Okay, I don’t usually write these sorts of things, but I had to respond to this. I’ve been a HEAVY extremely serious RP’er for numerous years now, I’ve played WoW since vanilla, I’ve poured time, creative energy, art, and effort into every single character that I’ve made to make them as realistic as I possibly can, and I can honestly say, I heavily disagree with you. Let me explain:
I’ve poured a lot of time into finding pieces over the years, however those pieces, after the fact, never really held heavy emotional value for my character themselves, why is this? Simply put, what attaches a person to their characters design is not through the effort we put into getting the pieces, but rather the time we spend associating our character with the pieces they wear. A system like D3, where a baseline set of items are available based on your weight class/armor class, would be preferable because it WOULD start the association of pieces of gear with your character at both an earlier stage, and form the bond effectively. The idea that people wear specific pieces of armor is based due to the effort they put into it is entirely flawed, let me explain with an example:
One day when I was browsing different armor sets in wow, I spied a cool looking set of armor with blue scaling, so I went to go farm it, as you do. I got almost all the pieces within a few runs, great! right? well, I got them all, except the pants, the pants were a huge piece of the set and it took me roughly 6 months of near daily grinds to get it. Do you know how many times I actually used that set after I FINALLY completed it? about twice. Why? Because my association between that set, and that character were so fragmented that I lost almost all of my interest in the piece immediately after I got it. I ended up hating it, because I had to work so hard, for so long, for what amounted for some colorful pixels. Some people find value in a grind like that, you, sound like one of those people (just based on how you talk about different armor sets), but equating your experiences and feelings to the whole is just blatantly misplaced. Moreover,
Stating this as a truth about humans as a whole is both incorrect, and playing into the same thing that Alteroes accused you of, the sunken cost fallacy. Yes, people value things that they put time and effort into, but if that time and effort is not rewarded as much as it should, or isn’t effectively ‘paid off’ in one way or another, it loses value entirely to the person, they just begin to hate it, when they should, in your eyes, love it. People want to feel that wondrous “gosh I’ve finally done it!” feeling, but if the grind is too much, ultimately they begin hating that they spent so much time and effort to something that is ultimately useless. Sometimes this results in denial, it ends in the person saying “this surely has value to me because of the time I put in!” when in reality… it usually doesn’t. It’s a pretty toxic mindset, one that breeds elitism and denial, it’s not healthy to encourage that.
Grinding, does not inherently give value to everything that one receives, the amount of grinding that I did, on a stupid pair of pants, did not give them value to me, nor should it. What gave things value was the amount of time I used them, the time I spent adventuring in that straw hat you both talked about earlier. I associate that character with that hat, not because I spent time finding the hat, but because I wore it, and spent time loving it, and my character together.
Maybe, for you, this seems like not a lot of time spent, rolling through countless dungeons and raids that became antiques ages ago, but for others, they don’t have that kind of time to spend, they just want to enjoy their game. You may not like players that play like or are named like Cheetoduster420, but he paid his money just like you did, and he deserves to have his say, just like you do. The funny thing is though, you run over your own ideas when convenient
Yes, no one has committed to memory every piece of gear the game has to offer, they don’t often remember the time they spent finding one piece, where they got it, when. When time rolls forward, those memories are lost because they’re unimportant in the end. What matters is which pieces speak to the character you have. I can’t remember where most of my sets came from, but I do remember however, every single set that I made for every character, the grinding, doesn’t give it value, wearing it does, you admit it yourself in that statement. Value comes from the time spent looking at, and loving the piece.
These two statements themselves contradict, which is a little ironic, considering they’re right next to each other. The point is changing clothes, to make a unique combination that you find fun for your character, something that speaks to you personally. It doesn’t matter what everyone else has when you’re making these decisions, because ultimately, you’re picking things out based on what YOU like, not what everyone else likes, or has. Even IF everyone had the same exact choices of clothing (and they wouldn’t in the D3 system) this doesn’t mean that everyone is going to wear the same outfit, or combine things the same way. NW has loads of different, gorgeous pieces of armor that I would LOVE to wear, other people having access to this armor, doesn’t and SHOULDN’T play into that. However, in case you’re concerned, there ARE plenty of pieces that you can grind for, that not everyone has, they can add pieces that you have to find to wear, and there are already cosmetics that you can buy or get from twitch ect. These things won’t go away even with a system like D3, if that has value for you, then you can do that, if you don’t feel it’s valuable to you, then you Should have the choice not to.
You need to understand, that not everyone is you, not everyone gets value out of the things you personally do, that there are people that share things with you, and are different in other aspects. Taking this into account is what separates a good game from a bad one, the ability to CHOOSE is an important one. Giving people the opportunity to wear pieces that the art team poured love, heart, and soul into, is a beautiful thing, people should be able to enjoy these things the way they want to, forcing your idea of what creates value, isn’t great for anyone. Moreover when you try to support it with misquoted and misunderstood snippets of psychology, as though effort is the only correlating aspect to value in something as complicated as the human mind.
Yeah, I get that he got a little upset about the car statement, but it’s justified in its own right, things need to be comparable to the time put in, and frankly, a digital t-shirt, just isn’t valuable to some people the way it’s valuable to you, regardless of the time put in. Equating something that amounts to a collection of pixels in a game, even if grinded mindlessly for literal years, to a real life investment that requires actual time, learning, effort, practice, and risk is just not the same thing, in any aspect. He was trying to explain that to you, but you took it as a personal attack.
He was trying to explain that your idea, is a faulty one, and that a lot of people would honestly be offended at a comparison like that. It makes it look like you can’t be reasoned with.
Now, on the notion that it would be ‘easier’ to code and implement a system where each individual person has individual unlocks for every single piece of gear in the game, versus a system where you unlock a block of outfits given a tier system granted from an npc. The answer should be obvious once you read that previous sentence over again, if it wasn’t already. The block system is an easier system to code, implement, and maintain by EONS. A system like that would come out faster, would require less memory to maintain, would have far fewer glitches/bugs/issues, and would be more fluent for every person.
As someone that loves to dress up, I would be happier knowing my friends could dress up in the same or similar outfit to mine for fun adventures in a merry band, celebrating these lovely pieces of armor and gathering value and memories from them, vs having to help them grind through it all for hours because RNG was unkind to one of my friends, only to play a couple of hours because we got exhausted trying to just put it together, only to never do it again. All that time and effort forced upon my friends and I on behalf of a minor part of the community that is completionist or else obsessive about hard to acquire clothes is nearly the definition of toxic. Ironically, in the D3 system, that minority of players that feel that way, still have a place, as there are legendary items and equipment that can be farmed and acquired, things that are unique to that player, paraded around like trophy. I would even go so far as to suggest adding in the D3 system, and then specific secret quest lines and Easter eggs of clothing sets that you can acquire ONLY through finding them in the wild/hard to reach areas or fighting a weird, secret boss, or some such, that would be great! I’m not ignorant to the joy that comes from content like that, but to suggest that everyone should have to deal with only that, isn’t okay.
I’ve gone and said this all, without even touching on the fact that, above it all,
The value that a player gets from getting a piece of armor that they worked hard for is entirely imaginary.
The reality is, RNG is at the end of the day, RNG. It means that for every piece you worked for months to acquire, another person may have got it in their first run. It’s not something to overcome, it’s not something that everyone has to endure, it is only something by which time is consumed for one person, over another one, creating a fake appearance of difficulty. That pair of pants that took me 6 months, took another person 2 runs, I’ve MET people that didn’t realize those pants were even rare. The value that a person puts on a set in a game, parading it around as though it’s a big achievement, might not have been, they might have been just simply lucky, they may even just think the set just looks cool, and that’s the end of it. That toxic elitist ideology that some people get from rare suits of armor, is just that, toxic, and moreover, fake. It’s not needed. Some people like it, and those people can exist in a D3 system, but acting like all of this isn’t just a fake idea created through personal difficulty, that it even has that value to begin with, is exactly that, an act. RNG curses, and it blesses, that’s all there is to it.
Finally, onto the flaw in comparing WoW to NW. The reality of it is: they are entirely different games that are designed entirely differently. They have different goals, different focuses, different groups that are interested in it, and different timelines. WoW is designed via a sub based system, a system designed to keep you engaged in the game for as long as physically possible, something that will always, and forever, ultimately end in grinding, because it’s simply too expensive and difficult to do otherwise based on the way people consume mmos. Some people will actively spend every waking moment consuming content created for them, about as aggressively as possible. Anyone who played NW the first and second week will know that there were people within the first few days already at 60, because that’s how some people are. For WoW, it’s beneficial to add an entire system that forces you to regurgitate old content over and over again for hours, days, weeks, and months on end because it means you will continually pay them money, if only, thanks to the sunk cost fallacy. RNG is the friend of sub based mmos, and it’s used extensively, and excessively.
NW is a pay once, and play kind of game, you pay your ticket to get into the show, and you can enjoy it forever, as long as you want, or as little as you please. A game like that does not need to add artificial, grinding content to keep you engaged because you already paid the entrance fee. Yes, there is value in trying to keep people playing, yes grinding does and will continue to exist even in NW, but there is no pressure to force people to continue forever. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, NW made a wonderful system that will keep you revisiting old areas and new areas nearly equally at any given time. While I’m playing the game, I’m constantly bouncing all over the map, old areas for iron, new areas for magic wood, oh there’s a war going on better go to this area to sign up, better jog over here to help fight off this other faction. Jump jump jump jump. You are constantly going everywhere, no area is old, or new after a certain point, it all just IS and that won’t be going away with the addition of new content. ‘Older’ areas still have needed materials, wars, people, events, hey, maybe you simply just like the houses over there better so it’s your storage area. Maybe you’re just there because that’s the mutation dungeon that week.
There is absolutely no reason to worry about making players revisit old content in NW, because there ARE no old areas due to the core design of the game and it’s endgame content cycles
Comparing WoW and NW discounts their central core design ideologies entirely, it’s flawed action that would ultimately end in a misdiagnosis of any issues you found, or problems in any core systems you’d want to implement. They simply can’t be treated as though they are the same game. Yes, they are similar, but acting as though one system for a game will work as well for another, especially when they don’t even share the same basic goals, is a flawed way of thinking. NW does not need to revisit old areas, because it does not have that problem, nor will it. It has different problems that require different solutions, because it is a different game, from it’s core outward. Ironically, it’s easier to compare D3 systems and NW systems than it is to compare WoW to NW because they share more similarities and philosophies both in how the core gameplay loop is designed, and loot is acquired.
Finally, and this is more of an aside. No one here is attacking you, at least from what I’ve seen. However I cannot say the same for you, from your weird hate towards people that enjoy a game differently than you do.
To your implication that players that enjoy a game differently than you have less value than you do.
To the weird ego you portray sometimes.
All I have to say is this: I really hope that you take a moment to look back at how you speak to people and evaluate your viewpoints on people that see the world differently than you do. This is a conversation about a game, an exchange of ideas that doesn’t require us to combat each other, it would actually be preferable if we didn’t. People talking about your ideas and feelings does not equate to them attacking you or being toxic. People enjoying things differently than you doesn’t make you greater or them lesser. We don’t need it, so please, don’t be so defensive in the future, there hasn’t been any cruelty to anyone, save for you towards SupDog69 and Cheetoduster420. Let us have our straw hats, and get on with our lives. Thanks.
And to the NW Devs that may have looked at my post, Thank you for all of your hard work. I’ve never seen a team be so attentive to their player base, it’s extremely encouraging, and part of the reason I even bothered to write this at all. Your game is lovely, and you should all be proud of it, I see the hard work, it’s dripping with effort, despite the clear time constraints you likely suffered through. Sorry I wrote a book, but thank you for reading it regardless.