Rampant gear inflation.

[Pua]

One of the biggest issues with the current game is, for me, the sheer ludicrous volume of disposable gear that's effectively thrown at players. One reason this is an issue is because when you start to overwhelm players with items that make what they're wearing redundant, you effectively lower the value of every item as a result. More rewards makes the game, ironically, less rewarding.

The larger issue here is that the inflation of item level via raiding is effectively creating a huge communal split of haves and have nots. The bottom line is that a group that clears heroic raids will utterly outperform players that don't do organised raiding due to the scheduling demands that it has.

Here are some numbers:

Level cap quest rewards are sat at 281 item level, but we could probably throw in top end crafts and azerite to round players to around 290. World quests will inflate that quickly to the heroic dungeon requirement, where the item level is 325 for precious little effort.

This is already an 11% increase in power with effectively no effort whatsoever, assuming we're talking about 290 to 325. There's then a group of things that compete to increase that number (LFR/Warfronts/WQs/Mythic dungeons/Titanforging) prior to the progression PvE system that matters, in heroic raiding. Heroic raids are throwing out 370 item level slots, which in turn is a 22% jump in power from when you first rounded out at the level cap.

If you take that next step up, and consistently kill Mythic raid bosses, then the reality is that you'll be equipped in 385 pieces which is a rounded jump out of 25%.

So, in other words, if you're just generally dungeoneering and questing then you can expect a solid item level of 340 or so. This is thirty item levels behind the heroic raiders who are going to have pretty much an 8% advantage over you, outside of skill differences.

Rounding out, level cap players are already at 75% of power available in the first tier of this expansion.

To compare this to Classic, for example, the jump was about 60 to 90 at the absolute top end (which there were less of than today's Mythic raiders), so a third of difference through the entire version of the game. We're already close to that after a single tier.

It's just another reason to look forward to Classic. It's not just the additional depth that it has throughout its systems, it's the fact that you don't need to be at the absolute cutting edge in order to have decent development options.

[Deleted]

I agree. But it seems Blizzard is doing this knowingly. If the RNG stayed as it is AND the gaps between item tiers were smaller, a lot more people would quit.

In short, increased layers of RNG and huge gaps between item/difficulty tiers go hand in hand.

[Th3Scourge]

One of the biggest issues with the current game is, for me, the sheer ludicrous volume of disposable gear that's effectively thrown at players. One reason this is an issue is because when you start to overwhelm players with items that make what they're wearing redundant, you effectively lower the value of every item as a result. More rewards makes the game, ironically, less rewarding.

The larger issue here is that the inflation of item level via raiding is effectively creating a huge communal split of haves and have nots. The bottom line is that a group that clears heroic raids will utterly outperform players that don't do organised raiding due to the scheduling demands that it has.

Here are some numbers:

Level cap quest rewards are sat at 281 item level, but we could probably throw in top end crafts and azerite to round players to around 290. World quests will inflate that quickly to the heroic dungeon requirement, where the item level is 325 for precious little effort.

This is already an 11% increase in power with effectively no effort whatsoever, assuming we're talking about 290 to 325. There's then a group of things that compete to increase that number (LFR/Warfronts/WQs/Mythic dungeons/Titanforging) prior to the progression PvE system that matters, in heroic raiding. Heroic raids are throwing out 370 item level slots, which in turn is a 22% jump in power from when you first rounded out at the level cap.

If you take that next step up, and consistently kill Mythic raid bosses, then the reality is that you'll be equipped in 385 pieces which is a rounded jump out of 25%.

So, in other words, if you're just generally dungeoneering and questing then you can expect a solid item level of 340 or so. This is thirty item levels behind the heroic raiders who are going to have pretty much an 8% advantage over you, outside of skill differences.

Rounding out, level cap players are already at 75% of power available in the first tier of this expansion.

To compare this to Classic, for example, the jump was about 60 to 90 at the absolute top end (which there were less of than today's Mythic raiders), so a third of difference through the entire version of the game. We're already close to that after a single tier.

It's just another reason to look forward to Classic. It's not just the additional depth that it has throughout its systems, it's the fact that you don't need to be at the absolute cutting edge in order to have decent development options.

It started with sunwell plateau catchup gear and got progressively worse. Nowadays the value of items is severely diminished

[Flaim]

agreed.
/10char

[lollerlaban]

Blizzard talked about this during MoP. It's the player mentality of only getting a 2ilvl upgrade doesn't feel "high enough" so they tried to find the sweet spot of how high the difference in ilvl should be in order to feel rewarded

[Pua]

It started with sunwell plateau catchup gear and got progressively worse. Nowadays the value of items is severely diminished

Interestingly, I was thinking about when this started and was thinking closer to Wrath (when raid difficulties started with tier 9).

That’s a suspicion, though. You could easily be right.

[beelgers]

Everyone these days wants gear thrown at them constantly. They want every activity to reward an upgrade quickly. They want TF/WF gear. All this on top of M+ and 4 raid difficulties that have to be even higher and noticeably different in strength. Then they wonder why there's so much gear inflation.

Yeah, its an issue, but it isn't going to ever change. They can't roll back the clock and make the game less rewarding. Going to keep on the daily RNG treadmill.

[Moxal]

The gear firehose could easily be toned down by giving us badges/etc back.

Drop less gear, give a tangible way to work towards the items we actually want rather than a bunch of random stuff that isn’t an upgrade or is for an alt spec we never play.

[Baracuda]

Everyone these days wants gear thrown at them constantly. They want every activity to reward an upgrade quickly. They want TF/WF gear. All this on top of M+ and 4 raid difficulties that have to be even higher and noticeably different in strength. Then they wonder why there's so much gear inflation.

Yeah, its an issue, but it isn't going to ever change. They can't roll back the clock and make the game less rewarding. Going to keep on the daily RNG treadmill.

They could remove LFR and let you queue for normal with a matchmaking buff.

[Ragnarohk]

Something like this would help keep seeing gear as worthy and not just random stat sticks and preserve the feeling of "epic" And "legendary" gear.

Remove TF/WF/random Sockets (add Sockets on a regular basis to ítem, not randomly)

WQs, Quests, Normal 5 mans, Heroics drop blue gear

Have mythic 5 mans drop blue gear with a small pool of epics that might drop from last boss (WotLK)

Have raids with only 1 or 2 (max) drops per slot. 1 cloth helm/1 neck piece/2 ring /2 trinkets. Balance secondary stats around this so that we don't discard upgrades because we got mástery and not haste etc. Perhaps bring back reforging to help buffer this. Currently a 30 ilvl up grade is useless if it has the wrong secondary stats

Give back meaningful legendaries (Tacregosa, Valanyr, Frostmourne, Rogue Daggers). Not the vanilla/glaives RNG drops nor the MoP/WoD welfare legendaries or the wtf Legion system.

Make crafted items blue with impactful legendary ítems costing mats/quest items/recipe that are Hard to get and trake effort and time. Limit the number of these items.

Ultimately your carácter should stay at rare gear for longer and get meaningful epic upgrades. Nobody recalls the name of a belt or ring or headpiece anymore. I remember in BC being eager to Craft my Belt of Blasting for my warlock. It also feels bad when you get an ítem that's not TF or WF, Removing this RNG will help with gear feeling worthy again

[dcc626]

Something like this would help keep seeing gear as worthy and not just random stat sticks and preserve the feeling of "epic" And "legendary" gear.

Remove TF/WF/random Sockets (add Sockets on a regular basis to ítem, not randomly)

WQs, Quests, Normal 5 mans, Heroics drop blue gear

Have mythic 5 mans drop blue gear with a small pool of epics that might drop from last boss (WotLK)

Have raids with only 1 or 2 (max) drops per slot. 1 cloth helm/1 neck piece/2 ring /2 trinkets. Balance secondary stats around this so that we don't discard upgrades because we got mástery and not haste etc. Perhaps bring back reforging to help buffer this. Currently a 30 ilvl up grade is useless if it has the wrong secondary stats

Give back meaningful legendaries (Tacregosa, Valanyr, Frostmourne, Rogue Daggers). Not the vanilla/glaives RNG drops nor the MoP/WoD welfare legendaries or the wtf Legion system.

Make crafted items blue with impactful legendary ítems costing mats/quest items/recipe that are Hard to get and trake effort and time. Limit the number of these items.

Ultimately your carácter should stay at rare gear for longer and get meaningful epic upgrades. Nobody recalls the name of a belt or ring or headpiece anymore. I remember in BC being eager to Craft my Belt of Blasting for my warlock. It also feels bad when you get an ítem that's not TF or WF, Removing this RNG will help with gear feeling worthy again

todays playerbase (at least the majority of it) would do nothing but scream about how unrewarding the game is if they did this. people *right now* complain when they dont get an upgrade whenever they play. the playerbase is entitled in a way that is not able to be reeled back in.

this is blizzards fault for catering to the screaming vocal masses.

the same masses that are currently calling for people to quit the game because they cant, for example, farm azerite gear from m+.

knife cuts both ways.

[crusadernero]

People are obsessed with getting gear these days. Been like that for years. Feels like alot of people play it for the gear and not because its fun or whatever.

So if they do ANY content now, and there is no reward in it, people wont bother.

I have tried making 40 man raids just go attack the horde capital in zuldazar, for the only reason to mess with horde. People dont bother. Some join thinking its a new feature or something. once they find out there is no reward except, you know, fun gameplay, they just leave :P

[Crookers]

Warforging and titanforging need to go away.

Using current tier as an example Rf should be 340, normal 350, heroic 360, mythic 370,
next tier should be RF 350, normal 360, heroic 370 mythic 380
following tier should be RF 360, normal 370, heroic 380, mythic 390
final tier(?) RF 370, normal 380, heroic 390, mythic 400

This kind of overlapping means that players can drop back to 'lower' tiers at higher difficulties and still get upgrade/sidegrades, which gives more to do at end game e.g. during the third tier a 'normal' raider could go back to t2 heroic for gear or t1 mythic

Then in 9.0 levelling gear should max out at 420ish.

[Azure653]

It's kind of funny that we keep getting stat squishes while the cause for their constant necessity is completely ignored. We got a stat squish in WoD and we ended ahead of MoP numbers. We started this expansion at about Cata numbers and we're going to be ahead of MoP numbers by the end of it. If we don't get a stat squish in the next expansion, we'll no doubt surpass Legion numbers in it.

[kubaje]

The funny thing is that Blizzard actually doesn't know what they are doing.


Ion keeps saying that a jump in 15 ilvls feels good. Okay, I'm fine with that.


What does Blizzard do? Make the next tier's mythic ilvl 415 + titanforge.


So in Blizzards logic 15 feels fine, 30 feels even better and increasing your ilvl by 45 each content is Blizzards wet dream.
There must be some communication issues or Ion is just terrible at maths and doesn't know the difference between 15 and 45.

[Deleted]

If only there was a Classic wank forum section...... o wait.

Or maybe you are going to fester here after you find out that Classic is not like Vanilla?

[Arainie]

It's all about instant gratification really. Nobody (I generalize, I don't consider myself part of this for example) today wants to do anything without being rewarded. If there's a very high chance you won't get an upgrade, people in general won't do a dungeon/raid/bg etc. Typically, you'll see your average Joe play the game until they can soft cap their gear through quick upgrades. For someone who doesn't do Mythic0/M+ this might be ilvl 345-350, and for others it might be around 360-370, but trust that playtime will considerably decrease when gear upgrades become considerably more rare. Warforging and titanforging obviously make this route even shorter, but the biggest contributor to the power creep we have today is 4 raid difficulties. I personally like the fact that I can raid Mythic while Jane is happy with Normal, but the power scaling (and Blizzards view of that every upgrade needs to be significant) is a negative result of diverse difficulties.

tl;dr Gamers are extremely reward driven nowdays, and obviously Blizzard caught on to this long ago. It's sad but true.

[Maudib]

I agree. But it seems Blizzard is doing this knowingly. If the RNG stayed as it is AND the gaps between item tiers were smaller, a lot more people would quit.

In short, increased layers of RNG and huge gaps between item/difficulty tiers go hand in hand.

It did not use to. Deterministic loot, available each tier, gave solid, rewarding experiences that never got old.

When you got "your gear" each tier... you felt like you reached your goals... a VERY important step in an MMO. The next tier came along and gave you a new goal, with defined paths to reach them. now it's just this never ending stream of gear... the iLevel gets higher, but it is still rng rolls doign the exact same content except the raids.

horrible game design.

[digichi]

I agree with this. The novelty of getting all these gear upgrades thrown at you so quickly wears down very fast, and i'm surprised it hasn't been pointed out more often. It kind of adds fuel to the fire of the fastfood playstyle (log in, get reward, leave ... not really encouraging people to slow down and smell the flowers.) I would also love to see gear and rarity reflected in the game design again (cause 'epic' purps arent that epic if they're super common..)

[Doffen]

It's just in line with other games, rewards equals fun.

I personally think TBC-gearing was awesome. That's how it should be. But then I am talking about me and the other 4-5% that did BT/SWP back then. The badge-gear though was good, same that you could get epic from last boss in heroic. So yeah, TBC was the start of it, while in WotLK it started as the new formula on how gearing should be.

Accessible for everyone, so the modern WoW began.