The lies and misrepresenttions of Titanforging

[HuxNeva]

Previously I could mitigate a bad drop by reforging the stats.

Previously I could run heroics to gain Justice/Valor points and WORK TOWARDS a reward. I knew that when I got 1250 points I could buy a tangible upgrade that had the exact stats I wanted.

See to me you talk about the most incredibly boring things that were ever in the game in terms of looting as if they were a plus.

'Reforging': Who cares about the piece that dropped. I'll just auto-reforge it. All gear reduced to a single number.
'Gear for Points': OMG, yes, have playing the game be a chore for a wage-slave. Completely horrid system. Only thing more mindnumbingly boring was the gated upgrade legendaries of MoP/WoD and now Anthorus. do your chores, get paid. 0 Fun. Why play a game when it feels like work?

[nekobaka]

See to me you talk about the most incredibly boring things that were ever in the game in terms of looting as if they were a plus.

'Reforging': Who cares about the piece that dropped. I'll just auto-reforge it. All gear reduced to a single number.
'Gear for Points': OMG, yes, have playing the game be a chore for a wage-slave. Completely horrid system. Only thing more mindnumbingly boring was the gated upgrade legendaries of MoP/WoD and now Anthorus. do your chores, get paid. 0 Fun. Why play a game when it feels like work?

Compared to doing your chores and getting jack shit except once in a blue moon get a bonus as an incentive to keep slaving away.

[HuxNeva]

Now the question should really be:
Why do players who do lower difficulty of content and are happy with the Titanforging system feel the need for a system that makes the higher difficulties so unrewarding?
Before you answer that, ask yourself - do i really need this upgrade for the content in which i participate? Or am i just happy that i have a shiney new high number?

In the past this was simple:
Do the content, and you might get the reward for your effort, don't do the content - may as well just keep on doing whatever you like because it doesn't matter to you.

Now it's:
Do, or don't... Doesn't matter, you still probably won't be rewarded. Unless you're lucky.

It's not about 'doing lower content', it's about having longevity in game-play and not being 'done'. And herein lies the grub. People either love not being 'done, or hate not being 'done'.
And the less they understand probability, the more they feel the need to 'grind'. Which is why I said trying to 'grind' out anything beyond a +15 is not worth it. If you like the gameplay associated with the 'grind', then by all means enjoy, but if you don't, just leave it. You will not miss much. If you are hoping for that +15 piece from one level down, you will need to do that about 8-12 times to have the same chance as the single kill on the higher level. Your Imonar example? Without TF you'd have 0% chance to get an upgrade if you got your item the first week. Now you still have a small chance.
M+ wouldn't exist as a broadly appealing game-mode if it wasn't for TF.

[killwithpwr]

It's not about 'doing lower content', it's about having longevity in game-play and not being 'done'. And herein lies the grub. People either love not being 'done, or hate not being 'done'.
And the less they understand probability, the more they feel the need to 'grind'. Which is why I said trying to 'grind' out anything beyond a +15 is not worth it. If you like the gameplay associated with the 'grind', then by all means enjoy, but if you don't, just leave it. You will not miss much. If you are hoping for that +15 piece from one level down, you will need to do that about 8-12 times to have the same chance as the single kill on the higher level. Your Imonar example? Without TF you'd have 0% chance to get an upgrade if you got your item the first week. Now you still have a small chance.
M+ wouldn't exist as a broadly appealing game-mode if it wasn't for TF.

1. Longevity for who? The game or the players? Either way, can be achieved by putting in cosmetic/mount/pet rewards... Many people are still running old raids for transmog/mounts/pets, there no need to put in power rewards for longevity.

2. Grinding is a choice, i agree. But you are wrong in saying that it is not worth it. If i have a chance at getting a better piece of gear from a dungeon, then as a raider i will be compelled to do that dungeon. Granted, it is my choice, but that choice is only possible because Blizzard put it there. If during ToS i had a raid boss to reward me with my BiS Relic, i would not go and farm BRH +15 or higher for a slight chance at a TF Relic that will make me more beneficial to my raid group.
You may think that its just a small personal power increase, but when talking about the whole grouo, usually, everyone needs to make the effort, not just one individual.

3. I do enjoy doing the higher keys (as high as i can possibly get with my limited time) and to me they are quite more enjoyable simply because of the challenge. Not the loot...

4. My Imonar example was to show how convoluted this system really is: A player decides he wants to participate in more challenging content, clears normal and heroic multiple times (more than 10 kills of every boss), gets a Heroic 945 Leg piece from Imonar. The first thought is 'shame... This could have been Titanforged so much higher... Even Warforged... But its just the lowest piece i was able to get... Meh' then a week later, get a Class hall mission to kill Imonar to get a mythic chest (woohoo! So mjch excitment!) but since he killed Normal, Heroic and Mythic Imonar that week, he decides to just kill Imonar in LFR, to make the quest faster. Kill Imonar LFR and get 945 TF legs... With a socket. When i saw that, i thought 'shit, i need to wear this now, because its a 200 Haste rating upgrade and all i did was to click on a que' then proceed to get a useless 960 Mythic cloak that i will not put on because of my Legendary.
If you don't see a problem there, then you shouldn't care about rewards so much, and shouldn't be bothered if you get a 900 piece of gear or a 985 in whatever it is that you do in this game.

5. Without TF i would be happy to know that i am done farming for a certain item and know that i can vacate my raid spot for a less fortunate bench warmer, alas TF exists, so i feel compelled to kill the boss again, and again, and again... And again... Untill i get the highest possible outcome. By the way, that is not 'Longevity'... That is more akin to gambling (and i admit, as of now, i am an addict).

M+ could survive if you remove Titanforging. It is simple really, right now the keys will give you a set ilvl at the base with +15 giving out slightly (very slightly) lower gear than Heroic raiding, which in my eyes is pretty comparable.

If you wish to have keys that reward the high ilvl gear, just tweak those out and lets say: A +20 will give out the same quality as Mythic does.
There is no need for the roller coaster of RNG systems stack up on each other.

Also, i can guarantee you that most (if not all) players who do higher than 15 keys do it for the challenge and not for the loot (mainly)

[Gaidax]

If you raid mythic, you have seen way more titanforges than you are letting us know.

I still doubt that a mythic raider wouldn't know the value of a titanforged item in their DPS. So, i guess you are a special snowflake.

Besides, you reverted to your ad-hoc narrative i guess? I don't care what a hill billy gets in their dungeon either, i care about the inbalance it creates between raiders of the same tier and how it robs them of a fun and fair performance competition. Ok? Ok. End of story.

I am raiding mythic and you have my signature with character, I don't feel need to hide. I'll repeat, bosses we just kill were killed with 10 average item level less than what we have. Titanforging does not suddenly turn your 2 raid nights into 6 or frikkin' control adds on Argrammar for you or make you position your raid correctly for Death Fog baiting. It does not matter. It would matter if titanforging was commonplace, but it's not.

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Not everyone spends their time doing pet battles and shit. I currently own like 10 items that are +30 forged or higher, and I have sold/DEd probably a similar amount, with the highest being a +60.

And yet out of all your 9 characters with that TF spam you don't have single one matching my ilvl and the best you could do is 5/11 mythic?

Guess you just wasted shitton of time for less than I got with my 2 raid nights a week and M+ or two.

That's why I say it's non-factor, you are yet another silly Billy who thinks TF are all, but you don't have anything to show for it.

[ID811717]

M+ could survive if you remove Titanforging. It is simple really, right now the keys will give you a set ilvl at the base with +15 giving out slightly (very slightly) lower gear than Heroic raiding, which in my eyes is pretty comparable.

If you wish to have keys that reward the high ilvl gear, just tweak those out and lets say: A +20 will give out the same quality as Mythic does.
There is no need for the roller coaster of RNG systems stack up on each other.

The argument is that with the current gearing system, titanforging is crucial for M+ to be viable.

But sure, if we had a better gearing system in M+, most players pushing M+ would not care if titanforging went away. But alas, we only got what we got here... And everything is interwoven. So any time you discuss titanforging, someone will mention that you cannot discuss it in isolation, since M+ gearing system depends on it. Change titanforging, and you have to change M+ gearing system. Change M+ gearing system - and you might get other far-stretched implications (say, if +20 dropped mythic quality gear then mythic raiders would be forced to farm keys besides the weekly chest). Basically, it opens up a lot of depth for exploring different game design decisions, and I'm sure most of us here have not enough insight to analyze how it would impact the game. Most people in this topic see titanforging as an isolated problem, and suggest a simple solution "remove titanforging", without realizing that it's a part of a much larger design challenge.

Let me be clear, I'm not trying defend the idea of titanforging in general. I'm just trying to point out that a suggestion to "remove titanforging" is pretty useless in isolation from other design decisions that could be controversial (e.g. forcing raiders to play a lot of M+ to be competitive), or could make the overall gearing unnecessarily complicated (e.g. if you would consider making raid gear not work in M+, and M+ gear not work in raids).

[Gaidax]

The argument is that with the current gearing system, titanforging is crucial for M+ to be viable.

But sure, if we had a better gearing system in M+, most players pushing M+ would not care if titanforging went away. But alas, we only got what we got here... And everything is interwoven. So any time you discuss titanforging, someone will mention that you cannot discuss it in isolation, since M+ gearing system depends on it. Change titanforging, and you have to change M+ gearing system. Change M+ gearing system - and you might get other far-stretched implications (say, if +20 dropped mythic quality gear then mythic raiders would be forced to farm keys besides the weekly chest). Basically, it opens up a lot of depth for exploring different game design decisions, and I'm sure most of us here have not enough insight to analyze how it would impact the game. Most people in this topic see titanforging as an isolated problem, and suggest a simple solution "remove titanforging", without realizing that it's a part of a much larger design challenge.

Honestly I'm not against capping titanforging at 25 ilvls, I think it's reasonable enough. Removing it just because some people feel salty for whatever reason there is, that's just silly.

I know personally one such guy who would choke his mother for a higher item level item, so I can see how titanforging and the pain on others and not him getting it affects his mental health, but other than that - for normal people it's not really a problem.

[gobio]

... Grinding is a choice, i agree. But you are wrong in saying that it is not worth it...

Stop right here. REALITY check. Lots and lots of people raiding in various stages (half clear mythic, full clear mythic) DO NOT DO LFR or even NORMAL. You can easily check mythic raider's history, I have checked plenty people. Yet you flat out call people wrong. You can have your own perspective, you can say YOU YOURSELF is compelled to do whatever. But please, kindly, do not generalize your desire to ALL raiders (or all "true" raiders if you are into these nonsense).

[Gaidax]

Stop right here. REALITY check. Lots and lots of people raiding in various stages (half clear mythic, full clear mythic) DO NOT DO LFR or even NORMAL. You can easily check mythic raider's history, I have checked plenty people. Yet you flat out call people wrong. You can have your own perspective, you can say YOU YOURSELF is compelled to do whatever. But please, kindly, do not generalize your desire to ALL raiders (or all "true" raiders if you are into these nonsense).

This right there, when I think about it, let's say I would go ahead and grind the shit out of M+ until my eyes bleed... what would I get that I actually can equip and has decent stats? Maybe like 2 items? That would be what? Whole 2, maybe 3 ilvl on top of what I have?

That's totally worthless waste of time with returns that are not guaranteed at all. Might as well grind artifact to 90 or something.

[Gaidax]

Hahaha.

You're probably a gambling addict IRL too?

Your version of events has you constantly doing shitty WQs, emissaries and farming argunite to plug into a slot machine. Hoping that this time the RNG gods will give you something useful.

How much garbage have we all vendored this expansion? How many epics?

They removed QoL aspects of the game that let you CONTROL how you wanted to gear your character. All control has been taken away.

OR one can just moderate himself and not do this because the odds are against you. If someone wants to gamble off his life on this in hopes of getting another item or two that won't bloody matter in a couple of months it's on that guy.

That's why I only do single M+15 per week and raid twice a week and that's it. Anything besides that is a major waste of time, you either get nothing or you get something that is neither realistically major or lasting. I have no idea why people spam the shit of M+ for gear. I can understand pushing for challenge... but for gear? lel.

THAT SAID, it's good there is an option for addicts, as opposed to let's say WoD where it was raid and then AFK in garrison for the rest of the week for those.

[Felkor]

The point is, what about Titanforging in BFA ?

We know that :

- Tiers bonuses : gone

For the "most important" piece of gear :
- The weapon : will not be able to titanforge (only warforge).
- Also, the impact of wdps on damage will be lowered (only scaling with AP, according to next build)

For the "important" pieces of gears : (aka the new "set" pieces with Hearth of Azeroth)
- helm/shoulder/torso : never titanforge or warforge

The rest of the gear
- will be able to warforge & titanforge in the same way it works on legion, but with a lowered frequencie.

Considering those points, I think that Blizzard acknowledged that there was issue with the titanforging system. Not on the system by itself, which I think is a good addition in the game in the long term, but with it iteractions with other systems.

I think this new interation of the system is interesting, and the discussion about Titanforging should be done on that perspective, rather than looking on the current implementation, which will not change until BFA.

[Toxuvox]

My problem isn't with WF/TF as a concept. My issue is with the size of the jump, and that the increase reaches back to already surpassed content. Ideally, WF/TF should present, at the most, a +5/+10 ilvl increase WITHIN IT'S OWN CONTENT BRACKET. So for example, each raid tier increases the ilvl of loot drops by +15 over the previous tier. This would put any drops from a new tier at an automatic +5 ilvl minimum increase over ANY item that dropped from the previous, regardless of WF/TF. These would mean re-running current content within tier still provides upgrade possibilities, without pushing folks into running older content for an item that remains BiS because of a potential to TF into current tier ilvls. In short, keep the WF/TF jumps small and tier limited.

[killwithpwr]

Stop right here. REALITY check. Lots and lots of people raiding in various stages (half clear mythic, full clear mythic) DO NOT DO LFR or even NORMAL. You can easily check mythic raider's history, I have checked plenty people. Yet you flat out call people wrong. You can have your own perspective, you can say YOU YOURSELF is compelled to do whatever. But please, kindly, do not generalize your desire to ALL raiders (or all "true" raiders if you are into these nonsense).

So... you took one sentence, blew out of proportion, and went off on a rant...

Good for you mate.

Maybe read the whole paragraph before you reply?

If i have a chance at getting a better piece of gear from a dungeon, then as a raider i will be compelled to do that dungeon. Granted, it is my choice, but that choice is only possible because Blizzard put it there.

Honestly I'm not against capping titanforging at 25 ilvls, I think it's reasonable enough. Removing it just because some people feel salty for whatever reason there is, that's just silly.

I know personally one such guy who would choke his mother for a higher item level item, so I can see how titanforging and the pain on others and not him getting it affects his mental health, but other than that - for normal people it's not really a problem.

Tbf, i don't have a problem with this either - capping TF will gives many players some breathing room...

But i would rather it got removed than stayed as it is now...

[Dangg]

Agreed

If you have some OCD that you NEED to do content for a 0.0001% chance for a 0.2% upgrade it's your problem.

[HuxNeva]

Hahaha.

You're probably a gambling addict IRL too?

Your version of events has you constantly doing shitty WQs, emissaries and farming argunite to plug into a slot machine. Hoping that this time the RNG gods will give you something useful.

How much garbage have we all vendored this expansion? How many epics?

They removed QoL aspects of the game that let you CONTROL how you wanted to gear your character. All control has been taken away.

Can't say I gamble at all IRL tbh.
In game, I'm did emisaries just for the the Legendary BLP, noting to do with TF. (My take on the legendaries in Legion: I like them a lott, mainly because they are like talents you can swap mid run in M+ an tha tis fun gameplay, so I'm realy sad to see them go. The way they needed to be acquired was horrible though. That realy had too much long term impact RNG.) I hardly did any Argus, as I just didn't like the zones. I got exalted with both factions and that's about it.

I do agree with you that there's a looming gambling thing going on in games, not just WoW.
Variable ratio/schedule reinforcement from behavioral psychology is omnipresent nowadays and is the most powerful of all incentivizers. Pure gambling is regulated in many regions, and game designers can expect increased scrutiny on how they apply these behavior reinforcement techniques. A good place to start would be to have game producers be open about the exact probability schemes applied, so players can decide 'objectively' how much effort/reward is average and how much variance to expect. Armory scrapers like can help here in the mean time. Would be interesting to see an analysis by Wowhead, MMOC, Wowprogress or Raider.io on the effort vs effective usefulness as in recorded kills/runs vs gear that ended up equipped. It wouldn't be perfect, as e.g.a M+ trash gearset is typically not the gear you log out on (every dungeon ends in a Boss), but at least it could start to provide some insight.

[Deleted]

I also raid Mythic (but I'm more casual currently at 8/11M), and the times I get TF is usually on shit gear with shit stats. Ilvl is a terrible way to judge gear this expansion because secondary stats matter a lot. I'm not worried about someone who exclusively does LFR or WQs and gets lucky because even if he was the luckiest guy in the world and got 960+ on every piece, his gear would be terribly unoptimized.

Besides 99% of our wipes have been on someone who derped on mechanics, it's almost never because we lack that 0.1% DPS because someone's gear didn't titanforge.

Neither am i. I used the word tier forgetting it has a different meaning in the WoW context. I edited to same difficulty.

In short: My problem is your buddy gets super duper titanforge trinket. You feel like theres no point even trying unless you also luck out. That ruins the fun. Theres also the AP power grind and legendaries. Everything was luck and how much time you can waste grinding. The fun of the raid itself and the competition based on skill was robbed.

[HuxNeva]

That's exactly the point though.

You're rewarded for playing the game like a loser. Literally rewarded for grinding out redundant raids in 4 different difficulties.

I log in once a week to raid Heroic because frankly - everything else in the game is boring as fuck now. I'm not grinding Argus for slot machine Argunite pieces. Fuck that.


This has all been specifically designed to make people grind and pull the slot machine more often.

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That's exactly what I do.

I play with a group of mates. All we do is raid Heroic as it is current. Once Heroic is down most of us un-sub because the content is just insanely boring. Argus is a boring grind.

The fact that as a Demon Hunter I still don't have the mandatory Legendary Ring over 12 months into the expansion is just fucking sad. I can't compete on the damage meters.

All because I refuse to grind redundant content on 4 different difficulties.


The fact is - the only option is the one designed for gambling addicts. Reforging is removed. Legendaries still exist. Valor Points removed.

Grinding 4 difficulties? What on earth for? I just checked my armory to make sure I'm not lying and I haven't even done full LFR this tier on my main. Think I only touched it (apparently am 7/11) when there was a quest and we already were done for the week (our last raid night is Sunday). I have done a weekly N clear because we do that as our 'fun & alts' run, and I haven't been playing much alts but still like the atmosphere. We mostly just clear HC, and when we get is down in time sometimes dabble in M though the fixed size means we often have to pug so only bother when our HC clears get fast enough so we can mostly do it in one 2,5 hour night (3hrs in theory, but we are too sloppy to be on time ), and then look to do something different on our second raid-night.

You seem both surprised and offended that Blizzard designs a game that rewards players for playing?
You confess to being a raid-logger. If you raid HC, I for the life of me can't see why the current system prohibits you from doing just that. You clear and farm you tier, and come back the next tier, that's it. I raid HC and the people that don't like M+ don't do it and guess what, they have no problems raiding.

Just raid-log. There is 0% need for you to do otherwise. Just don't go round and insult players that like different parts of the game or different play-styles. Expecting them not to have any fun just because you can't control your ilvl envy is frankly pathetic.

[liars]

That's exactly the point though.

You're rewarded for playing the game like a loser. Literally rewarded for grinding out redundant raids in 4 different difficulties.

I log in once a week to raid Heroic because frankly - everything else in the game is boring as fuck now. I'm not grinding Argus for slot machine Argunite pieces. Fuck that.


This has all been specifically designed to make people grind and pull the slot machine more often.

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That's exactly what I do.

I play with a group of mates. All we do is raid Heroic as it is current. Once Heroic is down most of us un-sub because the content is just insanely boring. Argus is a boring grind.

The fact that as a Demon Hunter I still don't have the mandatory Legendary Ring over 12 months into the expansion is just fucking sad. I can't compete on the damage meters.

All because I refuse to grind redundant content on 4 different difficulties.


The fact is - the only option is the one designed for gambling addicts. Reforging is removed. Legendaries still exist. Valor Points removed.

If you don't have all the legendaries for all of your specs, even as a raid logger, you're either a complete liar and playing nowhere near as much as you claim.
There is literally a legendary vendor. l i t e r a l l y

[Steelangel]

If it wasn't obvious enough for you, what you quoted was supposed to be a monologue, not a conversation between two people.

TFing devalues your own gear, leaving a sour feeling every time you get a good item, because you know it could have been even better if it was TFd.

"I Got Free Ice Cream But It Doesn't Have Sprinkles Or Candy Swirls, Fuck This Game."

[Alyajna]

I enjoy the TF system a lot, but I agree it's made raid progression underwhelming. We clear heroic regularly, and I think I've seen 1 upgrade for myself there. Anything that dropped would have to TF quite a bit - I got all of my gear TF'd in Normal/Mythic+.

I also really despise the issue it caused with tier and trinkets. Even now, people are wearing TF t20 that you just wont compete with if you didn't get lucky to get that because t20 bonus were a lot stronger for some classes. Some advice is "not to unequip unless a 100 ilvl difference", which is nuts. This is in part blizzards fault, I think...t21 is just bad for too many. And then you have Convergence of Fates, Arcano crystal.

But those are really the only issues I have. Someone got lucky in LFR? I'm happy for them. It doesn't affect me. What I don't like is being encouraged to run old raids no one really wants to do anymore, or grind rares on argus until my eyes bleed (I stopped, though). I think the system should stay, but things that drop in raids just need to be better and tier needs to be deactivated/weakened or something. But, I think they said it's being addressed in BFA. Better trinketes/no tier/stuff for your necklace you can only get there, etc.