Like I expected, there is nothing to do in DF

[kamuimac]

Yesterday I logged in with an empty quest log. 5 minutes later I had like 20 quests picked up in Valdrakken and that is excluding PvP quests and World Quests. Please tell me again how the people who want to play the game are screwed over?

What activity is missing that is so desperately needed so that people can "play the game"? Obviously it is not dungeons and raids. Doing those apparently does not qualify as playing the game.

hm i envy you . honestly i do .

i didnt do a single WQ for over a week because not a single one offered even a +3 itlv upgrade to any of my lower itlv alts dh is 371 and evoker is 367

and they cannot progress by world quests even if they wanted to

WQ are basicle dead content atm unelss you like spending hours afk for rares to spawn .

i envy you that you like collecitng that 200 gold wq . for me they are beyond pointless.

[Chilela]

I mean one thing is for sure: if they would have broken the Shadowlands' sales record, they would have bragged about it. They didn't.

Between that and the promotions you mentioned in a later post, I'm inclined to agree, even with the whole MS thing also brought up, didn't even think about that.

Your comment just reminded me of titanforging. This is an unpopular opinion but nerfing and eventually removing titanforging was another mistake. Legion is probably the only expansion since forever where people went back and cleared raids even after the release of new raid tiers simply because you could get lucky with titanforging or legendaries. It felt great to open the group finder and see so many groups looking for people to clear ToV after you were done with your weekly guild ToS run. They need to find a way to make raids relevant for more than one patch again.

The main two options, outside of RNGforging, that seem like the most viable solutions to the raid viability problem are 1. Something like the Fated system of SL Season 4, or 2. Reducing ilvl inflation, though that comes with the drawback of potentially making legacy raids drop BiS items (To be fair, this did happen even with high ilvl inflation; The CD reduction trinket from Elisande remained top-tier for Fury Warriors up through Antorus). The issue with RNGforging was that how obscenely luck-based it ended up getting. I remember running N EN on an alt and having a trinket drop that ended up titanforging up to well above Mythic ilvl. I could see smaller, random ilvl upgrades work, similar to how it worked in MoP/WoD, though.

[Osmeric]

Your comment just reminded me of titanforging. This is an unpopular opinion but nerfing and eventually removing titanforging was another mistake. Legion is probably the only expansion since forever where people went back and cleared raids even after the release of new raid tiers simply because you could get lucky with titanforging or legendaries. It felt great to open the group finder and see so many groups looking for people to clear ToV after you were done with your weekly guild ToS run. They need to find a way to make raids relevant for more than one patch again.

A great thing about titanforging was it encouraged carrying. It was a great catchup mechanic for the undergeared and late.

Maybe that's why they dropped it; it violated their loot puritanism (where no one ever gets loot they do not deserve.)

[Raisei]

They are the people that don't raid. It's not that hard to track how many people actually raid via achievements. And not raiding doesn't mean solo play. There were a lot a casual group activities over the lifetime of WoW but Blizz neutered them piece by piece to force people into their favoured endgame content. If they think thats better for the game, good for them. I just hope more people accept that and won't buy the next expansion if there is barely anything for them in it. If Blizz doesn't want you as customers you should accept it and move on.

As @Biomega said, this is just your personal definition. Nowhere is it said that Casuals cannot raid. Many consider "just" getting Curve to be a casual activity. My guild is a casual guild yet we have Curve on all bosses in the last 4 expansions.
And this lack of definition is why I am calling bullshit on your idea that the game is carried by people not raiding. Is it carried by the Casuals? Definately, but I do not agree with your narrow definition of that word.

You are of course welcome to your delusions, but believe me, if the metrics would show raiding and dungeons as unpopular as you say, they would have been much less focussed by now. Blizzard isn't wasting money on unpopular features. Dragonflights is the proof. There was lots of hate for all the "side-activities", islands, warfronts, torghast and whatnot and guess what we do not have in DF anymore? Side-Activities.

[HansOlo]

There's that KEY mistake again. You cannot ONLY count the opinions of players. You also count the opinion of people who used to play as they are voting by NOT playing. And you do that via sub counts. WoD had more players. Any expansion with less players than WoD is garbage, objectively.

You know what my professor in statistics told us?

Just tell me any kind of lie(ANY kind) - and I can make it look like the truth using statistics.

You are the reason why they don't show the subnumbers anymore. Each person concludes something out of context. So kindly take the numbers and...

[chaoticcrono]

Usually I’m not a debbie downer, but one of my biggest fears going into Dragonflight was that there wasn’t really anything that stood out as new endgame content. From the date I’m writing this yes, the raids and Mythic+ will unlock in a couple days, but that’s typical content.

I finished all my Mythics for the week so I’m locked out, all the world quests are done on the map and I finished all the unique dragon riding races. I consider myself a casual player and usually only spend a few hours per week even playing. The fact that as a casual I already feel dried up on content is not a good sign…and the expansion isn’t even 2 weeks old yet. Don’t get me wrong, the dungeons are great and so I always enjoy Mythic+ and the raid looks cool themed.

I’m not necessarily looking for new ‘systems’ like we’ve seen in past expansions, but I don’t think many would disagree that DF definitely feels like there is something missing.

busywork is missing. the game has almost 20 years of content to enjoy if youre so inclined,

[Glorious Leader]

Every raider I know personally hated it for that exact reason. You could never be DONE with content. !

Yes you could. You know how? YOU JUST FUCKING STOP WHEN YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH. Like the above stated here is borderline mental illness. You didn't actually NEED that titanforged trinket for your worlds 9999 mid tier guild. The MARGINAL increase in your damage/tanking/healing isn't why you didn't kill the boss. Like I'm not a fan of RNG in general and I get how it can be frustrating but the solution isn't to remove the system to placate people with no self control. The solution is to ignore those people.

[Thirtyrock]

Yes you could. You know how? YOU JUST FUCKING STOP WHEN YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH. Like the above stated here is borderline mental illness. You didn't actually NEED that titanforged trinket for your worlds 9999 mid tier guild. The MARGINAL increase in your damage/tanking/healing isn't why you didn't kill the boss. Like I'm not a fan of RNG in general and I get how it can be frustrating but the solution isn't to remove the system to placate people with no self control. The solution is to ignore those people.

I’ve put up with your rudeness long enough. You are obviously a person I would not choose to spend my time with. I hope you have a good life. You’re not going to get any more of my mental or emotional energy.

[VMSmith]

Yes you could. You know how? YOU JUST FUCKING STOP WHEN YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH.

While I do think that the thought process you describe is detrimental to everyone who's not interested in serious gaming, you discount the stresses of peer pressure in these situations. If they just stop doing the things their peers require of them then they can no longer participate in the content they are interested in. And that peer pressure is never going to go away for that type of content. So they actually do need Blizzard to remove it for all of them. I can get why raid-logging is so appealing to such folk, they're just not interested in the game other than as a raid engine.

The sad truth is that Blizzard is just not interested in a game that works for everyone. They could do it, plenty of other games balance raiding and casual/solo play just fine. Blizz is just simply only interested in higher-stakes group content.

When people tell you that you should find another game they're not being mean to you, they're just being honest with what you should expect from WoW and suggesting a reasonable course of action. It's not going to be the game you want anytime soon. Maybe they'll switch it up in the future. You should come back when that happens, if it does.

Also, the person you are responding to has been super considerate toward you and you keep showing your ass. It doesn't help any of your arguments to be so nasty to someone who's really trying to see your point of view and being reasonable with you.

[neik]

Although I'm not an enemy, and I always give credit (including credit for some quality combat changes in DF). But I'm pretty much wrapped up with DF already. Having deep hatred to memeflying including dungeon that requires you to memeride across the entire zone. It helps you just to logoff and forget this game even exists.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

While I do think that the thought process you describe is detrimental to everyone who's not interested in serious gaming, you discount the stresses of peer pressure in these situations. If they just stop doing the things their peers require of them then they can no longer participate in the content they are interested in. And that peer pressure is never going to go away for that type of content. So they actually do need Blizzard to remove it for all of them. I can get why raid-logging is so appealing to such folk, they're just not interested in the game other than as a raid engine.

The sad truth is that Blizzard is just not interested in a game that works for everyone. They could do it, plenty of other games balance raiding and casual/solo play just fine. Blizz is just simply only interested in higher-stakes group content.

When people tell you that you should find another game they're not being mean to you, they're just being honest with what you should expect from WoW and suggesting a reasonable course of action. It's not going to be the game you want anytime soon. Maybe they'll switch it up in the future. You should come back when that happens, if it does.

Also, the person you are responding to has been super considerate toward you and you keep showing your ass. It doesn't help any of your arguments to be so nasty to someone who's really trying to see your point of view and being reasonable with you.

I think we should stop using the community's toxic tendencies as an excuse for the removal of casual-friendly features. It only benefits a small(although a very vocal one) minority of the playerbase and it handicaps everyone else. We know that on average only ~2% of players manage to clear mythic difficulty raids based on achievement statistics. Mythic raids and high M+ are the only difficulties where min-maxing matters at all. Why should we advise 98% of players to play other games or be satisfied with community soups and fishing holes just so the 2% won't have to grind and deal with RNG to get their world first? We know that on average only ~17% manage to clear heroic raids again based on achievement statistics. And we know that you can clear heroics without needing BiS gear and max AP.

You have to understand that by removing features such as titanforging and legendaries and AP you are catering precisely to the people who are putting peer pressure on you i.e. the people who are looking at everyone's raider.io score and ilvl and only taking the highest. It will still be as hard for you to find group as it was back in Legion. The only difference is that now you can't just go clear an older raid and some world bosses or even run an m0 dungeon in hopes of getting a titanforged item or a legendary that would increase your ilvl. No, you have to pray that you get enough pieces of loot from your first week of raiding to have a chance to be invited into groups on reset. It's incredibly hard to catch back up once you start falling behind.

The game is not more casual-friendly now than it was in previous expansions and Legion in particular. In Legion casual activities were rewarded and provided casual players with access to high difficulty content. We took all of that away just because it forced the top ~2% to do casual activities too to be able to clear mythic raids. You didn't make it easier for casual players to play the game, you catered to the top 2% and the toxic portion of the playerbase, who want you to have BiS gear to invite you into groups for normal raids, thus perpetuating the issue.

[AtomR]

I mean, outside of the story stuff, which is still not bound by player power or anything too major...

The renown stuff is namely optional, yeah.

And again you're all assuming that everyone plays for player power and that's what makes things optional or mandatory in a game.

[Thirtyrock]

I think we should stop using the community's toxic tendencies as an excuse for the removal of casual-friendly features. It only benefits a small(although a very vocal one) minority of the playerbase and it handicaps everyone else. We know that on average only ~2% of players manage to clear mythic difficulty raids based on achievement statistics. Mythic raids and high M+ are the only difficulties where min-maxing matters at all. Why should we advise 98% of players to play other games or be satisfied with community soups and fishing holes just so the 2% won't have to grind and deal with RNG to get their world first? We know that on average only ~17% manage to clear heroic raids again based on achievement statistics. And we know that you can clear heroics without needing BiS gear and max AP.

You have to understand that by removing features such as titanforging and legendaries and AP you are catering precisely to the people who are putting peer pressure on you i.e. the people who are looking at everyone's raider.io score and ilvl and only taking the highest. It will still be as hard for you to find group as it was back in Legion. The only difference is that now you can't just go clear an older raid and some world bosses or even run an m0 dungeon in hopes of getting a titanforged item or a legendary that would increase your ilvl. No, you have to pray that you get enough pieces of loot from your first week of raiding to have a chance to be invited into groups on reset. It's incredibly hard to catch back up once you start falling behind.

The game is not more casual-friendly now than it was in previous expansions and Legion in particular. In Legion casual activities were rewarded and provided casual players with access to high difficulty content. We took all of that away just because it forced the top ~2% to do casual activities too to be able to clear mythic raids. You didn't make it easier for casual players to play the game, you catered to the top 2% and the toxic portion of the playerbase, who want you to have BiS gear to invite you into groups for normal raids, thus perpetuating the issue.

I mean, i agree with you, in theory, it would be nice if we (raiders) didn't have to cater to people who put unreasonable expectations on players, but that just isn't going to happen in any significant way. People are people, they're going to do what they do. You're never going to convince a bad or even mediocre raid leader that they should ignore easy power upgrades because it's really their skill level holding them back. First, they don't care WHAT'S holding them back, they want eventual progress, so they need some sort of path to victory, which generally includes easy power upgrades. Second, that's not something most people can hear and react to rationally.

I spent 3 expansions trying to find a guild that had players who were on a similar skill level as me (I'm not amazing, but I have been in server first guilds before and can easily clear AOTC and progress into Mythic with a similarly skilled group) who did NOT require all the grind to be completed. 3 expansions, at least 8 different guilds. The last one I found FINALLY fit those critera and then, lol, DF takes away the infinite grind.

This is a problem that requires design changes because it is impossible to change human nature.

- - - Updated - - -

And again you're all assuming that everyone plays for player power and that's what makes things optional or mandatory in a game.

I think it's safe to assume that MOST players want a path to progress their player power. If they feel like the majority of the available content won't help them progress, or that they don't have a clear and consistent progression path, they're going to get frustrated with the content. That makes a lot of sense to me (not the concept that there is nothing to do, that's bunk, there's plenty to do, a lot of it doesn't reward player power in any meaningful way).

I could not care less about player power progression AS LONG AS we're killing bosses, so the open world not offering power advantages is fine FOR ME. But solo players need a better/more clear path forward.

[liyroot]

So rich!!!! I tried to warn all of you. A new $100 expansion with no content. Made as quickly and cheaply as possible. Y'all spent 2 weeks getting a novel dopamine high. Now the novelty has worn off and you're angry.

Still not too late to quit. Instead of playing World of Warcraft: Dragon Adventure Land, I studied Japanese 2 hours a day and learned 140 new words. 140 bros! There are 140 new words I can read or hear and I understand them! Absolutely insano style. If you spend that 2-4 hours a day learning Japanese you could reach PhD level in Japanese in a couple of years. Srsly!

[Thirtyrock]

While I do think that the thought process you describe is detrimental to everyone who's not interested in serious gaming, you discount the stresses of peer pressure in these situations. If they just stop doing the things their peers require of them then they can no longer participate in the content they are interested in. And that peer pressure is never going to go away for that type of content. So they actually do need Blizzard to remove it for all of them. I can get why raid-logging is so appealing to such folk, they're just not interested in the game other than as a raid engine.

The sad truth is that Blizzard is just not interested in a game that works for everyone. They could do it, plenty of other games balance raiding and casual/solo play just fine. Blizz is just simply only interested in higher-stakes group content.

When people tell you that you should find another game they're not being mean to you, they're just being honest with what you should expect from WoW and suggesting a reasonable course of action. It's not going to be the game you want anytime soon. Maybe they'll switch it up in the future. You should come back when that happens, if it does.

Also, the person you are responding to has been super considerate toward you and you keep showing your ass. It doesn't help any of your arguments to be so nasty to someone who's really trying to see your point of view and being reasonable with you.

Thank you for this. I mean it; I've blocked that individual, so I won't see their replies, but that was...an unpleasant conversation, despite all my efforts. I repeatedly quit and stopped when I had enough, and that meant I just didn't get to raid, because that was the expectation of the guilds I had found up to that point (8 different guilds over 3 expansions, iirc)

I think most raiders don't want to raid log. They want to be ABLE to raid log when they have to. For example, I really want to raid between christmas and new years, my group has a wednesday raid scheduled that week. That's completely fine. It's not an EXPECTATION in the guild I'm in now to raid that week, but it's a scheduled raid and I WANT to raid. BUT I don't want to spend the rest of that week playing the game. I want to hang with family, log in to raid, and be done for the week. Now the week AFTER New Years, I will have more time to spend in game, so I want to have more things to do outside of raiding. This is how I see most of my raider friends viewing this discussion. They don't want to raid log, they want to be able to raid log when they need to without holding their raid back.

Now, if they also expected me to spend that week grinding my renown or anima or whatever levels (this 100% was an expectation in one of the guilds I quit in BFA because of this exact type of thing.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

I mean, i agree with you, in theory, it would be nice if we (raiders) didn't have to cater to people who put unreasonable expectations on players, but that just isn't going to happen in any significant way. People are people, they're going to do what they do. You're never going to convince a bad or even mediocre raid leader that they should ignore easy power upgrades because it's really their skill level holding them back. First, they don't care WHAT'S holding them back, they want eventual progress, so they need some sort of path to victory, which generally includes easy power upgrades. Second, that's not something most people can hear and react to rationally.

I spent 3 expansions trying to find a guild that had players who were on a similar skill level as me (I'm not amazing, but I have been in server first guilds before and can easily clear AOTC and progress into Mythic with a similarly skilled group) who did NOT require all the grind to be completed. 3 expansions, at least 8 different guilds. The last one I found FINALLY fit those critera and then, lol, DF takes away the infinite grind.

This is a problem that requires design changes because it is impossible to change human nature.

Precisely my point. You are not going to fix the problem by catering to people who are causing the problem. You are going to fix the problem by making it possible for casual players to access high difficulty content. That makes it easier for you to find non-toxic groups and guilds looking to clear content. Blizzard have been making it harder and harder for casual players to access normal and heroic raids and now the pool of raiders consists of sweaty toxic players who don't invite you if you didn't sweat your balls off to get geared or kick you if you mess up a single mechanic. It was much easier to find casual-friendly guilds and groups in Legion because casual activites were rewarding. A person who spent most of his time doing world quests, opening treasure chests, or just clearing LFR, could get proper gear to jump into heroic raids as much as a person who spent his time farming m+. When you remove all of that you make it so players have to pray they get lucky with loot drops on their first week of raiding to even get a chance to be invited into raids on the 2nd week. That's not solving the problem, that's making it even worse.

I understand that mythic raiders hated the fact that they have to do casual activities to be able to clear mythic raids, but that made the game much more accessible to everyone else, and we should cater to the 98% rather than the 2%, especially if we want to solve the toxic community problems.

Also, I feel like the AP farm problems are a bit exaggerated. I don't remember ever seeing anyone being kicked out of a group or a guild because their AP level was not high enough. I don't even remember if there was a way to check what someone's AP level is without inspecting. Ilvl and raider.io score were the main problem then as they are now as far as I remember. Your AP only mattered for min-maxing in mythic raids and high m+. Most people didn't even care about AP once they unlocked all their artifact traits after the first month.

[Thirtyrock]

Precisely my point. You are not going to fix the problem by catering to people who are causing the problem. You are going to fix the problem by making it possible for casual players to access high difficulty content. That makes it easier for you to find non-toxic groups and guilds looking to clear content. Blizzard have been making it harder and harder for casual players to access normal and heroic raids and now the pool of raiders consists of sweaty toxic players who don't invite you if you didn't sweat your balls off to get geared or kick you if you mess up a single mechanic. It was much easier to find casual-friendly guilds and groups in Legion because casual activites were rewarding. A person who spent most of his time doing world quests, opening treasure chests, or just clearing LFR, could get proper gear to jump into heroic raids as much as a person who spent his time farming m+. When you remove all of that you make it so players have to pray they get lucky with loot drops on their first week of raiding to even get a chance to be invited into raids on the 2nd week. That's not solving the problem, that's making it even worse.

I understand that mythic raiders hated the fact that they have to do casual activities to be able to clear mythic raids, but that made the game much more accessible to everyone else, and we should cater to the 98% rather than the 2%, especially if we want to solve the toxic community problems.

Also, I feel like the AP farm problems are a bit exaggerated. I don't remember ever seeing anyone being kicked out of a group or a guild because their AP level was not high enough. I don't even remember if there was a way to check what someone's AP level is without inspecting. Ilvl and raider.io score were the main problem then as they are now as far as I remember. Your AP only mattered for min-maxing in mythic raids and high m+. Most people didn't even care about AP once they unlocked all their artifact traits after the first month.

I do think you underestimate the hype that mythic raiders bring to the game. If the world first race, as well as individual server first races, becomes significantly less interesting, there's could be a fall off in general interest. I definitely saw people get told to catch up or kick rocks in some of the guilds I tried out. But beyond any explicit requirements, there was just the emotional toll on a lot of players, myself included.

Again, I think the best solution would be a way for world content to give great vault rewards IN LIEUE of either M+ or Raid rewards. We'd need a way to scale world content better, so the rewards aren't so appealing that raiding stops being a better path to gear for raiders.

[loras]

Of course it goes both ways. Why wouldn't it.

That being said, nothing says the definition has to be about hours played.

No, but given the prominent and limited nature of time spending 8 hours daily on almost anything is hardcore.
I mean there may be other definitions that cross that threshold earlier but going above 8 hours is a pretty definite one regardless of the specific activity/hobby you dedicate those hours to.

[Biomega]

No, but given the prominent and limited nature of time spending 8 hours daily on almost anything is hardcore.

That doesn't make sense. You can't agree that it's not about time, and then go "...but this amount of time clearly means..." because that implies it IS about time.

I mean there may be other definitions that cross that threshold earlier but going above 8 hours is a pretty definite one regardless of the specific activity/hobby you dedicate those hours to.

What you're doing here is smuggling in a definition by implicitly assuming it works a certain way. There is nothing "definite" about the definition of "hardcore", beyond useless dictionary definitions; same as with "casual". It's all about how you negotiate the definition in a given context, and that means you can't just assume it's merely about time invested OR that you can put a number on it like you're doing.

[Loveliest]

And again you're all assuming that everyone plays for player power and that's what makes things optional or mandatory in a game.

Well, mandatory is when you need it in order to do something. For example, your raid leader won't let you join the team unless you have x ilvl. Then content that gives you gear becomes mandatory for you. Things you choose to do as your own personal objectives are not mandatory because you and you alone control what "laws" to apply to yourself. So, most of the time, things that do not give player power are not mandatory, but I don't know, maybe you're in some RP guild that kicks you if you have not gone through all the lore. You need to elaborate who makes what activities mandatory for you if you want people to understand.