Can anyone explain how RnG has materially gotten worse since Classic?

[rohoz]

this is true.
I can complain all I want that I didn't get my azerites from weekly chest, but I was waiting for 4 months before I got the bee shoulders from geddon I think for my eleshaman (yes, I was playing ele, and it looked terrible on tauren) and there was no real alternative until they introduced tier 0,5 (horray terrible itemization) Thankfully, I was second in line to get ZHC, so I didnt wait too long for that, but I never got my NAC or the caster mace from BWL and played the rest of vanilla with the rep/scarab AQ20 mace. I also remember ZG not having any epic rings for quite a while and only introduced in one of the later patches to sweeten the loot table in ZG.

Yeah, getting the true BiS is now way harder with all the random WF/TF, sockets, azertie traits, etc so its not really achievable, ever, but actually GOOD ENOUGH gear is far, FAR more accesible than before. I was actually really suprised when they tried 10man and 25man equal in difficulty in Cata and instead of getting 2/3 higher ilevel items in 25mans, they started to give 5! items per each boss, something common now, with 1 item per 5 people, but absolutely nuts back then and reserved only for end bosses of old.

We got it easy now tbh.

heh. I was trying to explain to someone why briarwood reed and rune of the guard captain were often used to bwl and it went right over their heads.
I went through all of vanilla on my paladin without an epic spellpower weapon (since most +heal items were staves, paladins got the super shitty end of the stick) clearing up to and including huhuran in aq40

[SoundOfGuns]

Lol. That indignance.

When numbers approaching random collide with a system like this, it's "statistically irrelevant." There aren't enough players to have one get every great item, every time. 10,000,000 is nothing in a 100,000,000,000,000,000,000...+ situation.

Oh right, don't forget bad luck protection on the other end. :|

Okay, fair point. If i go out of my way to explain that these cases have a chance to exist i also need to keep in mind that i don't know the numbers and therefor can't know how high the chance is and if its high enough to be relevant at all. I guess i got carried away there.

I don't believe there exists a bad luck protection in all the loot related systems in WoW tho. They usually point that out quite frequently and quite eagerly for... some reason.

[StayTuned]

wait what kinda hacks are you using that gets you 20 legendaries a day from arenas?

Wops, ofc I meant epics.

[HuxNeva]

No, I don't think you quite get it because what you just said isn't even remotely close to representing what I said. The problem is that your personal character progression is now based on RNG because warforging and titanforging both make it so that the items that would have previously been obvious character upgrades aren't the best iteration of an item and it demotivates people who want to optimize their characters. If I had Mythic Khor's Hammer drop from Taloc at 385, that is horribly diminished by the fact that the WF/TF system can have it currently scale up to 395, and the fact that I've seen heroic versions of it drop for pugs at 390. It's a stupid hamster wheel that's meant to artificially extend play time and make older difficulties relevant, but just makes you feel bad if you don't get the titanforged variant with socket.

WF/TF is absolutely not designed to 'make older difficulties relevant'.
It is part of the 'soft caps' approach of modern WoW. I think Ion put it as (paraphrasing) 'WoW is a big game with many types of player enjoying different parts. Whatever you like to do in the WoW, or how much you want to play, we want you to have the possibility of character progression.' They were looking for an answer to the old 'there is nothing left to do' QQ. And yes, they fully knew that those players complaining hadn't finished all the classes, any last achievement, collection etc. , they were saying that in the things they liked to do on the character(s) they liked to play, there was nothing left to do that gave them a sens of character progression. They had hit the hard caps. Capped dailies, done the raid, and all they could do now was twiddle their thumbs until reset. It wasn't solvable in the old system, because if they raised the caps that would lead to the people no longer being able to 'cap' as they had less playtime in the week, falling behind significantly.

The solution was to built a system of probability based diminishing returns. Instead of the old 'hard-caps', 'soft caps' came in. You can play how you like, and as much as you like, there will always be some chance of character progression. You do not hit the wall, but you are going to face increasingly diminishing returns on time invested. You saw this with the introduction of the AP/AK system, and you see this with the WF/TF system. You can keep playing as much as you want beyond the 'old' cap and still progress, it's just going to be less and less efficient. So the difference between those going full ham, and those pacing themselves by choice or necessity exists, but isn't too large and disappears again quickly over time once you stop chasing the rainbow.

The system is brilliant for all, except two groups:

- functional min/maxers, aka competitive chart racers. As they are in a competition with each other, it isn't staying ahead of the nivelating wave they are after, it is staying ahead, being faster, than their competition. Especially in the beginning this led to people of this type completely burning out as they were never 'done' for the week. Of course they were going to go after milestones that weren't meant to be reachable yet by insane and targeted time investment (the MoS marathons). I think both they and Blizzard learned from that and adapted to the system.

- dysfunctional OCD completionists. The system of 'there is always a potential for character progression' is the direct anti-thesis of their impossibility for self imposed control. They need to be 'done', because if they don't feel 'done' they can't be satisfied. Of course they also want some playtime, just logging in and be done isn't fun for anyone, but they want to be done after having performed preferably predictable tasks in roughly X amount of time. X will be different for each of them, and all will complain if 'their' X is too far from the X Blizzard put into the game. They'll complain about 'nothing to do' or about 'too many dailies'. You can satisfy some, but never all. These people, unlike the former group, will also never learn and adapt to the 'new' system.

Now I guess it is also a sign of the times that the system is open to meme attacks. 'You can get full mythic geared from just running LFR' requires just a second of thought and a modicum of intelligence to invalidate, but apparently that is asking too much in this day and age.

Which brings me to group 3 (yes, I lied about there being 2 groups, deal with it): the ass-hats. They demand strict stratification, a clear separation of the species, a ruthless meritocracy, 'ordnung muss sein'. They don't feel enjoyment from achieving something, their pleasure is derived from making others feel bad. They have a compulsive need for adoration, have fantasies about standing outside the AH in their full mythic attire and imagining each and everyone 'inspecting' them and be filled to the brim with envy and self loath. They want the scrubs to grovel in awe of their vast superiority. They hate even the tyniest breach of the stratification protocol, as that is a personal insult to them. How dare the game award a single 385 piece to that HC scum. She's not worthy of equipping that. It is my privilege. Blizzard is denying me the exclusive glory that should be divinely mine.

Unlike the first two groups, which I think were/are wrong but I an accept their reasoning, I couldn't give two shits about group 3. Sadly the word 'elitist' is so misused in WoW/gaming that it has lost all meaning. Group 3 is where it would have applied.

[Axaion]

6+ months seems a little low

I've yet to see any binding drop, and my entire guild never saw one in vanilla either (we got to 4hm..)

[Rotted]

I see threads
I heard guild mates complain
Over
And over

But I don’t understand why they do it. In classic loot had horrible drop chances, with some guilds going 6+ months without getting a right for their left or a left for their right.

At worse it hasn’t gotten better but it certainly isn’t worse.

Am I missing something or am I right to conclude that WoW, 14 years later, is still full of people whining about dice rolls in a Dungeons and Dragons-esque game?

To add what @chazus said,

The whole community has changed in its way of thinking as well. I'm guilty of this myself to be honest. But in (vanilla I assume) and TBC (personal exp); it took you a while to hit max level and if you stuck it out you had a pretty good idea about gearing. How hard it was, how long it might take. But it started in wrath and gained momentum as the expansions went on; gearing became easier, faster and other sources for it. I don't want to say welfare epics but we've all got used to having relatively free, easy to come by epics.

Now we're at an expansion where while the gear is easy enough to get, you do need to be targeting specific pieces and because of how much of a shit show gear is at the moment, it's longer and harder to do. Myself for example, my pre raid BIS azerite, I didn't see it drop in normal, heroic or mythic dungeons and still haven't. It's kind of the complete opposite regardless it's something that technically speaking has always been around (IE specific loot from a specific source)

[Deleted]

Loot became more available. There is so much of it people just expect to get bis soon. Have you heard a backlash about mythic0 dungeon drops? "I did 6 dungeons this week, not a single weapon!!! blizz cashgrab /unsub". Don't really want to compare to vanilla because it was so long ago and so shit 40 poeple raid, 2-3 drops.... TBC made it slightly better, PvP sets got introduced. 10 man raid. Badges. Same with wotlk, but easier. Now loot is so easy to come by it's ridiculous and people got used to it.

[RobertMugabe]

I see threads
I heard guild mates complain
Over
And over

But I don’t understand why they do it. In classic loot had horrible drop chances, with some guilds going 6+ months without getting a right for their left or a left for their right.

At worse it hasn’t gotten better but it certainly isn’t worse.

Am I missing something or am I right to conclude that WoW, 14 years later, is still full of people whining about dice rolls in a Dungeons and Dragons-esque game?

I think the main Point is that in Classic, when you finally got this Epic item from the raid, it was an upgrade. Nowadays, you can get a very high ilvl item and it can be still trash.

[Deleted]

In vanilla, the boss dropped 3-4 pieces you needed to distribute between 40. people. Considering no Shammy gear dropped when you were on Ally (or pally on horde).

In legion, like 5 items drops from Mythic boss and you need to distribute that shit between 20 people.

I think you can calculate the RNG chances of you getting the right items.

[Segus1992]

How long did it take in Vanilla to get all the bis gear? How about now?

Difference is how much of that BiS gear is needed. People did Naxx with many slots of ZG gear.

[Tradu]

People just knew jack about itemization back in vanilla, they just saw purple and were happy. Now an item that isn't BiS is "unusable", specs that aren't FotM are "unplayable".

The problem is players' entitlement, not RNG per se. Objectively, getting geared has never been easier than today.

Just generally gearing up, sure. Reaching "the end"? Not even close. And having that end point was actually very nice in the past, now the grind is effectively endless.

[Segus1992]

I think the main Point is that in Classic, when you finally got this Epic item from the raid, it was an upgrade. Nowadays, you can get a very high ilvl item and it can be still trash.

Eh no, not really the case in Vanilla. There were a LOT of trash items, like Warrior gear with health per second.

[Tradu]

Pretty much this. I loved killing stuff in MC and getting 2 shaman tier pieces being alliance... good times.

Why do people compare current WoW to Vanilla? We've had 12+ years of potential improvement since then, and for the first half of that period the loot/gearing system did improve. Now it's regressing and people defend it based on "Vanilla was even worse".

- - - Updated - - -

It hasn't, but for some reason people think they have to obtain a very specific piece of gear, and that it has to be titanforged with a socket before they're "done." So they grind it religiously until it's not fun anymore.

News flash: that .01% dps boost from 3 months of grinding the same boss is not going to make the difference between beating a boss and not.

Because reaching that point of "being done" was a fun goal to work towards in the past, and then Blizzard randomly decided to make it effectively impossible for no reason.

- - - Updated - - -

You can just close your eyes on titanforge and sockets and call it a day when you've got non-titanforged pieces all together and be happy that some of them got improved while you was doing your list. It's a fucking list after all.

Except I can't, because WF/TF/random sockets/tertiaries completely throws off that list. Not to mention stopping at just the base item means I'm going to be weaker going into the next tier, which in the past was essentially a complete gear reset because everybody who raided at a decent level got BiS before the next tier, meaning only new items made a difference.

- - - Updated - - -

Exactly, it's all about making reachable and sensible goals for your game

And we had those reachable and sensible goals for years. Then Blizzard added WF and later TF to fuck with those goals.

[Segus1992]

Because reaching that point of "being done" was a fun goal to work towards in the past, and then Blizzard randomly decided to make it effectively impossible for no reason.

It was definitely fun to be able to reach BiS, but to say it was changed for no reason is silly. Apart from being a huge reason to play more, it's also a way to effectively nerf raids over time, meaning casual players can progress more easily over time.

[Tradu]

So in practice you won't get BiS at all, so why even go for it? That's the point though, if you think like that, you have in practice no BiS list, because it would be impossible to get. Not impossible sorry, like 1 in a billion to get.

And yes, I am from that era myself, TBC raiding was for me the best thing in this game ever, and gearing was better then, because of the difficulty it was to get those items. Now we get tossed the gear after us even if we want it or not, and that's why we have the layers on RNG. I don't mind it personally, though it have been better times imo. I never got MoB from Illidari Council, or DW from Deathbringer Saurfang and I did that every week, but hey, RNG ftw

Which is the core of the problem. Having a BiS setup to go for added motivation to keep going, because each of those items you could tick as completed on your list felt important. No gear feels important now, because you might replace it with a worse statted but randomly +50 ilevel item the next day.

- - - Updated - - -

It was definitely fun to be able to reach BiS, but to say it was changed for no reason is silly. Apart from being a huge reason to play more, it's also a way to effectively nerf raids over time, meaning casual players can progress more easily over time.

It had the opposite effect on myself and a lot of my friends. In the past having that realistic goal of BiS to work towards added motivation to keep going. Now, where no item is special and everything is replaceable purely due to WF/TF/socket/tertiary RNG, it feels pointless, because you know it's impossible to ever be truly done, whereas in the past it was realistically possible to reach that point.

[Deleted]

a lot of people seem to have mentioned the loot. But theres also a lot more RNG in the game than there was in vanilla for just playing

Look at most classes and they have an RNG "proc", go on top of that you have RNG random stat procs from items, traits in azerite gear (and consider end of legion with all those weapon traits and concordance).

The difference between the top 10% of most DPS ranks is procs, if someone gets the "god pull" and has constant procs, perfect time with stat procs and good crit RNG they do significantly more damage than the guy that did 20 casts of a spell without the magic proc. Why do you think theres videos around of mages casting 30-40 ice bolt before getting a flurry proc...

[Pua]

Am I missing something or am I right to conclude that WoW, 14 years later, is still full of people whining about dice rolls in a Dungeons and Dragons-esque game?

It's wildly different now because players have effectively no control over how good their gear is.

No matter what drops and what you equip, you can always technically get something better thanks to the absurd titanforging process (up to a maximum, of course, but one practically nobody ever gets). Sure, during Classic it was RNG dependent depending on what you were aiming at; but due to the massively higher itemisation, the multiple options with which to grab something, and the far less clear 'BiS' items, players were much less likely to target a single item and keep hoping that it procs umpteen RNG buffs.

When push comes to shove, this is the game now - by virtue of design. When gear depth was gutted, there needed to be another means that kept the treadmill seeming meaningful to players. As a result, Diablo 3 systems got transplanted into World of Warcraft and the dopamine casino has been addicting people ever since.

Lots of rewards does not make a game rewarding.

Jeff Kaplan and his team knew that when Classic was made.

Hazzikostas and his team have absolutely no idea.

[Doffen]

Which is the core of the problem. Having a BiS setup to go for added motivation to keep going, because each of those items you could tick as completed on your list felt important. No gear feels important now, because you might replace it with a worse statted but randomly +50 ilevel item the next day.

Agree that it felt better to get those items back in the day, like TBC. In started to end in like midway WotLK for my part. Still fun to get gear of course, and in my guild we start to harass the people that are lucky and we think that's funny

[Tradu]

I think you're probably right about this. I've seen people writing about RNG inside of RNG like nesting Russian dolls but there's not that much difference between a 2% chance for a drop and nested RNG rolls that come out to 2%.

I think that perceptually one thing that bothers people is that so much stuff drops that's essentially useless. I don't know how the psychology plays out over fifty chances to get something that you only get something once very rarely or you commonly get lots of drops that you don't need. Personally I find the first frustrating but I find the latter to be infuriating.

The other thing to note is that there are more non-raid, non-dungeon things in the game that have RNG associated with them. That probably contributes something.

For those that want to argue, I may well be off but that's how I perceive the differences between then and now. It might be better to get nothing at all rather than getting stuff repeatedly that doesn't do anything for me.

Also: signing on fully to the post [MENTION=822376]chazus[MENTION] made at #2. Combining that post with mine a conclusion you can reach is that loot is much less deterministic.

Except the comparison people are using there is completely irrelevant. Comparing any expansion past maybe TBC or Wrath to Vanilla is a waste of everybody's time. We've had years of (potential) improvements since then. The only relevant comparison is to other, recent expansions. So comparing the titanforging world(Legion and BfA) to the expansions just before that(MoP and WoD), and the warforging world(Throne of Thunder onwards) to the pre-warforging world(Wrath, Cata, T14). And in terms of specific pieces of gear feeling important, that has gone down drastically, especially since titanforging.
It also doesn't help that, as you said, there's just so much loot everywhere, and most of it ends up being garbage. Take trinkets for example, in the past those were some of the most interesting pieces of loot you could get, and there were only a few relevant ones at a time, so they could make those more interesting. Now you look at your world map and see 5 different flavors of "passive stat with a stat proc".

[Cyanu]

I see threads
I heard guild mates complain
Over
And over

But I don’t understand why they do it. In classic loot had horrible drop chances, with some guilds going 6+ months without getting a right for their left or a left for their right.

At worse it hasn’t gotten better but it certainly isn’t worse.

Am I missing something or am I right to conclude that WoW, 14 years later, is still full of people whining about dice rolls in a Dungeons and Dragons-esque game?

happily!

in classic there was only one source of gear, with a single item for your spec, you either got it or you didn't (you mostly didn't since it was shared with 40 other people, but that was ok, after all you had nothing better to do than run again next week)

now there are multiple gear sources with lots of different items in the same slot to choose from, so if you get the 2nd or 3rd best in slot you can whine for not getting the 3rd, feelsbad