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  1. #1181
    Quote Originally Posted by ippollite View Post
    I'll have a crack at this. But im going to reframe it a bit from 'advantages' because i cant even conceive of a universe where a casual player would ever have an advantage. I mean, i may be wrong or im missing something, but if there is an 'advantage' its probably going to be a time issue: Namely, with something like timeless isles or catch up in general a new player hitting the end of leveling will have to do far less to 'catch up' than a player who played throughout the expansion... oooh, also money i suppose: A new level 120 in bfa at the start of patch 8.3 will have all the previous patch content plus all the catch up at a mere 15 bucks compared to the person who paid throughout the entire expansion.

    I guess you could also point out stress and enjoyment. I didnt ever feel compelled to run islands beyond my own personal enjoyment of them, plus i didnt get really cross when my gear didnt titanforge. In fact, when it did, i was just stoked. It wasnt an expectation, but a bonus. So i guess on that existential note, theres a few advantages. I also didnt have to run an alt for split runs and hate every minute of my life gearing them up. In that sense then, i suppose these are some advantages. Titan forge was a bonus, i wasnt expected to run content i dont like, i wasnt expected to do anything i didnt want to do at all. I just played the game until it stopped being fun. Which was weirdly january 20th 2021 (when my 6 month sub happened to run out). Are they advantages i dont currently have? In a way yes, in a way no. In a way no for obvious reasons. I can quit whenever the game stops being fun for me. In a way yes, because it stopped being fun much faster than the previous expansion.

    Anyways, thats not the 'reframing' im talking about. Just taking a weird punt at that specific definition first. I guess i'll go to another post to make the point i actually want to make... namely, whats changed, or rather, 'whats so different in this expansion for casual players?'
    Comparing a .3 patch with a .0 patch and saying its unrewarding to casual/less progressing players is just rediculous. Never, and im stressing this, never has this game had an initial patch award full gear equal or close to normal raiding in every slot without needing to do any organized or progression group content (world boss excepted). Normal raid is 200 ilvl (207 end). Its entirely possible to fill your character with 194-207 items in every slot just doing world quests, solo quests and world bosses and/or buying BoEs. This means you can get more progressed as a solo player and choose to go into more challenging content being overgeared to compensate the lack of practice etc.

    Your second paragraph isnt the game forcing you anything, its either your guild or yourself. Theres no need to do split alt runs unless you are choosing to be in that min max style crowd. Fact is alt split runs have been part of the game since Vanilla and every tier since. The irony is, that requirement to do split runs is actually less because of no WF/TF issues. Once you get the item in its respective format its already maxed without RNG. You dont need to keep farming the same item for the WF chance on it. If you are required (Guess by your guild) to do split alt runs now for gear, then they should have required you to farm low and other content for chance of upgrades from TF in Legion/BFA or they have changed their expectations. Once again this isnt a blizzard change but a player side one.

    As Arkanon has asked - What other initial expansion patch has had solo/casual style progress gear and access better than Shadowlands? Answer is none.

    Badge gear - Nope. Limited slots, limited to doing by group play also - TBC required heroic dungeons which were slow, hard and required more teamwork and coordination than a M+ probably 10 today and almost no easy tools to make groups like we have now, and Wrath required raids heroic dungeons and raids (which you had to setup yourself).
    Valor points etc onwards - Same thing, limited slots, only slightly better because you had group finder or LFR from MoP you could mindlessly queue into, yet didnt drop normal raid level gear.
    That's gearing. Shadowlands beats all the previous ones for casual/solo play hands down for ease and availability of items and speed of acquisition.

    Access - Due to the aforementioned item level from easy and solo content, it also means you have the easiest jump into any other content for a long time. You can be M5-10+ ilvl before stepping into one giving a nice buffer in gear to the content, and you are also overgeared for normal raiding overall. Cant comment from PvP but normally PvP has been bad/slow to gear up via early on and this time its pretty easy to get started even if bad.
    Last edited by Dazu; 2021-04-07 at 10:32 AM.

  2. #1182
    Im literally saying that the only 'advantage' is in NOT playing the game for greater extended periods. How are you taking it that seriously? On your actual question... see the gigantic post above this one. But to address your two points and to summarise it, if youre exclusively talking about gear progression: a) my azerite neck unlocked and continued to unlock with a very distant cap throughout the course of me playing my normal world game. Now, all my gear and progression rewards are baked into a 2 hour window. Which might seem great on the face of it (or 'better' (total subjective value judgement by the way). But theres not much to do outside that UNLESS i decide to engage in content i hadnt before thus completely invaliding the point of 'whats different now' (assuming i play the exact same way i had in the past). b) RNG in world content has been cut down on dramatically. c) world quest upgrades in bfa were based on my current gear level in multiples of 5. World quest gear now has a definitive cap. So theyre all different, right? Better...? not for me, no. Much worse, since you ask.

    Now access: Access to what? The world content i already had access to? Again, if the criteria is what makes this different (or worse) from the previous expansion, then surely i have to compare like with like. Ie, if i play the game exactly in the same way i had done pre shadowlands, what changes in that content (or in how that content is consumed/rewarded) exist that make me believe this is any different from previous expansions? Well, i gave you three right above. I also gave you a mini dissertation right above this post on how this massively disrupts my gameplay loop to cater towards players who hate world content because it gets in the way of their desire to quickly and exclusively play the content they want to play (non world, instanced based content). Telling me how amazing my access to said content is, literally reinforces my point. World content has been dramatically changed (by both rewards available and time required) to quickly push players into instanced content. It is both less rewarding, and far quicker to overcome.
    Last edited by ippollite; 2021-04-07 at 10:42 AM.

  3. #1183
    Quote Originally Posted by ippollite View Post
    (Preamble edit: To be clear, when i use the term casual here (i really should stop using that term), im specifically talking of the player who taps out before LFG and is somewhat power driven (RPers and collectors may not be who im speaking of). Im not talking about the player who has x-hours per week to log in, or the player who has only managed to clear +14 mythic dungeons and/or up to SLG in mythic nathria - they are scrubs, not casuals - kidding! But i dont want the endless back and forth on 'what really is a 'casual' - i've defined them accordingly, and i accept this is a subjective definition in the platonic scheme of things.)).

    So what's different?
    Well, you alluded to one big difference: the speed of capping out in casual content. Another might be how you cap out. If you take renown as a case in point, think about how you'd formerly garner the gear, storylines and power progression behind that system (im ignoring anima as a system since its mostly cosmetics, though it does carry over into renown for those upgrades like gear (and is also one of your core renown upgrade quests every week)).

    In Legion it was straight up rep, or engaging in world content (for your artifact weapons). In Bfa it was again rep and general world content + weeklies to upgrade your azerite neck (unlocking the gear dropping in the world and from those world quests). I dont wanna get bogged down in details, but lets also throw in massive RNG in legion (legos) and bfa (warforging/socketing). The main gist is this: The power progression system rewarded you literally for your time investment in game. The more content you did, the more artifact power or azerite power you'd accumulate. In playing the game normally, you'd also have the RNG gods playing alongside you. And for gear, all this activity contributed your rep which unlocked certain pieces of gear or storyline elements. But you HAD to play the core game experience (in the world or in the instanced game).

    Now lets look at renown again. What happens? Well, you get three weekly quests each taking <20 minutes a pop (later reduced to two). Throw in a torghast lego (where you'd have been building your ash), maybe an epic calling here and there, and a world boss. You are now completely done for the week. At most its 3 hours of your time. At least, its about an hour. One hour a week of actual progression gameplay. Now compare that to its two prior systems heavy expansions. In both of those, all content was viable, all content helped progress your power. You could do as much busy work/chore farming as you like and still see some progression. It was certainly slower and more tedious. But it gave casual players something engaging to do throughout the entire week (not just for two hours every reset).

    So what we have is the complete transformation of the casual players gameplay loop. Thats a pretty big difference, right? We can also ask why did they do this in a very objective and non-blaming way. Who benefited from this change and who didnt? Well, i didnt. Obviously. I just explained why. I want to play the game, but theres nothing engaging to do as a non-lfg player. I mean i COULD farm anima all day for recolours. I could pokemon collect all the lego appearances. I could just grind gold forever using the mission table. But, i just wanna play the world game as ive always done. Now ive no incentive to do it. So it cant have been for casual players like me, because its fundamentally made our experience far quicker to consume (and cap) and far less engaging once you reach that cap. So why did they do it? Who is this change actually benefiting? I bring it up because theres a tendency to blame casuals for being 'catered to with a free normal raid gear set', and that 'we should stop complaining' because blizzard gave us 'free epics for doing nothing'. But it wasnt for us was it? It broke our gameplay loop. It was instead for players who could quickly hit 60 and reach the real end game content (non world, instanced) with as little friction as possible. I did say 'no blame' and what i mean is that this might be the ultimately correct design decision. We really have no idea. But its not a bone thrown to us world non-lfg players as is often assumed.

    So i hope thats a fair assessment of what's actually changed in our game play experience. As i say, its not an advantage (though, one might argue time --> power was an advantage we no longer have), but it helps maybe explain why this expansion is in trouble with that playerbase and why the complaints arent just moaning for the sake of it. There is a fundamental difference not only the pace of the cap (which you identify) but also both the cap itself and the means of reaching it.
    Artifact power wasnt a progression for a solo player, it was a great big wall saying you will never catchup to those with more time or able to do harder content. It was also completely wasted as like all other gear it was obsolete next content patch. It was also a massive barrier when your situation changed and you wanted to move up the content or play an alt, now it wasnt just gear holding you back, but a never ending farm which directly tied your character power to a tedious and slow grind.

    This model is more like the TBC/Wrath model where there was small to no benefit to playing more often. Log in, do your couple of things for the week and you were done. Your limit was where you placed your hardest content you were willing to do. Only real difference is the carrot was on a 10ft pole this expansion not a 50 ft pole if you didnt have the capability to turbo charge it. This expansion I have time to do things I enjoy. Group content without a schedule for example. The things annoying me most are small things like getting around zones (Id prefer flying much earlier, maybe tied to something like Exalted with your covenant or exalted with all the main reps), and other similar things.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by ippollite View Post
    Im literally saying that the only 'advantage' is in NOT playing the game for greater extended periods. How are you taking it that seriously? On your actual question... see the gigantic post above this one. But to address your two points and to summarise it, if youre exclusively talking about gear progression: a) my azerite neck unlocked and continued to unlock with a very distant cap throughout the course of me playing my normal world game. Now, all my gear and progression rewards are baked into a 2 hour window. Which might seem great on the face of it (or 'better' (total subjective value judgement by the way). But theres not much to do outside that UNLESS i decide to engage in content i hadnt before thus completely invaliding the point of 'whats different now' (assuming i play the exact same way i had in the past). b) RNG in world content has been cut down on dramatically. c) world quest upgrades in bfa were based on my current gear level in multiples of 5. World quest gear now has a definitive cap. So theyre all different, right? Better...? not for me, no. Much worse, since you ask.

    Now access: Access to what? The world content i already had access to? Again, if the criteria is what makes this different (or worse) from the previous expansion, then surely i have to compare like with like. Ie, if i play the game exactly in the same way i had done pre shadowlands, what changes in that content (or in how that content is consumed/rewarded) exist that make me believe this is any different from previous expansions? Well, i gave you three right above. I also gave you a mini dissertation right above this post on how this massively disrupts my gameplay loop to cater towards players who hate world content because it gets in the way of their desire to quickly and exclusively play the content they want to play (non world, instanced based content). Telling me how amazing my access to said content is, literally reinforces my point. World content has been dramatically changed (by both rewards available and time required) to quickly push players into instanced content. It is both less rewarding, and far quicker to overcome.
    So what your saying is you wish all the item rewards from world quests and covenants etc were acquired the same rate, but all at say 20+ itemlevels lower than now and you need to keep doing world quests for hours every day to slowly push them incrementally higher until they hit the current cap over 10-12 weeks so it feels like you are still progressing?

    I understand your point now, but im pretty sure you are in the minority of players. I think most casuals care about collectibles, alt friendliness and ability to get their 'chores' done quickly. SL does those well. I think the largest part of the playerbase is interested in entry and middle level group content (raids/M+ to low key levels) and want to be able to move into that content with the least grind needed. As such my belief is Blizzard has angled to appease that crowd (which is also the part im in) and ive personally found shadowlands the best first patch of any expansion except maybe Wrath. Im neither needing to do alot of stuff, or not able to find something to do. My gear isnt super RNG based and I can quite easily control it, but im not forced into content I dont want to do either. And if I dont want to do extra its not hurting me and I can play an alt without feeling like im gimping the main.

    If all you are doing is world quests and rares for incremental upgrades to gear, regardless on how its done it will feel pointless real quick, thats what Legion and BFA issues were (atleast to every casual ive spoken too). Yay I did 2 hours of world quests and didnt even get a single thing of note, not a weapon level or neck level. Maybe if I do that 5 times this week ill get 1 level on my neck. I dont think anyone enjoys world quests enough to want to do 5+ hours of them for a upgrade to your artifact that you cant even tell a difference from. Ive quit this game 3 times, WoD, Legion and BFA. WoD had nothing outside of raids and dungeons. Legion was a pointless grind and the benefit of grinding so miniscule outside of progression raiding that I just went why bother? BFA wasnt so bad, but the campaign quest structures and amount you had to do for alts was just too painful. Ive already leveled the same numbers of characters to 60 as I did to 120. Its so easy, campaigns are easy enough, can do it with a friend easily enough and getting early gear is easy enough too.

  4. #1184
    Lets first address the elephant in the room: You think its better. FOR YOU. I think its worse. FOR ME. (caps arent an angry caps, but emphasis caps). Im genuinely willing to accept that its a better game overall for a certain playstyle. Its incredibly selfish of me to want some of those things i mentioned, because it strongly impacts on your playstyle. Over the years ive come to think that perhaps players like me SHOULD be jettisoned for the longstanding health of the overall game. We're really hard (and yet very easy) to satisfy. We need lots of world stuff. It needs to be meaningful (in whatever way, but as maybe this expansion showed, not in a massive disparity between time and rewards via the current anima collection rate - honestly, saying this right now, but if it was more reasonable i might have held my sub far longer and would have been fine grinding out the cosmetics in lieu of power).

    But i will give an explanation to your initial point on azerite (because its kinda gestalt): As someone who is not on the ladder, i couldnt care less about my standing in relation to other players. The only thing i care about is 'am i having fun doing this?' As my azerite power unlocked i never once thought 'oh good, now i can unlock that ring putting me on an equal footing (or closer to an equal footing) with other players to make a claim on my access to player controlled selective content (LFG)'. I thought 'oh good, now i can open up a cool new effect!.'

    Lets do this with benthic as well. Instead of thinking 'oh god, it didnt titan/warforge, now ill have to spend another day farming these quests so i can try again' i thought 'oh cool! upgrade!' If it titan forged, i didnt think 'hell yes! now i have an advantage over players still farming for their titanforge piece' i thought 'oh cool! it titanforged!'

    Your second paragraph really throws me a bit. I had you pegged as someone who could only see the ladder (based on your gear and access comments and also the way you view azerite as a wall of competition). I guess i was mistaken. The problem if this expansion though (for players like me) might be the thing you said: The cap was on a ten foot pole instead of a 50 foot one. The cosmetics were on a 100 foot pole. All of these though, strongly impact my interest in engaging with the content over an extended period. And to be honest, thats not my problem. Ive got plenty of other things i can do in the interim (like argue over semantics ). Which, now i think about it, brings me kind of full circle to the point on not playing (or paying for) the game over an extended period to gain an 'advantage' (:

    So what your saying is you wish all the item rewards from world quests and covenants etc were acquired the same rate, but all at say 20+ itemlevels lower than now and you need to keep doing world quests for hours every day to slowly push them incrementally higher until they hit the current cap over 10-12 weeks so it feels like you are still progressing?

    I understand your point now, but im pretty sure you are in the minority of players.
    Yep yep. Funnily enough, back on the main forums i made the same argument once i realised what was going on (mid decemberish). Id rather be 10 renown levels behind the main pack if instead of a 20 minute quest every week, i worked on my renown throughout the entire week and unlocked those levels like a heart of azeroth (playing the game normally). In being behind (or rather, under the cap) at least id have stuff to do and a reason to log in (that isnt just ilvl boosting). Its one of the big defining issues of this expansion, its really thrust ilvl (and raiderio - another discussion) into the absolute forefront of incentives precisely because its such a defining feature of the gameplay in access to LFG content. Prior to this, players like me (not on said ladder), just enjoyed slowly catching up to the pack in our own way. Ilvl wasnt so defining in an end of itself. Or rather, the cap wasnt so easy to hit. So we had a lot of content to 'catch up' on. Yet once we hit the cap (mid january), well, then what? The only thing open is LFG and ilvl progression. Which we kinda dont wanna get involved in. So then you get the inevitable 'give us better world rewards' threads and massive bun fights over casuals wanting mythic gear for world quests'. We dont. We just want a reason to log in. Heck, make the anima grind more fun? As i say, i like cosmetics. I'd have happily engaged with that system instead of power, if only it wasnt so stingy.

    If nothing else i hope youve gotten some kind of answer on whats changed (to the negative - for me) but also a sense of how much i really just want to open my wallet and throw money at blizzard if theyd just figure something out. Even if they just threw some mythic zero gear into torghast tc so we could use the valor from callings on (really slow) upgrades... something? Anything? Anima boosts (or cost reductions), give venari more stuff to sell? Maybe some trinkets from normal nathria?

    And the problem is, i look at 9.1 and see no philosophical change on the horizon.
    Last edited by ippollite; 2021-04-07 at 11:45 AM.

  5. #1185
    Quote Originally Posted by Soon-TM View Post
    I stand corrected. Still, I don't get the "strange" part - e.g. I haven't actively played chess (at a competitive level) in 10 years or so. Is it "strange" for me to still post in a chess-dedicated forum? Really curious.
    Yes it is. Especially if you hate chest and treat everyone who liked chess with disdain. It would be very strange.
    Quote Originally Posted by Nizah View Post
    why so mad bro

  6. #1186
    And that brings me to this:

    A weird compendium of random stuff they could do to make me (a scottish person), open my hinged wallet.

    1. The great vault. Why have three systems when you could have 6? Why not use this once a week system of upgrades to reward players in ALL the spheres they play in. Obvious first ballot hall of fame goes to Torghast and twisting corridors. If im expected to have 225 gear (according to blizz) to finish a layer 8, then its challenging solo content! Why not put this on the great vault and overlap it with appropriate mythic dungeon levels). Number 2, honor. BGs suck. Honor levels though deserve a weekly low level conquest reward (or even just points - rank 1: x honor = 200 conquest; rank 2: x honor = 500 conquest; rank 3: x honor = 1000 conquest). I havent remotely thought this through (is 1000 conquest too much, i dunno?). But it means you can play random bgs all week and get something for your service. Number 3: WORLD QUESTS: Why am i doing callings? For gold and an upgrade to some random conduit for outlaw (screw you pirates!)? 3 callings per week = item from epic calling table; 5 = epic item from table thats kinda useful; 7 = OMG LOOTS!!!! (lets make it valor upgradeable because). Now you have everyone invested in this great vault system. You also have a really cynic... i mean incentivised way to up those DAUs.

    2. The skill/psychology gap. I believe, in my heart, that the game is too perceptually difficult. I also believe it isnt actually that difficult. Case in point, i once applied to a zg top rank guild and absolutely failed my trial (who puts a combat dagger rogue on the totems from hexxar?, im positional for heavens sake! Whats 'behind'?)... then i became top dps in my new guild once we wiped a few times. Perceptual difficulty is out of control. Lets have a weekly affix event attached to heroic dungeons. Week one, storming, week 2, tyrannical, week 3, timer... etc. Point is, a) you teach players how to play your game and b) theyre gonna learn. Introduce these features into the basic game. Teach them how to handle them in a less judgy atmosphere (LFD). Reward them appropriately for doing this (with valor upgradeable gear).

    3. If you decide to design an upgradeable system like valor, you need to INCENTIVISE players to engage with it. The way you dont do this is 9.0.5. The way you DO do this is by loot pinnate. You use every means available to shower players with the basic gear (upgradeable), then you say 'oh, you want to run callings for this? i guess so, it kinda sucks but you do you!'. Currently i can apparently use my valor (as a non LFG player) to buy crafting mats? Dudes, i capped out my profession in like december. It sucked. I couldnt care less about crafting.

    4. Fix your crafting.

    5. Hey, remember 2006 when you'd run a random BG and hit a premade and get gy camped? Me too! It happened. It sucked. But it wasnt the end of the world. We dealt with it. Why on earth is RBGs still on LFG. Just let me queue for one. We get farmed in wsg... okay. I can leave or i can get some conquest. And the more people accessing them, the fewer premades youre gonna run into. Logic.

    6. RaiderIO: The bane of every casual. Bake it in to the main game (discount 5 if you do this). Even ladder phobic players like me have a rating (0-20th percentile). Its a system in itself (my earlier posts on this). Its also a means to pull back on player gatekeeping. If done right, it has the potential to allow for solo-queueing/rank achievement. This makes it a vehicle for turning LFG content into LFD content. I get this is the most ambitious of these points. But its the one with the widest ramifications. Imagine mythic 0-9 on LFD based on your raider IO score (unlocking as you progress). Suddenly you have a massive group of players who felt locked out (they arent, but they FEEL locked out) engaging with the content and progressing based on their rio score over their gear score? And point 5 discluded because with this you now have actual matchmaking in pvp. Thus a premade with x raiderio may be less likely to engage a mish mash rag tag team with a raider io score far beyond them.

    The game is now fixed.

    (No current meta systems, phantasmical or otherwise were harmed in the making of this post).
    Last edited by ippollite; 2021-04-07 at 12:57 PM. Reason: youre welcome blizzard.

  7. #1187
    Quote Originally Posted by Something Wicked View Post
    Sorry. Maybe you could install an addon to help with your time management?

    Also, mind linking some factual information about how you're one of the world's greatest players? And not just some random, mediocre, addon-dependant raider who's so tragically upset about the idea of anyone else getting the gear you "so richly deserve?" I'll be waiting over there.
    Will you though? Will you be waiting over there? So WF raiders don't use add-ons? They are the best in the world. It would seem the better at the game you are the more likely you will have addons.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    I think from the context it's obvious that conquest refers what has been known in Wotlk as Arena points, which was essentially the former name of Conquest points before they introduced Rated Battlegrounds.

    After all, the name "Arena points" for the Rated PvP currency was only used for two Expansions (TBC and Wotlk), from Cata and onwards, Rated PvP Currency = Conquest Points.

    And for the record, at least the later Wotlk seasons had a Rating requirement for the current Season PvP items.
    This is completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter what they were called after WotLK. What matters is that we have people on this forum who don't know what they are talking about and they don't know what things are called. To even continue with the "but some PvP items had a ratings requirement" means you don't even understand what this is even about. No one claimed that WotLK never had PvP requirements. Please reread the argument and actually comprehend what was actually said.

    PS
    TBC had ratings requirements for some of the arena gear. Still irrelevant.
    Quote Originally Posted by Nizah View Post
    why so mad bro

  8. #1188
    Quote Originally Posted by ippollite View Post
    And that brings me to this:

    A weird compendium of random stuff they could do to make me (a scottish person), open my hinged wallet.

    1. The great vault. Why have three systems when you could have 6? Why not use this once a week system of upgrades to reward players in ALL the spheres they play in. Obvious first ballot hall of fame goes to Torghast and twisting corridors. If im expected to have 225 gear (according to blizz) to finish a layer 8, then its challenging solo content! Why not put this on the great vault and overlap it with appropriate mythic dungeon levels). Number 2, honor. BGs suck. Honor levels though deserve a weekly low level conquest reward (or even just points - rank 1: x honor = 200 conquest; rank 2: x honor = 500 conquest; rank 3: x honor = 1000 conquest). I havent remotely thought this through (is 1000 conquest too much, i dunno?). But it means you can play random bgs all week and get something for your service. Number 3: WORLD QUESTS: Why am i doing callings? For gold and an upgrade to some random conduit for outlaw (screw you pirates!)? 3 callings per week = item from epic calling table; 5 = epic item from table thats kinda useful; 7 = OMG LOOTS!!!! (lets make it valor upgradeable because). Now you have everyone invested in this great vault system. You also have a really cynic... i mean incentivised way to up those DAUs.

    2. The skill/psychology gap. I believe, in my heart, that the game is too perceptually difficult. I also believe it isnt actually that difficult. Case in point, i once applied to a zg top rank guild and absolutely failed my trial (who puts a combat dagger rogue on the totems from hexxar?, im positional for heavens sake! Whats 'behind'?)... then i became top dps in my new guild once we wiped a few times. Perceptual difficulty is out of control. Lets have a weekly affix event attached to heroic dungeons. Week one, storming, week 2, tyrannical, week 3, timer... etc. Point is, a) you teach players how to play your game and b) theyre gonna learn. Introduce these features into the basic game. Teach them how to handle them in a less judgy atmosphere (LFD). Reward them appropriately for doing this (with valor upgradeable gear).

    3. If you decide to design an upgradeable system like valor, you need to INCENTIVISE players to engage with it. The way you dont do this is 9.0.5. The way you DO do this is by loot pinnate. You use every means available to shower players with the basic gear (upgradeable), then you say 'oh, you want to run callings for this? i guess so, it kinda sucks but you do you!'. Currently i can apparently use my valor (as a non LFG player) to buy crafting mats? Dudes, i capped out my profession in like december. It sucked. I couldnt care less about crafting.

    4. Fix your crafting.

    5. Hey, remember 2006 when you'd run a random BG and hit a premade and get gy camped? Me too! It happened. It sucked. But it wasnt the end of the world. We dealt with it. Why on earth is RBGs still on LFG. Just let me queue for one. We get farmed in wsg... okay. I can leave or i can get some conquest. And the more people accessing them, the fewer premades youre gonna run into. Logic.

    6. RaiderIO: The bane of every casual. Bake it in to the main game (discount 5 if you do this). Even ladder phobic players like me have a rating (0-20th percentile). Its a system in itself (my earlier posts on this). Its also a means to pull back on player gatekeeping. If done right, it has the potential to allow for solo-queueing/rank achievement. This makes it a vehicle for turning LFG content into LFD content. I get this is the most ambitious of these points. But its the one with the widest ramifications. Imagine mythic 0-9 on LFD based on your raider IO score (unlocking as you progress). Suddenly you have a massive group of players who felt locked out (they arent, but they FEEL locked out) engaging with the content and progressing based on their rio score over their gear score? And point 5 discluded because with this you now have actual matchmaking in pvp. Thus a premade with x raiderio may be less likely to engage a mish mash rag tag team with a raider io score far beyond them.

    The game is now fixed.
    I think the idea is for rewards to match the difficulty and barring RBGs you can argue it has never been closer to that. The issue now seems to be with drop rates rather then actual power items offer.

    Making a weird argument that the games progression system should be busted because you do a lot of world quests doesn't make sense to me. A mythic 15 takes the same amount or close to the same amount of time as a mythic 0. If people honestly cared about making the game more casual this thread would be tearing to blizzard about time gating legendary items and conduit upgrades.

  9. #1189
    Quote Originally Posted by Lost controller View Post
    I think the idea is for rewards to match the difficulty and barring RBGs you can argue it has never been closer to that. The issue now seems to be with drop rates rather then actual power items offer.

    Making a weird argument that the games progression system should be busted because you do a lot of world quests doesn't make sense to me. A mythic 15 takes the same amount or close to the same amount of time as a mythic 0. If people honestly cared about making the game more casual this thread would be tearing to blizzard about time gating legendary items and conduit upgrades.
    'busted' seems a bit of an unfair description of the actual (and gameplay experience of players) prior to 9.0.3. Which is sort of the point im addressing. If you think it was 'busted' perhaps argue with blizzard (or congratulate them for their changes). But point of order, i, nor i believe my fellow 'casuals' - defined above - particulatly care about the ladder or your conception of "busted" gameplay. You do, the games markedly better for you. Thats fine.
    Last edited by ippollite; 2021-04-07 at 01:17 PM. Reason: Fuge state

  10. #1190
    Quote Originally Posted by ippollite View Post
    'busted' seems a bit of an unfair description of the actual (and gameplay experience of players) prior to 9.0.3. Which is sort of the point im addressing. If you think it was 'busted' perhaps argue with blizzard (or congratulate them for their changes), but maybe dont try and pin my gameplay experience prior to this on some kind of phantom hallucination?
    I just don't really see what you imagine things were like... People are acting like heroic raid gear was just given out... I guess if you squint you can say one or two crafted items in classic fit that and the crafted armor sets in tbc for casters. Outside of that you have to really struggle to find examples. Even in wrath you had to complete raids to get raid gear from vendors or simply had 2 badges a day.

    People here seem to be reminiscing about something that never really existed while ignoring time walls in order to try and campaign for free loot.

  11. #1191
    WotLK was peak WoW.

    Rating in PvP mattered since s2 I believe, or s3. Either way, PvP was heavily frowned upon as welfare epics from the raiding community ever since its induction. Probably a matter of PvPers not being really able to be dented by a full PvE geared player as it happened in Vanilla. But way back when the animosity between the two game modes was way higher than it ever has been since.
    Throughout all of Wrath you had basically no rating for all pieces and started at 1600 for gloves, I think, then 1800 for the t1 weapon, 2k for the shoulders and 2k2 for t2, introduced with s7.

    On topic, the issue is that as the internet and society got more connected and massive, WoW and its peers lost the sense of wonder and prestige we all experienced as players. Gone are the days of Reckful posting his 3k video or Neilyo shadowstepping into the future and here we are with Whaaz and Pika streaming highlight reel after highlight reel. They're great, but we thought Woundman was bad for posting 14 videos in a single season, and stream is that on steroids.

    It's not easy to upkeep a MMO in such an environment - during a pandemic nonetheless - in a world where everyone has access to basically all the answers all the time. I sometimes think the secret finding discord is the last bastion of pure unadulterated exploration fun this game managed to preserve. Whoever builds these secrets surely knows about this world enough to make them compelling.
    (and this is beyond Blizzard's current trends on firing, layoffs and the likes, which is another can of worms entirely)

    But here's the catch: this is the casual content. The one you can do without much effort, the one you can do while keyboard turning and clicking, because we all did but the game required us to stop in order to tackle its increasingly difficult challenges. Exploration seldom requires gear beyond what's given to you, maybe a couple consumables to replenish your health, but that's it: that's the original World of Warcraft before the dungeons and the quests and the faction wars and what have you.

    The argument about casuals wanting to partake is legitimate. I preserve the group of people I've been playing with since TBC, and as we head towards our 40s we're finding out we are bad. But we managed to clear Denathrius HC post nerf (alas), and have now a kill per week. Which is good enough for us, with some good parses if we like to and some more gray ones because as I said we're bad and stick to requirements for dps checks.

    But that's what we work for. That's what we discussed and agreed on. We will try mythic starting this week, we don't need the gear because 14s and 15s funnel us with enough gear to compete. We found each other and decided to hold on because decent people are hard to come by, much like friends do or relationships.

    In an MMO you have to be willing to compromise on being sociable or being left to do your own thing but with no sizable progress.

  12. #1192
    Quote Originally Posted by munkeyinorbit View Post
    This is completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter what they were called after WotLK. What matters is that we have people on this forum who don't know what they are talking about and they don't know what things are called.
    You really now want to dismiss an arguement because people referred to PvP gear as "conquest gear" because the currency at that point was called "Arena points" instead of "conquest points" and there just happened to be a PvE currency called "Emblem of conquest" and some badge Tier sets used the "of conquest" suffix?
    Quote Originally Posted by munkeyinorbit View Post
    To even continue with the "but some PvP items had a ratings requirement" means you don't even understand what this is even about. No one claimed that WotLK never had PvP requirements. Please reread the argument and actually comprehend what was actually said.
    I think that's really besides the point, it's silly to not engage an arguement because people referred to something by an incorrect name, the context made it obvious enough for me to get he was talking about Rated PvP gear.
    When somebody talks about rating requirements, it's obvious that they're talking about PvP gear because something such as a "Rating requirement" has never existed in PvE.

    You're free to insist on the proper nomenclature, but then i don't think you're interested in a genuine discussion when you cannot overlook something this minor.

  13. #1193
    Quote Originally Posted by Daedius View Post
    Effort should reflect reward... otherwise what incentive is there to do harder content?

    And don't give me the typical bullshit response of doing it for the 'fun' of it.
    This. Word for word.

  14. #1194
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    Quote Originally Posted by Swnem View Post
    Everytime i see this thread i can't help but think it's framed in a biased way.

    What if the title was:

    "Why is the unskilled player so angry about not getting better loot?"
    Because then the thread would have died on page 7 and we wouldn't have this hilarious shitstorm of a case study.
    Quote Originally Posted by Minikin View Post
    "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never....BURN IT"
    Quote Originally Posted by Kathandira View Post
    You are kinda joe Roganing this topic. Hardly have any actual knowledge other than what people have told you, and jumping into a discussion with people who have direct experience with it. Don't be Joe Rogan.

  15. #1195
    Quote Originally Posted by AcidicSyn View Post
    Because then the thread would have died on page 7 and we wouldn't have this hilarious shitstorm of a case study.
    Its slowly dying at least, finally, the people realized that this isnt the place to complain for better casual progression xd was about time they remembered that wow forums and such exist.

  16. #1196
    Quote Originally Posted by Frozenbro View Post
    Its slowly dying at least, finally, the people realized that this isnt the place to complain for better casual progression xd was about time they remembered that wow forums and such exist.
    Or the handful of casuals that were still subscribed remembered that FFXIV existed and jumped ship. There's a reason that FFXIV subs have increased by ~150% since Shadowlands launched even though the game is in a lull between expansions, that place is casual heaven and elitist minmaxers can gtfo. The exact opposite of WoW.

  17. #1197
    Quote Originally Posted by Echo of Soul View Post
    Or the handful of casuals that were still subscribed remembered that FFXIV existed and jumped ship. There's a reason that FFXIV subs have increased by ~150% since Shadowlands launched even though the game is in a lull between expansions, that place is casual heaven and elitist minmaxers can gtfo. The exact opposite of WoW.
    Im sure there is a reason subs have increased - and im damn sure you dont have a clue as to why. You are confusing correlation with causation.

    - You are assuming there has been a drop in wow subs
    - you are assuming those players are casuals
    - you are assuming these players left because they were unsatisfied with progression in SL
    - you are assuming they then subscribed to FF.
    - You are then insinuating that they like FF, and are happier than they were in wow.

    This is the amount of assumption required from you to make this statement valid.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Dazu View Post
    As Arkanon has asked - What other initial expansion patch has had solo/casual style progress gear and access better than Shadowlands? Answer is none.
    This is the part of the comparison they all fall apart on - matching like for like - apples with apples. Sure, there have been some loot fiestas in .3 patches, or towards the end of an expansion - never denied that, and dont know a single player who cares in the slightest. There have been a couple of "exception to the rule" moments, such as the cloth crafted set in TBC, but it only impacted a select few specs, within one armor type, and still required pretty substantial farming for matarials - certainly far more time consuming compared to covenant armor.
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyanion View Post
    In no way are you entitled to the 'complete' game when you buy it, because DLC/cosmetics and so on are there for companies to make more money
    Quote Originally Posted by rhorle View Post
    Others, including myself, are saying that they only exist because Blizzard needed to create things so they could monetize it.

  18. #1198
    Quote Originally Posted by Dazmalak View Post
    Well, you're not alone in your thoughts on the behavior of the community and the direction Blizz seems to insist on going. The game does cater to a more competitive audience than it used to and I am still not really sure why Blizz seems intent on taking the focus away from the world itself in favor of ever-increasingly complex encounters and gimmicks in instanced content where strangers can incessantly flame and hate one another as they treat one another as steps on their imaginary ladder to greatness.

    I would strongly suggest you go try FFXIV if you haven't already. Better community, friendlier content, and more tertiary things to do like housing and crafting that actually still matters at most levels of gameplay.
    For sure. What's a person who isn't that good to do in today's hypercompetitive, log-driven raiderio world? I'm not using the word casual as I do acknowledge that I played 12 hours a day, but badly. I'm a person who needs to take it slow and absorb things, and that just doesn't seem to have a place in WoW today.

    Example, I picked up Fire Emblem: Three Houses yesterday and played it almost all evening. I only did a couple of maps in that time because I needed time to explore, absorb the mechanics information, and take things cautiously. I'm not at all built to speed run things.

    I have been looking at FFXIV and it does seem interesting. I might take a look at that when my computer situation is fixed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lost controller View Post
    I guess you could get a normal mode set of tier gear in wrath Toc?

    I admit a lot of people here seem to be remembering a time that never was and likely never will be.
    I could grind a current tier tier set off of a lower tier raid and heroic dungeons in Wrath. I miss that.

    Quote Originally Posted by phantasiapt View Post
    And this is why, totally why, everyone from my guild left many expansions ago, during WOD. I've been ever since playing this game mostly to myself. To do whatever I want the way that I want. I step into LFR just to get the gear I want and for lore reasons (which are becoming more and more poor), do my covenant things, previously in BFA it was getting some mounts, more rep with the factions, flying unlocked, etc. When I become bored? I logout and go do other things.
    Recently with the announcement of TBC Classic, I am more and more playing in Classic and to be fair, found a good guild, social but with endgame target and it's been going really well.
    My recommendation to you? Go Classic. Toxic people are there too, but you have more chances of finding people just wanting to enjoy the game rather than recording every single step.
    The biggest issue from that just comes from the fact that I love random battlegrounds, but I love being able to at least have decent enough gear to feel confident about jumping in on a fight. At the moment I feel like a huge portion of the game is locked out to me, a portion that I happened to love.

    I'm not entirely sure I'd be welcomed in Classic either, as someone who would just want to have fun, see Naxx, and not stress over the world buff meta. A problem Blizz should have fixed but instead recently decided to wholeheartedly endorse. This thread does not give me any hope at all.
    https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...in-max-culture

    Quote Originally Posted by phantasiapt View Post
    More importantly, if you decide to start considering ending it all as you wrote. As someone else said, it's just a permanent solution to temporary problems. I totally think it's not worth it at all. But I'm not an expert on this or anything... Just trying to give good advice.
    Damm, I even made this account on purpose after over a decade lurking in here to just post this reply.
    It is something I genuinely struggle with. What place does a person like me have who can't compete in a hyper competitive world? By all rights of nature I should have been dead and weeded out long ago.

    I do plan on going back to counseling once this COVID thing is over, but at the moment I'm just terrified to leave my house. Too many people out there not caring about the lives of others.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jackstraw View Post
    In an MMO you have to be willing to compromise on being sociable or being left to do your own thing but with no sizable progress.
    I just wish that weren't the case. I have a hard time socializing, do I need to be treated like a second class citizen in the game by the devs?

    The exploration and secrets thing is the best though. Done them all and followed the ones in progress with wide eyes. I only wish I were smart enough to genuinely help with the puzzles, lol. I only really disliked the Hivemind one because that required a group in total tune with each other.
    Last edited by Tadkins; 2021-04-07 at 09:48 PM.

  19. #1199
    Quote Originally Posted by Tadkins View Post
    SNIP
    Again, you are saying "i cant do this, ill just get destroyed, i cant do that, its too toxic" and yet you have not played SL at all - you are only listening to one small segment of feedback, and ignoring the feedback from multiple people in this thread telling you that you are mistaken, and that everything you want to do CAN be done in SL. You have access to more gear than ever, better quality than ever, and with the least amount of effort compared to ANY first tier in wows history.

    You want to progress purely solo? You can obtain an ilvl equivalent to someone ready to start Heroic raids - eg someone who has farmed every item in normal mode raid - this has NEVER been the case in wow. You say you wont have anything to do after that, but again this simply is not true - you have said you loved heroics in previous expansions - good news - those still exist, and they are easier than ever. Gear not good enough? dont worry, you have your 197 covenant set, and you can do M0 which is the new equivalent to a heroic dungeon - about the same difficulty. (imo, they should completely remove +0, and just make heroic fill that spot).

    There are some who love instanced race-track based racing games - that's totally fine, but you cant play Forza Horizon (an "open world" racer) and then complain its not something different. You might love tactical, sim type shooters, but you cant play GTAV and then complain that it isnt a tactical shooter. And you shouldn't play wow, a massively multiplayer game, and then complain that all the good stuff requires participation in multiplayer activities.

    Here is a slightly different perspective - I love the idea of Warzone - but i find it a bit too sweaty and competitive for my tastes these days - so I don't play it, i play ghost recon with friends in coop. We didn't flood the CoD forums requesting a solo / coop scene be introduced that also provided all weapons and attachments - we simply found a game that better suited our personal expectations of a shooter. And even then, when playing that game or Division 2 (for example) i dont look up the best players doing the hardest content and say "but thats not fair, i want their same loot, but i want it for just running around in the world doing easy solo content on the lowest difficulty" - people keep saying "hardcore players shouldn't care what casuals have!" but refuse to accept the counter argument of "casuals shouldnt care what hardcore players have!".

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Tadkins View Post
    I'm not entirely sure I'd be welcomed in Classic either, as someone who would just want to have fun, see Naxx, and not stress over the world buff meta. A problem Blizz should have fixed but instead recently decided to wholeheartedly endorse. This thread does not give me any hope at all.
    https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...in-max-culture
    FYI, I would avoid classic if i was you. Not because it is inherently more or less toxic than retail, but because you seem intent on focusing on the negativity and ignoring all the good stuff. Myself and many friends have completed all pve content in classic, without ever joining a major guild or being competitive or worrying about "metas" and WB and all that jazz. Is it a part of the community? yeah, absolutely, but is it representative of ALL raiders and players of classic? Nah, absolutely not. We found a small group of friends and with friends of friends, ran a "community" (as it would be called in retail) of raiders who operated on an drop in / drop out system where it was essentially first online first in raid. We usually had 50-60 online and if someone wanted to leave, they left and were replaced. Sometimes we pugged, sometimes we didnt. Classic is so unbelievably easy, it really doesnt matter at all. Did we have a chance at any competitive times? HELL NO! not a chance, seriously not even close. Did we casually rock up once in a while and clear some raids in sub par times while having a laugh? Yeah, absolutely.

    But as you can see, this is required socializing and communicating, building relationships, and maintaining them, and obviously it required a lot of group content and teamwork. And, as such, even with the dramatically reduced difficulty, I cant recommend classic to you.
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyanion View Post
    In no way are you entitled to the 'complete' game when you buy it, because DLC/cosmetics and so on are there for companies to make more money
    Quote Originally Posted by rhorle View Post
    Others, including myself, are saying that they only exist because Blizzard needed to create things so they could monetize it.

  20. #1200
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    Quote Originally Posted by arkanon View Post
    snip
    If I understand right, he really isn't asking for much, unlike the OP who seemed to want 226 from doing WQs(). If I remember my badges and costs right, it took 30 days of doing random heroics EVERY DAY without fail to buy ONE piece of 251 baseline T10 from Frost badges, assuming it cost 60 Frost badges, and that wasn't even the really good pieces. There were 264 offpieces as well that cost about the same, but the trinkets generally sucked compared to raid drops. While a raider would have cleared ICC on 2 difficulties, 10 man and 25 man, 12 bosses, 2 badges from each boss, so 48 Frost badges a week plus those from daily heroics, making a raider get 62 Frost badges from one WEEK of ICC and random heroics, another 5(???) if you do the "X must die!" weekly raid quest. There was another 2-5 Frost or something small from a quest inside ICC itself.

    On top of that, the raider would have killed 24 bosses in that week, likely minimum 12 and up to 24 with relevant loot (10H/25N/25H). So in the WotLK model, there is still a large gap between a super casual and a hardcore/group using but competent raider. And in the 5 mans in ICC patch, you could buy a Battered Hilt with gold and get a 251 weapon from semi-solo play, though some parts of the chain required a dungeon group to complete.

    To me the modern idea for designing WoW is especially strange because WoW used to be the more casual option, and now it's not nearly as much with FFXIV and ESO etc out there. Usually WoW makes itself stand out by copying things that work from other competitors, but doing them well.
    Last edited by Freedom; 2021-04-07 at 10:12 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Scrod View Post
    Ok, I give up. This is pointless.
    Many Multitudes Online Constantly Harping About Minor Problems
    FIRE GIVES ME BIGGER BLOOD SHIELDS

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