valor for casual

[Progenitor Aquarius]

I’m slowly adjusting to this new system and guess what? I’m starting to like it. Because now high geared players are forced to farm valor from lower dungeons, as every dungeon earns same amount of valor. This is causing people to actually help others and get something for themselves, which is brilliant. I still haven’t done 15 in time but I am able to upgrade gear to 213 with proper stats, which makes me stronger as well in hope that one day I will do it. This is huge improvement because I felt like I got stuck. The most funny part is that the high end players also farm valor from 13-14 specific key dungeons which makes things for me even easier to get in mythic plus even as a frosted bonobo

[Dazu]

Yeah, my be it was catch-up mechanic back in WotLK, but it granted great gradual alt progression. Leveling/normals -> 3.0 heroics -> Coliseum heroics -> ICC heroics -> badge rewards -> then may be some PUG raids, because raids were LFR-like easy back then (at least 1st-2nd quarters and it was enough for casual players).

And overall it sounds great on paper, but in reality it feels bad. I've tested everything by myself, I've leveled 4 characters, I've tried different approaches on every character and, you know what, currently I don't have any desire to resub right now. 9.1 is 50/50. Yeah, it brings flying. But if flying will be gated behind even more Renown levels (and it will be), then I'll wait for catch-up first. And 9.2 won't be far away then. If it will finally fix things, then may be it will be better to just wait for it.

You sounds pretty much exactly like I was in WoD. I finally stopped raiding and realised there was nothing for me to do that I wanted to do at that point. Sure leveling was quick and easy, and gearing was easy enough, but without a end game goal anymore the expansion was empty. I had 4-5 max level characters (for raiding purposes) already and finishing my other 6-7 from max in MoP was not appealing at all (this was mid first tier so no catchups or other bonuses yet).

In truth I was just horribly burned out in playing this game at the time. It wasnt that the game wasnt fun. It just had become more job like than game over the years and the raiding had kept me engrossed. I came back near the end and went casual with infrequent breaks until now. I get the feeling you are remembering late expansion feelings where you had a plethora of options and ways to do stuff plus easy catchups and shortcuts and far more quest/storyline to finish, whereas this is still first patch so we have very little of any of that. I do agree it would be nice to have some extra challenge content for solo like we got with mage tower/warlock green fire and class mounts in vanilla from the very beginning of the expansion with time to work on it over the entire expansion but I dont see that happening.

[kamuimac]

Yeah, my be it was catch-up mechanic back in WotLK, but it granted great gradual alt progression. Leveling/normals -> 3.0 heroics -> Coliseum heroics -> ICC heroics -> badge rewards -> then may be some PUG raids, because raids were LFR-like easy back then (at least 1st-2nd quarters and it was enough for casual players).

And overall it sounds great on paper, but in reality it feels bad. I've tested everything by myself, I've leveled 4 characters, I've tried different approaches on every character and, you know what, currently I don't have any desire to resub right now. 9.1 is 50/50. Yeah, it brings flying. But if flying will be gated behind even more Renown levels (and it will be), then I'll wait for catch-up first. And 9.2 won't be far away then. If it will finally fix things, then may be it will be better to just wait for it.

you are assuming SL will get 9.2 which due to sub losses may no longer be the case.

remember how they axed whole raid tier in WoD ? and WoD lost less people then SL.

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I’m slowly adjusting to this new system and guess what? I’m starting to like it. Because now high geared players are forced to farm valor from lower dungeons, as every dungeon earns same amount of valor. This is causing people to actually help others and get something for themselves, which is brilliant. I still haven’t done 15 in time but I am able to upgrade gear to 213 with proper stats, which makes me stronger as well in hope that one day I will do it. This is huge improvement because I felt like I got stuck. The most funny part is that the high end players also farm valor from 13-14 specific key dungeons which makes things for me even easier to get in mythic plus even as a frosted bonobo

only for this week. once they are done next week with their mandatory 37 +2 farm for catch up they will no longer do any low keys dungeons because they will get vp cap from runing high keys for GV.

[Sezerek]

Yeah, my be it was catch-up mechanic back in WotLK, but it granted great gradual alt progression. Leveling/normals -> 3.0 heroics -> Coliseum heroics -> ICC heroics -> badge rewards -> then may be some PUG raids, because raids were LFR-like easy back then (at least 1st-2nd quarters and it was enough for casual players).

And overall it sounds great on paper, but in reality it feels bad. I've tested everything by myself, I've leveled 4 characters, I've tried different approaches on every character and, you know what, currently I don't have any desire to resub right now. 9.1 is 50/50. Yeah, it brings flying. But if flying will be gated behind even more Renown levels (and it will be), then I'll wait for catch-up first. And 9.2 won't be far away then. If it will finally fix things, then may be it will be better to just wait for it.

So to summarize it easy: You only want to play the catch-up systems of multiple patches combined ( as it usually happens at the end of an expansion)...but you want that already at the start of the expansion.
I guess that implies that you would have cried about this literally every single start of any expansion as they didnt have a multi-tier catch up system as there were no multiple tiers.

[Yriel]

Well if you are playing some hacked form of the game that allowed you to solo MoP world bosses sure, its solo content, but I couldn't solo them until significantly after the expansions were over therefor they are group content. If you had done enough solo content you would cap on bonus rolls unless you did the group content aswell.

I mean, i often did the daily quests in groups, too since it was faster that way. Thats a bit like counting peas. Grouping/solo open world content are not different gamemodes, M+ and Raiding are.
Especially since M+ and Raiding is often seen as organized hardcore content that a number of people don't enjoy. So the lines are a bit more clear here. And yes there are some self-identified casuals that raid mythic and do 15+keys yada yada yada.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

only for this week. once they are done next week with their mandatory 37 +2 farm for catch up they will no longer do any low keys dungeons because they will get vp cap from runing high keys for GV.

So you are saying my time is running out? Oh no!

Well thank goodness I got like only 3 pieces to upgrade.

[ohwell]

if you dont do any mm+, valor you gain with wq and some quest has any purpose ?

they are only to upgrade mm+ stuff right ? nothing to buy with them ?

Not sure how M+ doesn't have to do with casual....

Casual =/= bad

Casuals can easily do m+

[WowIsDead64]

You sounds pretty much exactly like I was in WoD. I finally stopped raiding and realised there was nothing for me to do that I wanted to do at that point. Sure leveling was quick and easy, and gearing was easy enough, but without a end game goal anymore the expansion was empty. I had 4-5 max level characters (for raiding purposes) already and finishing my other 6-7 from max in MoP was not appealing at all (this was mid first tier so no catchups or other bonuses yet).

In truth I was just horribly burned out in playing this game at the time. It wasnt that the game wasnt fun. It just had become more job like than game over the years and the raiding had kept me engrossed. I came back near the end and went casual with infrequent breaks until now. I get the feeling you are remembering late expansion feelings where you had a plethora of options and ways to do stuff plus easy catchups and shortcuts and far more quest/storyline to finish, whereas this is still first patch so we have very little of any of that. I do agree it would be nice to have some extra challenge content for solo like we got with mage tower/warlock green fire and class mounts in vanilla from the very beginning of the expansion with time to work on it over the entire expansion but I dont see that happening.

WOD was great exactly because it was very replayable and had just perfectly enough content for casual gameplay. Leveling wasn't that slow and boring. Garrison wasn't gated behind leveling. You had incentive to complete Loremaster even after getting to max level, because it granted very useful followers. Garrison was very fun, because it was about offline progression - it didn't require any resource grinding, that has got to it's apogee in SL, because Class Hall resources grind was more or less ok, War resource grind was already exceeding and Anima grind is already comparable with rep grinds by it's tediousness. Yeah, 6.0 daily missions were garbage. Especially without flying. But 6.2 fixed that problem. 6.2 was first moment if Wow's history, when alternative solo way of character progression was implemented. Difficulty curve, amount of effort required and speed of this progression were just perfect. Content was a little bit difficult at the beginning, but still doable. It was comfortable in a middle of progression. And it was starting to be easy by the end. Content required around hour. It wasn't about flying for 10 minutes from one WQ to another. It was about picking your favorite route. You had choice to do about 5 different levels of content. Each subsequent level was giving you better rewards and faster progression. 1) Doing just main quest 2) Doing extra quest 3) Doing appexis quest 4) Doing all locations 5) Doing throne. Overall it was about getting one item once in two days. Just perfect reward/effort ratio. All progression was around 25-30 days long. But you still had Garrison to level at that time. Thing is - it didn't require too much time or some grind. Just logging in and running missions. So, you had time to level your alts. Perfect content.

[Kaver]

How long do you imagine people will continue to a subscribe to a game that continually reminds them how undeserved they are? Particularly one where the community or at least a vocal part of the community reinforces that feeling? Telling people they suck is not a good way to retain subscribers.

Entitled people who want everything served on a silver platter should unsubscribe. That would be a good thing. Sure Blizzard would have less capital overall but they could then stop wasting money on shit systems like the covenants.

Clean out all the filth and focus on raids, dungeons and pvp.

[WowIsDead64]

So to summarize it easy: You only want to play the catch-up systems of multiple patches combined ( as it usually happens at the end of an expansion)...but you want that already at the start of the expansion.
I guess that implies that you would have cried about this literally every single start of any expansion as they didnt have a multi-tier catch up system as there were no multiple tiers.

I agree, that may be by MMO can't have enough content at release by design. But at the same time Blizzard do nothing to somehow fix this problem, i.e. at least give casual players something to keep them busy till later patches. This is actually possible and not that hard.

[LordVargK]

Hehe i used them for alts. I do some Heroic raiding and M+ (not arena anymore). I don't really consider myself hardcore. And don't really like M+, i will give you that.

But i still believe they do not care about casual. It's by design. They could throw casuals a bone but they don't. Traditional casual content like old raid soloing or random BGs are screwed because of scaling and ilvl powercreep. That's just the way it is tbh. Just my opinion though. I can understand many do not agree with that and think the game caters to casuals. I just don't agree with that.

They care about casuals. Casuals just don't need gear above 200. They regularly rework old raids so that encounters only need one player. SL introduced TONS of stuff to do as a casual, be it mounts, pets or transmog, Torghast as well is extremely casual friendly.
There are indeed some aspects that could see improvement, but SL is probably the most casual friendly expansion since WoD, some things being casual unfriendly should not taint your judgement.

[Kolvarg]

Because the 20 min WQ is probably not difficult at all: it’s only a quest that lasts 20 minutes for “reasons”.

Many people would argue any M+ below the gear cap is not difficult at all. And a dungeon only lasts 30~40 minutes because that's the amount of trash and bosses decided to put in them, also known as "reasons". Point being?

More difficult challenges giving a greater reward is the most basic and simple concept of reward structure.

It’s straightforward, logical, and provides a sense of accomplishment from improving and overcoming challenges.

And wouldn't that still be achieved if more difficult challenges allow you to achieve the greater reward much faster?

I mean, would the current gearing system really be any worse, or any less rewarding, if you could also get a small amount of Valor from World Quests and buy gear with Valor as well? Let's say something like 20-30 Valor per WQ.

M+ would still be more rewarding as you can get the items for free and already partially upgraded, as well as awarding more Valor in a shorter amount of time, but people who only do WQ would have an extended progression path.

Why do you need the gear then? What a stupid question.

Why do you? Mythic raids can be clear in Heroic gear: no need for gear.
M+ can be cleared in 185ilvl gear: no need for M+ gear.
PvP would be balanced if everyone was locked at very low gear: no need for gear.

No one needs gear, if you look at it with that mindset. But it is a nice reward for everyone.

This literally tells me everything I need to know about you and your views.

How shallow of you.

You think that 20 2minute world quests is equivalent to a single 40min M+. Ignoring the fact that m+ has a lot of prerequisites, such as getting geared for it, learning the fights, finding a group, etc. Meanwhile 20 world quests requires... Literally nothing. No gear, no effort, no skill, no work. And you think they should both give rewards?

That's awfully generalistic. You don't really need that much gear or really spend that much time preparing to do a +2, for instance.

Of course they should both give rewards. If you're spending time completing multiple WQs, there is for sure an effort being made. Of course the more difficult activities should be more rewarding, it's just that "more rewarding" does not necessarily mean that the "maximum cap" of the reward must be not just higher, but so much higher as it is at the moment.

Save everyone the time, eh? If you want everyone to have gear anyway then surely this is the easiest approach right?

I don't want everyone to have gear, or to save anyone time. I just think the game would be better if everyone has a viable character power progression path even if they don't like Raiding, M+ or PvP. One that doesn't end in a few weeks in order to protect the egos of "skilled" players. That's all.

[LordTakeo]

I don't want to do M+ because I hate time runs. May be I would do M0, but catch-up gear is 197 and it's perfectly enough for me. And if there wouldn't be this catch-up gear (Blizzard regret implementing it, because it "devalues" other gear, like that well known "+5 ilvl" WQ gear and heroic gear with nerfed drop rates), I wouldn't even play SL, because it would be BFA 2.0 with it's "9.1/9.2/9.3/etc. implements new content and you can't do it on alts due to way too sloooooooooooooooooow catching up and requirement to do way too overtuned content to actually catch-up, like Nazjatar for example".

... What? I don't wanna be rude, but the problem with alts in BFA was the lack of essences and Azerite level (which was fixed, thanks to the instant azerite 50 boost).

I've yet to die in Nazjhatar because it was 'overtuned'. Especially with so many alternative options like the upgradeable gear drops you got for almost free and were farmable/buyable with pearls.

And whats with everyone losing their shit over suddenly being able to upgrade your gear? If anything, this is good FOR the casuals, as they can circumvent RNG with grinding. You may take longer, but you did chose the easier content.

Atm gearing my shadow priest who dinged yesterday, and after a few M0's and covenant questlines to get starting gear, it's looking pretty fine.

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I don't want everyone to have gear, or to save anyone time. I just think the game would be better if everyone has a viable character power progression path even if they don't like Raiding, M+ or PvP. One that doesn't end in a few weeks in order to protect the egos of "skilled" players. That's all.

Idk, that kinda sounds you want everyone to have gear. Which progression path do you want to have? You 2-10 man PvP content. 5man M+ content. 10-30 Raid content.
Single player content via worldquests, Professions and Auctionhouse raid drops.
If you don't do any M+/Raiding/PvP, capping your Covenant Armor and gearing with Professions should be plenty, no? There is no content outside of M+/Raids/PvP that requires gear higher than that. Heck, I'd argue hc dungeon loot is more than enough for all outside content.

[Frozenbro]

one thing you will realise soon is that people who say how lol easy 10s are are all in 215+ gear while you will be there with 207 after many weeks of farming VP. and in SL those 8 itlv is world of difference in performance.

Yeah the people that find +15s easy got gifted their 226+ gear via mail for sure also, the things someone reads here.

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I don't want everyone to have gear, or to save anyone time. I just think the game would be better if everyone has a viable character power progression path even if they don't like Raiding, M+ or PvP. One that doesn't end in a few weeks in order to protect the egos of "skilled" players. That's all.

Then you will have to wait, its called catchup mechanics and they are introduced when the patch is esentially dead, and nice job ignoring "effort vs reward" concept and replacing it with "protect the egos of "skilled" players", almost fooled me.

[Kolvarg]

Idk, that kinda sounds you want everyone to have gear. Which progression path do you want to have? You 2-10 man PvP content. 5man M+ content. 10-30 Raid content.
Single player content via worldquests, Professions and Auctionhouse raid drops.
If you don't do any M+/Raiding/PvP, capping your Covenant Armor and gearing with Professions should be plenty, no? There is no content outside of M+/Raids/PvP that requires gear higher than that. Heck, I'd argue hc dungeon loot is more than enough for all outside content.

Gear is not reward because you need it. Gear is a reward because it increases your character's power, which is fun, even if you don't need it.

Otherwise Blizzard can just remove gear completely from the game, and balance the dungeons and raids accordingly to account for people not having gear. Would that be fun/better for you? You absolutely wouldn't need gear, therefore why would you want it?


World Quests and covenant armor cap very very early. Professions are essentially useless outside of the one Legendary slots, and you can just buy that form someone else.

The Valor system could be expanded, allowing to purchase gear with Valor and not just upgrade it, and allow obtaining Valor from WQs, Torghast and the first heroic dungeon of the day, for instance.

Or, in other words, something more similar to the iteration of a PvE currency between WotLk and MoP.

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Then you will have to wait, its called catchup mechanics and they are introduced when the patch is esentially dead, and nice job ignoring "effort vs reward" concept and replacing it with "protect the egos of "skilled" players", almost fooled me.

And wouldn't the game be better if instead of players having to wait for catchup mechanics they could actually have been slowly improving their characters this whole time?

Try reading again, I addressed it

[LordTakeo]

Why do you? Mythic raids can be clear in Heroic gear: no need for gear.
M+ can be cleared in 185ilvl gear: no need for M+ gear.
PvP would be balanced if everyone was locked at very low gear: no need for gear.

No one needs gear, if you look at it with that mindset. But it is a nice reward for everyone.

Nah, people need gear, because not everyone plays like machines. Gear is a good equalizer to make difficult things easier on you in raids and M+.
In M+ specifically you do +21's for fun and for the challange, so you kinda need the gear to even damage/tank these insane monsters. Minmaxing is also plenty fun in its own right.

And we had PvP where everyone was the same. It was the shittiest time we ever had in there, because progression truly felt meaningless in there, min maxing wasn't really accounted for, so all your effort amounted to nothing, which is a pretty bad thing to have. PvP atm is the most fun I've ever had with it, and considering how many names returned because of it, says alot.

Gear doesn't need to be the reward for people who don't need it. Cosmetics would do a better job for this. And also incentives the compeditive players to do the same content for said cosmetics.

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Gear is not reward because you need it. Gear is a reward because it increases your character's power, which is fun, even if you don't need it.

Otherwise Blizzard can just remove gear completely from the game, and balance the dungeons and raids accordingly to account for people not having gear. Would that be fun/better for you? You absolutely wouldn't need gear, therefore why would you want it?


World Quests and covenant armor cap very very early. Professions are essentially useless outside of the one Legendary slots, and you can just buy that form someone else.

The Valor system could be expanded, allowing to purchase gear with Valor and not just upgrade it, and allow obtaining Valor from WQs, Torghast and the first heroic dungeon of the day, for instance.

Or, in other words, something more similar to the iteration of a PvE currency between WotLk and MoP.

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I disagree with alot you said here, but...
I fully agree with you in making Valor points also being a thing to buy gear, similar to tokens back then in Wotlk/BC.
You can easily balance this, by having the raids drop Tokens as well, which incentives playing Castle Nathria despite it being old content by 9.1
Older raids, with easier time to clear it because of natural progression between patches, because of Valor drops, would mean a comfy alternative to M+, that you only need to do once a week, and can see the raid in a far saver enviroment.

But I get ahead of myself. Just using them to buy M0 level gear would be fine enough for starters, similar to Wotlk/BC.

[Frozenbro]

And wouldn't the game be better if instead of players having to wait for catchup mechanics they could actually have been slowly improving their characters this whole time?

Try reading again, I addressed it

You can slowly improve your character right now with the THREE different progression paths blizz has, but you dont want to partake in any of them, you want an alternative progression path that involves buying gear with valor and (and i assume upgrades too) by doing world quests, thorgast and the first heroic dungeon, the issue with this is that the activities you mention here lack the "effort" part of the reward vs effort concept, hence why they dont give gear, or you actually believe you should be able to farm 220 gear by doing these activities? do you find it fair for the existing 3 progression paths?

[LordTakeo]

I’m slowly adjusting to this new system and guess what? I’m starting to like it. Because now high geared players are forced to farm valor from lower dungeons, as every dungeon earns same amount of valor. This is causing people to actually help others and get something for themselves, which is brilliant. I still haven’t done 15 in time but I am able to upgrade gear to 213 with proper stats, which makes me stronger as well in hope that one day I will do it. This is huge improvement because I felt like I got stuck. The most funny part is that the high end players also farm valor from 13-14 specific key dungeons which makes things for me even easier to get in mythic plus even as a frosted bonobo

I absolutely love it. I don't feel bad anymore for asking my friends if they could give me a hand with M0's on my freshly capped alt.
Usually I tried to get them geared by myself till they could que on their own, but now? Valor rocks.

[Kolvarg]

Nah, people need gear, because not everyone plays like machines. Gear is a good equalizer to make difficult things easier on you in raids and M+.
In M+ specifically you do +21's for fun and for the challange, so you kinda need the gear to even damage/tank these insane monsters. Minmaxing is also plenty fun in its own right.

And here is where your logic fails. You are ok with gear making raids/M+ easier, but for some reason, gear making WQs easier/faster is unthinkable?

No, you don't need gear. If you didn't have gear, people would be doing +15 or +10s or whatever was at the edge of their ability and tuning instead of +21s. Same shit.

Yes, gearing is fun. That's the point. It's fun even for people who you believe don't need it.

PvP atm is the most fun I've ever had with it, and considering how many names returned because of it, says alot.

At the start for sure - because you could just play and progress even with just Honor. Are you sure the popularity surge is still going after people become unable to upgrade their gear because they don't have the rating? As ratings stabilize is that as soon as you get close to a threshold (for instance approaching 1600) you suddenly start playing against people with better gear making it particularly harder to reach those points and unlocking new gear upgrades.

[Rucati]

That's awfully generalistic. You don't really need that much gear or really spend that much time preparing to do a +2, for instance.

Of course they should both give rewards. If you're spending time completing multiple WQs, there is for sure an effort being made. Of course the more difficult activities should be more rewarding, it's just that "more rewarding" does not necessarily mean that the "maximum cap" of the reward must be not just higher, but so much higher as it is at the moment.

And that's why +2s don't give very good gear.

You can get 200 ilvl doing world quests and random BGs, you can only get 227 ilvl if you're a mythic raider or 2400+ in arenas. Do you really think the gap should be smaller? Honestly? It's only 27 ilvls. There's literally no reason it should even be as close as it is honestly.

Personally I think the better approach is to just remove gear entirely and make the whole game "for fun". No rewards, you do arenas because you like them, you push m+ because you like it, you raid because you like it. Then casuals won't have to complain about being left behind, and the rest of the community has a balanced and more competitive game.