Problems with Aggro/Threat/Hate

Audigy

The problem of the OP and many others is that they only know the wow system now, but not how group content was before WOTLK.

Even at Vanilla you had Warlocks tanking mobs, you had paladins playing support, you had Hunters kiting and trapping stuff etc. I did so many things in our raids, it was just great.

Today wow is none of that, that's why people struggle with TESO. At TESO everyone is responsible for himself, you cant rely on a tank anymore so that you can afk while spamming a rota. Just like a Healer now has to actually be smart and not a healbot who spams AOE.

My tank has a 15 seconds Taunt, the attack has no CD´s so that no mob will wander of to my healer. Trash minions the DD´s need to kill and CC, that's a good system and much better than Wows now, where you have nothing else to do than spamming 4 buttons as a DPS.

Someone said it before, give it some time and learn the new system. Yes wow players will struggle with TESO, but this is to be expected and if they cant adjust then this is just how it is.

elder42

And these aren't the sort of problems you just fix with hotfixes or a content patch, either. This is dismantle and reassemble.

MercyKilling

From what I've seen in gameplay...there's only one ability that generates hate/aggro. It's in the sword and board line...puncture, I think it is. Spamming that has always resulted in me gaining hate/aggro.

However, I do see healers generating an ungodly amount of hate/aggro. I've literally seen a boss stop attacking the DPS and turn around, march completely across the clearing( Fungal Grotto ) over to the bridge to attack someone rezzing a player....FROM THE TOP LEDGE where the DPS led him to. THAT's a bit broken, IMHO.

elder42

Audigy wrote: »

The problem of the OP and many others is that they only know the wow system now, but not how group content was before WOTLK.

Even at Vanilla you had Warlocks tanking mobs, you had paladins playing support, you had Hunters kiting and trapping stuff etc. I did so many things in our raids, it was just great.

Today wow is none of that, that's why people struggle with TESO. At TESO everyone is responsible for himself, you cant rely on a tank anymore so that you can afk while spamming a rota. Just like a Healer now has to actually be smart and not a healbot who spams AOE.

My tank has a 15 seconds Taunt, the attack has no CD´s so that no mob will wander of to my healer. Trash minions the DD´s need to kill and CC, that's a good system and much better than Wows now, where you have nothing else to do than spamming 4 buttons as a DPS.

Someone said it before, give it some time and learn the new system. Yes wow players will struggle with TESO, but this is to be expected and if they cant adjust then this is just how it is.

Even if you're right on all this, and the problem is player perception and not game design, the problem is that the community as a whole right now has to deal with the majority of the players being people who got into MMOs with WoW and expect it to play like that. And then when things go wrong, laying blame to people according to the way WoW plays. Which is, honestly, the fault of the devs, because if a game *is* going to be this different from what's become "normal" PvE, it should teach it better. Even FFXIV had those Guildhests that taught people how group mechanics worked, and it was teaching an old-hat system. *Every* MMO these days should have something like that, because otherwise you're making players learn group dynamics on-the-fly by grouping together, which sounds good on paper, but in reality people don't want that anymore. They don't even want to have to explain bosses to each other. They want in-game journals that everyone reads, and youtube videos everyone watches, so you can get in, clear, and get out.

Like it or not, MMOs for this generation need to do need more hand-holding. Yes, it sucks, because it dumbs the game's down a bit, but it saves the community from being at each other's throats because they don't understand what's different, and there is no information available to explain *how* it's different.

We are all literally swinging swords at each other in the dark right now, and we can debate the finer points of how good or bad that is, but I think it's a sign of bad game design. Either the complaints are valid and PvE is broken, or the complaints are invalid because PvE has a lot of depth and works very well, but it's different enough to be bizarre, and they didn't include *any* instructions.

Which in the glory days of MMOs would've worked, because *all* communities were smaller and tighter-knit then, but these days even MMOs that "fail" tend to sit around 500k - 1mil players. That creates more chaos. That means these games need more information now. Otherwise people just get frustrated, take it out on other players because the community is so large who gives a crap because chance of recourse is so low (bad manner players, ninjas, etc. used to get blacklisted which used to be bad, in a game with one megaserver for each continent where every time you do a relog you'll likely be put into a different instance of the same zone with an entirely different group of people, quite literally who gives a crap), which makes the frustration worse, and then people just leave.

WhiteQueen

I wish Zenimax would publish how aggro works. That'll at least enable us to make some viable builds and develop long-term strategies.

elder42

Honestly, based on what I've seen, I don't think this game has an aggro table at all. I think it's entirely based on temporary taunt effects induced by abilities, if none of those effects are in place the monster just picks someone.

Ashigaru

elder42 wrote: »

It's not different, this is how Holy Trinity tanking started off in the 90s before "Holy Trinity" was actual PvE design. The guy in the best armor grabbed the biggest dude while the rest of the group worked on everyone else, but you didn't have threat meters or CDs to roll through or anything like that. Everyone was pretty much DPS, just the highest geared melee was the one that lead the group, saw a group of monsters, grabbed the toughest one, and that was it.

It's a really boring way to play a tank. I like pulling a group and having it punch me in the face, controlling where the mobs are positioned and which way they are facing to help group survivability and max their DPS. This is why the "Holy Trinity" PvE aspect evolved into what WoW provided. WoW has done a lot of things wrong, but that was something they nailed, which is why everyone expects PvE to play that way now. It's just much, much better.

Said it in my first topic here, but this is the same mistake FFXIV 1.0 made. It tried doing things the "old" way as if it were all better and WoW ruined everything, but it's really that WoW improved on the formula, now WoW has ruined itself, we just need MMOs that take the core of what made WoW a great MMO in its prime and improving on it. This is just reducing the genre back to its base parts as a means to be different, but it's horrendously boring, and shows why MMOs were a basement hobby for so long. They just weren't interesting enough.

EQ had the trinity setup and working way before wow was even thought about.....

WhiteQueen

@elder42 wrote: »

Honestly, based on what I've seen, I don't think this game has aggro at all. I think it's entirely based on temporary effects induced by abilities, if none of those effects are in place the monster just picks someone.

You may be entirely right. I did my first Anchor today. That was a bit of a mess. I was the lowest level DPS there and managed to grab half the mobs.

Ashigaru

elder42 wrote: »

And to the guy who said something about getting kicked for being a "bad tank" for losing aggro because people expect tanks to be threat magnets now, when this game doesn't work that way. That's happened to me as well. The first group dungeon I did the group fell apart and everyone crapped on me, because one boss spawned an add that went to the healer, I could not for the life of me get it to attack me, the healer died, made some noise, DPS sided with them because I'm the bad tank that couldn't outdo healer threat (which I was thinking as well) and there goes that run.

It's also worth mentioning that the boss in this scenario didn't stay aggro'd to me either, despite spamming my "taunt" ability whenever possible. Though it's also possible that since anyone can do anything, it's highly possible that one of the melee dps was spamming their attack that had a "taunt" tied into it as well (since my "taunt" ability is actually taken from the DPS skill tree), which even further proves why the "everyone can do everything" concept is flawed. I have to worry about people who aren't building themselves exclusively for tanking accidentally tanking the run, because not only did I need to take an DPS skill to make myself a more effective tank, there are skills in *my* tree that DPS should take that makes them better at DPS, but will also give them more tanky ability. So essentially, the majority of PvE groups are going to be massive cluster****s, because most people are just going to grab whatever looks good for solo and keep it that way when in dungeons. Which is why roles are better when they're defined and exclusive, with no cross-over at all.

All these poor PvE group mechanics are going to have a seriously negative effect on community attitudes.

No what is going to have a negative effect is the community not willing to change to fit the game and start complaining as evident here. Just like the healing it is totally different people complained and then O wow they figured out how it works they like it now.... Just play the game get the feel for it instead of posting here complaining about a mechanic that you dont understand, because really there is no mechanic

elder42

Besides, if they need to tell us how aggro or tanking is supposed to work, then they didn't implement it very well. When I play a good game, it *feels* right as soon as I pick it up, but it takes a while to master. This just does not *feel* right, so I don't even know what I'm supposed to be working towards mastering.

Ohioastro

I've always found the trinity system to be utterly artificial. If you constructed a good AI algorithm, good defined as "one that has the best chance of defeating the players", there is no way that you'd use the standard MMO aggro. You'd do what players do: identify the biggest threat (e.g. healers, people who can hurt you badly) and target them. The tank system amounts to an artificial game where you trick the AI into focusing on a target who isn't actually their biggest threat.

I like much better the idea that there are different classes that can counter different enemies. So in this case a "tank" is ideally suited to counter strong melee opponents, or at least to tie them down; while ranged abilities counter ranged opponents. I think this is close to the model that they're trying for here.

<edit> But, yes, it would be enormously helpful to have some models for what group dynamics are intended to be like, and some learning environments to teach solo-centric modern MMO players how to be effective in a group.

elder42

Ashigaru wrote: »

No what is going to have a negative effect is the community not willing to change to fit the game and start complaining as evident here. Just like the healing it is totally different people complained and then O wow they figured out how it works they like it now.... Just play the game get the feel for it instead of posting here complaining about a mechanic that you dont understand, because really there is no mechanic

If there is no mechanic, then that is what I'm complaining about.

As far as my complaints go, I recently played FFXIV, and I only spent about 15 minutes on the forums until I hit level 50 (which is the level cap).

I've been playing this game for 10 hours, and I've probably spent about that much time browsing these forums, listing my issues and trying to figure out how to improve my experience, but really just finding a lot of people are in the same situation I am and feeling that nothing can really be done about it.

Don't confuse this with FFXIV having shallow systems. I actually enjoyed how deep tanking in that game was in comparison to the current WoW (though it still wasn't as involved as Vanilla Protection Warrior WoW). It's that it felt better, so I learned more by simply playing the game than talking to other people, and because of that, I also had very little to complain about.

I have no problem adapting. But there is no point pretending there is potentially nothing broken here. Telling me to adapt when it may be broken, is like telling me to adapt to eating food out of a fridge that can not keep an internal temperature lower than 10 degrees celcius. I can learn to work around it, but it does not stop the fridge from being broken and ruining the food I consume. To make the metaphor clear, ESO is the broken fridge, "Tank" is the food it's ruining. I believe the PvE group mechanics in this game are broken. Yes, I can work around that if I want, but that does not stop it from being broken.

That to me is still adapting. I can work around a crappy system, but it is still crappy. I don't have the power to make it work better. That's up to Bethesda, because they're the only ones that have access to the inner parts of this piece of machinery. If it was a fridge in my house, I could just fix it.

Ultimately, I do not give other people money to give me something in return, only to have to try and fix it myself or put up with how broken it is. Especially with entertainment. I am not paying for a living-situation service here, so that immediately puts my level of expectation for this company much lower than it would for something like a plumber fixing my toilet. This is not necessary, it is purely to waste time. That gives them a pretty low-stress job in comparison, because if they do a bad job it is not going to cause me to be unable to use something I *need*. It is just to waste time. I have pretty much given Zenimax $60 to help me enjoy wasting my time for a little while, and I am being told that since they can't even meet that low expectation, I am supposed to shrug at having given them $60 for a broken product, and now waste my time trying to work around all the broken pieces. I don't know if people realize how ridiculous they sound.

Audigy

@elder42, don't get me wrong I fully understand your concerns and you are right with what you said.

On the other hand, every MMO which did copy the system of wow has failed and went F2P. This wasn't because wow was so good and the other games so bad, no it was mainly because players like to sleep in their own bed and that bed is wow.
They got their friends there, their guilds and achievements build throughout the years and always went back home.

TESO is now very different, I doubt that players who like wow will stay - however, many who miss a good old MMO might join in. This doesn't mean that their shouldn't be adjustments and tweaks, but I think turning TESO into one of those WOW copy´s will be the wrong way and automatically means a defeat.
-
With the current system in place, there will at least be a "fight" so to speak and if that fight will be won by ZO nobody knows yet.


That said, people like to blame other players for the mechanics and this is wrong and a problem. This hopefully will change over time, I remember Cataclysm release at wow when people actually started accepting that a wipe can happen in a dungeon, when all tanks had to go for mitigation instead of stamina, a DPS had to avoid damage, especially AOE from bosses and Healers a close view on their mana bars.

It only took a few days to adjust and maybe, players at TESO will adjust as well. That said, the whine at wow later won and made dungeons and raids again very easy, but I think ZO will go a different way with their game and stick to the current design, with as said small adjustments.

elder42

I am not saying this game needs to go the WoW route, I am only saying that it does not give any information as to how anything works. Even things that look like they should be self-explanatory are not. I have a skill that says it will make a monster attack me for 15 seconds, so I don't know why threat is going to people aside from me, even when I am spamming that skill on the monster. The healer does not know why the monster is attacking him, even when he stops healing and two other members start to work heavily on that monster, it still attacks the healer until the healer dies. The DPS does not know why a monster attacks him when the tank starts the pull, the DPS has not attacked yet, and gets a monster latched on him anyway.

I am saying they either need to clarify their system if this is working as intended because then there is something people are obviously missing, or fix it because it's broken. Cataclysm was a quick (but painful, if we're honest) re-adjustment because the reasons for why everything was happening and how to handle it were clear. This game is not like that. That is a big problem.

MisterBlue

Round blocks fit awesomely through round holes and doing it for 15 years makes it almost instinctual but that doesn't mean the same block will fit so well through the square hole.

What we have here is the difference between people realizing the need for a new block and people trying desperately (and getting justifiably frustrated in the process) in trying to get the old round block through.

The sad thing is is that in MMORPG history there's a pattern of holes being changed to fit the wants and needs of the people who'd prefer not to have to figure out a new block shape than the one they are used to.

TESO is not perfect, improvements need to be made, but I sure hope they keep that square hole intact no matter how frustrated the round blockers are. I'll keep paying my sub to do my part in insuring so.

korwinthale

@Audigy as the original poster I take offense to your statement and yes I DID play vanilla wow which you would understand if you read the posts I made, I am NOT saying I want to TankandSpank every mob I'm saying I should at least be able to TANK SOMETHING. I Want CC abilities and kiting and magetanks and such I love dynamic combat and learning to ways to beat encounters .. but what I cannot stand is I pull the mobs and they just go utterly ballistic with no rhyme or reason randomly assaulting everyone in a fashion that lends itself to zero strategy... I spam my taunt I TRY to hold onto SOMETHING but they just run about randomly killing everyone .. And then you have people posting "the healer is the biggest threat mwwyyyaaaaahh " they dont understand what I Am saying because obviously they havent run dungeons... The mobs go CRAZY you have like 10 mobs on 4 people randomly attacking everyone and the healer is my biggest concern because they are essentially defenseless without help. And im standing their super tough last to die looking at the situation like... well if they want no aggro then what the hell am I wearing all this armor for?

elder42

MisterBlue wrote: »

Round blocks fit awesomely through round holes and doing it for 15 years makes it almost instinctual but that doesn't mean the same block will fit so well through the square hole.

What we have here is the difference between people realizing the need for a new block and people trying desperately (and getting justifiably frustrated in the process) in trying to get the old round block through.

The sad thing is is that in MMORPG history there's a pattern of holes being changed to fit the wants and needs of the people who'd prefer not to have to figure out a new block shape than the one they are used to.

TESO is not perfect, improvements need to be made, but I sure hope they keep that square hole intact no matter how frustrated the round blockers are. I'll keep paying my sub to do my part in insuring so.

So you are of the mindset that it's okay to pay for something that is broken and then continue to pay them to fix it, as opposed to paying for something that works and then continuing to pay them to make it better? If you give them money and say you are willing to give them more as they take their time fixing it, then what is their incentive to work hard to fix it in the first place, or work hard to fix it as soon as they can after you've paid them for something that is broken? If you continue the revenue stream, they have no reason to work hard, just do a little here and a little there, because you will pay them either way, and going slower and doing less will make them more money. Especially when put into a monthly subscription model. With the mindset of "I will pay them each month as long as they keep fixing it", then it is better for them to do a small fix every month for several months, instead of doing a big fix once a month for a few months.

This is why game companies do not need to give a crap anymore. The more people that share that mentality of yours, the longer it will take this game to improve.

MisterBlue

I don't consider it broken.

thedemiseraphb14_ESO

Hmmm, people asked all kinds of ask a dev questions... where was everyone when they needed to ask about hate and aggro? I'm SURE they would have answered.

MisterBlue

I consider it a work in progress (like any MMORPG world) that has been put together quite well. Of course there are some problems but blurring the lines between problems that need attention and broken is your perception - not mine.

Frankly I feel the game is surprisingly well. I was actually a bit worried about the launch around the November waves but they've come a long way ... farther than I gave them credit for thinking they could and the game now IMHO is damn good launch game.

elder42

thedemiseraphb14_ESO wrote: »

Hmmm, people asked all kinds of ask a dev questions... where was everyone when they needed to ask about hate and aggro? I'm SURE they would have answered.

I don't think anyone would think to ask that, because everyone probably thought it would work the way it has been for a while now.

thedemiseraphb14_ESO

elder42 wrote: »

thedemiseraphb14_ESO wrote: »

Hmmm, people asked all kinds of ask a dev questions... where was everyone when they needed to ask about hate and aggro? I'm SURE they would have answered.

I don't think anyone would think to ask that, because everyone probably thought it would work the way it has been for a while now.

Seems odd though since from the beginning they've talked about changing systems, freedom to play lots of ways not one, not being the same typical systems... feels to me like they never planned to just use the traditional group system so four players could change up how they play often.

doggie

I didn't read every post in the thread. I've done about 50 dungeon runs total at lvl 12-15 and 20-23 dungeons.

My experience is that when you're on level ie; not 5-10 levels higher than the mobs, you simply can't tank all the adds, you'll die. Sometimes fast probably to critts since you usualy dont have much against critts at 12.

I use AOE damage with a snare, and my ultimate is a AOE damage that also reduces incoming damage on all team members. I find those two very usefull on the add groups. I use my taunt on the one off guy bugging a healer or dps.

There is a magic based ranged taunt in one of the NPC guild skill lines.

When it comes to hate it does appear to exist, I don't do much damage compared to dps, still I can tank a boss without using the taunt every 15, so there appear to be some threat generation involved, some say it comes from heavy armor, but I haven't seen any solid info about that.

It's not designed for the tank to take all adds, the other team members have to get AOE damage and snares and such.

korwinthale

@thedemiseraphb14_ESO No I assumed they meant people could change rolls relatively easily so you were not ALWAYS healing or tanking or what have you but the basic concepts and mechanics would be rather functional/rational .. which they are not at this current time.

thedemiseraphb14_ESO

I've learned assumptions in the first month or two of any MMO tend to not work as planned. I'd like to see some DEV feedback

korwinthale

@doggie Yeah I'm completley fine with that if it works that way but in my experience it's just so random I've had the boss just randomly jump around attacking people while I am spamming my taunt move on him and its infuriating.

Adhamh

I have to agree with those that don't think the system is broken. I think players just need to learn to break out of the comfort zone that games like WoW and its clones have given them. Give the new system a longer try and see if you can adapt to it. If not, cancel your subscription and go back to WoW. You're not being forced to play this game. Yeah you paid money for the game, but again, that was YOUR choice to spend that money. The developers promised a different system and by the topic of these past two pages, they seem to have delivered one. So technically, you are getting what you paid for. You just had your expectations set in different places and that is not the fault of the game makers. Paying for the game doesn't mean that the developers have to cater to your every whim and complaint. Despite some may think, they aren't the only players here. Some of us actually like the game and will continue to elect to pay money for it.

Audigy

elder42 wrote: »

I am not saying this game needs to go the WoW route, I am only saying that it does not give any information as to how anything works. Even things that look like they should be self-explanatory are not. I have a skill that says it will make a monster attack me for 15 seconds, so I don't know why threat is going to people aside from me, even when I am spamming that skill on the monster. The healer does not know why the monster is attacking him, even when he stops healing and two other members start to work heavily on that monster, it still attacks the healer until the healer dies. The DPS does not know why a monster attacks him when the tank starts the pull, the DPS has not attacked yet, and gets a monster latched on him anyway.

I am saying they either need to clarify their system if this is working as intended because then there is something people are obviously missing, or fix it because it's broken. Cataclysm was a quick (but painful, if we're honest) re-adjustment because the reasons for why everything was happening and how to handle it were clear. This game is not like that. That is a big problem.

Yes I understand that, its like Vanilla when we did not have wow head and tons of addons in the game and had to find out why we wiped ourselves.
We also didn't understand why that silly boss at MC always revived his doggies, how much threat our tank had so we could start attacking etc. You know, I sat there with a stop watch timing every attempt to find a common "now you can start to DPS system".

Difficult times need smart decisions sometimes


As for if there is threat or if there is not, well I believe there is. If I hit the taunt the mob is on me, but that doesn't mean that there might be a bug or an intention that bosses can focus healers.

Keep in mind, we don't have DBM - maybe its a mechanic of the boss to reset agro. At wow its written in huge letters on your screen, at TESO it isn't.

Sure ZO could now release a dungeon journal for us, just like Blizz did or explain us every skill, every ability of NPC´s.
But is this really the game we want to play? I am honestly tired of that, I want to walk into a dungeon and find out what happens

And I play casually now, so don't think this comes from a 24/7 player ^^

@‌korwinthale I didn't want to offend you, sorry if I did! I read about your 15 years raid experience, but we didnt had a game like TESO since many years, that's why we old horses might also be a bit rusty these days.

I just think that even though you and I raided at Vanilla or other games before - we probably both are used to a lot more information than we currently get. While I refused to use any addons until today at wow, with the exception of CTR to manage our roles at Vanilla - we couldnt avoid seeing all those information on our screen.

This doesn't mean I am better, hell NO! I have not done any endgame at TESO, I am just as blind as everyone else is. But I just don't see all these "issues" as problematic as many of you - maybe because I was used to "on the fly reactions" and just play casually and don't care about fast success.

If the boss runs off to your healer, then this is of course a problem. You could now save your taunt for that moment, but I am sure you do this already.

The healer could also be on the move more, instead of waiting for the boss to say hello. The other DPS could intercept that boss, I don't think bosses are immune to CC?

What I am trying to say is, that while you are the tank (me as well ) - we also have others in our group - why don't they do something? At wow the pressure was fully on us tanks, now its a different story.

Everything you said is what you tried to do, but did your group nothing? I am asking this because I didn't see their actions mentioned in the thread.

ZO said clearly that this game wont work after a trinity "you tank, I heal, you DPS" system. They said every player must be able to fulfill all roles and play together, working out tactics to succeed. Exactly this the game seems to do now

We just cant predict what happens, that's how the game is designed and not knowing the things @Elder42 mentioned seems to be a part of that design.

elder42

Adhamh wrote: »

The developers promised a different system and by the topic of these past two pages, they seem to have delivered one.

I am not against new systems, I am against lack of information on how the systems work. I don't think you understand how much stress this is causing in a lot of groups right now, maybe people who were in beta were more patient because they were in beta and happy to be learning and everything, but now that the gate has been opened, you're getting all kinds of people in groups, and most of them aren't very patient/willing to admit they need to rethink how they play and adapt to a new game. It's far easier to blame when things go wrong, and since this is the Holy Trinity system the tank and healers are still the easiest targets to blame. So it's making it very stressful to even *try* group content right now. Lots of people are in a rush to quest, then they are in a rush to dungeon because they want to get back to rushing through quests so they can hit 50 asap, beat the game and move on. Frankly, there is just not a lot of room to "learn" with the current pool of people I keep getting into dungeons with.

That is just a brutal reality right now. This would not be the first MMO that was ruined before it even got going because the majority was forced to not have the time to learn its intricacies by being rushed and abused for everything that went wrong while learning, and never being able to figure out how to improve because they were constantly being pushed forward. If I want that experience I could just pick up a minimum wage job IRL, but this is a paid entertainment service here. It is supposed to cater and make things easier than life. I don't understand this desire to pay for hardship.

Adhamh wrote: »

So technically, you are getting what you paid for. You just had your expectations set in different places and that is not the fault of the game makers.

I actually bought this game with no expectations, which is what I did with FFXIV ARR and was pleasantly surprised (until the latest Atma quest was introduced). So my "no expectation" has become "bad experience" pretty easily due to a mixture of the game design and the general unwillingness of people to play together and take the time to learn something new together. That is really the biggest reason why change, especially jarring change, is bad. Most people do not want to learn something new. This system is not just slightly different, it is jarringly different compared to the mainstream.

That is the big problem with trying to force people to take their time with group content in MMOs. You are not on your own time, you are with a group of people and you do not know what situation they are in (one might be in a rush to get to work soon, another might be getting nagged by his wife and not really paying attention, another could be watching TV while going through a dungeon as DPS and then gets mad at one of the backbone roles because they died due to lack of attention and are embarassed, but backbone is always easier to blame). I can't even look at lore books or take the time going through quest dialogue in a group dungeon because of the "go go go" mentality that MMOs have now bred, so I do not know how I am supposed to have the time to learn how to play the group content. You cannot force a game to go against the grain and expect success, that is what a lot of this game seems to be trying to do.

Adhamh wrote: »

Paying for the game doesn't mean that the developers have to cater to your every whim and complaint.

No, but it does mean that if they don't adjust the way they do things, they will see their level of potential funding drop off significantly very quickly. Which is why people who like the game the way it is now will say "there is no reason to complain, I like it", but to anyone who has power in the business end of things, all these complaints and requests for some level of familiarity, or at least greater information on how the systems work, should be very troubling.

Business does not survive on a small community telling those who are unhappy that they should keep their money in their wallet and leave. It would be nice if the world worked that way because everyone would be happier, they would not have to share things they *really* like with people who only like *some* of that thing and want other pieces to be diluted to be more palatable, but it does not work that way. The experience this game is right now will become watered down over time, because the business will demand it in order to survive.

elder42

And I do not know why so many people seem to think that people abandoning this game and going to WoW is a viable alternative in the complainer's mind. If I wanted to play WoW I'd be playing WoW, I do not need people to continually point out its existence. I stopped because I stopped enjoying it and Blizzard is so rich they do not need to care to do anything with that game anymore, now I am looking for a new MMO and this is now on the market. This game being unenjoyable right now does not make WoW more appealing, so there is no need for WoW to keep being brought up as an alternative to play. If anyone actually takes that advice, you are only succeeding in giving WoW more money that this game could be getting to further improve itself. Since it sounds like a lot of people only make this suggestion out spite (like, "WoW is bad, if you want this game to be bad to cater to your bad taste, go play WoW instead, because it's already bad"), you are just suggesting people make something you dislike even stronger.

I'm sure a lot of people are in the spot I am right now. Bored with WoW, Mists of Pandaria being all out of content and there being some time until the next expansion, not sure if they want to continue WoW anyway. Lots of people looking for a potential new MMO home during the interim. This is a big opportunity for Zenimax to take advantage of. You may not like that, but they should be very interested in keeping people like me interested, because people like you are already convinced to stay and subscribe, I am still tempted to leave and try to find another MMO to call home for a few years.