Catch-Up Mechanics & Incentive to raid/play

[Frosteye]

In the numerous Classic Threads that have spawned, and the discussion of raid progression, catchup mechanics (or lack thereof), it got me thinking about Modern WoW's obsession with Catch-up mechanics, and gear homogenization between different player types (casuals,elitists).


Back in Vanilla (and I suppose TBC), raid progression was almost entirely linear. Even during later patches you still had to start out with MC/ONY/ZG and work your way up the raid ladder if you wanted to raid Naxx.

Somewhere along the way Blizzard began de-emphasizing a linear progression and implemented catch-up mechanics (as well as raid difficulties) to ensure that EVERYONE can jump into the current patch's content and begin completing it.

One complaint I see all over the place among Retail WoW players at this moment is "I'm bored, BFA sucks", and it makes me wonder how many of these players are bored because they've already cleared all of the content because of how EASY it is to quickly consume content in Modern WoW. If you look at the volume of content Blizzard is giving us, it's actually a LOT, but people complete it so fast nowadays.

Would moving back to a more linear progression be an entirely bad thing? I think a lot of people would hate it, but at the same time I think people would feel a better sense of accomplishment for making progress, since it doesn't become invalidated by catch-up mechanics.


I used to do Mythic Raiding in Legion, but myself and my friends quit because:
1. We used to raid in WoW because it was exclusive to the storyline, we can now do this spending a few hours in LFR.
2. We still raided because it meant getting the best gear, now casuals can get the same or better item levels from: M+, weekly cache, warfront, lucky titanforge. Not to mention the next patch's catch-up gear almost wipes out any progress we made.

I have basically no interest in BFA anymore because I know that WoW is going to keep following the same recipe, and I will continue just having my progress reset/invalidated by catch-up mechanics. Might as well go outside and enjoy the sun and pop back every few months and blast through all the content in a week.

Looking forward to WoW classic because even if I don't spend a ton of time on it and stay stuck in MC/ZG for longer than I would like, at least it means that I can keep climbing the ladder and making meaningful progress without skipping content via catchup mechanics.

[Nevcairiel]

Full linear raid progression isn't really that great of a thing. Active raiding guilds hated running old content to gear up new people. It wasn't entertaining for the veteran players, because they outgeared much of it and knew it like the back of their hand already, and for the new players that needed the gear, it was equally boring because they one-shot everything and still missed out on progression - so it was just a grind.

On top of that, it created a very poacher friendly atmosphere, where the top guilds would actively recruit people from mid-tier guilds after they were geared there, just so they didn't have to gear them themselves. Gear was the most important factor in Vanilla, because the skill required to perform in boss fights was much lower then it might be now to play on a top rank guild.

Catch-up gear solves both of those problems to a degree. You rarely run any old content just to get gear for new people - which really wasn't "fun" anyway. And since gearing people is easy now, you don't have to use mid-tier guilds as gear-factories.

In addition to all that, catch-up gear really doesn't remove the linear progression for people that are actually active players. If you don't take a break, then catch-up gear or mechanics really do not affect you at all. Its not strictly "required" to do this linear progression, but if you are playing the game you'll do it anyway.

If I finished the previous tier, then I'll start fully geared into the next tier already. Catch-up will not change that.

I think the reward system in raids and M+ could use some tuning, but at least for me as an active player, catch-up is really not a problem. And as a raid leader, I welcome it, so we get more immediately raid-ready people, which often are people that returned from a break, or other such circumstances.

If all you ever did raid for is the gear itself, you should really ask yourself why you raid in the first place, because at that point its just an endless treadmill. You collect gear to raid, you raid to collect gear. Repeat. I raid to have fun, and I collect gear to have more fun, since being successfull is more fun then failing. In the same vein, I actually want to progress through a raid because thats whats enjoyable to me, hence playing actively from day one, improving gear and knowledge of the raid over time and getting better at it - instead of just blasting through it weeks/months later with no effort. No wonder people get bored if they raid like that.

[Sansnom]

Somewhere along the way Blizzard began de-emphasizing a linear progression and implemented catch-up mechanics (as well as raid difficulties) to ensure that EVERYONE can jump into the current patch's content and begin completing it.

Which is a good thing in my opinion. Why lock out some, majority(?), of the players?

One complaint I see all over the place among Retail WoW players at this moment is "I'm bored, BFA sucks", and it makes me wonder how many of these players are bored because they've already cleared all of the content because of how EASY it is to quickly consume content in Modern WoW. If you look at the volume of content Blizzard is giving us, it's actually a LOT, but people complete it so fast nowadays.

Which is a player problem. They can choose the harder content but decided not to.

Would moving back to a more linear progression be an entirely bad thing? I think a lot of people would hate it, but at the same time I think people would feel a better sense of accomplishment for making progress, since it doesn't become invalidated by catch-up mechanics.

Because eventually they will hit a wall they cannot break. Not everyone is capable of playing like the world first guilds. If they were, WoW would not have have this. I think removing catch up would do more damage than linear progression because there is no more progression for them.

I used to do Mythic Raiding in Legion, but myself and my friends quit because:
1. We used to raid in WoW because it was exclusive to the storyline, we can now do this spending a few hours in LFR.
2. We still raided because it meant getting the best gear, now casuals can get the same or better item levels from: M+, weekly cache, warfront, lucky titanforge. Not to mention the next patch's catch-up gear almost wipes out any progress we made.

So it comes down to about what others people are getting.

I have basically no interest in BFA anymore because I know that WoW is going to keep following the same recipe, and I will continue just having my progress reset/invalidated by catch-up mechanics. Might as well go outside and enjoy the sun and pop back every few months and blast through all the content in a week.

Which has been in existence since WoTLK. So it is not really a BFA thing.

[glowpipe]

Lets face it. If you started as a brand new player when naxx was out. How many people would want to bring you to do molten core ?
If bfa didn't have catchup gear, and you had to do uldir then bod, then you would be completely fucked when eternal palace is out. People rushing through older raids put up stupid ilvl demands to bring you for a loot run

[Queen of Hamsters]

This game made it 15 years and beyond because it moved away from Classic.

All that needs to be said. And this thread clearly belongs over in the circle jerk that's the Classic subforum.

[Th3Scourge]

I did a little test, started a fresh toon on another realm (a DH to speed up the levelling process) with no gold or anything to fall back on. Within 7 days I was 401 ilvl, doing a few days of world quest tours, 1 run of normal BoD and 3/9 heroic. Ran one warfront for a piece of 400 loot, did a tour of M0s and then tanked to push my own key up, made sure i completed a 10+ for 410 cache and residuum for another 400 azerite piece.

It's a joke right now

[SoulSoBreezy]

Trying to avoid over generalizing, but there were two big camps who didn't like the linear progression system:
1. Raiders who had to who run old content to get their new people up because that was the efficient thing to do
2. So-called "feeder guilds" who were trying to run 25/40 man content but constantly had its members poached because it took took too long to get people ready

Back in the "good old days," raiders cannibalized each other. If linear progression returned in this kind of WoW where the group finder tool is prevalent, I'd argue that the raiding scene would collapse.

[A Chozo]

Look, Dexter.

If you make people hit a barrier of difficulty, here are some things that can happen.

1 - they improve to surpass it.
2 - they improve, but not enough, but they keep trying.
3 - they quit.
4 - they go do something else in-game that it's more adequate.

With the old model, only groups 1 and 2 keep playing for long. This used to be the case for the majority of mmo-rpgs, which caused the genre to be extremely unpopular. It was the game that you played by not playing because you needed to cooperate in order to do the hard content.

Nowadays, all those groups have content - rewarding content, with adaptative difficulty. People do what they want to.

And if they only chose the easiest option, it means they don't want challenge. And this is fine too!

[Tojara]

I think you can honestly have both. Whatever your take on 'modern' WoW is, there are systems that could be intertwined with classics 'linear' progression to make a better model.

Did I like going back to potentially gear potential applicants up? No, because it was a massive time commitment to do so. However, if they introduced modern day attunment systems (which they don't have in BFA, oddly enough) to where you can kinda jump around to certain points in the instance (as long as it makes logical sense), then that would solve a massive amount of issues. Having to clear every boss in Molten Core, BWL or AQ40 sucked. If however there was a system in place that allowed you to skip through most of the dungeon (again, as long as it made sense), that would make linear progression a lot easier pill to swallow.

Before people jump down my throat, I'm not suggesting changing classic, I'm suggesting that linear progression if handled correctly can operate in modern WoW. I feel like BRF had one of the most logical systems, in that the bosses entrance was right at the start, but required you to clear the entire instance multiple times in order to take advantage of that. It felt organic, it made sense, and it saved you loads of time. This is a system I like in modern woW (again, missing from BFA lol), and if paired with Vanillas linear progression could be pretty good.

I think gear is way too easy to come by in WoW these days for better or worse. M+ IMO is a great system that could be balanced a bit better in regards to loot acquisition. My main gripe with older versions of WoW is that dungeons were made obsolete rather quickly, and without a system like challenge modes and M+, it felt like a waste. Even in Vanilla WoW you get to a point where dungeons are largely useless, outside of crafting materials to fuel progression related activities. However, the problem with modern WoW for better or worse is that they obsolete raid content the minute something new comes out.

Ideally you have a system where raids, dungeons and crafting all feed off each other. You get to a point where everything matters, and only near the end of an expansions life cycle are the earlier systems are a bit dated.

[Frosteye]

Lets face it. If you started as a brand new player when naxx was out. How many people would want to bring you to do molten core ?
If bfa didn't have catchup gear, and you had to do uldir then bod, then you would be completely fucked when eternal palace is out. People rushing through older raids put up stupid ilvl demands to bring you for a loot run

Well, I started playing a ways into 2005 right before ZG/BWL dropped, and I was able to get into MC and work my way up to Naxx when it came out the following year.

I did spend a lot of time playing, but it was a lot of fun. And there wasn't a shortage of content since pretty much *all* content remained relevant even though I started late.


--

I'm not saying we need a complete return to classic for Retail, because obviously the game has moved on, but it would be nice if they would make some slight adjustments away from the abundant catch-up mechanics, and maybe itemize gear appropriately to the difficulty of content.

Maybe make an incentive to run last tier's mythic raid when a new patch comes out (or something). It's sad how fast raids become irrelevant in modern wow.

[SirCowdog]

This is a topic that's come up in several other threads already.

What I think is that catch-up mechanics tend to harm the lifespan and value of progression when they happen every single patch. I don't think it's necessary to drag everyone up to the most recent content release. In fact I think there's a lot of value to be had with allowing players to more naturally progress through deeper and more meaningful content, and overcoming challenges without the assistance of artificial jumps in power that they don't really deserve.

Having said that, however, I do think that catch-up mechanics for alts is a thing that should be accessible. Once a player has worked their way through the normal progression, there doesn't seem to be any substantial reason to make them slog through it again. Or at the very least, if they're going to have to run through it again, then it should happen at an accelerated rate.

What I imagine a "good" catch-up mechanic would look like shouldn't involve gear. Gearing up a character at level cap is where a great deal of the content at level cap is, and if you allow players to skip over that in great leaps, then it very much devalues the progress through that content.

But since it seems that Artifact Power is going to be the more steady form of progression at level cap, I would suggest a system whereby the gain of AP is increased for a player that reaches certain checkpoints in the content. I'm not certain of the exact math(since that seems like a job for the devs to crunch out), but it seems like it would be fair that alts should get accelerated AP gains until they reach the point of furthest progression that their account has reached.

However, giving accounts, that have NEVER progressed through content, a fast-forward to the end of the game seems unfair. Both by robbing that player of the sense of accomplishment for overcoming challenges during progression, and by shortening the lifespan of that same content.

I also think the pace of progression could be adjusted to make this more appealing. I really don't think we need to go back to the pace of Vanilla, since classic will cover the players that want that. But I do believe there's a comfortable middle ground that would serve to improve the game significantly.

[Raone]

As someone who raided in the middle of TBC and was an officer in a guild, 100% no.

Guild Poaching was and is cancer and is something I am glad is no where near as rampant as it was in TBC. Mind you it did quickly tell you who to add to your ignore list but it made progressing in Black Temple a pain everytime we got a new boss and we wiped the entire night and then the next week we didn't have 20 people cause such and such got poached. X guild who is farther ahead would whisper guildies (me included and our guild leader) to try and invite them to their guild (because they needed a bench from Sunwell poachers) that has already killed that boss and can offer that boss's loot and more bosses if they joined. Of course 9 times out of 10 they are perma benched and they would ask to come back a couple weeks later which would be a hard decline as you still look for players to replace them. What was worse is its not like you can find just a new raider, it had to be players already in black temple since nobody wanted to go backwards in progression to gear up people to be poached. Which meant you had to poach from other guilds to deal with poaching ... just a dark time in wow raiding nobody talks about.

I however do dislike how they make the previous tier worthless with each new tier, not a fan of that, I would rather they nerf the previous raid (20%) and make it drop more gear so you can progress threw that at a faster pace to catchup (Kinda like Naxx, was super easy and did it tons) while also dropping equivalent ilvl WQ gear to the previous tier but not invalidate it completely

[Faustzz]

Trying to avoid over generalizing, but there were two big camps who didn't like the linear progression system:
1. Raiders who had to who run old content to get their new people up because that was the efficient thing to do
2. So-called "feeder guilds" who were trying to run 25/40 man content but constantly had its members poached because it took took too long to get people ready

Back in the "good old days," raiders cannibalized each other. If linear progression returned in this kind of WoW where the group finder tool is prevalent, I'd argue that the raiding scene would collapse.

While I agree that you are historically correct, generally speaking, I think many people in this thread are looking at the past too strongly and ignoring modern day innovations and player ingenuity.

For reference, here's a model that works well on plenty of pservers:

1. <Epic Guild> has mandatory Naxx raid weekly to gear out its core members. As people leave or are absent they are replaced with trial raiders or upcoming members.
2. Some officers of <Epic Guild> maintain a pug discord that conducts weekly raids of MC, BWL, AQ ZG etc. People sign up on a spreadsheet in advance before they are approved and loot is handled with a soft reserve system.
3. Pugs, new raiders, and alts get an equal opportunity to gear up and progress with the advantage of <Epic Guild>'s strong leadership and organization.
4. Geared raiders don't have to endless grind all the raids each week if they don't want to. If they do, they can still sign up for the organized pugs.
5. There is less need for <Epic Guild> to poach raiders when they are getting a steady supply of recruits from pugs.

[Frosteye]

This is a topic that's come up in several other threads already.

What I think is that catch-up mechanics tend to harm the lifespan and value of progression when they happen every single patch. I don't think it's necessary to drag everyone up to the most recent content release. In fact I think there's a lot of value to be had with allowing players to more naturally progress through deeper and more meaningful content, and overcoming challenges without the assistance of artificial jumps in power that they don't really deserve.

Having said that, however, I do think that catch-up mechanics for alts is a thing that should be accessible. Once a player has worked their way through the normal progression, there doesn't seem to be any substantial reason to make them slog through it again. Or at the very least, if they're going to have to run through it again, then it should happen at an accelerated rate.

What I imagine a "good" catch-up mechanic would look like shouldn't involve gear. Gearing up a character at level cap is where a great deal of the content at level cap is, and if you allow players to skip over that in great leaps, then it very much devalues the progress through that content.

But since it seems that Artifact Power is going to be the more steady form of progression at level cap, I would suggest a system whereby the gain of AP is increased for a player that reaches certain checkpoints in the content. I'm not certain of the exact math(since that seems like a job for the devs to crunch out), but it seems like it would be fair that alts should get accelerated AP gains until they reach the point of furthest progression that their account has reached.

However, giving accounts, that have NEVER progressed through content, a fast-forward to the end of the game seems unfair. Both by robbing that player of the sense of accomplishment for overcoming challenges during progression, and by shortening the lifespan of that same content.

I also think the pace of progression could be adjusted to make this more appealing. I really don't think we need to go back to the pace of Vanilla, since classic will cover the players that want that. But I do believe there's a comfortable middle ground that would serve to improve the game significantly.

Thanks for a well thought out post. Many good ideas/points

[RoKPaNda]

We still get the absolute best gear from Mythic raiding. The myth that casuals are walking around with anything more than a piece or two at most of decent gear from lower content was dispelled ages ago.

M+ is supposed to be an alternative, but you're still not going to get better gear than Mythic raiders. Go look at the top ilevels in the world at pretty much any point during any tier and it's page after page after page after page of Mythic raiders.

We still get the best gear.

If they went back to the old way of doing things with no viable progression path for the casuals I'd personally peace out before the game cratered, which it would as the casuals that keep this game afloat would leave in droves.

[Frosteye]

We still get the absolute best gear from Mythic raiding. The myth that casuals are walking around with anything more than a piece or two at most of decent gear from lower content was dispelled ages ago.

M+ is supposed to be an alternative, but you're still not going to get better gear than Mythic raiders. Go look at the top ilevels in the world at pretty much any point during any tier and it's page after page after page after page of Mythic raiders.

We still get the best gear.

If they went back to the old way of doing things with no viable progression path for the casuals I'd personally peace out before the game cratered, which it would as the casuals that keep this game afloat would leave in droves.

Well... In Legion during Tomb of Sargeras I had the 1st or 2nd highest item level on my server for Monks. Our guild killed Mythic Sisters before I took a break from raiding.

After I quit raiding, I kept doing M+ and was able to sustain my high item level through most of Antorus. Most of my pieces had item levels that rivaled actual raiders. And I didn't have to do anything remotely difficult except roll through a dungeon once a week.

Mythic Raiding took a time commitment and I had to make sure I was free those evenings to play with my guild. I quickly gave that up so I could spend time with my Girlfriend (now Fiancé) and just login and play whenever I felt like it.

They should make the gear a bit better IMO, and reward players for the time commitment and overcoming the highest difficulty.

[SirCowdog]

As someone who raided in the middle of TBC and was an officer in a guild, 100% no.

Guild Poaching was and is cancer and is something I am glad is no where near as rampant as it was in TBC. Mind you it did quickly tell you who to add to your ignore list but it made progressing in Black Temple a pain everytime we got a new boss and we wiped the entire night and then the next week we didn't have 20 people cause such and such got poached. X guild who is farther ahead would whisper guildies (me included and our guild leader) to try and invite them to their guild (because they needed a bench from Sunwell poachers) that has already killed that boss and can offer that boss's loot and more bosses if they joined. Of course 9 times out of 10 they are perma benched and they would ask to come back a couple weeks later which would be a hard decline as you still look for players to replace them. What was worse is its not like you can find just a new raider, it had to be players already in black temple since nobody wanted to go backwards in progression to gear up people to be poached. Which meant you had to poach from other guilds to deal with poaching ... just a dark time in wow raiding nobody talks about.

I however do dislike how they make the previous tier worthless with each new tier, not a fan of that, I would rather they nerf the previous raid (20%) and make it drop more gear so you can progress threw that at a faster pace to catchup (Kinda like Naxx, was super easy and did it tons) while also dropping equivalent ilvl WQ gear to the previous tier but not invalidate it completely

A few things for you to consider:

• TBC raids had one difficulty, with one set number of raiders. Modern raids have FOUR difficulties, with flexible numbers of raiders(except mythic, which is always going to be a smaller pool of players).
• TBC didn't have gold-token-fueled server transfers. Modern wow does, and so the potential pool of geared raiders is larger that way as well.
• TBC didn't have the same level of class or spec balance. Losing a geared tank or healer could be crippling to your raid back then. Now you can choose from almost ANY healing class.

More rigid and linear progression in olden times was only a small part of the larger equation. Finding geared and ready raiders in modern wow would be MUCH easier than it was back in Vanilla/TBC. I don't think that having more meaningful and length progression through raid tiers would cause the nightmare of poaching you experienced, largely because most of the reasons poaching was necessary have been addressed.

- - - Updated - - -

if there were no gear progression for me at all since they decided to lock it all behind linear raid progression

I think this is an important point that needs to be recognized and discussed.

The idea that progression can ONLY happen inside of raids is something of a misconception. I believe that's it's absolutely possible to provide alternate forms of progression for all types of players. We already see it in the form of M+ for small-groups. I think it should be possible to apply M+(or some other similar scaling difficulty content) to solo players as well. Perhaps taking something like the Mage Tower and applying M+ rules to it?

I think the new AI introduced with islands also opens up a lot of possibility to provide more challenging content based on execution and skillful gameplay rather than raw increases in damage/hitpoints. And I'm talking about across the board, all the way from solo players to full 25 man raids.

Linear progression itself is not the problem, and catch-up mechanics are not needed, as long as there is a viable progression path with real depth and substance for any type of player(solo or group-minded).

[KoolKidKaos]

But is it worth it? Is it worth having 4 difficulties per tier? Is it worth old content becoming pointless every time a new raid comes out? Is it worth a item level and stat squish every expansion or two.

Back in the day raiding had 25 players, but catch up wasn't that bad, especially if your raid was geared, Hyjal geared people quick, and BT you could carry 1 or 2 people. ZA had nice loot, and once Sunwell came out you had the vendor. There were many ways to catch up undergeared people, that didn't involve nerfing old content to irrelevancy , making it useless or anything else. Hell we farmed Gruul for DST for over a year for our melee, back then I wasn't some oh I'm too good for this crap, I loved flying to all the raids and doing them every week to help out the guild. That's whats really wrong with the game today, people only play for themselves. I've never had a problem with helping gear people, help people get Shadowmourne, DTR, Fangs, I wanted the raid to be as strong as possible, getting people their legends, and special BiS trinkets is part of the guild, it's how you get the team better. The fact they discourage you from doing anything prior to the current tier is why everything is so boring. I'm not saying Uldir is raiding bliss, but I mean...there is no incentive to do anything, because the rewards are just trash. It's not years playing the game that's ruining anything, I'm LOVING the classic beta, I'm LOVING it, and I hated Vanilla with a passion, but people talk, people group up with you. You're on an adventure again, I know leveling is slow as dirt in classic, but omg it's more fun than Live x 200. The game has lasted this long because it's changed over the years it's true, I know it has to update with the world. But, it's slowly moving away from it's core values, and what made it magical, it needs to go back to it's roots. Catch up mechanics exist, but they don't need to be so helpful that it makes everything before the current tier trash.

[bufferunderrun]

Catch up mechanics were not needed back then, the only reason top tier guilds poached was attunements and not gear, while the latter was extremely important in progression the true is that carring a deadweight player was not a problem it wasn't in a 40m raid and it wasn't in a 25m tbc unless you lost the main tank.

What really was a deal breaker was to run new peoples through a long ass attunement that required age long grind, the gear problem may have been something belonging to middle/low tier guilds who already struggled with progression beyond first 3 bosses and beside tbc had catch up for gear mainly the pvp sets (that were not bad to raid albeit not optimal) crafted gear and badge gear.

All in all those discussions are plagued with lot of rose tinted glasses, nowadays even if you remove all the gear from all the source outside raiding a mythic guild is perfectly able to gear a fresh dinged character in few lockout without even bringing out their main, but is totally unable to carry a deadweight albeit fully decked toon who don't know what is doing into a progression raid given how boss design have shifted more toward executing the right move over a basic gear check.

[Mikazukinoyaiba]

Content consumed so fast because they're foolproof easy these days, i noticed alot of new World Quests dialogue but it doesn't really matter since its just a World Quest, walk to blue marked area and kill X amount of quest object that does 0 damage to you.

Raid also didnt matter much when you can just finish them once in LFR and be done with it.