Preach on the broken gear treadmill

[Elias01]

Mythic raiders already keep their unique looking tier for a year and a half/two years. Not to mention the mounts drop down to 1% drop rate so in reality they are still very rare. Things don't need to be gone from the game to be considered a rarity. And yes creating exclusive rewards can actually hurt the rest, given it takes resources and time from more widely accessible things.

They gotta keep it for 1 patch. New raid tier always makes previous ones completly absolote to the point you can easly pug it. Ans yes even with 1% mount drop it is nowhere near being rare mount. Exclusive rewards doesnt hurt anyone. If you feel entilted to rewards just becouse you pai sub it is your problem not game. I really dont see any reslason why you should get rewards in absolote content when you clearly dont deserve them.

[kamuimac]

Since Preach asked for this feedback. Here is my current impression of the game as someone who just came back and leveled from scratch. You have walls that Blizzard puts up, the community puts up and wall created by difficulty.

After TBC when they removed attunements and effectively nerfed raids to be casual friendly the community started to step in where they felt Blizzard was failing. It started with achievements and then morphed into gear score. I was there and saw how it was destabalizing servers and saw people quiting in droves who were excluded from content.

The response to raiders who wanted hard content was the Mythic difficulty wall. Preach has complained about this but fails to mention this wall was specifically put there for guys like him. Not all guilds were supposed to see it but this is poorly communicated by Blizzard. I specifically remember patch notes that were pages and page long of nerfs that I no longer see. It was normal to see Heroic raids beat with a nerf bat.

This was normal. All seasons are is moving the below curve. That is all Blizzard does nothing more and nothing less. They decide where they want a majority of the community to be and move the curve there. The community on the other hand responded with Raider IO where the curve does not move. It is a set score that last an entire season and is based on time.

All I see is the same gear treadmill but with more people intervening to either make it easier like Blizzard or harder such as the community. In Vanilla and TBC the one wall was the raid itself with Attunements, resist, gold requirements to respec and raid size.

Things like Titanforge and Warforge throw a wrench into the below system. It takes someone who is unguilded and throws them a piece of 415 loot and sets the expectation that this is normal. In reality that 415 gear would come from you joining a guild and doing Mythic raiding.

Get rid of Warforge or Titanforge that wall is hard and you do not get over it unless you run with a guild. This system has killed more guilds then it has helped in a very backwards way. It has led people to think they no longer need guilds to get over these walls.

Preach the reason you will see noone say anything positive about this system is because of the below walls. You can be wearing all 400 ilvl from Titanforges but if you do not have the correct Raider IO then you are rarely going to pug a +10. You can be wearing all 425 lvl Titanforged gear somehow but if you do not execute mechanics you are not Mythic raiding. Skill is the current gauge used by the community while Blizzard still thinks gear is the cookie. It is but not NEARLY to the extent it has been used as a carrot.

i do agree with a lot of what you written

i disagree that its the system what is killing guilds

what is killing guilds in reality is real life .

and people choosing to pursue real goals in real life instead fake ones in games.

all you need in reality to kill any guild is theat key 3-4 people quit and whole guild implodes.

its unrealistic expectation to desire for the same group of friends to do activity X on set schedule for years. it doesnt happen irl and its unachivable in games.

yes a lot of people will raid for months - but eventually they will quit .

very few people will raid for few years - but even they will eventually burn out and quit.

next to nobody is raiding non stop for 3+ years. it takes special kind of people - for example social outcasts , lonely people with no friends or some other special traits but no normal funtioning member of society will play the same same on high level on set schedule for years. its just not normal behaviour.

ye ye ye i know everybody on mmochamp who raids has wife kids high payed jobs and 3 cars and 12 inch cock - ofc you have - its internet we are all handome clones of ryan reynolds here duh .

only reality is a bit different. and this is something that most people are to scared to admit.

that the reason why they defend the "special place" for mythic raiding is because they have nothing else outside of it.

[Echocho]

I got insulted for saying I didn't earn 400ilvl on my monk, doing like, 2 +10s and 1 7 boss clear of BoD.

What do you mean? Of course you earned that. Me being AFK in a warfront and subsequently during a world boss shouldn't earn me a 400 and a 420 but it did.

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All I see is the same gear treadmill but with more people intervening to either make it easier like Blizzard or harder such as the community. In Vanilla and TBC the one wall was the raid itself with Attunements, resist, gold requirements to respec and raid size.

You wrote a lot of good stuff but I gotta comment on the bad (since this is the Internet). It may be a treadmill but it's definitely not the same one.

Mythic Uldir gear was 385 iLvl, when the next raid came out you were getting that quality of gear (or better in the case of warfronts, the new world boss and the weekly PvP quest) for doing very trivial content like world quests.

It would be like in TBC when sunwell came out everyone in the game would get BT quality gear across the board.

And this is only for those that were lucky enough to raid mythic, they could hold on to a few pieces of gear for a while at least. If you raided anything below mythic or did anything in the game other than mythic raiding all your gear was now completely useless. That's not satisfying.

I'd like to think that most people want some sort of steady progression, to feel some pride and put some value in the things they've acquired over the previous months and not chug it all in the garbage bin from one day to the next.

If they removed all the mounts from the game every patch and put in completely new ones I'd imagine that it wouldn't feel super great for the mount collectors, I doubt they'd even collect mounts in the first place.

[Kallisto]

It's the complete opposite. Me, a CASUAL player want less high quality loot for doing almost nothing. It doesn't feel good to be rewarded with things you didn't earn.

I couldn't give two shits about what mythic raiders are getting, I just want a reward structure for my level of play that actually makes sense.

I don't put much effort into the game anymore, I shouldn't be over rewarded for that.

Me as a casual player like being able to get decent gear while playing at a pace, not being forced into having to spend hours of homework to find a good guild that is 100% linked to my needs or end up pugging with what is list of pug groups where 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999% would likely fail at putting their shoes on right.

If that means I somehow get full mythic rated gear through titanforge who cares. It affects no one but me.

[Exkrementor]

he wanted controversy to sell it on youtube.

This only shows how you have really no idea what you are talking about. Someone who does virtually no money off of youtube wants to sell a controversy?

And this is exactly what I said about the mmo-champion community. Its just misinformed people whose feelings are hurt and they want to insult other people.

Another possibility is of course that you are a troll. Its hard to say nowadays because there are a lot of trolls but there are also a lot of stupid people voicing their stupid opinions. Damn Poe's Law.

[justandulas]

Me as a casual player like being able to get decent gear while playing at a pace, not being forced into having to spend hours of homework to find a good guild that is 100% linked to my needs or end up pugging with what is list of pug groups where 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999% would likely fail at putting their shoes on right.

If that means I somehow get full mythic rated gear through titanforge who cares. It affects no one but me.

There's enough WoW for all of us to go around. Let me break it down like this... currently, Destiny 2 has better raid reward structures than WoW.

There are certain exotic (wow legendary) guns that are ONLY obtainable from the last boss in raids, and they remain OP forever and ever.

Imagine if WoW had it's only legendary drop off mythic jaina only, or if mythic had a wing only available on mythic, or if mythic had certain items on the loot table only available on mythic, etc.

If you can solo your way to mythic gear, while i don't care what you have as i think there's plenty of WoW for us all, it does create a sense of apathy at high end of "Why am i bothering treating this like a part time job when johnny logs in an hour a week can be just as geared through RNG, luck, and free weekly chests?" so end game raiding dies.

When you can say Destiny 2 raid rewards are structured better than WoW and offer more incentive... maybe it's time to admit that WOW has an issue with raid loot, and incentive.

With hundreds of mounts and pets in the game, they no longer serve as adequate rewards. Same for achievements. There has to be more.

[crono14]

Me as a casual player like being able to get decent gear while playing at a pace, not being forced into having to spend hours of homework to find a good guild that is 100% linked to my needs or end up pugging with what is list of pug groups where 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999% would likely fail at putting their shoes on right.

If that means I somehow get full mythic rated gear through titanforge who cares. It affects no one but me.

If you don't understand how that affects anyone but you, then you don't understand the problem at all. Read any of the other million threads where others have already stated those points.

[Golden]

This is your second thread on this topic within the last 2 months. Getting old dude, move on. I don’t get why people are still upset that people, mostly casuals, have similar gear to the hardcore players? Does it somehow affect the hardcore player base? No, not in the slightest. It actually helps, makes it way easier to gear up alts for mythic progression. So who does it actually affect?

Most adults get their self esteem from their friends, family, spouse, kids, community, job, or religion. Most kids get their self esteem from things like sports or video games, and this lessens as they mature.

Titanforging, Warfront rewards, and LFR affect these players because it makes it harder for them to get their self esteem fix.

It also explains why their is always a war between these two groups. One group thinks they have the moral high ground because harder work should result in better rewards (and it mostly does in WoW). The other group thinks they have the moral high ground wondering why people take a form of recreation so seriously.

[crono14]

Since Preach asked for this feedback. Here is my current impression of the game as someone who just came back and leveled from scratch. You have walls that Blizzard puts up, the community puts up and wall created by difficulty.

After TBC when they removed attunements and effectively nerfed raids to be casual friendly the community started to step in where they felt Blizzard was failing. It started with achievements and then morphed into gear score. I was there and saw how it was destabalizing servers and saw people quiting in droves who were excluded from content.

The response to raiders who wanted hard content was the Mythic difficulty wall. Preach has complained about this but fails to mention this wall was specifically put there for guys like him. Not all guilds were supposed to see it but this is poorly communicated by Blizzard. I specifically remember patch notes that were pages and page long of nerfs that I no longer see. It was normal to see Heroic raids beat with a nerf bat.

This was normal. All seasons are is moving the below curve. That is all Blizzard does nothing more and nothing less. They decide where they want a majority of the community to be and move the curve there. The community on the other hand responded with Raider IO where the curve does not move. It is a set score that last an entire season and is based on time.

All I see is the same gear treadmill but with more people intervening to either make it easier like Blizzard or harder such as the community. In Vanilla and TBC the one wall was the raid itself with Attunements, resist, gold requirements to respec and raid size.

Things like Titanforge and Warforge throw a wrench into the below system. It takes someone who is unguilded and throws them a piece of 415 loot and sets the expectation that this is normal. In reality that 415 gear would come from you joining a guild and doing Mythic raiding.

Get rid of Warforge or Titanforge that wall is hard and you do not get over it unless you run with a guild. This system has killed more guilds then it has helped in a very backwards way. It has led people to think they no longer need guilds to get over these walls.

Preach the reason you will see noone say anything positive about this system is because of the below walls. You can be wearing all 400 ilvl from Titanforges but if you do not have the correct Raider IO then you are rarely going to pug a +10. You can be wearing all 425 lvl Titanforged gear somehow but if you do not execute mechanics you are not Mythic raiding. Skill is the current gauge used by the community while Blizzard still thinks gear is the cookie. It is but not NEARLY to the extent it has been used as a carrot.

I agree with some of your points, but raids back in the day at least in WotLK you referred to as well as others were only "nerfed" in the fact that a stacking debuff was implemented every week to help guilds clear the raid. I believe it just gave more damage and the boss less health, but you still needed to execute mechanics to kill the fights. No amount of damage or health would trivialize Lich King for example if you kept failing the Defile mechanic. This is just my opinion, but player's were not really quitting in droves until Cata when Dragon Soul was on farm and the game started stagnating. I would probably call this the time the game started to go lose some of the RPG aspect of the game.

MMO's are not seasonal games at all, and this is why WoW is in the state it's in. Blizzard does not understand this. All of the bad choices they have made to make the casuals feel like special snowflakes have deteriorated the core of what the game has always been. Why waste my time raiding or doing anything to challenge myself when I can log in an hour or two a week and still be able to get the best gear possible? This is why guilds break up and people quit, there is no longer any incentive to play the game. I can have fun and challenge myself with those same people in a myriad of other games. BFA's problems aside, there is literally no reason to log in to progress your character cause I can just come back in a month or two and catch up with everyone else.

There is no journey anymore, no meaningful progression of your character, no incentive to learn to improve your skill, no choice in what you do as Blizzard heavily dictates this, and no attachment to any rewards you receive. The game can be played solo which negates the "MMO" aspect and the "RPG" has long been gone from the game.

[Gaidax]

This is your second thread on this topic within the last 2 months. Getting old dude, move on. I don’t get why people are still upset that people, mostly casuals, have similar gear to the hardcore players? Does it somehow affect the hardcore player base? No, not in the slightest. It actually helps, makes it way easier to gear up alts for mythic progression. So who does it actually affect?

Forget it, apparently some random Billy getting a decent item once in a blue moon is destroying WoW as we know it.

I think this whole thing would maybe have a merit from Heroic raider standpoint, where you can easily get directly competing gear from alternative sources, but I just think that Heroic raiding is simply not any more challenging than M+10 anyway and it's the only unlimited source of heroic ilvl gear outside PvP.

Mythic raiders on the other hand have little to worry about, especially because of weapons being hard capped at +10WF and raid Azerite usually being best and capped at 400 for other sources aside from gamble one. So by definition in BfA best gear comes from Mythic raids, simply because nothing else drops comparable ilvl for key gear pieces anyway.

Honestly I would not give a damn if Blizz would hard cap WF/TF to 15 or even 10 ilvls max, just as I don't really give a damn for random Joe getting a sweet TF roll on some random item. So if that is what it takes to stop all this bleating, by all means do it, but realistically it won't happen because much more people benefit from the system as opposed to being "harmed" by it.

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Alternatively for all those who want to feel extra "speshul" they could increase gap between Heroic and Mythic ilvl to 25. That would do it too. Whether it's actually needed? Meehhh? Don't think so really.

[Elias01]

Forget it, apparently some random Billy getting a decent item once in a blue moon is destroying WoW as we know it.

I think this whole thing would maybe have a merit from Heroic raider standpoint, where you can easily get directly competing gear from alternative sources, but I just think that Heroic raiding is simply not any more challenging than M+10 anyway and it's the only unlimited source of heroic ilvl gear outside PvP.

Mythic raiders on the other hand have little to worry about, especially because of weapons being hard capped at +10WF and raid Azerite usually being best and capped at 400 for other sources aside from gamble one. So by definition in BfA best gear comes from Mythic raids, simply because nothing else drops comparable ilvl for key gear pieces anyway.

Honestly I would not give a damn if Blizz would hard cap WF/TF to 15 or even 10 ilvls max, just as I don't really give a damn for random Joe getting a sweet TF roll on some random item. So if that is what it takes to stop all this bleating, by all means do it, but realistically it won't happen because much more people benefit from the system as opposed to being "harmed" by it.

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Alternatively for all those who want to feel extra "speshul" they could increase gap between Heroic and Mythic ilvl to 25. That would do it too. Whether it's actually needed? Meehhh? Don't think so really.

Do you underatand that casuals are mostly the ones what doesnt like tf system? Becouse getting op reward tha ks to luck isnt rewarding experience for anyone. You get that item becouse you were lucky = it have no value for you and you dont care about it at all. And if you dont care about gear people quit.

[Gaidax]

Do you underatand that casuals are mostly the ones what doesnt like tf system? Becouse getting op reward tha ks to luck isnt rewarding experience for anyone. You get that item becouse you were lucky = it have no value for you and you dont care about it at all. And if you dont care about gear people quit.

That's just nonsense really and you know it. I am not terribly sure why people are pushing this BS.

Yeah, I can totally see random Billy screaming in rage when he gets a nice item he did not expect.

Reality is - the said casuals - who are a vast majority - don't really give much of a damn about WoW to have these heartbreaks over item ilvl - they just get what they get, wear what they wear - do an activity or two here and there and go off. So no, nobody is shaking their head in disappointment when they get a lucky good item, except for maybe OP and a small squad of forum extremists who for some reason see this as THE ISSUE.

[Elias01]

That's just nonsense really and you know it. I am not terribly sure why people are pushing this BS.

Yeah, I can totally see random Billy screaming in rage when he gets a nice item he did not expect.

Reality is - the said casuals - who are a vast majority - don't really give much of a damn about WoW to have these heartbreaks over item ilvl - they just get what they get, wear what they wear - do an activity or two here and there and go off. So no, nobody is shaking their head in disappointment when they get a lucky good item, except for maybe OP and a small squad of forum extremists who for some reason see this as THE ISSUE.

No it isnt nonsense. And you completly contradict yourself. First you sai it isnt issue for casual audience than you say casuals dont really care about items they get which is exactly problem of current gearing. You want casual players to care about it. If they dont care they start quiting game. Lesa you care about gear you getting less you are invested in charachter = less you are invested in the game = players quit. You have to make players care about gear.

This only shows thay you ate mythic raider and you have no clue what mmorpg casual audience actualy want. Ofc you think it is no issue when as top end player ot doesnt affect you.

[ToxicFlame]

That's just nonsense really and you know it. I am not terribly sure why people are pushing this BS.

Yeah, I can totally see random Billy screaming in rage when he gets a nice item he did not expect.

Reality is - the said casuals - who are a vast majority - don't really give much of a damn about WoW to have these heartbreaks over item ilvl - they just get what they get, wear what they wear - do an activity or two here and there and go off. So no, nobody is shaking their head in disappointment when they get a lucky good item, except for maybe OP and a small squad of forum extremists who for some reason see this as THE ISSUE.

true, nobody "is shaking their heads in disappointment" when they get a good item.
Nevertheless it still is "THE ISSUE" because the amount of gear you get inflates ilvl to the point where it's meaningless. This creates 2 major problems: firstly, alternative measuring systems are popping up unrelated to gear(raider.io) and secondly it takes away any sort of progression, because while you do get better gear, that gear doesn't unlock anything due to first problem.

[Gaidax]

No it isnt nonsense. And you completly contradict yourself. First you sai it isnt issue for casual audience than you say casuals dont really care about items they get which is exactly problem of current gearing. You want casual players to care about it. If they dont care they start quiting game. Lesa you care about gear you getting less you are invested in charachter = less you are invested in the game = players quit. You have to make players care about gear.

Casuals don't care about the gear to the extent you, Preach, OP and maybe even I do.

They will be happy to get an odd high ilvl item (and I just don't understand why you think someone would be sad over it, aside from special snowflakes), but on the other hand they don't really get that many of those for it to be a real factor in overall balance of things between dedicated players and casuals.

Casuals care about all kinds of stuff, there is plenty of "all kinds of stuff" in WoW aside gear that's why there are so many casuals. Some like pet battles, some like transmog, some like odd dungeon runs here and there and some like bloody ERP. Gear is not end all be all thing, but it is a positive thing for a casual when they get some nice item.

I think you make a terrible amount of logic leaps, but the issue is that you are not really casual and/or don't really have casual mindset, that's why you are so laser focused on one thing, disregarding that WoW is bigger than that.

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true, nobody "is shaking their heads in disappointment" when they get a good item.
Nevertheless it still is "THE ISSUE" because the amount of gear you get inflates ilvl to the point where it's meaningless. This creates 2 major problems: firstly, alternative measuring systems are popping up unrelated to gear(raider.io) and secondly it takes away any sort of progression, because while you do get better gear, that gear doesn't unlock anything due to first problem.

Progression is pretty clear, because Mythic in the end IS where the best stuff drops consistently and in some cases only place where such stuff drops at all.

Anything less than that is a free for all. Heroic and M+ are the major gear sources for ilvl 400 stuff with odd WF or World Boss once in a blue moon giving one shot at the same quality gear.

That's why no matter how much people huff and puff, Mythic players have higher average ilvl and gear quality than anyone else. Looks like OK progression to me, unless you want the gap to be huge, which it's not and for a good reason.

[ToxicFlame]

Progression is pretty clear, because Mythic in the end IS where the best stuff drops consistently and in some cases only place where such stuff drops at all.

Anything less than that is a free for all. Heroic and M+ are the major gear sources for ilvl 400 stuff with odd WF or World Boss once in a blue moon giving one shot at the same quality gear.

That's why no matter how much people huff and puff, Mythic players have higher average ilvl and gear quality than anyone else. Looks like OK progression to me, unless you want the gap to be huge, which it's not and for a good reason.

mate, you can't say progression is pretty clear and in the very next sentence say anything bellow mythic is a free for all.
although what I was trying to get at is, that getting a higher ilvl doesn't unlock stuff anymore, heroic, mythic+0 dungeons and lfr are basically free from the moment u ding at cap by just doing a couple of WQ, and WB, m+ requires r.io, mythic raid pugging isn't a thing to my knowledge, so you are left with normal and heroic raids to work towards, and in my experience for heroic raids people only care about curve for heroic which in my experience leaves you with normal raids that get "unlocked" by getting a high enough ilvl.

[Gaidax]

mate, you can't say progression is pretty clear and in the very next sentence say anything bellow mythic is a free for all.
although what I was trying to get at is, that getting a higher ilvl doesn't unlock stuff anymore, heroic, mythic+0 dungeons and lfr are basically free from the moment u ding at cap by just doing a couple of WQ, and WB, m+ requires r.io, mythic raid pugging isn't a thing to my knowledge, so you are left with normal and heroic raids to work towards, and in my experience for heroic raids people only care about curve for heroic which in my experience leaves you with normal raids that get "unlocked" by getting a high enough ilvl.

What you have described now certainly sounds like progression there. You aren't going to be pugging M+10 and Heroic raids from the moment you ding, you do need to get some gear and clout there to pass the initial checks, so yeah you do LFR, Normal, M+(x<10).

There are various shortcuts like guild/friends/cash, but this is a progression right there.

You may say yeah, maybe it should have been more clear, but imo it makes sense - you do normal/lowbie M+ and ramp up the difficulty as you go and get more geared/more clout.

[Raysz]

He is one of the more positive WoW content creators. It’s not like he shits on the game like Asmongold. Even Tal & evitel have critiques of BfA.

He shits it on it hard. I've watched a few of his vids and I couldn't take it anymore. He's nitpicking everything apart and he's being negative whenever he gets the chance. He's one of the people I would tell to get lost. I don't mind people being negative but just leave and don't make a scene.
Whenever I get tired of WoW I just unsub, that's bloody it.

[Gaidax]

He shits it on it hard. I've watched a few of his vids and I couldn't take it anymore. He's nitpicking everything apart and he's being negative whenever he gets the chance. He's one of the people I would tell to get lost. I don't mind people being negative but just leave and don't make a scene.
Whenever I get tired of WoW I just unsub, that's bloody it.

How'd he get his moneys from donations then???

It's his job and he knows full well what his audience wants to hear, so he shoves it down their throats.

[KaPe]

He shits it on it hard. I've watched a few of his vids and I couldn't take it anymore. He's nitpicking everything apart and he's being negative whenever he gets the chance. He's one of the people I would tell to get lost. I don't mind people being negative but just leave and don't make a scene.
Whenever I get tired of WoW I just unsub, that's bloody it.

That's interesting considering that he liked Blizzard's attempts at itemization in the new raid (even if he considers it to be somewhat undertuned) and keeps mentioning that he expects new patch to turn BFA around. But sure, he's so negative that you can't take it anymore.

Either your threshold for negativity is extremely low or you're cherrypicking the worst parts and filling in the blanks.