Skill or time?

[Tusq]

In recent times, it seems that time is the most beneficial "trait" as for getting the best gear in the game. Of course luck has a thing to add, but if things are done enough times, luck will shine on you and reward you with the best gear.

In vanilla time played a major role in what gear you got aswell. If you didnt have enough time to grind out pots and stuff, you would not be in the better guilds. PvP was SUPER time consuming and barely rewarded skill.

Things shifted slowly over the expansions rewarding skill more than time.

Now here in Legion we are kind of back to the time-part. The more you grind the more chance you have to get that titanforged gear. AP played a role in the early stages of legion aswell.

But what do you guys think should reward the best gear in the game? Skill or time? Something in between?

[Lochton]

Uhm, time is being rewarded heavily in Legion. With enough time, you can be ilvl 940, without entering a damn raid.

[Tusq]

Uhm, time is being rewarded heavily in Legion. With enough time, you can be ilvl 940, without entering a damn raid.

Uhm yes, that's what i said in the second last phrase.

But do you think that's what should reward the better gear?

[Lochton]

Uhm yes, that's what i said in the second last phrase.

But do you think that's what should reward the better gear?

The best gear reward should be by skill/ability to obtain. Always thought so, with legendaries being excluded.

[Ryjax]

@Gehco I think you missed the last few paragraphs :P

Are you strictly talking gear or also other categories (Mounts, Cosmetics, Titles etc.).

I'm probably in the minority, especially since WoW is an MMO, but I definitely prefer skill/accomplishment being rewarded more heavily than time. I would love to see more challenges and interesting rewards implemented.

When it comes to gear there should be a clear, but not huge, difference in output between a Mythic Raider/Glad-level-PvPer compared to someone that enjoys the more casual type gameplay.

[Eurhetemec]

But what do you guys think should reward the best gear in the game? Skill or time? Something in between?

MMOs in general primarily reward time, with some rewards more directed to skill, but even most of those are focused on "practiced skill", which is essentially time.

I think Legion has a reasonable balance of rewarding skill and time IF you're not the kind of person who feels the need to squeeze every last drop out of his character and play every second they can to do so. However, the number of people who play that way is probably in the low double-digit thousands, in a population of literally millions of subs, so they can be safely disregarded.

I'm probably in the minority, especially since WoW is an MMO, but I definitely prefer skill/accomplishment being rewarded more heavily than time. I would love to see more challenges and interesting rewards implemented.

The trouble here is that a lot of skill/accomplishment is merely actually the result of time, even if it's not time in terms of grinding gear or the like. If someone wipes 100x on a boss and is gradually getting better and better, is that really a skill accomplishment? I don't think so, myself. It kind of is, but it's more extreme practice, and more a function of time than anything else. So can you even draw a line between the two things, unless you do something like limit attempts? That's been tried in WoW, it was about as popular as a shart in lift.

It's not like this is new to WoW, either, it's been an issue since EQ, indeed, I remember discussing Skill vs. Knowledge for EQ back in 2000, 2001, and Knowledge back then was largely a factor of time/research.

When it comes to gear there should be a clear, but not huge, difference in output between a Mythic Raider/Glad-level-PvPer compared to someone that enjoys the more casual type gameplay.

Why should there be outside of Raid/Glad content, though? I mean, I'm not really trying to be difficult, but does that really benefit the game? If it does, how so? And M+ needs to factor in here too, now. I think the next step for M+ is to make it so there's a bit less gear crossover with raiding by giving out M+ sets with set bonuses aimed at M+ but with less relevance to raids (the classic example being set bonuses that add to the DPS of healers, which is super-relevant pushing M+, not so much pushing Mythic raids - I mean, it's not zero, but it's a lot smaller).

Also, how much is "clear not huge"? 10%? 20%? 30%? 50%? 100%? 200%? I'd peg it in the 30-50% range at most myself, but some people think doing 100% or 200% more DPS is "absolutely fine".

If skill is really what we want to reward, max-difficulty stuff should basically normalize gear, like Challenge Mode dungeons did. Trouble is, that conflicts with the notion of "progression raiding", which has NEVER been primarily about skill (indeed, it would not have become so popular if it was). Some pre-WoW games, like DAoC, effectively did "normalize" gear at max level (when you got to max level in DAoC, once crafting/enchanting was in, you could rapidly assemble a set of gear which capped all relevant stats and most resists), and that was interesting because it meant raiding challenge then became more about "How few people can we do this with?" so that the loot was spread among as few people as possible.

[Lochton]

@Gehco I think you missed the last few paragraphs :P

Are you strictly talking gear or also other categories (Mounts, Cosmetics, Titles etc.).

I'm probably in the minority, especially since WoW is an MMO, but I definitely prefer skill/accomplishment being rewarded more heavily than time. I would love to see more challenges and interesting rewards implemented.

When it comes to gear there should be a clear, but not huge, difference in output between a Mythic Raider/Glad-level-PvPer compared to someone that enjoys the more casual type gameplay.

Sorry, was only talking gear.

[owbu]

MMOS have always been a mixture between time investment and skill investment. Also time investment is probably the best way to get more skill. So this would be hard to test

I think its safe to say, though, that Legion made time investment into low skill game elements a bit more competitive to doing high skill elemts less frequently. But overall the guys I know, who run a couple of m+ once a week and some heroic raiding are still outgearing the "always on, but doing mythic dungeons and normal raids" guys.
Not sure about the 1% end of the spectrum. I assume its about the same. They have always done crazy stuff like 10 alt raids per week and so on.