Ghostcrawler - Loot Should Not Be "too Predictible"

[SoulForge]

fuck world of Looser-craft and all the stuck up assholes who play it now fuck you all go to fucking hell all of you assholes. fuck this moderator team on mmo-champion bunch of fascist elitest pricks fuck tards ,,|,,

Why? Because you were wrong?

OT; Loot being predictable is one thing but completely spec defining things like legendary item is an annoyance. There are some people/guilds who only take bleeding edge. And I am sure there are some who roll more than one of the same character / class to make sure they get those specific ones.

[Mhyroth]

I agree with this entire post.

P.S. The system forces you to stay with a single character and a single specialization, and the RNG on top of the RNG and the grinding on top of the grinding is retarded. Remove TF/WF and replace them with the upgrade vendor (from before), and remove the RNG on top of the RNG by bringing back Reforging (assuming that we're in agreement that Tertiary stats are beneficial).

There should be an upvote system on the forums here.
Tradu's post was exactly what this thread neeeded: clear and non-biased answer with a proper valid opinion.
Not the crap people spew here with "wrong, because I think so".

[Aggrophobic]

Quoting you so you can read my reply.



Since obvious things have to be explained - I meant 'always' as in raiding where the hardest content actually exists. If LFR is your level of highest difficulty content, ok. Discussion ends there. When loot drops, you have a chance that loot won't be for you at all or it will and then you have to roll against other players or hope that they don't needed it. If this is not RNG inside of RNG, I don't know what is. This was the thing since vanilla = always. RNG on top of the item, it just adds more excitement when loot drops.

Good luck in convincing Blizzard to reduce RNG. I'd strongly suggest to wake up.

- - - Updated - - -



I agree with that. And yes, some best items in the game drop at random from anywhere. This is also nothing new.

Yes, it is something new.

[DaGhostDS]

Still the father of the worst expansion (cata) and worst content patch (post Ulduar) of wrath and the warforged/titanforged system, so yeah he's gonna defend his system

[Bullettime]

Still the father of the worst expansion (cata) and worst content patch (post Ulduar) of wrath and the warforged/titanforged system, so yeah he's gonna defend his system

Warforged, sockets, and tertiary states were fine. The issue is that legendaries are RNG selection from an RNG drop and can fuck with balance, then titanforging being an abomination that dismantles the entire reward structure.

[Deleted]

[SNIP] Since obvious things have to be explained - I meant 'always' as in raiding where the hardest content actually exists. If LFR is your level of highest difficulty content, ok. Discussion ends there. When loot drops, you have a chance that loot won't be for you at all or it will and then you have to roll against other players or hope that they don't needed it. If this is not RNG inside of RNG, I don't know what is. This was the thing since vanilla = always. RNG on top of the item, it just adds more excitement when loot drops.
[SNIP]

Last time I raided with a guild was at the beginning of Cata. Afterwards, I mainly run LFR, but had some random groups in normal and killed HC Garrosh in SoO to get the heirloom weapon. In Wrath, I was occasionally running HC 10-man-raids (ToC, ICC), and did some hardmodes in Ulduar (10/25). I was also in the progression team in BT and Hyjal in BC and in the successful time run team in ZA (though never got the mount).

I know that warforged was introduced in mid-MoP, and I found it not that much of a hassle back then because the upgrade was minimal, and we had reforging as a backup. Now, with the enormous range of titanforged upgrades with/without sockets and potentially also tertiary stats, and without reforging, the situation is quite different.

I have no illusion that Blizzard will change its course except if they take the burnout in prominent raid guilds seriously which was partially caused by the whole wf/tf ordeal. Still, I will not stay silent on that matter.

[DaGhostDS]

Warforged, sockets, and tertiary states were fine. The issue is that legendaries are RNG selection from an RNG drop and can fuck with balance, then titanforging being an abomination that dismantles the entire reward structure.

Gotta agree Legendary drops like that are completely broken, also i wasn't bashing the warforged/titanforged just saying he was gonna defend the idea since that was created when he was there.

[Waddy]

In a recent post by Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, he said the following about Loot:



I bolded and underlined for emphasis.

I agree with Greg here, RNG in the loot game needs to be in the game. If everything were predictable, gearing up doesn't feel exciting anymore.

Think about how you currently gear up an alt. Grinding nethershards is an absolute predictable way to gear up. You grind 400 shards, you can buy an 850 piece. You grind 5k shards, you can get an 880 piece. Boring.

If dungeons only dropped honor / valor tokens, and you used them to just buy gear you wanted from vendors... Boring.

RNG has its place in MMOs, and it should absolutely stay. Anyone who thinks otherwise, please present a logical argument for why it shouldn't be a part of an MMO, especially one like WoW.

Just because it's boring to you doesn't mean it's boring to all of us... Some of us prefer a system where you can count on doing x to get y. I played ultimate online back in the 90's and it felt very punishing when someone had a weapon with far superior stats to yours simply because they got lucky with drops and you didn't.

It's extremely defeating in diablo 3 and in wow now to know that once you have a full set of gear at a relatively nice itemlevel say 890ish that you aren't even close to being well equipped. You will now have to grind for countless hours to obtain a full set of 905+ gear which is just a random chance of being the right slot you need, the right stats you need and the right item level... It's like literally doing countless hours of rift farming in diablo 3 to get that one piece with the perfect rolls just so you can start pushing greater rifts.

I remember a few seasons ago on diablo I played about 12 hours a day for weeks trying to farm up an ancient legendary suit with the right rolls and I didn't even get close. Meanwhile I'm watching streamers who farm twice as much some of which weren't much better off than me and others who had all the best slots magically and were pushing the top level of greater rifts.

I would love to go back to the days of getting specific pieces as BIS, especially if I could buy them with tokens so all I had to do was show up and raid and eventually I would get the best armor available. While I enjoy having the Mythic + system and the World Quests, I don't think you need the RNG based loot. I would farm WQ's and M+'s for the AP alone as most who are equipped do.

[Deleted]

Never heard that anyone got burned out on WF/TF and even if it did, it's probably because of stupid reasons. What is there to get burned about?

Did you not read all the announcements of top guilds quitting the progression race?

I have a simple math example for you.

Before RNG upgrades: Chance of 10% that an item drops from a boss and chance of 20% that you win the roll (assuming that 4 other people compete with you) => 0,1*0,2=0,02 => this means that you have a 2% chance of getting your BiS item. Of course, your chances improve with time, because if you don't get the upgrade, the other person in your guild group does, so your chances increase to 2,5% and 3,3% and so on, and then you end up with 10% when all competitors have this BiS item. And when the item finally drops, you get it, and you're done.

Now, if you put RNG upgrades into the equation... the whole basic math collapses, and the competition between these 5 people potentially never ends. So, if the other 4 people do not deliberately pass on an upgrade so you can get a version of your BiS item, you probably will never get it. And if people take turns on the item each time it drops, then you can get in the awkward situation that one of them gets the super TF upgrade with a massive increase, and all others will get the basic version or only a slight increase, and then, nothing better drops for a long while - probably even so long, that the raid becomes irrelevant. This puts one person in a huge advantage in comparison to the other four, not because this player is better or whatever, but just because he has been lucky that the good proc was in his turn.

How can you not understand the negative connotations in such situations?

[kamuimac]

Did you not read all the announcements of top guilds quitting the progression race?

nobody gives a single f... about those nerds as well as for who top guild is .

its computer game time to grow up and made better decisions.

all they were whining about was their final realisation about how much life they wasted on this shit which in long run is healthy for them.

[Okacz]

Never heard that anyone got burned out on WF/TF and even if it did, it's probably because of stupid reasons. What is there to get burned about?

Old system supported many players who played only during certain moments, like raid/pvp nights. A, for instance, raider knew that if the only thing he really likes about WoW is raiding, then he can just show up thursday-saturday or something and raid with his friends - and that way he is going to be the best at what he does.

TF/WF and Legendaries (which are a bit of the same problem) make this behaviour impossible. Raids are now tuned around players who do a lot of side stuff, particularly Mythic+. Someone who just shows up for raids is a liability to the group, because he has little to no AP, no right Legendaries, and yeah, weaker gear. Players doing less side content won't get as many chances to get good TF gear, which can be way better than what you get by simply raiding.

Of course the system is way better for those who do all sorts of content, or just the world/dungeon stuff, but does discourage raiders a bit. I'm playing more casually now, so it's not that bad, but most of my friends who liked to only log in for a raid night are not online for some time.

[Heathy]

no one was burning out farming for titanforged gear, ppl were burning out trying to get BiS legendaries first time on multiple alts so they would have an edge on the world first race.

you can still today progress through the raid content without touching anything else, you won't get as much loot, but you'll get enough loot chances to progress into the next tier of content. if you've been clearing nighthold every week, doesn't matter what difficulty, you should, by now, have enough gear to make a start on tomb. even if you have to start on normal tomb, you'll get some drops in there that will give you enough ilvl to start heroic.

its entirely a choice, not a mandatory requirement to do everything. its not required to make progress. if you want a slight upper hand, then you put in more effort to get the items that are rarer. the game is not balanced around those who play the game every waking hour farming every feasible orifice of gear. you just need to meet certain ilvl plateaus namely 10 ilvls lower than the gear dropped from the content you want to do next. if the raid drops 850 ilvl gear, you need 840, if the raid drops ilvl 1million gear, you need ilvl 999,990 gear. any more is icing on the cake.

its just 10 ilvls per difficulty jump.

840-855
855-865 -- entry tier
865-875
875-885
885-895 -- tier 1
895-905
905-915
915-925 -- tier 2
925-935

and so on. ppl seem to go out of their way to make it seem way more convoluted than it actually is. why is it difficult to reach full 925, because that tier hasn't released yet so ofc its rare to reach an ilvl of content that isn't actually out yet. please tell me though, out of sheer curiosity, what content in the game right now has a base requirement of 925 ilvl? wait what? none of the content requires that, you don't say. so in the grand scheme of things ppl are complaining for the sake of complaining.

complaining about not being able to easily cap your ilvl when there is no content in the game that requires that much ilvl to overcome it. its redundant.

by the time there is some content in the game that requires 925, there will be a new ilvl cap.

[Okacz]

I agree with AP problem but partly I think it's part of community problem. They should a bit lower they requirements since AP is uncontrollable. Guilds are missing a lot of potential good players out there.

I generally disagree with the stance that the consumer can ever be the problem when something feels off with the product. The game is always made with the "community", or rather the psychological factor in mind.

For instance, you might make the best FPS game ever, with perfect balance and difficulty curve, but screw up on one weapon. This weapon turns out to be way, way better than all other weapons, and it's only natural that players notice it and use it during the whole game - switching from it feels weird with how sluggish and weak other weapons are. Therefore players finish the game much faster and complain that it's short and way too easy. You might say it's their fault - they had a clear opportunity to challenge themselves with weaker weapons, they could not use the one that felt the best. In reality, it's the developers that messed up while balancing it, and the community is not to blame.

Same with WoW. The gameplay loops in WoW aren't complicated - get better gear (clarified by iLvL) to fulfill your role better, progress through various content etc. It's natural that players want the shortest and most satisfying route - which is why puggers ask for achievements and iLvL way higher than what drops, PvPers ask for proofs that you accomplished way bigger feats than they ever could, guild masters ask their players to sacrifice more to the game so the raiding group is better. If any of the above feels bad and drives players away it's the fault of the systems that make this possible, not the players involved.

[Sencha]

Agree with Jaylock here. Yeah I really do!

[rda]

I no longer find GC's quotes interesting. It's the 3rd or 4th quote in a row which I don't even want to discuss because it misses too much context to be relevant.

If I were GC, I'd stop talking about WoW, he is no longer making much sense. (And no, "I am talking about things in general" is not saving it, if we pretend that's talking about things in general, the thoughts aren't interesting either, they are just "meh, so? it all changes based on context, so why should I care?")

[Waddy]

no one was burning out farming for titanforged gear, ppl were burning out trying to get BiS legendaries first time on multiple alts so they would have an edge on the world first race.

you can still today progress through the raid content without touching anything else, you won't get as much loot, but you'll get enough loot chances to progress into the next tier of content. if you've been clearing nighthold every week, doesn't matter what difficulty, you should, by now, have enough gear to make a start on tomb. even if you have to start on normal tomb, you'll get some drops in there that will give you enough ilvl to start heroic.

its entirely a choice, not a mandatory requirement to do everything. its not required to make progress. if you want a slight upper hand, then you put in more effort to get the items that are rarer. the game is not balanced around those who play the game every waking hour farming every feasible orifice of gear. you just need to meet certain ilvl plateaus namely 10 ilvls lower than the gear dropped from the content you want to do next. if the raid drops 850 ilvl gear, you need 840, if the raid drops ilvl 1million gear, you need ilvl 999,990 gear. any more is icing on the cake.

its just 10 ilvls per difficulty jump.

840-855
855-865 -- entry tier
865-875
875-885
885-895 -- tier 1
895-905
905-915
915-925 -- tier 2
925-935

and so on. ppl seem to go out of their way to make it seem way more convoluted than it actually is. why is it difficult to reach full 925, because that tier hasn't released yet so ofc its rare to reach an ilvl of content that isn't actually out yet. please tell me though, out of sheer curiosity, what content in the game right now has a base requirement of 925 ilvl? wait what? none of the content requires that, you don't say. so in the grand scheme of things ppl are complaining for the sake of complaining.

complaining about not being able to easily cap your ilvl when there is no content in the game that requires that much ilvl to overcome it. its redundant.

by the time there is some content in the game that requires 925, there will be a new ilvl cap.

Just because it's not required doesn't make it feel less punishing when you don't spend all day farming compared to someone who does, you can no longer compete. If raider A spends 16 hours a day grinding mythic +'s and has 10 Ilevels on you, even though you both show up to raids just as consistently, your raid leader is going to start asking why you're not pulling the extra 100k dps that raider A is, and when you have to explain that you simply don't have the gear because your time investment is different, why would a raid leader take you over someone who does?

This wont affect the vast majority of players who are in casual guilds where you can still just log in and go to a raid, but for players who want to push mythic level content, you're creating competition between members based purely on time invested and chance than their abilities.

[Heathy]

there is always going to be ppl who get better drops than you, this is first world guild problems, if your not able to keep up with the demands then find a new guild where you always have a spot.

its why i don't raid mythic myself, i don't have time for that bullshit elitist mentality take what you need to kill the boss, end of story. if your guild isn't completely shit then you should have a system in place where if you miss a raid, or aren't taken for one raid, then you should be guaranteed to get a spot in the next raid. if you have enough overall raid output to kill the boss who the fuck cares?

if there is that much competition in one guild that your always left out, time to find a guild that isn't totally bullshit and actually lets you join the raids and gear up.

in the past if i had to sit out one raid i was void from having to sit out the next raid, this is basic guild management. like guild raid management 101. this has very little to do with wf/tf loot and more to do with having 10 extra raiders in your guild all fighting over a raid spot. if you have enough ppl that show up, there is no problem.

if your guild isn't willing to take you along and help gear you up to the point that you are competitive again, then they don't really care about you and so, shit guild, not worth being in it. you want to be in a guild where everyone helps one another, not a guild where ppl only help themselves.

even if gear isn't the deciding factor for missing out on raid spots, if you have two dudes, one guy does 100k dps more than the other guy but they are both good players, you want to take the guy that does the extra 100k. so lets pretend we're playing in a version of the game that has no wf/tf, you still have two dudes that perform equally fighting over who gets the raid spot. SOMEONE STILL ISN'T GETTING A RAID SPOT. not having warforged and titanforged gear doesn't automatically make mythic raiding grow extra raid spots. the end result (someone not getting to raid that day) is still the same eventuality.

[Waddy]

there is always going to be ppl who get better drops than you, this is first world guild problems, if your not able to keep up with the demands then find a new guild where you always have a spot.

its why i don't raid mythic myself, i don't have time for that bullshit elitist mentality take what you need to kill the boss, end of story. if your guild isn't completely shit then you should have a system in place where if you miss a raid, or aren't taken for one raid, then you should be guaranteed to get a spot in the next raid. if you have enough overall raid output to kill the boss who the fuck cares?

if there is that much competition in one guild that your always left out, time to find a guild that isn't totally bullshit and actually lets you join the raids and gear up.

in the past if i had to sit out one raid i was void from having to sit out the next raid, this is basic guild management. like guild raid management 101. this has very little to do with wf/tf loot and more to do with having 10 extra raiders in your guild all fighting over a raid spot. if you have enough ppl that show up, there is no problem.

if your guild isn't willing to take you along and help gear you up to the point that you are competitive again, then they don't really care about you and so, shit guild, not worth being in it. you want to be in a guild where everyone helps one another, not a guild where ppl only help themselves.

Which is an extremely biased view, you're basically saying that anyone who competes for a spot in a guild is a shit guild which is fine as an opinion but it's still an issue for those players.

[Heathy]

Which is an extremely biased view, you're basically saying that anyone who competes for a spot in a guild is a shit guild which is fine as an opinion but it's still an issue for those players.

I'm saying if you always competing for raid spots, always, if your guild is half decent then everyone should get a chance to raid, its called taking it in turns, a person who volunteers to pass their spot, should be void from passing next raid. its the fairest way you can get everyone to raid when you have too many excess raiders. if you have only a few or no excess raiders, what your complaining about isn't a factor, because there is no competition, you need everyone.

your only going to to be able to gear up to a certain point running non-mythic content, there comes a point where you have to get into the raid to get upgrades, so someone has to pass to let the others gear up, holy Christ this is like 'my first raiding guild, the biography'

but yes if your in a guild that doesn't share raid spots, always takes the same ppl and never lets anyone else join, that would be my definition of a shit guild, indeed. they obviously don't care about you or your possible contributions so why stay there, my bet is even if you do close that 100k dps gap they'd only find another reason why you can't join the raid.

I have no sympathy for those who choose to bash their heads against the mythic raiding wall, you should know what your getting yourself into. its not something you can expect to do casually and stay relevant. that content difficulty is the polar opposite of casual. I just can't take the words mythic raiding and casual in the same sentence, seriously. if you are doing it casually then you probably don't mind passing your raid spot. I mean you are essentially the stand in at that point.

[Hellrime]

In a recent post by Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, he said the following about Loot:



I bolded and underlined for emphasis.

I agree with Greg here, RNG in the loot game needs to be in the game. If everything were predictable, gearing up doesn't feel exciting anymore.

Think about how you currently gear up an alt. Grinding nethershards is an absolute predictable way to gear up. You grind 400 shards, you can buy an 850 piece. You grind 5k shards, you can get an 880 piece. Boring.

If dungeons only dropped honor / valor tokens, and you used them to just buy gear you wanted from vendors... Boring.

RNG has its place in MMOs, and it should absolutely stay. Anyone who thinks otherwise, please present a logical argument for why it shouldn't be a part of an MMO, especially one like WoW.

SOME RNG is good, ALL RNG is bad. Many people are gearing towards a specific set of content, i.e. Raids. Specific pieces are often required to be able to reach the maximum threshold, not obtain it but just to have the chance to reach it, then it falls on player skill. World of Warcraft at it's core is somewhat competitive. Contrast that to a sport and the scenario that each week you have to return to the store to see if they have a specific shoe, glove or protective pad. However, each week you have to buy one of the items to see if you get the one you want. How does that make any sense?

Largely for the casual player, it doesn't matter, loot is loot and a purple is a purple. However for those who are doing the content that the higher level of gear is aimed towards, RNG can be the difference between raiding and being benched. There was already RNG in the game with the loot system, no item is guaranteed when downing a boss or doing a dungeon. They have just largely complicated it with making an RNG system within an RNG system. It is comical as well because the skill trees were dumbed down to make the game less daunting to casual players, but for players who don't understand what stat will be the best or help them perform the best, RNG in the gear and stats makes it infinitely more complex for those players. It used to be "Why aren't I getting the same numbers?" Well you should replace X piece of gear and use X talent. Now it is "Why aren't I hitting the same numbers?" Well your spec is as cookie cutter as it gets, you just have to go out and farm for gear with X stat on it, but that piece of gear may have Y stat on it as well which won't be as good because it drops stat Z.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm saying if you always competing for raid spots, always, if your guild is half decent then everyone should get a chance to raid, its called taking it in turns, a person who volunteers to pass their spot, should be void from passing next raid. its the fairest way you can get everyone to raid when you have too many excess raiders.

No guild has ever followed that. Even the guilds that aren't pushing content read what the guilds that are do and following it like a bible. "We don't bring warriors because Paragon/Method/Etc said that warriors are bad, even though they're talking about Mythic and we're only on Normal". Not to mention, the best performing players are always chosen. It isn't stupid at all to take the consistent, high performing player over the lesser player. If all things were equal then I could see the point, but they aren't certain classes do better on certain fights, and certain players are better than others. Fairness only comes in if all things are equal, and generally they aren't.