we should not accept chore content without alternatives

[deenman]

Random bgs give gear I think, but the ilvl is probably embarrassing. Again I would have zero issues with this IF random BGs ilvl would be capped so that you can’t be perma face rolled by players running around with a BFG9000 while you are hiding with your light gun.

It would be somehow even fine IF every activity would be “boom I’m in”, waiting 20 minutes for a random bg to get perma fragged is not fun. Same applies for M+.

wile i have nostalgia for the old way of farming some bgs getting quick gear and then doing arenas,i feel like the current arena progression path is more apropriate,the problem is with matchmaking,you shouldnt just get matched with people of your mmr but also with similar ilvl's,because no matter how much better you are...gear is still gonna trump skill with the crazy scaling these days

[chiddie]

If only there was a way to play with people you know, like a guild…

I know, that’s why before or in another thread I said that this game is two games: in one you are in a nice, big, friendly guild and enjoy the content at will, in another you are alone and struggle to do everything.

Trying to enter the first tunnel is not so easy.

[Ashleyxoxo]

Activism in a Bli$$ard game rofl.

[cparle87]

Yes, you can get that stuff, that’s about 30 ilvl below max and taking something like 10x more time than a dude that can spam M+, not counting the boredom you have to bear to get that 230 ilvl set.

You can choose to do group content and pray or you can choose to do solo content and die of boredom enjoying an ultra slow progression that will be reset the second you are done in order for the wheel to continue running.

I fully understand that this is what mmorpgs are, that’s why I quit. I find sp games with optional partying way more stimulating. And they don’t even require a monthly subscription.

This is a cooperative game. The very best stuff SHOULD come from co-op play. The fact that you can max out your legendaries, your covenants, your conduits, and get gear better than two of the four raiding difficulties is very generous.

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I didn’t say anything about solo content. I want to gear up with battlegrounds and dungeons like I used to be able to, and yes that can supplemented with trade skills and word content, but the fact that they took away non-M+ dungeons and took away random BGs as viable endgame content has ruined the game for a substantial number of people.

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Because the game has been doing so well since they made the pve endgame all about M+.

When did they take away base mythics and random battlegrounds? You're conflating viable with optimal. There's nothing wrong with base mythics being your endgame. Just like there's nothing wrong with gold farming, auction house playing, LFR, normal, or heroic raiding being your endgame. You just need to accept that the VERY best stuff is above you. Just like it was in vanilla and BC when only 1% of players even got to see the inside of the raids that dropped the best loot, or even the two raids before them.

[Twdft]

I know, that’s why before or in another thread I said that this game is two games: in one you are in a nice, big, friendly guild and enjoy the content at will, in another you are alone and struggle to do everything.

Trying to enter the first tunnel is not so easy.

Personal anecdote but back in Cata I got heroic Deathwing out of a journey that started with solo fishing.

There was a guild achievement to catch 20.000 fish which unlocked a feast recipe. A guild asked in trade chat to pay for people fishing for them. I was on a trash alt and fishing anyway to make some gold. Win win. One of them started chatting from time to time, probably to check if I wasn't running a bot. After a while when they were short a dude they took me to dungeons and raids including heroic Deathwing.

Making friends in WoW is the same as irl, it doesn't happen automatically you have to talk to people.

[NineSpine]

You can get your max level legendary and gear higher than the normal raid from outdoor content. What really are you expecting? I'd say that's more than generous enough for people whose endgame involves nothing group related. Your entire argument that Blizzard is somehow insisting on raiding or die and other playstyles are removed is completely wrong.

But I want to do group content.

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do bg's not give gear?and i simply cant grasp how anyone actualy is against m+ and preferes ''old'' dungeons,when those still exist,you still have normal dungeons,heroic and 0,you didnt lose anything....you gained so much more....something tells me you just miss the ''good ol days'' of wrath where you could faceroll your way to the best pre raid gear with zero effort

BGs give out gear that you’ve out-leveled in about thirty minutes after hitting 60. The same is true for the dungeons you are talking about.

Yes, I miss when there was a game for me to play and it wasn’t replaced with systems I don’t want to engage in, like RBGs and M+.

You guys always act all obtuse about this like it is hard to understand “I used to be able to ply the game X way and then they relaxed that with Z and I don’t like Z”.

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This is a cooperative game. The very best stuff SHOULD come from co-op play. The fact that you can max out your legendaries, your covenants, your conduits, and get gear better than two of the four raiding difficulties is very generous.

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When did they take away base mythics and random battlegrounds? You're conflating viable with optimal. There's nothing wrong with base mythics being your endgame. Just like there's nothing wrong with gold farming, auction house playing, LFR, normal, or heroic raiding being your endgame. You just need to accept that the VERY best stuff is above you. Just like it was in vanilla and BC when only 1% of players even got to see the inside of the raids that dropped the best loot, or even the two raids before them.

If your argument is that I need to accept that I am going to out-gear all the content I enjoy about two hours into a patch, then you aren’t really countering my point; You are proving it.

[LTN]

But I want to do group content.

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BGs give out gear that you’ve out-leveled in about thirty minutes after hitting 60. The same is true for the dungeons you are talking about.

Yes, I miss when there was a game for me to play and it wasn’t replaced with systems I don’t want to engage in, like RBGs and M+.

You guys always act all obtuse about this like it is hard to understand “I used to be able to ply the game X way and then they relaxed that with Z and I don’t like Z”.

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If your argument is that I need to accept that I am going to out-gear all the content I enjoy about two hours into a patch, then you aren’t really countering my point; You are proving it.

I mean yes?

If you only enjoy content you instantly win at you are naturally going to out gear it instantly.

[Relapses]

Just stop caring about what others do and get to have their fun. They won’t spoil your fun unless your fun only comes in seeing you in Gold Cloth and the others dressed in Bronze.

I care about difficult content. The difficulty in M+ is spurred on by the timer. If you remove the timer, the hardest keys will either become "who can stack the most Venthyr Moonkins and kill the most trash in one pull" between Bloodlust windows or who has the most time available to pull everything in the dungeon one pack at a time so as to never be in danger of dying. There's also the death penalty which would be all but removed if the timer is taken out. Frankly, this is boring gameplay and honestly not even that challenging.

[cparle87]

But I want to do group content.

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BGs give out gear that you’ve out-leveled in about thirty minutes after hitting 60. The same is true for the dungeons you are talking about.

Yes, I miss when there was a game for me to play and it wasn’t replaced with systems I don’t want to engage in, like RBGs and M+.

You guys always act all obtuse about this like it is hard to understand “I used to be able to ply the game X way and then they relaxed that with Z and I don’t like Z”.

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If your argument is that I need to accept that I am going to out-gear all the content I enjoy about two hours into a patch, then you aren’t really countering my point; You are proving it.

That's not the point I'm trying to make. I'm pointing out that you can get closer to maxing out your character than you have been able to at any point in the past without the need for group content. So the people who complain that the game has "nothing to do but raiding" is quite incorrect. You can't get BiS, but the gap between someone who never does group content and mythic raiders is smaller than it has ever been.

"If your argument is that I need to accept that I am going to out-gear all the content I enjoy about two hours into a patch, then you aren’t really countering my point; You are proving it." Not sure what this has to do with what I was talking about or even how it's relevant to the discussion at hand.

[NineSpine]

I care about difficult content. The difficulty in M+ is spurred on by the timer. If you remove the timer, the hardest keys will either become "who can stack the most Venthyr Moonkins and kill the most trash in one pull" between Bloodlust windows or who has the most time available to pull everything in the dungeon one pack at a time so as to never be in danger of dying. There's also the death penalty which would be all but removed if the timer is taken out. Frankly, this is boring gameplay and honestly not even that challenging.

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with preferring timer based difficulty, but it's not the case that that is the only type of difficulty that exists. You could simply make the content itself hard to pull off, the same way raids are made difficult and frankly the vast majority of content in the vast majority of games is made difficult.

The problem, from my perspective, with M+ isn't the existence of timers. The problem is the existence of very strict timers that control the scaling difficulty mechanics of the system. If the dungeons were just very, very hard and had a timer that was just there to prevent slogging through to abuse mechanics, I'd feel differently. M+ is also a system that is designed to be grinded at relentlessly and that isn't appealing for a lot of people. I'd feel a lot better about a system where the dungeons are harder, take longer, and can each be looted once per week, basically treating them more like mini-raids for 5 people.

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That's not the point I'm trying to make. I'm pointing out that you can get closer to maxing out your character than you have been able to at any point in the past without the need for group content. So the people who complain that the game has "nothing to do but raiding" is quite incorrect. You can't get BiS, but the gap between someone who never does group content and mythic raiders is smaller than it has ever been.

"If your argument is that I need to accept that I am going to out-gear all the content I enjoy about two hours into a patch, then you aren’t really countering my point; You are proving it." Not sure what this has to do with what I was talking about or even how it's relevant to the discussion at hand.

It's relevant to the discussion at hand because that is my actual complaint. You keep beating up this straw man about getting the same gear as mythic raiders, which has nothing to do with anything I have said in this conversation whatsoever. My point has nothing to do with who gets better gear, but we can certainly discuss that separately if you want to.

My problem is very simple: The activities I enjoy doing used to be things that had long term rewards I could play for. Now, that content is rendered obsolete for progression absurdly quickly. I don't know why you are being so obtuse about this. When I hit 60 in shadowlands, I had out geared mythic0 dungeons by the time I ran two of them. I had out geared random BGs before I even got to play one of them. These used to be activities that I could count on enjoying for months while making progress through them.

[cparle87]

My problem is very simple: The activities I enjoy doing used to be things that had long term rewards I could play for. Now, that content is rendered obsolete for progression absurdly quickly. I don't know why you are being so obtuse about this. When I hit 60 in shadowlands, I had out geared mythic0 dungeons by the time I ran two of them. I had out geared random BGs before I even got to play one of them. These used to be activities that I could count on enjoying for months while making progress through them.

The highest level dungeons, heroics and later mythics, and random battlegrounds have never been the path to progression, though. They've always been a stepping stone. Mythic gear has always been outclassed by raids and battleground gear has always been outclassed by arena and RBG gear. You call me strawmanning when you're tilting at windmills.

As for the outgearring them "as soon as I hit 60" I feel that is hyperbole. Mythics gave 184 gear at launch and give 210 now. Besides a 190 BoE for tens or hundreds of thousands of gold in one or two slots. Are you complaining that mythics dropped too much loot so you got fully geared up too quickly? Cause I remember the consensus being the opposite.

[Nalam the Venom]

ANYTHING that gives player power that affects gameplay, should only be given from activities that require skill.

Anything that requires mindless grinding should be restricted to mounts and other cosmetics.

As long as it's also added to the cash shop so that the people who don't have skill can instead just pay for it.

[Gorsameth]

The problem is that it’s not you vs the timer. It’s you plus other 4 unknown dudes vs the timer.

This leads to unknown dudes leaving if they see timer cannot be beaten and you are left without nothing but having wasted 1 hour between queue and doing a part of the dungeon.

The biggest issue that people have against timer is that no one cares to complete the dungeon when they see it won’t be in par. And on top of that they will start to insult each other because of that.

And why would people that want to challenge themselves do a 3 hours run waiting for BL to be available? I don’t get it.

M+ is not designed for pugs. Thats a huge part of why its not in the LFD tool.

That you chose to pug content designed for organised groups and then complain about it being a bad experience is a you problem

[NineSpine]

The highest level dungeons, heroics and later mythics, and random battlegrounds have never been the path to progression, though. They've always been a stepping stone. Mythic gear has always been outclassed by raids and battleground gear has always been outclassed by arena and RBG gear. You call me strawmanning when you're tilting at windmills.

Why are you still going on about this? It has nothing to do with what I am talking about. Whether someone who is mythic raiding has gear 700 ilvl above me has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I am talking about. My point would be identical if there was no such thing as heroic raids, mythic raids, rated BGs, or M+ dungeons. As long as how the rest of the game remained the same, I'd have the same problem. My point has nothing to do with what drops in content I don't do. Do you understand this yet? Do I need to explain it a fourth time?

As for the outgearring them "as soon as I hit 60" I feel that is hyperbole. Mythics gave 184 gear at launch and give 210 now. Besides a 190 BoE for tens or hundreds of thousands of gold in one or two slots. Are you complaining that mythics dropped too much loot so you got fully geared up too quickly? Cause I remember the consensus being the opposite.

The amount of gear showered on you by the casual content, from LFR to M0 dungeons to covenant sets, completely negated any endgame model based on M0 or random BGs extremely quickly. The complaints about how much gear dropped was about M+, not about M0. The system was designed to quickly funnel players in M+ and RBGs, which are two things a lot of people, including me, dislike doing. The game was not always this way, and other games are not this way, so this weird faux confusion you have is really obnoxious and unproductive.

[potis]

My problem is very simple: The activities I enjoy doing used to be things that had long term rewards I could play for. Now, that content is rendered obsolete for progression absurdly quickly. I don't know why you are being so obtuse about this. When I hit 60 in shadowlands, I had out geared mythic0 dungeons by the time I ran two of them. I had out geared random BGs before I even got to play one of them. These used to be activities that I could count on enjoying for months while making progress through them.

You do understand posts like these is why no one takes you guys seriously, right and why Devs are ignoring all of you, right?

Any decent player, will finish all the M0 dungeons pretty much in around 5 to 8 played hours after dinging 60, because all of that stuff is joke difficulty content and they are getting cleaved down with 50 ilvls lower, you do realize thats how people play the game right , or you do realize how easy the game is at that level, that you are supposed to be playing like that, right?

This is what you guys dont understand, you are so disconnect and so low skill level, which is why you are getting ignored, you have no idea what you are talking about, and its why the "Crying" always starts averagely 5 to 6 months after expansion launch, cause it takes you that long to do basic things, cause you waste so many hours to pointless content.

I am not denying you are having your fun, or whatever you are doing.

And thats also why they simply keep doing it, cause out of the millions of players coming and going, the majority are like you, and it doesnt make a difference what they do, it takes you guys so long to do things, that they make so much money, that it doesnt matter if its good or bad.

[Lochton]

Dailies and rares. These things are not fun at all because there are no stakes. At least in the maw you were sort of time capped so there was an aspect of strategy(you didn't have the option to simply waste your day doing every possible thing).

This kind of content needs to be given an alternative. I want the chance to defeat a difficult opponent or do a time limit quest. I want a chance at more than what the easy slow content gives at the cost of possibly failing and getting much less than what the slow content gives. The fact that the game has no-stakes chores is always the fundamental thing that puts me off and makes me stop playing because thats not a real video game and i know it and i feel like an idiot for "playing" it.

Blizzard wonder's why they don't get respect. It's because they disrespect a huge part of the player base every time they log in wanting to play a video game and are instead given chores.

Isn't this a bit like saying that we need more alternatives to raiding and PvP'ing in general as well?

[Biomega]

Isn't this a bit like saying that we need more alternatives to raiding and PvP'ing in general as well?

That HAS been one prominent criticism leveraged against WoW, to be sure. And also one of the things that FFXIV does particularly well.

WoW's big strength has always been its endgame instanced content - and it probably still is. No MMO has a better raiding/dungeon experience overall (though FF certainly has improved a lot in that respect). The problem is EVERYTHING ELSE in WoW. The "chore content", if you want to put it that way, is all the preparatory/ancillary activities that feed into the dungeon/raid content - i.e., running all the various "borrowed power" treadmills to grind out tiny advantages for your character, doing the regular weekly/daily activities that feed the same, etc. etc. Those are not "required" in the hard sense of the word, but certainly are designed in a way that makes them highly desirable for most people. Legendary gear, conduits, etc. to name a few from this tier - and undoubtedly the Cipher of the Firstborn system from the next.

That "chore content" is designed to be repetitive because it needs to be completed regularly, but that means that almost no matter how "fun" you make it, eventually people will get fed up with it because they feel like they "have" to do it over and over again. The rate at which people are able to consume content generally tends to outstrip the ability to generate new content - if, that is, you cater to a playerbase that has a very goal-oriented mindset, because that means they'll measure everything by that goal and nothing else.

That's why it's a little different for "casual" content. Games like FFXIV or even SWTOR can get away with a lot more because they have a story-focused portion full of activities that don't necessarily appeal to "hardcore" players and are thus exhausted at a far slower rate. On top of that, games like FFXIV have a ton of casual activities outside of story as well, which are not directly tied to power gains - which means they can be designed with a lot more design freedom and a lot less concern for things like replayability, access, etc. that would be looming over any such system if it was tied to actual power.

WoW's developers have been strangely reluctant to decouple many of their core gameplay from power gains. It's the old principle of "people won't do it unless there's something in it for them" that they highlighted over the years - but I think we've reached a point where that's a lot more stratified. There ARE players who are only looking for a good time, and not necessarily equate that with performance. WoW has always PRETENDED to care about that demographic, but at their core, most of the systems they have are very directly designed to funnel into an endgame loop that is if not competitive, then at least has a competitive mindset. That's great for people who just like the dungeons & raids game (or PvP). But it alienates... most of everyone else. Sure there's still a TON of deeply invested fans who love WoW and its universe - that's entirely legit. And there ARE activities in WoW that don't bow to the power of the carrot-on-a-stick approach to game design. But now there's other games who do it differently, and do it better when it comes to certain demographics.

Could WoW change that? I don't think at this point that they can do a total 180 and just turn WoW into FFXIV, nor would that necessarily be a good idea. But they certainly should take a good, long look at the idea of decoupling some activities from the core character progression reward loop. What if Torghast had not been tied to the weekly legendary grind, for example? If it JUST existed to challenge people in cool ways? It would have been designed very differently, and though perhaps less people would have played it, maybe more would have enjoyed it. Or what if Covenants had nothing to do with character power, and were entirely about what you feel like associating with thematically? They could have included a ton of things with it to make an immersive story experience, without making people feel like they HAVE to be a Venthyr Moonkin because that slams, despite of the obvious nature/druid theme of Night Fae (and so on). They could have designed the entire Covenant system as effectively a secondary, parallel progression system not related to power but only to the experience itself. And so on and so forth.

It's hard to tell whether that's feasible to implement now, or whether WoW has simply gone too far and is now forever stuck in catering to the endgame dungeon/raid/pvp demographic, with all its associated progression systems of borrowed power, time-gated reward loops, etc. Maybe it's not too late to go in more on the casual side and draw back some players who just want to do cool shit at their own pace without it resulting in a drop in their DPS rankings when it comes to the weekly raid. Maybe it is.

[Relapses]

That HAS been one prominent criticism leveraged against WoW, to be sure. And also one of the things that FFXIV does particularly well.

...

Could WoW change that? I don't think at this point that they can do a total 180 and just turn WoW into FFXIV, nor would that necessarily be a good idea.

I kind of wish the people who want WoW to be another version of FFXIV would just play FFXIV instead of clogging up these forums with constant reminders that their new preferred MMO "does {x} better". There's room enough in the MMO market for two different MMOs to offer two different experiences.

[Biomega]

I kind of wish the people who want WoW to be another version of FFXIV would just play FFXIV instead of clogging up these forums with constant reminders that their new preferred MMO "does {x} better". There's room enough in the MMO market for two different MMOs to offer two different experiences.

Sure, but this is more about the demographic overlap - which DOES exist.

There isn't just two entirely separate spheres of WoW stuff and FFXIV stuff. There are things both games can - and should - learn from each other. But also a lot of stuff they shouldn't try and make like the other, for sure.

[cparle87]

Why are you still going on about this? It has nothing to do with what I am talking about. Whether someone who is mythic raiding has gear 700 ilvl above me has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I am talking about. My point would be identical if there was no such thing as heroic raids, mythic raids, rated BGs, or M+ dungeons. As long as how the rest of the game remained the same, I'd have the same problem. My point has nothing to do with what drops in content I don't do. Do you understand this yet? Do I need to explain it a fourth time?



The amount of gear showered on you by the casual content, from LFR to M0 dungeons to covenant sets, completely negated any endgame model based on M0 or random BGs extremely quickly. The complaints about how much gear dropped was about M+, not about M0. The system was designed to quickly funnel players in M+ and RBGs, which are two things a lot of people, including me, dislike doing. The game was not always this way, and other games are not this way, so this weird faux confusion you have is really obnoxious and unproductive.

YOU are the one who keeps talking about how random BGs and mythic zeros used to provide "long term progression", which they never did.

Again, M0 and random BGs have never been the endgame model. Stop acting like this is a new thing. Dungeons were always outshone by raids and battlegrounds always outshone by arenas and later rateds. The only time you could get top level gear from battlegrounds was in vanilla when it was rep tied. Acting like I'm deliberately misunderstanding and insulting me, not sure why you keep responding to me when you deliberately misrepresent or ignore what I'm saying in place of what you want me to be saying so you can say I'm wrong.

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Isn't this a bit like saying that we need more alternatives to raiding and PvP'ing in general as well?

You mean like how they added an honor system then battlegrounds then arenas then rated battlegrounds as an extention to there being nothing but wpvp in vanilla and heroic, then mythic, then keystone dungeons as an expansion of group pve content?