BFA biggest issues for collectors.

[Azerate]

Indeed not surprised, whole gaming industry is hellbent on the concept that preying on gambling addicts is more lucrative than actually selling a honest product people will enjoy therefore pay for. Tons of marketing research went into how to wrap up gambling to make it the most addictive, have maximum retention rate, and maximize profit.

I must be getting old that all these "surprise mechanics" and "lootboxes" are more discouraging than exciting me.

These aren't real money purchases so not sure what you're on about. I get that there is now this culture of outrage over lootboxes in games, but this doesnt apply to wow no matter how hard someone tries.

And the idea of random rewards has been in the game since the beginning. Only these days you can't have anything being random at all, because it's always gambling according to people seeking things to get angry about

[tmamass]

Better than nothing but not surprised that Blizzard went this route. Clear that players being able to work towards a goal rather than a chance at that goal isn't something they consider. I obviously can't speak for everyone but having a concrete progression system (such as directly purchasable expedition drops) would make me more likely to do content than this RNG based system on top of the RNG on RNG on RNG system that the current IE drops are.

no its not better, its worse! not that the mount droprate for islands is way to fkin low, now you can buy loot boxes that also wont drop the mounts for you...

rng on top of rng is NEVER the solution....

[Lord Pebbleton]

BfA's biggest issue for collectors is... BfA.
Diehard collectors are those that strive to get everything they can, or close to it. I was one, I know the feeling. I mastered areas of the game I didn't really like, just because I didn't want to miss on the rewards. I would invest my time in something, get it, and move on.

Problem is, Blizzard decided to shit on collectors, and it's been shitting on us for too long.

There was always a tiny fragment of content that was stupidly based on rng and hard work to complete, like the camel figurine ordeal, but it was VERY out of the way. Then the nonsense made its way to core things with the paragon mounts. Having a sliver of chance to find a mount every 10k rep above exalted with no currency mechanism in place to account for bad luck is INSANE. I missed maybe 3 weeks of Legion, I still miss 4 paragon mounts, and you can bet your ass I'm never going back to it, because I have no say in ever being rewarded, even if I spend 24/7 there.

Then they touched new heights in stuff like island expeditions. I still remember the debate about mounts dropping in there. To get the quilen you had to go through hoops that felt stupid to even consider, and even if you did it all right, you still had a chance to not find it. You wouldn't even get a consolation prize, like a coin that would let you buy it when you had 100 of. I don't know the situation now.

All in all, the problem is that the collector has almost no power anymore over the achievements they engage. If you want to farm Ravenholdt you need an insane amount of lockboxes, but rest assured you will get 75 rep per turn in. You could kill a dinosaur in Isle of Giants in 10 minutes of kiting, but you were sure to find plenty of bones on each of them to get the white raptor.
Now? Now you can run 2000 expeditions and never see the damn quilen. You can go back and do Legion paragon for 2 more years and never see a single mount.

I am talking from the perspective of one who left before Dazar'alor got released, things may be better now (or not). But a huge reason I stopped playing, apart from glaring problems the game has, is exactly this: I logged in, craving for something to farm, knowing full well that no matter how much effort and time I put in it, there was a chance I would make no progress at all. In the long run that was enough for me to stop caring.

[Zyrinx]

So one comment I read from the PTR had mounts dropping around 1 in 8 lootboxes.

So that's more expensive that the Albatross and not a guarantee, which I think is too expensive (20% seems right to me), but at the same time, it's a major step in the right direction. TBH if this system had been in place all along, the entire Islands feature likely would not have died on the vine the way it did.

On one hand I'm glad I stopped doping these, but OTOH I would have mountains of dubloons saved up if I had kept going and _maybe_ a mount, already.

- - - Updated - - -

I am talking from the perspective of one who left before Dazar'alor got released, things may be better now (or not). But a huge reason I stopped playing, apart from glaring problems the game has, is exactly this: I logged in, craving for something to farm, knowing full well that no matter how much effort and time I put in it, there was a chance I would make no progress at all. In the long run that was enough for me to stop caring.

Yeah I feel this - you wanna feel your farming is "moving the needle", even if a little bit. This step doesn't _really_ address that directly, unless the drop rates are, as I said, at least 10% if not more like 20%.