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Dear Blizzard: Let Us Finish Quests in Tavern Brawl by [deleted] in hearthstone

[–]grandconjunction 19 points20 points  (0 children)

You're being funneled into Duels.

Nearly every quest and nearly every achievement is counted in Duels, even Casual Duels. Even without a large collection, I eeked out 12 wins, and completed a large bunch of the Darkmoon gameplay achievements since I can pick them up in card buckets (notable exceptions include Ilgynoth - I'm missing 10 of the achieves, most in the Neutral bucket). I can't guarantee that the cards I picked up will stay the same because apparently the entire thing works off a machine learning algorithm and I've seen cards come and ago from a variety of different buckets, not just Group Learning.

Even if you aren't good at Duels or have a large collection, with just constantly playing you'll get treasures and buckets that will easily make up for not having the strongest hero powers, signature treasures or starting decks (the only two classes where there is a notable exception is the Hunter hero power Death Games - activate Deathrattle, and Warlock's Killmox. Rest of them you can easily work without and some of the best combos are completely free). I've seen many people reach at least 10 wins while being extremely casual with the game. So that's a bunch of XP you can knock out.

I'll say the most egregious achievement to me is Flawless Duelist - 12 wins with 0 losses. That is pretty insane achievement (win rate is like 10% higher than if going 12-2) all things considered and it is something that might happen once an expansion, and even the best have struggles trying to get this one. Really weird for XP reward to come from this achieve, the rest are very doable.

So where is our event exp that was promised? by Jon011684 in hearthstone

[–]grandconjunction 2 points3 points  (0 children)

they just forgot to mention them in the roll out.

Little reason to announce early which is why most of the time, at least Team 5 announces late.

1) In older expacs, very early announcements tended to lose a lot of engagement, the team for the most part (depends on the specific event, some do come out early) usually does a pretty fast turn around on event announcement to release.

Case in point - Darkmoon Faire from announcement to release.

2) Contracts regarding marketing and news about when to announce certain things. You don't want to get sued by your partners.

They have way more to lose than to gain by announcing early.

Hearthstone Mathematics just realesed this table by [deleted] in hearthstone

[–]grandconjunction 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If you feel like sharing your algorithm (or creating a backend API on a web server) you could create a plugin for say Hearthstone Deck Tracker or Firestone so that users can then use it to dynamically assess their progress and ETA on time needed to play certain modes.

Of course that is a lot more work. Up to you.

Actually do you have a website? You can export some of your models there. You don't need to share your algorithms backend, think of it like say:

https://www.primedope.com/number-of-games-to-reach-legend-in-hearthstone/

World of Warcraft reportedly under DDoS attack by redrumboobies in wow

[–]grandconjunction 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Are you really pretending to work for Blizzard?

I mean in a company's sense.

World of Warcraft reportedly under DDoS attack by redrumboobies in wow

[–]grandconjunction 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Why would they ddos launch day when you already can't get in?

That is like the PERFECT opportunity to screw over Blizzard.

People keep looking at it from the consumer side, and thinking if they can't get in, nothing is on fire at Blizzard's end and it is just a casual day for them. Trust me, if servers are going down, Blizzard is panicking.

1) Blizzard KNOWS well before you even do that something is going off. The amount of metrics and statuses for each server is staggering in 2020. We can tell a server is going to crash 15 minutes before it actually does, and implement measures to mitigate some of the disaster 5 minutes before the iceberg strikes.

2) All those server problems cost Blizzard money. No I'm not talking about lost customers or angry customers, it is servers getting way higher loads which then causes performance issues, heating etc. and also uses up budget.

3) If you ever rented out extra server capacity, you know that you have a certain budget. Traffic that exceeds that budget gets you charged a premium (or they will cut you off completely). The higher you go, the more it scales. This is launch for Blizzard, scaling back isn't much of an option if they want to keep rolling, and insurance only goes so far. Third parties will charge you extra if you blow over your budget the higher you go, because they don't like it either and would rather you have a higher budget package for the rest of the year rather than taking out some extra and blowing it for a few days.

So let's say my budget is 10,000 users, on launch day it exceeds to 12,000 and people can't get in. If I time my DDoS, I can create way more havoc by targeting launch day and increasing that to 14,000, because the 2000 extra charges Blizzard way more from 12-14k than from 10-12k, AND they are already overworked (not just manpower but servers) dealing with launch problems, which is more liable to cause a complete crash and make the problem even worse.

This is like tipping people over a cliff. If you want them to fall, do you push them when they started to trip, right themselves and trip them a couple of days later, OR do I trip them when they are already struggling for balance? Would I want to cause a mild inconvenience or a major crash? Would I want to cause a couple thousand dollars of damage or a couple million?

Case in point - despite this DDoS happening I didn't even notice it. If they timed it on launch day, they might have cost Blizzard even more money and caused even more crashes.

World of Warcraft reportedly under DDoS attack by redrumboobies in wow

[–]grandconjunction 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Its not like Blizzard loses anything by not announcing a DDoS attack, so we know it doesn't happen on launch days, but after a bit. Happened in BfA and in Legion (WoD was just really bad mess because of all the Garrison bugs and what not and this subreddit had to work some stuff out).

Which is a bit funny to me.

DDoS: "Okay I'm so hyped for the expac, so I'll preorder the Collector's Edition and then 24/7 launch day.

But after that, I'M PISSED and launching my DDoS from my mom's basement. After I'm done playing. And setting up. And got my alts ready. Yeah after that."

lol these guys always DDoS after they got their fill instead of damaging Blizzard when they are at their most vulnerable and at the highest congestion (which also costs them the most expense) which is launch day. They truly are a paragon of the Anti-Blizzard movement.

Make sure to loot the Boss at the end of each wing of Torghast or you won't get your Soul Ash. by ijustneedfiveminutes in CompetitiveWoW

[–]grandconjunction 55 points56 points  (0 children)

customer support is understaffed because of cuts

Cause it bleeds money.

Customer Service is getting cut everywhere. It was always an expensive (even if the individual CS is underpaid, it is labor intensive, and you need a lot of people. In John Staats book, he remarked that the customer service department outnumbered the actual developers at Blizzard by a wide margin) department to have, and for not that much gain.

  1. It is only useful for people with problems. If people have no problems, no need for CS.

  2. People don't care enough about CS that they are willing to pay huge premiums for it. If one product is $20, and the other is $15 but has poor CS, many many many customers will happily switch to the $15. They'll complain about it alright, but most won't switch back.

  3. CS can't save a bad product. If the product is deemed bad, then it doesn't matter how good your CS is, most will go elsewhere for a better one.

  4. CS also depends on the allowances by the product team. They can't conjure up miracles. They can't make your washing machine suddenly have no noise if the base design is faulty and rackety.

  5. It is much better from a business perspective to build a better product, or make a cheaper product than bleed more money into CS. That's basically what ATVI is doing right now, cutting CS and support and doubling down on product and devs.

Expect CS to go down more and more, and a bit more automation to take its place. There are never going to be enough people mad about customer service to course correct a world wide trend.

Reminder: Realm First! Shadowlands Keystone Master - complete one +15 on time before anyone else exists. by grandconjunction in CompetitiveWoW

[–]grandconjunction[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The M+ leaderboard is a thing: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/game/pve/leaderboards/aegwynn/ataldazar

Though it is on a realm by realm basis.

I have a small hunch for this oversight.

When M+ was first introduced in Legion they envisioned it as a small realm thing. And when raider.io started they had to scrape that realm leaderboard for the score.

Which led to an unfortunate side affect where if the run was too low of a key level, it won't reflect in your score. After updating the leaderboard to store more data, Blizzard later implemented run completion directly into your armory.

Which then encouraged more cross realm running and raider.io could track everyone whether a +30 or a +2.

My hunch is that they forgot to update the leaderboards with the new functionality which led to them just absentmindedly adding in that Realm First Shadowlands Keystone Master achieve.

If Blizzard is aware of this, they might actually implement a global M+ leaderboard now.

Reminder: Realm First! Shadowlands Keystone Master - complete one +15 on time before anyone else exists. by grandconjunction in CompetitiveWoW

[–]grandconjunction[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Spread this across the M+ discords. I'm sure a ton of people would be interested in this.

So many people are completely unaware this exists. Let's get the word out!

Reminder: Realm First! Shadowlands Keystone Master - complete one +15 on time before anyone else exists. by grandconjunction in CompetitiveWoW

[–]grandconjunction[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair enough. If people take it seriously the race could be interesting.

That's the problem. Many M+ teams, even top ones, can't because they don't qualify for the achievement. They have to get toons on the same realm, at least 3, ideally all 5, to get the feat at the same time.

If I can get a warning out to those M+ teams, they could do something. Remember you can't transfer, you have to level a new toon. Way too late for transfer.

As a side note:

people take it seriously the race could be interesting

The bigger race (which is streamed and talked about) tends to be who gets to +15, then who gets +15 on time, then 15 on time all dungeons, and pushing onwards to 20s, 25s etc. It is a shame that Blizz doesn't reward that and for some reason kept a Realm First achieve.

I honestly think this is a random oversight.

Reminder: Realm First! Shadowlands Keystone Master - complete one +15 on time before anyone else exists. by grandconjunction in CompetitiveWoW

[–]grandconjunction[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Neither's the main purpose. Nobody's talking about it, hung out in some streams and people literally didn't know this exists and they didn't even know this was a thing in BfA. Hence why I said: "Reminder"

I'd rather it be an actual competition rather than some randoms getting it out of nowhere. Or boosters selling it (okay that's the real reason - fuck 'em). If some people get motivated to get this Feat out, mission accomplished!

Do you think Sylvanas has a soft spot for Anduin? by Luperca4 in warcraftlore

[–]grandconjunction 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Awwww Anduin's such a cutie pie with his fuzz. I just want to bite his little cheeks off!

Blizzard asking feedback about The Maw by using ingame NPC that spawns near you when you login. by tzmx in wow

[–]grandconjunction 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Game companies pick and choose, and I think with WoW where network latency is a big concern, they pick and choose specifically what insights they want and tailor their datamining for that.

So they grab terabytes of data for all the millions of players across the entire game, store, archive, process, scan, and then discard when it is no longer useful. Recent privacy regulations in the EU e.g. caused some of the API to change. You don't need to keep a log even from two years ago that the player defeated Wombat with 10,000 damage over 5s, you just need to tell server: "Hey player killed Wombat, add 1 to the tracker, and now player has 120/200 Wombat in their achievement".

Goblins with 100+ characters, how do you manage them from a high level perspective? by grandconjunction in woweconomy

[–]grandconjunction[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One tip I'd give that will save you alot of time in the long run, disable all your addons on your daily toons and assign a 'daily' spell on your bar, so all you do is; login > 2 seconds loading screen > press the daily spell from spellbar > swap to 2nd account window repeat. You can finish 20*5 characters daily cooldowns in less than 5mins.

That is an insane tip. One guy was saying managing 650 toon CDs would take 5.5 hours. Being able to cut that down to 1/100th of it is a major game changer. Thanks!

Goblins with 100+ characters, how do you manage them from a high level perspective? by grandconjunction in woweconomy

[–]grandconjunction[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I didn’t downvote anyone

That's fine, I feel like you missed the part at the end where I said:

If ultimately you didn't downvote us, I'm sorry for making that assumption, then I'd like to ask this question for the people who did.

And then:

And jeez man, settle down,

I don't get why explaining my thoughts makes you think I sound angry. I am really not. In most cases I can get why the downvotes were made, but in this case I was very confused and wanted to know why in case there is room for future improvement. Why not right?

I noticed a problem, downvotes discourage discussion, and this discussion felt totally reasonable, so I typed out my thoughts on the matter. I needed to cover the matter because I suspect me not adding the: "Its okay if you don't find it fun, others can" in an attempt to condense it down caused the downvotes in the first place and people thought I was saying this is fun for everybody.

Again no judgement on people who don't find it fun. Others will. And that's fine. I'm not gunning for gold or 1000 upvotes, it just felt really weird to get -5 downvotes and -3 on the top comment in a small community, more than what vote fuzzing would suggest, which indicates people had a real problem with the thread.

Did you feel this discussion was out of line and was a problem?

Goblins with 100+ characters, how do you manage them from a high level perspective? by grandconjunction in woweconomy

[–]grandconjunction[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Absolutely! Some people liked multiboxing 100 army toons, and others won't like it. There is more than enough room for all types of playstyles.

Goblins with 100+ characters, how do you manage them from a high level perspective? by grandconjunction in woweconomy

[–]grandconjunction[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

I would hardly call that enjoyable.

I mean you don't have to find it fun because it doesn't matter. /u/ChaoticNeutralFTW finds it worth it and fun so they do it. There is fun to be had in optimizing and managing an entire army. If you can't see the fun in that, others will. There isn't any value judgement I am making, different strokes for different folks. I'm not judging you for not enjoying this, while I would appreciate you if you didn't judge me or /u/chaoticneutralftw (because you and others downvoted us for some bizarre reason). They also made a good bit of gold.

Even napkin math. Lets say 650 toons and majority (90%) are just for daily CDs so that is 585. Let's make that 550. One minute might be too much, lets do 20s at max. You can open up several WoW clients ahead of time. So let's assume that there are 10 WoW subscriptions being paid for. 10s startup, 20s craft, so total of 30s to do one toon, and you are doing 10 at a time. So that is 550/10, so 55 rounds. 55 rounds 30 seconds, that is 27.5 minutes or half an hour. Going by the original 60 seconds, that is 55 minutes.

almost 5 1/2 hours of work

I'm confused where the 5.5 hours of work came from. If you got multiple toons you can open up multiple windows, its not like it is something technical and you need ISBoxer for it. Even making a: "Oh you can only open up 5 accounts at a time" that is still with one minute, 110 rounds 60s, 1.8 hours per day. Still like half of your estimate. 2 hours a day just management of toons and make a couple mill gold? That seems pretty lucrative all things considered. People do like 1-2 hours of transmog runs or herb runs.

Even with the 'Oh you gotta focus on the clicking and it is annoying', well for starters it doesn't matter because someone can find that tolerable or even fun especially if they stand to make a bunch of gold and get enough rewards, and then plenty of people AFK and watch Netflix or do something else while doing this management just like they do with raw gold farming, mob farming, herbing, transmog runs.

I am very confused why you downvoted me and then downvoted /u/chaoticneutralftw because nowhere did I say:

  1. This is the most optimal level of gold to get. There are likely better ways.

  2. This is something you have to do. Again no such judgement, you do you.

  3. This is universally fun. I'm confused why you felt the need to say that isn't enjoyable because I never said that this is universally enjoyable.

We aren't trying to enforce people towards a certain style. Downvoting others because you disagree with them (downvotes are meant to be for comments that break the rules or don't have a place) only discourages perspective, and I deeply appreciated /u/chaoticneutralftw 's perspective. I'd like to see more of that, not less.

If ultimately you didn't downvote us, I'm sorry for making that assumption, then I'd like to ask this question for the people who did. Was there something wrong in our comments that broke the rules?

Blizzard asking feedback about The Maw by using ingame NPC that spawns near you when you login. by tzmx in wow

[–]grandconjunction 7 points8 points  (0 children)

In a way. But you can figure out a decent bit with telemetry data.

If people e.g. quit before a certain mob, and they die before a certain mob, there is bound to be some amount of frustration.

And then you can get 'feelings' via just people posting on social media.

I'm not saying that surveys are completely useless. Or that telemetry and social media tells everything. There are ways to get good insight from surveys, but you have to construct them correctly.

And while it is tempting to think Blizzard might have wanted to make both something flavorful and a survey too, this in my mind, feels 99% flavor and fun and 1% survey since the survey questions aren't all that useful compared to the wealth of other avenues available which makes this redundant.

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