So, item levels are getting spiked for no reason. Again.

[kamuimac]

Except it haven't.

exept it has been since release of Dire Maul with first catch up gear in wow

[Raelbo]

Ok, so how many times does a new tier have to make the previous one obsolete, adding ways to fast catch up and and having gear that makes you substantially stronger than previous tier?

For as long as the game wishes to stay alive.

They repeat this mistake again and again.

It's not a mistake. The real mistake would be thinking they can stop doing it.

New tier is released, the previous one becomes a total waste of time.

And a good thing too. Last night we were doing a final run to get Curve for three of our guildies who missed out our previous kills. After downing G'huun, there were multiple cheers on Discord and a pretty much universal consensus that we're bloody glad to be done with this boss forever. Don't get me wrong, we did enjoy the tier. But we've now had enough of it and want to move onto something new.

Why cant it be like it was in TBC? Why cant all the tiers remain relevant through whole expansion? Why can it not be that the new raid has slightly (but still worth the time) better gear, making the minmaxers focus on this one, while the rest of the playerbase can decide for themselves?

Because it was a godawful, shitty, poorly designed system which was developed before the designers had the advantage of all those insights learned from running the game for many years.

The TBC model worked wonderfully...for the 1% of the playerbase who represented the cream of the crop. For the other 99% of us it sucked. And it nearly killed the game.

Believe it or not, no one enjoys spending an entire expansion trying to progress through the entry level raid because until they do so they can't progress to the next raid. And every time it looks like they're finally getting there, some better guild will poach your strongest players, setting you back months, meaning that you never end up getting anywhere.

Because for every guild who has lovely rose-tinted memories of the glorious road to BT and Sunwell, there are 10 guilds whose role it was to provide talented and well geared players to sustain the leaders. What kept those guilds going was the false belief that one day they too would see Kil'jaeden, but by the end of TBC, for many (including my original guild) all that was left was a sense of disillusionment.

It is important that the bulk of players get to actually see content and enjoy it at a level that is appropriate (ie fun) for them, while it is still current. While in theory the idea of progressing from raid to raid is great, in practice it relies on other people acting in a manner which simply fails to take into account basic human nature. Raiding, being an activity that relies on a group activity, is simply far too reliant on people not acting in their own self interests, to work in such a manner.

[Xath]

Welcome to World of WarCraft that has been like this for 15 years.

Uh no it hasn't this crap only started in legion before that the worst jumps were 5 ilvls and making sockets random which is still stupid.

- - - Updated - - -

99% of the people in this thread say you're wrong but you go in and say that :thinking:

99% of people in this thread apparently started playing in legion. Making the entirety of previous raiding irrelevant every patch was not a thing until legion.

[rohoz]

That's not the point they were getting at. In BC Kara was relevant to guilds that raided Kara. Guilds would progress in a more natural curve from Kara to ZA to SSC to BT and eventually Sunwell. This lasted the entire expansion, not just for guilds that started at launch and cleared everything patch-to-patch. There were guilds at every step of the way and you progressed to the top by starting at the bottom. Yes there was some catch up but it wasn't really enough to completely gear you for top-end raids and it wasn't able to be done completely solo. Nowadays you ding 120 and you're in top-tier ready gear within a week as a casual.

Not to mention the occasional geared player(s) that would help out back then, because, you know, servers had a community and some people were known for that. They'd either be bored or just feeling charitable and join up with lower tier guilds and help them out. It gave the people in the guild something to look forward to more than anything. "if we can manage to progress more, we can all be at that level too!"

so you do old content months behind? Just because you did shit content in obsolete gear doesn't mean that your gear wasn't shit and that the content wasn't obsolete.

Random people in mythic gear still do normal and lfr from time to time and carry raids.

- - - Updated - - -

Uh no it hasn't this crap only started in legion before that the worst jumps were 5 ilvls and making sockets random which is still stupid.

- - - Updated - - -



99% of people in this thread apparently started playing in legion. Making the entirety of previous raiding irrelevant every patch was not a thing until legion.

since tbc*

T4 gear was useless by the time you were able to kill leotheras.

Actually, since vanilla because you replaced all of your T1 in the next raid, and all of your T2 in aq

[Kurve1776]

so you do old content months behind? Just because you did shit content in obsolete gear doesn't mean that your gear wasn't shit and that the content wasn't obsolete.

Random people in mythic gear still do normal and lfr from time to time and carry raids.

So Normal is Obsolete because mythic exists in the same tier?

It might be a similar concept now but it wasn't "I want to be able to do a harder version of what I'm already doing" it's "I want to be able to do that awesome looking raid, but first I need to progress my character enough to get there."

[Xath]

The reasons are pretty obvious and make sense. A new raid is coming out, which means that current raid gear is now the entry level gear for the new raid, which in turn means that content like world quests and 5 mans, whose purpose is to help players equip themselves with entry level raid gear, needs higher level gear rewards.


I am not really sure exactly why you think this is so obviously problematic that you don't even have to explain your position?

Because this is a moronic idea that has no place in an rpg. You are supposed to progress through content not just instantly be walking into the latest raid.

- - - Updated - - -

Sure, if you pay separately for the raids. I don't want to pay a sub to finance content I no longer have the time to experience, thank you.

You aren't experiencing anything in lfr

[rohoz]

So Normal is Obsolete because mythic exists in the same tier?

pretty much yeah, dunno why anyone would do normal when heroic is a smidge more difficult.

It's low hanging fruit for the lowest common denominator. it's obsolete after the first month.

[Kurve1776]

pretty much yeah, dunno why anyone would do normal when heroic is a smidge more difficult.

It's low hanging fruit for the lowest common denominator. it's obsolete after the first month.

And you don't see a problem with that?

I'd rather work towards and entirely new raid vs. a harder version of the stuff I've been doing for ages.

[Xath]

Quite the populistic view here. Just for the fun of it. When did we have four difficulties first? I´d say Wrath. And how long do we have the actual system of 4 now? 3 Expansions stable would be my answer.

So where is ever increasing in this? And why the hell can people not understand that multiple difficulties is good for everybody because everybody can choose the difficulty for him/herself. Because not everybody is ready for mythic and there are people that are not even ready for heroic raiding because of multiple valid reasons. So why deny the the easy version of the raid? Just because we myhtic raiders are the only real guys? Bullshit.

Why is there no petition for the sudoku industry to only produce the hardest ones and not ones that can be solved while drunk by people that do the harder ones?

And as to your graph Blizz has stated multiple times why they have exponential growth in itemlevel. Which is each new item should mean something and you should feel the difference which would be much harder when you have linear growth.

And the 200 itemlevel with the first raid that someone mentioned are bullshit aswell. Much of that is expansion start growth. 10 character levels worth of that, dungeon span worth of that and then let´s say 340+ to 385 from the raid +10 for forging. Mere hyperbole on here.

We had 2 difficulties in wrath. 10 and 25 man were separate progression paths not difficulties. LFR didn't exist until the last patch of Cata and Flex didn't become a thing until Siege.

[Kurve1776]

We had 2 difficulties in wrath. 10 and 25 man were separate progression paths not difficulties. LFR didn't exist until the last patch of Cata and Flex didn't become a thing until Siege.

I disagree, there were noticeable difficulty differences between 10/25

Don't forget, for Naxx and Ulduar 10 was "Normal" and 25 was "Heroic" mode.

It was just expanded upon and ended up being something like: Normal (10 man), Normal+ (10 man Heroic), Heroic (25 man), Heroic+ (25 man Heroic)

[Xath]

This is good. It makes it easier for new and returning players to join in with the latest content and it makes progression have a noticeable power increase.

Or it would if not for the stupid item level scaling they've implemented but still.

The exponential ilvl increase is why we have shit like raiderio and curve is required because item level alone isn't enough to tell you if someone is competent it actually makes it much harder to get started raiding.

- - - Updated - - -

I disagree, there were noticeable difficulty differences between 10/25

Don't forget, for Naxx and Ulduar 10 was "Normal" and 25 was "Heroic" mode.

It was just expanded upon and ended up being something like: Normal (10 man), Normal+ (10 man Heroic), Heroic (25 man), Heroic+ (25 man Heroic)

They were separate progression path for most guilds.

[Themanintobuildafire]

We went +200 ilvl in just one raid tier. Blizzard made their ilvl/stat squish meaningless within a few months, it's shocking how they keep butchering the character progression by throwing endless gear/ilvl/difficulties into a blender.

How did we get +200? Mythic geared Ant w/ leggos was around 250-260 (titanforges/warforges)

First raid was kicking out 370 for heroic, 385 for mythic, so a bit over 100 ilvl. If you want to go with 210 as a base, then the +200 to put you at 410 is actually 2 tiers.

Your point is still valid, just the numbers are a bit off for tier 1.

[Xath]

That's odd, considering as the game became more and more casual, the subscriber count went lower and lower. Maybe that's just a coincidence, but we can't just pretend like the game becoming more casual didn't ruin many aspects of the MMO itself.

"Casuals keep the game afloat, so catering to them instead of creating a good game is irrelevant!" Someone might say. It's almost like if you call yourself a casual and then proceed to care about ilvl, you're not actual a casual, you just want to reap the rewards.

Nah having nothing to reach for and killing the final boss in tourism mode within weeks of the raid coming out is definitely good for sub counts what are you talking about?

[Hypasonic]

I mean if item levels didn't go up, we wouldn't be getting more powerful? Wheres the character progression in that?

[Kurve1776]

The exponential ilvl increase is why we have shit like raiderio and curve is required because item level alone isn't enough to tell you if someone is competent it actually makes it much harder to get started raiding.

- - - Updated - - -



They were separate progression path for most guilds.

I think you're referring to 10 man only vs "25 man only" guilds? Though there were outliers a majority of the 25 man guilds also ran 10 man until they were no longer able to gain anything from 10 man. Similar to mythic raiders going to Heroic to get more gear to help in mythic.

[rohoz]

And you don't see a problem with that?

I'd rather work towards and entirely new raid vs. a harder version of the stuff I've been doing for ages.

If you're referring to normal, noone looking for challenging content did normal past week 3 but whatever. You aint gonna get 2 different tiers of content at launch.

[Thagrynor]

I'm not putting any more money into this because, frankly, this design team just hasn't got a clue why its systems are broken, and why so many players are resolutely unhappy with it. With a single raid tier, the item level has been well over doubled from what the expansion starts with, and rather than keeping content relevant it just gets made laughably pointless with a shallow system that players want sheer luck from in order to gear past the spots of what they're actually doing.

Except that, in large part, it has doubled only because of the ilvl squish. It would have been a decent increase, yes, but not a doubling if not for dropping our ilvl by like, 700, going into BFA.

Additionally, there is good reason for having the ilvl increase across the board: Character progression.

If they didn't bother to increase it across the board, they get into a state like BC where you could never really catch up an alt without an entire raiding carrying you through the raid or through old content to the current raid.

The catch up mechanics of increasing ilvl in dungeons and stuff has been going on since at least WotLK, where the ICC dungeons gave loot better than most of the raids in WotLK.

The same thing happened in Cata with the 2 Troll dungeons. The problem with doing it that way is that those 2 or 3 dungeons become the only dungeons anyone runs and they get bored and burnt out.

In MoP, they didn't bother increasing at all and let the catch up be world content from Timeless. That left the dungeons feeling largely worthless after the second tier of content.

In Legion they made it so that the ilvl across the board increased. This kept ALL dungeons relevant and gave a larger pool of things to run throughout the expansion. This is a far better way to handle this than to let content last about half a tier and then become worthless.

And the reason for all this relates back to character progression. If the ilvl and power of the gear never increased (or increased in too small a block), people would get to BIS gear on, say, the first tier and not have a reason to play in future tiers aside from seeing the content and maybe replacing a couple pieces with better itemized. The only way to prevent that is to end up like we did in WoD where the first tier of gear was HORRIBLY itemized with itemization getting better as the expansion went on, so you have shit stats until the second or third tier. That is certainly not fun. Nor is getting to be as powerful as you will be for the expansion after the first tier. Without the power progression, there is little reason for many people to continue playing.

It does suck knowing that the M10 that got me <insert piece of gear here> will now drop 15-30 ilvl higher if I do in next tier so I am basically just grinding the same content for the same gear at a higher ilvl. But, to be honest, it would be FAR worse if it didn't increase because either you would have to continue to run old content to get your ilvl up to run the new content (the same basic problem that was alleviated with the character boost to help new players) or you would have to be a detriment to your raid until they could funnel you enough gear to get caught up and actually pull your weight, which if it was progression content, wouldn't necessarily be doable.

[rohoz]

How did we get +200? Mythic geared Ant w/ leggos was around 250-260 (titanforges/warforges)

First raid was kicking out 370 for heroic, 385 for mythic, so a bit over 100 ilvl. If you want to go with 210 as a base, then the +200 to put you at 410 is actually 2 tiers.

Your point is still valid, just the numbers are a bit off for tier 1.

people are disingenuous with those statements anyway, if you're being fair about it, 340 is where the pre-raid gear puts you at. so t1 in bfa would be 340-395.

[lappee]

Tiers didn't remain relevant the entire expansion, ever.
Just because you were in a bad guild in bad gear doesn't mean your stuff was relevant.
T4 was 100% useless past T5 progression. Same with T5.

If people are doing them to progress then they're relevant. Pretty much all raids were relevant in TBC throughout the expansion because you didn't have instant catch-ups on alts.

You simply weren't farming one raid on multiple difficulties but multiple raids on one, it was all around a better system that is ruined by players with "I paid money thus I deserve to get everything handed to me" attitude.

[Zenfoldor]

There are plenty of things wrong with BFA imo but having the ilvl go up too much between raid tiers is not one of them imo.