Azelma wrote:
Aestu, you're far to cheeky/intelligent for Blizzard to handle. They only want fanboys and yes-men on the forums. No matter what your contribution to the game, the fact that you are opinionated, and have public sway (however much or little it may be) means that they must silence you. The fact that they've silenced you for...well nothing really..... leads me to be positive that this is true.
You have no idea how much it angers me when people say things like this.
Azelma wrote:
How are casuals the future? More specifically, what should blizzard understand about casualization. How can they possibly make the game more casual friendly without making it possible for terribads to get into pugs and be awful (even though they have welfare gear)?
I mean, I'm casual, I spend only 5 or so hours every week raiding. I don't consider myself to be a bad player in that I can put out respectable DPS and can more than do my part when healing, and I don't die in stupid shit or wipe raids.
However, I feel as though I'm an exception, not the rule when it comes to people who don't play often. The game blizzard is creating is sort of a double-edged sword.
Yes, someone like me, a decent player, can get good gear and see end game content without having to spend hours farming etc.
However, this also means that someone who is terrible, has no situational awareness, and fucks up even the most basic of game mechanics (idk...STAND UNDER SPORES or MOVE OUT OF THE GOO) can also obtain gear with relative ease. I've seen Mages with fantastic gear put out DPS that is simply abysmal. I've seen a hunter who just hit level 80 (wearing greens and blues) out DPS deathknights who are epic'd. I've seen hunters who somehow have ICC gear not know what the fuck a misdirect is. I've seen paladins who refuse to buy reagents because they are "expensive." I've seen shadowpriests cast mind sear on a boss (no adds). These things aren't isolated incidents, these are becoming commonplace in this game.
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So, I ask you again Aestu, HOW?
Horizontal progression.
Execution-based gameplay.
More engaging world environment.
Less overly complicated/technical mechanics.
Glacial rate of change in the game as a whole.
Pervasive RP; fewer monologues.
Simple but elegant gameplay; fewer gimmicks.
Many - almost endemic - world events.
A super-casual MMO would feel like something like a cross between Vanilla WoW and Final Fantasy Tactics.
Raids would be like Karazhan or ZG - highly immersive, nothing really complicated or techical, very execution based, with a lot of weird exploratory stuff. PvE would be dominated by highly dynamic TBC-style encounters like Yogg or Aran.
PvP would be like WSG or AB - very simple, designed to grow with the game, with immense replay value. There would also be more GH or Halaa type events.
There would be more world PvP - almost constant. Many world bosses on short respawns, of many sizes and shapes. Instead of 10-15 fivemans there would be about a hundred.
There would almost always be world events going on. There would be a lot of wacky sidequests and vanity items. So many, it would never, ever be possible to collect them all, and they would be ubiquitous. You would expect to get one a day and never get all the thousands out there.
There would be microtransactions, but they would be cheap and numerous, like ringtones. Instead of half a dozen items in the store there would be thousands.
Itemization would be key, and it would be highly customizable, like Armored Core. Items would not merely have passive stats, on-use items would be common. Gimmick gear would be more common. Itemization would be more vanilla-like. Gear would not have an item level tag.
RNG would be pervasive. Drops would be highly random, making it impossible to farm anything. Bosses would be random, like Hydross trash or Opera event. Imagine if ToGC-10 had a three day reset and you fought three bosses out of 20 at random, on a timer.
Vendors would not have limited supply items. Instead, many vendors would simply change their stock at random, stop offering certain items, and suddenly offer others. You could walk up with 30k honor to spend and find the vendor has no belts or gems, but is offering a rocket launcher for your shoulders, or a rare unique-themed hoofguard.
The game would be grossly unbalanced, but sheer scale and mutually opposed forces would prevent individual imbalances from being gamebreaking. Good example would be prot pally vs vanilla rogue vs vanilla mage vs beta warrior.
The game would operate in real-time, but have some sort of diminishing returns and benefit caps, more like Pokemon than EvE.
The client would be very simple, highly functional, and almost uncustomizable.
Graphics would be both plausible and simplistic but absolutely fantastic. Most zones would look like Halaa, SMV or Winterspring, and nothing like Dragonblight, Borean Tundra, or Grizzly Hills - there would not be the "Five Flags" feel, with choppy conjoining of "rides" or quest hubs / vignettes. The graphics would be relatively crude but smooth looking - more like Final Fantasy Tactics or Vanilla than Half-Life or Halo.
Community would be everything in the game world. There would be a simple eBay-style feedback system, and most PvE and PvP would be coordination-intensive, with reciprocal rewards and ranking. The feedback system would encourage the same sort of thing seen on eBay or Facebook, where people make a whole hobby of farming rep with other players.
What would keep players playing would be the glacially slow pace of the game itself, the RNG that defeats farming (and burnout) and makes the game constantly suspenseful, and the constant new content, made possible by cheap technology and simple mechanics. It would be casual in that it would be almost Tamagochi-like - something you immerse yourself in with your free time. The real-time mechanic and constant variety would give the game a Civilization-like "one more turn" syndrome.
