Why is end game tailored so much against the casual player?

[Freedom]

Majority of wow playerbase are casuals. That is static, even if the casual will not stay for long other come in his place. So the overall numbers is static, same with hc. But casuals pays the bills.

So what if they actually do? You didn't address my central point - SL is not showing significantly different behavior for "sub at start, leave, maybe come back for patch, etc" (bar that there is no patch yet) cycle WoW has had for quite a long time. And Blizzard isn't going to take a huge risk to try to address the problem of casuals leaving, especially given they have no guarantee that catering to them will actually make enough of them stay around for it to be worth it, and this has been an "issue" for a long time. They could cater harder, then find that they retain no significant additional number of players, possibly even losing a portion of the harder core playerbase. What then? They're left empty handed. If they do nothing and don't address the creaking of unoiled hinges on the forums? They take less risk, and probably lose nothing.

[rhorle]

Longer road, harder challenges, more time spend playing and paying. I imagine blizz cares about those last two at least.

Harder challenges? The entire reason why they are at a wall now is because they don't want to do the harder challenges. The don't want to do anything harder but want the gear for those harder things.

[Rappy28]

What I fail to understand is how this would be any different to the past 17 years or so of WoW.

Badges. Justice and Valor.

Both obtainable via purely queued content from 3.3.3 to 5.4.

With them gone, I was pretty much done with WoW's endgame content. At least WoD had the legendary quest to give me a reason to run LFR, while late Legion had an attainable solo goal in Mage Tower, which kept me running Antorus LFR on alts. That was the last time I stepped into any dungeon or raid for reasons other than a one-off story quest.

[s_bushido]

Badges. Justice and Valor.

Both obtainable via purely queued content from 3.3.3 to 5.4.

And they would only ever get you so far. They went all-in on the vendors in Cata, and you could get up to...normal raid quality gear. Which is exactly what you can get now purely through Covenant stuff.

[rhorle]

Badges. Justice and Valor. Both obtainable via purely queued content from 3.3.3 to 5.4.

But you still hit that gear wall. The difference between then and now is the speed at which you reach the gear wall without having to do higher content. World Quests offer Mythic +4 and Mythic +5 end of dungeon item level. Covenant set can be upgraded to Mythic +6 end of dungeon level. It is just speed and perception since it isn't packaged in a small gain currency with a clear cut vendor.

The casual wall is just below Normal mode loot (first 8 200, last two 207). The only real problem is LFR having no upgrades and the great vault being a mix between 187 and 194. The system is designed to encourage you to step up in content. But it is no different then past systems that had a casual wall.

[Imurbandaid]

Hi.
I've been playing casually since some events in my life forced me to not take the game so serious,
so I've been in some less organized groups who still raid some mythic and with my experience from some competitive gaming I came into some strange conclusions.

Switching a spec takes only 10 seconds, and there are so many hybrid classes, yet there is no practical way to utilize them,
if one doesn't spend considerable amount of time and Shadowlands is even less forgiving in that regard since covenants came into the mix,
and one spec can be vastly superior when using a certain one, while being less than optimal in other,
so for example a healer spec of some class, can use a different covenant than a dps spec from the same character.

Switching a covenant can be done once a week, and one has to also do some chores on top of it,
farming a 235ilvl legend takes approximately 5 weeks. 5250/1140 Soul Ash per week
there is also farming Stygia, which I wouldn't personally say is that bad in itself, but can be really tiring, if you want to do it on multiple toons.

Now, I brought the casual player argument because, it seems to me like the ones who really suffer from this IMO stupid design choice,
are the guilds on the lower end. Someone can't attend a raid and a healer/tank is missing. The guild has many hybrid classes in the group,
but none are using it, because it is so gimped.
I've noticed that a lot of players wouldn't mind to switch it here and there, even though they wouldn't want to stay that role full time,
but there is really little to no incentive to even try it.
Lower end guilds would benefit from it, even if it was: 'John could you heal today, so we could raid?'
and I don't think higher end ones would suffer.

Then there is another design choice that the developers set on, and it seems it will stay this way forever: 2 tanks, mostly 4-5 healers, rest dps.
Most of these fights for tanks are: switch[taunt] after X amount of stacks, that's it - done; or switch after Y ability.

I got 2 characters, one is a Monk who can play every role, and 2nd is a Mage who is a beast when it comes to dps. I personally would find it really cool if a certain encounter demanded for example 5 tanks, other one 8-10 healers, another 15 dps with 1 tank, and I would be able to fluidly change my spec on my hybrid class, but I cannot do it, as it's a huge time sink. I already am playing Brew with my friends in M+ and WW on raids, and I'd love to chill on MW sometimes, but it's impossible to imagine.
Players who cannot fathom not being somewhere around the top of 'Damage Done' dps meter can stay pure dps.

I doubt it will change the way things are, but I just wanted to see how other players feel about it.

EDIT: Since so many people miss the point: by casual I don't mean bad, I mean players who don't spend their whole life on the game, and have limited time, but still want to accomplish something more than farming achievements/mounts etc.

Why is END GAME tailored against CASUAL players? I don't know, maybe because by definition a casual player most likely wont reach end game of a patch before the next patch comes out, but lets make the end game content for that audience.

[Glorious Leader]

And they would only ever get you so far. They went all-in on the vendors in Cata, and you could get up to...normal raid quality gear. Which is exactly what you can get now purely through Covenant stuff.

Which is actually not the same thing. Quite apart from the ilvl difference (albeit it minor) the covenant gear isn't what you got from raid which is what you got from the badge vendors Tier pieces.

[s_bushido]

Which is actually not the same thing. Quite apart from the ilvl difference (albeit it minor) the covenant gear isn't what you got from raid which is what you got from the badge vendors Tier pieces.

And? Considering we don't have set bonuses on raid gear this tier, what does it matter where your pieces came from if they're comparable in power?

[Soon-TM]

dungeons now is a stressfull shitfest and I despise it. Its much more down to picking correct spec, talents, covenants and all that. With the timer its also alot more stressfull, and it gets toxic so quickly.

This is yet another example of Blizzard catering to the hardcore crowd. Sure, they made dungeons relevant for the entire expansion, but at what cost?

[Aliven]

Harder challenges? The entire reason why they are at a wall now is because they don't want to do the harder challenges. The don't want to do anything harder but want the gear for those harder things.

That is logical fallancy. Wanting more auto quequeable content is not the same as wanting easy content.

Also, i assume the 3 other points you agree on?

- - - Updated - - -

So what if they actually do? You didn't address my central point - SL is not showing significantly different behavior for "sub at start, leave, maybe come back for patch, etc" (bar that there is no patch yet) cycle WoW has had for quite a long time. And Blizzard isn't going to take a huge risk to try to address the problem of casuals leaving, especially given they have no guarantee that catering to them will actually make enough of them stay around for it to be worth it, and this has been an "issue" for a long time. They could cater harder, then find that they retain no significant additional number of players, possibly even losing a portion of the harder core playerbase. What then? They're left empty handed. If they do nothing and don't address the creaking of unoiled hinges on the forums? They take less risk, and probably lose nothing.

SL is special because it is easy to get to 200 and then path slows to a crawl. It is worse than ever. The systems are huge grind and game, harder than ever, does not respect player time. The system which could possible cater to casual players - ie cosmetic rewards from anima and sense of progression is a joke, due to the time it requires to grind any significant upgrade. I love cosmetics and, after seeing how it works, say - whatever, not gonna bother.

The tintanforging is gone - so there is no point into doing huge amount of content because gear hard stops at certain ilvl.

Catering to largest audience is always the best strategy. Also, i never said to cater at the expense of the hc (even when they clearly did not give a fuck about casuals ahen designing hc content). Dont know why you think it is need to be binary.

[arkanon]

That is logical fallancy. Wanting more auto quequeable content is not the same as wanting easy content.

Also, i assume the 3 other points you agree on?

- - - Updated - - -



SL is special because it is easy to get to 200 and then path slows to a crawl. It is worse than ever. The systems are huge grind and game, harder than ever, does not respect player time. The system which could possible cater to casual players - ie cosmetic rewards from anima and sense of progression is a joke, due to the time it requires to grind any significant upgrade. I love cosmetics and, after seeing how it works, say - whatever, not gonna bother.

The tintanforging is gone - so there is no point into doing huge amount of content because gear hard stops at certain ilvl.

Catering to largest audience is always the best strategy. Also, i never said to cater at the expense of the hc (even when they clearly did not give a fuck about casuals ahen designing hc content). Dont know why you think it is need to be binary.

How can you create such an obvious "us vs them" argument, entirely based around "hc" and "casual" and follow up with "why you think it needs to be binary?"

[Sithalos]

These threads always give me a laugh, because people on both sides of the fence have no idea what they're talking about half the time.

Just a sign of the times I guess. It extends far beyond the game.

[Frozenbro]

This is yet another example of Blizzard catering to the hardcore crowd. Sure, they made dungeons relevant for the entire expansion, but at what cost?

At no cost at all? before m+ was introduced dungeons were relevant for 2 weeks, now dungeons are relevant during the whole expansion and the difficulty that existed before m+ is still there, this argument is actually extremely stupid, casual Jimmy can still go and do heroic dungeons like he did during Wotlk, but he chooses to do m+ cause it provides better progression, which is fair, but Jimmy gets stressed on m+ so he wants m+ removed despite his "chill experience" from the past still being there, see how dumb this argument is.

[Freedom]

SL is special because it is easy to get to 200 and then path slows to a crawl. It is worse than ever. The systems are huge grind and game, harder than ever, does not respect player time. The system which could possible cater to casual players - ie cosmetic rewards from anima and sense of progression is a joke, due to the time it requires to grind any significant upgrade. I love cosmetics and, after seeing how it works, say - whatever, not gonna bother.

The tintanforging is gone - so there is no point into doing huge amount of content because gear hard stops at certain ilvl.

Catering to largest audience is always the best strategy. Also, i never said to cater at the expense of the hc (even when they clearly did not give a fuck about casuals ahen designing hc content). Dont know why you think it is need to be binary.

I never said that SL in wonderful or the divide is just fine as is - in fact I said originally that they should have stretched the acquisition of the Covenant gear out longer to create a better sense of progression and progress - all I am saying is that it is unlikely that Blizzard will address this, because there are factors motivating them to take a wait and see approach, as well as it would be trying to "solve" a problem that may very well have no solution (casuals getting bored and unsubbing). That and they usually wait until later in the expansion to introduce new or temporary casual friendly content and new systems like LFG, LFR and transmog, horrific visions etc.

[Lumineus]

And they would only ever get you so far. They went all-in on the vendors in Cata, and you could get up to...normal raid quality gear. Which is exactly what you can get now purely through Covenant stuff.

What you're arguing is misleading because a "normal" raid in Cataclysm and throughout most of MoP was aligned with the old 25m difficulty from TBC and Wrath in order to justify raid quest and legendary progression across all raid sizes, a difficulty and level of itemization which is equivalent to the current Heroic mode setting.

[Echocho]

Wow could learn a thing or two from FFXIV. They actually take good care of the biggest crowd of any MMORPG, the casuals.

[Crimson Spears]

No I've used the correct word in so far as the English language is concerned. The root word progess:
noun

noun: progress

/ˈpräɡres/

forward or onward movement toward a destination.

"the darkness did not stop my progress"

advance or development toward a better, more complete, or more modern condition.

"we are making progress toward equal rights"

verb

verb: progress; 3rd person present: progresses; past tense: progressed; past participle: progressed; gerund or present participle: progressing

/prəˈɡres/

move forward or onward in space or time.

"as the century progressed, the quality of telescopes improved"

advance or develop toward a better, more complete, or more modern state.

"work on the pond is progressing"


Notice that theirs no mention of the concepts of difficulty or challenge. For our purposes the most relevant definition is "advance or develop toward a better, more complete, or more modern state." The notion that progress or progression MUST include an increase in challenge or difficulty is entirely a mythic raid centric view and not remotely accurate in either the literal meanings of words or in the experience of 99% of people who have ever played this game.

I think the problem is you don't understand what progress and progression means. While similar the two words are different.

You progress from level 1-60 by killing boars. Once you hit level cap and no longer gain experience you are no longer progressing. There needs to be an end goal and so far i've yet to see one that justifies the systems your trying to defend.

[crusadernero]

This is yet another example of Blizzard catering to the hardcore crowd. Sure, they made dungeons relevant for the entire expansion, but at what cost?

It will cost them, alot. It worked in legion cause then it was new. It somewhat worked out in BfA cause there was other activites to obtain currency and/or gear, like Warfronts.

In SL theres m+ or fuck it, besides raid. I've said before that the m+ system for dungeons will in the end be a big reason for people not playing the game at max level. People like it, but they are in the few.

[arkanon]

These threads always give me a laugh, because people on both sides of the fence have no idea what they're talking about half the time.

Just a sign of the times I guess. It extends far beyond the game.

And you do? Or you just wanted to feel involved? By all means, please put forward your point of view on the subject, im sure we would all like to read it.

[Rappy28]

And they would only ever get you so far. They went all-in on the vendors in Cata, and you could get up to...normal raid quality gear. Which is exactly what you can get now purely through Covenant stuff.

Which takes, what, 2 weeks after hitting 60 according to people here?

What I'm saying is that I remember actually farming the ICC dungeons as well as MoP LFR on a weekly basis, on my main and on alts. I was making slow but steady progression with queued content, I was having fun and it kept me subscribed. That was cool.

There was a carrot on a stick. No more carrot, no more sub. What's the point if I'm done in 2 weeks? Square Enix feeds me all the delicious carrots now.