May News/Discussions

[Skandranon]

Yes, a 10 player instance which is tuned to the relative difficulty of it's corresponding 25 player would be harder on each individual which is a good reason to have the same loot tables. I also don't have any argument over excluding players who can't perform the required gaming challanges.

Blizzard does.

I appreciate you're arguing here on the basis of principle, but Blizzard wants people playing the content, and to be frank, the majority of players are really bad. It's basically a choice between two cases:

1) Ten mans that are equal in relative difficulty to 25 mans. Loot of equal quality and proportionate amount. Harder on each individual. Out of reach for the majority of players.

2) Ten mans that are easier than the equivalent 25 man. Loot of lesser quality and possibly proportionate amount. Easier on each individual. Accessible to far more players.

You want case 1. Blizzard wants case 2. The point I'm making is that there are pluses and minuses and Blizzard isn't being crazy to pick 2 - you just disagree.

I understand this perfectly, I also understand that it is a design philosophy based on a false assumption. That assumption being that the user base of MMO's is not growable and that to maximize profits you need to design to minimize or negate churn.

This isn't a bad assumption when designing content for the live team. Live team updates don't grow the MMO base; the boxed content is supposed to do that. You don't get into an MMO because of something the live team just added, because chances are you won't even see it for months. The entire purpose of the live team is to reduce churn.

And what's the opposite assumption? What is the counter-philosophy if this one is wrong? Are MMO userbases infinitely growable? What can the live team do to affect that - efficiently?

Whatever the end game is, whatever group size it happens to be, the live team needs to be able to produce content for it within its capacities and resources. 5 mans aren't the endgame specifically because they clearly can't build those fast enough relative to the rate of consumption. I don't see the alternative, unless your choice is to forego the live team completely, ignore people who reach the end of content, and just crank out an expansion every two years.

It seems totally absurd to me that...

You keep making these statements. "It's totally absurd that..." "Blizzard's crazy in that..." "It doesn't make sense to me that..." Blizzard is a quality game company with very smart people in it, and have made some of the best games of the past decade. What's the simplest and most compelling solution? That Blizzard is run by maniacs who don't make sense? Or that what they're doing is based on a very rational and understandable plan?

Things happen for reasons. In this case, they're happening for good reasons. You can't make a reasonable criticism of Blizzard's design by asserting that it's self-evidently absurd, because there are plenty of reasons why it's completely rational. If you want to suggest an alternative, you need to explain how what you suggest is better all-around and covers all the same ground the current endgame does.