Ashran: What now?

02/25/2015 02:08 PMPosted by Ninh

So there's no reason to attack the enemy general anymore.

A lot of people would still like to collect Combatant and Gladiator gear. It's decent.

02/25/2015 02:16 PMPosted by Taelarn

02/25/2015 02:14 PMPosted by Zarhym

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A lot of people would still like to collect Combatant and Gladiator gear. It's decent.

Why? For what reason is that important now?

It might not be important for you at this stage. And that's okay. You might be one of the people who should be focusing more on winning the events over the Horde for the Conquest Points. Desvin spoke to this earlier:

02/25/2015 01:03 PMPosted by Desvin

We understand there is a lot of confusion about the removal of conquest points from Grand Marshal Tremblade and High Warlord Volrath, so we’d like to explain the reasoning behind it.

Our primary goal with Ashran was to create a zone where two factions were competing against each other throughout the zone. The average visitor in Ashran has two motivations: earn 200 conquest to fulfill the Ashran bonus portion of their conquest cap, and kill the faction boss for their daily chance at loot from the Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox. Prior to 6.1, players could earn that conquest by either killing the faction boss or by doing events. We were allowing the same reward to be earned at two different places at the same time.

This setup does not encourage competition. It encourages collusion. As a result, an implicit truce had emerged between the factions, where the Alliance claimed victory in the Road of Glory while Horde wandered the event areas unopposed for conquest. Both sides earned their reward in an efficient manner without any fighting. But Ashran is not a place for truces. Ashran is a place for killing. We removed conquest from the bosses knowing full well this meant the Alliance would be forced to compete against the Horde in events for conquest. Furthermore, we knew that facing new opposition at events, the Horde would once again engage in the central road.

Of course, we acknowledge that killing a faction boss only to receive Aspirant gear isn’t very motivating. As a result, we’ll be removing Aspirant gear from the Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox. That means it will always award either Combatant (ilevel 620/675) or Gladiator (ilevel 660/690) gear.

We are already seeing increased competition between the two factions in both events and the main road. In every Ashran instance, the population of both factions is tightly controlled to maintain equal numbers. Your faction has the opportunity to compete, but it is up to you to earn victory. Good luck and have fun!

02/25/2015 02:24 PMPosted by Infadell

I guess that's why the que times are down, nobody wants to go in there anymore!

There were fairly notable changes in 6.1 to how Ashran instances are populated, the goal being to reduce the unacceptable wait times.

02/25/2015 02:26 PMPosted by Weathervane

02/25/2015 02:14 PMPosted by Zarhym

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A lot of people would still like to collect Combatant and Gladiator gear. It's decent.

I got a piece of 600 gear and what seemed like 20 honor. I don't want 600 gear or honor. Volrath and a Kronos are on their own now. :/

We're removing the Aspirant gear from the faction bosses. As Desvin mentioned in his post, we totally agree that that's not a motivating reward.

02/25/2015 02:26 PMPosted by Pojjo

02/25/2015 02:14 PMPosted by Zarhym

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A lot of people would still like to collect Combatant and Gladiator gear. It's decent.

I might be speaking about a vocal minority here but, as much fun as gear grinding is, the reason I grind out pvp gear is to be able to use it in all forms of pvp.

The problem with Ashran, in my opinion at least, is that it has turned into less of a "world pvp hub" and into a honor/conq grinding hub. Groups rarely interact anymore at all. Horde does events, Alliance kills boss. Rinse, Repeat, no actual pvp included.

Its actually the complete OPPOSITE of what makes World PvP amazing. World PvP isnt about being awared with free loot for shooting npcs, thats what LFR is for. World PvP is about two groups fighting without rules, boundries or reason. Its about spontaneous wars breaking out in random places. Ashran is now just PvE content that can occasionally be interupted by the other faction.

We mostly agree with you, though we do feel that it's nice to have some tangible rewards to gain beyond the sweet feeling of besting your foes from the opposing faction. We've changed how the rewards are doled out, the objective being to discourage collusion between teams and see people rumbling more.

Real improvements aren't going to happen until you guys quit patting yourselves on the back.

I don't know what this means. We've said for sometime now that Ashran can be improved and have been tweaking things to that end.

02/25/2015 02:30 PMPosted by Pojjo

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It might not be important for you at this stage. And that's okay. You might be one of the people who should be focusing more on winning the events over the Horde for the Conquest Points. Desvin spoke to this earlier.

But what about the people who have no need for Honor or Conquest points? Are we expected to avoid Ashran now to simply do arenas or rated bgs? Why should I, who have full conq gear, take another step into Ashran?

Perhaps it depends on whether you enjoy the experience you're having there. Ultimately that's important.

02/25/2015 02:35 PMPosted by Nakotsu

Hey Zarhym.... Heres a novel idea for your fail ashran pvp.

Stopped reading right at the end of your first sentence.

A lot of people in this community have opinions to share. You might consider whether your approach to sharing yours is in the least bit palatable.

02/25/2015 03:09 PMPosted by Kumqatninja

02/25/2015 02:55 PMPosted by Zarhym

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Stopped reading right at the end of your first sentence.

A lot of people in this community have opinions to share. You might consider whether your approach to sharing yours is in the least bit palatable.

Are you ignoring feedback because it's negative? At the end of the day, there is a reason the feedback is so negative towards Ashran. Maybe you should be more open to all types of feedback, as it stands Ashran hasn't improved since launch.

We read plenty of negative feedback all the time. When it gets to an insulting level there's no point in wasting time on it. Many others can phrase their objections in reasonable and constructive ways. The less time we spend negotiating with the most hyperbolic and cynical people in the community, the more attention we can pay to the people making honest attempts to share their perspectives in civil fashion.

It's not a complicated, diabolical, or arrogant concept. There has to be a practicality to sifting through opinions in such a large community.

Given my previous post, I feel this is an opportune time to provide a simple example.

02/25/2015 03:17 PMPosted by Zaero

02/25/2015 02:46 PMPosted by Zarhym

Perhaps it depends on whether you enjoy the experience you're having there. Ultimately that's important.

Now this is something I'll gladly not wait to reserve judgment on and comment on now. With the event timers as LONG as they are now, and often times watching groups or being in groups doing nothing but sit at a spot with nothing at all happening because they have no interest in doing a road push, the LONG wait for anything to happen at all with any kind of reward is very dull.

I did Ashran because I liked how it used to feel like old AV, and I don't like Arenas at all. For my PvP fix now I'm more likely to go to regular BGs for points, and Heroes of the Storm for FUN. (Yeah, I know it's still a Blizzard game, I play it anyway, but it goes with the fact there's nothing rewardingly fun about Ashran now if you're even half CP geared, the box drop rate is abysmal.)

What's worse is with the current state, the Gladiator's sanctum quests may never get done. I know my brother's been on the Pandaren one for months and has went into Ashran daily often to never find one at all on the Horde side. :/

This is negative feedback. It's also constructive feedback. I don't have anything particular to respond with right now and otherwise wouldn't be -- as is the case with many posts in this thread -- but this is the type of stuff we register, document, and discuss internally.

No response =\= ignored.

Frankly, we can't take the time to acknowledge all decent feedback or respond to it directly, but that makes it no less useful to us. In many cases honest, constructive feedback will spur a discussion of ideas within the community, until finer points are scrutinized, debated, and sometimes augmented to reflect popular feedback. We love to see it and will participate in the discussion if we feel it'll somehow enhance the conversation or clarify common misconceptions.

Carry on!

02/25/2015 03:20 PMPosted by Qng

well that got stuffed up Zarhym. Oce servers have a 30 min + que atm because someone decided to join all of the OCE servers. It used to be insta entry on barth now I cant even get in, besides the fact I really don't want to.

You broke your game even more

It was necessary to open the matchmaking pools more similar to how BG queues are handled. While we really prefer to have opponents fighting from the same realm, or at least from a small enough pool that opponents' names maybe familiar, many imbalanced and highly populated realms had extreme wait times, while low population realms had unfilled Ashran instances. Our 6.1 changes have leveled that out much more, though we'll continue to monitor the effects this has in each region.

I know when your critique something you are also supposed to provide ideas for improvement but it is difficult with the layout of Ashran as it is.

The issue with adding rewards for people's enjoyment, or making rewards easier to obtain, is that most players will endure an unenjoyable experience for a good upgrade. This fills Ashran with alot of people who have absolutely no interest in the actual activites and solely want to get in, reap the rewards, get out. The weekly ashran conquest reward is a good example or people forcing themselves into Ashran not out of enjoyment but out of their perceived neccessity.

I asked this is a previous comment but what exactly are we fighting for in Ashran? We are fighting a battle we can't actually lose and that has no consequences, only rewards. Lore wise what are we fighting for this island again?

To address your first statement which I bolded (back on the topic of feedback), you don't always have to provide ideas or solutions when providing feedback. It's perfectly okay to simply present what you feel are problems to be solved. I'm just saying do that in a civil way, which you did and I appreciate. :)

02/25/2015 03:56 PMPosted by Kumqatninja

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We read plenty of negative feedback all the time. When it gets to an insulting level there's no point in wasting time on it. Many others can phrase their objections in reasonable and constructive ways. The less time we spend negotiating with the most hyperbolic and cynical people in the community, the more attention we can pay to the people making honest attempts to share their perspectives in civil fashion.

It's not a complicated, diabolical, or arrogant concept. There has to be a practicality to sifting through opinions in such a large community.

Taking a jab at a customer that insults you in their feedback, is just as non constructive. Just ignore it and reply to constructive feedback. The point I was trying to make was that you outright told a customer that his opinion wasn't valid because he was negative to you in his first sentence, when his post could have been skipped over all the same without a reply, and time spent on replying to actual feedback. Something I also found jarring was that a customer can be angry that the content they want to be good isn't, and if they show their emotions towards it in the "wrong" way, they are ignored. It's pretty telling that you, as a company, create content that so many of us can become emotionally invested in. I guess that can be a double sided coin.

Just some thoughts that I had when I saw your reply to his.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not jabbing. My word choice was clear. I outlined the issues with that manner of posting, and elaborated on how and why it should be improved.

Many, many people in this community have concerns about the behavior of their peers and the general toxicity found within what should be pretty simple discussions about video games. Yes, I'm here to talk about the game, but I'm a community manager, not game designer. If I can point out what I see to be problematic behavioral trends and provide examples of how they can be improved for the betterment of the community, I'm absolutely going to.

02/25/2015 04:23 PMPosted by Lainon

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It might not be important for you at this stage. And that's okay. You might be one of the people who should be focusing more on winning the events over the Horde for the Conquest Points. Desvin spoke to this earlier.

Again this is a confrontational post, this should not be your job. You job as community manager is communicate with your community not antagonize it.

You had better solutions that just angry almost an entire faction ;)

Alliance wins a lot events in Ashran , for myself I am cap in 5 lvl 100; a Wednesday , no I am not gonna lvl more for now and that's exactly the major issue in ashran.

DId you guys mess with ashran, yes you did.

Whatever tone you're inserting into my statements, stop it.

Maybe this post is slightly antagonistic, but I don't know what else to offer you at this point. You seem legitimately put off by statements written in blue.

02/25/2015 04:45 PMPosted by Zsigmond

Secondly, why are you only responding to trolls and not players with good productive suggestions?

I sincerely wish you'd read my posts in this thread where I directly speak to this.

02/25/2015 04:50 PMPosted by Kestor

Do game designers have forum profiles such as yourself? Idk, to me it would feel better to know what's going on over there time-to-time.

Desvin, who posted on the Ashran forum, is senior PvP designer Brian Holinka. Ion Hazzikostas posts from time to time as Watcher on the Dungeons & Raids forum. We're also doing a live Q&A with Ion tomorrow.

02/25/2015 04:50 PMPosted by Kestor

Not like a constant update but more of "Hey, srry if patch *name* is taking a bit longer. We ran into a bad error" Something like that would kind of make me feel a bit happy.

We always try to provide as much insight and input as possible. The responsibility of crafting and relaying that info generally falls into the hands of us community managers though, as the developers are very busy taking in feedback, tackling bugs, designing new content, etc.

02/25/2015 05:20 PMPosted by Pojjo

Zaryhm im glad your still active in this forum post. Its very refreshing.

So I thought maybe we could focus this feedback a little bit everyone.

What do you think is the best part of Ashran currently?

I love exploring the map itself and all of the buffs you can find/collect.

What is your biggest concern about Ashran currently?

Mine is how events and main lane pushes are both rewarding yet offer no consequence for not doing/attempting. This leads to the divided factions doing differant objectives and avoiding each other.

I totally agree that it'd be cool to hear some thoughtful answers to these questions from the folks who wouldn't mind taking the time, Pojjo. :)

I rephrased them slightly.

What aspects of Ashran gameplay do you enjoy most or think work well and why?

What aspects of Ashran gameplay do you dislike and why?

What changes would you like to see made and why?

Sincerely,
Zarhym and why?

02/25/2015 06:52 PMPosted by Bidwell

02/25/2015 06:10 PMPosted by Zarhym

Sincerely,
Zarhym and why?

Cause nobody else is masochistic enough to do this job?

;)