Friday, May 29, 2015

Do You Like The Jumping Games?

With all the hubbub about flight I figured I might as well do a little self evaluation on the things in game that ground only mounts could bring us more of.  Admittedly as a pro flyer myself I would rather just land on something than jump to pick it up because, hey, that is why flight was added, as a quality of life improvement so we did not have to do those tedious tasks.  However it seems with the possible shift in design we might see a lot more things, such as jumping games, added to the game.

There are other things that will change with no flying in warcraft any longer, but this is the first topic I will tackle as it seems to be the most obvious "addition" to the game with the subtraction of flying.

Do you like the jumping games?

Remember this is only my opinion on the matter and might hold true for some but surely not all.

I was on the beta for warlords when Nagrand was first opened up.  It was bugged out for alliance and I could not complete the entry quest so instead of questing, as I couldn't, I decided to do some treasure hunting.  Myself, along with another person, went around the area and tried to find all the goodies and figure out how to get to them.

This, of course, was before there were any guides or videos or addons or for that matter anyone else that had done them that I could ask.  Most people that ran into my friend and I in nagrand asked us for help because we set the pace for finding treasures.

I must admit it was a hell of a lot of fun trying to find all the treasures.  It was like one giant world sized puzzle.  Each time we found a new glider it was a moment of excitement.  If there is a glider here, it must lead to something.  Lets find it.  We took the gilders in every direction imaginable while looking for what might be a treasure and then ran back.  Something that now might seem wasteful, but then, was pretty fun actually.

We spent a long time looking for goodies, figuring out how to get to the goodies, and running back and forth to gliders.  Not to mention a bit of mountain climbing and lots and lots of jumping along the way.

I loved it, I really did.  It was a hell of a lot of fun to find stuff and I freely admit it was even more exciting to know most of the ones that we were able to get I was not only the first person to find it, but the first person to get it.  When I managed to get one of them, that was easily seen, that no one else had been able to get someone spoke out in general that someone finally got it.  It was kind of fun as people from all over the zone started to run to it and asked me how I did it.

On the beta having to find them myself (or more accurately, with my friend) and figure out how to get to them on our own the jumping puzzles were very fun.  Still not something really great, content wise, because it only took us a total of 6 hours to find everything and figure out how to get to it.  So even at its hardest level, with no addons and no help, jumping puzzles seemed like a waste of time for them to spend development time on from a play time standpoint at least.  I am sure the development time put into finding these things and the paths to them could have been better spent making some kind of repeatable content instead of a one off thing.  But I really loved doing it.

I do have one funny story about that day to share before I move on.  There is one where you take a glider and land in a tree to get some garrison resources.  I had the worst time trying to land in that tree.  I missed it 7 times.  Twice I had landed on it, but in an odd spot, and when I attempted to move to a position where I could loot the treasure I fell.  Oh poo. 

Good thing my friend was with me.  He landed up there and was waiting for me.  So after those failed attempts I gave up and asked him to revive me when I died.  Dying however became a little bit of an issue as the only thing around there were talbuks and they are not exactly what you would call strong.  It took them well over a minute beating on me to kill me.  But he revived me and I did manage to get it.

The funny part is when I went there on live, I was telling everyone I would miss it because I have never been able to land on it.  And I managed to get it on the first try.  How messed up is that?  When I was expecting to miss, I made it, when I was expecting to make it, I missed.

Now, on to live.

When warlords was released I was 100 on day one.  I did not go after the treasures in nagrand immediately, I figured I would wait so I could bring a bunch of people from the guild there to show them how to get them all.  Instead I fished that first day and got nat pagle right away, which was kind of cool.

That Saturday I took an expedition out there to show them where all the treasures where.  I think it was 9 of us in total at the time.  We jumped, we glided, we revived people who died on purpose, we got all the treasures in quick time, I would say no more than 2 hours, probably closer to 1 and a half.

It all just felt like busy work as I had done it before.  To some of the people with me, namely two, it was frustrating beyond belief.  They hated every minute of it.  Even with addons like handy notes (which is a must have addon) and me showing them the way, they still hated every second of it.  One of those two gave up half way through and said they had no interest in going back there until they add flying.  He never has either and now it looks like he never will.

It was sort of fun for me being I was showing a bunch of people the way, but it was one of those "I did all this already and now it is just annoying" things.  That is and will always be a problem with doing one time only things like this on the beta or PTR.  I still did them anyway to help the others and because I like getting all the achievements on my main, but I really did not enjoy doing it again.

On my alts I never even touched them.   Even the ones that were desperately in need of garrison resources when they first hit 100.  No way in hell was I doing that crap again.  It was not fun, it was not exciting, and it sure as hell was not something that once you did it you would ever want to do it again.  Not a single one of my alts has gotten even one treasure that required jumping in some sort of special way or a gilder.  Even if I was well experienced and knew were they all were.  No thank you.  Not fun.

So looking at it from a live perspective, it was not so bad when doing it with a group.  It was made amazingly easier (if I had not already known) with addons like handy notes and it was a one time thing, as in once you did it, it was done.  Meaning there was really no desire to get used to doing it because you would need to do it each week.  So from a live perspective, it was a complete waste of time. A one time only filler.

I don't like the jumping puzzles on live.  I did like them on the beta.  The problem here is that everyone, myself included, will use whatever resources they can get their hands on.  Namely things like handy notes and wowhead for advice.  This means the main thing I loved about it on beta, the finding it myself and figuring it out myself, was completely removed from the live game.

You can not blame blizzard for this, you can only blame human nature for wanting to use said resources to make it easier.  Nothing wrong with that.  We are always told to think smarter not harder.  And using those available tools is thinking smarter.

Even if you were to hinder yourself and create a situation like I had on the beta where you do not download any addons for it and do not look up hints online at sites like wowhead, once you do find them all and figure out how to get to them the replay value of doing it again is greatly diminished.

I do completely understand that there are people that do dig this type of stuff.  I did the first time around as well, but over all this is not exactly where I would like to see the developers time spent.  Sure it gives us something to do on our ground mounts but I really do not care for it.

Not to mention, your mileage might vary, but I have a devil of a time jumping on some races.  Night elves, humans, undead, orcs and blood elves I seem to do just fine on, but small ones like a gnome, dwarf or goblin or large ones like a dreanei or tauren I really have a hard time with it.  I am sure someone that mains one of those races would have no issues, but as I am used to the night elf size only the races of very similar sizes do I seem to handle the jumping games with well.

I think the jumping games would have been better if there were more valuable items to get from them.  Lets face it, every piece of gear you get from them is junk and even the ones that do offer garrison resources offer such a small amount you have to question if it was even worth the effort. 

I also think they would have been better if there were repeatable ones that you could do weekly.  Nothing really complex, just a simple jump one that anyone can do to get a small weekly cache of garrison resources once a week.  It would also counter the number one complain about have about content this expansion, too much one and done stuff, like treasures, and not enough repeatable content.

Furthermore I also think if they did not require running all over the world to get back to a glider half a continent away it would have been more enjoyable.  Nothing feels worse than missing a landing point and then having to first find your way back to the glider than the time it takes to get there which is much more if you can not find your way back to it.  No thank you.  Heck, I knew exactly how to get back to them and I still say it took way to much running around to get to them.

Lastly I think the difficulty and number of them should have been less, even more so being it is not like it was real content intended to last as it is a one time only thing, why make it annoying having to jump all over the world to get to them.  Think the timeless island ones.  A couple on the top of hills, a few tight rope walking ones and the bigger repeatable one that just required some simple pillar jumping that was no problem even on my gnome which I suck at jumping games with.

Over all I would have to say I really do not like them, even if I did enjoy them the first time through.  The things you can find in the world can be made a hell of a lot better than they were this expansion.  However even if they were made them better I am still not convinced they will ever be something that warrants content worth keeping us grounded for.

Do you like jumping games?

24 comments:

  1. Yes I like jumping puzzles but not enough to do them when the rewards are pure garbage. If they had put components to build a mount in chests throughout draenor or something to that effect I would have rushed out to do them (once). But not for garrison resources. The fun of searching for treasures on TI was in the chance of getting a useful starting epic, not in receiving those stupid coins. I wish I could have properly explained stuff like that to blizz when I unsubbed but they only give you 250 characters. It's unfortunate because they seem to have an uncanny knack for drawing the wrong conclusions from the data they collect. Intentional obfuscation maybe?

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    1. Nice idea for better stuff.

      Could have been cool if the things needed to build the auction house were found that way as well going with your train of thought a little.

      They do tend to come to the wrong conclusions often. As I said about the dailies before. People said they did not like them so they removed them. But they came to the wrong conclusion. It was not the dailies they disliked, it was the gating of the dailies they disliked and locking the valor gear behind them and having to do one rep before you could start another. But they drew, as you mentioned, the wrong conclusion.

      I agree, the joy of the TI treasures was getting something "good" out of them. Didn't seem like anything good came out of the ones in warlords. I vendored everything I ever picked up.

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  2. The first question that comes to my mind is would you have enjoyed those jumping puzzles in beta if you were not with a friend? After missing that tree for the 7th time, would you have gone back all by yourself for an 8th, 9th or 10th attempt without your friend there to rez you? In my experience even the most mundane grind can be fun with good company so I hope you can understand where I am coming from when I ask that question.

    As far as jumping puzzles for myself, I have only enjoyed them in games designed for them. Rayman, Prince of Persia, some of the Tomb Raider series etc… Timeless Isle was only done because it was a quick way to gear alts. While after picking up a couple of the easy treasure boxes on Draenor and seeing that was nothing but garbage in them, I quickly forgot about them and decreed them a waste of time.

    So I guess in the end, if there is a reward worth the time I have to spend getting the treasure, then sure I’ll download a guide and get the treasure. But I don’t typically play WoW to do plat forming or jumping puzzles. There are too many other games out there that do it a heck of a lot better.

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    1. I can not say if I would have liked them without a friend, but I could guess it would have not been nearly as fun if I did that discovery all on my own. And surely I would have given up on that one I could not get to.

      I agree with the "games designed for them" idea. It does not seem as if this is really a game designed for them. And the rewards were dismal, which gives even less of a reason to do them.

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  3. An annoying problem is if you try to jump straight up on a ground mount, it does an emote instead.

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    1. LMAO

      You are so right about that. I admit more than a few times I went to jump and just got the mount special. Each time that happens I say, I wish I had flying.

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  4. No.

    I could just leave it at that, but I'll explain.

    I found them annoying (especially the glider and jumping puzzle ones) and only did them because I am a completionist and needed garrison resources early on. This game is not a physics simulator or a puzzle game... it's a RPG, so I don't think that type of content fits with the game.

    I would have preferred just having a few of them that only gave things like pets/toys (or the mount idea that oro mentioned). But having dozens of them where most just gave a few garrison resources or useless gear was just too much.

    I'll never do them on alts after having done them on my main.

    I preferred the Lorewalkers monuments in MoP to the treasures in WoD since there weren't that many, they were in nice 'scenic' locations, and you got a title/mount/achievement from visiting them all. So it seemed worthwhile, but was totally skippable.

    Suggested improvements for treasures:
    -Have less of them (a few per zone or something)
    -Make them more rewarding
    -Make some of them repeatable (the ones in the well traveled areas like daily hubs, etc)
    -Make them easy to get to but not necessarily easy to find (i.e., no crazy jumping puzzles; they should fine work with or without flying)

    So my suggestions are pretty similar to Grumpy's.

    Overall, I'm not sure they're worth the development effort though.

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    1. I agree with the annoying part. Busting your butt for 10 minutes trying to get to something to see it only had 12 garrison resources is the most annoying thing in the world if you ask me. Makes you say, why am I even doing this?

      I did them all as well on my main, but as I said, I do not touch them on my alts. If it is on the ground and I pick it up, sure I take every single one of those, but if I need to even waste a few seconds jumping to get it I move along and surely do not even consider the glider ones on alts.

      Your suggestions do sound the same as mine. Glad to see someone is thinking similar. Same goes for me not thinking it is worth the development effort either.

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    2. I'm just going to agree with Jaeger.

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    3. Yeah, his suggestions really seem on target.

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  5. While I do like the treasure gathering, I don't like the jumping games. The reason for that is simple, I always sucked at platform games. So adding a bit of those platform games in my MMO or any RPG is a no go for me. Luckily there's not that many of them that were too hard in WoW. There's other MMO's that are full of those hard jumping games and for me that's a big reason not to play them.

    I'm also purist in a way that I find that those cross gaming features have no place at all in an MMO, which in my eyes are still RPG's and you shouldn't turn my RPG into a platformer. I think the same about pet battles and any other cross platform rubbish they added to WoW. But I'm well aware that a lot of people like these things and that I might be in the minority here.

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    1. Same, love treasures, not so fond of jumping all over the place to get them.

      I personally like pet battles but I think the best thing about them is that they are 100% independent of the rest of the game so if you did not want to do them you lose nothing by not doing so. The treasures felt liked I "needed" to do them on day one for garrison resources. On alts I just wait and let them build up instead.

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  6. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

    I have found a few treasures here and there, and I suppose I did actually jump my way up the hill or whatever to get them. I really did not notice those treasures as jumping games, so I evidently found the very easiest things that were supposed to lure me into trying to find out how to get to the rest of them. It failed. Took one look at a treasure that was sitting in a tree above me and the ropes I think I was supposed to tightrope my way across to get there and said "no." I have no interest in such games, mini or otherwise.

    If Blizzard seriously thinks that qualifies as content, I have a real problem with that. I did not enjoy the jumping game in old Nagrand of Outland. I hated it then. I hate it now. Blizzard is not designed to be a jumping game of any sorts. What makes them think it is a good idea? Did someone get a Super Mario game for a birthday gift? Or is it part and parcel of a systemic effort to break WoW? Yeah, that last one sounds like tinfoil hat territory to me as I write it, but at this point it seems almost as likely as any other thought, fore or after that went into WoD.

    And that is supposed to be the compelling, immersive content that is replacing flying? Good game Blizz, soon you will be right up there with 3dO (or what ever the Might & Magic company was before it went belly up).

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    1. I do believe this is one of the major "content" things they are going to offer us now that we are grounded. Seems we both disagree with them, but that is not exactly surprising.

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  7. The jumping puzzles were okay while I was leveling the first time through. Though, they would have been far better if they place you could land always 100% matched up with where it was visually. I haven't bothered much at all with them after hitting 100. I didn't even do all of them on a single character.
    There simply wasn't enough incentive. If there had been bits of a mount in them I'd have done them. If there'd been a rep prize with a mount behind it like for the Pandaria Scrolls I'd have done them. Those scrolls were perfect.I did them more than once partly as an excuse to listen to Lorewalker Cho's stories when I was done. The treasures in Draenor could have had lore tied into them like that. I'd have liked that.
    I wasn't a fan of Timeless Isle after about the first week because it was too repetitive to me, but it was still better than the one off treasures in Draenor. On another note... I'm really pretty bad at jumping puzzles. So that might be a factor in my enjoyment.

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    1. I loved the lorewaker cho stories. They were worth it if you ask me, even without the flying disc, but I do like the disc a lot.

      It seems to be quite common to hear people say the rewards were not enough to be worth doing them. It is kind of cool to hear the ideas you and others have said to make it more interesting. I really wish blizzard would read some of them and add them, it would be a nice addition and add something that is lacking from the jumping games now, a reason to do them.

      One guild member told me he punched his monitor after failing at a jump over and over for an hour. So you are not alone in not being good at them. Trust me.

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  8. whats that shit above me? It doesn't belong here does it? Or some asshole trying their spam?

    -roo

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    1. Someone spamming advertising something. I deleted it. I get them all the time.

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  9. I would like to know how you level in a day from 90 to 100 just by fishing. If that is all that is required, teach me.

    But on to what you are chatting about - I liked the jumping games (I can see a movie 2 or 3 or even more, about a young lass who has to jump to win food for her family, called "The Jumping Games", LOL.

    Ok, enough of that, got to get the meds squared away - I only enjoy them on my mains on the different server just to get that garrison going. Nothing more wonky than getting to a 100 trying to get that garrison to lvl 3 and no 1200 or was it 1500 (?) garrison supplies. What a bunch of hooey. Why can't the toons on the same server just use the one garrison, instead of having to build their own? That really sucks.

    Ok, gots to go feed Mister Sweet Bob. Otherwise he will nibble my toes (He's my last really old ferret. Lost Miss Peachy (his mate) a few months and since they were together for 6 years, he is lonely).

    -roo (huh, still want to know what that crap is doing above me. I know it is not Crappy Elf sponsored, oops I mean Grumpy Elf sponsored.)

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    1. Not level my character, but get all the "enormous" fish achievement so I could get nat pagle in a day. It is actually even easier now, way way way easier being all catches in pools are enormous fish now no matter your fishing skill level.

      I like garrisons, but hate that I have one on each character. I think that is the one mistake of garrisons, making it such a huge time sink for each and every character. It should be a one and done thing.

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  10. new data graphs over at mmoc.

    http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4924-Blackrock-Foundry-Stats-Blue-Tweets-Setup-of-the-Month-Symmetra-Gameplay

    according to them, among active players, around 25% of them have downed a boss on heroic difficulty.

    of those initial 25% who have downed a boss on heroic difficulty, there is a further breakdown of which bosses they got down. the least common are blackhand 40% > blast furnace 60% > iron maidens 70%.

    This matches our guild.
    --
    regards,

    regardsanon

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    1. I will say the same thing I always do when they list those numbers.

      They are only counting raiders, not players. So that is the number of "raiders" that have done that. Not the number of players.

      They even say so in the post. I think those numbers are a little low for the "over all" of the game and that is knowing they are only checking raiders. Which seems kind of odd that they would be that low.

      You would figure the number would be higher if you were strictly looking at raiders for how they are doing in raids, which, for the most part, that is what they are doing.

      I hope we get blackhand before the next patch comes out. I have not missed a AotC since they added it and if I miss this one, it really would make me want to quit raiding. Because that would mean one of two things, find another guild or quit. And I sure as hell do not want to find another guild, so that means quitting would be my only option.

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  11. Jumping puzzles, yes. Gliders, no. One or two glider treasures would have been interesting, the silliness that is Nagrand - not so much.

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    1. For me it was not the gilder itself that bothered me, it was the three mile hike back if you missed that got really tired really fast.

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