One of the big problem with WoW nowadays is the lack of sense of progress

[Golden]

@the thread in general:

A lot of business industries are based on pride addiction. Pride addiction is the concept that some people will do just about anything for opportunities to say, "I'm awesome but you suck." It's a way of getting self-esteem, everyone has it to some degree, and they need regular fixes of it in order to feel OK about themselves. The beauty industry is an example of it, and it's really easy to monetize.

The reason I bring this up is because video games, especially MMOs, operate on pride addiction as well. That is why you typically find two main types of players in MMOs.

One type gets a lot of their self-esteem from the game, they treat the game like a sport, and you hear them talk about stuff like "welfare epics" and "participation rewards" and baddies. Many of them are not happy unless every aspect of the game custom caters to them.

Then, you have another type of player that doesn't get most their self-esteem from the game. They treat the game more like an RPG where they are building a character, experiencing a story, and exploring new lands, etc. A lot of times these are older people who have, over time, learned to get their self-esteem from their wives, kids, communities, religion, etc. When they see people going through 300 wipes to down a boss to get some digital loot, they just shake their heads.

Pride addiction has some problems in MMOs. One problem, as I mentioned above, is that pride addiction diminishes over time. Another problem is that pride addiction can lead to sociopathic behavior. If someone needs their "fix" bad enough, they will start to cheat or misbehave to win, which can be pretty bad in a social game.

One of the huge challenges for MMOs is trying to get these two types of players to peacefully coexist. Both need a progression path without ruining the experience for the other.

[Khallid]

The real problem with WoW nowadays is that your progression feels more fake than ever. You never feel strong, you never feel like you achieved something, only your ilvl increases which only let you do the same content on a more "difficult level" with few added mechanics and bigger numbers, and even if you do those, you will be afk sitting because you can't take advantage of your hard earned gear anywhere. Everyone just feel the same, everyone is equal etc. The catchup mechanism adds to this, why bother farming things when someone can do the same in 1 week that you did for months like farming Azerite, and I don't think the current WQ, Island Expedition, Warmode, Mythic+ daily for months is so fun that it's worth subbing for. The outside world scales, gear in PvP barely matters It's a repeated cycle but in the worst way. At least in vanilla, tbc, even wotlk, your character felt unique because everyone had so many different build/gear, when you get one piece of upgrade you felt like you are better now, you felt accomplishment. You went out and you felt strong.
On a side note the different difficulties of dungeons, raids totally ruins the immersion for me. There is no such thing as a big bad enemy, who is powerful, I just do some raid finder and kill the big bad guy like Gul'Dan in 1 min taking 0 dmg. That's why raids like MC Ragnaros, Onyxia felt partly epic.

You will only feel unique if you you're unaware that there are several thousands of people playing the same spec you do, most likely using the same talents, rotation and seeking the same gear. That has pretty much always been the case, the only uniqueness back in Vanilla was inside your head. Look for any vanilla guide and there's like 2 or 3 talent builds per class. You could just pick the wrong talents if you wanted, but that doesn't make you unique.

Or you can play Survival Hunter and BAM, you're immediately unique. You will never meet any other player doing that for the rest of BfA.

I solo world bosses and even some 5-man dungeons. I definitely feel strong. Dunno what you're on about not feeling strong when our damage increases by about 50% with every tier.

Waiting for catch-up mechanics to get gear defeats the whole purpose of playing the game. You never experience content the way it's supposed to be experienced if you do that. The main purpose of playing the game is having fun, not getting gear. If you kill the fun part you will obviously not enjoy the game.

[rohoz]

No you didn't lol. And that "full gear" was usually on par with Normal raid gear so it wasn't even the best. Because you know why? We didn't have RNG crap like Titanforging blowing it all out of balance where an LFR piece can now in theory be as strong as a Mythic raid piece.

Valor had a cap. If you were just doing HC dungeons it would take you weeks to gear up and by the time you were most of the better players were pushing into higher end raiding. The last set of Valor gear from 5.2 was 522 ilvl. The cap was what 450 a week? So that's 5 weeks to get a chest.

See that's the problem now. The method of gearing is "you may get an upgrade after a few weeks". Rather than "After a few weeks you can get an upgrade".

The older currencies were better. You never got the best gear from them but it felt progressive.

And please the RNG shit we have today is flat out worse. "go farm 600 of a currency to play the slot machine and you might get something good or you might get something that's garbage". Oh yeah fucking awesome system.... /s

the point isn't to do shit dungeons to get gear way better than the shit dungeons.
That's why its gone and will never go back.

if you want to do heroic 5mans to get raid gear, say that. Don't tout it as a good system

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It was a thing because levelling wasn't done in a day, no insta-teleports so you needed to go places to do things, and even in the end-game you often farmed outworld for professions and drops. It's definitely the smallest part of my list but it was more than just ganking.

Southshore vs Tarrenmill was literally ganking, lol. Alliance kids flew to a horde area to disrupt quests.

sorry, griefing.

[crusadernero]

Titan Residuum is trash. It's for Azerite gear only. It does not solve the issue of actual gearing. Not to mention they price the guaranteed pieces deliberately high as a carrot on the stick and the RNG ones deliberately low in the hopes people either stay subbed longer to farm or just get sick of it and sit there playing the casino.

Just rework Justice and Valor and bring back and update it each patch with gear representative of the current raid. Rather than this slot machine RNG fiesta the game seems to want to shove down our throats.

Agreed. This slot machine RNG lootfest we have right now is utter crap. I get so much shit gear thrown at me, that when I finally get something I need, I almost dont care. Its been a long time since I was excited about getting gear.

Its just gear constantly being thrown at you and I dont understand why, cause most of it is either vendored, scrapped or DE.

[Eleccybubb]

the point isn't to do shit dungeons to get gear way better than the shit dungeons.
That's why its gone and will never go back.

if you want to do heroic 5mans to get raid gear, say that. Don't tout it as a good system

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Southshore vs Tarrenmill was literally ganking, lol. Alliance kids flew to a horde area to disrupt quests.

sorry, griefing.

And for the 100th time. You did NOT get a Valor piece every week.

At earliest it took 3 weeks with Bracers. By then raiders would have a shitton of Normal pieces. Not to mention you could NOT get every armor slot with Valor. Or weapons.

So no it was a good system. A damn sight better than the RNG fiesta we have. But I mean if you seriously want to tout the RNG system in place is better go for it. I mean you're wrong but feel free to.

And no that's not why at all. It's gone so the devs could push said RNG system on players.

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Agreed. This slot machine RNG lootfest we have right now is utter crap. I get so much shit gear thrown at me, that when I finally get something I need, I almost dont care. Its been a long time since I was excited about getting gear.

Its just gear constantly being thrown at you and I dont understand why, cause most of it is either vendored, scrapped or DE.

Getting gear for me hasn't been exciting since WoD.

Oh an upgrade? Cool I guess. Oh 100 downgrades? Oh boy love this RNG system.....

I remember getting my first Emblem piece as a new player in Wrath. Think it took me like 20 days because I had no idea how to efficiently get Frost. That was exciting. Farming towards that piece.

[rohoz]

And for the 100th time. You did NOT get a Valor piece every week.

At earliest it took 3 weeks with Bracers. By then raiders would have a shitton of Normal pieces. Not to mention you could NOT get every armor slot with Valor. Or weapons.

So no it was a good system. A damn sight better than the RNG fiesta we have. But I mean if you seriously want to tout the RNG system in place is better go for it. I mean you're wrong but feel free to.

And no that's not why at all. It's gone so the devs could push said RNG system on players.

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Getting gear for me hasn't been exciting since WoD.

Oh an upgrade? Cool I guess. Oh 100 downgrades? Oh boy love this RNG system.....

I remember getting my first Emblem piece as a new player in Wrath. Think it took me like 20 days because I had no idea how to efficiently get Frost. That was exciting. Farming towards that piece.

You know what's a better system? doing the raid.

Yeah, valor was trash. I can see why y'all low hanging fruit loved it, but nah. It's gone, and for good reason. Do challenging content for gear.

[Phantombeard]

World of Warcraft atm is the Worst it has ever been but at the same time for those looking to play a MMORPG it is still the Best the Genre has to offer.

[Eleccybubb]

World of Warcraft atm is the Worst it has ever been but at the same time for those looking to play a MMORPG it is still the Best the Genre has to offer.

Subjective.

Imo the best the genre has to offer is FF14. 2nd best would be ESO. 3rd would be Guild Wars 2.

I literally said to someone earlier that in my opinion the ESO Plus sub (optional sub for a B2P game) has more value than WoWs sub. That really says a lot about my opinion of the game state when I'm saying a B2P games optional sub holds more worth.

I definitely think WoW offers the best raiding. PvP eh I can't really comment as I don't really PvP much in these kinds of games.

[Powerogue]

Pretty much the nail on the head. Legion was perfectly fine oddly enough in that regard, so we can't simply blame scaling. I think a distinct difference was that the artifact traits weren't impacted by the scaling, while azerite traits are. And with Legion you were always improving on what you had, whereas with azerite traits you're throwing out that gear you upgraded and starting over, often with the exact same traits that, when scaled, leave you exactly as strong as you were before. Sometimes WEAKER!

Legion also had different tiers of the raid, which I don't see as an issue as long as the tiers play differently enough to be unique experiences. I really think the core failure was the azerite system, reinforced further by handing out gear like candy from non-raiding sources to the point where raiding weekly literally had me at the same gear level as my alt who was just doing WQs and stuff.

[Dudenoso]

Exclusivity of those raids was ehat kept players playing. People start leaving game more when game lost this exclusivity becouse nobafy cares about something with no value. Exclusivity creates desire and acessability creates apathy. I gey you might be too stupid to inderstand psychological aspects of different game desings but atlest try. This is exactly what is wrong with the game. All you see is is some made up 1% number and pointed on it becouse that number is too small. Completly ignoring all psychological aspects what exclusive content breeds in player head. If LFR would be in game right from vannila i would never touch guilds or organized raiding. Acessability is not good for the game.

While I do agree with the general point, I would like to inform you that saying people might be too stupid to understand your point is a negative factor on the whole getting them to agree and/or understand your point.

So is bad grammar, although there might be legit excuses for it.

[Elias01]

That is an ignorant way to view something, especially when Blizzard clearly changes fights and adds different or more punishing mechanics as the difficulty rises.

Only thing what adds new mechanic is mythic difficulty and thats hardly incitive to push that difficulty. Specialy when you alredy beat those bosses several times before.There are better ways how to spend time playing other games than wasting it in mythic raids for what? 1 achievement what nobady cares about? Give me break.

[RoKPaNda]

Did you come up with this on your own? I mean big youtubers have been saying this and people have been regurgitating it for ages, but really unless you're a cutting edge raider you have MORE of a sense of progression and actual progression than you ever did before.

Raiding was always a niche activity, and for the small minority of us that engaged in it there was a sense of progression. If you were a part of the vast majority of the playerbase that never raided you didn't have any sort of progression beyond some faceroll dungeons.

Now there's Mythic+, a raid difficulty that fits everyone's play style, etc.

I'm not sure why you feel that you've lost anything. Because you're not forced to grind out SSC/TK an entire year after they were relevant?

[Armourboy]

Did you come up with this on your own? I mean big youtubers have been saying this and people have been regurgitating it for ages, but really unless you're a cutting edge raider you have MORE of a sense of progression and actual progression than you ever did before.

Raiding was always a niche activity, and for the small minority of us that engaged in it there was a sense of progression. If you were a part of the vast majority of the playerbase that never raided you didn't have any sort of progression beyond some faceroll dungeons.

Now there's Mythic+, a raid difficulty that fits everyone's play style, etc.

I'm not sure why you feel that you've lost anything. Because you're not forced to grind out SSC/TK an entire year after they were relevant?

Let's put it this way, progression is so out of whack I no longer feel the need to engage in mythic+ or raids. They are handing me the gear through other means. My main is sitting at 390 item level, I haven't run but one regular mythic 5 man for the story and zero raids. I play 3 hours a week just to kill time. I'm sorry but that's just ridiculous and strips any reason to want to even mess with the rest of the content.

[Eggroll]

..., but really unless you're a cutting edge raider you have MORE of a sense of progression and actual progression than you ever did before.
If you were a part of the vast majority of the playerbase that never raided you didn't have any sort of progression beyond some faceroll dungeons.

Yes, but WHAT IS actual progression? From one characters point of view in an RPG? I ding maxlevel and 4 hours later I can already do raids, LFR mind you, but still, I almost get better gear of dailies than in 20 man content... like what the actual fuck.

Faceroll is relative, faceroll for you might not be faceroll for someone else. This game has become a complete brainfuck, a monkey on a constant sugar rush, I can no longer get enjoyment out of this mess. The only philosophy I see behind it is "MORE, MORE, MORE of EVERYTHING", just for the sake of it. It's mindnumbing.

[rohoz]

Yes, but WHAT IS actual progression? From one characters point of view in an RPG? I ding maxlevel and 4 hours later I can already do raids, LFR mind you, but still, I almost get better gear of dailies than in 20 man content... like what the actual fuck.

Faceroll is relative, faceroll for you might not be faceroll for someone else. This game has become a complete brainfuck, a monkey on a constant sugar rush, I can no longer get enjoyment out of this mess. The only philosophy I see behind it is "MORE, MORE, MORE of EVERYTHING", just for the sake of it. It's mindnumbing.

try doing group content.
the entire point is "gear fast to do meaningful *current* content with your *friends*"

[Eggroll]

try doing group content.
the entire point is "gear fast to do meaningful *current* content with your *friends*"

That's exactly the problem.... it's like taking a portal instead of the gryphon, or the ship, or fly/ride by yourself. Why not just leave everything out then? Why not just create a character at maxlevel, completely geared to do "meaningful *current* contentent with your *friends*, hu?

[rohoz]

That's exactly the problem.... it's like taking a portal instead of the gryphon, or the ship, or fly/ride by yourself. Why not just leave everything out then? Why not just create a character at maxlevel, completely geared to do "meaningful *current* contentent with your *friends*, hu?

why not just watch a video on youtube and pretend you did the things?

Stop shifting the goalpost. If you want to do old content, nothing is stopping you.

[RoKPaNda]

Let's put it this way, progression is so out of whack I no longer feel the need to engage in mythic+ or raids. They are handing me the gear through other means. My main is sitting at 390 item level, I haven't run but one regular mythic 5 man for the story and zero raids. I play 3 hours a week just to kill time. I'm sorry but that's just ridiculous and strips any reason to want to even mess with the rest of the content.

So your character is 390 - And this is somehow a problem for you? Go do raids or M+ and your ilevel will be much higher. You have a path of progression. You have multiple options even.

Yes, but WHAT IS actual progression? From one characters point of view in an RPG? I ding maxlevel and 4 hours later I can already do raids, LFR mind you, but still, I almost get better gear of dailies than in 20 man content... like what the actual fuck.

Faceroll is relative, faceroll for you might not be faceroll for someone else. This game has become a complete brainfuck, a monkey on a constant sugar rush, I can no longer get enjoyment out of this mess. The only philosophy I see behind it is "MORE, MORE, MORE of EVERYTHING", just for the sake of it. It's mindnumbing.

You realize that the game has been like that since Wrath right? You could level, gear up in an evening, and start doing content. What raid content isn't giving you better rewards than world quests? The easier levels of old content? That's about it. Sounds more like you're burnt out than anything else.

[Elias01]

Did you come up with this on your own? I mean big youtubers have been saying this and people have been regurgitating it for ages, but really unless you're a cutting edge raider you have MORE of a sense of progression and actual progression than you ever did before.

Raiding was always a niche activity, and for the small minority of us that engaged in it there was a sense of progression. If you were a part of the vast majority of the playerbase that never raided you didn't have any sort of progression beyond some faceroll dungeons.

Now there's Mythic+, a raid difficulty that fits everyone's play style, etc.

I'm not sure why you feel that you've lost anything. Because you're not forced to grind out SSC/TK an entire year after they were relevant?

It creates apathy. In Dark Souls finishing the game was it. It was main goal of every player. Nobady cares about + difficulty levels becouse replaying same game is not fun. For WoW baseline for majoryti is LFR no becouse it is fun but becouse it is path of least resistance how to finish content. And just like in DS nobady cares aboit higher difficulty in WoW becouse it is same content. People join in finish LFR and leave. With 1 difficulty players apathy threshold is far higher becouse exclusivity creates desire. No matter if you will end up doing that content it keeps you playing the game. Acessability does only thing it devalues content value for everyone. There should be casual content and there should be hardcore content no casual/hardcore difficulty.

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So your character is 390 - And this is somehow a problem for you? Go do raids or M+ and your ilevel will be much higher. You have a path of progression. You have multiple options even.



You realize that the game has been like that since Wrath right? You could level, gear up in an evening, and start doing content. What raid content isn't giving you better rewards than world quests? The easier levels of old content? That's about it. Sounds more like you're burnt out than anything else.

And that supostu be excuse? Just becouse it was in Wrath makes it good system? Do you realize that WoTlk had masses of people quiting game becouse change of direction of the game. People praise Wotlk becouse they see high sub number completly ignoring fact that biggest player grow and retantion was during TBC. Wrath grow was only 500k and after that game went downhill. No sir wotlk wasnt great it was starr where wow lost its direction.

[rohoz]

I mean if you never do lfr and stick to higher difficulties, the "apathy from beating the game" is non-existent.
And yes, lfr is a blight, a plague

Also, Dark souls has NG++