Why the current hunger/feasting system SUCKS

[SnuggleSnail]

The vast, vast majority of people try to min/max without taking it to an absurd level. You need to be willfully ignorant to not see it. It's not some fucking coincidence that something like 96-98% of all uploaded parses in WoW had the 'right' covenants for their class, even tho it was a permanent-ish LARP choice with stats attached.

There is a no alts 100 postcount casual hermit in this thread explaining how the current system hurts him.

These are not 400IQ big brain observations. It's so overwhelmingly obvious that most people "try to do what the game wants them to", that to not recognize it you need to either have no experience or ur brain works in some way that makes social pattern recognition very hard for you. Likewise, it's painfully obvious the current system encourages very unfun gameplay if you try to min/max it even slightly.

[Sevenless]

The vast, vast majority of people try to min/max without taking it to an absurd level. You need to be willfully ignorant to not see it. It's not some fucking coincidence that something like 96-98% of all uploaded parses in WoW had the 'right' covenants for their class, even tho it was a permanent-ish LARP choice with stats attached.

There is a no alts 100 postcount casual hermit in this thread explaining how the current system hurts him.

These are not 400IQ big brain observations. It's so overwhelmingly obvious that most people "try to do what the game wants them to", that to not recognize it you need to either have no experience or ur brain works in some way that makes social pattern recognition very hard for you. Likewise, it's painfully obvious the current system encourages very unfun gameplay if you try to min/max it even slightly.

I see a lot of casual players do what the system "encourages you to do intuitively". In this case it's not the minmax solution, but it falls into the noobtrap category instead.

I don't think the system needs to be completely changed to fix, but it certainly needs a sizeable rebalance at least. I don't see a point in adding my personal fix mix anymore though, there's so many alternative suggestions it's kinda pointless.

[SnuggleSnail]

there's so many alternative suggestions it's kinda pointless.

Ye, that resonates with me a lot, TBH. I feel like a huge dickhead every time I say it, because still supporting a project after a decade is insane, but the average patch for the last few years has made the game worse outside of generating hype.

There are so many obvious far-reaching problem with 100 different obvious/unobtrusive solutions, yet whenever Jorbtar speaks you realize they don't even see the issue that 99% of the player-base agrees is bad.

It kinda makes sense why things are that way when you see their bases. The experiences/things somebody with 350 MC who hasn't made walls cares about are representative of no regular player, so they don't even notice the obvious stuff.

Most every patch in world 10 I can remember was good. You can tell he was playing then, and almost every patch was just them encountering an annoying problem that they cared about and the simple fix being applied. Can't do that when you're playing in a way where you don't care enough to make walls.

[vatas]

there's so many alternative suggestions it's kinda pointless.

Ye, that resonates with me a lot, TBH. I feel like a huge dickhead every time I say it, because still supporting a project after a decade is insane, but the average patch for the last few years has made the game worse outside of generating hype.

There are so many obvious far-reaching problem with 100 different obvious/unobtrusive solutions, yet whenever Jorbtar speaks you realize they don't even see the issue that 99% of the player-base agrees is bad.

It kinda makes sense why things are that way when you see their bases. The experiences/things somebody with 350 MC who hasn't made walls cares about are representative of no regular player, so they don't even notice the obvious stuff.

Most every patch in world 10 I can remember was good. You can tell he was playing then, and almost every patch was just them encountering an annoying problem that they cared about and the simple fix being applied. Can't do that when you're playing in a way where you don't care enough to make walls.

It's like if World of Warcraft had two people making the raids (mechanically, not graphic/aesthetic design), and both only explore random places in the open world the few times when they actually play the game?

[Dawidio123]

Most every patch in world 10 I can remember was good. You can tell he was playing then, and almost every patch was just them encountering an annoying problem that they cared about and the simple fix being applied. Can't do that when you're playing in a way where you don't care enough to make walls.

True and based, bring back world 10, most fun world i ever played even if it was plagued with botting. You could always trade and get a better anvil (by like 300ql) every week, you could get dozens of cupboards of food and then eat it all at once, you could go questing and get millions of lp, it wasn't the most balanced but it was fucking fun.

TLDR you have no idea what you are talking about because you haven't reached high enough level of play, the system is fine for suboptimal players that don't care about competing, but you can't balance the game around that.

This is where you are wrong. You cannot balance the game around a minority of super-optimized no-lifers. I wonder, how many players in H&H go for those stats for "high enough level of play"? 5? 10? Sure, let's balance game around them :LUL:

Those players will stay winning no matter the system, and retards that can't recognize a simple pattern in their gameplay and optimize it will stay losing. No matter the system they will still be fine since they don't care about optimization, therefore there is no point in balancing it around them since they will be happy either way, you are just against a change that won't affect you anyhow, maybe even help you get better stats.

[Sevenless]

Most every patch in world 10 I can remember was good. You can tell he was playing then, and almost every patch was just them encountering an annoying problem that they cared about and the simple fix being applied. Can't do that when you're playing in a way where you don't care enough to make walls.

I actually remember that now that you mention it. Haven's an insane timesink, and I know a lot of people who say "I can't really play, I have a job". Let alone playing and trying to work on it while having a job like jorb mentioned.

Hopefully they get more time in the future and don't decide to spend it on OCO lol.

[vatas]

It's not some fucking coincidence that something like 96-98% of all uploaded parses in WoW had the 'right' covenants for their class, even tho it was a permanent-ish LARP choice with stats attached.

Bad example. At least I got the impression that Blizzard promised, or at least implied, that the Covenants would be "mostly cosmetic." However they did become part of the "mandatory minmax culture" because they did have an effect on the standard raid rotation. There's a clip of guy going "some people's damage; 50% just from the Covenant ability" which sounds extremely bad but it could be that the Covenant ability replaces some "regular" ability instead of being purely additive, meaning "correct" covenant only gave 5% DPS increase instead of 50%. But yes, even if the gay magical forest covenant only gives 5% DPS increase, you will be chewed for choosing the actually cool bloodlord faction over it.

[SnuggleSnail]

Covenants are just the only easy example I can think of that have numbers behind them.

The /fact/ almost everybody min/maxes to some extent is so egregiously obvious it shouldn't even really be up for debate? If you look at any significant dataset for any online game you'll notice people are VERY disproportionately doing the thing that is stronger, and by such a wide margin that it's obvious without even getting into statistics. You can just look at your screen during gameplay.

[APXEOLOG]

If you look at any significant dataset for any online game you'll notice people are VERY disproportionately doing the thing that is stronger, and by such a wide margin that it's obvious without even getting into statistics. You can just look at your screen during gameplay.

Most of the time those "datasets" are aggregated by "hardcore" players from other "hardcore" players (those who use certain add-ons, tools, visit forums and subreddits, etc).
I have a good example from the Path of Exile - where the "meta" is typically defined based on certain trackers, that in turn rely on the official leaderboard for the top 15000 players (based on their level). Of course top 15k players out of millions will be those "hardcore" players who will play the optimized min-maxed builds and strive for efficiency. The game developers stated multiple times, that the actual representation is vastly different from those "visible datasets".
Same goes for forum posts and negative comments btw. For every person who create a whiny post/comment here there are probably 10 satisfied players out there

[Aerona]

Yeah. Not many people out there who go "I'm so content I just have to say something about it!"

My contribution to the discussion is that it seems very strange to have a progression from hearthlings having stats in the tens to stats in the thousands just from eating. I have no idea what lore or gameplay rationale there is for there being such a huge gap between new and old characters. Is it just 'for progression'? Does it go back to some sort of MUD tradition? Anyway, if it weren't for that then it wouldn't be such a big deal.