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The guides are often almost useless

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    The guides are often almost useless

    Sadly the guides often give us bad advice instead of good ones.

    They often don't know the stats on the gear, ignore different itemization needs for various specializations (cat vs moonkin druid for example). Even, if you use a talent advisor for feral spec, the guide recommends moonkin items often.

    The guides often send people into severely overcrowded areas, where all the "competition" in the busy area can make leveling or resources farming very slow, and as the guide doesn't have a button to "suggest an alternative" when this happens it can remain slow for an extended amount of time. For farming guides, a lot of web-based guides can recommend different zones for the same ore, Zygor doesn't offer alternate routes. When more users compete for the same few zones while they ignore other alternatives that are less overused that can put users at a disadvantage.

    But the worst of all is simple: In classic the most important choice we make is simple: Some people want to level alone (mostly by questing), others will have a questing partner or two. While Zygor allows us to share the guide state and see the same arrow that is where the support ends. The guide doesn't have a talent advisor for talents relevant in groups (leveling tanks, healers), ignore plenty of options that are valid for leveling groups (like picking up dungeon quest when we are there, going to the dungeon when it is nearby), etc.

    Even without dungeons, leveling in groups, the guide is often bad at estimating the rate of leveling (in collect quests some people kill far more monsters than others)... And as it often uses "green almost grey" quests for an easier path, once you hit a level early you would do grey quests (sometimes not even in a chain) because of the guide, at other times you would have "grind steps" because the guide skipped other quests (see murloc heads in Ghostlands). When you have people grouping, when you see people going to dungeons for gear this mostly static guide is bad.

    While sis tries to send us to a good starting position when that includes both grey quest (prerequisite) and grind step for leveling, that is disappointing.

    Retail requires fewer and fewer guides, you have closed guides for other games. WoW Classic is an essential and huge market if people in guilds hear their guildies complaining about bad advice from guide, etc. they will be less likely to subscribe. If they praise the guide because they have far fewer problems and receive useful advice that is good advertisement.

    When we (with other users) discuss mining and other farming activity and I get consistently more ores because I ignore the guide (I pay subscription money for) than the people who follow the guide... That shows the guide as pointless to other guildies. Even if we can say "but we can see the same arrow with a questing partner and it can make things a bit more convenient sometimes" that isn't convincing anyone to pay for the guide.

    #2
    I really really like the guide for Shadowlands, however Classic/TBC I agree with you. I find the lack of continuity between zones jarring, with the guide just ending. I don't understand why it doesn't point you to the next zone or even load the next guide automatically. I have to assume its a limitation of the client, but regardless it is a bad experience overall.

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      #3
      Sorry to hear you're not enjoying your experience with Zygor. Some of your reported issues we can look into, some of them we need more info.

      We would need an example of what item the gear system didn't know the stats of. We'll look into if there's a way to make it factor in different druid itemizations.

      Overcrowded areas can be a relative thing based on servers and the time you play. Everything is overcrowed immediately following a launch. We typically provide what we feel is the best location, which often won't be as crowded as hype around a launch simmers down. We will look into the possibility of alternate routes though.

      As for leveling in groups, our addon is indeed intended for solo leveling play. We do have some guides for dungeon quests, but the intended way of leveling is through solo questing, not grouped play. We may add additional specs in the future for tanks and healers
      .
      As for collect quests and quest colors, every guide we release goes through several revisions. The earliest revisions may have some minor issues since they were written in beta. They usually get ironed out once our team is able to go through on the live servers after a launch. Our most recent updates corrected much of the 60-70 experience and adjusted the grind steps.

      There's really no way for the SIS not to direct you through a gray quest if it's a required pre-requisite. Your best bet there would be to just not use SIS if you want to try to jump in without pre-quests.

      The guides should prompt you to load the next guide automatically (see below)



      If it doesn't, we need an example of a guide where you reached the end of that didn't prompt you to move to the next guide.

      We will definitely try to address your other concerns as best as we can.
      Zygor Guides Creative Director

      Comment


        #4
        My Jewelcrafter crafted a few blue rings with random enchantments. Some bosses drop blues with a few random stats. Those seem to be one of the problems.

        Right now on my healer pally, I have a Kilt of the Night Strider used, it is leather. Your addon wants to replace it with Azureplate Greaves. It claims I would lose 8 spirit but would gain 612 Armor, 33 Strength, 6 Stamina. It ignores the +33 healing and 11 spell damage on the kilt and ignores the sockets and the socket bonus. But people who discuss the guide in the party, or in Guild chat will mention it in very different ways, and complaining customers seen in guild chat can discourage others from buying the guide.

        Most of the issues we have seen on Druid also involved items where Zygor Guide said we would get bonus stats (only green numbers displayed) and essentially forgot about all the stats of the existing items, or at least stats from sockets, stats from "green text" bonus stuff from item tooltip. So the problem seems to be with detecting actual gear stats. So even when in Druid it suggested item for the wrong spec, it probably forgot about some (or all) stats of the current gear, and that seems to be the source of this problem. So these issues can be traced back to a single issue. And as it involves mostly blue items that can be considered for finding upgrades and not on "green junk with random stats" it is probably a problem that comes from your item database.

        About focus on solo leveling: Sorry if it sounds rude, but it is actually impossible to make a guide that is really good for solo leveling. Experience often beats even the best guides. Simply because the maker of a guide cannot predict everything about the user. Some would level lightning fast with ZF Graveyard farming with a paladin. Others would see that grind steps are fast with a frost mage, or incredibly slow as a tank. When I level an alt, I often level it because I need the professions on the alt to support another character. When the goal is to quest and mine at the same time and I would get some extra kill xp fighting at veins, that is very different from leveling a non-gatherer.

        A guide for solo leveling can't factor many variables into the path. And it is even more likely to ignore overcrowding problems, and sometimes what you learn from the beta can be a problem (say in ghostlands). So for solo leveling, you only need a guide, when the inefficiency due to your inexperience would be a bigger problem than the inefficiency caused by the fact that no guide is personalized. And even if you would recommend the guide most people would point to this fact.

        For leveling in groups of 3 players would go in 3 (or 4) different directions because they have their own route in mind, which can be a huge inefficiency. And that can be fixed by an addon showing a semi-optimal route for the group and everyone seeing the same directions immediately. When you mention that advantage and see how it makes things go more smoothly, faster, etc. the ones who "just followed" and start to understand the value of the addon might start buying.

        Even if a solo leveler would be happy with the guide, that would be unknown to most, and it wouldn't sell more subscriptions, happy leveling groups discussing the addon and recommending it to people who just join at LFM might sell the addon. Automating sharing tips with party members who don't have the addon could also help to sell the addon AND make it more useful for existing customers.

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          #5
          I quit zygor for all these reasons, came back to see if its changed so i can sign up for wrath prep but sadly nothing seems to have changed

          Comment


            #6
            I'm primarily a solo player and the WOTLK guide works pretty well for me. Also, when I complete one guide it does load the next one automatically.

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