Preach on the broken gear treadmill

[Tarba]

That doesn't work for Mythic guilds. They can't just pick up and go at patch drops. They have to maintain from patch to patch. If no one cares to keep playing, it's a major problem.

It is worse than ever this expac. The gear treadmill is absolutely broken. People think "i've killed it heroic, i'm done here" and log til next patch because there is NO POINT other than pride and friendship, to suffer through MONTHS of Mythic only for the gear to be trivialized next patch. Or to see someone in normal/heroic decked out in wf/tf that rivals there's, despite 1/10th the effort.

It's become a "Why bother?" moment this expac for mythic raiding, and even heroic raiding.

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That's why BFA is doing SO WELL right now, amirite?!

It's why BFA is largely voted the worst expac on EVERY SINGLE POLL on the internet, right?

It's why mythic raiding is dead this expac and can't be saved.

I thought it was legion. And wod before that. And mop before that. And cata before that. And wotlk before that.
Personnaly I still think it's bc.
Mythic is dead because it's hard nowadays to find 20 stable raiders on your server.

[justandulas]

Then the incentive to keep playing is to maintain the guild from patch to patch. If you think that raiding is suffering, why on earth would it be how you spend you free time?

I am not raiding anymore, i quit a few weeks ago. First time since vanilla i've unsubbed, but i'm just not digging the current direction of the game. Again, it has more in common with ARPG like Diablo than MMORPG like Everquest and vanilla WoW. Cool for those who prefer that, but not for me. i'm /waiting for classic.

BUT, mythic raiding can feel like a slog. If you've ever been there, you'd know what preach was talking about. Mythic raiding typically gets rewarded for their trouble, but not in BFA. the gap between have's and have not's has completely disappeared. Once everyone is special, no one is. So people have left BFA in droves over it.

The population at the high end of this game is dead AF because of all these gear changes. WF/TF need to go. Mythic needs content no other raider can get, and M+ needs to cut off before the mythic raid ilvl.

Why bother suffering through the grind of mythic raiding, the off hours, etc... when you can just derp it up and do a few M+ a week and be more geared, while seeing the content in normal and call it a day and unsub? It's what everyone is doing now in BFA.

The content that's here just doesn't appeal to the high end player or wanna be high end player. There's no RPG elements, no way to distinguish YOUR character and achievements from another. Mounts and pets also have never meant less, but that's because there's 500+ of each now so of course a new one isn't gonna be special anymore.

[Sansnom]

I think he's touching on a very important subject. With how the reward structure is set up right now it means that there's really no incentive for anyone to replay the content and progress their character after seeing the content, regardless of at what level you play the game it'll all be completely reset after 3 months anyway.

Not quite sure what you mean here. People stop raiding once that beaten the last boss? How does that differ from the past?

• Normal/Heroic dungeons are removed, only mythic and mythic+ remain.
• Remove titanforging and instead reduce the amount of loot we get from various sources in order to make the things we do get feel more meaningful. In a perfect system you'd get all the gear you want from your raid difficulty of choice a couple of weeks before the next raid comes out (on average).
• Valor points and honor points are re-added to the game and and have a cap that should net you one piece of gear per week (two pieces if you cap out both valor and honor). Honor vendors also sell upgrade tokens that cost as much as a piece of gear, you can use those to upgrade your gear to heroic raid item levels.

These things ensure that you have a meaningful and rewarding progression path through gear that isn't instantly invalidated when a new season starts.

Too bad for the people doing normal and heroic only or do not raid. Of course, these people do not matter to you and people like Preach I guess.

[Gaidax]

Actually the Youtubers provide solid viewpoints and perspectives of the game... their popularity is partially due to the numbe rof people who are looking to validate their own opinions.

WoW isn't shit because Preach says so... WoW is shit because it is... and Preach simply shares that opinion... which draws in 363,000 subscribers who also think WoW is shit.

There are plenty who do not agree with it and still play WoW... Doesn't make either "side" unintelligent... it just means some people have a very low expectation of an MMORPG these days.

Thinking that wow is shit is favorite pass time of your average tardie.

WoW was shit in Legion, it was shit in MoP and it was shit in WoTLK.

I mean your bloody sig just shows how backloaded your opinion is and I say this as a guy who started this game back in Vanilla.

The choice is indeed clear, it's BfA because by all rights Vanilla was pretty bad and we praised it because alternatives back then were mich worse.

[justandulas]

I thought it was legion. And wod before that. And mop before that. And cata before that. And wotlk before that.
Personnaly I still think it's bc.

Legion is the 3rd-4th most beloved expansion behind WOTLK and TBC. It is held in high regards, especially with mythic raiders and high end gamers. MoP has also aged well because most people feel their particular class played the best during that expac (not for me, but i get the argument)

WoD was generally considered the worst, by far, until BFA. BFA has taken that crown and ran so far ahead with it, WoD can't ever catch it.

Even the most positive youtubers like Bellular, who if you cut him his blood will literally spell out blizzard on the floor, has been honest that BFA is pretty FUBAR.

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Thinking that wow is shit is favorite pass time of your average tardie.

WoW was shit in Legion, it was shit in MoP and it was shit in WoTLK.

I mean your bloody sig just shows how backloaded your opinion is and I say this as a guy who started this game back in Vanilla.

The choice is indeed clear, it's BfA because by all rights Vanilla was pretty bad and we praised it because alternatives back then were mich worse.

vanilla was 10000x the game BFA is. Classes played better. we had agency. Gear MEANT something. the world felt big and alive. social bonds were real and not just LFR. And, most of all, it was an mmo RPG.

There's no RPG mechanics left in WoW. if there are, where are they?! Vanilla WoW was inspired by Everquest. Current WoW has more in common with Diablo 3. BFA is an ARPG at this point.

[Leniaas]

That doesn't work for Mythic guilds. They can't just pick up and go at patch drops. They have to maintain from patch to patch. If no one cares to keep playing, it's a major problem.

It is worse than ever this expac. The gear treadmill is absolutely broken. People think "i've killed it heroic, i'm done here" and log til next patch because there is NO POINT other than pride and friendship, to suffer through MONTHS of Mythic only for the gear to be trivialized next patch. Or to see someone in normal/heroic decked out in wf/tf that rivals there's, despite 1/10th the effort.

It's become a "Why bother?" moment this expac for mythic raiding, and even heroic raiding.

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Why are people playing? That is the actual question.
Is it for gear? Is it for kills? Is it for the best gear? Is it for the hardest kills?
Or is it for doing it in a group of people you actually like?

The whole concept of gear in this times just stands there to be able to do it the way you like.

Why bother grinding gear if you never use it at all? You dont need great gear to world quest.
You only need it if you face a wall you cant beat whilst playing the best you can, no matter what difficulty.
Thus, gear progression is fine right now.

[justandulas]

Why are people playing? That is the actual question.
Is it for gear? Is it for kills? Is it for the best gear? Is it for the hardest kills?
Or is it for doing it in a group of people you actually like?

The whole concept of gear in this times just stands there to be able to do it the way you like.

Why bother grinding gear if you never use it at all? You dont need great gear to world quest.
You only need it if you face a wall you cant beat whilst playing the best you can, no matter what difficulty.
Thus, gear progression is fine right now.

We will not see eye to eye on this, so we can agree to disagree. To me, the gear progression has never been worse. You used to be able to target specific pieces of gear and be BiS, now even if you get it, you need a WF/TF version with a socket or a higher M+ key done. There's no real progression with your character in an RPG.

If you want WoW to be Diablo 3 with group que's, by all means then BFA is fantastic and probably never better for a solo or loner player... but at the top? Why bother? When everyone is special, no one is.

[Jowany]

Blizzard should remove catch up mechanics, so you are "forced" do old content to gear up for newest content. Now with catch up mechanics you don't even bother step in LFR or Uldir, you just do all m0 (370 drops - same as BoD LFR) and some low keys and you're @380, one or two runs normal and you're @390 plus some TF/WF luck and warfronts and you can be @ 400+ in 2 resets. You just skipped all first content (Uldir) and do second content (BoD).
I know what I am talking about, I geared this way in 2 resets (3 weeks ago). Now I just hoping for upgrade/proc and praying to RNG god for best trinkets with higher ilvl.

In 8.2 you will skip Uldir, BoD, run some m0 and run newest raid.

[RyudoTFO]

Your progression is as meaningful and rewarding as you make it yourself. It sure isn't meaningful, if ilvl is all you look at.

Titanforging is not the best of features, but don't forget that it's there, to literally force all those who clear the new raid in 2 weeks with tricks and tactics to get the most loot out of it for the main characters, to continue playing and not cry about how there is no content to play.
But what progression are we speaking about ?
Gear progression: you ruined it yourself by rushing.
Story progression: you would rush it too, because of this it has to be gated, and even then, let's be real, most elitists don't care, they just want loot to show how much better they are then everybody else.

Replace Titanforging with Valor points?
For what?
Instead of crying about the one piece of gear you still don't have as a Titanforging not dropping, you would cry about having spend all your VP and nothing else to do.

While I agree that there are far too many raid and dungeon difficulties now, I don't see a point in rewarding elitists with elitist stuff so they can prove how elitist they are ...

90% of players won't see the last boss on mythic in this expansion anyway. Isn't the fact that they can do something, 90% of players would never be able to accomplish and 99% not in the same time enough for them?
Guess not.
Bet they all must be driving super expensive sports cars and wear the most expensive clothing in real life to show everybody how superior they are ... oh wait, they can't, cause they focus their efforts on being best at a video game.

Trying to extend an ilvl gap that is already there so they won't be mixed up with 'casuals' is really mature. As much as crying every major patch and add-on that the awesome gear you collected is obsolete as it can now be replaced with something better.

Mythic players already get exclusive mounts and better looking gear (Uldir LFR/Normal sets might as well have been fished up from a dumpster look-wise) and yet they still need something more? Maybe a group of slaves to carry around their massive ego?

[Leniaas]

...I do know the first time I truly burned out on wow was during Trial of the crusader, having 4 different modes and being in a decent raiding guild we raided all of those modes. ...

We got the real problem right here on the floor.
The problem is not how gear is distributed but rather how people think they need to f... the system.
You dont need to raid all difficulties, no matter what you actually want accomplish.
Want to clear myth? Raid HC week one, move on and do myth next week. If people dont get geared in that one week nowadays they wont be geared in the next 3 weeks following.
Gearing is fine if done right.
The choice is on the players and thats super good.

[Magical Mudcrab]

Preach and other shitters like him simply make a score off unwashed massed with their "revelations" and these said masses swallow it all hook line and sinker.

The majority of hardcore players (high rated PvP and Mythic raiders) seem to agree with Preach more often than not... it generally seems to be lower skilled/casual players that aren't affected by the systems that people are talking about who disagree.

[VladimirM]

People, stop listening to this whiny little B...

[Echocho]

Why bother grinding gear if you never use it at all? You dont need great gear to world quest.
You only need it if you face a wall you cant beat whilst playing the best you can, no matter what difficulty.

That's also a very good point. The only two activities where you can fully utilize better gear is in instanced PVE content so you're really mostly just getting raid/dungeon gear to do the same raid/dungeon with bigger numbers. Out in the world or in PvP scaling steps in and prevents gear from mattering.

[Gaidax]

vanilla was 10000x the game BFA is. Classes played better. we had agency. Gear MEANT something. the world felt big and alive. social bonds were real and not just LFR. And, most of all, it was an mmo RPG.

There's no RPG mechanics left in WoW. if there are, where are they?! Vanilla WoW was inspired by Everquest. Current WoW has more in common with Diablo 3. BFA is an ARPG at this point.

Poppycock!

Vanilla was a frikkin' broken mess full of trap choices (chiefly of those were classes, trap I soundly fell into with paladin) and with barely any sort of coherent story.

You know why gear mattered? Because 90% of it was utter shit, so the remaining 10% that even made sense for your class and playstyle were glorified.

World was big and empty as fuck, you had whole zones literally void of any meaning with a bunch of random NPCs offering totally random quests and all this was glued together by systems that would rightfully drive people mad nowadays, because if you think that bloody spamming city chat for half an hour to make maraudon run then waste 20 minutes traveling to the dungeon only the whole thing fall apart like a house of cards 3 pulls in was good, then boy, I don't know what to say.


Ultimately Vanilla picked up because it was the most casual friendly MMO back then by far, backed by franchise people gave a damn about. But objectively it was a very very Meh game.

[justandulas]

The majority of hardcore players (high rated PvP and Mythic raiders) seem to agree with Preach more often than not... it generally seems to be lower skilled/casual players that aren't affected by the systems that people are talking about who disagree.

It's easy to bash those at the top, but if all the top players leave.. then what? I've never seen a mass exodus at the high end of raiding like i have in BFA (and i guess i'm one of them since i threw in the towel a few weeks ago as a mythic MT which sucks because i know that isn't easy to replace)

BFA is great for the casual bad players, but for the high end blizz has basically told us to go play other games... so we did.

A mount or a pet is not a proper reward for Mythic vs heroic raiding grinds when there are hundreds of pets/mounts in the game so they become more meaningless with every addition.

There must be more.

[Maudib]

Thinking that wow is shit is favorite pass time of your average tardie.

WoW was shit in Legion, it was shit in MoP and it was shit in WoTLK.

I mean your bloody sig just shows how backloaded your opinion is and I say this as a guy who started this game back in Vanilla.

The choice is indeed clear, it's BfA because by all rights Vanilla was pretty bad and we praised it because alternatives back then were mich worse.

Now see? I don't care if you still like WoW... or play it everyday. I don't like modern WoW... Haven't really enjoyed the game since Cata... but truly was only passionate about it BC/Wrath. (Never played Vanilla which is why I am PUMPED to play Classic... although I have played a few pservers)

Just because I don't like something you do doesn't mean I'm a "tardie" nor does it make you one. The real difference between us is that you are angry that others don't like your game... does it also drive you nutz that other people are excited and passionate about Classic? It must, because you take offense to my sig.

For me, when I compare modern WoW to vanilla, there is a night and day difference in game design... mostly in reward/effort ratio, and the importance placed in the little things in Vanilla. Because of that difference... I prefer Classic... the choice is clear. Which is why I never bought BfA after participating in the Beta, and why I can't wait for Summer.

[Leniaas]

...Why bother suffering through the grind of mythic raiding, the off hours, etc... when you can just derp it up and do a few M+ a week and be more geared, while seeing the content in normal and call it a day and unsub? It's what everyone is doing now in BFA.

The content that's here just doesn't appeal to the high end player or wanna be high end player. There's no RPG elements, no way to distinguish YOUR character and achievements from another. Mounts and pets also have never meant less, but that's because there's 500+ of each now so of course a new one isn't gonna be special anymore...

Thats simply not true.
I have multiple chars sitting at ~400 ilvl only doing m+. And i have 1 char sitting at 412 doing myth raiding and the occassionall m+. There are no upgrades in m+ at all for my myth raiding char, except for WF/TF i wont even bother about.
Its the exact opossite of what you are saying. Like.... ?????

[Irian]

Without gear as it is, with no replacements, gear would stagnate and people would get bored as shit like they did in WoD. Preach is a raider and has in my experiences always seemed to have a talent of trying to explain well really poorly thought out concepts.

What we need is less of this obsession on these complicated systems. Bring back gear vendors, cut the amount of ilvls between each tier and honestly scrap one or two of the difficulty modes. Of course gear loses its value when its vomited at you from every turn, how about we tone back on the amount of items in the game as a whole and have a more clear and less RNG loot system as a whole so people will know based on their gear where they stand and what they need to do to progress?

When I can play super casually and RNG into heroic to mythic item level I have no reason to push on to those difficulty tiers. Yes many people don't just play for a higher ilvl but what it did do is give a clear path of progression to your actions and establish an endgame. We don't have that anymore. We don't even have a gear vendor which served to allow casual players to be near the normal (or heroic as it is now) ilvl so they could step into raiding. The current designers of WoW's gear system feel like they lost sight of what it is that gear did in the game itself, which was give players a numerical - both in ilvl and damage - path of progression that they could understand and work towards.

[justandulas]

Poppycock!

Vanilla was a frikkin' broken full of trap choices (chiefly of those were classes, trap I soundly fell into with paladin) and with barely any sort of coherent story.

You know why gear mattered? Because 90% of it was utter shit, so the remaining 10% that even made sense for your class and playstyle were glorified.

World was big and empty as fuck, you had whole zones literally void of any meaning with a bunch of random NPCs offering totally random quests and all this was glued together by systems that would rightfully drive people mad nowadays, because if you think that bloody spamming city chat for half an hour to make maraudon run then waste 20 minutes traveling to the dungeon only the whole thing fall apart like a house of cards 3 pulls in was good, then boy, I don't know what to say.

It was a much better game, period. It was a true RPG, vs today's ARPG wow.

Maybe your experience was different, but i remember damn near EVERY gear i got in vanilla and where i targeted it, when it dropped, who was with me, etc.

I have friends from vanilla for LIFE. It was the best of WoW by a large margin in many departments. Raiding would become better over time, but the gear and character development meant more in vanilla than any expac since put together.

Go ahead and name me 3 RPG mechanics in current WoW that exist.

I'd rather play a big open world that felt alive vs sit in a town and que for activity with random nameless faces in a crowd. In vanilla, you'd have more social interaction with that single MARA group you mentiond than in all of BFA's LFD/LFR/M+ put together.

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Now see? I don't care if you still like WoW... or play it everyday. I don't like modern WoW... Haven't really enjoyed the game since Cata... but truly was only passionate about it BC/Wrath. (Never played Vanilla which is why I am PUMPED to play Classic... although I have played a few pservers)

Just because I don't like something you do doesn't mean I'm a "tardie" nor does it make you one. The real difference between us is that you are angry that others don't like your game... does it also drive you nutz that other people are excited and passionate about Classic? It must, because you take offense to my sig.

For me, when I compare modern WoW to vanilla, there is a night and day difference in game design... mostly in reward/effort ratio, and the importance placed in the little things in Vanilla. Because of that difference... I prefer Classic... the choice is clear. Which is why I never bought BfA after participating in the Beta, and why I can't wait for Summer.

I put it like this....

One is an MMO-RPG and one is an MMO-ARPG. Two different games. Classic wow was a real MMO RPG in every sense of the words and experience. Current WoW has more in common with Diablo 3 and ARPG than it does it's roots such as other MMORPG like EQ.

They appeal to 2 diff crowds. Classic WoW appeals to the older, more sophisticated generation that is there for the journey not the endgame grind. A more table top AD&D setting.

Current WoW appeals to the ARPG Diablo 3 insta gratification crowd with very little, to no RPG elements left in the game at all.

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Thats simply not true.
I have multiple chars sitting at ~400 ilvl only doing m+. And i have 1 char sitting at 412 doing myth raiding and the occassionall m+. There are no upgrades in m+ at all for my myth raiding char, except for WF/TF i wont even bother about.
Its the exact opossite of what you are saying. Like.... ?????

you just proved my point for me, actually. You have multiple characters at Mythic raid readiness by only doing a few M+. Why should the mythic raider continue to grind in the off hours, the AP, and everything else if you can just get some lucky WF/TF in M+ or Heroic and call it a day?

The gear treadmill has never been worse in WOW

[Gaidax]

Now see? I don't care if you still like WoW... or play it everyday. I don't like modern WoW... Haven't really enjoyed the game since Cata... but truly was only passionate about it BC/Wrath. (Never played Vanilla which is why I am PUMPED to play Classic... although I have played a few pservers)

Just because I don't like something you do doesn't mean I'm a "tardie" nor does it make you one. The real difference between us is that you are angry that others don't like your game... does it also drive you nutz that other people are excited and passionate about Classic? It must, because you take offense to my sig.

For me, when I compare modern WoW to vanilla, there is a night and day difference in game design... mostly in reward/effort ratio, and the importance placed in the little things in Vanilla. Because of that difference... I prefer Classic... the choice is clear. Which is why I never bought BfA after participating in the Beta, and why I can't wait for Summer.

You just tossed a bunch of non-starter slogans. "Importance placed in the little things in Vanilla". What does that even mean?

Effort/Reward ratio? I Flash of Light spammed whole Vanilla as Paladin raider, that's pressing one bloody macro 90% of the time and I got loot for it. Shiet that effort worth the reward man. By today's standards I'd be bloody LFR level, the only real effort that was there is guild leadership, because gathering 40 morons that are barely capable of mashing that one or two macros without standing in a fire was a challenge.

When I compare what I did then compared to bloody choreographic dancing I do in Mythic raids now... lel... It's as if I was bloody playing tic tax toe against myself back then compared to effort needed now to beat encounters.