The CASUALties of 7.3 -- Free loot for everyone

[Lillyth]

I am neither envious nor furious about him getting a 930 trinket in a +0 dungeon. It just demonstrates how out of control RNG in Legion is.

Its working exactly as intended. They said during Blizzcon and many Q&A's that doing any content can possibly yield you something really amazing, but that it isnt as consistent at all such as raiding weekly.

So while this guy got one 930 item, raiders will have 12 930 items within a few weeks without having to rely too much on RNG.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Trying to talk about this on these forums now a days? With the milenial mentality that's taking root everywhere?
[/B]

.

Millennials belong to one of the hardest working generations.

Sort of a bi-product of growing up during a financial crisis.
And pathetic saps whom raid just to have better pixels than others, rather than for the experience, can do well with learning that they're nothing special.

[Kailith]

You new to WoW? They do this every last patch of an expansion.

[Pickynerd]

and people who did hit the right buttons in the right order and run meters are supposed to feel good about themselves? why? being good at a video game is hardly something to feel proud about - it is nothing more than sitting on your ass having memorized some scripts and developed muscle memory.

if somebody plays WoW badly and feels good about it, it amounts to the same thing as being a mythic raider. Neither has accomplished jack shit that means anything to 99.9999% of people.

I mean if someone plays bad and feels good about it, that's fine; however it isn't when you try progression, which oddly enough is 99.9999% of the idiots who take zero pride in anything the do - including video games, because fuck trying to be good at something right?

[xcitng]

As a mythic raider, I have no issue with the item level drops, who cares what others get.... our only non-raider in our guild is the only one who has got an 910(or higher) arcano from the new vendor, should he feel bad?

[anon5123]

All of these changes were done with the idea being "random is fun"

Oh, so you're mad at RNG.

It's not "fun", it's designed to keep players playing as long as possible, just like Diablo 3's loot system.

[Sederath]

Oh, so you're mad at RNG.

It's not "fun", it's designed to keep players playing as long as possible, just like Diablo 3's loot system.

At least someone gets why I'm actually upset.

I'm well aware of what the business side of it is, but what they're going out and telling the playerbase is that it's intended so that the "anything can happen" moments feel great.

What it's actually done is the exact opposite, for a good portion of the high-end playerbase, and has made keeping up for stable Mythic content far more of a chore than it was previously, for the sake of trying to keep the majority of players hooked.

Just a terribly lame feeling of gameplay, and not one I have any intent of returning to, if I ever do.

[Kasanja]

You new to WoW? They do this every last patch of an expansion.

I doubt this is the last patch...

[Theoris]

Couldn't care less, because I'm not supremely concerned with other players getting slightly better gear.

[MoanaLisa]

I mean sure, it works from a business perspective, but player retention rates are getting lower and lower.

The only way to combat that with a playerbase that's largely only coming on for new content is time-gated content, and with all of the negativity surrounding that now, how long is that going to succeed?

Casual not-every-day players are not thought to be very forum-aware. The negativity to be found on forums is irrelevant for them. Many people, if they knew, would disagree with it and others simply don't know or care. They have their game, likely mostly solo and at least for a few million that's fine. Not to lose sight of the fact that this "failing game" thought to be "abandoned by its developers" still have people paying every month to play it that number well into seven figures worldwide.

You may also be mistaken about player retention rates. Blizzard knows all of this and budgets accordingly. These regular every-77th-day patches are likely not an accident. I would say that Blizzard plans accordingly but up until this expansion they're planning hasn't been for shit, speaking honestly. Nonetheless, Blizzard has signaled that they are not overly fussed about keeping everyone signed up for 12 months a year. They just want it to be easy to return and relatively quick to catch up when they do. So much forum drama from a simple premise.

RNG isn't quite the demon for irregular players that those that are playing daily might think. Neither is the grind. Trust me, if you're logging on for a couple of hours three or four times a week, mental grinds are not particularly an issue. Having something to do when logging on--and something that may progress the power of their character a bit--is a bigger deal than most regulars here allow. I've been convinced for years now that much of what passes for conventional wisdom here isn't reflected in the game at all. It's wise to keep in mind that an average player is not thought to be a very good player and half of everyone is a lesser player than that. They foot a large piece of the bill for the every-day players and fund a significant part of organized raiding.

Logging on and having some world quests they can complete successfully and other things that are generally scoffed at here is a pretty big deal. You would never get that if you only listened here or on the Blizzard boards but that's a subset and not a very large one at that. 80% of what's posted here in WoW Gen is probably put up by less than a couple of thousand people if that. A drop in the bucket relatively. I'm only writing at length about this because I think it's a perspective that's completely lost in the day-to-day and is rarely heard here or anywhere else.

I'm not saying that you are wrong exactly, there is truth in everyone's honest opinion, but it's the nature of every forum like this to be an echo chamber of sorts and the actual reality gets distorted.

Those people--casual players--spoke very, very loudly during Warlords. Blizzard is trying to listen to them. They're quite willing to lose a few Mythic-level raiders if they pick up casual players in the process.

[Jastall]

You never ran with a mythic team pushing content who are in competition with either the world ladder or server have you lad?

I have, and while people definitely worry about what the competing players get, nobody cares if Billy Casual gets a poorly statted 930 once every week from a world boss or weekly cache. If anything we like the opportunity to get good stuff on alts.

[Rotted]

And what's the justification for it?

What good reason is there for players not doing content to be rewarded equally with players doing the hardest content available, through sheer chance?

Happy Customers?

Happy customers are paying customers. Your finance and pride (the number of hard core players to casuals) don't cover the costs of the game with profit margins.

What we have now is the result of years of tweeking the system expansion after expansion, from easier difficulties to cross realm groups to handing out freebies. Each expansion just adds that little bit on. It's not like they've come from TBC and said "You know what, this system is to difficult lets hand out all free loot next expansion". It's just got a bit easier each time, plus the majority of the player base is a completely different customer base with different values to what we had.

And that goes back to happy customers, if you take away what their used to now, the subs will drop.

I don't think they are completely in the right doing it, nor do I disagree with it totally, a TBC loot system (only getting raiding epics from raids and low epics from crafted) wouldn't work these days.

- - - Updated - - -

Perspective

most casual players will always have lower ilvl than hardcore players... You're unlikely to see casual people ilvl 950+

Started a new character a good few weeks ago with RL friends, since hitting 110 one of them has pugged EN normal,hc, some mythic, NH normal and heroic, ToS normal and a few bosses on hc. Along with keystones between 10-12. The rest of us have done the same minus the heroic tos and our keystones are normally 9 ish for the week. He's 926, I'm 917, the other two are 920 and 914.

I'd say we're all casually raiding and no where near 950, so I'd agree even with the current loot system, it would be really unlikely to see a casual hit 950.

[Zenfoldor]

and people who did hit the right buttons in the right order and run meters are supposed to feel good about themselves? why? being good at a video game is hardly something to feel proud about - it is nothing more than sitting on your ass having memorized some scripts and developed muscle memory.

if somebody plays WoW badly and feels good about it, it amounts to the same thing as being a mythic raider. Neither has accomplished jack shit that means anything to 99.9999% of people.

I'm that 0.00001%, and you sound like someone who might not be doing so hot on the meters yourself.

[Osmeric]

I'm that 0.00001%, and you sound like someone who might not be doing so hot on the meters yourself.

Aw, the reflexive ad hominem. It's so cute.

[HuxNeva]

You do realize that that LFR raider has just as much chance of running around in full 915 gear as the HC raider has of running around in full 945's right (excluding legendaries here for simplicity of the argument). Our guild is a typical HC guild. Our core team ilvl hovers now around 930'ish after raiding every week since the lauch of ToS. With the same 'luck', an LFR-exclusive team would average at 900'ish (again, oversimplification as we can run not just HC, but also N and LFR each week for more loot chances if we choose to, and lots of pieces come from M+, which would be much more accessible to us as to an 885-900 person, so compounding the difference).
So yes, due to the number of people running LFR, there will actually be some that got ONE 955 piece. So what? That person was very lucky and prob very happy. What is it to you?
As Watcher put it at the start when EN was current: 'With a base Item Level of 835, it needs to upgrade 12 times to make it all the way to 895. Long story short, that's a 1 in 4096 chance of being 880. Let's say you get 2-3 items a week from fully clearing Raid Finder. You'd need to run Raid Finder every week for over 21 years in order to have a >50% chance of seeing a 895 item out of Emerald Nightmare LFR. By that time, we'll all be in item level 4000 gear as we play the latest Corgis Unleashed expansion on our VR decks'

[VyersReaver]

Started a new character a good few weeks ago with RL friends, since hitting 110 one of them has pugged EN normal,hc, some mythic, NH normal and heroic, ToS normal and a few bosses on hc. Along with keystones between 10-12. The rest of us have done the same minus the heroic tos and our keystones are normally 9 ish for the week. He's 926, I'm 917, the other two are 920 and 914.

I'd say we're all casually raiding and no where near 950, so I'd agree even with the current loot system, it would be really unlikely to see a casual hit 950.

Casually? You're serious, aren't you?..

[Gottalot]

How does someone else getting gear affect you directly? As a Mythic raider I can honestly say I could give 2 shits less what anyone outside of our guild is getting loot wise or how they are getting it(And can say that no one in our guild does either).

I see people complaining about "casuals" on a reg basis, The "casuals" paying $15 a month is what helps make it possible to have new Mythic raid content for those of us that do it.

This guy is spot on. I don't raid Mythic now cause of IRL but THIS is exactly the same stance me and fellow hardcore raiders from back in the day think.
The people that write this kind of nonsense posts are the ones clearing 2-4 Mythic every teir. This bs is not coming from the top guilds on your realm.

To make it perfectly clear to the OT: WE DON*T CARE WHAT PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE GUILD/RAID TEAM GETS! Comprende?

[Deleted]

I doubt this is the last patch...

7.3.5 is the last patch but technically 7.3 is the last big content patch

- - - Updated - - -

Started a new character a good few weeks ago with RL friends, since hitting 110 one of them has pugged EN normal,hc, some mythic, NH normal and heroic, ToS normal and a few bosses on hc. Along with keystones between 10-12. The rest of us have done the same minus the heroic tos and our keystones are normally 9 ish for the week. He's 926, I'm 917, the other two are 920 and 914.

I'd say we're all casually raiding and no where near 950, so I'd agree even with the current loot system, it would be really unlikely to see a casual hit 950.

That doesn't sound very casual... Most casuals don't touch Mythics + and if they do it's usually getting carried by friends

[Rotted]

Casually? You're serious, aren't you?..

I am?

We play casually and decide on the spur of the moment what to do where. We don't do progression runs, we haven't got a raid schedule. We play 3-4 nights a week for a few good hours. I'm playing less now and getting more done than I ever had in a structured raiding guild, raiding 4 nights a week for 4 hours.

3 of us work every day. Myself I'm still on seasonal hours so I'm out of the house at 8am to open for 8 30, then get home around 8pm at night

We are literally casual in physical form, we do what we feel like, when we feel like xD. The only thing we do seriously is manage our playtime, we don't faff around afking in citys. I wouldn't say that makes us hardcore raiders xD

I don't understand how you'd think that was anything but casual? and I don't mean this as a digg or a attack, but the only thing that springs to mind is we've achieved more in a shorter time than a typical player?

- - - Updated - - -

7.3.5 is the last patch but technically 7.3 is the last big content patch

- - - Updated - - -



That doesn't sound very casual... Most casuals don't touch Mythics + and if they do it's usually getting carried by friends

(See above)

Well, the first set of mythics 0s, I went in on my main to make sure they had a smooth ish run. But when they started level 2, I was on my new character with them. We've had a blast even in the lower ones working our way up through the levels. I'm not embarrassed to say two weeks ago we couldn't clear a level 7 NL in time. But we've progressed and now we can and higher.

Granted we use discord and we have two dps 1 tank and 1 healer to make life easier, but again I wouldn't call that hard core.

Edit:

Just checked with the guys and the other guy whos been on wow years like me says we're casually playing atm. The two new guys call it 'middle ground'

[Osiria]

You don't understand the meaning of "free".