Preach on the broken gear treadmill

[ToxicFlame]

It has increased massively. Try going into HFC with legacy loot on and you'll see what I mean. It's like 1 piece of loot per 2 people or something ridiculous like that.

doesn't legacy loot increase drops from content that is more than 11 levels lower?

[Lei]

He puts a lot of effort into making his voice heard yes, doesn't make it a good voice though. And yeah, I have an opinion, and so does everybody else. My main issue with Preach is that he seems to think that his opinion carries more weight, and he's just very negative in general. He lacks nuance and goes for hyperboles because he knows it will get him more views. I hate people who are like that.

The very way how gearing works is not an opinion. It's a fact. You can't argue with that. His opinion is that he doesn't like it. You are of course entitled to your own opinion, but just how gearing works remains a fact.

[Daffan]

I didn't post in this thread because i dont see the gearing system as a problem...at all.
Therefore i didnt see a reason to post here.

Once someone gets the gear they want they either stop playing or decide to "flex" in random groups on damage meters.
Obtaining gear was since classic a reason to flex your power to others.

Gear scaling is a thing now in PvP so you can no longer flex there.
Thats the only difference

I dont see the problem...

Even if gearing was more fun...in the end it wouldnt fix any major thing in the game.

Same thing for titanforging.
People talk about that a lot.
Who cares?
Removing titanforging would NOT acomplish anything relevant to the game.

I just dont see the point in this discussions.

This post is so random I don't even know where to begin.

Gear being obsoleted by new raid tier is a thing from late TBC, so again I am not sure how you and some others suddenly make such a big issue out of it.

I'm afraid you don't understand the meaning of "obsolete"

[Big Thanks]

This post is so random I don't even know where to begin.

Whats random about it?

I dont see "gearing" as a major problem of WoW.
"Gearing" is not gameplay. Its rewards.

The only gameplay "gearing" gives is if it offers customization and WoW doesnt have customization.

My other point is that gearing once unlocked gives you the possibility to "flex" your power to the community.
Either by DPS meters on random groups or in PvP.

Sadly (or not) PvP now has scaling so gear doesnt matter.

Why is my post confusing?

[Soon-TM]

I liked the gym analogy that was brought forth in previous pages. In a world where everyone but the most fanatical gymbreakers (i.e. Mythic raiders) are "normalized" in power after a few months, I can't see a lot of people desiring to work towards being fit.

[Echocho]

doesn't legacy loot increase drops from content that is more than 11 levels lower?

No it just enables group loot instead of personal loot. The amount of loot that you get on average (since personal loot is a bit uneven) is the same.

[Sansnom]

MMO's are not seasonal games at all, and this is why WoW is in the state it's in. Blizzard does not understand this. All of the bad choices they have made to make the casuals feel like special snowflakes have deteriorated the core of what the game has always been.

No. But entertainment and possibly gamers are. Maybe not everyone. Sports are seasonal. Now there are external reason for this, such as players needs rest, weather etc. But this is actually a good thing because otherwise the sport could run all year long. Particularly those that are exclusively indoors and are not affected by the weather.

I think Blizzard understands this. Why? They can see what players are doing, how often and when. We do not. We only see the game through our own limited vision and the circle we move in.

Their choices have made the game more accessible. If anything, this has made people feel less of a snowflakes rather than more. Also, my experience has been that there has more complaints about how the game is more accessible.

It seems you have this view given the the statement you made.

Why waste my time raiding or doing anything to challenge myself when I can log in an hour or two a week and still be able to get the best gear possible? This is why guilds break up and people quit, there is no longer any incentive to play the game. I can have fun and challenge myself with those same people in a myriad of other games.

You still can. You can challenge yourself. Blizzard, as far as I know, have not removed the hardest difficulty. So why are you not still not completing those? Because you can acquire better gear elsewhere? Then you sound like the casuals players. You are playing for gear. Not for the challenge.

You can get the best gear possible outside of raid. How often does that happen? Are you saying you get geared to the same level of a mythic raiding in almost the same amount of time? If I had that kind of luck, I rather use it on the lottery. People are confusing just because you can, you will. What are the drop chance of a mythic gear in WQ vs the chance in a mythic raid?

BFA's problems aside, there is literally no reason to log in to progress your character cause I can just come back in a month or two and catch up with everyone else.

Catchup has been around much earlier than BFA. It started late in TBC according to some and was the norm in WoTLK.

[Big Thanks]

No it just enables group loot instead of personal loot. The amount of loot that you get on average (since personal loot is a bit uneven) is the same.

Embriel, what is exaclty the major problem of gearing not being fun?
I dont see a major problem at all because gearing is not "gameplay" (in this case, because there is no customization in WoW)
How exaclty is this a major problem of WoW?

(sorry if i havent paid attention to the thread, you can link me a previous post of yours for me to read)

[tratra]

Let's assume that wow isn't getting new players and it's all just current players

My mage represents Jimmy who let's say has played BfA since launch

Does anything change?
The systems remain broken
I still have no reason to do anything outside of daily emissary and invasion

The world bosses outside of darkshore are dead gear wise
I can get better gear from a world quest than the last raid tier

The only reason to repeat content is RNG
I have to do content I don't enjoy to stay caught up

its not an assumption that wow is not getting any new players... I don't think kids nowadays want to play a game like wow. Its not fast paced enough, the new generations have a completely different idea of what fun is.

Blizzard is trying their hardest to cater for returning players by having everything being so easy in the game but its just not working.

Literally BFA is the only expansion where I got plenty of time in my hands due to business going well on autopilot and can't play cause there is nothing for me there.
At this point even WoD seemed like a much better game than what we currently have.

[Kokolums]

its not an assumption that wow is not getting any new players... I don't think kids nowadays want to play a game like wow. Its not fast paced enough, the new generations have a completely different idea of what fun is.

I am over 40 years old and I have never EVER seen a shred of evidence for this. And believe me, I've heard people lament this in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and today. In my experience, kids want the exact same sort of entertainment they've always wanted. What changed was the GAME, not the kids. Blizzard has destroyed WoW by streamlining everything and simplifying everything and removing all the social elements.

Blizzard destroyed battle.net and tried to remove ALL chat channels from their games. In response, the kids made several protest threads on their forums, begging to get socialization back into the games. Blizzard utterly refused. The kids DIDN'T CHANGE. They finally threw up their hands, left, and congregated on Discord instead. They still want socialization. They now just are forced to go to Discord to get it because Blizzard took it away. And of course they don't come to Blizzard now as much so all of Blizz's titles suffer.

But the kids didn't change at all....

[kamuimac]

I am over 40 years old and I have never EVER seen a shred of evidence for this. And believe me, I've heard people lament this in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and today. In my experience, kids want the exact same sort of entertainment they've always wanted. What changed was the GAME, not the kids. Blizzard has destroyed WoW by streamlining everything and simplifying everything and removing all the social elements.

Blizzard destroyed battle.net and tried to remove ALL chat channels from their games. In response, the kids made several protest threads on their forums, begging to get socialization back into the games. Blizzard utterly refused. The kids DIDN'T CHANGE. They finally threw up their hands, left, and congregated on Discord instead. They still want socialization. They now just are forced to go to Discord to get it because Blizzard took it away. And of course they don't come to Blizzard now as much so all of Blizz's titles suffer.

But the kids didn't change at all....

so now we gonna argue on who is older and more experience ? really ?

ok as 30+ year old i can tell that gamers for sure changed - games which 20 years ago were considered mega easy would be considered nowadays as mega hardcore .
games got easier , much much much faster paced and they are now mostly plug and play - we are ofc speaking about gaming online

single player games are more or less the same as they have been always but loot at titles which are succesfull online - most of them offer mega fast 5-30 minuts single out sessions - and people love this because they can play 2-3 of those and go do something else - its perfect for teens and for young adoults.

wow is a dinosaur which doesnt fit this "vision" - because nowawadays gaming - hoverer you like to look at it is considered as cool&fun activity - ofc gaming done in such fast short sessions - nobody wants to be a nerd who spend whole week on 1 game - but its cool to tell that you played game for a hour or 2 - not whole evening.

wow simply doesnt fit in nowadays world. its a dinosaur game for dinosaur gamers .

and as all dinosaurs it will eventually go extinct.

[Echocho]

Embriel, what is exaclty the major problem of gearing not being fun?
I dont see a major problem at all because gearing is not "gameplay" (in this case, because there is no customization in WoW)
How exaclty is this a major problem of WoW?

(sorry if i havent paid attention to the thread, you can link me a previous post of yours for me to read)

Well the core point of any RPG is to progress and customize your character over a long period of time in order to overcome more difficult obstacles. In WoW most of these things have been removed over the years so gear is essentially the only thing left.

The problems with gear in the current iteration are many. First of all the stats are pretty boring and shallow and mostly just give you +power so iLvl is the only thing you look at, there's no depth that requires you to balance and cap certain stats and there are no interesting gems and enchants to tailor the pieces to fit your character, not that it would make much sense with the bland stats. They even removed gem slots and interesting enchants from gear.

There's also way too much gear and you get too much of it, when you get gear every five minutes it doesn't feel special. This causes gear to lose it's identity and is why nobody can name a single piece of gear they have equipped. It's just haste/mastery bracers, they're so anonymous and you switch them out regularly so it doesn't matter.

There's also the random nature of the gear. Even if the stats were interesting and had depth to them and there were like 5 pair of bracers in the game instead of 50 you couldn't find the one you liked and go after it because titanforging and random sockets prevent that.

Then there's the reset problem. Catchup mechanics are good, they allow people to get in to the latest content if done right. Currently however all your gear is replaced from doing trivial content when a new patch comes out regardless of what level you play the game which negates the whole point of progressing your character in the first place.

Lastly there's the issue of gear being pointless. The outside world scales to your iLvl, PvP battles are normalized so that gear don't matter. The only two places where better gear actually matters are dungeons and raids, doing the same content you're already doing just at a different difficulty level.

[Kokolums]

so now we gonna argue on who is older and more experience ? really ?

ok as 30+ year old i can tell that gamers for sure changed - games which 20 years ago were considered mega easy would be considered nowadays as mega hardcore .
games got easier , much much much faster paced and they are now mostly plug and play - we are ofc speaking about gaming online

single player games are more or less the same as they have been always but loot at titles which are succesfull online - most of them offer mega fast 5-30 minuts single out sessions - and people love this because they can play 2-3 of those and go do something else - its perfect for teens and for young adoults.

wow is a dinosaur which doesnt fit this "vision" - because nowawadays gaming - hoverer you like to look at it is considered as cool&fun activity - ofc gaming done in such fast short sessions - nobody wants to be a nerd who spend whole week on 1 game - but its cool to tell that you played game for a hour or 2 - not whole evening.

wow simply doesnt fit in nowadays world. its a dinosaur game for dinosaur gamers .

and as all dinosaurs it will eventually go extinct.

Kids want the same thing they always do. Most want social interaction. They gravitate towards games with social interaction. Game developers are mostly introverted and make solo games. So you have a war between those factions, with customers wanting one thing and then the devs "following their passion" and making something most don't want.

It never changes.

[Tony Slam]

so now we gonna argue on who is older and more experience ? really ?

ok as 30+ year old i can tell that gamers for sure changed - games which 20 years ago were considered mega easy would be considered nowadays as mega hardcore .
games got easier , much much much faster paced and they are now mostly plug and play - we are ofc speaking about gaming online

single player games are more or less the same as they have been always but loot at titles which are succesfull online - most of them offer mega fast 5-30 minuts single out sessions - and people love this because they can play 2-3 of those and go do something else - its perfect for teens and for young adoults.

wow is a dinosaur which doesnt fit this "vision" - because nowawadays gaming - hoverer you like to look at it is considered as cool&fun activity - ofc gaming done in such fast short sessions - nobody wants to be a nerd who spend whole week on 1 game - but its cool to tell that you played game for a hour or 2 - not whole evening.

wow simply doesnt fit in nowadays world. its a dinosaur game for dinosaur gamers .

and as all dinosaurs it will eventually go extinct.

nah kids havent changed. They'll still game for 12+hrs straight on a single game easy. WoW just isnt worth investing time into right now.

[Big Thanks]

Well the core point of any RPG is to progress and customize your character over a long period of time in order to overcome more difficult obstacles. In WoW most of these things have been removed over the years so gear is essentially the only thing left.

The problems with gear in the current iteration are many. First of all the stats are pretty boring and shallow and mostly just give you +power so iLvl is the only thing you look at, there's no depth that requires you to balance and cap certain stats and there are no interesting gems and enchants to tailor the pieces to fit your character, not that it would make much sense with the bland stats. They even removed gem slots and interesting enchants from gear.

There's also way too much gear and you get too much of it, when you get gear every five minutes it doesn't feel special. This causes gear to lose it's identity and is why nobody can name a single piece of gear they have equipped. It's just haste/mastery bracers, they're so anonymous and you switch them out regularly so it doesn't matter.

There's also the random nature of the gear. Even if the stats were interesting and had depth to them and there were like 5 pair of bracers in the game instead of 50 you couldn't find the one you liked and go after it because titanforging and random sockets prevent that.

Then there's the reset problem. Catchup mechanics are good, they allow people to get in to the latest content if done right. Currently however all your gear is replaced from doing trivial content when a new patch comes out regardless of what level you play the game which negates the whole point of progressing your character in the first place.

Lastly there's the issue of gear being pointless. The outside world scales to your iLvl, PvP battles are normalized so that gear don't matter. The only two places where better gear actually matters are dungeons and raids, doing the same content you're already doing just at a different difficulty level.

I could go over your points one by one but there is no point if we try to see "the bigger picture" of things.

Blizzard dont want gearing to be complicated (they have said it many times)
So no gem slots, no customization, no doing old content...always moving forward.
Thats just how they want the game to be...what can we do?

Trying to see the bigger picture again:
What would a improved and awesome gearing system bring to this game? Would it make the community happier and subscribed longer?
My opinion is "No, in this current iteration of the game and following Blizzards vision on how current WoW must be...there is no point"

Because "gearing" without customization DOESNT open up new content for you to play. It DOESNT increase your level of happiness and wont keep you subscribed longer.

So there is no point in making "gearing fun" because...it wont keep you subscribed longer.

Does it?

[Isilarya]

I could go over your points one by one but there is no point if we try to see "the bigger picture" of things.

Blizzard dont want gearing to be complicated (they have said it many times)
So no gem slots, no customization, no doing old content...always moving forward.
Thats just how they want the game to be...what can we do?

Trying to see the bigger picture again:
What would a improved and awesome gearing system bring to this game? Would it make the community happier and subscribed longer?
My opinion is "No, in this current iteration of the game and following Blizzards vision on how current WoW must be...there is no point"

Because "gearing" without customization DOESNT open up new content for you to play. It DOESNT increase your level of happiness and wont keep you subscribed longer.

So there is no point in making "gearing fun" because...it wont keep you subscribed longer.

Does it?

Look at systems in FF14 like Eureka, a hell of a grind, for several different iterations but its exciting to hit milestones for the work. You can get a decent ilvl from doing it even if you dont wanna ever raid. So casuals like what i currently am in FF can actually work towards something meaningful and it feels good.

MMOs have such an enormous wellspring of opportunity available to them I just feel like its not being used as well as it could.

[Big Thanks]

Look at systems in FF14 like Eureka, a hell of a grind, for several different iterations but its exciting to hit milestones for the work. You can get a decent ilvl from doing it even if you dont wanna ever raid. So casuals like what i currently am in FF can actually work towards something meaningful and it feels good.

But what will you do once you unlock/get said gear?

1)quit the game?
2)Try different builds (wont happen in wow because there is no customization)?
3)Do old content without any kind of reward for the "fun" of it?

MMOs have such an enormous wellspring of opportunity available to them I just feel like its not being used as well as it could.

I agree completely with this!

[crono14]

No. But entertainment and possibly gamers are. Maybe not everyone. Sports are seasonal. Now there are external reason for this, such as players needs rest, weather etc. But this is actually a good thing because otherwise the sport could run all year long. Particularly those that are exclusively indoors and are not affected by the weather.

I think Blizzard understands this. Why? They can see what players are doing, how often and when. We do not. We only see the game through our own limited vision and the circle we move in.

Their choices have made the game more accessible. If anything, this has made people feel less of a snowflakes rather than more. Also, my experience has been that there has more complaints about how the game is more accessible.

It seems you have this view given the the statement you made.



You still can. You can challenge yourself. Blizzard, as far as I know, have not removed the hardest difficulty. So why are you not still not completing those? Because you can acquire better gear elsewhere? Then you sound like the casuals players. You are playing for gear. Not for the challenge.

You can get the best gear possible outside of raid. How often does that happen? Are you saying you get geared to the same level of a mythic raiding in almost the same amount of time? If I had that kind of luck, I rather use it on the lottery. People are confusing just because you can, you will. What are the drop chance of a mythic gear in WQ vs the chance in a mythic raid?



Catchup has been around much earlier than BFA. It started late in TBC according to some and was the norm in WoTLK.

Yes, Blizzard can make their game however they want. However since they have started going down this 'seasonal' road, the players stop caring about coming back or wanting to play anymore. Fans of the actual game don't recognize the game they have been playing all these years and casuals are off playing other things anyway. So you are only going to alienate your core fans. The game grew just fine and maintained when it was an actual RPG game and not seasonal garbage. Your opinion is yours, and I have mine. They are killing their own game in the long run with this mentality.

What one players sees as challenging is different from another. For me a challenge is competing on the leaderboards in raids. WF/TF/RNG gear makes this almost impossible as pretty much everyone is wearing some form of different gear. So no there is no challenge in the game for me. Mythic fights aren't difficult, much like any raid it's getting 19 other people to not suck and kill things. I could care less about gear, so it's nice you to assume why myself and others play the game. The amount of time, gold, & materials in-game to progress in mythic just isn't worth the time anymore.

Who cares how long catch-up has been around? I am well aware how long it's been around. You are just deflecting the point I made with another meaningless point. It doesn't change the fact there is no reason to log in to progress your character when I can catch up in AP and gear in the next patch.

[KaPe]

So there is no point in making "gearing fun" because...it wont keep you subscribed longer.

Does it?

It very well might? Assuming there's a tangible goal in gear progression that's both meaningful and achieveable in reasonable amount of time. Currently, this doesn't really happen. Titanforging and random sockets destroyed any concept of BiS list or targetting specific items, since you'll just use whatever procs the highest. There are no guaranteed, concrete rewards outside of Azerite vendor... and even then, the "concrete" part is absurdly expensive, to the point that you might as well save that residue for the next raid tier. Emissary rewards are a lottery. World quests are a lottery. Lucky proc can end gearing up in minutes instead of making it an iterative process. M+ only offer good rewards after +7 and that's generally only done by reasonably "hardcore" players. Any other type of dungeons is largely useless.

Sure, people who didn't care about gear early on still wouldn't give a damn about any new system. But if you could invest a set amount of time and get a set amount of rewards? Who knows. There'd be a reason to grind some reputation, collect some Warfront currency and so on. Of course it would slow down the gearing, but maybe that's the issue here and "be done quickly, wait for next patch" isn't working. We don't really know.

For all the claims that "the casuals really benefit from this system and they love it", there isn't really any proof, just random guesses. Preach claims "casuals" contact him and say the opposite. I assume he isn't lying - maybe it's a tiny minority, maybe it's part of a larger trend, only Blizzard knows... or, well, they *should* know, because their decisions (even outside of gearing process) are baffling regardless of whatever data they have.

[crono14]

But what will you do once you unlock/get said gear?

1)quit the game?
2)Try different builds (wont happen in wow because there is no customization)?
3)Do old content without any kind of reward for the "fun" of it?

Do you ever automatically quit a game when you get the most powerful stuff or finally complete something you have worked for? I for one am now free to go do other things. Some people like to do other things: old titles or mounts to farm, work on gearing up an alt, pvp, any other number of things you could go do in game. What you see as rewarding or not doesn't mean someone else doesn't. I swear everyone assumes their own opinions as fact on this forum. Not to mention most people have no idea what an MMO even is these days. WoW is not the standard for how an MMO should be made/played.