You get X or a new raid tier.

02/10/2014 07:36 PMPosted by Mishotem

That said, their constant "...at the cost of a raid tier..." excuse is getting old. We should just call their bluff and say sacrifice the raid tier and give us race-specific buildings for our garrisons.

It's just a handy reference to explain the level of resources required to do some of the things that might be requested. As has been evidenced by this thread, it seems that when we say that, it can (amazingly) be misconstrued.

I know it's easy to envision Blizzard as a mysterious Willy Wonka-esque magic factory where unfathomable entities craft limitless wonders. As cool (disturbing?) as it would be if we had a bunch of orange-skinned green haired gnomes running around to do our bidding, we don't (but we're working on it). In the meantime, there are real people working long hours with mouse, keyboard, and tablet to bring those wonders to life. It's hard work, and it's held up to an exacting standard.

The long and the short of it is that when we say that, we're not necessarily literally saying that "It's this or a raid tier". It's just shorthand for the amount of resources it might require to accomplish something. It's more like: 'this' or 'more content elsewhere in the game'. Some of you mentioned that you want 5-mans. Well, then the question becomes: Do you want a set of Garrison buildings for one new race or a 5-man? Or a new questing zone? Or new creatures, items, and gear? Or, indeed, a raid tier? So on and so forth.

It's merely an expression of equivalent effort to get across a point that no matter how many creative people we have working, we are always only be able to accomplish so much with those specific resources in a specific amount of time. And that means we have to prioritize what we do. We have to know when to call a project done, and move on to something else, and when to delay an 'Oh, that would be cool if' for later. Feature creep is a real thing, and it can cause an entire project to end up on the cutting room floor.

02/10/2014 08:03 PMPosted by Jatarri

I would think with the 10's of millions of dollars Blizzard brings in every month, you could maybe hire a larger development staff to actually work on things we have been complaining about for years. Not fixing things, but throwing a bandaid on them with a promise that they will be fixed later and never are.

Oh, I've never thought of it that way before.

ಠ_ಠ

It's merely an expression of equivalent effort to get across a point that no matter how many creative people we have working, we are always only be able to accomplish so much with those specific resources in a specific amount of time. And that means we have to prioritize what we do. We have to know when to call a project done, and move on to something else, and when to delay an 'Oh, that would be cool if' for later. Feature creep is a real thing, and it can cause an entire project to end up on the cutting room floor.

02/10/2014 08:13 PMPosted by Mcconnell

That is, of course, assuming these people exist to be hired, but I'm talking purely hypotheticals.

Ah!

02/11/2014 06:30 PMPosted by Deathvaderr

If making a couple faction-specific buildings takes away resource already, then when Bashiok says it would literally take away a raid tier to add race-specific buildings, he MEANS it would LITERALLY take away from a whole raiding tier. What Drak here is trying to say, is that in any other instance it's only a figure of speech.

Correct! Except for my name.

='(

02/12/2014 09:18 AMPosted by Kevin

You already have buildings for these races, and you've reused the same exact building designs a number of times. Which leads me to believe that adding new racial garrisons wouldn't require actually building them from the ground up.

You would, alas, be incorrect. That's not how it works, especially when new technology is involved. Not that we'd be inclined to settle for dropping old art into a feature like this, were it possible.

02/12/2014 10:11 AMPosted by Blasco

The quality and detail Blizz is using going into garrisons doesn't hold up with existing buildings that would just be copy pasted on, even if it was as easy as just copy pasting general racial buildings into a system like garrisons, which I highly doubt.

Correct. We want building and running a Garrison to be a fun and engaging experience, and we're not down with kludging features together. If we do something at all, we always try to do it right.