I want to tackle some key argument i keep seeing on these forums as well as in some games.
"how long have you been playing, you don't know enough" or "your just bad, get good"
This argument predominately comes from individuals that advocate for games with large amounts of complexity. Ultimately, this position falls upon the bases of egotism. Why is this said?
When it comes to choice in games, you ultimately have depth, or complexity. Some developers intentionally add complexity to the game, or it is a direct byproduct of the systems designs (the way things work in various aspects) in the game.
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In all cases we find that intentionally designing the game with complexity results in a (almost always) direct statistical gain on player characters. This means that players who have the time to invest in complexity, and ability to do so will come out on top always over other players.
The alternative to complexity is depth. Depth is similar to complexity in that you gain a "choice" or form of "customization" in a game, however, it does not have the negative drawbacks of complexity. Lets look at an example:
Complexity
10% of your agility is converted to attack power
Depth
10% additional attack power
In the above example you see a similar mechanic, one that is often found in games. However there is some hidden mechanics that are often common in mmo's that hide the fact that in the above example the complex based option is far superior. Why?
In traditional mmo's you will often find that +agility will give you armor, dodge, critical strike, critical strike chance, attack speed, attack power or a number of other stats depending on the game. Some games give two or three, while others one or two.
So by stacking agility there is a break point to which you gain near or equal amount of attack power, and the raw stats that come with agility. For example
1000 attack power = 10 attack power bonus (depth)
1 agility equals 2 attack power = complexity
So stacking 100 agility equals 200 attack power, and 10 attack power from the above trait/talent. This means that the complex option is far, far superior to the depth one, but only for those who are able to invest time in this to learn that this situation is far better then the depth for those who invest said time.
So, we come to the statements made above "get good" and "you just did not play long enough to know". The truth is this arguments are only result of individuals who are looking to exploit the games hidden mechanics in an effort to abuse others to gloat or flex over them and that is egotism.
The developers cater to casuals, which is bad for the game
Did you know that about 85% of an mmo is casual? From a perspective of what is better for the game, and the company, it is clear that catering to 15% of the population is definitely not the way to go. From a business perspective you would be killing your game.
So why then should the development team listen purely to the top players in the game?
The truth is that hardcore games are generally superior to casual players, but this makes sense as they generally invest far more amounts of time then casual players. Its kind of like comparing someone who spends 4 hours on his craft a week against someone who spends 20. there really is no reason in a general sense why the hardcore crafter would not be superior in his craft, or even have superior knowledge.
The same applies to mmo's. So as developers what we really want to do is set up the game to have depth and build the game for the average and slightly above after curved individuals. Luckily in most mmo's this is focused in the same area for both casual and hardcore players, since the majority of the two fall in the general "average" and "above average" area's of the "skill" curve, with hardcore players performing slightly better in all ranks of play (bad, to exceptional).
So in short the game should be built around the casual player for the sake of longevity and stability of the game and the company, not the minority of the hardcore player base. Sadly the result of this is some alienation of the hardcore players as most of them fall in the realm of egotism and the result of that is the changing of above complex systems to ones with depth, which tends to upset them. They need to learn that until they can fill a game with 85% of the population and millions of players being hardcore, they will never get to make the say in the games direction, and rightfully so.
Because of this ZoS should at once drop all communication with top players and go to casual input about the game. As much as the hardcore players will not like this, the make up the majority of the game.
Hope this clears up some things.
[edited for off topic content/ discussing other games]
Edited by ZOS_FalcoYamaoka on April 26, 2020 4:07PM