Unpopular opinion: Titanforging was fine, but its timing wasn't...

[Toybox]

I've never really been the kind of person that was bothered by other people getting a random WF/TF upgrade, as it either had no effect at all on my life (non-guildies) or it was just a straight up good thing for our raid team if a fellow raider managed to snag themselves a big item. That one in a million max iLvl LFR piece is beyond irrelevant to anyone besides the lucky soul that got it, & anyone who felt obliged to run said content early on would be safeguarded, if not by common sense, then by my recommendation: Warforging/Titanforging should come into play after the top 100 Glory kills.

There's a few reasons why I think this would be a good thing.

• Firstly & most importantly, it'd mean the raid was designed to be completed with standard gear, rather than with the expectation of a slight iLvl advantage through WF/TF. This'd mean, when the time came, WF/TF would act as a gradually increasing nerf to the raid for guilds out side of the top 100 per faction.
• Secondly, it'd make farm raiding interesting again. As it stands, despite only being back for 5 months or so, I know I can kill 11/12 bosses in Mythic Nyalotha without any chance of an upgrade, and having already picked up two of the three N'zoth items I want, the only thing left is the sword which I'm not all that bothered about. While I do see the appeal of having your character "completed" & know people who personally have several characters fully maxed out, as someone with little patience for alts with this current set of systems, bringing my main knowing there's zero upgrade potential is rather dull.
• Finally, outside of the top tiers of raiding & dungeoneering, I don't believe there was much dislike of the WF/TF system*. Seeing your blue reward go purple was a nice buzz on alts, & it'd also serve as an extra push to give the more casual playerbase a chance to conquer the content they've been progressing for a while, whether that be normal/heroic raiding or progressively higher M+ keys.

(* I'd actually like to get some opinions on this for sure. While I've held this view since Legion & know it's very uncommon within the raiding scene, if I can, I'd like to see what more of the casual playerbase thinks of the system).

So yeah, that's my unpopular opinion. I'd love to hear thoughts on it from both sides of the supposed mythic divide. Anyone else with no interest in alts get bored in farm raids? Did you ever feel hard done by because some random got the same trinket you did but with a few extra stats on them? I've gotta admit, I always found that especially sad.

[ro9ue]

I don't really like Titanforging, but I do wish they'd create something similar to the MoP valor point upgrade system so you can still advance your gear a bit. And then maybe titanforging would just be like you got a lucky 4/4 pre-upgraded drop. But anyone can get a 0/4 and just eventually upgrade it to 4/4. So there's some cool bonus/time saver involved but everyone can work towards their BiS with a reasonable valor upgrade cap.

[Metis]

You're focusing on small upsides while ignoring the problems.
Yeah my house is on fire and I'm going to die, but at least I'm not cold.

[Davaca]

I understand the idea of giving people some kind of reward for doing any kind of content, including content that would generally give you lower ilvl. For example, I would love to be significantly rewarded for doing normal or heroic dungeons with my friends even if I0m wearing mythic gear already. However, you have to put some kind of non RNG in play to feel like the reward is relevant. I always liked how The Division (and to some extend Paragon levels in Diablo 3) rewarded you for doing ANY content. Even killing a random mob from the street gave you progress in a little bar that, when filled, dropped a piece of year that was on par with your highest equipped ilvl. They prevented abuse and grinding by making it more efficient to fill the bar doing harder content, but anything bellow would still help you fill it by a small amount.

For example, in WoW it's frustrating when you just want to click some random item to complete a World Quest and you accidentally pull a random mob. But, if you filled your bar just a little bit for killing that mob, it wouldn't feel so bad. At least that's how I felt in The Division when I was roaming from place to place and found some random low level mobs. It was fun to just decimate them and receive a little reward in the process.

[dcc626]

I don't really like Titanforging, but I do wish they'd create something similar to the MoP valor point upgrade system so you can still advance your gear a bit. And then maybe titanforging would just be like you got a lucky 4/4 pre-upgraded drop. But anyone can get a 0/4 and just eventually upgrade it to 4/4. So there's some cool bonus/time saver involved but everyone can work towards their BiS with a reasonable valor upgrade cap.

wont have to worry about upgrading gear. you will spend your time trying to get gear at all.

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I understand the idea of giving people some kind of reward for doing any kind of content, including content that would generally give you lower ilvl. For example, I would love to be significantly rewarded for doing normal or heroic dungeons with my friends even if I0m wearing mythic gear already. However, you have to put some kind of non RNG in play to feel like the reward is relevant. I always liked how The Division (and to some extend Paragon levels in Diablo 3) rewarded you for doing ANY content. Even killing a random mob from the street gave you progress in a little bar that, when filled, dropped a piece of year that was on par with your highest equipped ilvl. They prevented abuse and grinding by making it more efficient to fill the bar doing harder content, but anything bellow would still help you fill it by a small amount.

For example, in WoW it's frustrating when you just want to click some random item to complete a World Quest and you accidentally pull a random mob. But, if you filled your bar just a little bit for killing that mob, it wouldn't feel so bad. At least that's how I felt in The Division when I was roaming from place to place and found some random low level mobs. It was fun to just decimate them and receive a little reward in the process.

the problem with this is that if you create content that doesnt give rewards people ignore them. ill be interested in seeing how many people do torghast beyond the weekly amount for legendary mats.

[Sansnom]

I did not care much WF/TF. Like you, I did not care what someone did or did not get as it has zero impact on me. I personally would congratulate them for getting a proc on their upgrade. It is no different to some fortunate who won something on a lottery ticket.

So the rage I see on the forum complaining about the whole system is something I did not understand.

The only issue is the frequency it happens on the whole game which I am sure Blizzard is tracking to ensure it does not happen to frequently. I think I only had it proc once for me since it introduction. I was fine with its initial inception and did not really see any reason to change it.

I am neutral about it being gone as it was not something I really cared about. The only thing is that it seems Blizzard caved in to a very loud portion of the player based who demanded its removal.

[Marxman]

Mythic player before I quit. Titanforging/RNGforging was one of the big reasons I stopped playing. It completely ruins the gearing curve and reward structure of the game. It was a blight.

[RoKPaNda]

Mythic player here, it was definitely fine as it was. A lot of us Mythic players liked to complain about it because back before people understood how infrequently high level TFs happened people thought it would make us feel less special. As per Ion at the end of Legion in a normal length tier a normal raid player could expect to see ONE piece of Mythic level or higher per tier. Hardly game breaking.

Mythic player before I quit. Titanforging/RNGforging was one of the big reasons I stopped playing. It completely ruins the gearing curve and reward structure of the game. It was a blight.

Not really. High level Titanforges didn't happen nearly often enough for it to be a problem. We STILL have the best gear. Mythic+ gearing was more of a problem (The difficulty of doing a +15 versus doing a Mythic raid ... lol) and even that is fine.

[Kaver]

wont have to worry about upgrading gear. you will spend your time trying to get gear at all.

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the problem with this is that if you create content that doesnt give rewards people ignore them. ill be interested in seeing how many people do torghast beyond the weekly amount for legendary mats.

Lots of games are able to make great repeatable content without any rewards (other than cosmetics). There just need to be some kind of accomplishment but that doesn’t have to depend on gear.

[Rendark]

I hated titanforging because it shouldn't feel bad to get gear. Like the trinket you really wanted dropped but its normal. Before that was fine, "sweet got my trinket!". With titanforging it was oh well cool i got it but it could have been far better. It was like that with legendaries being random drops too. It should never make you feel bad to get a legendary item.

[kaminaris]

I don't really like Titanforging, but I do wish they'd create something similar to the MoP valor point upgrade system so you can still advance your gear a bit. And then maybe titanforging would just be like you got a lucky 4/4 pre-upgraded drop. But anyone can get a 0/4 and just eventually upgrade it to 4/4. So there's some cool bonus/time saver involved but everyone can work towards their BiS with a reasonable valor upgrade cap.

Oh boy here we go agane. MoP valor point upgrades were literal garbage gear tax. You got item from heroic and upgraded 4 times, other dude got same but mythic upgraded 4 times and you were still behind.

[Drattz]

I did not care much WF/TF. Like you, I did not care what someone did or did not get as it has zero impact on me. I personally would congratulate them for getting a proc on their upgrade. It is no different to some fortunate who won something on a lottery ticket.

So the rage I see on the forum complaining about the whole system is something I did not understand.

The only issue is the frequency it happens on the whole game which I am sure Blizzard is tracking to ensure it does not happen to frequently. I think I only had it proc once for me since it introduction. I was fine with its initial inception and did not really see any reason to change it.

I am neutral about it being gone as it was not something I really cared about. The only thing is that it seems Blizzard caved in to a very loud portion of the player based who demanded its removal.

In a world where personal loot allowed you to trade based off of the base item level I might agree. However the first four weeks of Uldir this expansion I got the heroic Taloc 2 hander, a +5 heroic Taloc 2 hander, the mythic Taloc 2 hander, and a +5 taloc 2 hander in that order. I was the only person in my raid to receive a 2 handed weapon for those five weeks from either him or Mythrax. I would have liked to trade every single one of the warforged ones to someone else for the sake of my team but I was screwed out of being able to because I got "lucky". So long as personal loot is going to be our only option and this is how they approach trading gear I don't want the ilvl to go up because I want to be able to give my guildies the gear that is marginal for me but massive for them.

[Clozer]

Na, Corruption was in every way an upgrade to TF/WF. If we ever get back to a better gearing system than LOL HIGHER ILVL, we will get some kind of Corruption system back.

[exochaft]

There's a big assumption in the OP's point of view, for at least 2 out of 3 proposed changes: content needs to be endless and repeatable. The direction of WoW has ingrained this concept into many, that you should be able to constantly rerun content you're done with to get upgrades. However, the game was originally designed to be just the opposite, as content was meant to be enjoyed and crafted to make an experience for the player, but you move on afterwards (some of the original WoW devs actually go into this).

WF/TF in itself was meant to have reclearing the raid after you've beaten everything give you a chance at upgrades and potentially add more excitement on said reclears. While the original implementation was probably the best (+5/+10 ilvls, but still not able to reach the next raid tier's base ilvl), it opened the door to some pretty nasty side effects. It introduces extra player fatigue and diminishes the emotions when you get a specific item to drop, but it's not the correct ilvl. It makes players go through content that they're long done with regardless of their skill level, all for various reasons that already existed prior to WF/TF but making the time to achieve said reasons much longer. The concept itself runs counter to what the current devs proclaim they want when it comes to certain systems, then they're scratching their heads wondering why things aren't going according to what they planned, all while their player base is getting exhausted from playing their game. In the interest of brevity, I'll just leave the list at this, but there's many other negative effects of a WF/TF system.

Anyways, when it comes to the first proposed change, there have already been systems in place in WoW that achieve the progressive 'nerfing' of content without messing with gearing at all. First of all, it's sort of a circular issue with WF/TF: the scaling/difficulty itself is all out of whack and likely excessive because of WF/TF, and removing the system itself should nerf content. Second of all, getting gear as you progress through a raid is supposed to be the default method to 'nerf' the raid naturally. Third of all, Blizz has implemented progressive auras in older raids that did blanket damage/hp reduction of the enemies in the raid (or increased the player power) to make raids easier over time, and you were given an option to turn it off if you didn't want to use it. Fourth of all... well, this ties into the rest of the proposed changes, so I'll list it below...

Your second and third proposed changes come from a standpoint that players should be able to get everything they want, removing most or all adversity to getting all the rewards. That's super unhealthy for any game, and not of sound game design... and yes, Blizz has been doing this with WoW, and I'll reaffirm it's terrible game design. While one of the devs at one point did say that players will not tend to rise to the challenge if you make things too difficult, players also won't rise to the challenge, get bored, or even fail to show up if you give them the rewards easily and without adversity. WoW really lacks the ability to allow players to fail in most aspects of the game, and the player base is conditioned to always being allowed to win. The result of such a game design are insane gear scaling and difficulty curves, which has lead to many of the issues with WoW in recent years.

Anyways, the super simple version is that all the problems supplied are actually the result of WF/TF and a warping of the original intent of the game, and it's removal is a good thing in the long run.

[Redroniksre]

Lots of games are able to make great repeatable content without any rewards (other than cosmetics). There just need to be some kind of accomplishment but that doesn’t have to depend on gear.

WoW is a bit of a different beast. Mage Tower was good but it was a piece of short content that wasn't meant to be a main focus. If Torghast only gives Legendary mats and nothing else it will be dead by 9.1. And most people will be done gearing about a month or two in, then thats when they either become collectors or quit.

Titanforge itself wasn't the problem, the problem was that they introduced it without a sister system to keep its RNG in check. Like others have said, an upgrade system would of helped immensely with this. Even given you the ability to consume the same item to upgrade it would let people slow progress, and then Titanforge would feel more like a boost than anything.

[Saltysquidoon]

Firstly & most importantly, it'd mean the raid was designed to be completed with standard gear, rather than with the expectation of a slight iLvl advantage through WF/TF. This'd mean, when the time came, WF/TF would act as a gradually increasing nerf to the raid for guilds out side of the top 100 per faction.

Raids are and always have been designed to be completable with gear from the tier below, that never changed when WF/TF existed. What you're describing is how the system was designed to work. If you don't feel that's how the system was working that's because it's a shit system.

Secondly, it'd make farm raiding interesting again. As it stands, despite only being back for 5 months or so, I know I can kill 11/12 bosses in Mythic Nyalotha without any chance of an upgrade, and having already picked up two of the three N'zoth items I want, the only thing left is the sword which I'm not all that bothered about. While I do see the appeal of having your character "completed" & know people who personally have several characters fully maxed out, as someone with little patience for alts with this current set of systems, bringing my main knowing there's zero upgrade potential is rather dull.

I can't pretend people don't raid for gear or that's not a valid reason to raid. But if you need an endless shower of perpz to want to raid maybe its time to consider how much fun you're actually having. Sure farming sucks, did it suck less with TF? Yeah, did it suck enough to justify killing the competitive aspect of raiding?

Also, the unstated argument here is the real reason the system was added in the first place. Too many wow players only play wow and need content forever because they're addicts. It's ok to be done with a character, it's ok not to need anything for the rest of a patch. I don't care about how many people REEE about WoD(even though raid logging was a thing from vanilla to cata), raid logging is good.

Finally, outside of the top tiers of raiding & dungeoneering, I don't believe there was much dislike of the WF/TF system*. Seeing your blue reward go purple was a nice buzz on alts, & it'd also serve as an extra push to give the more casual playerbase a chance to conquer the content they've been progressing for a while, whether that be normal/heroic raiding or progressively higher M+ keys.

The lab rats don't realise they're in the maze either. Of course, the system was popular in lower level content, it's a dopamine injection directly to the part of the brain wow targets. There's actually no reason to remove the system from leveling and heroic dungeons and just not have it in rated pvp, m+ and raids, the reason they entirely removed it was because keeping it at all would admit the system didn't exist to make the game better, it existed to make people sub longer.

[iamthedevil]

It definitely gave a reason to do things that normally would have had 0 incentive.

[msdos]

I liked it when it felt very rare, like maybe you'd have 1 or 2 titanforged pieces. But at some point it became like an actual thing you could target, mostly because of M+ scaling and reward structure.
M+ has accelerated the partition of the gear item levels to crazy multitudes. I mean BFA is probably what the game looks like if you leave in TF, corruptions and just remove the lockout on loot.

If you could heroic raid, mythic raid, do M+ and arena, there was no lockout on loot for you for the most part and each thing had a chance to TF. All it does it put people who can't play as much at a disadvantage. It also punishes raid loggers and PVPers who just want to stay in their own lane. Not a wholly balanced system.

The 5 mask thing was kind of a way to give solo players more access to loot, but it was terribly implemented and the Visions themselves aren't fun unless you're just destroying everything instantly and even then..

[kaminaris]

WoW is a bit of a different beast. Mage Tower was good but it was a piece of short content that wasn't meant to be a main focus. If Torghast only gives Legendary mats and nothing else it will be dead by 9.1. And most people will be done gearing about a month or two in, then thats when they either become collectors or quit.

Titanforge itself wasn't the problem, the problem was that they introduced it without a sister system to keep its RNG in check. Like others have said, an upgrade system would of helped immensely with this. Even given you the ability to consume the same item to upgrade it would let people slow progress, and then Titanforge would feel more like a boost than anything.

Upgrade system that eventually upgrades gear to max level effectively means static gear which would be just a roundabout way of having extremely boring gearing system
Upgrade system that worked like mop, only relative +X ilvl from base drop is just a gear tax and does absolutely nothing for power curve.

[Razion]

WF/TF I thought was fun. At its most perfect in SoO, and ruined by people complaining about it all the time. At the Mythic level I never had an issue getting WF/TF gear for bosses on farm. Especially with larger raids with more bosses, fights on farm saw more and more kills with more and more improved drops. It functioned exactly as OP describes: bosses you already passed with the lesser gear got nuked from the upgrades so you wasted less time on farm, and it was a natural carrot on a stick to keep playing during farm to get the perfect set with upgrades plus ideal tertiaries or sockets. But again this extra wasn't even needed for current or even upcoming tiers - it was just a fun bonus. I only ever thought WF/TF during SoO could ever so marginally be improved at the time because I liked how it was so much. I think they went too far after SoO but I'd be lying of I said I didn't still enjoy it - I just thought SoO's WF/TF was the closest to perfect it got.