As the title says, I hate WoW achievements.
Why?
Because I enjoy PvP in WoW. Specifically, in battlegrounds. Yes, I’m sure that’s not hardcore enough for you leet gank groups that cut your teeth on the blood of the damned in Darkfall or blow up Titans in Eve with your tackler or whatever. I enjoy killing things, and WoW lets me do that and rewards me with points so I can buy new pants. It’s a win-win, usually.
I can’t play this week. Why? Because Blizzard’s version of Children’s Week this week has, as a quest to unlock an achievement, capping flags in several popular battlegrounds.
Note: in a given game of Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin, not everyone caps a flag. That’s not how the game is designed. It’s designed to be played as a cooperative team endeavor. In fact, everyone can’t cap a flag because only one person can at a time. And don’t even get me started about Eye of the Storm, because (a) the flag is in one spot where you are basically turned to paste anyway and (b) I play Alliance, and Alliance are never allowed to win Eye of the Storm. It’s in the rules. But hey! Someone thought it would be a brilliant idea to make an achievement for taking your little orphan sprog out to the battlegrounds, and spent about 3 minutes writing it up. Awesome.
Which means, currently, battlegrounds in WoW currently consist of nothing but achievement hustlers, frantically trying to unlock the achievement in the one week open to them before next year so they can get their purple pulsating flying manhood compensator (the flying mount, the fastest in the game, that you get for unlocking all the event-based achievements) trying desperately to outclick other players in clicking a flag, regardless of what actually is going on around him. Or, even worse, the achievement for Warsong Gulch where you have to return a dropped flag. Which results in entire teams camped around their flag in the hope that one foolhardy opponent actually tries to play the game as intended.
This is monumentally retarded, and here’s why.
- You don’t force people into PvP who don’t enjoy it. My god, this is basic MMO Design 101. Blizzard usually plays in the big leagues, and then goes and makes a junior varsity mistake like this that makes me wonder if the adult designers went on holiday this month. PvP is an entirely different playstyle. You incentivize it, you reward it, you don’t make it a requirement, and you especially don’t make it a requirement for achievement playstyles who are collecting achievements instead of, you know, doing PvP.
- You don’t make single player achievements that screw over other players. I literally wonder if the designer who made this achievement ever set foot in a battleground, so disruptive is it to gameplay. This incentivizes players – who, thanks to the point above, are there even though they have no interest in the actual gameplay – to screw over their teammates and be the first to win the CLICK CLICK CLICKY contest to unlock their precious little dingy achievement unlocked window so they can stop trying to screw over their presumptive allies and go back to doing what they enjoy. This is not good design. This is not even bad design. This is incompetent design. Anything that rewards players for pissing off other players is incompetent design.
I know. It’s only for a week. At least they didn’t include my favorite BG (though it seems awfully hard to queue for lately!) I should stop being a whiny …whatever the insult is for someone who just wants to kill people and right now wants nothing more than to kill his own presumptive allies (and lest we forget – I play Alliance. I *already* have a burning, unslaked desire to kill night elves) because Blizzard decided it’d be funny to direct the locust swarm of achievement whores through the wilds of PvP.
Just in case you think I’m being a whiny baby? Here’s what noted rantsite WoW Insider had to say:
Nightmare.
This…is not going to be a lot of fun.
School of Hard Knocks requires you to enter the four pre-Wrath battlegrounds and capture/return flags or assault nodes with your orphan out. It may sound simple, but think about the length and frustration factor of the average pugged battleground, and then think about the length and frustration factor of a pugged battleground where your own team’s sole concern is beating everyone else to an individual achievement.
This is going to work in one of two ways: either you get these achievements for being close to a captured/returned flag or a captured node, or you have to do it yourself. If it’s the former, then this achievement is suddenly a lot less nightmarish. (Editor’s note: it’s not. You have to be the one to return/cap the flag.) If it’s the latter…I really don’t know what to tell you that might help. Your best bet is to try to organize a premade (if your guild isn’t doing one already), rotate people into flag and node captures, and hope everyone sticks around long enough for everyone to get their achievements done, although this is obviously going to be a tall order by the time you hit the 40-man AV.
I’m looking forward (well, not really) to seeing a series of Warsong Gulches where no one plays offense, Arathi Basins where no one plays defense, Alterac Valleys where no one plays defense, and EOTS where the entire game is a writhing, howling mass of players clustered around the center trying to be the first to click the flag. Oh, and to make things even better, with the huge decline in arena participation and the relative ease of raiding, few players at 80 have serious resilience gear, making it easy for burst DPS on the opposing team to annihilate people in the run for a flag or node.
I return to my previous statement; nightmare.
Hey! Blizzard! Why not for next month’s event? Make an achievement that requires you to get an arena rating of 2000! That’ll be a hoot!
I hate WoW achievements. I want my game back, goddamit.
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Lum, if Ghostcrawler is indicative of the sort of clueless, upjumped summer interns on WoW’s live team these days, you can expect the number of ill-conceived design decisions to do nothing but increase. No worries, though: by the time WoW is finished punching itself out, Blizzard’s next MMO should be hitting store shelves; and we’ll have a presumably stellar SC2 to tide us over in the interim.
My beef with WoW’s current direction is broader than Lum’s–his seems to be that Blizz is failing (at least in this instance) to make an event ideally accessible to casuals. My problem is that they’ve swung the pendulum too far in favor of making the game a discrete collection of minigames for those last few potential subscribers out there–particularly through the most recent round of nerfs to the not-very-difficult Ulduar and by removing the tactical aspect of PvP.
I guess it makes sense since chatroom+minigame lobby is apparently the Future of Online Gaming, but it leaves me cold.
He started with a ten paragraph post. If you take out Lum’s quoted section Owain’s original comment was longer.
I used “flaking” for not having to say “talking shit”. Because he was talking shit about games that he didnt even played.
The discussion seems to be heading to PvP in general, and PvP games like Eve and Darkfall. So, …
I had thought that EvE had the problem of “The old are game-designed better than you, you can never catch up”. I read a web page (linked earlier in here) that indicated otherwise — a group of 3 people, after about 3 months, with good teamwork, can take a singleton player with 5 years.
Alright, if that’s true, then the “older is better” issue is solved. And it makes sense — there has to be a way for older players to be removed, or there’s no point in starting.
But consider this: That’s basically saying that you have to play in a team.
It’s one thing for a game to permit, or even encourage team play.
It’s something else for a game design to say “Soloers are out of luck. Period”. Saying that I can’t play game X unless I can get some friends to play at the same time as me? And if it’s all about teamwork, and working together as a smooth unit, that means that I can’t play “pickup” with a new group next week; I have to practice with the same team and get our team moves down.
Someone, that doesn’t seem much better. Maybe it will become the next big “professional game sport” — it is, after all, built-in teamwork, and look at how many people turn in to see a professional sports team. But that’s not what makes a good casual “game” — an entertainment concept.
What could make a good “casual game” — entertainment — and still give the challenge of another person instead of a mob?
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Do pulsating, compensating, flying purple people mounts come in one eye and a horn?
If you want to take down a 5 year vet after only 3 months, then yes, it might be a good idea to bring a couple of friends with you, but that in itself does not demonstrate that “soloers are out of luck.” It may just mean that you might have to wait a few more months for you to be able to do it yourself. I don’t think that is unreasonable. Again, I’m still not sure why people what to play an MMO and yet try to make a solo game out of it. If you want a personal challenge, sure go solo. But to go solo and then complain that you aren’t as effective as a group strikes me as being a bit silly.
“What could make a good “casual game” — entertainment — and still give the challenge of another person instead of a mob?”
This pretty much rules out persistant MMOs where players build game skills (not mouse/keyboard skills) progressivly over time. Your best bet would be a first person shooter, I think. The capabilities of your character are as good as they are ever going to get, barring things like special weapon unlocks. With a FPS, you are mostly concerned with ping, knowledge of the map, and your twitch ability.
You know, for getting teh purples you are going to need other people. Its time to review the abreviation: Massive Multiplayer Online Game. MMOG. The whole point of those games is playing with others. Sure you can do stuff alone, but the biggest rewards you dont get it alone.
I said it once and I still believe it: MMOG cannot be like single-player games despite the fact that most people want that. Sorry. Its just like wanting apples to be oranges. They are way too different. Mainly because an MMO involves playing with others. You cant escape that.
@Keybounce
What would make a good “casual” game that allows newbie vs veteran to be a challenge? I think maybe a game where experience gives you “broader” skills instead of raw power. So the vet has a lot more cool moves that apply debuffs and what have you, but he doesn’t have ten times the raw DPS, hit points and armour of the newbie. If the vet uses all his great moves intelligently, he’s going to win – but an idiot playing his brother’s level 80 won’t crush a skilful level 1.
Closest examples I can think of to the “broader” power design are Guild Wars and Planetside.
It also doesn’t make sense to make the entire leveling process soloable, only to have grouping suddenly be the post-level content. It’s like playing a bowling match, but the last set is suddenly a game of basketball.
Games don’t necessarily have to make sense. They just need to make money.
To that end, I can’t wait until some genius charges monthly for a solo MMOG, where your only “interaction” is through chat, auction house, or in the terrible designed small-group content that don’t give rewards any better than solo play does. Moneyhats will be in abundance.
Honestly, yes those games can and will exist, but i fear a day when those games are the only game out there. It will be a day when everything that i believe as a gamer will die by the hands of the collective stupidity. Because, those games are good enough for the mindless ones, but not for me. I play games because the thirst for a challenge, i want my actions to make a difference, and i want to share that with others.
Almost nothing in this world feels better than competing against other human being, and those times when you could barely get the victory….is when you truly feel alive. You can smack me all day for that, i dont care, i play games for that.
Returning to the subject, its not that bad that PVErs start to go to the BGs more often, it is bad that they are inmersed in that clickfest orgy/gangbang/bukkake party in the flag and/or towers instead of trying to win. That, for the people that PVP, its like standing on the fire for PVErs. And god knows that people can suck in BGs without the help of stupid archievements, thank you.
I seem to have been misunderstood.
I don’t think that a 3 month player should be able to take out a 5 year vet by themselves without a sneak attack, catching them off guard, an ambush, or catching net lag, or something like that.
A team of 3 with the basics under their belt is another story. In a ship versus ship game, a ship is going to have the same abilities no matter how skilled the pilot is. A more skilled pilot might aim better and hit more/miss less; a well-equipped ship might have better targeting computers (and then, if you can’t afford it after three months, it’s probably mis-priced), and three ships will outgun that one ship. Now, maybe the 5 year vet has an ultraship with more firepower, but the team of 3 can lure the solo ship into a trap. Etc.
In a WoW style game, 3 months gets you to level max; then it’s three-on-one, and the one might have more PvP experience, but is still outnumbered and out of luck.
I see nothing wrong with saying that a soloer will not be as powerful as a group.
I see nothing wrong with saying, “Hey, if your friends are online, you can play with them”.
I have played in MMO games where there are hundreds if not thousands of other players. Maybe I’m competing as a merchant against a hundred other merchants. They may not be online at the same time as me. Maybe I’m competing in skill against the other players.
And maybe I’m in direct team play against another team, with perhaps 4 to 20 total players involved.
The game world itself may have 400 people online; I may play against a background of 2500 people on the server.
But I am only playing with a group of 1 to 5 people as a rule. In Puzzle Pirates, I used to routinely play with 25 to 50 people at a time, and occasionally 150 people at a time (as that’s how many people it can take to crew the largest ships); others have weekend blockades (the YPP “raid” game) with 400 people involved in one battle.
Yet even with those numbers, what’s the typical “group size” as seen by players?
Most players are doing their part to contribute to the ship.
One person has the game role of navigating the ship that has 1 to 150 people on it. (50 in a typical raid ship)
One person might have the job of XO and manage all those people on the ship.
What’s typical in a WoW type game? A team of 5. In a raid, one person on each side managing 10 teams for a total of 50 people.
The server is massively multiplayer.
The player’s game is small multiplayer, or solo.
Now, most MMO games have this basic rule:
You can play solo. You’ll get more entertainment, access to the nastier areas, etc, if you play in a group.
A game like Eve has this basic rule:
If you go solo, expect to be ambushed and destroyed. You must be in a group at all times.
Worse, most or all MMO’s have this rule:
As much as your character is not you, there is no hint of any sort of self awareness or self defense. If you are turned away from your screen for a moment, your character is helpless. So you never get any real “downtime” while playing, as you can be ganked at any time if not 100% aware. Oh yea — never mind that in RL your character would have peripheral vision, some sort of defenses, etc.; in this game, you have narrow tunnel vision that doesn’t let you see what you would see if you were there, you don’t have any sort of instinct or reflexes, but must depend on being able to find the right key or mouse button; there is no instant feedback, but rather you have to worry about several different status displays that act as a HUD at best, obscuring your limited vision even farther, etc.
An MMO RPG is not the same as “being there”.
The avatar in an MMO isn’t supposed to be you in most games — as your avatar gets “higher” (level, skill, etc) it gains in ability even if you do not, in most games, yet the basic skills of responding to what happens to you never goes above your own ability to manage the keyboard, the UI, deal with the many different add-ons/plug-ins/macros/customizability/etc (see WoW and all those things for it), etc.
I hardly think that testing your ability to memorize map trivial and twitch better makes for a fun game. And yes, some people do.
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Again, the difference of:
You can play solo, but group play will be better
vs.
You can’t survive if you are solo. Make sure your friends are able to play with you before you log on. Or, make sure that there are guildmates with you, in your area, who will help you and are not involved with something else.
Not to mention games like WoW that say: “Yes, your friend is online. But they gained 8 levels the last two evenings when you were not playing, and can no longer group with you without wasting their time for nothing.”
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Should a level 1, skilled player, be able to take out a level 80 played by an idiot? I really hope not.
I think a far better question is, should an avatar that has gone through the “newbie” area, and done some basic development, run by a skilled player, be able to challenge a high-level/skill avatar run by a bad player? I hope the answer there is yes. I hope the answer is something like the underdog has a 33% chance of winning. Enough that the high level person won’t be looking for that, but not so much that the low level person is looking for the high level person.
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Do pulsating, compensating, flying purple people mounts come in one eye and a horn? (Does this board support signatures?)
WoW growth finally stopped. I wish I could say it is beginning of the end and in a couple years we will be playing something else, but that actually depends on GC’s continuous employment.
WoW is doomed, 9 months tops before it loses all but its core subscribers. It just doesn’t have the depth to last. Oh wait, that prediction didn’t pan out.
A little wiser, I realize the major fault in my wild speculation was just underestimating for how many players WoW was their first MMORPG – WoW was their EverQuest. How long did it take players to bore of EverQuest?
Well, lets see. Everquest started in 1999, peaked at about 550,000 in mid-2005, and in 2007 it was down to about 175,000.
Following that pattern, WoW was released in 2004. It should peak at about 2009 – WoW’s growth has stopped, you say? By 2011 it will still have about 35% of its subscriber base.
Of course, WoW is a massive exception to the usual rules in MMORPG subscriber bases, perhaps that means behavior will be different here. (Even though it essentially is another version of EverQuest.)
A really tricky thing to consider here is just how many of that 35% were the original players. My guess? Without even looking at the statistics, I’m going to say less than 10%, simply on the grounds that I really doubt a MMORPG can entertain somebody for anywhere near 9 years before chronic burnout applies.
@geldonyetich
The pattern with Everquest doesn’t really apply to WoW. Something happened between 2005 and 2007 – WoW got into full swing and ate everyone else’s lunch.
WoW’s growth has stopped, at least for now, because they’ve saturated the markets they’re in. They’ll have the usual rate of attrition as players burn out/get girlfriends or whatever, but I don’t expect a precipitous decline unless something new and shiny comes along and lures a large swathe of the player base away.
And it won’t be Darkfall
@Tremayne
I’ve mentioned this somewhat before, but while Guild Wars didn’t have the massive gear scaling that raid-style MMOs have, you definitely could NOT take on fully developed characters without some pretty considerable grinding (but you could at least pick PVE or PVP).
In the case of Planetside it would be more accurate to say that you needed to get enough levels to access whatever cheesy tactic was most effective (Pounder MAX, or Surge/Jackhammer, or whatever it was that Vanu used, I forget).
More fundamentally, while the principle of your suggestion is sound, the trouble is that abilities that aren’t directly quantifiable are the biggest can of worms in PVP balance. Complaints about gear (except the stupidity of resilience) are actually not all that common on the WoW forums anymore; it’s precisely those debuffs that have everyone up in arms.
As the guy who doesn’t want to clutter up your Warsong Gulch with my under-geared, squishy ass, I am in complete agreeance with this assessment.
Oh about the Ulduar nerfs, its mostly in the hard modes because, well, some bosses (Kologarn) hard modes were determined mathematically impossible to kill and stuff like that. When, even in the near-perfect tests of the best classes and specs dont kill the thing its bad.
Achievements are consolecrap and should always be consolecrap!!!
I never hate them to be in WoW and other PCGames!!
Before, I would suggest that people <i>are going</i> to quit WoW on the grounds that they’ve got to be bored of the game by now.
Now, I would <i>beg people to quit WoW</i> on the grounds that it, along with piracy and other factors, are strangling the PC game market.
Nobody ever said stunning success came without consequences for everybody else.
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