Blizzard invalidating content once again

[Heran]

Honestly, it caters to everyone and even more to hardcore raiders as it can titanforge so much that it makes mythic raid drops poor in comparison. Even the best trinkets in the game for most specs are world bosses drops.

No, it caters to the bad players who can't even do any difficult content. Those who people call casual players even though they should call them bad players.

See my earlier post how I feel about this catering:

Mythic gear should've remained 340, mythic 10 gear should've remained at 370 and you should've needed to complete +15 for 400 gear to drop.

If they do add more to it, like 405, 410, 415 drops from mythic plus, that should be from 16, 17 and 18 and not from a 10.

[George Costanza]

Not even sure why normal needs to exist at this point.

Replacement for LFR

[Rixxis]

My problem with this isn't that "bad" or casual players get gear close to mine, it's that everything between normal 5 mans to heroic raid becomes almost useless. The game loses a sense of progression which while serving as a bit of a barrier for some players offers a proper reward structure for time investment. I don't think it's exciting to get heroic raid gear for shooting seagulls. You won't really care about it because you obtained it in such a menial manner. And then so much of the game's content becomes not worth doing - why bother queueing heroic BoD?

There is already no reason to do normal 5 mans, heroic 5 mans, normal raid because the reward structure is so odd that the difficulty of content doesn't match the rewards. I'm not interested in stopping people from getting gear but I don't think it's good for the game if you don't actually have to participate in the challenging parts of the game to obtain the higher rewards. Currently it seems Blizzard is content with having M+ and Mythic raid be the only tier of content that matters beyond solo stuff which seems like a mistake. When the game was most popular there was a sense of progress to your raid group. Right now there is little reason for anyone to join a non CE guild.

[mag07]

12 groups last night at 9pm server time in the EU raid LFG, 8 of them selling boosts. Join a regular one for Crucible Heroic. 90 minutes later, we managed 2 tries. Some people won't join voice, no one will volunteer for interrupts or tanking the ranged boss; assignments are made and we go; wipe because it's only a shadow priest with an interrupt on 45 sec cd that manages to fire one off - half the mele have a hissy fit and leave; wait to refill the group; rinse repeat. That's you average pug life in this game. Everyone and their grandma is 400+ on their mains and has all sorts of achievements; a ridiculously small amount of people are aware how to use their toolkit or set the default ui to display needed information, let alone actually be familiar with mechanics on the encounters they have achies for. Handing out raid level gear for 30mins worth of questing is killing both the raiding and m+ scene. The game fails to teach players how it's played. The reward is there before any effort. Some may very well consider it fulfilling. I personally find paying someone to play the game for me or collecting goodies just because Blizzard feels the shrinking player base needs more rewards just to stay subscribed a bit counter productive. The game is taking out the 'play' factor out of itself. It's actually quite amusing. Soon enough it may very well turn completely mobile - /pay/log in/click a button/ding achie/loot/boast in chat/logout

[Cainium]

12 groups last night at 9pm server time in the EU raid LFG, 8 of them selling boosts. Join a regular one for Crucible Heroic. 90 minutes later, we managed 2 tries. Some people won't join voice, no one will volunteer for interrupts or tanking the ranged boss; assignments are made and we go; wipe because it's only a shadow priest with an interrupt on 45 sec cd that manages to fire one off - half the mele have a hissy fit and leave; wait to refill the group; rinse repeat. That's you average pug life in this game. Everyone and their grandma is 400+ on their mains and has all sorts of achievements; a ridiculously small amount of people are aware how to use their toolkit or set the default ui to display needed information, let alone actually be familiar with mechanics on the encounters they have achies for. Handing out raid level gear for 30mins worth of questing is killing both the raiding and m+ scene. The game fails to teach players how it's played. The reward is there before any effort. Some may very well consider it fulfilling. I personally find paying someone to play the game for me or collecting goodies just because Blizzard feels the shrinking player base needs more rewards just to stay subscribed a bit counter productive. The game is taking out the 'play' factor out of itself. It's actually quite amusing. Soon enough it may very well turn completely mobile - /pay/log in/click a button/ding achie/loot/boast in chat/logout

Well, in the past it was like this:
"I can't beat XYZ, how can I beat it?" -> Process of figuring that out begins, including learning the game.

Today it is more like this:
"I can't beat XYZ. This game is shit." -> Quit playing that game.

Just had a recent experience of this in Diablo II. While I've managed to get through hell on closed bnet ladder self founded on my own, a friend of mine who started playing with me had troubles with the first quest boss in act 2 normal. Guess what? HE BLAMED THE GAME and said things like "its impossible to kill this guy", and quit. Another friend of mine progressed further (act 1 hell), but quit too at the point where his characters wasn't brainless destroying everything without any effort anymore.

The time of challanging games, which require a brain, not to be good at them, but just to play them, is long gone and will never come back. What bothers me most about this is that both guys from the anecdote above, consider themselve "hardcore gamer" with games being their "primary" hobby.

[Thage]

Crucible of Storms releasing, time to increase emissary rewards to 395/400.

So Blizzard is saying that the majority of players doesn't raid mythic, which means they are either entirely or mostly invalidating everything the majority did for the past 3 months.

To be fair, it's not just Blizzard saying it. Whenever people post completion rates for Mythic there's a massive drop-off between Normal/Heroic and Mythic, far bigger than even the huge drop-off between LFR and Normal/Heroic. Upping emissary rewards is a method, sloppy though it may be/is, to keep world content relevant for the entire expansion and help alts/fresh 120s avoid being left behind. It also gives players who aren't good enough for raiding and Mythic+ dungeons to have a progression path rather than stalling out at fresh-120 gear.

This pretty much means: 1 week 3 months after raid release = 3 months of progressing multiple hours a week

Why would any sane person choose to actually raid and invest that much more time when they can get the same rewards 3 months later without any effort by doing trivial content?

You should be raiding because you enjoy large-scale cooperative PvE gameplay. If you dislike raiding so much that you consider heavy timegating on lower-effort gear progression a reasonable alternative, it's probably for the best you don't raid as that sort of mentality can be damaging to a raid group's enjoyment and efforts to progress. Also, by the time the world quest stuff gives that item level, raiders already have soared above that item level via progression and farm-night drops, meaning you maintain a distinct item level advantage.

Furthermore, if we're discussing mythic raids, you get unique armor designs and mounts that people who just do emissaries won't get for years to come, until the content becomes easily soloable at the skill level of a player who caps out at emissaries.

[Magnosh]

Also where this implication that everyone is getting loot drops from their caches every day came from? Last time i've done emissary quests i was rewarded with bunch of artifact power or garrison resources. Raiding and M+ is still better way to gear your character (not to "raid-ready" state, but actually gear it past that point), and it'll be the same with this change. The only players who'll be greatly affected by this change are those, who log in to do their 4 world quests every day and don't do anything besides that. WoOoOhOoOo these people will get 395ilvl, at best in two weeks (granted that each day you get a new piece of gear you was missing), that's two extra raid lockouts and two M+ loot boxes on top of Emissary things for a dedicated player, who farms raid, how is that worse than "just doing WQs for emissary reward"?.

The Azerite pieces from Emissaries will be 400 and it doesn't matter, what someone else gets doesn't affect me as a player. That is what I meant

[MrLachyG]

Casual doesn't mean bad. I'm casual, I don't like this change at all. My alts are all 400+ just from doing a 10 per week, doing warfronts when up and doing world boss when up. My 2 chars I play mythic plus with friends on, that I've played higher keys on, are around those item lvls you specified.

But why don’t you like having better gear? Maybe not for your geared toons but for alts?

[Heran]

The time of challanging games, which require a brain, not to be good at them, but just to play them, is long gone and will never come back. What bothers me most about this is that both guys from the anecdote above, consider themselve "hardcore gamer" with games being their "primary" hobby.

I've said WoW is shit in various states in the past. But that's because they've actually been shit then.

Like Fan of Knives rogue in wotlk, making it impossible to fucking cast in PvP. Interrupting every fan of knives. You couldn't heal, you couldn't CC, every time they pressed FoK you were interrupted with no CD, only thing limiting them was their energy. Late wotlk when I could solo kill someone in a deep freeze with troll racial + trinkets, wasn't even worth using PvP gear because my PvE gear gave me so much haste. Cata legendary dagger rogues are another state that I've called shit when trying to play PvP. It doesn't matter how well you play, unless they fucked up you were at a disadvantage. TBC sl/sl and resto druid in 2v2 as mage/rogue, unless they were brain damaged you would not win. Those were shit designs.

PvE? The few things I've encountered that I think are shit are bugs that took/takes them far too long to fix. They still haven't fixed the orb bug in ToS, happened twice in MDI so far.

- - - Updated - - -

But why don’t you like having better gear? Maybe not for your geared toons but for alts?

It destroys progression. There's no point to run anything that doesn't give better gear than that.

[Sansnom]

It is crazy how some people beliave that its elites what doesnt like this when in fact it is actual casual majority what hate this change.

Do they really? People keep using the term "majority", I wonder what basis they have to make such a statement.

This people got their progression rip apart not mythic raiders. Some people live in such delusinal state they think casuals enyojs getting free gear for doing nothing and it keeps them playing rofl. No casual players will not keep playing your game just becouse you will rain welfare gear on them it actualy makes them quit.

What is "nothing"? What is "free"? Are content outside of raid consider "nothing"? There seems to be bias towards some portion of players with these being used.

Blizzard has said that the raiding portion of the player base is very low and in the minority. Has Blizzard mention what the raiding percentage are at now? And what are the percentage once LFR is removed? I would be interested to read any info on this.

And why would that problem be applied to casuals? Are you suggesting non casuals would continue to play even with free gear? I recall someone mentioned that Method has an unusual low number of kills of the final boss with the suggestion that farming Mythic+ is an easier path to gear. If so, them even top level seeks the easier path to gear and not really entirely for the challenge.

[Zorachus]

I'm a casual player that used to be big Raider in MoP and Legion, but taking it easy in BfA. Anyways...i do find it crazy easy to gear up without ever stepping foot in a M+ or current Raid. All my alt's are around 390 or so, and they never Raid or M+. So why should my alts I barely play get good gear for only braindead WQs etc... ? That's almost Heroic raid level gear, and all for just running simple World Quests.

Yes, to be i400+, you do need to actually run M+ and do some heroic raiding.

But man I see so many players with like i385+ gear score, that suck balls in M+, just zero clue how to play. You'd think they just DINGd 120

[Lurker1]

I'm a casual player that used to be big Raider in MoP and Legion, but taking it easy in BfA. Anyways...i do find it crazy easy to gear up without ever stepping foot in a M+ or current Raid. All my alt's are around 390 or so, and they never Raid or M+. So why should my alts I barely play get good gear for only braindead WQs etc... ? That's almost Heroic raid level gear, and all for just running simple World Quests.

Yes, to be i400+, you do need to actually run M+ and do some heroic raiding.

But man I see so many players with like i385+ gear score, that suck balls in M+, just zero clue how to play. You'd think they just DINGd 120

Sorry but even ilv 400 now is crap gear.

[Zorachus]

Sorry but even ilv 400 now is crap gear.

How is i400+ "crap gear" ? Isn't that heroic Raid level ? Typically if you were decked out in current heroic raid gear, you were pretty bad ass. So with TF let's say your like i407, that to me is pretty powerful.

What's the max possible geared you can be currently ? i430 / i435? Which requires being super lucky on Titan Forge in Mythic raid for all gear.

[Kralljin]

You should be raiding because you enjoy large-scale cooperative PvE gameplay.

I think those people generally raid Mythic, because the scene that limits themselves to normal and heroic seems to get smaller, especially in the light of the fact that most normal and heroic content can be done with pugs.

It's not like in ICC where people hit a brick wall after Deathbringer Saurfang with most pugs.

Gear is simply part of the motivation to raid, that doesn't make those people loot whores, but it is most certainly part of the reason why people do it, to progress their character.
This logic is so one sided, i've said multiple times: Go ahead, remove gear as a whole from raids and watch what happens.

They did this to PvP in Legion with the Template System, Gear was not exactly relevant in Legion PvP (it offered like a ~10-15% power bonus being in Full Mythic gear in Instanced PvP).
Lot of people in the PvP scene complained over it and Blizzard met them halfway by introducing the scaling system, because PvP participation rates dropped heavily during Legion.

There's a reason why almost any activity in this game that involves actual combat with your character awards Gear or AP, because unless some tangible reward is offered, a good chunk of people will pass over it.

The fun of this type of RPG (among other things) lies in progressing your character, should the content you are doing be fun?
Absolutely, but applying the same logic that works for a Moba as "reward structure" on an MMORPG doesn't work, people just aren't going to engage in content just because for the heck of it.
It's not like people did dailies from TBC to WoD because they were so fun, unless those dailies offered some tangible reward (like Rep or some currency) most people passed over them.

Furthermore, if we're discussing mythic raids, you get unique armor designs and mounts that people who just do emissaries won't get for years to come, until the content becomes easily soloable at the skill level of a player who caps out at emissaries.

I doubt anyone seriously involved into Mythic progression cares about this change regarding their main characters, at least i don't.

[Eleccybubb]

How is i400+ "crap gear" ? Isn't that heroic Raid level ? Typically if you were decked out in current heroic raid gear, you were pretty bad ass. So with TF let's say your like i407, that to me is pretty powerful.

What's the max possible geared you can be currently ? i430 / i435? Which requires being super lucky on Titan Forge in Mythic raid for all gear.

Which again is why I prefer games like GW2 when it comes to gearing.

Simple gear curves. GW2 goes Exotic to Ascended. No RNG BS and you can even pick the stats of the Ascended one with the insignia for that stat. You do have to put a bit of effort into crafting the Ascended piece but it's well worth it as you get rewarded for that effort.

Meanwhile WoWs is "GO DRAW A TRIANGLE AND GET A 385"..... Not to mention the gear acquisition has gone from being a straight line to completely invalidating 2 of the 4 raid difficulties. It's idiotic.

[Zorachus]

Then this brings up another question. So what ? Why would others care that WQs and Emissary gear is now i390 - i400 ? If your a Mythic Raider, then go for your i420 and TF to i435 gear, and be happy.

At the end of the day, what difference does it make if some casual players is i395? Who cares? They're never going to be i430+ in current WoW.

And what does being i420+ geared even get you? Like really what's the big deal? Ok so you can Raid Mythic, or high end M+ keys, ok, so frigging what?

I guess I am just sick of the whole ' World of Carrot-on-a-stick-Craft ' this game is.

[Eleccybubb]

Then this brings up another question. So what ? Why would others care that WQs and Emissary gear is now i390 - i400 ? If your a Mythic Raider, then go for your i420 and TF to i435 gear, and be happy.

At the end of the day, what difference does it make if some casual players is i395? Who cares? They're never going to be i430+ in current WoW.

And what does being i420+ geared even get you? Like really what's the big deal? Ok so you can Raid Mythic, or high end M+ keys, ok, so frigging what?

I guess I am just sick of the whole ' World of Carrot-on-a-stick-Craft ' this game is.

Nah nah it's "World of Carrot on an RNG stick craft".

With timegated chicken.....

[Maudib]

good so go play your classic instead pollute retail and pretending you are interesting in retail.

im sure this will be amazing experience to play 16 year old game in ints primitive state from 2004

I personally would love to treturn to retail if it were worth playing. And to me that means reverting a LOT of changes brought in the past several expansions.

Classic, TBC, even Wrath... all were amazing to me... and if current WoW could return to what made those games great... then yeah.. I'd be all about "retail". I'd even enjoy seeing the positive things about modern WoW kept... like the encounters and the... um.. the... well the encounters.

But it's not... it's an absolute snorefest for me. And I'm telling you now... Classic is going to be an amazing experience... it will overperform and perhaps even eclipse sub numbers for BfA.

I'll predict right now... that even you will be playing Classic... at first because you don;t want to miss out on the launch.. but then because when you open Batttle.net and are given a choice between BfA and Classic... you will find yourself craving the experience of that 16 year old game...

You may log into BfA to try and feel like you are keeping current.. but you will not stay long. Because your characters are not progressing in BfA. It's just a repeat of Legion... a repeat of WoD... over and over with no real feeling of progression.

[Onikaroshi]

Which again is why I prefer games like GW2 when it comes to gearing.

Simple gear curves. GW2 goes Exotic to Ascended. No RNG BS and you can even pick the stats of the Ascended one with the insignia for that stat. You do have to put a bit of effort into crafting the Ascended piece but it's well worth it as you get rewarded for that effort.

Meanwhile WoWs is "GO DRAW A TRIANGLE AND GET A 385"..... Not to mention the gear acquisition has gone from being a straight line to completely invalidating 2 of the 4 raid difficulties. It's idiotic.

Did GW2 drop that whole "gear is mostly aesthetics!" thing, cause that shit turned me off back in the day. I don't play for how gear looks :S none of my wow characters are even transmogged.

[mojusk]

im not too fuzzed about it.
ive had 400+ in every slot since week one of BoD mythic release.
mainly beause of 400 gear can be farmed endlessly in m+10s.