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

[Alroxas]

Switching a spec takes only 10 seconds, and there are so many hybrid classes, yet there is no practical way to utilize them,

I mean did you not see #pulltheripcord prior to SL launch? There's a reason why there was so much discussion over #pulltheripcord.

But honestly, if your perspective is from a "casual" gameplay then covenant choices shouldn't matter. Isn't this really the bigger issue? Either you're a casual player and performance really doesn't matter that much or you're a semi-serious (or more serious/competitive) player and these choices matter.

And the systems built around end-game progression are similar. For instance, why does a "casual" player need a ilv 235 legendary? Is a 190 or even a 210 not enough?

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.

Eh... That's not entirely true. Experimentation has been done before (see Crucible of Storms) and even in the current raid you could bring in an extra tank if you wanted to... In fact, didn't we see exactly that? In some special cases where only a group of DKs took down certain bosses? Or how about back in BFA where Heroic Ny'alotha was fully cleared by 29 fire mages (+1 DH). So clearly it's not a "set in stone you must have 2 tanks, X healers and Y DPS".

[Tradu]

Parses can be toggled to ilvl so skill > time and effort in that. If all you want is the highest parses on WC logs for example than its your skill that matters when broken down.
Getting the best gear/most gear most certainly should be a benefit of effort and time investment mixed with skill.

Do people seriously look at ilevel parses?

[czarek]

Is end game tailored so much against the casual player?
There, i fixed that for you. You're welcome.

And the answer is: no.

You wanna casualy raid? There is LFR, normal or heroic.
You wanna casualy run dungs? There is M0 or low keys.
You wanna casualy PVP? There is RBG and arena skirmishes.

For nothing of that you need bis covenant or spec. Remember you are casual player. You dont need to be top performer. You just need to enjoy the content that is ment for you and dont try to push yourself into content that is not ment for you.

Casual does not mean you want to stand on low skill content. Im casual atm but i do like endgame challenge. Doin high keys as casual on main char. I made alt but progresion is far to long.

[Tradu]

I mean did you not see #pulltheripcord prior to SL launch? There's a reason why there was so much discussion over #pulltheripcord.

But honestly, if your perspective is from a "casual" gameplay then covenant choices shouldn't matter. Isn't this really the bigger issue? Either you're a casual player and performance really doesn't matter that much or you're a semi-serious (or more serious/competitive) player and these choices matter.

And the systems built around end-game progression are similar. For instance, why does a "casual" player need a ilv 235 legendary? Is a 190 or even a 210 not enough?



Eh... That's not entirely true. Experimentation has been done before (see Crucible of Storms) and even in the current raid you could bring in an extra tank if you wanted to... In fact, didn't we see exactly that? In some special cases where only a group of DKs took down certain bosses? Or how about back in BFA where Heroic Ny'alotha was fully cleared by 29 fire mages (+1 DH). So clearly it's not a "set in stone you must have 2 tanks, X healers and Y DPS".

There's a strat for Hungering Destroyer that uses 4 tanks in order to allow the other 16 people to switch off their brains completely, because the tanks handle the people with the healing immunity debuff. Most tiers have a 3 tank fight as well. It's definitely not as locked in as OP believes, but the degree of being locked in that we have currently is necessary for guild rosters to function. They also struggle to make fights fun for 2 tanks, I have very little faith that increasing that to 8 tanks would somehow let them make tanking more fun.

[Dazu]

Your comparison to Classic/TBC is beyond stupid, because of course it was bad back then too. The relevant comparison would be to expansions where it was actually good, like WoD/MoP or late Legion/BfA.

I was quoting the OP who made out like the talent tree respec times of the game were better, AKA Vanilla- Cata era. I used TBC seeing as Wrath atleast brought in dual spec which made it slightly less painful.

MoP onwards with the new trees switching specs is really painless outside of Legion for the start. Shadowlands is no different, if not even better than all those previous expansions as there is almost nothing stopping you from changing spec whenever you feel like.

[Tradu]

I was quoting the OP who made out like the talent tree respec times of the game were better, AKA Vanilla- Cata era. I used TBC seeing as Wrath atleast brought in dual spec which made it slightly less painful.

MoP onwards with the new trees switching specs is really painless outside of Legion for the start. Shadowlands is no different, if not even better than all those previous expansions as there is almost nothing stopping you from changing spec whenever you feel like.

Conduit energy and legendaries do. Covenants if you actually want to optimize. That's in addition to the potential other gear changes that were always there: weapons, trinkets, maybe different secondary stats.

[uuuhname]

I've been in the same guild for 3 expansions now and none of these problems come up for me. then again I dropped maining a warrior in favor of being useful (DK) so there is that.

[Dazu]

Do people seriously look at ilevel parses?

Why not? How else would you realistically know how you are measuring against equal geared players of the same spec as you? Not everyone can play cutting edge mythic raiding or dedicate the time to get fully decked in the best gear. I dont want to measure my hunter against Rogerbrown for example as its not a equal comparison. Ill check where I stack against similarly geared hunters and see what im doing wrong and what I need to improve on.

- - - Updated - - -

Conduit energy and legendaries do. Covenants if you actually want to optimize. That's in addition to the potential other gear changes that were always there: weapons, trinkets, maybe different secondary stats.

And why the hell is a casual needing to optimize conduits for a role change to fill in for someone in a raid? There is nothing in the casual game area that requires min maxing to the extent of switching covenants and multiple soulbinds.
A legendary is barely stopping you, if you've been playing long enough to be doing any content you should have atleast a 190-210 for any spec you intend to play or the soul ash to craft one.

[Zaanm4n]

You are talking about not catering to the casual player, thats the tip of the iceberg, this game is so terrible to new players who have no friends. My friend wanted to play the game, he leveled to 50, liked it, decided to get SL got to 60, low and behold.. he cant even get his leggo cause the market is so inflated, the only way he cna get gold is if he decides to A) pay for it, or B) gets me to recharge. He didnt wanna do either so ended up quitting.
I am sure now the prices are lesser than before, but its still ridiculous how the game makes u do 1001 things and even after doing it all if you dont have 20 bucks to shell put as a new player u cant get a max lvl leggo. I may be wrong, but just sharing and exp he had, the dude ended up just going back to playing ESO

[AcidicSyn]

Is this the thread for people who don't feel like reading 75 pages of the same topic in the other threads and/or want to argue with different people? Missing dickman, ark, ellieg, and tadkins and then we can just call this part 2.

[Tradu]

Why not? How else would you realistically know how you are measuring against equal geared players of the same spec as you? Not everyone can play cutting edge mythic raiding or dedicate the time to get fully decked in the best gear. I dont want to measure my hunter against Rogerbrown for example as its not a equal comparison. Ill check where I stack against similarly geared hunters and see what im doing wrong and what I need to improve on.

Then you're comparing your play to the play of other people who are making a lot of mistakes, most likely. And personally I'd rather compare myself to everybody and then be realistic about where I should be able to get to, because ilevel rankings get skewed by so many different things(Orgrimmar Cloak + BiS gear, good player on an alt vs people who are "meant" to be in that ilevel bracket, good trinkets + weapons but bad other slots or vice versa, stuff like that)

[Alroxas]

Conduit energy and legendaries do. Covenants if you actually want to optimize.

Emphasis added.

So then here's my question, why does a "casual" player need to optimize? They shouldn't, the content in which is relegated to "casual" should not require nor need "optimization" or min/maxing to the degree where switching covenants is necessary or high ilv gear (such as ilv 235 legendaries).


A "casual" player isn't going to be tackling Mythic Nathria or high M+ keys so then why do they need to have the best "covenant" or the highest ilv of gear/conduits?

[Edward Wu]

This thread is hilarious.

95% of the game is insultingly easy but because there is difficult content in the game that gives good rewards, there is always that small portion of the playerbase that cry endlessly how unfair that is.

Interesting how they always call themselves casuals. It's always that term, and their enemies are always hardcore/elitist/snobs/snowflakes/entitled, because of course these terms could never actually be used to define them, only their enemies!

Just like, quit game if you don't like it anymore.

[Tradu]

You are talking about not catering to the casual player, thats the tip of the iceberg, this game is so terrible to new players who have no friends. My friend wanted to play the game, he leveled to 50, liked it, decided to get SL got to 60, low and behold.. he cant even get his leggo cause the market is so inflated, the only way he cna get gold is if he decides to A) pay for it, or B) gets me to recharge. He didnt wanna do either so ended up quitting.
I am sure now the prices are lesser than before, but its still ridiculous how the game makes u do 1001 things and even after doing it all if you dont have 20 bucks to shell put as a new player u cant get a max lvl leggo. I may be wrong, but just sharing and exp he had, the dude ended up just going back to playing ESO

Gold gains are also massively inflated, though. You get 1.5k a day just from doing your calling, 1.6k per week for doing the 1k anima weekly once you're renown capped(which happens very quickly now), like 10-15k from follower missions per week.

[Alroxas]

he cant even get his leggo cause the market is so inflated,

I mean that's more an issue of the server economy. Also don't pick lower pop servers? And lastly, ilv 190 legendary seems cheap all the way around.

And before you say, well the higher ilv ones aren't, I'll reiterate again: Why does a "casual" player NEED a high ilv legendary? What content are they doing "as a casual player" that requires such optimization?

[BeepBoo]

Parses can be toggled to ilvl so skill > time and effort in that. If all you want is the highest parses on WC logs for example than its your skill that matters when broken down.

"I got a 99th percentile parse... on this spec... for this ilvl bracket... with this kill time..."
Kinda doesn't really hold the same clout as "I have a 99th percentile parse out of literally everyone in the game"

In addition, there's actual performance of yourself on the meters while in the raid. Being top DPS in a raid as it's happening is hugely gratifying for me. I shouldn't need to make excuses to my team "well, I'm doing really well for this specific subset of data!" while being middle or bottom of the pack.

Getting the best gear/most gear most certainly should be a benefit of effort and time investment mixed with skill.

Nah. Time investment need not apply. I've invested years of my time into the game already to get the requisite skill and I'm sick of the hamster wheel. It's a pointless, meaningless aspect simply there to dupe idiots into *feeling* like they're actually progressing their character. Meanwhile, their power relative to whatever the current content is remains the same.

[Tradu]

Emphasis added.

So then here's my question, why does a "casual" player need to optimize? They shouldn't, the content in which is relegated to "casual" should not require nor need "optimization" or min/maxing to the degree where switching covenants is necessary or high ilv gear (such as ilv 235 legendaries).


A "casual" player isn't going to be tackling Mythic Nathria or high M+ keys so then why do they need to have the best "covenant" or the highest ilv of gear/conduits?

They don't need to, but I can absolutely understand wanting to, because being suboptimal is less fun than being optimal to a lot of people(not just "hardcore" players). The guy I was responding to also wasn't specifically talking about casual players, but spec changing in general.

[Ohvul]

Why would a regular Joe care about having a fancy car?

To feel a sense of reward for their effort in life? Are you actually going to be so nieve as to compare the sense of accomplishment related to working X number of hours to acquire a physical object which gives heightened physical sensations elsewhere in life, to the sense of "reward" lmao associated with staring at a screen and making the numbers larger?

Apologies if you're in a wheelchair but comparing video game achievements to physical world ones is pitiful.

[azka]

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

The end content for you is called: LFR, but if you want a challenge you can go to Normal. There, you can have all tanks, or half tanks, half healers, or whatever configuration you want, the sky's the limit.
Also, you can be a Necrolord Balance Druid or a Venthyr Frost Mage without legendary and do well.
Don't bother with Soul Ash, Stygia, stuff. You don't need that.
Uninstall Details, or whatever addon you have, you can avoid that anxiety.

[Wuusah]

I think the game is very casual and hardcore friendly right now.

What the game is not, is being "bad player friendly". Bad players are stuck in some low difficulty content with a weekly item rewarded to them that is 25-50% weaker than what better players get. The power gap between ilvl 200 and 226 is ridiculous.