, do the whole run, etc etc), neither on the same level of rewards that players get for completing Normal of Heroic content.
I disagree.
Lets look at raids (I didnt do any at MOP, but know them quite well).
At Vanilla it took a good guild to clear a new raid several weeks. A medicore guild or casual, some months.
Today you join the LFR and a few hours later you have finished the content.
Do you see the big difference there? In vanilla you were busy for many weeks, today for several hours.
Lets look at pvp
In vanilla you had a real competition within your faction. You always had to be better than the other players, you had to win a lot and these BG´s did last 1 or 2 hours.
Today you have 5 min arena games where a fotm wins. But even if you dont win, you will be a winner at the end of the season.
Again, its missing the depth.
That's not depth. Content in vanilla required more preparation, but bosses were much, much easier than today's Heroic content.
The duration of the content doesn't have much to do with the depth of the game. In fact, there's much more depth and complexity in overcoming your opposition on a Rated Battleground today (as strategies keep evolving as the community does and teams can be very coordinated) as opposed to trying to cap Lumber Mill for the 100th time with a bunch of strangers that refuse to stay in their bases and would rather camp the roads.
07/02/2013 16:06Posted by
Ráchel I dont deny that you can do more things today, but the "how" is what matters and there wow has lost a lot of its depth and fun.
Many of the things that have been mentioned on discussions like this have to do with "the grind" more than the activity itself.
Was Battleguard Sartura a fun encounter in Ahn'Qiraj? Sure, it was.
Was it incredibly fun to farm the resistance sets required for some bosses back then? I'm not so sure there's going to be a common agreement there...