120916-welp-thought-id-like-it-page-6

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To be fair, World of Warcraft, when I first started in it, had no LFD. It had no training dungeon. And it was a lot harder than it's become; even VC required a kill order and a CC directive. I used the LFG channel in Westfall and had a random group essentially teach me how to do WoW group mechanics. I mean, they were technically holding my hand (as much as someone who has played games and MMORPGs for most of my life, was there at launch, and was splitting time between it and FFXI could be taught). They taught me a lot because WoW was a lot faster than the other games I had been playing at that time and I didn't know warrior at all (luckily, they let me DPS instead of making me tank my first VC (even thought I distinctly recall having to wait in the channel for a while more until a tank showed up, with the group passing up on other DPS). Community is so important to these games because people don't know what they're doing.  Even seasoned MMORPG players need someone to get them up to speed.  And one of the major reasons I don't think the dungeons need to be detuned is that I don't actually believe ANYONE is beneath the normal dungeons.  Yes, they're harder than what's out there these days, but as has been stated here by a few people, it's not THAT hard.  It's going to be frustrating if we, as a community, don't make it better.  There is no training dungeon, no DF mechanics, and not even a detuning of dungeons that will make group play in this game fun unless we, as players in groups, make it that way. That's why MMORPGs are fun, what sets them apart from other genres, that we are an active commodity of the game. I don't think Danohavek is too used to having his hand held or a product of WoW's wet-noodling, honestly. I think he came into this game perhaps thinking death was more of a big deal than it is in this game, and he was probably helped along, being in a PUG, by some asshat who told him that dying in your first dungeon runs, perhaps without even instruction, was absolutely unacceptable. Believe me, I don't think the dungeons need to be detuned, but I in no way question that the guy is frustrated and wanted to quit. I just don't think it's because the dungeons are too hard, I think it's because, whatever their intentions, people told him the dungeons are above him. They're not. I hope he came upon a much better group in the community that will help him develop into the kind of player in a PUG that doesn't just silently do his job, but will also teach other players the ropes himself. He's capable, I think all people are capable. Part of that relies on us being better mentors and, at the very least, a friendlier and more accepting community.


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I'm not entirely sure why you think that the man who has the numbers and can see them, then came to the opposite conclusion from you, should be directly contradicted because you don't like that it disproves you. That's a major problem; you're telling me to outright believe he is wrong for absolutely no reason. You are trying to say, "It could have been something completely different, and if it had, he would be wrong!" But we have zero reason to think you have an insight into the game (you have directly stated you don't have the information) that Timetravel doesn't have. I'm not sure what is difficult about that concept for you. You are essentially saying that if Timetravel had information that contradicted his conclusion (which nobody, including you, has any logical reason to accept as the gospel), then his conclusion would be wrong. That's not how logic works, and you know that. I can't think you aren't aware of the problem with your idea. You came to your conclusion first and assumed he was wrong because he directly contradicts you. That's a major issue here. You are not analyzing data. You said you have no data. In fact, you said you did not care that you didn't have data. What "data" are you examining? Timetravel has analyzed data, you have not. Person A has information, comes to a conclusion. Person B comes to a different conclusion without information, and says you should believe them simply because the other person can't possibly be perfect. Does that make this make more sense for you? Sure, Timetravel may be fallible, but not only are you just as, if not more, fallible, you have no data on which to base the conclusion you reached. If you hadn't reached a conclusion, that wouldn't be an issue, but you did. You are directly telling me I should believe that level 20 dungeons should be reduced in difficulty because... I can't assume Timetravel is perfect? But you apparently are, therefore I should assume you are right in direct contravention to the idea that you have nothing to support your conclusion beyond that? I'm asking what you were here for, because you were not hear to see where Timetravel's post actually came from. You seem surprised that we weren't surprised that was what Timetravel said? The reason I ask is because if you weren't active in July and August, you can try to twist up Timetravel's word. If you were around for July and August, you would know what everyone was saying. There was no exit survey (and the forums were completely flooded with posts from people quitting). People who were there knew those people were directly stating the rewards and the grind were why they left, but that they liked the dungeon difficulty. I not only know this because I was there, but because I was talking to those people the same as I'm talking to you now. Timetravel's post, you think, is coming out of context and you're trying to take it to be something that not only it wasn't intended, but that you wouldn't even understand if you weren't reading three or four posts a day calling the game Grindstar. That's why Sly and I aren't confused at all, we were here to see exactly what was said and we know exactly what Timetravel is referencing. We were both here, active on the forums, You are confused because, I can only assume, you actually weren't here to see them. Otherwise you wouldn't be wondering if Timetravel somehow missed feedback about difficulty in proportion. He didn't, none of us did. Those of us who were knee-deep in those arguments (and I didn't have to look up your post history to know you weren't there, I would have recognized your name especially if you were talking about detuning the dungeons) are well aware that people weren't quitting over the difficulty, especially of level 20 dungeons. I just described the nature of the flood of quit posts in July and August. Timetravel's post isn't unambiguous if you were there when those posts were around. Those quit posts directly led to Timetravel's post later, because the feedback of those people was that they wanted to play a game with this difficulty and combat mechanics (almost universally praised during the major exodus you are referencing with that 180,000 people lost hyperbole, that's where this is coming from). The reason that huge swell of people you're referencing left (at least their stated feedback) was entirely related to how RNG affected loot drops. That's what dominated the general discussion forums for months and months. You're assuming that there's a huge population of people, just below a majority, of people who were in dungeons may have left, making it a large number. That's where your hypothetical numbers come from. I was around to see exactly why Timetravel said dungeon difficulty should stay while rewards should be buffed, that's exactly what people were saying. That's why I don't buy the numbers that you're postulating to make your conclusion even hypothetically work. I was here to see what people were complaining about. I talked directly to those people and posted in their threads (inb4 the lock). I know that wasn't the case, and I know it personally. Then you look at Timetravel's post in October and, if you think it doesn't make sense, you weren't there to actually see people saying exactly that.when they were dropping quitting posts every day on the forums. And you might assume that a huge number of people might have left specifically from dungeon difficulty, instead of optimization issues, bugs, RNG, lack of content for people avoiding groups, and other things that were actually stated in the only place people could vent before they left. In fact, you may not know how many people simply left before they even got to level 20, not from difficulty but because their old AMD machine with an ATI GPU couldn't run even the open world at more than 10 FPS (that's why there's a 92 page optimization thread at the top of GD, there are more pages of optimization issues in that thread than mentions of dungeon difficulty anywhere). The reason Slyjeff and I aren't confused is because we've been here and we actually do hear people complaining about a lot more than dungeon difficulty. In fact, these posts are relatively rare, and seldom are these dungeon difficulty threads actually quitting threads (in fact, even this one technically isn't, since the OP is giving the game another shot anyway.  In fact, neither are you.  There is only one person in this thread, of all the people in it, that has stated explicitly that they are leaving due to dungeon difficulty.  That's why your statistical idea that makes your hypothesis even workable is calling for a FAR larger proportion.  You yourself aren't leaving due to dungeon difficulty.  How many people, honestly, do you think have explicitly stated they are leaving due to level 20 dungeons being too hard compared to those people who supported it or, more to the point, said they were leaving for completely different reasons? It's definitely not the 49% of people, all leaving for dungeon difficulty, that you're insinuating.  Slyjeff and I, having been here to see a lot of other complaints show up, some FAR more pervasive than this will ever be, that proves your statistical fancy false. Hell, more people posted quitting threads in two weeks in August about telehackers taking crafting nodes than have EVER posted about dungeon difficulty being too high. If I didn't actually see those threads, your numbers may, in some universe, work. They'd work mathematically, but you'd have to have all those people who quit for other reasons not exist. People I know quit, and for the reasons they stated, because I was actually there talking to them. So if you don't understand why Slyjeff and I don't buy what you're selling, it's because both of us were here to know your proportions don't have a basis in reality. You don't have data to analyze, but the hypothetical numbers you pushed out to back this conclusion, we are both personally well aware aren't real. Your "data analysis" is actually a platitude, one we both, very directly, know is false because we have both been here, involved in the discussions with people who are quitting. Not just this one thread with the only person that is confirming they are leaving the game for the dungeon difficulty, but to see far larger amounts of people leaving for completely unrelated reasons. So your hypothetical numbers don't work if your assertion is, "If only a miniscule amount of people never do a dungeon, and almost all of them leave, then 99.75% of all people do dungeons, and only 49% leave, then the numbers work, right?" As an indicator of dungeon difficulty exerting negative pressure on the game, yes, if all those people are leaving due to the difficulty of level 20 dungeons. You can see in every thread that there is far more support for the difficulty than people who are quitting over it (including this one). Since we know that's not the correct proportion, that a much smaller proportion of people are leaving the game over dungeon difficult than are here stating it was what initially drew them to it, we know your hypothesis is bunk. You could just as easily say that, of the people who have tried and left the game, a majority have never entered a dungeon, and of the people who remain, a majority have. You make the assumption that, because a quest leads to STL and KV, people do them. You certainly don't have any data to analyze in that direction either. But that idea doesn't support your argument, so you discount that. That's why we don't find your data analysis to be worthwhile or trustworthy, you haven't actually analyzed anything, nor have you examined all the possibilities to find out what is the most viable given Timetravel's conclusion, or the response in this thread, or taking into account the plethora of people who very obviously quit for different reasons. You only selected the one narrow idea that may, if it were true, support your conclusion that you reached beforehand. So we find your data analysis to be already biased by a pre-existing condition for realization. If you were really that good at analysis, you would know that's a cardinal sin; you can't go into anything already having a conclusion you do not have the actual data to back up (you directly stated you didn't care about evidence, so it goes to reason that you actually don't care about the information you're supposedly analyzing) or prejudice one potential solution against another (and you have to discount a lot of possibilities to get numbers to back up the specific conclusion you reached). So yes, your credentials as an expert on data is suspect, at best,  You are not arguing a possibility, you are arguing a hypothetical possibility as fact to support a conclusion you define as irrefutabe, that the level 20 dungeons are causing more harm than drawing in and retaining players. It isn't often I see someone take a quote and assume that the individual elements of an evidence-refutation-alternative redress are not related. Timetravel gave a quote that did precisely that. It's like looking at my two previous sentences and saying, "Well, they are two different sentences, and since he didn't directly say he was talking about Timetravel's post in the first sentence, there's no reason to assume he's not talking about two completely different sentences." If your basis of fact for this argument that he didn't mean what he said rotates around the idea that he obviously had information, thought your idea was bad, and another idea was better, and somehow none of these three things are connected, I think you're trying really hard to grasp for straws. Is your conclusion that he takes in information, but then never uses it to come to a conclusion? He had more information than you did coming to a conclusion, you are far more likely to be guilty of blindly following your conclusion than he is. You actually don't have any statistical data, and you came to a conclusion. Not just a conclusion, but one that the person with information said was a bad idea. If it isn't clear, this means that any idea you'd have for me to discount him discounts you by the exact same logic, and a LOT faster. I have a reason to believe he has examined the statistics, I outright know that you have not, and yet you feel it doesn't discredit your ability to demand any changes. You do feel a level 20 dungeon is hardcore, though, which is somewhat shocking to me considering you actually want a raid-level solo instance. What mechanic do you personally find to be time consuming about a dungeon (for that is what hardcore means). Or did you mean that a level 20 dungeon is difficult, and only to be accomplished by people of exceptional skill, time and dedication, ready to pour weeks into normal dungeons so that they can gear up, master the mechanics that require intensive and constant communication headed by a dedicated guild of... You mean this about level 20 dungeons? You think that needing to know how to save kick for after you run to Aethros is only to be the purview of those who will pour months into the game? Is only a 40-man Datascape raider to be capable of running to the eye of the storm during Stormtalon's whirlwind? Is it to be a great barrier of skill, separating the 5% from the 95%, to be able to sprint to avoid a following telegraph? What, exactly, do you think is "hardcore" about normal STL and KV. How long do you suppose someone should spend gearing up on Aethros and resetting before they can fight Stormtalon? What skills do these dungeons require that are impossible to teach to a player unless he is willing to spend eight hours a day, five days a week, running a normal level 20 dungeon? Hardcore? You think level 20 normal dungeons are hardcore? Give me Danohavek for a run, maybe two if he's really lost. I can teach him to clear STL in any random PUG he does thereafter. I do that regularly right now. Did it take you more? Do you honestly think only a hardcore player can clear a level 20 normal dungeon? That no casual in the history of the game could hope to reach such lofty heights? Seriously? And you think that people are missing the epic story arc where you walk into STL, contact the doctor, and he says, "Clear this dungeon, which will now have its own self-contained story where all that stuff happening outside doesn't waken Stormtalon, he's awakened by the Pell inside." You think Danohavek or Zyrri are incapable of completing this content, because you don't think they're "hardcore" enough? Seriously? I'm sorry to say, I couldn't think you're more wrong. I could walk either of them through STL and have them educated in no more than two runs. It's never taken more than that for anyone I've ever met to get up to speed. I think that, even without forsaking their lives, I could teach them to survive a level 20 dungeon. Whether they want to do that or not, that's another question. But I would never, for any reason, say that it takes a hardcore player to clear a normal dungeon. It takes someone explaining how to survive the Stormtalon breakout. World of Warcraft's Deadmines wasn't hardcore because someone in vanilla needed to teach me to attack the skull, then the X, then the square, then the diamond. Final Fantasy's Valkurm Dunes weren't hardcore because I needed to be taught to chain my Wasp Sting off of a Raging Axe. And Wildstar's normal 20 man dungeons aren't hard because we might actually have to take time out of our day to teach group mechanics to someone who's never been in a group before. That doesn't come close to any definition I would ascribe to hardcore. Is the time to have Aethros explained and a possible first-time death considered a major investment or beyond the range of a casual Wildstar player? What kind of definition of hardcore are you applying to a level 20 normal dungeon? No wonder players like Zyrri are afraid of them; buying some kind of scaremongering on the forums about them being unpuggable due to difficulty (untrue, just less pleasant because of the game of prick roulette you sign up for in a PUG). And I wonder why Danohavek didn't have a Slyjeff-style explanation of the fights so he knew what was coming. These players aren't incapable, these players aren't lacking the time or dedication to just run a normal dungeon. Because these normal dungeons are so hardcore, we just have to assume they're not capable of learning to escape the red. We need to make it so that telegraphs can't kill them, mechanics aren't necessary, and nobody could ever possibly die. These players can't be trusted to master these hardcore techniques. That attitude about a player's ability to learn is just depressing. Veteran dungeons, that's arguable whether you need to wipe in one over and over again to gear up and really master mechanics. Hardcore might be more applicable to a veteran dungeon, since it's the last tier of difficulty before walking into GA with nineteen other people. But a normal, level 20 dungeon? I assume that any player schooled in group mechanics and armed with the basics of individual fight mechanics can handle the content. I have never walked into STL or KV with a single player that couldn't meet those lofty and exacting criteria.


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You can make a new thread and quote me if you want. Carbine hates me


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