Are the infinite power grind here to stay?

[Onikaroshi]

If the highest itemlevel loot was collectible like herbs, some people would love it for sure. But that wouldn't be so good for the game. This is on the devs to figure out what is okay for most players and for the game. I mean this is what they studied for YEARS. Some players would be okay with training dummies as bosses. Would that be good for the game? Problem is that they don't even seem to protect the game as a whole anymore. If something can be used for a bandaid that holds the shit together, just use it! (See the course of BfA, see the garrisons etc)
The devs should know their own game after more than a decade, know what people generally like or don't like, see what worked in the past and what didn't, and have a bit more holistic approach. I mean some of it is really just common sense.
Some of the decisions in the game is just burlesque at this point. The devs are like Dory, re-learning everything from scratch after each expac (well, that's the PR of this nonsense anyways), and it doesn't help.

We're not taking extremes like collecting high level loot like herbs, or Target dummy bosses though, obviously those are not good for the health of the game.

Things like azerite though are less clear. I like azerite (and legion AP), I just didn't like having to re earn things at the start of the expansion due to getting upgrades. Infinite grinds aren't harmful to the game, of anything they're actually good for overall well being of the the game, some players however can't control themselves and must grind grind grind, so they hate it.

Or things like corruption, it doesn't harm the game, it's fun for a lot of people, but others don't like it, so which side do you go with? On corruption blizzard has already said they are pleased with the system and may figure out something going into sl

[Relapses]

Once more: If Blizzard doesn't bungle the balance moving into SL and improves acquisition methods for affixed gear, they have a system that not only keeps gear interesting, but also provides the endless replay factor the current dev team seems to covet.

If they address these issues then I see SL turning out to be very positively received.

[Jester Joe]

It really is in a lot of cases, especially when you're running Vision of Perfection, plus the addition of 3 other essences, it's roughly 1050 dps per neck level for me which vision just capped for me.

Regardless it's still power gains, not sure what's so hard for you to realize, especially when guilds wipe at 0% on Mythic on a daily basis.

Because as said a million times across plenty of threads by now, unless you're pushing world first, that tiny little extra isn't going to be the make it or break it and there's probably some other issues really.

And again, I'll sim it myself when I get to it, but that much DPS increase was about the equivalent to getting rank 3 breath of the dying. So no, I'm not going to believe 2 item levels is going to be on par with that.

[Lei]

We're not taking extremes like collecting high level loot like herbs, or Target dummy bosses though, obviously those are not good for the health of the game.

Things like azerite though are less clear. I like azerite (and legion AP), I just didn't like having to re earn things at the start of the expansion due to getting upgrades. Infinite grinds aren't harmful to the game, of anything they're actually good for overall well being of the the game, some players however can't control themselves and must grind grind grind, so they hate it.

Or things like corruption, it doesn't harm the game, it's fun for a lot of people, but others don't like it, so which side do you go with? On corruption blizzard has already said they are pleased with the system and may figure out something going into sl

So what if there is a 3rd part of the playerbase who can't give a shit and find the infinite power boring? Then you have one part that can't control themselves, the ones that enjoy it, and the ones that find it boring. Well of course we don't know how many people are in each groups, but just what if players have more than one reason to not like it, but only one reason to like it which is just "I like it".
My problem with infinite power is that it's cheap. If it was a story progression like with the mop cloak, sure why not. But just for some boring numbers on a broing gear piece? Eugh.

[Onikaroshi]

So what if there is a 3rd part of the playerbase who can't give a shit and find the infinite power boring? Then you have one part that can't control themselves, the ones that enjoy it, and the ones that find it boring. Well of course we don't know how many people are in each groups, but just what if players have more than one reason to not like it, but only one reason to like it which is just "I like it".
My problem with infinite power is that it's cheap. If it was a story progression like with the mop cloak, sure why not. But just for some boring numbers on a broing gear piece? Eugh.

You're just exacerbating the issue and showing even clearer why it's not clear decisions to be made. No matter what you do you're pissing off someone, so you have to be very careful.

Then there's things that no one likes but may be better for the health of the game, possibly their reasoning behind things like the GCD change.

[Zyky]

Because as said a million times across plenty of threads by now, unless you're pushing world first, that tiny little extra isn't going to be the make it or break it and there's probably some other issues really.

And again, I'll sim it myself when I get to it, but that much DPS increase was about the equivalent to getting rank 3 breath of the dying. So no, I'm not going to believe 2 item levels is going to be on par with that.

Doesn't really matter if there's other issues or not, a 0% wipe is the difference between one person being a single neck level higher. It isn't an insignificant value, you're just trying to justify being lazy.

[Onikaroshi]

I’m sure it’s still gonna have the other issues that infinite power systems always had, mainly:

“Oh hey, you just started an alt? Great! Now you need to cap anima for x weeks to get close to the level everyone expects for raiding!”

“Oh, you’ve got a busy month? ...make sure you log in and get your anima, don’t want to fall behind! Don’t worry, it’s mindless. Even at your busiest, we’re encouraging you to do something that is literally just designed to waste your time.”

Games been like that since at least TBC when badges were introduced. All they need to do is have the cap be rolling. Miss a week? That weeks cap extends into the next weeks, so if you would have had to get 100, you instead just get 200 and are caught back up.

And if the caps can be reached through normal play (Torghast, dungeons, raids, etc) it's not mindless. When they were talking about the cap they talked about reaching it through just normal play.

[Relapses]

I’m sure it’s still gonna have the other issues that infinite power systems always had, mainly:

“Oh hey, you just started an alt? Great! Now you need to cap anima for x weeks to get close to the level everyone expects for raiding!”

“Oh, you’ve got a busy month? ...make sure you log in and get your anima, don’t want to fall behind! Don’t worry, it’s mindless. Even at your busiest, we’re encouraging you to do something that is literally just designed to waste your time.”

Considering we have no information about how the system will work it's a bit cynical to assume that's how it'll be rolled out.

[Onikaroshi]

That's an easy solution, but they won't do it because they want to keep people hooked. They want you to feel like you can't afford to miss a week.

It's all speculation, but lately they don't seem to want people to be permanently behind (which a system without rolling caps would be)

[Kathranis]

The devs have said they found Corrupted gear to be a success so it's likely we'll get some type of similar system for 9.0. How it'll look is still up in the air but I think it's pretty safe to say that Titanforging is gone. We may see Warforging a la MoP/WoD, however.

They're bringing back Legion-style legendaries in Shadowlands, though they will be acquired deterministically through the forge in Torghast, cutting out the RNG.

I know that they don't want to remove RNG from gearing entirely, since they want you to have an incentive to keep doing content, and it seems they have data indicating that despite complaints it pays off for them, but I doubt there will be room for a Corruption-style gear system when players are already mixing and matching Legendaries.

Their big key phrase for Shadowlands is "player choice" so I doubt they will have many systems that don't at least have fallback deterministic options as bad luck protection. They seem to really want you to be able to set goals and work towards them.

My guess is that gear can still randomly upgrade to some extent, either smaller ilvl boosts or sockets, but the currency used to forge/upgrade new Legendaries will also be used to manually upgrade gear, similar to sockets in 8.3 and Benthic gear in 8.2.

Since their goal is seemingly to put weekly caps on power progression, this might mean that for the first x weeks you'll be working on unlocking and/or upgrading your chosen legendaries, and then deeper into the season you'll be able to use those resources to instead upgrade your unforged BIS gear, and it'll ideally be staggered such that getting full forged BIS comes relatively late in the season.

[Advent]

If the casuals who only do WQs are crying who cares. The reality is this is an mmorpg not a single player game. If you don't want to participate with a group of any kind for M+ or raiding(casually or any degree of hardcore) then you have no right to be complaining about not having anything to do because you're not playing the genre at all.

So your idea is to completely ignore what is likely the most populated part of the game? Because we can infer from previous data and comments from Blizzard that organized group content represents a very small part of overall players. Where in MMOs was it decided that not grouping meant you were playing the genre incorrectly? I seem to recall an MMO being some world inhabited by many other players. Does that somehow mean I must go out of my way to schedule my time around the genre now? That , I believe, ignores what some people probably choose not to bother with raiding or dungeons to avoid.

[Zyky]

So your idea is to completely ignore what is likely the most populated part of the game? Because we can infer from previous data and comments from Blizzard that organized group content represents a very small part of overall players. Where in MMOs was it decided that not grouping meant you were playing the genre incorrectly? I seem to recall an MMO being some world inhabited by many other players. Does that somehow mean I must go out of my way to schedule my time around the genre now? That , I believe, ignores what some people probably choose not to bother with raiding or dungeons to avoid.

MMO means that it's a MULTIPLAYER game, it's in the genre name. Solo content deserves minimal attention as it isn't what the game was built on and it's really the reason the community has gotten so shit.

[Jester Joe]

Doesn't really matter if there's other issues or not, a 0% wipe is the difference between one person being a single neck level higher. It isn't an insignificant value, you're just trying to justify being lazy.

So how many times are you just going to make up random statistics/assumptions to try to prove a moot point?

[Aliven]

Considering we have no information about how the system will work it's a bit cynical to assume that's how it'll be rolled out.

We have the past. We should learn from it. Its literally the only reason we have memories...

[Very Tired]

MMO means that it's a MULTIPLAYER game, it's in the genre name. Solo content deserves minimal attention as it isn't what the game was built on and it's really the reason the community has gotten so shit.

MMO means there are other players with you online. It doesn't mean you literally have to do everything with them. There are a many other MMOs out there with a primary focus on solo content where this argument doesn't even exist.

And personally, the more I've grouped with this "community" over the years, the less I've wanted to do with them. I just stick with my friendly guild and stay the heck away from randoms.

[Relapses]

We have the past. We should learn from it. Its literally the only reason we have memories...

The past does not predict the future. Why be pointlessly cynical about Blizzard's approach to game design? Are you really so bitter that you need to validate your very original opinion that Blizzard hates its players and only does (or doesn't) do anything is because fuck you?

[Doffen]

Because as said a million times across plenty of threads by now, unless you're pushing world first, that tiny little extra isn't going to be the make it or break it and there's probably some other issues really.

And again, I'll sim it myself when I get to it, but that much DPS increase was about the equivalent to getting rank 3 breath of the dying. So no, I'm not going to believe 2 item levels is going to be on par with that.

Just gonna chim in that I did this sim last wednesday with neck at 80 and 81. There was 280 dps upgrade per 2 item level on the neck on a Havoc DH on a Patchwerk fight. I guess its a tad bit more on cleave/aoe but tbh I was surprised it was this much. Percentage wise a HoA level is stronger now than a Legionfall point was in Legion. I guess it depends on spec and so on but seeing a 1k+ dps upgrade seems a bit much. Though I can't say it isn't either but not near that on my sim at least.

I'm moving along

[Jester Joe]

Just gonna chim in that I did this sim last wednesday with neck at 80 and 81. There was 280 dps upgrade per 2 item level on the neck on a Havoc DH on a Patchwerk fight. I guess its a tad bit more on cleave/aoe but tbh I was surprised it was this much. Percentage wise a HoA level is stronger now than a Legionfall point was in Legion. I guess it depends on spec and so on but seeing a 1k+ dps upgrade seems a bit much. Though I can't say it isn't either but not near that on my sim at least.

I'm moving along

Honestly the range of 50-200 was what I was expecting, 280 isn't that far off but still a surprising amount yeah.

[Doffen]

Honestly the range of 50-200 was what I was expecting, 280 isn't that far off but still a surprising amount yeah.

Haven't really thought about it, but seeing I have a rank 3 Twilight Devastation the extra stam from the ilvl the neck gets might be giving it an extra push since it's based on health. Didn't really check the numbers from each damage ability in the sims either so can't say for sure. I might have underestimated the little boost neck-levels gives for the essences but yeah, was expecting more like 150-200 myself.

Anyways, didn't intend to break myself into the discussion but I find the damage boost and numbers interesting.

[Rogue Karl]

Games been like that since at least TBC when badges were introduced. All they need to do is have the cap be rolling. Miss a week? That weeks cap extends into the next weeks, so if you would have had to get 100, you instead just get 200 and are caught back up.

And if the caps can be reached through normal play (Torghast, dungeons, raids, etc) it's not mindless. When they were talking about the cap they talked about reaching it through just normal play.

It really wasn't the same. Badges only went out of control during sunwell in tbc. The first wave of gear was usually worse then blue dungeon gear in most cases less you needed fire resist.