The health of the game is not determined by the 5% sweaty no life players like myself who played on other regions, its the new players who rightly expect a fresh experience with new player friendly stepping stones and progression.
Whilst I personally love the idea of t3, perception of the experience matters a hell of a lot and it will inherently exclude a large array of players who would have otherwise have played.
There is a lot of nuance to the premise, but i think long term, the health of the game will be affected negatively by this initial start point.
Alots of my friends will be like so T3 is the end game? And I need to do what to reach it? And shop has mats for upgrading that cost real money? You don’t have to be genius to see that it will turn alots of people off in comparison to T1 which anyone can reach easly and get used on the Gameplay loop. Personally I hoped we get some more classes before we reach T3 so I don’t know, not a fan of this decision.
The problem is the stepping stones are still required and nobody tells people this. You cannot skip T1 and T2 and go right to T3, because you are literally locked out due to item level.
When WoW Classic re-launched, it wasn’t like Vanilla. Everything in Vanilla was there. I didn’t see this uproar. It took literally 2 years for Vanilla WoW to fully release all the content we got.
I think this argument is less about content and more about the progression experience for the player. And I believe it is a valid argument because experience is important, and they are judging it on other games (mainly WoW (skip via payment) and FFXIV (skip via payment)) and they perceive a rush when it doesn’t exist. Nobody is pressuring anyone to rush other than themself or their guild if they are in one.
That being said, nice job adding color to the original, much better. The digestible stepping stones EXIST. CASUAL AND NEW PLAYERS DO NOT HAVE TO RUSH THROUGH!
The image represents perception, not the reality, the game could be the best game to have ever been made but if 99% say its garbage…none of it matters.
Loud voices do not perception make. These forums do not represent the majority of players. They represent people who actually use forums.
I don’t understand why anyone who has never played this cares about what content is available on release. People will be level 50 on day one-two of head start.
Some of this comes down to people wanting to cap others for “fairness.” To them I say grow up. Life isn’t fair.
Some of it comes down to experience. Nobody is rushing people, enjoy the game how you will.
Some of it comes down to the absolute magnitude of content. So what. You’d rather have no end game and the game die in a month?
None of these arguments hold water in the end. They are just whining to whine, and trying to be the loudest voice in a sea of whiners.
Play the game. Enjoy it how YOU like. Or, don’t play and find something else that suits you. But don’t be a whiner because SGR has billions of hours of playtime among players to know what they are doing. AGS, well, hopefully they learned a few things from the fiascos of New World.
Perception isnt relevant in the social space, its the space outside of it, where the 99% are who dont interact on forums or social media. Its the people whos perception of a game is determined by the odd youtube comment, a random forum post they see when looking into the game, or the various information that is scattered they havent really looked for.
the original image represents the perceived gap between start and end points, the relevance of what comes between means little when specifically related to perception.
Yes you still have to go through all of the tiers but t1 is no longer the “current endgame”. Streamers were telling viewers to rush to 50 in t1 for a year and that wont change now that we have t3. There is just longer progression that you “have to” rush through. Sure enough you don’t actually have to do it. But for a lot of ppl mmorpgs are competitive and people compare themselves to others. Poeron A will see person B having way higher gear and they will feel bad about their progression as if “I worked so hard for this but this person has so much more”. Yes, you can still enjoy the game at a slower pace, the “full” release does not prevent you from doing just that. But a lot of people compare themselves with others, be it healthy or not and it will happen here as well.
“just don’t play the game if you don’t like it” like what the faq? It’s not like we are saying that game is bad now, we just don’t “like” this certain change. If you don’t like something you just look away? “it is the way it is”? Forums are here to give feedback and telling people to “not play the game” doesnt really do anything.
As the thread owner said, perception matters. Of course not all people will be affected by this. Some will rush, a lot of people will go by slower pace. And yes this doesnt represent “majority” of the players. Majority of players are new players who dont know how tiers work so this doesnt really affect them. People on forums are the ones that have a tad bit of experience with the game and are for certain reasons against the change.
I agree this will end up being perceived badly by casuals which make up the vast majority of any gaming community. I’ve smashed my way to T3 on multiple toons in another region and was actually hoping to be able to cruise through T1 running up some alts and doing a bit of the mountain of side content you need to do for the extra skill points. Releasing T3 at the start will inevitably leave an absolute chasm between the hardcore and the casuals.
Stop pushing a false perception. Your visual(preception) makes it look like you will be skipping tiers 1 and 2 and going straight to big bad scary T3. That is the furthest from the truth. We on the RU had to progress through T1 and T2. Even the whales had to.
This is exactly what I fear for the long term health of the game as well. After all, you only get one shot at creating the right first impression, and it’s really difficult to recover from bad first impression.
In addition, we all knew that there will be P2W shitposts about the game once it launches and the T3 at launch will only make this argument stronger, creating a more “p2w” impression than it would have with T1/T2 release at launch. Again, that doesn’t mean the game is actually more “p2w” but the impression and perception created, especially when fresh players see how huge the gap is between them and veteran players and whales within the first month of launch.
Of course, you can argue that it doesn’t matter because it’s just about your personal progression, and you’re right. That’s how I feel about the game as well. However, we’re talking about MMORPG. You have to be delusional to think there won’t be people who will be turned off by feeling at a huge disadvantage when they see people who simply soar above you at ridiculous speed, especially considering the incredible difference in terms of resource income difference between T1/T2 and T3.
Perceptions matters and you only get one shot at making good first impression.
EDIT: Also wanted to add that it doesn’t matter that you need to go through T1 and T2 to get T3. There is a huge difference between T1 and T2 becoming simple steps you have to go through and get out of as soon as possible, and actually becoming a temporary soft cap and its contents staying relevant for a period of time. They instantly turn into filler contents.
While there has been no incentive for people to actually try to spend money to fast progress through T1/T2, there certainly is now. When I say spend money, it’s not just about AH but also mats packs sold directly from cash shop.
I don’t see many suggestions of an actual release cadence in many of these posts. I get that people are giving their pros and cons and thinking of the casual playerbase or thinking of the hardcore player base. However, the main point of contention is how fast is too fast and how slow is too slow.
How long in T1 and T2 would have been acceptable before releasing T3 for casuals and hardcore/veteran players? It would require balance but I can’t tell what the agreed balance is.
Honestly, I think 2-3 months per T1/T2 or releasing T1+T2 with 3-5 months before T3 release would have been perfectly fine, giving enough time for new players to flock in, and giving players enough time to learn about the game, and reach the end of vertical content.
That also would have been enough time for hardcore/vets to complete vertical progression and work on horizontal ones like collections while waiting for additional content releases without getting burnt out or feeling pressured to spend money.
Considering the fact that it took JP 9 months to get T3 and 1 year or so to get legion raid, this would still be much faster pace than any other regions.
They will gain much higher short term revenue with T3 at launch but can’t shake off the feeling that it is being set up for less success in terms of reaching wider audience and creating good impression, which are closely tied together.
Yes, but without the Astalgia patch. Now, you just need to reach +15 instead of 3 times +15. You can’t compare the two. They just add the doors to T3 (no Argos, no Baltan), the very beginning, and everything will be just fine
Right, which is why making the pace to be half of JP is more than sufficient at a staggered cadence, rather than dumping it all at once.
This doesn’t affect how I will play the game for the most part, as well as many vet/hardcore players and people who have information on the game. This does, however, affect a lot of fresh players and potential players and those who learn about the game in the future and think about trying it out, especially after amount of “P2W” shitposting expected post launch. Just think about how distributed/divided the player pool will be month or two after the release.
You didn’t play the game bro
This big arrow doesn’t exist, it will takes weeks/months to get T3.
T3 launch make everyone happy, everyone will be abble to go at their speed they want and to feel improvement whatever the path you choose.
Nothing except yourself make this “big arrow” big, you guys putting yourself the pressure to rush while there is legit no reason when you don’t want to.
Good points. I wavered on this as well. I felt T1 release would have been fine and going to T2 about 2 months later and T3 coming 2-3 months later after that.
I think the difficult part is gear irrelevancy transitioning between tiers. As a veteran player, I wouldn’t bother with upgrading epic gear sets in abyss dungeons if the road map told me T2 was coming in 2 months. I would upgrade blues and do collectibles. If the next tier was 3 months possibly I would do it if I had nothing else to do.
However, I’m not sure at what pace the casual base would be okay with this. They are learning the ins and outs of the game and crafting epic gear with set bonuses in T1 for it to be wiped in 2 months and they would craft a new t2 epic set for it to happen again.
I think this would give the impression that the game doesn’t respect your time unless content creators and the veteran community got on board to tell them to not waste their time trying to craft these sets and gather these accessories because they aren’t needed to get past that content anyway.
The partial T3 release should naturally progress newer players to only get blue gears and upgrade those between tiers until they reach T3. Looking at various opinions this has kind of swayed me toward T3 at release being a good thing for newer players. I’m not a long-term veteran but I’ve been on RU for about 3 months. I never bothered to craft epic gear getting to T3 just used my blues until then.
