Why can't gear just be gear? Why all these shitty systems?

[HuxNeva]

Except for Azerite power, artifact power, and legiondaries. All three of those systems rewarded you more for easy content than for hard content.

Only if you wanted to go apeshit grinding out unintended levels of upgrades for some reason. The average player had zero interest in doing that.

[Ghostile]

they've got this dumbass idea that there has to be infinite progression.

people called for this shit for years, having stuff to do post-max. couple that with activision's unending need for ever increasing MAU's, and you get this infinite horseshit.

Or...maybe...just maybe its the "people called for it" part.

But nah cant be, had to be the evil overlords at Activision that decided it regardless of that part.

[justandulas]

Thats wow since vanilla tho, with reps and whatnot

Not even comparable. You can get gear in classic and keep it til the end of the game. My gear isn’t invalidated every patch and I have to truly earn upgrades by climbing the progression ladder

[Ghostile]

Not even comparable. You can get gear in classic and keep it til the end of the game. My gear isn’t invalidated every patch and I have to truly earn upgrades by climbing the progression ladder

Remember resistance gear?

Entry requirements?

[HuxNeva]

they've got this dumbass idea that there has to be infinite progression.

people called for this shit for years, having stuff to do post-max. couple that with activision's unending need for ever increasing MAU's, and you get this infinite horseshit.

"Hey Blizz, this game is dumb. I'm done. There's nothing to do."
"Hey man, I hear you. Why don't you play an alt? Just do it all over again, but on a different class"
"I don't want to play alts. I bet you'd like me to as it is 12x the content for zero effort on your part. I want to be able to progress my main. Give me stuff to do"
"I heard you. well, here you go, open ended progression for your main. enjoy"
" WTF Blizz. I'm never done. You want me to grind forever? I don't have time for my alts as time spent on them could be spent on inching out progression on my main"
"XD"

[Nnyco]

Yes, the devs are completely out of touch.

They have for a long time now seen the community as the "enemy". Cause they want to make this game they feel like doing to please the higher ups (aka have a milking cow formula they can keep repeating every xpac) but we are inconveniencing them by not liking it. So, they choose to ignore us instead.

So, at this point only one thing will bring the message across. Unsub, don't buy the next xpac, etc. Even then i am not sure it will work. But at the end of the day we are consumers, and if we are not happy with the product we can find better things to do with our time and money. If they refuse to improve the product, then it deserves to die.

Careful buddy, you almost dropped your tinfoil hat.

[HuxNeva]

Remember resistance gear?

Was that the stuff people believed they needed for surviving raids before they learned to play?

[justandulas]

Remember resistance gear?

Entry requirements?

Again, those are EARNED and earned forever. They aren’t something that comes and goes with seasons like retail seasonal content.

It would only be comparable if the only way to gear was to climb the raids and have to start at the first raid, then move on to BoD, etc etc

Instead, each patch invalidates the others prior and makes them irrelevant due to “catch up mechanics”

Wow died on the altar of accessibility.

Good mmmorpgs have haves and have nots and retail wow is afraid of that

[derpkitteh]

Or...maybe...just maybe its the "people called for it" part.

But nah cant be, had to be the evil overlords at Activision that decided it regardless of that part.

those cunts opened the door, activision walked through. it's a fortuitous combination for them, bad game design for the rest of us that understand that infinite progression is a fucking bad thing.

"Hey Blizz, this game is dumb. I'm done. There's nothing to do."
"Hey man, I hear you. Why don't you play an alt? Just do it all over again, but on a different class"
"I don't want to play alts. I bet you'd like me to as it is 12x the content for zero effort on your part. I want to be able to progress my main. Give me stuff to do"
"I heard you. well, here you go, open ended progression for your main. enjoy"
" WTF Blizz. I'm never done. You want me to grind forever? I don't have time for my alts as time spent on them could be spent on inching out progression on my main"
"XD"

two different kinds of people.

most of the people that wanted infinite progression now probably regret asking for it though, now that they understand that it leads to nothing but boring bullshit.

[shade3891]

Having systems on top of systems is fine, but systems like corruption have to big of an effect. If they reduce all effects by 70% things are a lot more inline.

[Ghostile]

Again, those are EARNED and earned forever. They aren’t something that comes and goes with seasons like retail seasonal content.

It would only be comparable if the only way to gear was to climb the raids and have to start at the first raid, then move on to BoD, etc etc

Instead, each patch invalidates the others prior and makes them irrelevant due to “catch up mechanics”

Wow died on the altar of accessibility.

Good mmmorpgs have haves and have nots and retail wow is afraid of that

You say it like people didn't boost for money or new recruits.

Its a known thing people dont get good when faced with ab obstacle, they quit.

- - - Updated - - -

those cunts opened the door, activision walked through. it's a fortuitous combination for them, bad game design for the rest of us that understand that infinite progression is a fucking bad thing.

So "fuck those people for liking what I dont like"?

[derpkitteh]

So "fuck those people for liking what I dont like"?

who likes it?

now that we've had it for however many expansions, nobody seems to like it. nobody is really happy with the current state of anything.

if some people do like it, whatever. but they're vastly outnumbered at this point. i'd 100% bet money that the vast majority of people that called for it deeply regret doing so.

[oplawlz]

"Hey Blizz, this game is dumb. I'm done. There's nothing to do."
"Hey man, I hear you. Why don't you play an alt? Just do it all over again, but on a different class"
"I don't want to play alts. I bet you'd like me to as it is 12x the content for zero effort on your part. I want to be able to progress my main. Give me stuff to do"
"I heard you. well, here you go, open ended progression for your main. enjoy"
" WTF Blizz. I'm never done. You want me to grind forever? I don't have time for my alts as time spent on them could be spent on inching out progression on my main"
"XD"

The simple rebuttal to this is that last quote is from an entirely different group of people. People like me who get bored easily playing only one character, and now have no way to keep alts relevant without putting an unhealthy amount of hours into wow.

Where bliz is falling down is making the idea of infinite progression optional. Of course now it's nearly impossible, because they've added so many cosmetics to the game nothing is particularly special(I don't blame them for this btw - the game is 15 years old, rewards are going to pile up). For the casual non-completionist there just isn't any reason to do post cap content that doesn't give power or something specific that we like.

[Lurker1]

There is content, you do that content, you get gear. The more difficult the content the better the gear with better stats. A good formula, it worked for ages.

Now, I'm not one to stifle progress. You want to add new systems to freshen things up, fine. But it's already been many, many years of systems after systems that have been very poorly received. Criticized ceaselessly by both casuals and hardcore players.

And yet they haven't learned at all. Instead they seem to be doubling down, creating even shittier systems. It's like when they say they'll get rid of a certain annoying part of the game, they somehow make it worse. Like with removing titanforging which was supposed to make the game less RNG, to adding corruption which is more RNG. Is this company just completely out of touch? So they hire a lawyer as a game director to use his lawyer-speak and constantly put out fires that he started with his own lies.

Time played metric or active users per day or month you pick.

- - - Updated - - -

who likes it?

now that we've had it for however many expansions, nobody seems to like it. nobody is really happy with the current state of anything.

if some people do like it, whatever. but they're vastly outnumbered at this point. i'd 100% bet money that the vast majority of people that called for it deeply regret doing so.

I regret nothing i been no lifeing wow from the first day 8.3 dropped and it feels good man!

[RumbleShakes]

This is how I'd want items to be found...
Bosses drop particular trophies.
These trophies are turned in for a varying currency.
Currency is spent on buying an item.
Items have set bonuses that augment a particular class ability.
Items have Stamina + main stat + random secondary stat.
You'll have to purchase a new item to get the desired secondary stat.
Items have experience needed to reach peak strength or max rank.
Each rank increases stats and bonus.
Bonus is increased based on an average of set ranks.

Example item:
Brethren Chestguard of Critical Strike
Rank 1 of 5
100 Armor
500 Stamina
400 primary attribute (changes based on current spec)
250 critical chance
Set Bonus (1/2): Causes [ability] to reduce your next ability cost by 5%.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Because once someone gets BiS why continue to play? GG until next expansion and they got to find a way to bait a lot of people to stick around for the next 6 months+ of nothing coming out.

[Marrilaife]

Why can't gear be gear?

Because people want to play 40h a week, continuously "progress" yet the power creep needs to be kept in check, so the systems need to give people illusion of progression while in fact they're running in circles.

Back in the days wow wasn't balanced around spamming content 40h a week, everything had a lockout or daily / weekly limit and people whined and wanted spammable, no-life-able content. So they got it.

Also apparently psychologists found out that manipulating people's emotions with rng creates more "excitement" than linear progression that is deemed "boring", so obviously they put these systems everywhere, rng on top of rng, because it's more addictive. At least we don't have cash shop with loot crates in wow, contrary to some other shitty manipulative games.

[Zantera]

The gear process is one of those things where people tend to remember the good but not the bad (like with most things). I don't think the gearing process has ever been flawless, though the closest was probably in MoP where you had a mix of 'what you get is what you get' with some RNG (thunderforge/warforge but no titanforge) and the item upgrade system which rewarded you for playing and letting you upgrade items.

While the current RNG loot system has a bunch of problems, and I'm not trying to brush those over by any means, the old loot system was a main reason why expansions like WotLK and Cata are mostly remembered as 'running around the capital'. The old loot system definitely benefited the type of player who loves to play a patch for 3-4 weeks, then quit for 5 months only to return to the next patch and be completely up to speed. However for those of us who played the game through all that time, it was a big struggle because a lot of people hit their 'bis'-list and then they would start to play less and as a raider you really suffered. With that said, I don't think insane amounts of RNG and the 'carrot on a stick' approach now is the best solution either, again I think MoP had a fairly good balance of 1. bis is bis 2. it might go +5 ilvl but no 30 ilvl or sockets or corruption 3. being able to upgrade the items you wanted by doing daily/weekly events.

[Azelas]

gear cant just be gear because there are 4 stats in the game.

Therefore making gear interesting is 100% impossible. All gear feels the exact same.

[Swnem]

Careful buddy, you almost dropped your tinfoil hat.

What tinfoil hat? These things were said in interviews. They are happy with features highly criticized. Corruption, flying, to name just a couple.

Maybe the rose tinted glasses are clouding your vision.