Endgame for Casuals: New Thread with Summary Suggestions for WoD (Updated)

[notorious98]

How do you know that this would appeal? Do you have any evidence? Or is this something you only know would appeal to you?

It's impossible for me to KNOW that it will appeal to everybody. It's also impossible for me to KNOW that it will appeal to the majority. However, I've brought this idea up on other threads and have never seen a negative reaction, only positive. Take the anecdotal evidence for what it is, but I don't do market research for Blizzard.

[Ravendale]

Yeah. Go back to the days of WotLK and Cata when you could run dungeons and get current iLevel gear.

No, anything that drops outside of a raid would have to come from a challenge mode equivalent difficulty dungeon to be current ilvl, or be pushed through difficult gathering quests. Like gather 20 bloods of heroes, but only 5 spawn a day and they are shared spawns. Meaning only 5 bloods can be gathered by the entire server per day. Something absurdly long/difficult for current ilvl gear.

[Lyoncet]

How do you know that this would appeal? Do you have any evidence? Or is this something you only know would appeal to you?

This is MMO-Champion, not a warcrimes tribunal. You don't need solid evidence to put out an idea and invite constructive discussion.

[rda]

Well, two questions I keep waiting for the the answer on. 1) Why do you people need gear if you dont raid? Everything the difficulty of single player content may be based on is execution. And execution is stupidly easy in this game, and gear will make it even easier, efficiently killing any difficulty of the content you might ask for. Gear has never been the main factor for success in raiding, however. 2) How do you plan to make it challenging? There are a ton of ways to make raids harder but in small scale group content or solo the margin for error is very small and it's either massive execution reqirements: VERY long fights with one mistakes equating a wipe or speedruns.

The answer to the first question is now in the FAQ section of the first post.

Regarding the second question: they have Brawlers Guild and Proving Grounds. These are not ideal, but they are a good starting point and Blizzard can always improve.

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My question is what the fuck are you actually progressing for? Raiders gobble up as much gear as possible so that they can be competitive in the next tier of raiding, and maintain a form of social status within their guild community. Its great that non-raiders actually want to work towards something. However I don't understand what that would be. You want dungeon sets to make your dungeons easier? Or immersive quests that make questing easier? Why? Those things are already scaled difficulty-wise to meet blue and green gear levels, and have never been exclusive enough, or long lived enough to be classified as "end content." Everyone gets to quest, everyone gets to do dungeons.

That's the same question as the first one above. The answer to this question is now in the FAQ section of the first post.

Reproducing it here:

Q: What do you need the gear for, anyway? If you don't do raids, you don't need raid gear.
A: First and foremost, again, we ask for a non-raid progression, not for gear. We want multiple *challenges* of increasing difficulty, with the most difficult of them requiring raid-level gear and raid-level personal skill to overcome, and only then we want these challenges to reward us raid-level *gear*. Second, it is not strictly true that if one doesn't do raids, he or she also doesn't need raid gear. If you don't have raid gear, you are heavily penalised in many areas of the game outside of raids: you will have problems soloing or duoing many of the old raids (Cata and entry-level MOP), you will likely have problems in the last tiers of the Brawler's Guild, you will be much less efficient in farming high-level areas, like the Timeless Isle, etc. We want a non-raid progression to make us as powerful as raiders in the world. We like the world, but we don't like raids, and it is unfair to force us to raid to enjoy the world to the full, the way raiders do.

[Ryme]

It's impossible for me to KNOW that it will appeal to everybody. It's also impossible for me to KNOW that it will appeal to the majority. However, I've brought this idea up on other threads and have never seen a negative reaction, only positive. Take the anecdotal evidence for what it is, but I don't do market research for Blizzard.

This is MMO-Champion, not a warcrimes tribunal. You don't need solid evidence to put out an idea and invite constructive discussion.

You're missing the point, all of this effort in trying to design the game is essentially irrelevant. You have no idea what you're proposing is a good idea or if what you propose will have a positive impact on the game. To then dictate to blizzard and other players (many of them happy with the game) that their game is doing it wrong is both arrogant and stupid.

[bewsh]

This is honestly absurd.

What you are actually campaigning for is Blizzard to literally change the format of the game and of MMOs as a genre.

The central factor to success and progression is socializing. You can not do it on your own. You shouldn't be able to, and you probably never will be able to so it's about time to get used to it.

Raiding IS the endgame whether or not you want it to be or not -- you are not required to participate in it. If you want gear however, you are. You can already do heroic scenarios which gave chances @ better gear than even LFR did and are a billion times faster and less stressful.

You guys just can not hide your entitlement regardless of how hard you try to mask it or what you try to spin it as. You want high item level gear, and you flat out do not want to play the game as it was designed to obtain it. If you want to play a solo RPG, go play Skyrim. Go play Dark Souls.

Putting in only time and no (or minimal effort) should not reward you with the same thing rewarded to someone who chooses to do both.

[Lyoncet]

You're missing the point, all of this effort in trying to design the game is essentially irrelevant. You have no idea what you're proposing is a good idea or if what you propose will have a positive impact on the game. To then dictate to blizzard and other players (many of them happy with the game) that their game is doing it wrong is both arrogant and stupid.

This thread isn't to tell people they're doing it wrong. I don't know where you're getting these ideas from. The OT was genuinely constructive, and almost everything since that has been dedicated to trying to get putting out flames.

[rda]

The main progression path of WoW and many other MMO-RPGS is around Raiding. Raid is a large group of players who are trying to achieve a specific goal (Kill A Villain). If you don't want to partitipate into a raid group and you want to progress in a solo-like way, WHY ARE YOU PLAYIING THIS GAME???? If you don't like to interact with other people then stop playing WoW and go play Single-Player games.....

The answer to this question is now part of the FAQ in the first post.

Reproducing it here:

Q: WoW revolves around raiding, that's how the game is. If you don't like it, stop playing.
A: That's fine, just realize that you might be saying this to the majority of the playerbase.

[Ryme]

This thread isn't to tell people they're doing it wrong. I don't know where you're getting these ideas from. The OT was genuinely constructive, and almost everything since that has been dedicated to trying to get putting out flames.

Hey, constructive idea storming is all well and good. I'm off to watch Blizzcon, hope everyone enjoys!

[notorious98]

No, anything that drops outside of a raid would have to come from a challenge mode equivalent difficulty dungeon to be current ilvl

You didn't read what I said and must not have played Cata/WotLK. Dungeons dropped tokens for gear. Except for the final bosses in Wrath heroics. They dropped 1 epic iLevel 200 piece (the same as 10 Naxx/OS). But I don't have a problem with what you said. That's why I had already said it.

or be pushed through difficult gathering quests. Like gather 20 bloods of heroes, but only 5 spawn a day and they are shared spawns. Meaning only 5 bloods can be gathered by the entire server per day. Something absurdly long/difficult for current ilvl gear.

No. If you want to make it through grinding, that's fine. But don't make the grinding artificially long by putting time constraints like that on it. If you're willing to put in the extra time and effort, then you should be rewarded for doing so.

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You're missing the point, all of this effort in trying to design the game is essentially irrelevant. You have no idea what you're proposing is a good idea or if what you propose will have a positive impact on the game. To then dictate to blizzard and other players (many of them happy with the game) that their game is doing it wrong is both arrogant and stupid.

Who said they were doing it "wrong". I'm merely offering suggestions on how they can make it BETTER. The clear difference being is that you don't believe the game can be better and plenty of us do. How is what I'm saying any more arrogant or stupid then what you're saying?

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This is honestly absurd.

What you are actually campaigning for is Blizzard to literally change the format of the game and of MMOs as a genre.

The central factor to success and progression is socializing. You can not do it on your own. You shouldn't be able to, and you probably never will be able to so it's about time to get used to it.

How many times does it need to be explained to somebody that raiding isn't the only form of group socialization in this game? Just because you're not raiding doesn't mean you're a solo player. Why does it always boil down to "if you're not raiding, you must be solo"?

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Hey, constructive idea storming is all well and good. I'm off to watch Blizzcon, hope everyone enjoys!

Obviously it isn't. According to you, it's "arrogant and stupid".

[Ravendale]

You didn't read what I said and must not have played Cata/WotLK. Dungeons dropped tokens for gear. Except for the final bosses in Wrath heroics. They dropped 1 epic iLevel 200 piece (the same as 10 Naxx/OS). But I don't have a problem with what you said. That's why I had already said it.



No. If you want to make it through grinding, that's fine. But don't make the grinding artificially long by putting time constraints like that on it. If you're willing to put in the extra time and effort, then you should be rewarded for doing so.

The badges of justice were good yes, but they got you to first tier equivalent gear, (Tier 7, where the "actual" raiding was tier 7.5 from naxx). Yes I was around back then, and actually that was a mechanic put into place back in burning crusade they they continued into wrath, for good reason. I actually prefered the BC implementation, in that one type of badge was used for entry level gear (requiring 40-120 badges) that was released the tier after it would have been the same ilvl. (Tier 6 finished? Badges now usable to get tier 5 quality shit) that type of thing. Not be able to jump into current raid progression at the level of gear it starts with. (Basically instead of starting naxx10 with ilvl 200 epics, start with ilvl 200 blues/187 blues.)

And my second point was me being retarded, happens a lot, I blame being dropped on my head too often. But, the collecting the blood of heroes was difficult, not because of spawn rate, but more of they spawned an elite mob that actually did a lot of damage and had a lot of health. The time constraint is a good thing, since raiders already complain having to do LFR or what not, we don't want to introduce another system that they feel compelled to grind out in a single day. We want the system to take long enough that by the time a raider would acquire the gear it'd be obsolete. (Though the time constraint shouldn't be as absurd as the given example)

[thurizas]

So.. basically casual players want a progression path inside of a MMORPG that isn't PvE or PvP?

Oh please Rob Pardo.. I have faith in you.. please deliver. I might actually make an account to play again.

Not all PvE is raids. I think people are asking for a progression path that is not a raid.

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Also, people seem to misinterpreting here.


MMORPG (Read: Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) is defined as, via Oxford Dictionaries, an online role-playing video game in which a very large number of people participate simultaneously.

You don't want to PvE or PvP on massive scales (hence the games genre)? That's perfectly fine. However, this isn't the game for you.

No where in the defination is it stated that the players are cooperating. It just states that a large number of people are participating in the game at the same time. Granted, most people assume that at some point in time players will be working together to acheive some end, but tje defination doesn't require it.

[bewsh]

You didn't read what I said and must not have played Cata/WotLK. Dungeons dropped tokens for gear. Except for the final bosses in Wrath heroics. They dropped 1 epic iLevel 200 piece (the same as 10 Naxx/OS). But I don't have a problem with what you said. That's why I had already said it.



No. If you want to make it through grinding, that's fine. But don't make the grinding artificially long by putting time constraints like that on it. If you're willing to put in the extra time and effort, then you should be rewarded for doing so.

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Who said they were doing it "wrong". I'm merely offering suggestions on how they can make it BETTER. The clear difference being is that you don't believe the game can be better and plenty of us do. How is what I'm saying any more arrogant or stupid then what you're saying?

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How many times does it need to be explained to somebody that raiding isn't the only form of group socialization in this game? Just because you're not raiding doesn't mean you're a solo player. Why does it always boil down to "if you're not raiding, you must be solo"?

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Obviously it isn't. According to you, it's "arrogant and stupid".

Yes, there are other forms of socialization. There is the PvP minigame. There are group scenarios. There is 5 man content. There is rep/rare faming on the Timeless Isle. There are any number of non-raid avenues in place to progress your character power beyond that of your level 90 quest greens. Some have always been in place while others are quite new.

While I agree the LFR is not the answer for "casual" progression -- you should have to raid if you want raid quality gear, period. If you do not want to - then you do not want the gear. If you want the gear, you can do flex runs according to your schedule.

Everyone gets that you want new and more content -- I think it safe to say everyone likes that. But no other group of players other than you people -- and to an extent people who only PvP -- constantly bug blizzard to redesign the game to your every wish and desire.

Let's think about this realistically for a moment and consider all the new features added over the last two expansions starting with LFR meant to give casual players with time restraints and even antisocial players who avoid group content at all costs:

1. LFR
2. Scenarios
3. Pet Battles
4. Brawler's Guild
5. Proving Grounds
6. Flex, along with the new ability to acquire your raid meta mount without doing anything remotely challenging.
7. The ability to obtain legendary item equips in low difficulty levels which are not even scaled down, and are identical to their hardest-difficulty level counterparts. Let's not even touch upon the fact that you literally did not even have to raid to obtain these, you merely had to enter an LFR and be present.
8. Item level upgrades

End game raiders got heroic modes three expansions ago and not much special treatment since (well most of realize that raiders' proper treatment comes in the form of well developed content and encounters). I'll tell you what, to make it seem a little less lopsided we can also consider the addition of Thunderforged/Warforged items but honestly, that's debatable.

From where I stand I see you have a single valid complaint - and that is being pigeonholed into LFR, and I agree -- LFR should not be your endgame, nor anyone's.

But no, blizzard does not need to waste their developer resources on creating even more casual/solo content or means of character progression. You just need to play the same game as everyone else and stop trying to change it to better suit yourselves.

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Not all PvE is raids. I think people are asking for a progression path that is not a raid.

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No where in the defination is it stated that the players are cooperating. It just states that a large number of people are participating in the game at the same time. Granted, most people assume that at some point in time players will be working together to acheive some end, but tje defination doesn't require it.

Yes, it does, and every MMO ever has been that way. If not we would not need 10-25 people to take down a boss.

Want a boss encounter you can solo? Wait til next expansion or go nuts in the brawlers guild.

You really need it to explicitly say that Co-Op MMORPG? Seems like more of a personal problem.

[KBWarriors]

See, people keep using the word "casual" but they don't know what it means these days.

A Casual Player is simply someone who doesn't have that much time to devote to the game.. and plays the game casually.

Somehow over the years the term "casual "transformed into lazy player who lacks coordination, doesn't gem, doesn't enchant and doesn't play to win. Don't ask me how this happened, but somehow casual now means that it's ok to stand in the fire.

I hate seeing so many people claim to want easy content because they're "casuals". No, you want easy content because you're unmotivated to better yourself and you're lazy. You're probably the same people who whine about the "99% of wealth" being in the hands of bankers and Government and want them to just hand you money because they have it all.

That's honestly what I see when I go to the Blizzard Forums and the community keeps me from playing this game. I actually like the game, it's a fun game.

The truth is: The people who have an interest in 25 mans are leaving the game.. they're not becoming casuals, they're just leaving the game and holding onto hope for something better to come along. I'm honestly surprised Blood Legion and other top 25 guilds still have enough people interested because rumor has it.. some of the top guilds are having trouble keeping people interested in heroics.

It's not that people are becoming "casuals" as they call themselves now, it's that they're tired of living in a game filled with socialism.

I miss 25 man raiding, but finding people who even want to do normals is tough now. It's so easy to find people for Flex who can knock out the content in a quickie that the interest for normals has rapidly decreased.

Then you have your LFR whiners.. these are the people that I wish would quit the game in mass. What would we lose honestly? We'd lose people who do 30-40k DPS on boss fights, don't know fights before coming to a raid, don't gem their gear, don't read up on their class mechanics every patch, etc.

The "Casuals" think for some reason that if Blizzard made their game hard, they would all quit. I say prove it and I'm calling your bluff.

Update 2:42 PM EST: The team has been thinking about the early days with the first Blizzard games.
Update 2:40 PM EST: Chris Metzen is here to talk about the next chapter of WoW
Update 2:37 PM EST: Pardo is talking about Hillsbrad and Southshore, Onyxia, and other things from Vanilla. Next the Dark Portal, AQ Gate opening, Corrupted Blood and other fun shared experiences.

PLEASE DELIVER MY HOPE! I'm actually getting excited over this one... I can't wait to see the tears of the lazy and unmotivated if they announce that WoW is going back to old school.

[bewsh]

See, people keep using the word "casual" but they don't know what it means these days.

A Casual Player is simply someone who doesn't have that much time to devote to the game.. and plays the game casually.

Somehow over the years the term "casual "transformed into lazy player who lacks coordination, doesn't gem, doesn't enchant and doesn't play to win. Don't ask me how this happened, but somehow casual now means that it's ok to stand in the fire.

I hate seeing so many people claim to want easy content because they're "casuals". No, you want easy content because you're unmotivated to better yourself and you're lazy. You're probably the same people who whine about the "99% of wealth" being in the hands of bankers and Government and want them to just hand you money because they have it all.

That's honestly what I see when I go to the Blizzard Forums and the community keeps me from playing this game. I actually like the game, it's a fun game.

The truth is: The people who have an interest in 25 mans are leaving the game.. they're not becoming casuals, they're just leaving the game and holding onto hope for something better to come along. I'm honestly surprised Blood Legion and other top 25 guilds still have enough people interested because rumor has it.. some of the top guilds are having trouble keeping people interested in heroics.

It's not that people are becoming "casuals" as they call themselves now, it's that they're tired of living in a game filled with socialism.

I miss 25 man raiding, but finding people who even want to do normals is tough now. It's so easy to find people for Flex who can knock out the content in a quickie that the interest for normals has rapidly decreased.

Then you have your LFR whiners.. these are the people that I wish would quit the game in mass. What would we lose honestly? We'd lose people who do 30-40k DPS on boss fights, don't know fights before coming to a raid, don't gem their gear, don't read up on their class mechanics every patch, etc.

The "Casuals" think for some reason that if Blizzard made their game hard, they would all quit. I say prove it and I'm calling your bluff.



PLEASE DELIVER MY HOPE! I'm actually getting excited over this one... I can't wait to see the tears of the lazy and unmotivated if they announce that WoW is going back to old school.

25m and 25m Heroic is still the de-facto raiding scene. People go to 10m because they want it easy.

There are plenty of 25ms recruiting, maybe not on a particular realm - but they are around - and the players will still gravitate to those realms with them.

Guilds like Vodka/Exodus fall apart because they raid nearly as much, if not more at times, than most people work in a full time work week and you're correct -- most people don't want to do that anymore, straight up. My guild raids 3 days per week, 3 hours per night and making respectable progress after 6-8 weeks - especially when compared to any guild that raids 12-15 hours per week. I consider that extremely fucking casual for heroic 25m raiding. We just don't see the need to literally drop everything and rush through the content as fast as possible simply because it's been provided - especially at the end of the expansion where we have a minimum 6-8 months before patch 6.0.

I agree on many points, I just don't think the discrepancy is with everyone else's use of the word casual. I think it's more the misconception of the masses that every guild running 25m heroics are like Blood Legion.

[KBWarriors]

You have got to be kidding me.. well there you go "Casuals".

Blizzard just announced the ability to "Boost" to Level 90 right off the get go.

I guess I'll wait for further details.. rest of the expansion looks awesome.

[notorious98]

While I agree the LFR is not the answer for "casual" progression -- you should have to raid if you want raid quality gear, period. If you do not want to - then you do not want the gear. If you want the gear, you can do flex runs according to your schedule.

Explain that. But explain it objectively. If they can offer 5-man content that's just as difficult as raiding, why can't it offer raid equivalent gear? "Because I say so" isn't a valid answer.

Everyone gets that you want new and more content -- I think it safe to say everyone likes that. But no other group of players other than you people -- and to an extent people who only PvP -- constantly bug blizzard to redesign the game to your every wish and desire.

What, exactly, is being redesigned? Are you saying that Blizzard is incapable of offering the difficulty of raiding in a smaller group environment? If so, you never ran BRD, Scholo, or Strat when it was current content.

Let's think about this realistically for a moment and consider all the new features added over the last two expansions starting with LFR meant to give casual players with time restraints and even antisocial players who avoid group content at all costs:

1. LFR
2. Scenarios
3. Pet Battles
4. Brawler's Guild
5. Proving Grounds
6. Flex, along with the new ability to acquire your raid meta mount without doing anything remotely challenging.
7. The ability to obtain legendary item equips in low difficulty levels which are not even scaled down, and are identical to their hardest-difficulty level counterparts. Let's not even touch upon the fact that you literally did not even have to raid to obtain these, you merely had to enter an LFR and be present.
8. Item level upgrades

Proving Grounds? Really? Did you just include that as "content"? Have you ever done it? It's shit. Item level upgrades? Not casual content. Pet Battles? Let's not be absurd here. Brawler's Guild? Same thought process applies. None of these are viable endgame activities that have to do with endgame. Pet Battles can be done at any level. Brawler's Guild offers no real rewards and is easier with better gear. Proving Grounds is just a simulator as opposed to a training dummy. Item level upgrades helps everybody, including raiders, to help them eke out that extra 1% on the meters. As for flex, you still need 10+ people. Not exactly for small groups, now is it? That leaves LFR, Scenarios, and the cloak. Woo....hoo. So much content for a casual player. With LFR being the only VIABLE piece of endgame content. Which isn't challenging in the slightest.

End game raiders got heroic modes three expansions ago and not much special treatment since (well most of realize that raiders' proper treatment comes in the form of well developed content and encounters). I'll tell you what, to make it seem a little less lopsided we can also consider the addition of Thunderforged/Warforged items but honestly, that's debatable.

Actually, raiders have gotten plenty. Where did the dungeons disappear to? Oh, that's right. They got shoved to the wayside in order to create LFR. An endgame that's for everybody, but forces a "raid" atmosphere where it wasn't necessarily needed or wanted. As for raiders, they get something with every huge big content patch. What did "casual" players get during that time? A shitload of dailies and Timeless Isle. Impressive. At least Cata offered 5 Heroics. Even if 1 of them was a complete rehash.

But no, blizzard does not need to waste their developer resources on creating even more casual/solo content or means of character progression. You just need to play the same game as everyone else and stop trying to change it to better suit yourselves.

You're right. They don't need to. But then again all those people can go play another game that DOES offer those types of activities. They do exist.

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You have got to be kidding me.. well there you go "Casuals".

Blizzard just announced the ability to "Boost" to Level 90 right off the get go.

I guess I'll wait for further details.. rest of the expansion looks awesome.

I think they're attempting to cater to the crowd who has no interest in buying the game, all the x-pacs, and having to level 1-90. If they've never experienced an MMO before, those people would probably be more likely to just play a F2P game.

[Glorious Leader]

Yeah. Go back to the days of WotLK and Cata when you could run dungeons and get current iLevel gear.

In the age where valour is awarded from every activity this would basically make every activity an alternative to raiding. This is exactly what casual players want. Now you can deny it all you like and you can think it's a shit idea but their it is. It's what made certainly wotlk extremely casual friendly.

Is casual end game now supposed to be the garrsion? Certainly not dungeons as they've decided that they can make as few of those as possible. I often wonder why they even bother.

[Redpanda]

blizzard dosent read these forums

[rda]

Well, it doesn't look like Warlords of Draenor will improve on providing a meaningful non-raid progression for all those who are tired of being shoved into raids.

The features of Warlords of Draenor so far:

* Quest from 90 to 100, do events from time to time? - OK, will do, that's welcome, although that's not an endgame.
* 6+1 instance, 4 of them available during leveling - Well... didn't we have more even in MOP??? We had 9 and now it's going be... 7?? Really?
* Some scenarios - OK, will take them. Much too short for a progression, but what else do we have apart from these and instances...
* 2 raids - Life as usual, want a non-raid progression path, that's not it.
* Challenge modes - Fine, but that's not a progression as there's no gear with stats.
* Garrisons - That's just a minigame, like pet battles. No encounters, no bosses, nothing, a minigame. There'll be some epics. Meh.
* Professions - ??? Nothing about them yet. Since there are no big news, I guess things are as usual, very little to do there.
* Immediate Level 90 for 1 Char - Only listed, because someone said "here, you got what you wanted". This is almost the opposite of what we are talking about.

So. There's nothing to be excited about right now, sadly. Maybe today's panels will bring something.

My only question is: did I misunderstood the concept of followers in garrisons in that - would we be able to take them to instances and raids (and are they powerful enough for that)? Right now I suppose we won't be able to do this, but if that's not the case, and if that allows us to try and solo (or, say, duo - with two players coming with their own followers) raids, that could work.