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

[msdos]

People were already arguing with me in the beginning of BFA because I was saying I basically did nothing and geared up to 360 the first 2 weeks and they were saying I was exaggerating. Now we have this thread. Telling..

[Elias01]

I think we talked about this plenty. Lower difficulty grade players eventually get close to higher ilvl, but this eventually takes a long time or a lot and lot of grind.

New Heroic raid ilvl is 400, people who clear heroic weekly will get that ilvl fast, your random Billy doing WQs won't get that ilvl for months, because all he has is once a 3 weeks welfare WF and super occasional TF.

Alternative way to get ilvl 400 is to grind M+10 forever, which all in all takes a whole load more time and effort than heroic raid where first 3 bosses are throwaway loot and 3 next bosses are not a pinnacle of difficulty either.

Then of course in like 5 months from now when tier is long dead, Blizz will open gear floodgates, but at that moment - you have new raid imminent and wheel spins again.

Not sure why this grinds your gears so much.

I am sorry? Months? I geared upto 376 itemlvl by not doing single mythic 0 or + and without single step into raids in 7 days playtime. So dont **** tell us it takes us months of grind becouse it doesnt. I would love to see how much time heroic/mythic raider spend playing game in order to get 376 so we can compare time investment vs reward.

[Echocho]

I am sorry? Months? I geared upto 376 itemlvl by not doing single mythic 0 or + and without single step into raids in 7 days playtime. So dont **** tell us it takes us months of grind becouse it doesnt. I would love to see how much time heroic/mythic raider spend playing game in order to get 376 so we can compare time investment vs reward.

It took me 14 resets of Uldir to get to that iLvl. Granted the last three bosses didn't fall in the first reset but I don't think that really matters.

[Elias01]

If you are only playing to increase your ilvl, and not because you enjoy the activities you are doing, then maybe you just do not like the game and should play something different? I thought that spending your time in a manner you enjoy is the reward system from a video game.

By your logic Blizzard can remove gear from the game and give everyone stat templates for wow content. Not like we play rpg game right? Where main point of this game is character progression. People always cared about gear. Now not much becouse gear have no value. But you are delusional if you think people doing raids and dungeons for pure fun. No. Getting gear and progress you charachter is what is fun part in rpg game.

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It took me 14 resets of Uldir to get to that iLvl. Granted the last three bosses didn't fall in the first reset but I don't think that really matters.

Thata quite time investment comapred to me afking in non instanced content.

[Unholyground]

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.

Titanforging would have worked if it was built in a more caring way. The best idea I saw was if it added tertiary effects that did not effect the overall item level but were more utility based, so it would be nice when it happened but would not break the reward structure by increasing stats. You would take the following stats and add them as a bonus that is more for survivability rather than pure throughput (though it may increase some things ever so slightly).

Leech
Speed
Avoidance
Indestructible

This way you still get those stats but only from titanforging and warforging without an increase to item level.

[Echocho]

Titanforging would have worked if it was built in a more caring way. The best idea I saw was if it added tertiary effects that did not effect the overall item level but were more utility based, so it would be nice when it happened but would not break the reward structure by increasing stats. You would take the following stats and add them as a bonus that is more for survivability rather than pure throughput (though it may increase some things ever so slightly).

Leech
Speed
Avoidance
Indestructible

This way you still get those stats but only from titanforging and warforging without an increase to item level.

I don't even think titanforging is the worst offender here since it's not all that common. Getting heroic raid quality loot from doing a warfront of LFR difficulty is a much worse offender for example.

For me it devalues the entire reward system when you can get high effort level rewards from doing low effort level content.

[Unholyground]

I don't even think titanforging is the worst offender here since it's not all that common. Getting heroic raid quality loot from doing a warfront of LFR difficulty is a much worse offender for example.

For me it devalues the entire reward system when you can get high effort level rewards from doing low effort level content.

Well in PvP you could always do this even as far back as Wrath even if a trade off was resilience on said gear, I remember losing BG's constantly and still being able to get my welfare epics. The real issue is too many difficulties and gear types in general.

[Gaidax]

I am sorry? Months? I geared upto 376 itemlvl by not doing single mythic 0 or + and without single step into raids in 7 days playtime. So dont **** tell us it takes us months of grind becouse it doesnt. I would love to see how much time heroic/mythic raider spend playing game in order to get 376 so we can compare time investment vs reward.

You could do this in 8.1, nobrainer bud, it was end of the tier as I said. Catchup exists.

[Monolithi]

I'm not saying rewards should be removed, I'm saying you should get the quality of reward you worked for. There's nothing more demotivating getting a reward you didn't earn. I can do the bare minimum and come out with the same rewards as someone who raids heroic on a weekly basis. Where's the incentive to push yourself to do more difficult content in a world like that?

I think you refuse to believe someone can have other motives than “effort, work hard, earning” thingy.
Many people arent competitive and dont like hard work, but they still like good rewards.
Its called path of least resistance, and that is how humans, and animals function. Hell, even electric current chooses that path.

[Roxxy]

Is it really that hard to view things from different perspective, namely Blizzards in this matter?
They just have to go with this reward structure, they need to give majority their carrot. If majority isnt happy, they will leave the game. Who will pay the bills then?
Yes, this system isnt perfect, but there cant be much better system. Keeping everyone partly happy is best Blizzard can do with such large spread of playerbase.

Yeah I was thinking that today. This casino loot is for the people who don't raid, maybe do lfr which apparently is the biggest piece of the playerbase. 'Seasons' have been introduced so that before they have the chance to unsub the bar is raised and they then grind to the next level, along with the neverending AP grind to keep them busy. Still with the seasons being so quick even the casual club might sooner or later recognise the rat race. In this model normal and heroic raiders have been royally screwed over, mythic not so much but mythic raiders are the icing on top of the cake.

It's a big experiment and I wonder if it will pay off for Blizzard. As a heroic raider I got disillusioned and quit and quite a few of my guildies also quit or went to play final fantasy. I suppose its balancing the people who get so disillusioned by the new system that they leave against retaining the vast casual club and how long they can string them along (pump them with loot to keep them happy!). Blizzard should have known that a fair part of the disillusioned crowd wouldn't get go quietly into the night though.

[Pooti]

By your logic Blizzard can remove gear from the game and give everyone stat templates for wow content. Not like we play rpg game right? Where main point of this game is character progression. People always cared about gear. Now not much becouse gear have no value. But you are delusional if you think people doing raids and dungeons for pure fun. No. Getting gear and progress you charachter is what is fun part in rpg game.

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Thata quite time investment comapred to me afking in non instanced content.

I 80% raid and mythic+ because I enjoy the activity. Why does it have to be all or nothing? Gear is fun to get, but it also is not the SOLE REASON to do any of the in-game activities. There is no need to hyperbolize to removing all gear from the game and it being just as fun. Stop being so dramatic.

[Roxxy]

That's more a problem with their design.

Making a slot machine be able to spit out Mythic level rewards from "punt 10 squirrels" WQs is not the way you make easy pathetic content "relevant".

How about they actually try to solve this like the billion dollar renowned developers they are and come up with challenging, rewarding content outside Mythic raids?

I mean Mythic+ kind of did this but they've ruined that in BfA with absolutely asinine amounts of trash with stupid abilities.

This is very true and this is what makes me think that the game has gone into maintenance mode. Instead of trying to come up with a good system, innovative content and features and investing in it, they are taking the lazy way out and putting boring dumb skinnerbox grinds in to keep the playerbase subbed. It's not fun and sooner or later will probably backfire.

[kamuimac]

This guy thinks way to highly of himself. I love how you state Heroic raiding is just casual content and act as if Mythic is real raiding. Maybe you should actually take a look at some statistics. Heroic is by no means considered casual content statistically, considering only 30% of WoW characters earn an AoTC achievement. I would not call that casual at all. About the only thing you get right in your comments is the fact that mythic is the hardest content. That is true and no one is debating that at all.

What people are debating is how a player who never steps into a raid can get to item level 370 without having stepped into a raid OR mythic+.

and where would you get data like this ?

unless you mean 30% of people who got registered in some way on wowprogress

which is veeeery different number of people who are level 120.

[Elias01]

You could do this in 8.1, nobrainer bud, it was end of the tier as I said. Catchup exists.

it doasnt matter if it was at the end of tier. It is simply far more time efficient to not play the game from beggining. Right know you get absolutly nothing out of it. There is no long lasting exclusive reward or content for putting more time into the game. I will rather now just quit, spend my money on Dark Souls 3 game and propably return when last content patch will hit live servers and withimg 1 week just catch up with everyone els, finish content and after month again quit till new expansion will relwase. It is far more time and money efficient than keep.wasting hours upon hours on something what will be diminished next patch.

[Martymark]

There are 3 paths to excellent gear right now:

-Be a mythic raider
-Be a mythic dungeoneer
-Be Alliance and spend 5 seconds in a raid that kills 25 losers

[Byleth]

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.

I agree with this comment.

Better question for everyone, why do you car what other people get in terms of loot from content?

If you're raiding Mythic, you get Mythic gear and other people (upon inspection) will clearly see that you are a Hardcore player.

Why does it bother you that other people get some gear too?

[Elias01]

I agree with this comment.

Better question for everyone, why do you car what other people get in terms of loot from content?

If you're raiding Mythic, you get Mythic gear and other people (upon inspection) will clearly see that you are a Hardcore player.

Why does it bother you that other people get some gear too?

There is no such thing as mythic gear. There is only itemlvl. And it isnt about others gettong high end gear. But about being rewarded for mythic content properly compared to rwst of the game. When players see they can earn same gear by doing trivial content they start questioning themself. Like why they bother with mythic progression etc... Whats the point spending so much time when i can progress far easyer and more eficient way. There is argument that you do mythic raid for challenge. But when you remove exclusivity from mythic gear those people will simply find challenge in other games and wow will become their log in log out game.

It is also funny people defend casuals grtting mythic gear becouse those players doesnt need it right? You have non raiding players what are getting high end gear when they have no content where they could use thst gear. You dont need 400+ items if you are doing non raiding content. And getting gear for sake of progression is stupidest desing what i have ever seen.

[Echocho]

I agree with this comment.

Better question for everyone, why do you car what other people get in terms of loot from content?

If you're raiding Mythic, you get Mythic gear and other people (upon inspection) will clearly see that you are a Hardcore player.

Why does it bother you that other people get some gear too?

I don't care. I care about my own experience getting ruined by getting gear I didn't earn. Currently I have two choices, I can do heroic raiding for three months straight or I can play one week at the end of the season, the end result will be the same. Seems like a pretty obvious choice, the best way to gear up in the game is to not play the game

[Sethus]

Regardless of what lies Blizzard tries to feed us, the only reason for Titanforging is artificial inflation of time played. Just kill one more boss and maybe you'll get lucky. A never ending gambling system.

[Lurker1]

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.

They are useing 2 things now in BFA time based rewards and skill based rewards alot of free mmorpg do this nowadays.