Ion: It's the Myhic guild leaders fault for burnout

[Deleted]

Because it's amazingly convenient way of thinking. On the one hand, they claim that Artifact Power is extremely easy to get - they only do couple quests every day, a dungeon or two a week and are almost done. On the other, they would instantly reach that weekly cap, no matter how high it would be. And of course, mythic raiders would be the one to blame for this.

I don't even like the idea of cap and think it could be done in other ways, but this is just a hypocritical argument. They "don't care", expect when something changes in a way it shouldn't affect them, it's suddenly bad.
... The very title of this thread mentions Mythic. Whether you agree with Ion's statement or not, it seems rather obvious he's talking about the highest difficulty - and yet here you are, "bragging" that you didn't need 54 to do "some Heroic".So who's getting "fucked over" in 7.2? Because, you know, some things are getting changed and some of them seemed to be mentioned by Mythic raiders. So either their arguments made sense or Blizzard is going to "fuck over the majority of playerbase to protect hardcore players" in the next few months. You'd have to be delusional to believe it's the latter - or just hate mythic raiders and believe they are to blame for all the problems in the game. Or both.

What makes you think a cap doesn't affect them?

A cap does affect all players, it only helps people that can't control themselves though (so basically, addicts and stupid people).
And even if they add a cap, why do you believe Blizzard wouldn't tune Mythic NH bosses for 54 artifact power traits?
Since they are going to remove these traits in 7.2, you can bet your ass that the cap would also aim for a 54trait artifact weapon right now.

So how the hell would a cap change anything? I'm all for making each playerbase happy as possible. But for the first time, we have a system that allows you to increase in power no matter what you do, as long as you play the game (at least until you are maxxed out) and this shouldn't stop because of a cap.
If I want to play over the would be cap, I also want to be rewarded. I don't want to log off when I'm in the mood to grind, just because I capped this week/day.

And everyone who says that each mythic boss should be killable when mythic releases, that has never/rarely been the case and whenever it happened, people would say that the content is too easy and blizzard can't design difficult encounters.
I don't know why we should forget 10+ years of progression, where people had to farm up on easier bosses to beat the next one, just because some would-be mythic heroes think they should've a chance in the race, even though they never had it in the first place.

[Desparil]

I like that when i have time i can farm as much as i want, don't really care what 0.1% people will do to burn themselves out.

[caervek]

They deliberately made it harder to maintain a mythic guild, harder to recruit, etc and now blame the guild leaders for the state the scene is in? What a dumbass.

[Tojara]

54 at this point really isn't hard. If you do a half a dozen M+ a week, raid, send your dudes out on AP missions and do your emissaries (focus on AP ones) you should have been 54 awhile ago. That which I listed really isn't that hard to accomplish, and in most expansions (sans WoD) you had to put in the much effort each week regardless to be part of any guild that wants to raid the hardest content. In the past it was getting your badges or your VP, whatever it was, you still had to do it. It really only hurts people that play other specs or get bamboozled into picking one spec, and Blizzard changing the balancing such that the one you didn't level is now best. To be honest, that's the only issue I have with the AP system as a whole, DPS getting pigeonholed into one spec and it ending up being bad or changed at one point. I play a tank though, so it doesn't really affect me.

We ended up dropping a day this expansion because realistically the fourth day of raiding probably would have burned people out. In addition to that, like mentioned by previous posts, the power creep you need in order to beat raid bosses doesn't exist entirely in raids anymore. For us it was simple, drop a day but just look for non raid logging players. You can gain power outside of raids at any pace that you want through extra traits, getting lucky with legendary items or just from doing M+. None of us minded throwing our bodies against a boss until it died because in the past, that's all you really had to do. Now with so many ways to progress you character outside of raiding, at least for guilds like mine, it makes no sense. You would be better off getting traits or doing M+ for the odd chance of an upgrade. Most guilds in our position simply need one of three things in order to progress. Raid more, get better players, or play more outside of raiding. Until this expansion that third option never existed.

We don't pressure people into doing things outside of raid days, we just actively look for people who actually like playing the game. I did have to have a sit down and talk to some people I've raided with for awhile this expansion during ToV though because the raid logging style of play that they grew accustom to, just doesn't really mesh with how the game is being played at the moment. All we asked was that people do emissaries, do half a dozen M+ a week and at least do the highest M+ that rewards the highest cache loot. For people who grew accustom to WoD, this was way too much, and as such they are more or less casual raiders now. The funny thing is they don't mind because it's clear that the way we use to play the game is gone.

I have issues with the game and it's philosophy right now, but we adjusted to it in order to maintain raiding going forward. I, like many others that I raid with have been raiding for nearly 12 years and it comes to a point where for guilds like my own, raiding 4 days on a schedule is excessive. The best thing I like about Legion is that I ended up cutting a day and we are progressing at the same rate, and that's only made possible by Legion allowing you to gain power outside of raiding, basically whenever you want to play. It's grindy yeah, but it's flexible, and people like flexibility.

Again, I have issues and I certainly don't like Legendaries nor do I like some aspects of the AP system, but by and large it's nice to have power gains outside of raiding. It must be an absolute nightmare for guilds that require alternate characters for split runs though, but I honestly don't pity them.

[chronia]

Even with all this, is 54 actually that hard to reach these days? I mean i'm a fairly casual player playing in a very casual guild (in my guild i'm one of ppl that plays the most, but compared to the hardcore crowd i'm deffo very casual), the last time i raided reasonably hardcore was in TBC, Early Wrath i graduated from Uni, got a job and all that stuff. Atm i'm 8/10 heroic on my main and 7/10 heroic on my alt, nothing special there.

I never chainfarmed M+, just did guild M+ runs. Yet on my main i'm 54/44/35 in Artifact Trait for my 3 specs, and on my alt 52/42/0, Just from raids, a average of +-10 M+ runs a week across 2 characters and WQ's, Orderhall Missions for AP and Daily heroic / mythic dungeons (first 3 weeks, some quest lines and when the Mythic dungeon weekly event is up) and timewalking (when ever the weekly event is up).

[Yunaqt]

It took you month to get to 51 traits on one weapon. Now do the same for 4 characters at same time for potentially 3 dps specs, just to do split raids.
Oh and you better get lucky titanforges from M 15+ because your alts BiS comes from there.

See the point?

Not overly, since it took that long to get a toon 900 and at almost 52traits playing pretty casually.

Your alts BIS comes from there? Cool story, you don't need your alt to be full BIS for splits, they're pretty easy unless you're trying to split raid mythics - Only needed 880~ with 35traits on alts for split raids since it's only heroic.

[Deleted]

It's a false statement. The guild leader decides nothing. It's player driven. If the player's expectations outweighs the guild leader's, they'll cut off the head and find a new bannerman.

Each individual player takes the decision to follow the grind or drop to a lower activity level.

Fact is that the amount of farm is starting to mount higher than ever before, IF you wish to be BIS. Most player seek it, but rarely meet the goal - and the goal is intentionally being pushed further away - for some out of reach. The question remains if the developers can keep forcing players from reaching their goals, aka working on their BIS states, because developers want to force diverse specs builds and item configurations.

The thinking behind the changes are both good and bad, but the "Arms Race" that Ion talks about takes two sides to happen 1) developers 2) players. What was wrong in the first place to let people play as they wish? Why is there even a problem - aka why is there a need for a solution? why is there an arms race? And why is this solution to push linear grind and implement rng? I feel the solutions presented to not fit the problem they want to combat. It doesn't mean it's bad, but it's their public reasoning does not fit. The solutions they present keeps the game very diverse and keeps players subscribed each month, but it does nothing to combat burnout and respec and reroll difficulties.

The "arms race" is higher than ever, escalated by the developers more than the player. The amount of time you need to commit far outweighs the situation in wrath with TOTGC fixed attemps. It was ridiculously easy to catchup and gear character back then. In a very good way. From someone who cleared ICC HC on 3 characters each week, there are far more to do now than before. And this is just to stay up to date. If I started in wotlk, I could get into challenging content rather fast. If I start in legion, it's near impossible. The AP time gate is very bad, much like how the prior expansions welfare legendaries were a time gate for anyone wishing to get back into wow's difficult content.

[callipygoustp]

Ion is, basically, saying what I've always known : the problem with WoW is the players.

[Deleted]

Yet they tune the bosses around having that much AP. An interesting contradiction you totally ignore.

Yes they do but if you wait 5-6 weeks before you start Mythic you dont have to grind af much every week. And you still get to clear the mythic content.

[eschatological]

2 hours a day in order to prepare your character to compete on high level seems completely normal to me.

It hasn't been, for almost four expansions.

[Redroniksre]

Yes they do but if you wait 5-6 weeks before you start Mythic you dont have to grind af much every week. And you still get to clear the mythic content.

But i want to be well known guild #14 to beat Mythic! Then people will be calling me up, telling me how much of a great competitive WoW player i am! /s
Most people i know who raid Mythic do it for the challenge and because they find it fun. It is these people trying to be World First (Which they will most likely never be) that kill it for the rest.

[Manabomb]

"We shouldn't design our game around people playing it 80 hours a week."

>Releases content tuned for people with 54 Artifact traits

Fuck off, Blizzard.

Oh man, maybe instead of doing your very best to blaze through the game like it's made of tinder isn't the developers fault... It's the players fault?... NO. Self responsibility? NOWAI.

[PowerOfTwo]

Typical spin on Ion's part here. Missing the point that it NEVER took this much grinding in the past for world first guilds to stay relevant. It comes up in interviews with guilds like these quite often and the answer is allways the same "It's not that big of a comitment , realy, everyone is free to do whatever during farm, and most adults can schedual a week off work 2-3 times a year during progression". Because that was all that was needed in the past. you hit max level in a day, chain run Heroics for another day or two , pool the guilds gold into consumeable and BoE's and DONE, you've essentialy done your farming for that expansion. From that point on gear comes from farm / split runs wich, while taxing , as mentioned above are a week or two once or twice a year.

Now tho? For a pure dps to keep all his specs in line , it takes ~600 MoS runs to get 180M AP for a pure dsp class, just in case blizzard screws with balance or the fight require another spec, even tho "we'd never drasticaly alter the balance between specs BECAUSE of the AP sysmte *snort*" (and don't gimme the whole, "but but but, WQ". MoS is (will have been come 7.2) the most efficient way to farm AP, period, WQ's beyond the daily 4 for a cache are just a waste of time at that level. Even with a conservative estimate that people are going to feed your guild keys and 100% if your time online is spent doing MoS, at 10 mins a run for +10, you're looking at 100 hours per character JUST TO BE READY for progression, wich ironicaly will take alot less than FARMING. Sure NH took 3 weeks to clear, but EN took... 2 days? Just imagine that, 100 hours (or you know... 2-3-4 hundred hours for tanks sometimes, as usualy tanks are required to have multiple raid capable alts in Top tier guilds to compensate for blizzard screwing with balance) of farming and the tier is done in less then 48 hours.... but it's the players fault not blizzards. Never in WoW's history have top tier raiders been required to do activity's outside of raiding to stay relevant... and now blizzards has pretty much compensated for that 12 year gap...

Could have just stopped the paragon system from working in newly opened raids for ~ a month and this would have been fixed in a nanosecond, and nobody would complain....

There's also legendary's ofc but world race guilds have either bought characters with BiS or have remade characters untill they just rolled bis form the initial wellfare legendaries. While idiotic, at least there's a way to work around the system here.

[klaps_05]

I actually really like the way progression is now - the raiding scene has been a joke since the leader guilds who understood it quit and the good thing is a lot of these guilds thinking they are first page material are being put in place.

I doubt Paragon, vodka, old Ensidia, Wraith or Stars would bitch and quit cause "the game is hard" if this system was in place then. Most guilds on the first page on wowprogress right now are a joke compared to the standard set in the past, excluding Exorsus, Serenity and Method(all 3 old school rosters even with changes). Boo-hoo, we are quitting - maybe learn your place isnt in the top20 ranking?

People talking about hours - through wotlk and Cata on the first progress weeks you will fucking raid 10 hours and play an extra 4-6 outside of raid times a day to optimize in whatever way you can. And that was just to BE on the first page of wowprogress and it was more or less the average for the guilds there. One of the main questions in interviews we had for filling real raid spots was how much time you commit to wow, outside of raiding, per day. Answers with under 4 were not even considered. Its an MMO - you are supposed to grind, you are supposed to spend COUNTLESS hours playing if you want to compete with millions of other players.

The current system will probably take 1 more tier, but it will remove all the guilds which think they are so hardcore when there is no real competition for first page. The one who wants it the most, gets it. The ones who bitch about the system and how unfair it is can keep doing so on forums and reddit.

[Rafoel]

It hasn't been, for almost four expansions.

How long did it take you to complete MoP dailies?

[Tart]

Ion is, basically, saying what I've always known : the problem with WoW is the players.

Its been like that since WOTLK. Blizzard have tried to cater for too many different type of player base.

[Deleted]

Now tho? For a pure dps to keep all his specs in line , it takes ~600 MoS runs to get 180M AP for a pure dsp class, just in case blizzard screws with balance or the fight require another spec, even tho "we'd never drasticaly alter the balance between specs BECAUSE of the AP sysmte *snort*" (and don't gimme the whole, "but but but, WQ". MoS is (will have been come 7.2) the most efficient way to farm AP, period, WQ's beyond the daily 4 for a cache are just a waste of time at that level. Even with a conservative estimate that people are going to feed your guild keys and 100% if your time online is spent doing MoS, at 10 mins a run for +10, you're looking at 100 hours per character JUST TO BE READY for progression, wich ironicaly will take alot less than FARMING. Sure NH took 3 weeks to clear, but EN took... 2 days? Just imagine that, 100 hours (or you know... 2-3-4 hundred hours for tanks sometimes, as usualy tanks are required to have multiple raid capable alts in Top tier guilds to compensate for blizzard screwing with balance) of farming and the tier is done in less then 48 hours.... but it's the players fault not blizzards. Never in WoW's history have top tier raiders been required to do activity's outside of raiding to stay relevant... and now blizzards has pretty much compensated for that 12 year gap...

Just 600? (isn't it much more?)
And you think that is a lot?
And MoS farming isn't the most efficient, it's just the most efficient if you sucked up all the other options which are on a cooldown/lockout.

I mean, you talk about how guilds take a few weeks off from work, and you are telling me a mere ~6 days of playtime over the course of 5+ months is a problem?

The AP grind is completely irrelevant for mythic racers and even "normal" mythic players.

[Deleted]

That's where you're wrong. Mythic raiding is designed around playing 80 hours a week. And Ion is the head designer.

Accepting ZERO responsibility for HIS and HIS TEAM'S design is the absolute pinnacle of hubris. This guy is so full of himself it honestly makes me sick.

No, making the choice to rush for world first and clear the content in about a week is what takes playing 80 hours a week. Not mythic raiding in general..

It's each and every individuals responsibility to play as much or little as they want and to progress as quickly or slowly as they want as a result of that choice.
Putting the blame on developers because you chose to spend 80 hours a game in the game is just bullshit. Grow the fuck up and take responsibility for your own actions and choices in life. Wether it be in a video game or in real life!

[ls-]

But i want to be well known guild #14 to beat Mythic! Then people will be calling me up, telling me how much of a great competitive WoW player i am! /s
Most people i know who raid Mythic do it for the challenge and because they find it fun. It is these people trying to be World First (Which they will most likely never be) that kill it for the rest.

TBF, people who are capable of getting WF don't complain that much.

I'd say that tryhards and hardcore wannabes are the ones who ruin it for everyone. The guys who are progressing through Heroic NH, yet do splits in Normals, ask for 54 traits in artefact, etc. They don't need it, but they just do it cuz that's what guys from WF guilds are doing. The guys who are progressing through Normal and complain about being benched cuz of not having BIS legendaries and/or 54 traits in artefact. Also the guys from world #21314 guild who are crying about being FORCED to grind to stay competitive. These are the people who whine A LOT about everything that's somewhat related to raiding, these are the people who make hardcore scene look pathetic.

[Manabomb]

It's a false statement. The guild leader decides nothing. It's player driven. If the player's expectations outweighs the guild leader's, they'll cut off the head and find a new bannerman.

Each individual player takes the decision to follow the grind or drop to a lower activity level.

Fact is that the amount of farm is starting to mount higher than ever before, IF you wish to be BIS. Most player seek it, but rarely meet the goal - and the goal is intentionally being pushed further away - for some out of reach. The question remains if the developers can keep forcing players from ever reaching their goals, aka BIS states, because developers want to force diverse specs builds and item configurations.

It's both good and bad, but the "Arms Race" that Ion talks about takes two sides to happen 1) developers 2) players. What was wrong in the first place to let people play as they wish? Why is there even a problem - aka why is there a need for a solution? And why is this solution to push linear grind and implement rng? I feel the solutions presented to not fit the problem they want to combat. It doesn't mean it's bad, but it's their public reasoning does not fit. The solutions they present keeps the game very diverse and keeps players subscribed each month, but it does nothing to combat burnout and respec and reroll difficulties.

No we don't. Infact, the only people looking for BiS are the ones that always seem to start with this raider mentality bullshit.

PLAY. THE GAME. AT A SLOWER. PACE.

It's not hard. Not revolutionary. Won't change your experience of it, won't cause you to end up disliking it.

Do you know what BiS looks like for a casual player? Things like LFR Stargate is BiS for a casual player. Because a casual player doesn't play in raiding designed for guilds. They stay in content that is fit for them. But you raiders with your whiny vocal minority are willing to ruin fun gameplay just so you can speed through it as quickly as possible? I'll use three words that a good amount of people told me in college when I said I played WoW.

Get a life.