So above are excerpts from the letter which detailed AGS’s read on what they perceive to be the main culprit of burnout by the community. I am going to shatter that with a simple statement.
Burnout is caused by your weekly obligation to raids for gold, not your daily content.
Why burnout exists
This is why burnout exists and persists among the vast majority of players. This is why the game feels less like an MMORPG where I can indulge in all the other content in the game and feel like I am obligated to run the same hamster wheel. Players feel forced to marathon thier weekly raid content because without doing so you cannot progress your character and the only feasible way to do that is to run 3 raids across 6 characters. All players form thier habits and plans for the game around this behavior, even if they do not have a roster of 6 themselves, why? Because those with a roster of 6 represent the cohort within the community that enforce gatekeeping standards. Adjusting daily content is still fine to do but a player who experiences burnout cannot burnout from daily content because you can let that go and retain value through rested bonus. There is no rested bonus for raids, and even if there were it would make FOMO worse.
As it currently stands your playerbase cannot enjoy this game or it’s many contents (horizontal, PvP, etc) as they should like a normal MMORPG because you force us to play alts. This is why people burn out. This is why they are so hostile to new players. How can you care about someone who is new to the game when you have to run 18 raids a week. How can you enjoy the game when you tailor your game habits around gatekeeping standards perpetuated by those who are mentally fatigued. You can’t afford to fall behind until you flame out and those willing to replace those players diminish by the day.
Until this domino falls your issue honestly wont see real headway and you cannot realistically foster a true casual playerbase no matter how much content you nerf, or how many catchup mechanics you implement. The weekly “homework” is far too much.
The solution
In order to address this burnout you will need to cut down the amount of weekly raiding required to only one raid entry per week roster wide. What does this mean? You run 3 legion raids for all your gold for the entire week on your roster. After that you can collect bound/character materials for your individual alts progression, but gold can only be collected ONCE per week.
Ever since the launch of this game in the west people have questioned the need for alts, and it was clear to us why. The community has always had a read of what you guys say you are simply now realizing in your letter. There are other ways to entice players to try new classes (balance patches, skins, better VGUs, unique identities, etc) and thus invest on them. Main swapping could also be made much easier while not only retaining more players but attracting new blood if your roster is much more malleable and optional.
cause they arent required to do the raid x6 times to get gold. infact the only reason they need to do raid is to get raid gear but that could also be gained in m+.
if wow had a similar roster model where the game gives you high incentive to play 6 characters and raid on all 6 there would be people moaning day in and out.
Yes u dont need Gold. Since WoW system is a little bit different. But in the end if i buy my BIS item for Gold for Farm weeks/months for my BIS item. In the end its the same.
1 Char in WoW is boring long term and do multiply is more work then maintaining 6 roster in LA.
I play WoW 17 year + and LA is alot easyer playing multi chars End game then WoW.
People would be this amount of required content makes the game feel unbearable for most over an extended period of time. As raid content gets harder and you push your roster this becomes harder to maintain. I’ve witnessed real time many players drop or develop very toxic attitudes and snap simply because of the stress the game is causing on top of thier real life. This game has always had potential to be much healthier for a broader audience while also still remaining true to it’s core. Forcing people to raid on alts is what kills it. Gatekeeping starts from the top down and is perpetuated because of the “need” to do things efficiently.
U dont need more then 1 Char to play End Content. If the person feels bored he can try 1 more step by Step. Only FOMO is forcing u to play full roster or more chars.“If u do more chars cuz u want more gold mats etc”
I dont agree that burnout is only due to weekly raids. Ive burnt out and quit in May last year before any raid even dropped in the game, because i min maxed 6 alts chaos plus guardians plus other stuff and was trying to catch up to whales doing argos on release
So if they implement what you suggested, the pressure to farm the daillies is gonna increase again due to them being tje focus of most of our time now, and same people who would burnout doing radis would now burnout due to daillies
Yea then its a sickness. In germany if u have a real " burnout ". U can be go for weeks/months off work since its a sickness. And need to be geting care.
I would say, reduce gold earning characters from 6 to 3 characters. Double the gold gained from raids.
This would make us only do 9 raids per week for gold, cutting weekly raidtime in half to stay relevant. You still get same amount of gold, and you can play more alts if you want too.
There is a big difference between 6x3 different raid with different group or 1 raid with 12 boss and with the same group (or mostly the same group) as a weekly content.
I think Lost Ark raid is harder because its 4-8 man raid and there is bigger pressure on 1 individual member.
I dno about that, the raids is the best part of the game lol (though yeah they can feel repetitive if you do too many in a row). Just reduce the daily activity like chaos dungeons and guardians
Like i sayd u can play 1 char only and stil be in current End Game.
If the player feel force to play more or full roster or more then 6 chars for more gold/mats reason and not just for the fun to play multiply chars. Its Fomo in a nutshell.
Well trying to achieve too much can be a problem for anyone sure, but feeling pressured to do all raids as we currently do is hard to circumvent. Also many people are willing to not chase whales and still find it hard to prog content and do older raid content again because your fighting a lot of gatekeeping which is perpetuated by the over doing of raid content. If raid content was one and done for most people gatekeeping standards would severely diminish and “not having time” to pug with a new player would be a lot less of a feasible attitude to hold.
More people than not would open up to it. This would also extend to opening up the avenue to doing other content to get those tradable rewards from dailies (PvP and other horizontal, mini games, etc). Theres too much focus on repeating content on new characters for the formula to play this game. There needs to be more time to basically sit, do nothing or do something simply for the fun of it and not be punished in the long run.
I dont think that mathematically you can keep up with others with only 1 character. Its like not possible without swiping.
Especially if you are not a lone wolf and like to play with friends.
You want to play with them.
Of course if you are playing alone without friends then its all about FOMO. But this game is built on fomo.
In other words, it’s about the players, not about the game. Nobody is forcing us to do anything - it’s our choice because of our faulty thinking.
And yes, it IS faulty thinking.
If you feel constant stress about doing your weeklies or daillies in order to catch-up and burn out while doing it, you actually made your progress even slower (you’ll gonna return one day in the future only to realize you’re now even further behind)
On the other hand, simply relaxing and doing what feels like doing will pay up because most of the people who burnt out left and paved a way for you to catch up to them xD
It’s just human personality cycles. Can’t change human personality with any change you implement in the game
