Should Rewards Reflect Your Content ?

[HansOlo]

It shouldn't... and it doesn't. Hope that helps.

Now... you convince me that the luck involved in finding 19 other people to take you through a Mythic raid should reward you with upwards of 5 or 6 bits of 226 gear ?

Are you critizing the most iconic and classic feature in the entire game - going into raid, killing some dragons and looting(regardless of results which is bound to RNG - just as it worked for decades before WoW)?

Some enjoys Mythic+ more than raiding. Others enjoy PvP more than raiding. Some loves raiding and don't care about the rest. Problem occured when they gave us the freedom to pick - because people are like "why should I raid when I can do X!!!".

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I mean you arent wrong to some extent, the questions that need to be answered using an example are basically this:

1- Should Jimmy get 226 gear by doing world quests despite 226 being the ilvl rewarded only by the hardest content in the game?
2- Should Jimmy still get some kind of progression doing "not particularly hard" content since he doesnt want to partake in any of the 3 existing gearing paths?

The answer to the first question is no, there is a clear progression path towards the highest ilvl ingame obtained by (obviously) doing the hardest content ingame, like every rpg out there, if they change this then it goes against "difficulty of content v/s reward", and may as well change the genre of wow anyways since thats not an rpg.

The answer to the second question is yes, Jimmy should still have gear progression and idk why blizz hasnt found the middle ground, personally if people could upgrade their non m+ gear to 207 as maximum ilvl this wouldnt hurt much, more than this and the community would be pushing their luck since 210 belongs to farmable +15s and 213 to heroic raiding, theres just enough ilvl you should get without stepping foot into any challenging content and taking away the relevancy of those, but being hardstuck 200 isnt the right call either.

Because Jimmy is a LoL or PUBG/CS player. He wants to get the upgrades - not get involved any further in any kind of content except for World Quests(because getting gear is fun for no purpose - also unsubscribe until next big patch). Why would they create content for such flakey person? You know thier playerbase dropped by 40% after the lunch(just as always) - as they know there a bunch of nonsense people, while the rest of us are funding the future.

You see - problem is not the content - people are just not motivated(maybe the game got old for some people?).
After all - gearing is not the game - it's killing the dragons and other players for progression - more gear is rewarded for more killing. It's not perfect, but this is WoW - not the casual 2021 mobile game.

[Shelly]

That doesn't make any sense. At all.

How so?

This entire thread is full of people talking about how they have done KSM and easily complete +10s but have yet to get generals or sire down.

So for 4/5 of the raid they've carried multiple people getting 213 gear.

So yeah, M+10 and above fill the gap between heroic and mythic raiding.

M+ at 10 and above is harder than 4/5 of the heroic raid and requires tighter coordination for everything from kiting paths to stuns and cooldowns. Far more than raid does and it's a more dynamic content as well as Blizz considers an entire M+ run as a single boss.

[T-34]

It shouldn't... and it doesn't. Hope that helps.

Now... you convince me that the luck involved in finding 19 other people to take you through a Mythic raid should reward you with upwards of 5 or 6 bits of 226 gear ?

It doesn't take luck in any form to find 19 other people to do a mythic raid, it requires a degree of skill at the game combined with the bare minimum of social skills.

The problem that people like you have in-game is that you will never ever admit or recognize that a "problem" can or could be solved by you.
In this particular case we have many many 1000's guilds doing mythic bosses. None of them do it because of "luck", they can do it because people use their in-game and social skills to group up with people of similar skill and mindset.
So whom should we believe? You with your "victim-stance" or the untold others that get shit done in-game?

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since wow had already less players then FF14 just 4 months after launch. in a year differnce will be astronomical once new F14 expansion comes out.

Could you please link where you found data on the current playerbase for WoW or FFXIV?
Or is it your usual numbers pulled out of some dark place?

[VinceVega]

Just petition Blizz to make easymode servers.

If you jump you get a max-level piece of gear into your bag.

There you go.

I really really do not understand how people play games sometimes. It is probably the same like people spamming rosebud in sims and than complain, that the gameplay is not fun after building a huge mansion.

If i don't put in the effort why do i need/deserve 226 items right now? You won't go into raids anyway. You won't suddenly became an uber Mythic+ player an PvP is even harder to get into.
You have better gear but nothing to work for anymore other than legacy content/transmogs where you would not need that gear in the first place.

If gear is to easy to obtain you can just remove it completly. There is no reason for it anymore at that point.

[Kaver]

Previously I also thought that raid vault should give you a higher ilvl items as well, but I changed my mind over time. If you just gave people weekly items from a mythic raid ilvl for completing heroic raid, you'd completely remove the need to even do mythic raids (other than progression ofc).

As for m+...it's not that simple either. You kind of get higher ilvl reward than the content provides, but not really. That ilvl reward is part of the reward structure for said content, so technically it's not higher than it should be.

The thing with m+ is that for an average casual raider/pver to reliably clear a given keystone level, they need ilvl much higher than what that keystone level drops. Or in other words you could say that the rewards from the regular dungeon-end chest are lower than the gear you already need to have to get that chest in most cases. Yes, I'm sure someone can link me 10 people right now who completed keystone master at 210 ilvl, but that's certainly not the case for the majority of people who end up achieving it.
Valor is supposed to mitigate that a bit and I guess it's a good mechanic for people who mostly limit themselves to do m+. I know in my community most people reached 220ish ilvl before they started timing 15s and it seems to be the case for other guilds/communities of heroic raiders on my server as well.



The problem with that is mythic raid ilvl is the ilvl ceiling for any patch. So they would have to add a step up in ilvl that would only exist in the great vault for completing mythic bosses, which would be unhealthy for the whole system for a lot of reasons.

At this point, I really don't think people do Mythic raiding for the gear anymore. It's definitely not the case for me. Maybe people do the first 3 bosses for loot but beyond that the gear is definitely not worth the effort for the average progression guild. So their drive to do mythic progression must come from something else than gear. And if you clear the entire raid only to get 233 ilvl gear then you're insane (not talking about people getting boosted).

[LordVargK]

How so?

This entire thread is full of people talking about how they have done KSM and easily complete +10s but have yet to get generals or sire down.

Meaning +10 and maybe even KSM is definitely easier than the last bosses of the raid. It does not however mean, that they are harder than the previous bosses.

So for 4/5 of the raid they've carried multiple people getting 213 gear.

How do you come to that conclusion? If they struggle to do the last two bosses, they probably can't carry anyone. In m+ however they seem to be able to carry.

So yeah, M+10 and above fill the gap between heroic and mythic raiding

No. It fills the gap between normal and heroic and provides a gear boost for those struggling with heroic bosses. The fact that people do KSM but not AotC shows that m+ does not brigde the gap between heroic any mythic but that high Keystones (10-15) are roughly on par with heroic raid difficulty.

M+ at 10 and above is harder than 4/5 of the heroic raid and requires tighter coordination for everything from kiting paths to stuns and cooldowns. Far more than raid does and it's a more dynamic content as well as Blizz considers an entire M+ run as a single Boss.

Did you even do Nathria? In +10 you don't need any coordination. It's hardly any different than the normal dungeon. Multiple people can die and you still time the key. And you even get loot if you don't time it. Try doing that with slugdefist. Or coucil. If you got any slackers in the raid, they take at least one other groupmember with them when they die, causing a wipe if you not outgear the fight, because damage is pretty tight.
In m+ you are not punished for your groupmates mistakes. That alone makes it way easier.

[Kaver]

Blizzard's philosophy of soft nerfing content through gear is well-documented and the game has functioned like this as far back as Vanilla. The only difference today is that there are multiple avenues to get upgrades and gear, in general, is far more plentiful.

The thing is that in vanilla all the raids were relevant throughout the entire "expansion". When Naxx was out there was still a lot of players doing Molten core. Players who couldn't complete the raid while it was the top tier waited until a new raid came out and the new gear added would soft nerf the ealier raid.

But today the earlier raid dies completely when a new raid comes out. And everyone expects to be able to do all the content while it's the top tier.

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Now... you convince me that the luck involved in finding 19 other people to take you through a Mythic raid should reward you with upwards of 5 or 6 bits of 226 gear ?

When does this ever happen? Nobody just finds people to carry them through a mythic raid. And you definitely don't get 5 or 6 pieces of gear from clearing a raid unless you are traded the loot from other players.

Are you talking about people paying for boosts? Because otherwise it's just an imaginary scenario that never actually happens.

[arr0gance]

There are multiple paths for upgrades

I would venture a guess, that there about 4 million people who disagree

I have a Kaluak fishing pole... I am very proud of of it, It's cool... you know what ? It didn't make my character any stronger.... can you imagine someone doing content that didn't make their Character stronger ?

That's what WoW used to be... now WoW is people doing 171 lvl content and expecting 210 lvl gear, while calling casuals whiners, for wanting the same welfare epics that you get

Yes, you figured it out. 4 million players quit the fucking game because of The Great Vault.

How in the fuck do you register this as an even remotely valid argument?

[Shiekyerbooty]

Yes, you figured it out. 4 million players quit the fucking game because of The Great Vault.

How in the fuck do you register this as an even remotely valid argument?

I apologize if my meaning was not clear, I do not mean to suggest that 4 million people have quit, I was suggesting that perhaps 4 million people might disagree with you when you suggest they are happy with their paths to progression

[arr0gance]

I apologize if my meaning was not clear, I do not mean to suggest that 4 million people have quit, I was suggesting that perhaps 4 million people might disagree with you when you suggest they are happy with their paths to progression

Your suggestion is still entirely baseless and pretty *cough* arrogant.

[Shiekyerbooty]

Your suggestion is still entirely baseless and pretty *cough* arrogant.

IKR ... feels weird when someone tells you you don’t deserve your gear or better gear

Believe it or not, I respect your opinion and should not begrudge you for having one

[Lurker1]

Rewards should reflect your effort, not your content.

Being carried through a Mythic raid shouldn't give greater reward than as much effort solo doing world content.

Then give me my world content then give me my world plus system already so i can gear up what i like to do and i want easy hard or even fucking hard content so im asking for W+ to be a thing one day.

[ellieg]

Then give me my world content then give me my world plus system already so i can gear up what i like to do and i want easy hard or even fucking hard content so im asking for W+ to be a thing one day.

Lol. Collect not 10, but 11 anima cones. And do it in 3 Mins.

Can you describe how W+ would work?

[erifwodahs]

The fundamental problem is that raiding has finite chances to get gear that are completely random, but M+ has infinite chances and PvP has a highly deterministic gearing. As described, the problem can be independent of the difficulty of the content. However, the difficulty associated with raiding just exacerbates the gearing issues with raiding right now. The weekly Vault was supposed to help alleviate such issues, but they just made M+/PvP that much better, still leaving the gearing gap. As it stands, if you want your rewards to reflect your content, you'll just M+ or PvP as their difficulty-to-reward ratio is so much better than raiding right now.

You forgot to mention that raiding gives Vault slots too in addition to max ilvl drops. So m+ vault and pvp vault is not much different from raiding vault.
As a m+ player I can never get trinket from Kaelthas mythic i.e. unless I get into organized raiding, while raiders can quite freely do that +14 even if not in-time and get their best item. So there is a bit of balance there.
M+ is strong at the start of the patch, but as you kill more bosses and get close to the m+ base ilvl it diminishes very quickly.
Also don't forget Legion/BfA where our tier sets, BiS Azerite pieces/weapon corruptions actually cam from raiding. Again, same problem - m+ players HAD to do raiding and for raiders doing m+ is way easier than Raiding is for m+ players. And that is kind of ok, i'm fine with sticking with one or two BiS pieces from HC raid, as long as they don't lock half of my bis gear in raid.
Someone who does both will always be better.

[Shiekyerbooty]

Lol. Collect not 10, but 11 anima cones. And do it in 3 Mins.

Can you describe how W+ would work?

At first it sounds like a joke... but that's actually freaking brilliant... WQ challenge mode

[Lurker1]

Lol. Collect not 10, but 11 anima cones. And do it in 3 Mins.

Can you describe how W+ would work?

Stuff hits harder you know harder content like i dont' understand why something this simple can't exist ext.

[Shiekyerbooty]

Disagree. In my opinion, the point of gearing is progression. You do one type of content, it gives you rewards that allow you to progress to the next level of content, that then gives better rewards.

“Effort based” gearing systems mean that you’re better off spamming easy content because you can do it faster than hard content. They can’t fix that with scaling because everyone has their own unique difficulty curve.

With “effort based” systems you end up with the atrocity that was Legiondaries, with mythic raiders breathlessly mowing down every available wing of LFR in raid groups in order to get the most leggos possible. That’s awful.

“Effort based” also means that if you show up late you can’t catch up by playing well. It means a separation between reward and difficulty that discourages pushing on into harder content and incentivized spamming content you’ve already mastered. Yuck.

Totally agree.. that's why everyone is gravitating towards M+

[bloodmoth13]

It would help if they tied some stats to the content that they come from. Pvp gear could have bonus stats that affect pvp, mythics having effects that help in dungeons and raids having effects that only work in the raid.
I think they had a really good design choice in BFA uldir where gear had effects that only worked in uldir

This would leave the base items to be balanced in specific tiers while the mode specific stats scale with mode specific content.

Of course players will bitch and moan that the stats are useless in other content and that mythic gear should be the best in the game period regardless of game mode, but i think the idea is probably the best to allow gear to be good in all content but better in the content it is obtained from.