Mythic plus is the true grind because it doesn't have a meaningful lockout. Yes, there are keys, but that's largely negligible because of LFG tool, and the fact that you won't really deplete your keys quickly enough.
Being a serious casual raider that wants to come to raid prepared this expansion is particularly painful because you can never be fully prepared for raid with pseudo-unlimited mythic plus gearing, AP grinding, and WF/TF items. Before if I want to raid seriously for 2 days, I can easily cap out on what I need to do to come prepared for raids. Now I'm pretty much raiding 2 days and doing 5 days of prep by spamming Mythic plus. Yay
Grinds aren't the issue with Legion. The randomness attached to said grinds is the issue.
21 boss kills in EN, 3 Essence. 0 legendaries since launch. 0 upgraded Mastery WQ trinkets (BiS including raid trinkets).
the real grind is mythic+ farming lmao
who cares about world quests when a single chest in m+ gives 1500ap and you can easily 3 chest dungeons
And who exactly is "their user base" ? Everyone has different opinions on what is "too much grinding". If you reduce grinding, there will be people crying that there's nothing to do. If you increase grinding, there will be people crying that it's too grindy.
You cannot please everyone when you have over 4 million people playing.
It's simple: There is not ONE community, there are actually different people!
I know this might be news to you but some people want more to do and some people want less to do.
Blizzard apparently hasn't found the right solution yet.
In my opinion it should be: Nothing that increases character strength and needs a grind. That only annoys the people who don't want to grind.
But there are plenty of people who want to grind. Give them something to do. Optional quests, ways to earn rep that's used for mounts and pets, grinds for cosmetic items.
That way both kinds of players are happy. The grinders get stuff to grind for and can boast their new awesome legendary skin and the non-grinders get to play the game in peace.
About the Legion "grind":
Just don't do it! Yes, being behind in AP sucks but ultimately 2-3 levels in the weapon don't matter that much. What matters is executing mechanics correctly, unless you are in a top100 guild you can safely ignore the AP grind and wait for artefact research to kick in.
Yes you can, by introducing a grind with rewards players want (mounts, skins etc.) without having grinds for progression content (raids).
Last edited by MegaVolti; 2016-10-02 at 07:21 PM.
It's crazy how blizzard is forcing us to run the same quests we already did to level up in order to get further into the game.
I'm still playing but far more casual than I have been in recent weeks. We have months and months of this ahead so I don't feel the need to rush. 7.1 is already planning another AP dump for when all traits are unlocked.
And while Mythic + is a very nice system which can be done for serious progression I probably wouldn't bother with them too much, I like the occasional +2 / +3 run as its slightly more challenging than normal Mythics but not completely brutal.
Naturally I'll try the harder difficulties when my own gear progresses.
The whole RNG is nice as it gives people the incentive to keep playing and subbed but I won't play constantly in search for my first legendary, when it comes it comes. No doubt in my case it'll probably the the worst one available
I have absolutely no trouble whatsoever with the level of grind in World of Warcraft. It's much less than other MMO's, and apart from certain classes that it feels awful to grind as (e.g. Shadow Priest), grinding can be rhythmic mind-numbing kind of fun.
I cannot stand the timegating whatsoever. Artifact Knowledge was a neat idea until they locked stuff behind it. Nightfallen rep being timegated by how many world quests pop up in a day is god-awful. Class order hall quests being timegated made my playrate and motivation to play drop significantly.
They did exactly that with reputations in WoD. And what was the result? Almost nobody did rep grinds because there was no reward besides some small cosmetic items. IIRC only around 3-5% of players got to exalted with the base WoD reps.
So no, mounts and skins are not things that a majority of players want as a reward for long grinds.
Again, Blizzard cannot possibly please every single person. They cannot create a system that will make every single person happy with the amount of grinding involved, or the amount of skill needed, or whatever. Expecting such a system that pleases everyone, is ridiculous.
What "grind" is there for raids? Last I checked, there is no attunement for Emerald Nightmare.
Last edited by anon5123; 2016-10-02 at 07:57 PM.
Well, it's also about how you do it. Make them big cosmetic items instead of small ones to start with.
And make the rep grind not a total shitfest but at least semi-tolerable. The rep grinds in WoD were the worst ever. Running around in one section and having to kill thousands of mobs? Seriously? Of course nobody wanted to endure this bullshit! The same person that thought shityards would be a good idea must have come up with this ...
It's a bit like the complaints about the mana sabre world quest blue beam farm thingy. People wanted more variety in quests, now they are getting the lay line races and they still complain. Does that mean they didn't want more variety after all? No, it doesn't. It means they still want variety, but they don't want utterly shitty racing quests that are badly implemented. Variety is great, but the quality has to be right, too!
Same with the rep grinds: Giving cosmetics as reward would be fine, as long as the quality of the rep grind itself is sufficient. Which it wasn't in WoD.
The rep grind in Legion on the other hand is implemented perfectly. A slow but "efficient" option with emissarry quests, a way to grind them in a not completely stupid way with world quests. The only problem I am having with this is that actually power is gated behind reps instead of just cosmetic stuff.
And yes, of course they won't be able to please every single person, but there is a huge common middle ground which they regularly fail to hit for some reason.
Well, I counted mythic+ kind of as raids and there is an attumement there.What "grind" is there for raids? Last I checked, there is no attunement for Emerald Nightmare.
There also is the AP "grind" to keep the weapon up to date, although that one can be ignored without too much of a problem (if the guild is understanding engouh).
There is also the grind necessary to be able to afford flasks, potions, enchants and gems at the current prices which are pretty insane. It's the raiding support items that force people into grinding.
Last edited by MegaVolti; 2016-10-02 at 11:34 PM.
You can easily get 850 items from Mythic dungeons and even heroics with warforge/titanforge though. I hit 850 without even stepping into a raid, and all of the available Exalted 850 pieces are useless to me now. So really, the only things being gated behind reps are the rank-3 profession recipes, because by the time you hit exalted, you're likely going to have better gear than that 850.
Not really an attunement, really just a gear level requirement.
Yeah, people whine about AP being "required", but I have yet to see anyone requiring certain amount of artifact traits, outside of high-end raiding guilds.
I cleared 7/7 EN normal in pugs, without ever using a flask or potion. (outside of healing/mana pots)
And you can make at least 10k per week just doing world quests and LFD satchels, so gold isn't that hard to come by.
Shit's only expensive because the expac just launched. In 7.1 there will be a Blood Trader where you can trade Blood of Sargeras for all sorts of materials, so when that happens, the prices will drop really fast. Myself, I've got like 450 bloods now because my professions (alch/ench) don't use them, so I'll be able to buy a fuckton of herbs once 7.1 drops.
The only problem I have with grind is endless Mythic+. I despise 5ppl content - its easy, dull and boring.
And now I just can't skip this shit - unlimited gear from them is just too good to pass. If only it had some kind of weekly lockout or cooldown. Whole system is unclear and poorly implemented.
Also, single thought of running the same dungeons for 2 years terrifies me.
While some of it is slightly annoying, go and play Blade and Soul and their version of constantly leveling up the same (mostly) gear for 1-50 levels with a fuck ton more RNG involved and gold bidding against other players and/or pay $5+ for chest keys for your upgrade piece.
While I would want account-wide everything myself because I can't stand doing the same shit on another character, WoW's grind is a literal walk in the park by comparison to a lot of other MMOs.
Last edited by Usagi Senshi; 2016-10-03 at 06:59 AM.
Tikki tikki tembo, Usagi no Yojimbo, chari bari ruchi pip peri pembo!
I think infinite is too much.
Every previous expansion of wow had a cap on how much grinding was necessary to max out your character each week. (even Vanilla you could actually achieve goals). Legion is the first expansion with literally no cap. Even if you reach the gear cap in every slot, there is still AP to grind.
So, what you're saying is more time-gating? Because most people don't seem to like that idea. Also, a lot of this seems to be a problem of people wanting to min/max 100% of their playtime, which, with legion, probably results in a quick burnout. We have to step back from "I'm able to do everything this game offers in a certain timeframe', reduce the fear of missing out and just take this with a more relaxed mindset, aka "I'll go fishing now, even if there are infinite M+ and WQs that I could do'.