Why is it alright to diminish the experience of non competitive players?

[Kokolums]

why is it alright to diminish the experience of competitive players for what you want?

I don't think anyone wants that. But to be a mythic raider requires a time investment that is insane. Besides actually killing the bosses, you are researching your class constantly. If you are a guild leader, you are constantly recruiting new talent that can pour tons of hours into wow and constantly weighing if you should either keep the guild going, merge with anther guild, or gquit and join another mythic raiding guild. If you are not a guild leader, you are constantly weighing if you should stay in your current guild or gquit to another guild. You got to do things like run specific m+ dungeons like 25-30x just for one BiS item.

The bottom line is that the "competitive players" have oceans of free time to do all this.

[Surfacin9]

OP, what sort of a progression is there from heroic to mythic dungeons, apart from increased difficulty? Ever since Wrath (with early cata as an exception) heroic dungeons were designed to be easily completed by practically anyone who can move their character and press buttons to do damage/heal. Nothing hits hard, nothing requires much to be killed. I don't think there are any one-shot mechanics or something that can kill you. It is something that people run before raids and m+ open, or on a freshly levelled character. The tuning is done in way that no in-game system matters there. So why should developers be concerned with something that has a life-time of 1-2 weeks and then is forgotten by 95% of the playerbase. Heroics and regular mythics are so undertuned that its almost impossible to fail.

Why do players only consider something an issue when it effects raiders and high end players like mythic+ and gladiators?

Because that type of content is designed to challenge people, and at the very high end people go out of their way to get hte max result. Like world top raider try to squeeze every last bit, every last digit out of their character to progress. That's where things like conduit ilvl, gem slots, covenants matter. 90% of the game can be completed without being optimal, so those things don't matter at all. Its all in players' heads that those things matter so much.

Why is the start of the game seen as something that is entirely free to bypass and ruin the progression of the larger playerbase?

Because in Vanilla raiding was hard to get into with lots of grind for starter gear and prep. In TBC they made the first tier more accessible and most of the playerbase raided Kara, Gruul, Maggy, but a lot less saw BT and Sunwell because of the straight progression system and attunements. Believe it or not, it takes time and effort of the developers to create raids. What developers wants a huge chunk of the game seen by only a small portion of the players? So in Wrath raiding became even more accessible, and everyone and their mother could raid, and the game became about the end-game, the rest was there for people to stomp through on the way to the raid and the big bad endboss that the whole expansion was leading to. So levelling became a way to start the story that ends inside the raid. And its been like that ever since. So it is completely unclear to me what 'progression of the larger playerbase' gets ruined? The majority of players do dungeons/raids/pvp/world content. The rest sub to see the story for 1-2 months a patch, or play their own game within WoW with their own personal progression and goals.

[MoanaLisa]

Blizzard has never balanced around casuals. No good competitive game has.

Technically, PVE should be more co-operative than competitive. Blizzard, in their infinite cluelessness, has done a lot to instill competitive attitudes in content that really requires something else. Quite a bit of the competitive BS on the part of individual players in PVE is purely ego-boost and easy to dismiss. They don't want to play with lesser mortals and that attitude should be returned or ignored.

No one should be diminishing the accomplishments of anyone. People play at different skill levels and many have their own physical issues to work around.

[Kumorii]

WoW when it was released was the casual MMO and ever since then it has just become more and more casual friendly. Especially nowadays, it also try to encapsulate even more brackets of players which again benefit casuals as well as hardcores of course.

I see very little diminishing of casual experience from others and when I do it's often a response that's more about how their idea is bad, rather than trying to destroy for casuals.
It's very common nowadays though that people think if someone points how their idea is bad it's because they set out to destroy you and the group you perceive you belong to rather than the idea being bad.

Just my 2cents. This goes both ways ofc.

[starstationprofm]

Technically, PVE should be more co-operative than competitive. Blizzard, in their infinite cluelessness, has done a lot to instill competitive attitudes in content that really requires something else. Quite a bit of the competitive BS on the part of individual players in PVE is purely ego-boost and easy to dismiss. They don't want to play with lesser mortals and that attitude should be returned or ignored.

No one should be diminishing the accomplishments of anyone. People play at different skill levels and many have their own physical issues to work around.

Vanilla was competitive from the start. You had world first announcements even then.

Blizzard just does what the players want, people watch the World First Race, not the top 1000 race.

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.....I hope this is sarcasm cause all 4 of them are HUGE esports

Sorry bud I never heard of a huge Power Rangers streamer lmao

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Hehehe, the frost mage, feral druid and survival hunter are crying in their corners.

M+ is many things but least of them is being accessible.

Feral is actually good.

And all those classes can host their own keys. Plus, they all have a busted spec, they just need to switch to it.

[Wuusah]

No but certainly you can give them things to work for no?

For people who struggle through normal dungeons completing heroics would be a meaningful personal achievement to them no?

Why then does their seem to be this expectation to over gear them to the point it is painfully clear they didn't overcome anything but simply out geared it?

We had that in TBC for the most part. There was no catch-up gear except for the occasional badge item you could buy. If you wanted to gear up, you had to do normal dungeons, then heroic, then T4 raids, then T5 raids, then T6 raids.

Sounds nice. You have this progression throughout the game and all content matters. The problem is simply that guilds had to regrind old content all the time to gear up new members and people were sick and tired doing karazhan all the time.
It also feels really bad to know you have to play for multiple months until you are ready to be where everyone is already right now, simply because you started later.

Catch-up is important. Normal dungeons, heroic dungeons, LFR and even normal raid to some extent. Those are stepping stone modes. Those are not designed to be the place to have your progress on. That’s why catch-up gear outgears them.

[Antontein]

OP can you tell me where and how is your experience diminished during HC dungeon runs?

[Kalisandra]

Blizzard has never balanced around casuals. No good competitive game has.

Yeah, it has. PvP adjustments have been made based on random BG performance in the past, rather than on arena performance.

[Mysterymask]

Sorry bud I never heard of a huge Power Rangers streamer lmao.

TBF you probably never looked either....

[cparle87]

MMORPGs always had some element of competition. But the key was that cooperation was always more valuable. I think BlizZard has lost sight of this. Vanilla raiding wasn't really difficult but it was more of a cooperative experience.

Current raiding scene is hyper focused competition because of the many mechanics.

How can this be when things like MC could be done by 15 people who knew what they were doing carrying the other 25 who could be semi-afk? I'd say today's raiding, where every player needs to know mechanics or the boss won't die, is more heavily focused on cooperative than vanilla ever was.

[Kalisandra]

How much gear were you getting from doing quests and dailies prior to Legion? Basically none?

You did LFR and mythic dungeons and the world boss and you had your three crafted pieces, and those could be whatever slots needed them and swapped in and out as needed so they made your worst three slots into some of your best if you were a non raider. The gear was quite decent really, except for dealing with those cats in Tanaan, for which you wanted a group or good raid gear.

I suspect that part of the reason for the griping at the moment is that there's a lot of non-instanced content where the gear you get from solo play isn't enough to feel powerful in. Usually, aside from the odd elite (World Destroyers, Devilsaurs, etc.) once you reach a certain point open world mobs just die, and it's somewhere in the first tier. In SL there are plenty of open-world areas where you want a group, or to have good raid gear, and that makes soloable gear feel weak even if it's not compared to 5-man dungeon (non m+) gear.

Back in LK, Cata, and MoP, while you needed to group up and do 5-mans, you didn't need to raid to get quite decent PvE gear. What's more in BC grinding 'welfare' PvP pieces in random BGs got you quite reasonable gear from mid-expansion onwards.

[T-34]

Technically, PVE should be more co-operative than competitive. Blizzard, in their infinite cluelessness, has done a lot to instill competitive attitudes in content that really requires something else. Quite a bit of the competitive BS on the part of individual players in PVE is purely ego-boost and easy to dismiss. They don't want to play with lesser mortals and that attitude should be returned or ignored.

No one should be diminishing the accomplishments of anyone. People play at different skill levels and many have their own physical issues to work around.

But PVE is co-operative! You have to co-operate with your group!

PVE in WoW is no different than handball, football or cricket. It is the combined individual skill of each player within a group framework that decides your success.

And no-one is diminishing anybody's accomplishments. For some people killing the end boss on normal is a great personal and group achievement.
I think the OP's thread is one of the untold veiled "why-do-I-not-get-the-same-rewards-as-more-progressed-people-threads".

And your remark that someone "doesn't want to play with lesser mortals" is very strange:
If someone wants to play with people on his own skill level does in no way mean that he despises people of lower skill level. It just means that he wants to compete at his own level.

What happens more often than "evil elitists laughing at lesser mortals" is that someone who either can't accept or isn't self-aware of his own skill level gets mad when people of higher skill doesn't want to play with him or carry him.
That usually ends up in remarks of the sort "elitists", "gate-keepers" and other slurs at people from said entitled people.

[Kalisandra]

OP, what sort of a progression is there from heroic to mythic dungeons, apart from increased difficulty? Ever since Wrath (with early cata as an exception) heroic dungeons were designed to be easily completed by practically anyone who can move their character and press buttons to do damage/heal. Nothing hits hard, nothing requires much to be killed. I don't think there are any one-shot mechanics or something that can kill you. It is something that people run before raids and m+ open, or on a freshly levelled character. The tuning is done in way that no in-game system matters there. So why should developers be concerned with something that has a life-time of 1-2 weeks and then is forgotten by 95% of the playerbase. Heroics and regular mythics are so undertuned that its almost impossible to fail.

Ever since 3.1 (Ulduar), perhaps. Initially the LK heroic 5-mans had plenty of stuff that would one-shot you. Several bosses in Gundrak, Loken, the first couple of pulls in one of the undead dugeons, some of the casters in the other one, and so on. It was only later, when they were outgeared that those dungeons became incredibly easy and because of currency they were still being run at the end, so that's what people tend to remember. Cata's heroics weren't that much harder than Wrath's were at the beginning of the expac, but it took longer for them to become trivialised.

Because in Vanilla raiding was hard to get into with lots of grind for starter gear and prep. In TBC they made the first tier more accessible and most of the playerbase raided Kara, Gruul, Maggy, but a lot less saw BT and Sunwell because of the straight progression system and attunements.

Also, a small guild could raid Kara (and later Zul'Amun), but needed to ally with other guilds to raid Serpenshrine, The Eye, or Black Temple, let alone Sunwell required a really solid alliance or a guild able to field a full 25-man raid, plus backups, and fair number of those player had to be willing to reroll or at least re-profression as required.

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We had that in TBC for the most part. There was no catch-up gear except for the occasional badge item you could buy. If you wanted to gear up, you had to do normal dungeons, then heroic, then T4 raids, then T5 raids, then T6 raids.

Sounds nice. You have this progression throughout the game and all content matters. The problem is simply that guilds had to regrind old content all the time to gear up new members and people were sick and tired doing karazhan all the time.

Well, some guilds were having to constantly gear their new players. Others just recruited from the players geared through the former guilds ('poached' is another way of putting it). This is was harmful for the guilds that wanted to progress, but weren't quite fast enough to satisfy their pushier players, as they'd all gear up and then skip out for a 'better' guild, leaving their old guild to have to start the gearing process over again, which was very demoralising for those players who had loyalty to their guild.

[Lochton]

A good solution would just be to leave the Raiding, M+, BG, Arena systems as they are (of course with balancing and maintenance, it was more the selection) and then start expanding on world options. Give people the ability to progress, although slower, with gear/power, add options for claiming equipment through the need to do world content, disconnect it from the competitive scene of loot but still able to match the item levels (again, much slower).

This would be a benefit for casuals and world players, meanwhile not harming the other groups.

[Amaterasu65]

I don't understand how the experience is ruined in heroic dungeons. If people find heroic dungeons difficult it's mostly about them needing to learn the basics of the game and their class. Once they're done doing that there's nothing else to see.

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A good solution would just be to leave the Raiding, M+, BG, Arena systems as they are (of course with balancing and maintenance, it was more the selection) and then start expanding on world options. Give people the ability to progress, although slower, with gear/power, add options for claiming equipment through the need to do world content, disconnect it from the competitive scene of loot but still able to match the item levels (again, much slower).

This would be a benefit for casuals and world players, meanwhile not harming the other groups.

World content definitely needs a rehaul and it needs to be actually rewarding. Surely not on the scale of doing actually hard content, but having more solo content that's worth doing is welcome. Right now the only reason I'm doing wqs is anima for cosmetics.

[Surfacin9]

Give people the ability to progress, although slower, with gear/power, add options for claiming equipment through the need to do world content, disconnect it from the competitive scene of loot but still able to match the item levels (again, much slower).

This would be a benefit for casuals and world players, meanwhile not harming the other groups.

Isn't that exactly what covenant armor accomplishes? Its obtainable purely from solo content (doing story) and upgradeable by doing world content (anima from world quests). Right now you can a full 200 set without weapons and jewelry relatively easy at your own pace by just doing world quests. They even have a set bonus. Its also unique to that playerbase as in, no hc or mythic raider will have that set bonus. At that is also ilvl equal to normal raid loot and +7-9 mythic plus end of dungeon chest. You get your legendary from doing solo content in Torghast, and you set the pace - do lower levels for less gain, or do higher levels for slightly more soul ash. You can even add more power to those items, at a slower pace, by doing another type of solo content - the maw. Weapons and jewelry you can get from World quests.

So all of that without ever touching a dungeon, raid or ever groupping with another player. I'm pretty sure the WQ items and covenant armor ilvls will be increased with more renown. You also can do the world bosses, which even though require a group, are in no way 'group' content (you technically don't even need to join a group, just run up while people are killing them, simply tag or dps), that give ilvl 207 items.

How can this system be possibly improved?
1) Increase the max upgradeable ilvl - that will make all of m+ end dungeon and hc raid obsolete;
2) Time-gate the increase in max ilvl for upgrade - see above, people still run various m+ levels and hc raids;
3) Severely increase the ilvl upgrade cost above 200 - anima is scarce, you will either be 'forced' to constantly grind it if you only want the ilvl, people who want ilvl AND cosmetic rewards/covenant buildings, will be completely f*cked.

Right now the game gives you an ability to earn decent ilvl without groupping or doing pvp/raid/m+. Item level that is enough for that type of content and even above. If you want higher rewards, you need to step into the end-game content. This, after all, is an MMO, not a single-player game.

[Lochton]

Isn't that exactly what covenant armor accomplishes? Its obtainable purely from solo content (doing story) and upgradeable by doing world content (anima from world quests). Right now you can a full 200 set without weapons and jewelry relatively easy at your own pace by just doing world quests. They even have a set bonus. Its also unique to that playerbase as in, no hc or mythic raider will have that set bonus. At that is also ilvl equal to normal raid loot and +7-9 mythic plus end of dungeon chest. You get your legendary from doing solo content in Torghast, and you set the pace - do lower levels for less gain, or do higher levels for slightly more soul ash. You can even add more power to those items, at a slower pace, by doing another type of solo content - the maw. Weapons and jewelry you can get from World quests.

So all of that without ever touching a dungeon, raid or ever groupping with another player. I'm pretty sure the WQ items and covenant armor ilvls will be increased with more renown. You also can do the world bosses, which even though require a group, are in no way 'group' content (you technically don't even need to join a group, just run up while people are killing them, simply tag or dps), that give ilvl 207 items.

How can this system be possibly improved?
1) Increase the max upgradeable ilvl - that will make all of m+ end dungeon and hc raid obsolete;
2) Time-gate the increase in max ilvl for upgrade - see above, people still run various m+ levels and hc raids;
3) Severely increase the ilvl upgrade cost above 200 - anima is scarce, you will either be 'forced' to constantly grind it if you only want the ilvl, people who want ilvl AND cosmetic rewards/covenant buildings, will be completely f*cked.

Right now the game gives you an ability to earn decent ilvl without groupping or doing pvp/raid/m+. Item level that is enough for that type of content and even above. If you want higher rewards, you need to step into the end-game content. This, after all, is an MMO, not a single-player game.

A very good example is just to make the valor upgrade system for everyone? World content players gets extremely low amounts compared to Mythic+, so, where is the hurt?

[bloodmoth13]

I noticed this trend over a few topics now. Why do players only consider something an issue when it effects raiders and high end players like mythic+ and gladiators?

Why is it when it comes to destroying the progression of a player doing heroic dungeons moving onto mythic is it seen as something that has zero value? I constantly see requests and at times celebration when systems are made to undermine low level progression in favor of simply letting people grind repetitive content. Is this just a case of " Its always been this way"?

Why is the start of the game seen as something that is entirely free to bypass and ruin the progression of the larger playerbase?

You mean catch up mechanics?
Its because the playerbase moves on from content. Its actually MUCH harder to play catch up without help. There will be less players doing the old content as everyone is trying to push new content. Keeping old content relevant helps players that are behind, or just straight skipping it if they dont want to force cutting edge players to backpeddle.

It doesnt undermine the cutting edge players, they completed that content at the time. It doesnt diminish the top 10 cutting edge mythic raiders who downed antorus when i rock in right now and solo it does it?
Content has an expiry date, once the competitive scene has devoured the content its best to allow some players who are lagging access to the new content to keep the population grouped together.
There is nothing worse for a social game to have your playerbase scattered among too various content where they cannot interact with eachother.

There are a lot of tricky solutions blizz have to make that seem stupid and awful to the playerbase but are actually entirely necessary, its just like content gating being a necessary evil for the health of the game.

[Tsarez]

Feral is actually good.

And all those classes can host their own keys. Plus, they all have a busted spec, they just need to switch to it.

So accessibility = play your own keys regardless if the dungeon you have drops anything for you, as well as disregard which spec is fun for you, switch to the meta? I find both things extremely weak.

Maybe if you could switch your keys to the dungeon of your choice, be it with a penalty like -1 level for a switch, I would consider them accessible again. But as things stand right now, M+ isn't easily accessible for classes outside of meta. As a matter of fact you might end up sitting in a city for 60+ minutes looking for the right key and group that is willing to take you.

[Soon-TM]

why do you even enter conversations if you don't bother to read? you clearly read one line, came up with a "rebuttal" that is both asinine and hyperbolic, and just declared yourself right. I know you didn't read past the first sentence because if you did, you would've realized that I said the exact same thing you started with. so good job making yourself out to be a fool.

You said that killing Denathrius is no longer special because everyone can do so in LFR, aka more elitist QQ about casuals finally getting to see the inside of a raid without your kind gatekeeping them outside, which is where they belong /s

Man, looks like we're back in WotLK, you guys could at least change your speech to not make it so obviously biased - and no, you didn't say the same than me, not in the slightest. But I guess you can't bother to reread what you just wrote.

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As a matter of fact you might end up sitting in a city for 60+ minutes looking for the right key and group that is willing to take you.

And retail fanboys have the gall of decrying Classic for this very reason, go figure