Can we have casual gear progression content that isn't a raid?

[Deleted]

I'll clarify: do the set of dailies. Don't just swap to the armor at turn-in time.

It's amazing to me how many people don't see how vast of an increase you see every 20 ilvl points this xpac. My i507 Hunter feels half as strong as my i518 one.

did it with a ilvl 472 warrior and I had no problems granted it is 9 op ilvls over 463 but still I had no problems with ToT daylies.

[Deleted]

I'd like 5 man heroics with relatively hard requirements, like CC, cooldown timing, and stuff like that could be added. the rewards could be several slots of current normal tier items, and the rest half a tier lower, somewhat an amalgam between cata heroics and TBC heroics.

[Kelimbror]

Not sure if this was mentioned, but I've wanted this for a long time. A new MMO (shall remain nameless) has stated they have goals to do something along these lines, but we'll see. The only reason why we will likely never see this is because of the extra time it would take to make. Granted, I think this is negligible if planned for ahead of time as they can merely adjust the xp/rep gains from questing and overall spend the same amount of time on 'quest content'.

The best solution in my mind is to have a supplementary stat on the gear that signifies what type of content it is best for. Combined with a difference in ilvls to compensate for people who feel the need to do multiple things. Here's how it would look:

PvP Gear: Has resilience/pvp power, which is only applicable in PvP like it is now. It provides no benefit to any other activity.
Quest gear: Has 'Quest Power', which is only applicable in the open world and dungeons. It increases damage/healing done, reduces damage taken.

Raid Gear: Has 'Raid Power', which is only applicable in raid instances, etc, etc.

So, a couple of things would be needed for this system:
1) If LFR was removed in favor of this, the argument would truly be that people were missing the story of the game, which would still be bad. They would have to find a way to tell a story in two narratives, where neither side feels left out for not experiencing a part of it.

2) Obviously you could use the gear from one area as an intro to another. It would allow more flexibility, while still marking what is the best gear for this content.

3) Raid ilvls would need to be a little bit higher in order to prevent raiders feeling like they need to do all the quests and raids in order to have the best farming gear, etc. Granted they already have to grind rep and whatnot now with questing, so...don't know how important this would really be. Maybe it would make everytone feel like they have more choice in how to gear up, which would be good.

4) They would need to implement an armor storage system, possibly a very intricate and large one. Where once you acquire the gear it automatically goes in an interface instead of ever being in your bags. You choose your gear through a menu much like the new transmog interface and can save sets like you do now.

As much as I'm loving WoW right now, I don't see Blizzard ever going to this extent to 'fix' the PvE side of the game. I could be wrong, but I just don't see it happening.

[Raintola]

Casual PvE gear progression would be pretty neat, but I feel before they add that, they need to re-do the entire loot/gear system. All the "ilvl" stuff and the numbers are confusing and way too high. I hope in the next expansion we get an item-squish, back to where people have around 20k-30k health average, like Wrath numbers. That would be nice. Also they need to get rid of ilvl, way too many people freak out about it and it is dependent, it just took the horrible add-on gear score and added it to the game, giving each person a "number" instead of their skill.

Item level has been part of the game since Vanilla. You couldn't see it, but gear that had higher stats had a higher item level. If they removed it being displayed, you'd just have your gear looked up on Wowhead to see where it dropped.

[Venant]

The whole idea that there are progression raiders who complain about having to do things other than raiding, and then go and wipe on a heroic boss for 30 hours, well that is just completely ridiculous. If you are set on being an insane min/maxer then you shouldn't complain that the game isn't making it easy enough for you! You might as well complain that heroic modes are too hard and you should never have to wipe on a boss more than 10 times.

[Deleted]

This game have gotten to Welffare.

Give back TBC and the hard farming for shitty gear just to get into raids.

[Ferocity]

Quest gear: Has 'Quest Power', which is only applicable in the open world and dungeons. It increases damage/healing done, reduces damage taken.

Raid Gear: Has 'Raid Power', which is only applicable in raid instances, etc, etc.

So, a couple of things would be needed for this system:
1) If LFR was removed in favor of this, the argument would truly be that people were missing the story of the game, which would still be bad. They would have to find a way to tell a story in two narratives, where neither side feels left out for not experiencing a part of it.

2) Obviously you could use the gear from one area as an intro to another. It would allow more flexibility, while still marking what is the best gear for this content.

It sounds too convoluted. What about soloing old content (older raid instances)? For quest gear to be viable in raids and for soloing old stuff, it has to be part of items' hierarchy.

Best way would simply be to move away from raid-centric game. It doesn't mean that raids shouldn't exist, but when all character progression is tied to raids (in the form they are currently are), well, it simply makes the whole term "world" meaningless in WoW. We have dead professions, we have no alternate advancement, and it doesn't matter what you do, if you don't raid, you are forever 50%+ less powerful than those who do.

This game have gotten to Welffare.

Give back TBC and the hard farming for shitty gear just to get into raids.

Of course we can't have nice discussion without all that kind of people...
What do you mean by hard farming? Farming S1/S2/S3? The whole term "welfare items" (PVP and badge epics) appeared in TBC. Now, don't even try to pretend you played back then. Or maybe you played but forgot that you probably was crying bloody tears by looking at people in BT-look-a-like S3 epics, which were beating any KZ drops. There is no shame in telling others that you cried, really

[Kelimbror]

It sounds too convoluted. What about soloing old content (older raid instances)? For quest gear to be viable in raids and for soloing old stuff, it has to be part of items' hierarchy.

It's not convoluted at all...it's having 3 sets of gear that apply to the three different areas of the game. You can still use any gear in all content, but you won't be 'the best' unless you have the gear from that content. Unfortunately Blizzard has been thinking a lot like you lately and assuming people don't have brains, so don't like choices.

Additionally, why would you need different gear to solo old raids? The pure stats from ilvl will vastly outpower them just like now. The idea would be to have the same stat budgets and exact same amounts of specific content power. If you really think everyone is so stupid that numbers and a stat is confusing (even though PvP gear has had that forever now) then just but a big disclaimer like the 'Raid Finder' at the top of gear now and say 'PvP', 'Quest', and 'Raid'. Can't really get any simpler than that.

The numbers can stay behind the scenes, doesn't change how it could work.

[Reyzzz]

I'd like 5 man heroics with relatively hard requirements, like CC, cooldown timing, and stuff like that could be added. the rewards could be several slots of current normal tier items, and the rest half a tier lower, somewhat an amalgam between cata heroics and TBC heroics.

Daily challenge mode gives a bag which can include 516 ilvl items.

[Pua]

It's not convoluted at all...it's having 3 sets of gear that apply to the three different areas of the game. You can still use any gear in all content, but you won't be 'the best' unless you have the gear from that content. Unfortunately Blizzard has been thinking a lot like you lately and assuming people don't have brains, so don't like choices.

Additionally, why would you need different gear to solo old raids? The pure stats from ilvl will vastly outpower them just like now. The idea would be to have the same stat budgets and exact same amounts of specific content power. If you really think everyone is so stupid that numbers and a stat is confusing (even though PvP gear has had that forever now) then just but a big disclaimer like the 'Raid Finder' at the top of gear now and say 'PvP', 'Quest', and 'Raid'. Can't really get any simpler than that.

The numbers can stay behind the scenes, doesn't change how it could work.

No, I'm with you, I think it could work. That said, I honestly think SW:TOR took a huge step forward in gear itemization when it made pretty much every stat customizable through mods, plating, hilts and the like. You could literally put whatever you want in gear, assuming you have access to the right mods.

Alas, such an overhaul is unlikely to happen in WoW. It's relatively clear Blizzard want people to just keep farming over and over again, never certain that something will drop but always hopeful that it will.

It sucks, but it's likely here to stay.

[Ferocity]

Additionally, why would you need different gear to solo old raids? The pure stats from ilvl will vastly outpower them just like now. The idea would be to have the same stat budgets and exact same amounts of specific content power. If you really think everyone is so stupid that numbers and a stat is confusing (even though PvP gear has had that forever now) then just but a big disclaimer like the 'Raid Finder' at the top of gear now and say 'PvP', 'Quest', and 'Raid'. Can't really get any simpler than that.

The numbers can stay behind the scenes, doesn't change how it could work.

I was thinking more along the lines of stats like "Raid Hit", "Raid Crit", and such. So if you have no raid gear, you have no crit, no hit, etc. against raid mobs. Or, if we'd have some kind of "Raid Power/Resilience" stat - for ilvl to make a difference in soloing old content, we should have even higher inflation, so old raid power requirements would become obsolete to make up for lack of it on quest gear.

PvP gear is different from PvE, because it is used against players, not mobs. Following this logic, Raid Gear is gear used against raid mobs only. Which would devalue that gear for raiders as well, if raid stats don't work on world mobs. And if they would work, it would make that gear superior to quest gear. And raids shouldn't be the only way to progress your char, but raid rewards should also be useful in any non-raid PvE environment.

If we will start making some exceptions and additions, like base PvP resilience, we will still make specific items' hierarchy, where for character progress it would still be ending in raid gear.

Speaking about exceptions and additions, I am not much into PvP, but all that stats' juggling and lower ilvl of PvP gear makes hc raid gear superior to PvP gear in PvP-environment.

Daily challenge mode gives a bag which can include 516 ilvl items.

What are you speaking about? Chance to get it is close to 0, then you have to pray for right slot/stats, so it will take much longer than eternity to get anything useful out of it. Also the very paradigm of "challenge" mode goes against character progress and pacing. Auto-scaling is the most horrible feature ever implemented in RPG game, and it is usually used as easy way to balance to keep "challenge", but in the end just makes it boring, because you can't feel any real progress in scaled-environment.

And nvm, 516, it is submediocre gear, it looks like grays in comparison to hc thunderforged. Getting junk gear isn't progress, which could be alternative to raiding.

[Kelimbror]

No, I'm with you, I think it could work. That said, I honestly think SW:TOR took a huge step forward in gear itemization when it made pretty much every stat customizable through mods, plating, hilts and the like. You could literally put whatever you want in gear, assuming you have access to the right mods.

Alas, such an overhaul is unlikely to happen in WoW. It's relatively clear Blizzard want people to just keep farming over and over again, never certain that something will drop but always hopeful that it will.

It sucks, but it's likely here to stay.

I feel like it is too. SWTOR isn't the only one going that route with gear. The same MMO on the horizon that is approaching content distinctly also has a robust gear customization system similar to SWTOR, but far far deeper.

As someone who used to raid competitively, but has no time or desire to do that sort of thing, I love LFR. I probably wouldn't be playing the game without it as it's the only way I have to progress my character in a meaningful way. If they introduced distinct content like that, it would restore the prestige of raiding while still giving the every man something to do.

I would certainly remain a player in that system, though it may have an unfortunate side effect of creating an even greater division of the playerbase which isn't a good thing. Perhaps then the solution would be to include lots of different types of content in the open world environment...kinda a step where they are headed right now with the barrens and ToT dailies. World bosses, 'dynamic' events, etc.

Who knows? I feel like anything major of that variety would be seen as trying to reinvent the wheel and would probably fall flat in this game.

[Jtree]

I would like to see a new tier for dungeons, a BRD-dungeon-type tier without LFD.
Those dungeons should be longer and more complex and have quests. I dont mind to add difficulty levels (like normal and heroic) there as well.

I've heard the name Labyrinth tossed out, and I like it the idea. I don't have high expectations that Blizz will do something like this, but it's fun to think about.

IMO, BRD could use a story update, and would be perfect for a new type of endgame content. With Moira having committed to the Council and the Alliance after the Blood in the Snow scenario, I can imagine a coup attempt happening in BRD. The Alliance will go in to put down the rebels and free the mainly loyalist population. The Horde will go in to put down the rebels and steal as much Dark Iron wealth as they can. XD

Other wishes for Labyrinths:

No LF mode.
3-day reset, giving you the opportunity to break a full clear into manageable chunks.
CC needed when not overgeared.
Large roster of regular bosses.
Bonus rewards when fully cleared.
List of rotating quests that change on reset. These will spawn additional bosses and objectives for bonus loot.
New quests for new raid tiers, adding harder bosses that reward even better loot.
Dungeon set armor.


Possible Labyrinths:

BRD
LBRS/UBRS
Dire Maul
Mauradon
Karazhan

[Kelimbror]

I was thinking more along the lines of stats like "Raid Hit", "Raid Crit", and such. So if you have no raid gear, you have no crit, no hit, etc. against raid mobs. Or, if we'd have some kind of "Raid Power/Resilience" stat - for ilvl to make a difference in soloing old content, we should have even higher inflation, so old raid power requirements would become obsolete to make up for lack of it on quest gear.

Ah, see you're taking it beyond what I had in mind. We already have systems that affect hit/crit like gems and reforging. That stuff can stay so that you can customize your gear how you see fit for your content. The only things affected by the difference would be a flat boost on dmg, healing, and dmg reduction. All other stats function the same in both instances of PvE.

If we wanted to be completely ideal, it would be literally the same peices of gear (with a bit of an ilvl boost from raid gear only there so that raiders don't feel they 'have' to do the world content as well).

So it would look like:
Quest Gear (hidden 25% boost on dmg, heals, reduction in the world)
2500 Agi
1500 Stam
1000 Hit
1000 Crit

Raid Gear (hidden bonuses in raiding)
3000 agi
2000 stam
1200 hit
1200 crit

Since raids can be tuned however, everything past the intro raid can be tuned with the specific bonuses in place, effectively preventing quest gear from being remotely close to best in Raids, but will server to get someone into them. Obviously I'm not a math whiz, so the stat specifics would have to be mathed out...but these are arbitrary numbers to show what it could look like.

[fangless]

What are you speaking about? Chance to get it is close to 0, then you have to pray for right slot/stats, so it will take much longer than eternity to get anything useful out of it. Also the very paradigm of "challenge" mode goes against character progress and pacing. Auto-scaling is the most horrible feature ever implemented in RPG game, and it is usually used as easy way to balance to keep "challenge", but in the end just makes it boring, because you can't feel any real progress in scaled-environment.

And nvm, 516, it is submediocre gear, it looks like grays in comparison to hc thunderforged. Getting junk gear isn't progress, which could be alternative to raiding.

I think for the effort put into the scenario, the reward is justified. When I say give players a progression path outside of raids, which is to mean all the slots, I wouldn't expect it to be max level items. But players now don't expect that stuff when they do quests/LFR. I think most people understand their gear won't be 541 stuff for casual content.

But as long as it's just something to obtain, a goal to reach, through a means that isn't the one thing they don't have time/desire to do, it would make sense. Making an easy raid for people to get items out of that isn't even fun or compelling seems just like a slap in the face of the players, to be honest.

[Ferocity]

If we wanted to be completely ideal, it would be literally the same peices of gear (with a bit of an ilvl boost from raid gear only there so that raiders don't feel they 'have' to do the world content as well).

So it would look like:
Quest Gear (hidden 25% boost on dmg, heals, reduction in the world)
2500 Agi
1500 Stam
1000 Hit
1000 Crit

Raid Gear (hidden bonuses in raiding)
3000 agi
2000 stam
1200 hit
1200 crit

Now I see what you had in mind. But it would greatly undermine raiding. People who get raid gear, want to see it's benefits not only during raids, and such system would make raids (and LFR as well) much less appealing. Having alternative non-raid way to get gear up to current (541 as of now) wouldn't hurt long-term as much as separate stat bonuses.

I've heard the name Labyrinth tossed out, and I like it the idea. I don't have high expectations that Blizz will do something like this, but it's fun to think about.

That's what would be great to see instead of heroic scenarios. Some long dungeons which you could do with couple friends, and which rewards would be something more than 0,0..01 chance to get random 516 from bag and some pathetic amount of gold for completion. But without updates/rehashes of old dungeons, we need some new dungeons. I don't know for others, but I feel MoP lacks fresh things, fresh dungeons.

---------- Post added 2013-06-17 at 06:30 PM ----------

I think for the effort put into the scenario, the reward is justified. When I say give players a progression path outside of raids, which is to mean all the slots, I wouldn't expect it to be max level items. But players now don't expect that stuff when they do quests/LFR. I think most people understand their gear won't be 541 stuff for casual content.

But as long as it's just something to obtain, a goal to reach, through a means that isn't the one thing they don't have time/desire to do, it would make sense. Making an easy raid for people to get items out of that isn't even fun or compelling seems just like a slap in the face of the players, to be honest.

But long-term it ends like this. We have specific kind of content (raids), which isn't appealing to many players due to various reasons, and most of char. progression is locked behind it. Why bother with going for long routes for submediocre gear, when we can just wait till next raid tier and some kind of catch up? On higher scale, players aren't satisfied with submediocre items, which they have little to no chance to see at all (like 516 from hc scenarios), and don't look at it as any kind of character progression.

And it is exactly what we have now, and what developers outlined too. A lot of people play from patch week to patch week, and not in-between. Because if you don't raid, there is nothing interesting to aim for. Goals just ain't worth it. Extremely dire RNGfest for some crap item doesn't worth to keep steady subscription.

[Ronduwil]

There is one, it's called 463 heroic gear. If you never do anything harder than dungeons then you have no need for higher gear because that's the ilvl heroics are tuned for.

I see this argument all the time, and it's completely non-sensical. Raiding gear is useful for everything: You can grind through dailies faster. You can clear the areas around the nodes you're gathering faster. You can world PvP better. You can clear the mobs around your fishing spot faster. You can clear a space for your pet battles faster. No matter what activity you prefer in WoW, it's all easier with raiding gear. Notice how no one is asking for a different progression path for PvP gear. That's because PvP gear is only good for PvP. If a PvPer made the argument, "If you never do non-PvP you have no need for PvP gear because it's only good for PvP," I would agree with them. That argument makes no sense for raiders, though.

Raid Gear: Has 'Raid Power', which is only applicable in raid instances, etc, etc.

If this were implemented I would completely agree with you that raid gear is only good for raiding. Until then please quit making that ridiculous claim.

---------- Post added 2013-06-17 at 11:03 AM ----------

I honestly think SW:TOR took a huge step forward in gear itemization when it made pretty much every stat customizable through mods, plating, hilts and the like. You could literally put whatever you want in gear, assuming you have access to the right mods.

I'm sorry, but I have to correct you here. Guild Wars implemented this system back in 2007 (maybe even earlier). It has its pros and cons. On one hand it's easy to min-max, but on the other, you cap out too quickly.

[fangless]

But long-term it ends like this. We have specific kind of content (raids), which isn't appealing to many players due to various reasons, and most of char. progression is locked behind it. Why bother with going for long routes for submediocre gear, when we can just wait till next raid tier and some kind of catch up? On higher scale, players aren't satisfied with submediocre items, which they have little to no chance to see at all (like 516 from hc scenarios), and don't look at it as any kind of character progression.

And it is exactly what we have now, and what developers outlined too. A lot of people play from patch week to patch week, and not in-between. Because if you don't raid, there is nothing interesting to aim for. Goals just ain't worth it. Extremely dire RNGfest for some crap item doesn't worth to keep steady subscription.

People do a lot of work right now for "sub-mediocre" items though right now. If you considering anything under normal/heroic raids as such, that is.

People also expect too much too quickly, and to your point, leads them to play for a few weeks, and wait until the next patch. You can do all the "tasks" for gear in a week, and then the only reason you have to log-in is gone until the week after.

If those tasks took more effort, and you had to maybe stretch them out over the week, you'll have the same gear, but you also have a reason to keep logging in.

[Ferocity]

People also expect too much too quickly, and to your point, leads them to play for a few weeks, and wait until the next patch. You can do all the "tasks" for gear in a week, and then the only reason you have to log-in is gone until the week after.

If those tasks took more effort, and you had to maybe stretch them out over the week, you'll have the same gear, but you also have a reason to keep logging in.

There is no effort in RNG, there is no feeling of tangible reward. Abysmally low chance to get random 516 item isn't high enough motivator. I, myself, did a lot of "work" grinding those heroic bags too, but so far it all was waste of time apart from 1-time quest. Now, if bag would contain some token, and with enough tokens you could get relevant piece of gear, it could be more tangible and more motivating.

Ad as you see, this your generalization only works in theory. On practice, more and more people get tired from futile attempts to get anything from mogu runes, from heroic bags, even more so futile because reward isn't even mediocre and thus they do what developers noted - log from patch to patch.

There are a lot of ways you can design reward system to work on stretched-in-time (sry, couldn't find better word) basis. But pigeon-holing everything into dire RNG with abysmal chances for submediocre rewards isn't what can be called as interesting character progression, or as tangible rewards. Raid reward system itself is flawed with all that RNG tied to BoP loot drops. And putting RNG in even more absurd amounts for non-raiders only make the flaw even more so obvious.

How would you feel if you would still be stuck with, say, 483 weapon, knowing that there are 541 weapons, which are immensely better? With only "tangible" option being to waste tons of gold for 502 craft junk (that's if you will be lucky to get crafter with free ingots or item listed on AH)? You would start doing same as most people - rethink your time investment in game (as it doesn't justifies itself) and check game on patch days to see content. Because character progress, if you don't raid, is mostly null and void.

P.S.: Weapons are the most sad moment in character progression. They are "make or break" the character and thus they should be removed from RNG's influence altogether, especially with such huge gaps in power between tiers as we have now.

[Kelimbror]

If this were implemented I would completely agree with you that raid gear is only good for raiding. Until then please quit making that ridiculous claim.

Wtf are you talking about? I gave a suggestion on how to provide meaningful progression to each aspect of the game without using LFR. I think you're either reading something completely wrong or don't know who you're responding to.