"such as how a lot of players spending a lot of time doing one activity doesn't necessarily mean that activity is fun, so much as more rewarding than everything else."Literally BFA with islands and warfronts.
I think "Mechagon" needs to be changed to "Mechanar" in the quote...
"back in Burning Crusade, Mechagon was the most popular dungeon in the game."?
"we learned a lot from bfa" is code for "we ignored community feedback because we always know best"
"The thing that is most gratifying to any game developer is going out into social media, watching streams, reading Reddit, talking to friends and reading praise and seeing people having fun with the work we have poured our hearts into".It must have been 2 long years then.
Non-answer bull$%^&. The natural continuation is "and so, we always strive for more engagement with tactics that we know work - that we know you probably hate when presented with, but love after a good few tries.".While I get the need for good PR...who asked?
"If people are logging in less and playing less, that may be an indicator that there's nothing for them to do, that they're getting less value from their subscription."This assumption is exactly why everyone complains about their engagement metrics, why their engagement metrics hurt the game, why their assumptions from their engagement metrics cause them to make development decisions that are bad.Reaching completion doesn't mean loss of subscription value. (Excluding the extremes) You used to be able to go hard for the first month or so of a patch grinding your dungeons and reps and whatever you needed to fully participate in the content. Then you were able to essentially JUST do the content you wanted to do. Time played dropped after the start, however, that meant you were focusing on only your favorite content so the monthly sub lost ZERO value. Then near the end of the patch you'd have gotten your BiS gear, cleared the content at a level you were able and the time played dropped off more. This wasn't an indication of the subscription losing value, it was an indication that you were fully satisfied with the content and ready to relax a bit before the next round of content.Having stuff to do is good. Having stuff you feel like you need to do can be draining. Adding more obligations does not increase subscription value. It decreases subscription value. If the sub is a burden it's not better.
so if they enjoy making a game that players find both fun AND engaging, why do they consistently ignore complaints from beta test players?
I think Island Expeditions were a fun idea and fun the first times. Forcing players to grind it was really the problem.If Island Expeditions were this thing purely for cosmetics, I could see them being a success. Some players would burn themselves out doing it to get the stuff they want as fast as possible, but that's just how some players are. Others would do Island Expeditions in their free time after they've done all the important stuff, only when they felt like it, to slowly works towards that mount or pet they want. And if there's a currency to guarantee what you want if you don't get it as a drop, it makes the system perfect.I hope they create more content like that in the future, just don't force us into it.
Ion said they are not going to make another ap grind and yet they made gem socket only available by doing maw grind. Ion said himself that they are aware of how tedious maw is and they are going to improve the experience in maw, but they barely did anything. Why tie character power in to field contents that most player don't wants do? I only play healer and I despise field content because it feels so tedious after HP scaling they implemented in end of legion. I get gears from mystic raid and still takes forever to kill random none elite in field. If you are going to make HP scaling in field do differently for specs. or better stop tying character power to field contetns.
Great stuff. I love Ion. <3Lookin good in the neighborhood, man.