FilthMcNasty wrote:
Theonehio wrote:
This format is severely double-edged because it's easy to catch up/keep up..but at the sacrifice of lasting content.
Exactly. They're trying to appeal to a player who isn't dedicated to the game at all and while they're not doing a horrible job at it, they're hurting themselves in the process. I love theme parks, but I couldn't go to the same one every day unless there was enough to see and do that I could spread it out enough to keep it from becoming redundant.
I'm going to challenge this and declare that your ideal of dedication is both dated and completely invalid to begin with.
Let's start with the validation. The two measuring sticks a corporation who's developing a game are going to look at is subscription numbers and activity of an event. Period. A few dedicated people who habitually return to the same content over and over again in the same month are not more valuable to a larger group of casual players who play enough to stay subscribed through each month. In fact, if the numbers of casual players outnumber the hardcore base, the larger group is actually more valuable.
Dedication, in this sense is a player who remains subscribed. That's all that matters. So the new definition of dedication should be the person who remains subscribed and plays a lot of different content. Right now, the way that the game forces players to butt their heads at a single kind of content, by design squeeze life out of other parts of the game, because it forces everyone to worry about keeping current with the power creep. If there were multiple ways of keeping current with keeping current with the power creep, you can keep far more people engaged in the game, choosing what sort of method appeals to them more.
So. I'd say SE is hurting themselves more by over-focusing on hardcore content that keeps a minority of people engaged, rather than focusing on content that keeps a large number of people engaged.
Put simply, if they designed Diadem to function like Dynamis, or even a harder version of the 24 man content we have now. Then put the average difficulty of raiding between Savage and what we have now, pull savage entirely out of the progression pool. And put a decent reward system tied to PvP. They could potentially keep the highest reward tiers on all three routes, and appeal to the dedication of a far, far broader range of players than they are now.
The best of the best players? They will still be here, doing multiple sections of content rather than pushing just once, in order to twink out the best in slot spread between these three sets.
If the hardcore players
absolutely must have their prestige gear to weigh above other players. They can provide multiple routes for the Relic Weapon Quests which nets them higher stats at their respective peaks, and then stick the upgrades into Savage, or distribute them at the top echelons of each content type.
Right now? What SE's doing, is trying to lead most their players around the nose to content that gets progressively harder in order to progress. But they bleed subscriptions when they do that between the tedium and difficulty jumps. If the content is too easy, then hardcore players unsub when they get their goals done quickly because there's really only one route to take. If the content is too hard they loose the casuals because their harder end content just doesn't appeal. Their efforts should focus on midcore content that further encourages the 'variety of play' they're already trying to get people to do. Less nonsensical content that will distract players for a week and then get ignored, less super-difficult content that only a small sliver of players are going to enjoy and complete.
Edited, Feb 26th 2016 6:14pm by Hyrist