Could WoW benefit from a paragon system?

[Eapoe]

Now, keep in mind, I have nothing really worked out, just posing the question of the title.
Basically it would work along the lines of roughly every 4 levels you could get about 1-5 points in your primary stats (agi/vit, str/vit, etc), and maybe an increase of like .05-.1% increase to secondary stats per other levels. Blizzard could reset these every 4-6 months to not let people stay overpowered. Could give people extra stuff to strive for, with increased XP based on the content you are doing.
Now, where would this apply? Obviously, as a dev, you would want to encourage people to play but not so much so that it causes people to focus 100% of your free time on the game. The most obvious choices would be world content, but it would also need to be included in others. So far, mythic+ dungeons, world, and random BG's seem to be the best option, with paragon levels disabled in other aspects of the game.

[Kraineth]

Nah

Artifacts already do this

[Rafoel]

No. Just no. This is not rpg way.

[stomination]

That would just make the game just like diablo.

Kick the low paragon player.
Must play all day to keep up with others.

[Justpassing]

I think WoW could benefit from having more content, not specifically what you suggested maybe but you get my point.

[darkwarrior42]

In the sense of an endless reward system? Perhaps. Guild Wars 2 has Achievement Chests you get every 500 achievement points, with major milestones (1,000x, 5,000x, etc) giving bigger chests and more rewards (% boosts to karma/gold find, unique skins, money, etc). There are also repeatable achievements so that you can keep pushing as high as you like.

In the sense of Diablo-style paragon levels that give potentially infinite character power for grinding? No. All that does is strongly encourage botting and reduce the value of gear and skill (X # of paragon levels = 1 ilvl, so eventually your bot that grinds while you're at work can get you the equivalent of a full tier of power, or more).

The occasional resets would prevent there from being an upper limit, but as with what happens in Diablo, for the duration of that time frame botting will win the day. Indeed, with a limited time frame, there is a finite maximum of time you can spend on the game, so it becomes advantageous to have a bot grinding to maximize that time.

*shrug* I don't think the idea of "You're always rewarded for doing things which would give xp" is bad, but having it tied solely to character power and with no upper limit (save that which a seasonal reset would provide) is a bad idea. I think Diablo actually proves that quite nicely, where if you want to be at all competitive on the ladder you pretty much have to bot to get sufficient paragon levels.

[Kelathos]

Any power you give to a player either trivializes the content... or becomes a mandatory requirement.
Don't have legendary ring? No raid.
Don't have Paragon 4,000? No raid.

I don't even like it as it is now, let alone what Paragon would do to it.

[luckydan79]

Now, keep in mind, I have nothing really worked out, just posing the question of the title.
Basically it would work along the lines of roughly every 4 levels you could get about 1-5 points in your primary stats (agi/vit, str/vit, etc), and maybe an increase of like .05-.1% increase to secondary stats per other levels. Blizzard could reset these every 4-6 months to not let people stay overpowered. Could give people extra stuff to strive for, with increased XP based on the content you are doing.
Now, where would this apply? Obviously, as a dev, you would want to encourage people to play but not so much so that it causes people to focus 100% of your free time on the game. The most obvious choices would be world content, but it would also need to be included in others. So far, mythic+ dungeons, world, and random BG's seem to be the best option, with paragon levels disabled in other aspects of the game.

Why not they flogged everything from Diablo III might as well put a paragon system in so the more you play the more you progress, reward for being in the game vs benefits output but yea botting problems and blizzard don't want to bother with this if Legion falls flat after a month.

[Camthur]

Paragon just leads to huge power imbalances in the player base and makes people grind and grind. However, if a paragon type system gave points you could spend toward cosmetic effects, transmog and other benefits unrelated to character power level, I'd totally be up for that.

[endersblade]

I hope you guys do realize the paragon system is not unique to Diablo 3...hell, they weren't even the first to come up with it, and if they put it in WoW, it wouldn't be the first time it was in an MMO.

[Eapoe]

Well, the main idea is that it benefits the stuff people do solo, like the random BG's, regular/heroic dungeons, with the benefit of mythic+ dungeons without breaking the endgame of arenas/ranked BG's/mythic raids.
I know people want more content, but here's the problem with it: people consume content way to fast these days, and always want more. I understand the want of this, but that would mean devs would be working 24/7 just to keep up with the demand of the playerbase. I agree WoD was a little lacking in content, but even by old xpac standards (when I started in Wrath), there was very little to do outside of raids once I had the gear from them. Short of Blizzard bringing back atunements thru rep grinds of adding the cosmetic/mount rewards of dailies like ToC, there is very little to do. The paragon system fulfills some of that, especially with players that like the long, grindy aspect of vanilla. Also, I liked what the one guy said with the loot crate style system where you can get the limited cosmetic reward(s).
I understand the bot issue, but Blizzard advances their detection on this all the time, even with player feedback.

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Any power you give to a player either trivializes the content... or becomes a mandatory requirement.
Don't have legendary ring? No raid.
Don't have Paragon 4,000? No raid.

I don't even like it as it is now, let alone what Paragon would do to it.

Again though, that's why it would be disabled for things like raids and ranked PvP. It would only benefit solo playstyle with the addition of mythic+ dungeons. Let's face it, those were created from the idea behind rifts in D3, might as well have a little extra bonus for the leaderboards (we all know they will happen).

[apples]

everquest already did it

and it did exactly what you would think happen

people with low paragon were replaced with people with high paragon

[Eapoe]

Any power you give to a player either trivializes the content... or becomes a mandatory requirement.
Don't have legendary ring? No raid.
Don't have Paragon 4,000? No raid.

I don't even like it as it is now, let alone what Paragon would do to it.

Again though, that's why it would be disabled for things like raids and ranked PvP. It would only benefit solo playstyle with the addition of mythic+ dungeons. Let's face it, those were created from the idea behind rifts in D3, might as well have a little extra bonus for the leaderboards (we all know they will happen).
I think too many people are just reading the title without seeing the full context of the post.

[Sentynel]

Again though, that's why it would be disabled for things like raids and ranked PvP. It would only benefit solo playstyle with the addition of mythic+ dungeons. Let's face it, those were created from the idea behind rifts in D3, might as well have a little extra bonus for the leaderboards (we all know they will happen).
I think too many people are just reading the title without seeing the full context of the post.

And then what would be the point of a grindfest if it's not usable in endgame? Because, admit it, raid and PvP are the core endgame content of WoW.

[Xeranath]

everquest already did it

and it did exactly what you would think happen

people with low paragon were replaced with people with high paragon

To be fair, EQ's AA was more than base stats; there were required abilities locked in to that. Poorly implemented.

Not totally opposed to a mild AA, but it probably wouldn't be good. If you want a good example of such, you could look to Rift. While the stats gained from their Alternative Advancement were not massive, they did add up to a point where if you weren't actively grinding, you were doing it wrong. Still, from my view at least, it did make going out in to the world a little more worthwhile.

[Eapoe]

And then what would be the point of a grindfest if it's not usable in endgame? Because, admit it, raid and PvP are the core endgame content of WoW.

Because it gives people something to do and strive for OUTSIDE of raids. Something people have been asking for. It also allows a steady increase of player power for when they do their things solo or thru LFG, or even in random BG's. You could even leave it in for older raids to allow faster clears. The point isn't for the people who do the endgame (short of what will become with mythic+ dungeons), it's for people who don't raid. I agree that those are the endgame, but not everyone does that, and these are the people who want things to do the most.
And as stated, it's still usable for things like random BG's, dungeons, mythic+ (for epeen leaderboards only really, because you won't need crazy paragon to get your high end loot crate), and world content. Hell, you could even leave it enabled in LFR, as how that doesn't really matter towards the endgame. The point, is to give another aspect to the endgame to people who don't want to constantly feel like they have to have a raid or die mentality or want to put in effort for being a Glad.

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And then what would be the point of a grindfest if it's not usable in endgame? Because, admit it, raid and PvP are the core endgame content of WoW.

Because it gives people something to do and strive for OUTSIDE of raids. Something people have been asking for. It also allows a steady increase of player power for when they do their things solo or thru LFG, or even in random BG's. You could even leave it in for older raids to allow faster clears. The point isn't for the people who do the endgame (short of what will become with mythic+ dungeons), it's for people who don't raid. I agree that those are the endgame, but not everyone does that, and these are the people who want things to do the most.
And as stated, it's still usable for things like random BG's, dungeons, mythic+ (for epeen leaderboards only really, because you won't need crazy paragon to get your high end loot crate), and world content. Hell, you could even leave it enabled in LFR, as how that doesn't really matter towards the endgame. The point, is to give another aspect to the endgame to people who don't want to constantly feel like they have to have a raid or die mentality or want to put in effort for being a Glad.

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Sorry this is double linking, acting up posting from my phone.

[Sandraudiga]

They are already bringing too much from Diablo into WoW, we don't need a Paragon system.

[Sentynel]

Because it gives people something to do and strive for OUTSIDE of raids. Something people have been asking for. It also allows a steady increase of player power for when they do their things solo or thru LFG, or even in random BG's. You could even leave it in for older raids to allow faster clears. The point isn't for the people who do the endgame (short of what will become with mythic+ dungeons), it's for people who don't raid. I agree that those are the endgame, but not everyone does that, and these are the people who want things to do the most.
And as stated, it's still usable for things like random BG's, dungeons, mythic+ (for epeen leaderboards only really, because you won't need crazy paragon to get your high end loot crate), and world content. Hell, you could even leave it enabled in LFR, as how that doesn't really matter towards the endgame. The point, is to give another aspect to the endgame to people who don't want to constantly feel like they have to have a raid or die mentality or want to put in effort for being a Glad.

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Sorry this is double linking, acting up posting from my phone.

Yeah, that'd be hell of a fun game when in a 25-player LFR there's 24 people on Paragon~100 and a random dude joins who's Paragon~1500 and one shots the boss.

Same goes for random BGs. I'd really enjoy if a Paragon~1500 player one shots me.

Paragon system wouldn't work in WoW.

[Kokolums]

The problem with paragon is the same as with vehicle combat in WoW.

When it was on the drawing board, vehicle combat seemed like an amazing idea. And it is. But they designed it wrong. When they introduced vehicle combat in Wrath in Wintergrasp and Strands, they designed it so that the vehicles were very accessible to all players. This design philosophy actually ruined vehicle combat because in order for vehicles to be accessible to everyone, they had to also be weak and easy to destroy (otherwise everyone would be driving around in overpowered vehicles). Since the vehicles were weak and easy to destroy, they were pointless, unfun and it all became just a hassle.

What originally made vehicle combat appealing was the goblin shredder in vanilla WoW's Alterac Valley. The shredder took a good bit of effort to construct. But once built, it was actually pretty powerful and could turn a battle. THAT was fun. THAT was cool. You didn't see a shredder every day.

Instead of understanding that they designed vehicle combat incorrectly, Blizzard decided the game mechanic was a poor one and scrapped vehicle combat entirely (except we do see it in WoD's Nagrand. But again they make the EXACT same error in making the vehicle common and weak so that players can destroy it easily so it kinda sucks). So we have all of this amazing vehicle combat code and it just sits unused because they can't figure out the implementation.

Paragon levels suffer from the same problem. Its a good idea, but like vehicles, Blizzard's stated design philosophy is to make Paragon accessible to all players. That pushes them to make levels fairly easy to get, which in turn pushes them to make the rewards as tiny and as worthless as possible. That ultimately creates a system where people grind away at lots of Paragon levels and it feels like it hardly making a difference, which is as unfun as you could possibly make it.

I like Paragon, but I hate the design philosophy Blizzard applies to it.

[Etselion]

This actually sounds pretty cool