We don't have a reward structure, we have reward chaos

[Echocho]

Imagine the effort levels of the game going from 1 to 10, 1 being very easy content like world quests for example and 10 being very difficult content like mythic raiding.

Each of these effort levels should ideally give you rewards proportionate to the effort and the difficulty of that content.

The problem is that we have a lot of systems that don't obey these rules. A effort level 3 activity can award gear that matches the gear from a effort level 8 activity.

Even mythic+ dungeons are an example of this with the weekly cache. Are m10 dungeons difficult? Yes they are, are they as difficult as a mythic raid boss that they deserve to give the same quality loot? I would say no.

Warfronts and the timewalking dungeons are good examples of this too. You do content that is very easy, especially in the case of Warfronts that Ion himself said was on par with LFR. Both these have weekly quests that award loot much higher than the effort required to complete them.

The effort has to match the reward, always.

I don't like how I (as in me, not other players, me!) have access to heroic raid quality gear on a regular basis. I couldn't care less about what other players have but for me I'm finding it difficult to see a reason to do normal mode raiding or even heroic raiding, gear wise there's not going to be a difference. This is a MMORPG after all and it should have long term character progression which it doesn't have in its current state, it has short term character progression within any given patch and then everything is completely scrapped.

[Roxxy]

Yes Op your post makes complete sense, I have no idea how the devs didn't forsee that titanforging would completely devalue the reward structure.

People say 'oh but it's so rare it doesn't make an impact', but wait a second, titanforging happens on all gear, even activities you can spam. People actively 'fish' for titanforges. So even that way skill no longer means reward but it's more about time spent 'fishing' for titanforges and luck. So anyone that can dedicate their life to spamming content for titanforges gets very much ahead (and burnt out) and other people that want to be competitive get burnt out trying to stay competitive.

Not to mention that people think, why bother doing hard content when I can just spam lower content for titanforges. The reward driven people are perversely encouraged to do lower difficulty content to progress. Not to mention how disheartening it is to get base item level now when you see others get titanforges for the same content or feel annoyed when you get a base item level because it hasn't titanforged or got a socket.

I really don't think the dev's thought it through very much. Was a dopamine hit worth all the negatives? It's even debatable if people who are attracted to mmorpgs get a dopamine hit from casino loot as these are the people drawn to games with traditionally rigid progress structures. They aren't really the gambling type.

[Lei]

A lot of issues originate from WQs. I imagine the thought process like this, but not this fast, maybe when they bumped into a problem with them...

- Okay so let's reinvent the wheel with wqs. Fast in and out standalone activities. One at one place over all zones.
wqs are a go.
- What about factions?
- No need them, just do wqs they'll give rep. (compromise/sacrifice)
some time goes by--
- What is the reward then? (With factions, you didn't get too much reward initially, you got your big rewards at the end (exalted unlocks))
- Well then we can throw shitty items at them all day everyday and they hope it will TF. (compromise/sacrifice)

It seems like every new "invention" has at least 2 expac shelf life. Mission tables were a thing in wod and legion, not so much in BfA as for now. WQs ditto.

tldr: Mom fucked up the dinner with her new recipe, but we have to eat it because we're poor to throw it out.

[Devilyaki]

I like it.

[chiddie]

A lot of issues originate from WQs. I imagine the thought process like this, but not this fast, maybe when they bumped into a problem with them...

- Okay so let's reinvent the wheel with wqs. Fast in and out standalone activities. One at one place over all zones.
wqs are a go.
- What about factions?
- No need them, just do wqs they'll give rep. (compromise/sacrifice)
some time goes by--
- What is the reward then? (With factions, you didn't get too much reward initially, you got your big rewards at the end (exalted unlocks))
- Well then we can throw shitty items at them all day everyday and they hope it will TF. (compromise/sacrifice)

It seems like every new "invention" has at least 2 expac shelf life. Mission tables were a thing in wod and legion, not so much in BfA as for now. WQs ditto.

tldr: Mom fucked up the dinner with her new recipe, but we have to eat it because we're poor to throw it out.

Maybe I’m playing a different version of the game, I missed the “big rewards upon reaching exalted” part.

[Louz]

Imagine the effort levels of the game going from 1 to 10, 1 being very easy content like world quests for example and 10 being very difficult content like mythic raiding.

Each of these effort levels should ideally give you rewards proportionate to the effort and the difficulty of that content.

The problem is that we have a lot of systems that don't obey these rules. A effort level 3 activity can award gear that matches the gear from a effort level 8 activity.

Even mythic+ dungeons are an example of this with the weekly cache. Are m10 dungeons difficult? Yes they are, are they as difficult as a mythic raid boss that they deserve to give the same quality loot? I would say no.

Warfronts and the timewalking dungeons are good examples of this too. You do content that is very easy, especially in the case of Warfronts that Ion himself said was on par with LFR. Both these have weekly quests that award loot much higher than the effort required to complete them.

The effort has to match the reward, always.

In some other thread, you said it took you months of Uldir raiding to get 375 ilvl.

Therefore I assume you're not from the cutting edge Mythic raiding crowd, nor the M+10+ because you would be way over that by now.

So with that, it seems you don't quite know how the rewards work.

The thing is (and a lot of other people arguing about ilvl got it wrong too) that M+ rewards end where mythic raid rewards start. And that is one weekly item that comes from the cache - those items are on par with mythic raid. Again, one random item per week. The drops you can farm are on par with Heroic raids. Heroic raids, that are on par with what used to be called Normal before WoD. Also you need to do a +10 to actually have loot on par with Heroic from the dungeon chest and Mythic from the once-a-week chest.

So if you do mythic raids, on regular basis, you end up with much higher ilvl than those who simply don't. Again, thanks to Titanforging - because what you and your likes seem to be grasping at is that somehow basic mythi raid ilvl is where the rewards end. No, they don't, they TF just the way any other item can.

On the account of Warfronts - it's one guaranteed item per little under two weeks (one WF cycle), and a chance on another one from the WF world boss. Again, random drops, can be duplicates or just shit. Best used on fresh alts to get them going if you want to do any relevant stuff.

People talk about WQ rewards as if those +40 ilvl upgrade were a common occurrence, almost guaranteed. It's not. In fact, you can consider yourself very lucky if you get a proc like that.

Tl;dr: If you actually raid or do whatever you consider your peak performance, you have no right to worry or complain about people who do lower difficulty content than you do, because they will never reach your ilvl.

[Accendor]

Even mythic+ dungeons are an example of this with the weekly cache. Are m10 dungeons difficult? Yes they are, are they as difficult as a mythic raid boss that they deserve to give the same quality loot? I would say no.

Warfronts and the timewalking dungeons are good examples of this too. You do content that is very easy, especially in the case of Warfronts that Ion himself said was on par with LFR. Both these have weekly quests that award loot much higher than the effort required to complete them.

The effort has to match the reward, always.

I mean I generally agree with that, but it brings another problem: As soon as you are a mythic raider, every other content in the game is irrelevant for you. You log only on for raids and thats it. That is not a good design and it is bad for your mythic raiders. They need to have something to do outside of raids.

Because of that I think the reward structure for m10 is fine. Everything outside of it however (with warfronts and incursions being the worst offenders) rewards waaaay more than it actually should.

[Lei]

Maybe I’m playing a different version of the game, I missed the “big rewards upon reaching exalted” part.

I meant before wqs, well I should say before WoD as well. When you reached exalted with a faction it gave you pretty good ilevel gear rewards.

[Echocho]

In some other thread, you said it took you months of Uldir raiding to get 375 ilvl.

Yes but we cleared it in 3 resets or something. We're not a guild that has the manpower to do mythic raiding though and even if we did I don't think most of our members would be keen to progress through the same raid a third time. I cleared that raid every week since then and ended up at 375 iLvl before the new patch came in and invalidated all my progress.

I mean I generally agree with that, but it brings another problem: As soon as you are a mythic raider, every other content in the game is irrelevant for you. You log only on for raids and thats it. That is not a good design and it is bad for your mythic raiders. They need to have something to do outside of raids.

Do they though? I don't think we need to design the game around 1% of the playerbase, I think it's more important that the rest of us have a satisfying experience.

[Gaidax]

Imagine the effort levels of the game going from 1 to 10, 1 being very easy content like world quests for example and 10 being very difficult content like mythic raiding.

Each of these effort levels should ideally give you rewards proportionate to the effort and the difficulty of that content.

The problem is that we have a lot of systems that don't obey these rules. A effort level 3 activity can award gear that matches the gear from a effort level 8 activity.

Even mythic+ dungeons are an example of this with the weekly cache. Are m10 dungeons difficult? Yes they are, are they as difficult as a mythic raid boss that they deserve to give the same quality loot? I would say no.

Warfronts and the timewalking dungeons are good examples of this too. You do content that is very easy, especially in the case of Warfronts that Ion himself said was on par with LFR. Both these have weekly quests that award loot much higher than the effort required to complete them.

The effort has to match the reward, always.

See, as a genuine Mythic raider, I think your post is a bunch of baloney.

Why?

Because while mundane activities can provide exceptional items, chances of this are so low that it does not matter any. Your ilvl 375 main is a good example of that. Tell me if things are so easy to acquire why you could not match my ilvl 387 in Uldir after months of Uldir? I mean, go grind some WQs and get your titanforges, right? It's that easy, no?

Reality is Mythic raiders like me will always have a clear edge gear-wise AND efficiency-wise. We clear mythic raids for years strictly 2 days a week, 3 hour raids and for these years the same thing remained true - I get geared to the teeth second month raid is out and it takes a whole 6 months cycle for non-mythic raiders to match that even if they manage to, which you, OP could not.

So in my view rewards system worked spot on, because I was significantly better geared as mythic raider than you heroic raider at every point of Uldir.

- - - Updated - - -

Now to forsee your response - you may be saying - OK, but what about Heroic raiders, why Warfronts and M+ give equal ilvl gear? Answer is because Heroic raiding is a shit casual content, for example my guild cleared Heroic BoD in literally 4 hours the moment it was out. It's a little effort content that's about on level of M+10 from my standpoint, so rewards accordingly. As for Warfronts specifically, you get one random heroic ilvl gear piece on like 3 weeks cycle, that's nothing.

You will have to live with the fact that Heroic raiding is basically an upper level of casual content and like every other casual content it rewards similar gear. That's it.

[Alphatorg]

As someone on top of the food chain I don't see a big problem with the current reward structure. Most of what OP is saying is exaggerated anyway. Warfronts and weekly chest aren't grindable and they give you a random items, which can even be a duplicate. TF happens so rarely that it only affects a few slots at best. Obviously they get you close to mythic ilvl eventually, but in the meantime you have a very clear ilvl advantage as a mythic raider (or heroic raider over the nhc/lfr crowd). The point of the system is not necessarily how far you get in terms of ilvl, but how quickly and efficiently you get there.


The problem imho is that OPs attitude is pretty brainless. Why are you ruled by ilvl? You do raids because you enjoy the content and your group. If you think heroic is too easy for you then you look for a mythic raid. If you don't enjoy raiding but do it anyway, because of some meaningless numbers on your character screen then you must be pretty stupid?!

[Lei]

You will have to live with the fact that Heroic raiding is basically an upper level of casual content and like every other casual content it rewards similar gear. That's it.

I'm not disagreeing but then what are normal only raiders? What are lfr goers (not calling them raiders intentionally)? What are .. freaking pet battlers who sometimes push themselves to get some relevant gear? Or is it the same category? A category noone cares about?
You say the reward structure from a high end point is OK. But then what is it for anyone else? And by reward I don't just mean gear.

[Alphatorg]

I'm not disagreeing but then what are normal only raiders? What are lfr goers (not calling them raiders intentionally)? What are .. freaking pet battlers who sometimes push themselves to get some relevant gear? Or is it the same category? A category noone cares about?
You say the reward structure from a high end point is OK. But then what is it for anyone else? And by reward I don't just mean gear.

Is there not a significant difference in gear progression of hc raiders and those below?
What constitutes relevant gear for LFR and NHC players whose content of choice is tuned towards facerolling it on the lowest of ilvls? Maybe people who progress on that level need the crutch of "welfare epics" the most?

[slime]

I mean I generally agree with that, but it brings another problem: As soon as you are a mythic raider, every other content in the game is irrelevant for you. You log only on for raids and thats it. That is not a good design and it is bad for your mythic raiders. They need to have something to do outside of raids.

Because of that I think the reward structure for m10 is fine. Everything outside of it however (with warfronts and incursions being the worst offenders) rewards waaaay more than it actually should.

Gotta play the percentages. How many "mythic" raiders are there? And how many everyone elses are there?

[Gaidax]

I'm not disagreeing but then what are normal only raiders? What are lfr goers (not calling them raiders intentionally)? What are .. freaking pet battlers who sometimes push themselves to get some relevant gear? Or is it the same category? A category noone cares about?
You say the reward structure from a high end point is OK. But then what is it for anyone else? And by reward I don't just mean gear.

They are common casual folk and that's fine. This is challenge tier at which most of WoW population is and I think game gives them both plenty of ways to play it and rewards them nicely for it, as it should be.

Heroic all in all is pretty much what "Normal" used to be and that is pretty casual, but at least they have to sort of deal with reasonable challenge for that challenge tier - it needs some sort of coordination and structure at least in the beginning of the raid tier. But let's not exaggerate there, challenge is not huge and it is all in all casual content, although of a higher grade at that.

Normal and LFR on the other hand are truly 100% casual on and off folk entertainment, the point here is to simply giving the ability to scrape raids on surface without any commitment or constraints and get rewarded reasonably as well to feel like you are doing something that progresses your character.

I think this is a fine setup.

[Alphatorg]

Gotta play the percentages. How many "mythic" raiders are there? And how many everyone elses are there?

They are already doing that? I think it's pretty obvious that the design team when in doubt designed for casual players over the wishes of mythic raiders in recent years.

Examples are:
-island expeditions
-warfronts
-warmode
-world quests
-legiondaries
-AP grinds
-titanforge

each of those a major design decision and each designed to please casual players.

[Ztranger]

It's a good thing that there are multiple ways to get gear. And I like TF a lot, since I would run out of content that could give gear upgrades really quick without it.

[Gaidax]

They are already doing that? I think it's pretty obvious that the design team when in doubt designed for casual players over the wishes of mythic raiders.

Examples are:
-island expeditions
-warfronts
-warmode
-world Quests
-legiondaries
-AP grinds

See, as a bona fide Mythic raider, I don't see how existence of above somehow detracts from my enjoyment of Mythic raids. I still get my teeth grinding top end raiding content and I still get all the same accolades for it I got for years.

Why should I care there are bloody IEs and Warfronts pray tell? I don't even do IEs, because it's not my cup of tea, guess what pet battles either. WoW is big enough to cater to both casuals and hardcore, don't see how existence of one hurts the other.


Side note - my neck is almost level 40 now. What do I do? Log in daily, do 3-4 WQs (the ones where you kill one "elite" and get AP) and fiddle with app... that is "grind" to you? Because I do that shit in 15 minutes flat give or take 5 minutes.

People really need to chill their edginess and hyperbole - TF existing does not mean everyone gets rain of mythic items constantly for doing casual stuff and AP existing does not mean you have to slave away like mad to keep yourself up and ready.

[Philomene]

Yes Op your post makes complete sense, I have no idea how the devs didn't forsee that titanforging would completely devalue the reward structure.

People say 'oh but it's so rare it doesn't make an impact', but wait a second, titanforging happens on all gear, even activities you can spam. People actively 'fish' for titanforges. So even that way skill no longer means reward but it's more about time spent 'fishing' for titanforges and luck. So anyone that can dedicate their life to spamming content for titanforges gets very much ahead (and burnt out) and other people that want to be competitive get burnt out trying to stay competitive.

Not to mention that people think, why bother doing hard content when I can just spam lower content for titanforges. The reward driven people are perversely encouraged to do lower difficulty content to progress. Not to mention how disheartening it is to get base item level now when you see others get titanforges for the same content or feel annoyed when you get a base item level because it hasn't titanforged or got a socket.

I really don't think the dev's thought it through very much. Was a dopamine hit worth all the negatives? It's even debatable if people who are attracted to mmorpgs get a dopamine hit from casino loot as these are the people drawn to games with traditionally rigid progress structures. They aren't really the gambling type.

Nice post - but no offense, you are delusional. They foresaw all of this. That's exactly the point of the current casino slot machine reward system.

All of this + the content patch released a month and a week before the actual raid, the Allied Races being postponed and Blizzard communication being dodgy as hell about it, is meant by Blizzard. It is being done like this on purpose.

Of course, like they've been doing for at least 10 years, they'll apologize in a blue post while preparing the new expansion : "The team agree that blah-blah-blah has gone out of control and has designed blah-blah-blah in order to fix that issue in <New Expac>". And they will willingly and on purpose introduce another system full of crap, fixing it slowly through patches.

[Gaidax]

Of course, like they've been doing for at least 10 years, they'll apologize in a blue post while preparing the new expansion : "The team agree that blah-blah-blah has gone out of control and has designed blah-blah-blah in order to fix that issue in <New Expac>". And they will willingly and on purpose introduce another system full of crap, fixing it slowly through patches.

I think this is a very cynical point of view. Is it so hard to accept that not every new system is a smash hit?

Over the years WoW introduced many many new systems and more often than not most of them were met with open hostility, but guess what - quite many of those ended up genuinely improving over time to the point where it became no-brainer and a welcome addition.

I think the healthier way to look at it would be - Blizzard wants to give something new every new expansion and many new ideas sound much better on the paper than they turn out once committed to. That's reasonable really - I'd rather have them try and fail than do nothing and stagnate.