Catch-Up Mechanics & Incentive to raid/play

[SirCowdog]

Players should still be able to get gear via world content, I’d rather not see the game degrade back into “Raid or die, if you’re late to the party then unsub until the next expansion”.

That sort of progression is fine for a stagnant, non-updating game. But for a game that receives constant updates, catch up is a necessity to bring back old players and welcome new ones.

And would you be ok if the parts of the world that gave better gear were more challenging than the average faceroll "Kill-X" quests? It's fine and well for the average quest content to give lower iLVL drops in line with the amount of work required to click 10 things, or go to a place and kill 15 bears. But I think if players want better, higher-level gear, they should have to do tasks that are more difficult.

What would that look like? I don't fully know. Perhaps something like the Silithus mechanics from Vanilla, where players could solo farm up mats and turn them in at the enemy camps to spawn progressively more difficult enemies, some of which required a group in order to defeat. Maybe it could be a series of progressively more difficult world quests that culminates in a Mage Tower or Brawler's Guild style solo challenge.

Do you think you'd be open to doing something like that for higher-level gear out of the open world?

[Ielenia]

3) ilevel requirements for pug raids are getting way out of hand

I agree with most of what you wrote, but this one I kind of have to contest, here. It's not a 'con' of catch-up mechanics, more like a 'con' of player-run grouping. Catch-up mechanics or not, there will still be players creating pug groups with absurd item level requirements. They do that not because of catch-up mechanics, but because they want a smooth run of the instance. Usually (in my experience) the pug leaders themselves don't even match the item level requirements, too.

[MoanaLisa]

Attunements were stupid then, and they're stupid now. Only an idiot would advocate for a Vanilla/TBC system implemented into retail WoW.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and have changed my mind since BfA started.

There's a discussion to be had--but probably not here--about giving raiders what they want and putting raiding into a place that's more apart from the world game. Once you do that then you can imagine stuff like the grindy parts of the game that raiders hate (Azerite) just go away for them. Raiders would level, do some dungeons, or even raid-specific short attunements that no one but organized raiders would need to do to start their journey into organized raiding. They would have a completely separate gear treadmill which would come from dungeons of all kinds and especially raids. That allows raids to go back to something like a more linear system. LFR exists outside of that ecosystem entirely with its own requirements from what we'll call "world" players so they can see the raids.

It needs some thought but apart from dividing the player base into a kind of territory it also solves a lot of problems too. Normal progresses to heroic. You can use mythic dungeons to start at heroic if you like and progress to mythic. If you don't want to be out in the world grinding stuff you wouldn't need to be. You would go back to an older system in which you can come up through raids and gradually progress your gear as you go. I understand the arguments about dividing players but let's face it, organized raiding has pretty much already done that with no help from Blizzard.

SirCowDog will have a response I'm sure after he's over his shock that I actually wrote this but when you have a Gordian Knot that's making everyone unhappy sometimes it's worth discussing whether or not you should just cut it.

In a sense it makes raiding it's own game-within-a-game but why not. Isn't it really close to that already?

The world doesn't need to suffer for this. They get their own gear which won't be very viable for raids, no matter the iLevel and we end up where a lot of people are already: raiding gear and "world" gear.

I'm sure there's a lot wrong with this: It's undoubtedly radical and it's a fantasy that the devs would likely consider it but we could certainly talk about it. And I'm not so sure about the devs if there was a real push to make it happen. OK. I've got my shields up. Let the brick-throwing begin.

[Tumile]

Full linear raid progression isn't really that great of a thing. Active raiding guilds hated running old content to gear up new people. It wasn't entertaining for the veteran players, because they outgeared much of it and knew it like the back of their hand already, and for the new players that needed the gear, it was equally boring because they one-shot everything and still missed out on progression - so it was just a grind.

On top of that, it created a very poacher friendly atmosphere, where the top guilds would actively recruit people from mid-tier guilds after they were geared there, just so they didn't have to gear them themselves. Gear was the most important factor in Vanilla, because the skill required to perform in boss fights was much lower then it might be now to play on a top rank guild.

Catch-up gear solves both of those problems to a degree. You rarely run any old content just to get gear for new people - which really wasn't "fun" anyway. And since gearing people is easy now, you don't have to use mid-tier guilds as gear-factories.

In addition to all that, catch-up gear really doesn't remove the linear progression for people that are actually active players. If you don't take a break, then catch-up gear or mechanics really do not affect you at all. Its not strictly "required" to do this linear progression, but if you are playing the game you'll do it anyway.

If I finished the previous tier, then I'll start fully geared into the next tier already. Catch-up will not change that.

I think the reward system in raids and M+ could use some tuning, but at least for me as an active player, catch-up is really not a problem. And as a raid leader, I welcome it, so we get more immediately raid-ready people, which often are people that returned from a break, or other such circumstances.

If all you ever did raid for is the gear itself, you should really ask yourself why you raid in the first place, because at that point its just an endless treadmill. You collect gear to raid, you raid to collect gear. Repeat. I raid to have fun, and I collect gear to have more fun, since being successfull is more fun then failing. In the same vein, I actually want to progress through a raid because thats whats enjoyable to me, hence playing actively from day one, improving gear and knowledge of the raid over time and getting better at it - instead of just blasting through it weeks/months later with no effort. No wonder people get bored if they raid like that.

As a hardcore neckbeard who quit after BoD having raided top 50-20 throughout Nighthold to Uldir, and going to a top 200 guild for BoD, I can whole heartedly say that your opinion is wrong, now you may think "But how can an opinion be wrong?" Fuck you thats how.

For real though, Catch up mechanics are THE MOST harmful to players who do not take a break. I love wow, I want to spend an insane amount of time on the game, while still working 38 hours a week. Which is why i was mostly a PVP player back in the day. I know that PVP and PVE had all their fights "PVE Hero, PVP Hero" etc. but the fact of the matter is, that the PVP players mostly played pvp for 2 reasons.

It's a flexible schedule compared to raiding.

And the amount of Time you could put into PVP compared to PVE.

Now, with legion bringing the M+ system that changed, and i swapped entirely away from PVP, Ive gotten glad titles since TBC, and all i did was 1 day of playing to get 2k+ raiding and get my PVP transmog if it looked cool for my class, that was all i did in legion, because i could now invest retarded amounts of hours into M+ which was generally more fun than PVP due to balance issues.

The catch up system though has always been terribly implemented. Let's have a look at BFA, the first Catch up patch, i got my friends together, we got a scuffed m+ comp going, but as most of us are also part of gallywix etc it really wasnt an issue running with shit like resto shamans for these low tier keys. it took us 3 days. 3 days and we no longer had Any reason to spam M+ what so ever. only upgrades we could get were minor Titanforge upgrades. we're talking less than 1% upgrades. some of us on multiple characters cuz they took those days off from work.

And the funny thing is, we didn't even need the gear. You don't need all that gear to clear the content, the content is generally pretty undertuned, and gear is really not that valuable. my example of this is BoD, got a rank 1 log on my resto shaman, with sub uptimal but pretty decent Azerite traits, had 2 shit ones, 4 BiS, my neck was level 38, and my item level was 402. If i had 412 ilvl it would've helped for sure, but wouldn't really have changed much, those 10 ilvls werent on my weapon, or relevant gear, it was my rings, my trinkets, pants, etc. Most of which hardly touch my healing output, only really my stamina, except the trinkets of course, but trinkets are all absolute garbage for healers anyways, Ilvl doesnt matter, just get the entwined mirror or w/e its called from King Rasta at any Ilvl as an "oh shit" button that is off the GCD.

I can brag that im a beast who is just that good at the game that i can raid lead, have the worst cooldown placements and still get a rank 1 with 10 ilvls lower than anyone else pretty much, but that isn't the case. I pressed 3 buttons, Healing rain on CD, Cloudburst on CD, and chain heal whenever people were missing health, it was pretty fucking easy, Jaina is a pretty simple fight once you have figured out the strat, so raid leading wasn't really a problem. and the Item level difference barely battered, having 10 more ilvl's would've maybe increased my output by 3%? and taking overhealing into account that would be an output difference of 1-2% on the healing meter at most.

My point is that gear is incredibly irrelevant in BFA if your goal is mythic raiding. If your goal is to compete on logs then there is so much RNG involved, that it isnt as much about gear as it is just gettigng good RNG on the a kill.

The reward structure of Wow is gear, the reward structure of most MMO-RPG's is Loot. If the Reward structure becomes irrelevant, then so does the game. and the reward structure is broken, and has become irrelevant, they made the catch-up shit so frequent that all we did was play for 3 days once every catch up patch, and then just log on for raids. The power of gear has been disintegrated compared to previous expansions, Vanilla, TBC, Wotlk, Cata, MoP, WoD, think about the strength of items in those expansions, especially trinkets, and compare it to BFA. And yes it was broken as fuck for dot classes, but what about death bringers will from ICC? That trinket was absolutely insane for Warrios, ferals, etc. there is no equalevent in BFA. they nerfed how effective secondary stats are repeatedly to the point where a lot of healing classes especially barely gains anything from an item upgrade. getting 40 ilvls on your ring? Means nothing on a resto shaman, once i have a decent amount of crit i no longer really care. My resto druid is the same in a raid format, yes Haste makes me pump super hard, but the class struggles so much with mana, and since haste barely gives u any Healing per Mana spent, but only HPS, it again doesn't really affect the class much. this is for raiding onyl of course, it changes in M+.

I want haste on my fury warrior, yeah. its some nice dps for sure, but compare it to getting your Hit cap, or getting one of your Armour penetration soft caps in Wotlk, it was so satisfying, and you could see it on ur damage numbers, u could see it on the DPS meter, You Felt the upgrade, You felt your character growing stronger, I do not feel incrimental increases to my haste, at all.

The reward structure has failed, and yes Catch-up mechanics are a part of it, Catch-up Mechanics aren't necessarily bad, but it depends on the execution. and the current execution is pretty terrible, mix that together with how uninteresting gear is, and that is how you collapse your own reward structure.

Imagine if you got paid from ur work place, but instead of buying things for the money you recieved, like a new car, you would just have a car that u upgraded slightly, every pay check, changed the heating to work 1 seconds faster, changed the exhaust to be 2% quieter, changed ur top speed by 1 km/h, every month, that does not give u the same feeling as saving up and buying an entirely new car, or your first car for that matter. the result at the end may be the same, but the road to getting there is entirely different. and on top of that, once every 3 months ALL of the upgrades u bought, would disappear, it makes them feel incredibly pointless.

You Don't NEED these upgrades in order to get to work, u just need a somewhat functional car, doesn't matter if the heater is shit, or its top speed is 100 km/h, they just make ur ride slightly more comfortable for a short duration of time, but you still need to put in 8 hours of work a day in order to get those upgrades. A lot of people don't want to go to work in order to upgrade their car in tiny incrimentals that will be removed 3 months down the road anyways. and that is what BFA feels like.

Where getting BIG upgrades, such as an entirely new car, every couple of years is a completely different story. yeah all the money u used on the previous car is lost, but this car has freaking cup holders! That is what expansions should be. Oh boy, look at this new mercedes I bought! It has Deep freeze, I always wanted a stun!

Instead for BFA i bought a new car, because the old one had too much tax and it used too much Gas, so i bought a prius. without any cup holders, I miss my cup holders man.

It might be a shit analogy, but it's hard coming up with real world examples.

[Big Thanks]

@SirCowdog

Have you found a way to make you idea work with mythic+ and rated arena on the picture?
And isnt your idea flawed because every single person who played since day 1 would feel the "content drought" anyway?
Your idea is only "good" for new players (in theory) because they would have so much content to experience if joined late.
But they would be roflstomped in PvP.
And they wouldnt be able to play with friends who were on current content anyway.

Unless you make the friends go all the way back to outdated content to help eachother out.

This is all just a mess to balance...

edit: Ah, so you want to do what Moanalisa said and have "raid gear", "world gear" and "mythic+ gear" that were only useful for each respective content?

[SirCowdog]

@SirCowdog

Have you found a way to make you idea work with mythic+ and rated arena on the picture?
And isnt your idea flawed because every single person who played since day 1 would feel the "content drought" anyway?
Your idea is only "good" for new players (in theory) because they would have so much content to experience if joined late.
But they would be roflstomped in PvP.
And they wouldnt be able to play with friends who were on current content anyway.

Unless you make the friends go all the way back to outdated content to help eachother out.

This is all just a mess to balance...

First off, the PVP issue is a completely different discussion. IMO it's a colossal mistake to even attempt to mix PVP and PVE in the same game. Really WoW should be doing like GW2, where structured PVP is a completely different system where everyone uses the same array of equipment and stats. There's literally no reason for Arena to be giving PVE awards in the first place, outside of maybe special xmog skins, titles, and mounts that can't be obtained anywhere else. I mean...imagine if Mythic raiding gave you the Gladiator title. Would that make sense?

This, of course, doesn't even open the can of worms that world PVP is. You basically would have to design the entire game around WPVP in order to make it meaningful. What Blizzard is doing right now with War mode is a dumpster fire. Impossible to balance. Impossible to reward fairly. If Blizzard is going to include WPVP in their game, it either needs to go all the way, or remove rewards from it entirely and focus on BGs and Arena as it's own separate game mode.

For M+, I don't see why it's even a problem in the first place. Why do you think M+ is causing problems? M+ is intended to be a parallel path of progression along side raiding. As long as the rewards for M+ are correctly and fairly in line with raiding based on their relative difficulty, then it's not an issue. That's an easy fix. If M+ is giving out gear that's too powerful for the challenge, then turn it down.

As for these changes not benefiting players live in the game: There is no change that will satisfy such players. It's a mistake to attempt to try and cater to them. But what you can do is try and focus on making the content last longer in absolute terms. Make the content have more depth and meaning in a general sense, and you increase the value for everyone.

[Big Thanks]

First off, the PVP issue is a completely different discussion. IMO it's a colossal mistake to even attempt to mix PVP and PVE in the same game. Really WoW should be doing like GW2, where structured PVP is a completely different system where everyone uses the same array of equipment and stats. There's literally no reason for Arena to be giving PVE awards in the first place, outside of maybe special xmog skins, titles, and mounts that can't be obtained anywhere else. I mean...imagine if Mythic raiding gave you the Gladiator title. Would that make sense?

This, of course, doesn't even open the can of worms that world PVP is. You basically would have to design the entire game around WPVP in order to make it meaningful. What Blizzard is doing right now with War mode is a dumpster fire. Impossible to balance. Impossible to reward fairly. If Blizzard is going to include WPVP in their game, it either needs to go all the way, or remove rewards from it entirely and focus on BGs and Arena as it's own separate game mode.

For M+, I don't see why it's even a problem in the first place. Why do you think M+ is causing problems? M+ is intended to be a parallel path of progression along side raiding. As long as the rewards for M+ are correctly and fairly in line with raiding based on their relative difficulty, then it's not an issue. That's an easy fix. If M+ is giving out gear that's too powerful for the challenge, then turn it down.

As for these changes not benefiting players live in the game: There is no change that will satisfy such players. It's a mistake to attempt to try and cater to them. But what you can do is try and focus on making the content last longer in absolute terms. Make the content have more depth and meaning in a general sense, and you increase the value for everyone.

Season 1
Raid 1
Mythic +

Season 2
Raid 2
Mythic + (with improved item level)

Therefore everyone would be able to skip raid 1...because myhtic + item level improved on season 2 :S

[SirCowdog]

In a sense it makes raiding it's own game-within-a-game but why not. Isn't it really close to that already?

The world doesn't need to suffer for this. They get their own gear which won't be very viable for raids, no matter the iLevel and we end up where a lot of people are already: raiding gear and "world" gear.

I'm sure there's a lot wrong with this: It's undoubtedly radical and it's a fantasy that the devs would likely consider it but we could certainly talk about it. And I'm not so sure about the devs if there was a real push to make it happen. OK. I've got my shields up. Let the brick-throwing begin.

As I was reading your post, the bolded part is exactly what I was thinking. It's also VERY similar to what I was just saying to Togabito about PVP mixing with the PVE part of the game, and there may be a lot of merit in just giving up and splitting WoW into 3 different game modes that don't really interact with each other(Open world adventure, Instanced challenges, PVP).

However, I think that's taking the easy way out. PVP and PVE have some fundamental aspects that can't really be reconciled unless they're designed to interact from the ground up. WoW doesn't have that. It's NEVER had that. WoW is designed to be a PVE game, but has PVP aspects slapped on as an afterthought. So having instanced PVP be off in its own world with its own progression and gear is almost a necessity at this point.

But Raiding and the Open world doesn't necessarily have that problem. The only real issue causing problems is the relative nature of the challenges each type of gameplay presents to the player. There is no inherent reason why raiding has to be super-difficult. LFR is an example of this. Likewise, there's no inherent reason stopping the open world from having fundamentally difficult challenges, as we have seen with things like epic vanilla quests for hunter weapons, or acquiring the Scepter of the Shifting Sands from the gates of AQ. There are solo challenges like the Mage Tower which provide VERY enjoyable and popular content that are a kind of hybrid between the two.

Where I think the real problem stems from is in making raiding the primary focus of the game, and giving it a disproportionate amount of attention from the design team. I understand that raiding is what traditional MMORPG players generally come to the genre for, but I'm not so certain that continuing to make it the ONLY focus of end-game is the path forward. I think there is room for the open world to be both challenging and rewarding, and done in a way that doesn't alienate casual players.

- - - Updated - - -

Season 1
Raid 1
Mythic +

Season 2
Raid 2
Mythic + (with improved item level)

Therefore everyone would be able to skip raid 1...because myhtic + item level improved on season 2 :S

I'm not sure I'm following your logic.

Are you saying that a player who starts in season 2 would be able to immediately jump to completing the higher difficulty of M+ with starter gear? That doesn't make sense.

Or are you saying that Season 2 of M+ just drops better gear from the lowest difficulty?

[Big Thanks]

I'm not sure I'm following your logic.

Are you saying that a player who starts in season 2 would be able to immediately jump to completing the higher difficulty of M+ with starter gear? That doesn't make sense.

Or are you saying that Season 2 of M+ just drops better gear from the lowest difficulty?

So, your idea is that people still have to do the "Raid 1" if they subscribed only in Season 2, right?

But mythic + is there with improved item level from season 2.
A Mythic +2 gives item level of LFR...of Raid 2 from season 2.

I simply dont understand how can this work with Mythic +.

Unless you make lower keys give item level from.....Season 1 Raids?

[MoanaLisa]

As I was reading your post, the bolded part is exactly what I was thinking. It's also VERY similar to what I was just saying to Togabito about PVP mixing with the PVE part of the game, and there may be a lot of merit in just giving up and splitting WoW into 3 different game modes that don't really interact with each other(Open world adventure, Instanced challenges, PVP).

One of the things I realized a while ago is that if you look at it objectively, not what was intended but what has actually happened, raiding is as different from PVE as PVP is different from PVE. You've spent days arguing about people doing WQ's getting gear as good as raid gear. That goes away. Less-skilled players walk the path of the open world doing what they can to achieve their goal which is more about time than difficulty. There's some form of BiS for the game(s) that you play and that's that. There's no more need to complain that people want to raid for doing nothing. They can't. They have to walk the raiding path to raid. And why not from an RPG perspective. Open world adventurers were equipped for what they were doing. Small armies on raids were equipped quite differently.

The ship has sailed with respect to players thinking of themselves as raiders or non-raiders. Splitting PVE apart from raiding solves all of that by providing separate paths into raiding that have nothing to do with World Quests. It's not even different gear as such. It's just itemized to emphasize certain useful secondary characteristics depending on where you are.

I'm not really interested any longer in Blizzard trying to find some design that makes everyone in PVE/PVP/Raiding happy together. It won't happen and the game design at its foundation won't allow it to happen as long as the 3 are integrated. So split them. Find out what raiders want and give it to them. Find out what people who don't raid want and give that to them. And everyone can do LFR if they like to see the raids. LFR is likely the end of the open world path as it should be.

It's a big radical design shift but it seems to me that we are right now at a point where it makes perfect sense. Zero chance it happens but it's worth exploring as a thought experiment.

[clevin]

Like seriously?

I've heard so many ridiculous arguments against catch-up mechanics it's not even funny. This isn't 2004-2007. Ion CLEARLY stated that WoW players are "seasonal" which means they have noticed a trend of people playing for a few months, then quitting.

well, one reason they are is due to catch up mechanics. Design influences how people play and *which* people play (those who like more linear gear progression will have left).

The thing is, we need some catchup mechanism or people get discouraged if they fall a little behind, etc. The real question to me is how fast someone should be able to catchup. Its one thing to be able to catch up on 1-3 toons... but being able to catch up on a dozen is a little overboard.

[Sencha]

Linear progression was far better than what we have today. A new raid comes out, nobody plays the previous ones and you can start doing the same daily chores for more ilvl. Horrible design.

[Relapses]

One of the things I realized a while ago is that if you look at it objectively, not what was intended but what has actually happened, raiding is as different from PVE as PVP is different from PVE. You've spent days arguing about people doing WQ's getting gear as good as raid gear. That goes away. Less-skilled players walk the path of the open world doing what they can to achieve their goal which is more about time than difficulty. There's some form of BiS for the game(s) that you play and that's that. There's no more need to complain that people want to raid for doing nothing. They can't. They have to walk the raiding path to raid. And why not from an RPG perspective. Open world adventurers were equipped for what they were doing. Small armies on raids were equipped quite differently.

The ship has sailed with respect to players thinking of themselves as raiders or non-raiders. Splitting PVE apart from raiding solves all of that by providing separate paths into raiding that have nothing to do with World Quests. It's not even different gear as such. It's just itemized to emphasize certain useful secondary characteristics depending on where you are.

I'm not really interested any longer in Blizzard trying to find some design that makes everyone in PVE/PVP/Raiding happy together. It won't happen and the game design at its foundation won't allow it to happen as long as the 3 are integrated. So split them. Find out what raiders want and give it to them. Find out what people who don't raid want and give that to them. And everyone can do LFR if they like to see the raids. LFR is likely the end of the open world path as it should be.

It's a big radical design shift but it seems to me that we are right now at a point where it makes perfect sense. Zero chance it happens but it's worth exploring as a thought experiment.

The problem with this is the same problem that is inherent to most of the discussions on these forums: Most players don't know what they want. While it's interesting to think about (as you said), it's unlikely Blizzard is going to do anything to further fracture its already fractured playerbase. (Hell, Classic is disruptive enough as-is.) If anything, I think they'll continue to try to develop the retail game to appeal to the broadest audience possible.

[SirCowdog]

Unless you make lower keys give item level from.....Season 1 Raids?

Yes.

Just pulling number out of thin air:

Raid 1 drops iLVL 500
M+0 to M+5 drops 450-480 or something.

Raid 2 drop iLVL 550
M+6 to M+10 drops 500-530


The idea is to keep M+ drops in line with the level of difficulty that the equivalent raid tier. Since M+ is only 5 man content, it's going to be easier in a general sense, than the challenge presented by something for 10+ players. Less coordination. Less scheduling. Less time investment.

A player who's just starting the expansion wouldn't be able to just instantly jump into M+6 without somehow acquiring gear to get ready for it. Whether he does tier 1 raiding or M+0 to +5 wouldn't matter. That's the whole point: It's parallel progression.
@MoanaLisa This is a bit of a crossover for what you were talking about:

Now, raid drops are going to have gear that's better for raiding. We already see that even today. Hopefully we'll get gear that has bonuses only to dungeons. The same thing could be done for the open world. Raw iLVL would allow players to overpower any type of content(Open world/raiding/dungeons), but a player with the right gear for that content would be better at it.

This way if a person has 500 open world gear, it wouldn't mean they could just skip to raid tier 2, but wouldn't be as good at it as someone with 500 raid gear. And it might even be worth it for them to go back to Tier 1 to get raid gear.

The various buffs to each respective type of could be tuned to make crossover easier or harder. Hell, it could even be done via Essences, where a player slots in bonuses to whatever type of gameplay they want, with the essences necessarily only dropping in the content they're for. Thus allowing players to progress as far as they want in the type of content they enjoy, while preserving progress they haven't done in other areas.

Does that make sense? Do you guys think something along those lines has merit? I think it does. Look at what Final Fantasy XIV does with their crossover between combat classes and crafting classes. It's very similar.

[lllBlackSunlll]

Would moving back to a more linear progression be an entirely bad thing? I think a lot of people would hate it, but at the same time I think people would feel a better sense of accomplishment for making progress, since it doesn't become invalidated by catch-up mechanics.

I have mulled over this since Classic was announced and feel that WoW started out as a job but has turned into doing chores. Chores are some individual things of work that need to be done, like doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, taking out the cat litter, etc. These things do accumulate to something positive, like a clean house, but is generally left unmeaningful.

A job on the other hand are maybe tasks you have to do over and over again, like being a chef, the better at a dish you are the better your resume looks, eventually taking on more responsibilities which you are rewarded with pay or going to a better restaurant. Both of these require work, but the point is the reward incentive.

In retail, to be successful we have to do a lot of chores. Do all of the world quests, do your weekly 15 key, do your weekly raids, etc, all of which generally help you to the same one thing. On a job you are on this one linear path to work on one goal, and everything you do is for that one single goal.

In BC we would first need to be heroic ready, then get the attunments/keys for said heroics, then once geared get the keys for the raids and then do the raids, then set on a linear path of going from one raid, mastering it, then off to the next and never returning to the previous.

For chores in this case we are constantly reliving previous content in some way because it benefits us, which is helpful for new characters/alts by being carried by geared ones. In other ways it dulls down the game because for almost 2 years you'll be doing the exact same thing, at least a little bit, such as still doing that Mythic Freehold or the same world quests.

As a job, once we out gear heroic dungeons or a raid, we had no reason to go back to that. In some ways this was great because the player really felt like they accomplished something, like going from a cashier, to a department head, to a manager. You really do outgrow a lot of responsibilities and content while experience the absolute hardest the game has to offer. The downside of this model means we have to accept that not all the cashier will be managers. For instance <1% of Vanilla players actually killed any of the Naxx bosses, and around 6% of players in BC killed any of the Sunwell bosses before the 2.4 nerf.

I am not arguing one is better than the other, but I do believe those are the differences. What I am seeing from the community is doing chores is a problem.
The chore model is attractive because you do quick work and are rewarded, doing unmeaningful work for great rewards.
As a job you work hard, slowly rewarded, but you keep doing it not just for the reward, but also do it for the work, the player likes to do the work and knows the rewards will come.
Once chores loose their charm and the rewards lack meaning, people will just stop doing them. With a job model, players do the work for the sake of doing the work, it gives the player meaning.

TL;DR Current model doesn't give players meaning, and don't want to progress. Previously players would put in the work for the work sake. This isn't the only reason, but I believe it is the biggest.

[SirCowdog]

I've often thought I'd like a separate gearing system like this (world gear good for world content, raid gear good for raid content etc...) but then it seems you run into two problems. One being that it becomes excessive work to gear for more than one type of content meaning worldies are less likely to do pvp or raid, or raiders being less likely to do pvp or world content. And that would possibly lead into raiding just dying on the vine as it's the least played content in the game overall and the investment would stop making as much sense for Blizzard. Keeping LFR for everyone may mitigate this, but I just can't see raiding staying as part of the game for long if it were split off into it's own thing apart from the rest of the game.

That's a fundamental flaw with the design. A lot of reason why many players raid is ONLY to get the "best" gear so they can overpower everything else and show off. Take that away and raiding has to stand on its own merits. If suddenly players can be rewarded with meaningful content and gear in other areas, they can play they content they're actually interested in instead of feeling forced to raid in order to get more powerful.

This is something I touched on in my earlier replies to MoanaLisa about not being sure that raiding is the only path forward for WoW.

[SirCowdog]

Catchup mechanisms also function as a method of keeping people like myself interested in the game by giving us something to do. Remove catchup and what is there for the non-raider to do in the game?

Have you ever considered that if the open world had more depth and challenge, that you wouldn't need catch-up gear to provide you with things to do? Or rather, that catch-up wouldn't be as needed?

[MoanaLisa]

That's a fundamental flaw with the design. A lot of reason why many players raid is ONLY to get the "best" gear so they can overpower everything else and show off. Take that away and raiding has to stand on its own merits. If suddenly players can be rewarded with meaningful content and gear in other areas, they can play they content they're actually interested in instead of feeling forced to raid in order to get more powerful.

This is something I touched on in my earlier replies to MoanaLisa about not being sure that raiding is the only path forward for WoW.

LFR is there for both paths exactly for the same reasons it's there now. To amortize the development costs for raids by getting as many players as possible into them. Lots of people still get to see raids and the gear collected on the "world" path is sufficient to see people into LFR which would work much as it does now for world players but be the end of the storyline for the patch or whatever. It's just a simple acknowledgment that supports my thesis about the whole idea that LFR is for one group of players; organized raids for another. Mind you the "raiding path" would feature more linear progression than we have now. Perhaps not as linear as BC but perfectly able to work your way up through it without grinding stuff in the world. Mythic dungeons is where the catch-up mechanisms for raids would reside. You could even do attunements in the open world that reward specific gear to get people into normal/early heroic linear raiding.

[SirCowdog]

LFR is there for both paths exactly for the same reasons it's there now. To amortize the development costs for raids by getting as many players as possible into them. Lots of people still get to see raids and the gear collected on the "world" path is sufficient to see people into LFR which would work much as it does now for world players but be the end of the storyline for the patch or whatever. It's just a simple acknowledgment that supports my thesis about the whole idea that LFR is for one group of players; organized raids for another. Mind you the "raiding path" would feature more linear progression than we have now. Perhaps not as linear as BC but perfectly able to work your way up through it without grinding stuff in the world. Mythic dungeons is where the catch-up mechanisms for raids would reside. You could even do attunements in the open world that reward specific gear to get people into normal/early heroic linear raiding.

The thing that got me thinking about this was how many crutches are required to prop up raiding.

Catch up gear sacrificing previous content in order to get people into the most current raiding tier.
LFR needed to justify the expenditure of so many resources required to develop raids.
Putting the climax of the story arc into a raid in order to encourage lore junkies into it(special "true" ending in mythic even!).
Putting the best gear in raids.

That leads me to wonder about the problem of how you support raiding while breaking off all the things that prop it up. Would raiding still be enough, on its own merits, to justify its existence? I really don't know.

And because of that I think that a system that has at least some amount of crossover is going to be far more likely to succeed than having a hard separation between them.

[Daffan]

TBC is actually WHY the landscape of raiding changed.

There were too many guilds stuck in Kara for the entire expansion... and too few seeing the raid at Magisters Terrace (the name escapes me).

The lesser progressed guilds were in a constant state of having their better players poached by more progressed guilds, making it almost impossible to actually progress as a guild.

The poaching guilds hated finishing the gearing of new recruits in old content.

The good thing to come out of it was that Blizzard realized through Kara (and later ZA) that a pretty good bit of people WANTED to raid but just could not do it very well. This helped set the path to easier raids and the multiple difficulty levels that opened up over the next two expansions... starting with the very next raid (LK Naxx).

Yes and there are other better solutions than just adding catchup.

Flex. Premade Finder. Cross-realm. B.net friends and the change in the lockout system (Can kill boss infinite times, just loot once). If these systems were available in TBC, catchup would have never been implemented, they weren't because technology didn't exist for them yet (server-meshing tech, scaling tech etc). Now catchup is in the game like opening Pandora's box and they can't go back on it which is screwing the game.

Guilds got stuck at Kara because you had to run 2-3 groups of 10 before you could do a single group of 25. Boom flex alone solves that.

Legion solved the problem of out-dated content quite handily with the Legendary system, which was complained about at first but those problems were mostly solved by the end of the expansion.

I don't buy it.

I played Legion at launch, got to 870ilvl through M+ and than quit for a long time. When I got back, it was ToS release so that means I never got to do Nighthold, EVER. And that was only 1 raid before ToS, people packed up instantly and never did it again.

Let's just assume your right and people did go back for the chance at legendaries. 1) You overgear it so it's a zergfest chore like a 5 man. 2) The loot drops are useless therefore it feels like a waste of time for 99%. Useless.