Stop pulling stuff from out of thin air. In old expansions there was no such thing as titanforging or warforging. There was a thing called best in slot. And no better gear to get than that.
I think the best analogy for the case of titanforging is this thing I heard on asmongold's stream last night:
Imagine you and another student are writing a test. On that test, you are a bit more knowledgeable and you get a B, while the other student didn't study hard enough and got a D. But when you got your results back, his test results suddenly titanforged into an A. So while you did your studying and put in the effort to get a good grade, this casual was just chilling and got a reward he didn't deserve. Don't you look stupid now?
Now, of course casuals love this system. This is catered to people like you.
But for people that put in the work, that have scheduled raids with guilds, that do their m+ runs to get the best possible gear in order to do good on the mythic raids, this system does not reward the hard work put in.
Why do 14 hours a week mythic raids when you can easily do a 2-hour heroic run and get equally strong gear?
So basically, effort != better rewards. But luck does determine it. Which is a shitty system.
Yeah and then the next patch releases. So do you also complain about adding new raids with new gear?
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Because doing 14 hours a week mythic raids means you will have better gear than someone who does a 2-hour heroic run.
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The more effort you put in, the more rewards you gonna get. Luck has always been a factor. In the past more so than ever. But now we have things like bad luck protection which make it even more likely that loot will drop when you get unlucky for too long.
This idea that effort isn't rewarded anymore and that luck determines it all now is absolutely nonsensical. The players that put in more time and more effort are the ones with the better gear.
You're wrong about the effort part. Effort will lead to better rewards, on average. Yes there'll be instances where someone gets a titanforge 395 item without putting in as much effort, but if you're playing more, if you're putting in more effort, if you're playing more difficult content, you will get better gear, again on average. Whenever people complain about titanforging, they always use this extreme example. Instead of thinking about the average case.
Where I find Asmongold to be off is, it's not the kid next to you, taking the same test. It's some random kid who you didn't know existed except that you heard over the internet that he got a undeserved grade. Oh, and this kid won't be at your school, or in your circle of friends. But you're angry because this kid exists. You call them casuals, which is fine. But these are not people you'll be playing with.
I don't like titanforging overall. I don't think gear should ever be better than gear that drops off the highest difficulty content. We should have rewards for people who put in more effort, something that's un-achievable by those who don't do that content. I think the potential upgrade in ilvl is too much. I wouldn't care that much if it had a lower cap, maybe if you've done normal uldir, you can titanforge up to 355, heroic or enough m+ it can go up to 370, but 370 is the absolute cap.
I'll ask everyone this, has there ever been a time where an item titanforged for you, something that's an upgrade, and you were angry at the titanforging. I don't like it but damn it when something titanforges for me, I'm a bit excited.
Last edited by tclphz; 2018-10-17 at 10:01 AM.
You are everything, I never knew, I always wanted.
Because it, by design, rewards you more than the content you did warrants. It keeps content relevant that shouldn't be.
Well, some people were pretty content with just having the max ilvl gear and correct trinkets, which was pretty much bis and wasn't that difficult to obtain. Getting full BIS (ie. items with proper secondary stats) was more difficult, but still achievable. I've had it couple of times myself. It was really nice feeling. But honestly, even if getting the actual BIS was difficult, at least it gave you a goal to work towards, a white light at the end of the tunnel of gear grind and your character's progression.
Except titanforging incentivizes doing easier content by allowing the loot to be higher ilevel than it has any right to be.
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This is the big thing. It gave you a realistic goal to work towards. It made each item along the path to get there feel more special. Now we get showered in garbage gear and have to filter through it to find the few useful pieces(which funnily enough was also one of the problems Diablo 3 had initially)
The goal being realistically achievable also added motivation to keep going. If I knew I'd get BiS if I clear the raid each week and do 21 +10s(so 3 a day) a week for 3 months, I'd be much more likely to actually do that. Compare that to now, where I could fill every free hour I have with M+(which might be more or less than the 21/week) and still not get anywhere close to BiS, so I just don't bother at all outside of weekly chests, pretty much. Knowing the goal is achievable is incredibly powerful in terms of making people keep going.
It's what kept me going when working towards getting every legendary for every class in Legion during late ToS/Antorus. I knew I'd get there, I had a rough idea of when I'd be done long before I was actually done. Why? Because once I had a legendary, that was it. I could check it off my list.
Last edited by Tradu; 2018-10-17 at 10:11 AM.
The point is treat each tier like a season, without a hard and fast BiS for that season many dont feel satisfied working hard and slowly EARNING your BiS. People feel UNSATISFIED with your chest just RNG'ing a BiS. It's also a mental headfuck to people who aren't lucky when you saw a great piece of gear on a character back in the day you IMMEDIATELY thought DAAYYMMM he's done x or y thats sick! That means he MUST have done x content hes good at game etc.
Where as now you can see someone with sick gear and go oh hey....he got lucky out of his chest....wonderful. Mentally you feel not inspired AT ALL seeing sick gear on other players, because RNG. Where as you'd feel INSPIRED back in the day because x item drops from y content and that is badass.
Because people don't want those whom they deem inferior to have good stuff.
Did you lately try to join a pug uldir nhc? or recently applied to a gild for a raid slot?
And you were declined because you don't wave 360 ilvl?
That's why titanforging sucks. Everyone can get super high gear with little to no effort based on rng. This leads to a playerbase that is "overgeared" in generall.
Nowadays everybody wants a smooth run without any struggle. And ilvl is the only indicator for skill that is quickly available to compare. When every "idiot" can get super high ilvl people start to raise the restrictions on whom to pic based on a fucking huge ilvl.
So actually the idea was "give ppl rng better loot so the can compete on higher skill levels without having to increase thier skill to then maybe improve the gameplay and go further on".
Instead we got "raid drops 355? you better already have 360 to apply to my group".
It simply makes gearing feel like accomplishing nothing. You go and run 5 m+5 and are stuck at ilvl 350 because you dont get anything. and over there is jimmy who got super luck on the rng gods with his 2 +3 runs. His mates didn't need the gear so he sits at 360 or something. Jimmy can go and do uldir nhc. Jimmy can also apply to any super casual guild and is more likely to get a slot than you.
See why titanforge sucks?You can spend as much time in the game as you want. You can improve as much as you want. The community dictates what you can play and what not. And that is based on your luck of rng not your skill or the effort you put into it.
I would say it has also to do with a change of mind of the community. Most people playing this game sticked for it for..damn more then a decade? They are getting old right now. Time has to be spend for the job...the relationship, kids, friends, other hobbys, sports...and whatever other activities you can think of. Time has become more meaningful for a great part of the community (assumption of me).
The grind has always been somewhat there...there where always some better items to get, at least for the most of us. But when i went to school or college i didn't mind the time i spent playing because i had plenty of it. 4 hours a day? no problem at all. Now its more like getting 4 hours of gametime a week is a great accomplishment.
If you value this as true, it's absolutely frustrating working your ass of in order to do higher m+ or raids just to be told "sorry your ilvl sucks pls do not consider reappling for my guild/grp/whatever". When on the other side jimmy got super lucky with his tf and is not bound to m+5 or lower. I mean it doesn't matter that i have 14 years of game experience and know damn well wtf i am doing there right? Who wants a player that can switch classes/speccs on the fly anyways?
TF creates this gear inflation where you're excpected to have unbelievable high ilvl to do anything. And this is why it sucks. Every rnd that has alot of time to spend in the game makes it harder for anybody else to join groups ecause TF-> gear inflation -> uldir nhc pls have at least 360.
Last edited by swatsonqt; 2018-10-17 at 10:30 AM.
The problem I have with the titanforging system is that they took away valor point upgrades and valor gear for it replacing those systems with bonus rolls and titan forging *non RNG system that allowed played to choose how they wanted to improve themselves turned into a completely RNG system with little player choice (choosing what bosses to use bonus rolls on)*
Because chasing gear is one thing, having free upgrades given to you because of RNG is quite another.
It's especially more in your face when its people you know who get a slice of luck.
For example last week me and some friends ran our keys to +10, so we built them up and worked upon them until we got there.
Now once we had completed a few +10 just before reset night we let another friend who doesnt play that much do a +10 with us despite knowing it was going to be a more painful experience just so he can get a decent reward in weekly chest.
And what happened? Well 4 of us got marginal / no upgrades from our weekly, the one we helped out pulled a 395 out. So when you boil it down to how much work everyone else put in and someone comes along puts a minimal amount of effort in (in effect got boosted) and pulls a 395 out it makes you pretty sour. Not at the player, but at this ridiculous system.
Here is my problem with titanforging in the current context of main stat dominance. If a piece is a higher iLVL it has more mainstat and thus is usually an upgrade in terms of output. The problem arises when certain classes require haste to actually play fluidly without severe downtime. Given the secondary stat nerf getting haste pieces is vital. If a piece with garbage stats titanforges I am compelled to equip it and thus lose haste. Now, short of a new patch/gear reset or pushing much higher than I usually do, that slot is dead and I can't get haste in that slot again until a piece with better stats forges to an equal or higher level which is rare. It feels awful when I finally reach the haste % where my class is fun and then I get a "lucky" forge and my class plays far worse again until the slot machine graces me with a better forge. Every time I move up to a harder M+ level or raid tier I lose a vast proportion of my gear and my class plays similarly to how it did in M0 gear at launch. After a point I just stopped pushing higher because if my class isn't fun i am not going to find the content fun even if it is more challenging. In the past where secondaries were stronger it wasn't much of an issue, you could (by en large) hit a haste brake point and preserve it but now it is and I hate it. Reforging would really help in this scenario.
Last edited by mmocd56b1573ce; 2018-10-17 at 10:40 AM.
Try playing Dark Souls board game, no matter how smart you are or how much foresight you have, your skill has no influence over the game because everything is decided by rolling the dice. Which is the exact opposite of how the actual game is where your skill and foresight gives you huge advantage. Being able to forge our own path in a deterministic way always outweights praying to RNGJesus for lucky roll because you weren't smart enough to plan in advance so now you need help from RNG to fix your problem of being lazy and a casual.
Lockouts exist. You can't do mythic raids over and over. You also need to progress in mythic first, which makes it extremely inefficient in terms of loot per time spent.
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Titanforging makes that goal impossible to reach, which is awful for motivation.