I think Legion's loot system is going to be its downfall.

[kamuimac]

The whole point of the game is that reward = effort.

and where is that written ? who decided that ?

[primalmatter]

and where is that written ? who decided that ?

Every rpg ever?

Hell I would argue any video game every.

I don't know if you noticed the trend but levels get harder as you advance in them. WoW uses gear as a stat check as well you actively screw with content pacing with gear golden showers.

[Mafic]

There is no effort involved when they are designing an entire gear system on being 100% RNG.

There is a reason why the introduction of the badge system in WoW blew away its other competitors at the time. Players having a clear progression path is always more meaningful to "work towards".

[Deleted]

I think this is good. Raiding should not be the only way to get decent or average PvE gear, maybe for the top ilevel gear (mythic) sure, but normal/heroic equivalents are welcome. It’s pve gear after all = Player vs environment (world bosses, quests, npcs, etc). You should be getting geared by using all of the environments, not a single one.

As for pugs, they will still require you to have the achievements and the gear...not that those even help when people with gear and curve die to fire and such on Archimonde.

[WowIsDead64]

I have always been asking for universal reward system. It's system, where you're not forced to do specified content to get specified reward, because you should do content, you like, not content, that provides reward, you want. Doing content, that doesn't suit you and focusing on reward - not gaming process cause burnout and other problems, like cheating and botting. Harder content should provide more rewards or greater chance to get better rewards - but never better quality of rewards.

[Redroniksre]

You speak as if there won't EVER be challenging solo content, which is blatantly false if Blizzard is worth their salt and can do it right. That being said it won't be as difficult as waiting for a Bloodlust or for your Raid leader to call out to regroup or spread, but i am sure they can still have equal concepts. Also if you can,t clear the raid in the top 10 (being generous) then you can't call yourself a competitive progression guild, since the competition is over and you lost.

[Nethlord]

Three pages late, but this triggered me hard. Obvious casual PoV.

The whole point of the game is that reward = effort. The best gear (player power, opposed to cosmetic **** mounts) SHOULD come from the hardest content.

The obvious unavoidable benefit is simple - the best players have the best gear. Anyone under the impression that high content is blocked to highly skilled players by gear is simply wrong and clearly has no experience of the system at the high end. (All high end decent guilds use parses of comparative gear levels now so they're fully aware if you're performing insanely for your item level or not. There is no longer an excuse.) In a system with no excuse, socialist redistributor gear systems make zero sense... there is no valid justification for them.

There are plenty of catch-up gear mechanics now in place to solve the problems that used to exist. This random Mythic upgrade stuff is simply casuals getting more for free/no extra required effort. That is a mistake.

1)

Casual PoV.

Nope, 11 years raiding including current content. The pool is so small now it's amazingly sad. The catch up "reward=effort" does not exist and it never has not in the simple way you put it. Also it goes Effort=reward and your personal definition of "effort" is broken, legion corrects it.

2)

The obvious unavoidable benefit is simple - the best players have the best gear.

Define best? If you mean people fighting in instanced combat for a dedicated amount of time a week...then everyone doing anything for long swaths of time is under this umbrella. Whether it's fighting a mythic boss or grinding for hours upon hours in BG's, or even spending days and days doing world content; then the gear should be just as "great" for "Effort." No one is special snowflake, but if you're putting in the time, you should be rewarded appropriately for it. Currently, the only place this even exists is raiding (any tier other than LFR). You are not extra-special because you learned to min/max gear or macroed everything to pristine perfection and do one piece of content endlessly (raiding)You earned it because you put in the effort...well everyone isn't treated the same and gonna go because it has to. Lumping in one place doesn't inspire people to do raiding, it turns them off. Ask yourself this; If blizzard told you tomorrow that all the gear can only be obtained via crafting...would you be happy? You love raiding, why did they stick it behind one door!
3)

All high end decent guilds use parses of comparative gear levels now so they're fully aware if you're performing insanely for your item level or not. There is no longer an excuse.

This thought process is why WoD drove millions of people away from the game. I'm going to put my response on a separate line here for added weight:

The game high-end guilds play is and has always been an inclusive one. You are not playing the same game as the rest of the people here and you never have and the game as it is now was made for you. That's wrong and why it's broken.

It is the reason why I despised raiding this xpac. Raiding is no longer for fun or enjoyment, even if you're competitive and pushing for the top of the line metrics, it's because the only point of raiding for everyone was raiding=metrics. It became a job, But the person doing content for just as long, but not in the way "YOU" deem effective shouldn't even matter. Look this is the same game no matter where you look, it's all WoW. PvP, crafting, World Content, Dungeons...all WoW. Tier's/difficulty levels/ilvls, all the same game.

But raiding for years has become a problem in this game. Instead of being essentially the simple progression in the storytelling of the game content per patch and the natural evolution beyond instanced dungeons, it became the lazy way out to book-end things. Basically they just shoved everything of worth in one place and arbitrary made it a weekly loot-pinata to elongate the process. That's it, everything else....has nothing to do with the actual game. That high-end guild competition that gets spoken about all the time, that's not in the game. Leaderboards with other "high-end" players, nope not in the game. This is "Your" game...and it's only about 50k people playing it; yet it dictated the entire progress of this expansion and past ones as well. WoD was the eventual breakdown of this design and we're all paying for it.

With Legion, that game, the one that has dictated the play of entitled clicky players goes away, because that game....that game Was a mistake.

[Ailil]

I think is mind boggling stupid that you only can get top gear in this game in raids

All major features (raids, dungeons, questing, pvp and crafting) should have a progression to top gear, legion seems to be going in this direction, so this is cool

We still have to see if the implementation will be good, so there's that

[Deleted]

The loot system says simply "more grind better gear" while currently in WoD it is "better gear only if you farm raid content" it doesn't change a lot to be fair.

[Supercool]

I think is mind boggling stupid that you only can get top gear in this game in raids

All major features (raids, dungeons, questing, pvp and crafting) should have a progression to top gear, legion seems to be going in this direction, so this is cool

We still have to see if the implementation will be good, so there's that

You simply can't make solo content that's on par with organized group content. The fact that some people struggled for weeks or months on Kanrethad while players with raid experience got it in 2-3 attempts shows how much more difficult you'd have to make a solo encounter to be on par with a 100-300 wipe raid boss and how out of reach it would be to the average player.

Mythic+ will be the best non-raid method of obtaining top gear and it's still organized group content. Solo content like crafting or disorganized group content like random BGs just can't deliver similar rewards for a lot less work. As it stands though crafting is being given a big boost with Obliterum, so if you really devote to crafting you'll be able to level up your crafted gear pretty high (how high we don't yet know).

[emilylorange]

Anyways what do you think? Is there some draw to everything can be anything that I simply can't see from my perspective?

Mostly you're describing behavior that already happens like the worse case scenario. Progression has always favored who has better RNG (why do you think mythic teams split up to farm? Better tier drops and trinkets). PuGs have always been stupid about ilvl standards (back in BC no one would take my appropriately geared prot pally to a heroic dungeon, but everyone loved my T6 druid). Casuals need something to do in order to continue playing - always having an option that's rewarding is still better than the shithole that is Tannan. PvP, well, PvP can bite me as it always has. Crafting seems more a means of making money from the lazy than improving yourself, of late.

So I'm not arsed I guess.

[primalmatter]

You speak as if there won't EVER be challenging solo content, which is blatantly false if Blizzard is worth their salt and can do it right. That being said it won't be as difficult as waiting for a Bloodlust or for your Raid leader to call out to regroup or spread, but i am sure they can still have equal concepts. Also if you can,t clear the raid in the top 10 (being generous) then you can't call yourself a competitive progression guild, since the competition is over and you lost.

Challenging solo content requires as much work as the warlock fire quest or a legendary quest.. its not likely they will be able to keep up that for every class. Never mind tanking and healing specs would need their own encounters..

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1) Nope, 11 years raiding including current content. The pool is so small now it's amazingly sad. The catch up "reward=effort" does not exist and it never has not in the simple way you put it. Also it goes Effort=reward and your personal definition of "effort" is broken, legion corrects it.

2) Define best? If you mean people fighting in instanced combat for a dedicated amount of time a week...then everyone doing anything for long swaths of time is under this umbrella. Whether it's fighting a mythic boss or grinding for hours upon hours in BG's, or even spending days and days doing world content; then the gear should be just as "great" for "Effort." No one is special snowflake, but if you're putting in the time, you should be rewarded appropriately for it. Currently, the only place this even exists is raiding (any tier other than LFR). You are not extra-special because you learned to min/max gear or macroed everything to pristine perfection and do one piece of content endlessly (raiding)You earned it because you put in the effort...well everyone isn't treated the same and gonna go because it has to. Lumping in one place doesn't inspire people to do raiding, it turns them off. Ask yourself this; If blizzard told you tomorrow that all the gear can only be obtained via crafting...would you be happy? You love raiding, why did they stick it behind one door!
3) This thought process is why WoD drove millions of people away from the game. I'm going to put my response on a separate line here for added weight:

The game high-end guilds play is and has always been an inclusive one. You are not playing the same game as the rest of the people here and you never have and the game as it is now was made for you. That's wrong and why it's broken.

It is the reason why I despised raiding this xpac. Raiding is no longer for fun or enjoyment, even if you're competitive and pushing for the top of the line metrics, it's because the only point of raiding for everyone was raiding=metrics. It became a job, But the person doing content for just as long, but not in the way "YOU" deem effective shouldn't even matter. Look this is the same game no matter where you look, it's all WoW. PvP, crafting, World Content, Dungeons...all WoW. Tier's/difficulty levels/ilvls, all the same game.

But raiding for years has become a problem in this game. Instead of being essentially the simple progression in the storytelling of the game content per patch and the natural evolution beyond instanced dungeons, it became the lazy way out to book-end things. Basically they just shoved everything of worth in one place and arbitrary made it a weekly loot-pinata to elongate the process. That's it, everything else....has nothing to do with the actual game. That high-end guild competition that gets spoken about all the time, that's not in the game. Leaderboards with other "high-end" players, nope not in the game. This is "Your" game...and it's only about 50k people playing it; yet it dictated the entire progress of this expansion and past ones as well. WoD was the eventual breakdown of this design and we're all paying for it.

With Legion, that game, the one that has dictated the play of entitled clicky players goes away, because that game....that game Was a mistake.

The game now was made for casual players...

Never before has so much of a expansions resources gone towards them nor have the rewards ever been better (725 dungeon gear says hello)

Wod was the expansion for casuals it isn't a surprise to me it brought in casual profits.

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I think is mind boggling stupid that you only can get top gear in this game in raids

All major features (raids, dungeons, questing, pvp and crafting) should have a progression to top gear, legion seems to be going in this direction, so this is cool

We still have to see if the implementation will be good, so there's that

Mythic raid ilv gear from dungeons wasn't enough in wod?

[Deleted]

Keep in mind that alpha/beta drop rates are subject to change and often inflated for the purposes of testing.

As long as the drop rate is somewhat low, I don't see the issue. It keeps raiders doing non raid activities and gives non raiders a carrot on a stick to keep them going while not breaking anything.

It isnt carrot. Carrot on stick for non raiders and casuals is content itself. In moment when they will finish content in dungeons and i guess in LFR they will again leave game. There is no reason to bother with rng loot items when in next few monts all that rng fear will be absolote and all that pain from getting 1 proper item can start again.

RNG gear is bull****. You dont feel rewarded when you get good item. You feel reliave that was about time to drop such item. Imagine that you doing entire week Mythic+ dungeon. You spend several hours in them and achieve high lvl. Annnnnd you drop versitality, masterty cloth wrist on your fire mage. Enyoj.

[Blur4stuff]

solo content can't be as challenging as organized raid content

if this were true then that would mean WoW organized raiding is more challenging and engaging than any game ever that didn't have organized raiding

which is obviously not true

but that's comparing different games

doesn't matter. it proves that non-raiding content can be plenty challenging if game designers want it to be.

if raiding has to continue to exist in WoW, there are zero good reasons to keep the best possible gear as mythic raid drops.

[Sodia]

Define extremely rare?

On alpha it wasn't that uncommon and a few people I know who powerleveled beta say it is still the same... Where are you getting very rare from?

.... Well coz its Alpha??

[Supercool]

doesn't matter. it proves that non-raiding content can be plenty challenging if game designers want it to be.

If you make content that takes a skilled solo player 100s of attempts it's going to take the average person more attempts than they would ever be willing to put in, effectively making it wasted content for them. They'll either cry for nerfs or give up.

It should be obvious why Blizz doesn't do this.

[Sodia]

and where is that written ? who decided that ?

You joking right??

[primalmatter]

If you make content that takes a skilled solo player 100s of attempts it's going to take the average person more attempts than they would ever be willing to put in, effectively making it wasted content for them. They'll either cry for nerfs or give up.

It should be obvious why Blizz doesn't do this.

Green fire or the old vanilla class quests for epic weapons would fall under this category but I agree most wouldn't want well tuned solo content. Never mind it need to be tuned per class.

[judgementofantonidas]

I think the whole any gear from any source can become a highest ilv piece available for that tier is going to backfire hard. I am trying to think of who such a system benefits and I really can't see anyone coming out ahead.

1. Raiders: The easy example. This boils down the progression race largely into whoever can get the most good rng in terms of drops. It doesn't add depth of game play nor ease of access. All I can see this doing is increasing requirements to join groups.

2. PuGs: After three weeks pugs are going to demand outrageous entry restrictions. Gear will not be even the slightest indicator of skill (not that it has been a amazing one for a while). People will fall back to having extremely high requirements in desperation to try and filter out players who only spam one ability from the rest of the group.

3. "casual" players: This crowd seems like it would be the most effected by the change. Not only does it reduce their progression to be no different then a Korean grind mmo it actively outgears them for content that is designed around them. It leads to a shallower and more empty experience.

4. PvP : Gear is going to be rng from this model... enjoy

5: Crafting: While the rework of crafting is good I question how effective it can possibly be when grinding boars for leather produces better leather gear then anything you craft... It seems like a effort in futility.

As for the Pros.

This system honestly does help out people with set group progress further and further in mythic + dungeons. I would be remiss not to show that it has at least some positive impact...

Anyways what do you think? Is there some draw to everything can be anything that I simply can't see from my perspective?

This system should make people like clueless leader happier than a puppy with two peters. Now he can do litterally nothing and get max level items to feed his need for welfare player power.

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Alpha rates do not conclusively prove anything about live.
In fact they are often inflated for testing purposes.
From where are you getting that the rate on alpha is final ?



Legendaries may not be defined as required by blizzard, but then again neither is item level above that blizzard defines for content.
But the community decided otherwise.
It is the community that will decide that, and that decision has been going largely one way now for years.

agreed. heroic citadel is designed to be and has been cleared by players in the mid 500 ilvl but try pugging in at that.

[the]

I think I am not seeing eye to eye with the OP about what "downfall" means. If WoW turned into something with the difficulty of Farmville, but continued to generate the same profit for Blizzard, is that a "downfall" in your eyes? @primalmatter