Should roguelike gameplay become a fourth "solo pillar" of the endgame?

[Hctaz]

Yup, sadly yup. I distinctly remember my mythic raider friends griping during Nighthold about 'having' to go back to Emerald Nightmare to try to get a titanforged trinket off Ursoc.

I think it was less "incentive" and more "being terrified of being told there's "nothing to do" but raidlog" for a second xpac in a row. Hence why we get so many systems.

MHMM. Okay good so you were exposed to it too second hand! LOL

Yeah. The narrative that I prevalently saw was that the hardcore raiders just didn't want the casuals to be able to wear the same gear as them which is absurd. I said it myself a million times: I don't care if you run LFR and get a piece of 925 gear, just don't make ME have to run LFR/Normal/Heroic/Old raid tiers in hopes that I get a 955 because Mythic only drops 925 baseline.

Titanforging wasn't a terrible idea, it was just implemented in a way which made it feel mandatory to constantly do a TON of content in order to remain relevant as a cutting edge raider, and that was miserable. If old content didn't increase to the new cap, and Mythic drops were either the highest a piece of gear could go OR were VERY close (like 5-10 item levels lower than the highest an item could roll) I don't think it would have been a problem. But your odds of getting a Mythic piece to titanforge 30 item levels to the maximum cap were so low that I don't think my guild ever quit running heroic raids just to increase the odds of some crazy RNG loot happening. Heroic was only like 15 ilvls lower if I recall correctly, so anything higher than +15 and it was better than a non titanforged Mythic piece. And we were certainly "encouraged" to farm Mythic plus as much as possible for lucky drops.

[cparle87]

MHMM. Okay good so you were exposed to it too second hand! LOL

Yeah. The narrative that I prevalently saw was that the hardcore raiders just didn't want the casuals to be able to wear the same gear as them which is absurd. I said it myself a million times: I don't care if you run LFR and get a piece of 925 gear, just don't make ME have to run LFR/Normal/Heroic/Old raid tiers in hopes that I get a 955 because Mythic only drops 925 baseline.

Titanforging wasn't a terrible idea, it was just implemented in a way which made it feel mandatory to constantly do a TON of content in order to remain relevant as a cutting edge raider, and that was miserable. If old content didn't increase to the new cap, and Mythic drops were either the highest a piece of gear could go OR were VERY close (like 5-10 item levels lower than the highest an item could roll) I don't think it would have been a problem. But your odds of getting a Mythic piece to titanforge 30 item levels to the maximum cap were so low that I don't think my guild ever quit running heroic raids just to increase the odds of some crazy RNG loot happening. Heroic was only like 15 ilvls lower if I recall correctly, so anything higher than +15 and it was better than a non titanforged Mythic piece. And we were certainly "encouraged" to farm Mythic plus as much as possible for lucky drops.

Agreed. Whatever dropped in mythic should've been the cap, with lower and previous stuff being able to titanforge up to it. Having mythic be 30 ilvls lower than the cap so even THEY had stuff to titanforge up to was just too much. Come to think of it while writing this post the keystone gear is kind of like titanforging. You get this trinket, it's BiS. New patch happens. And you have to go farm the same trinket again now that the max ilvl cap has been raised.

https://www.darklegacycomics.com/689 puts it well.

[Zodiark]

Yeah, but you should understand, that it should be done Diablo-style. Not Torghast-style. Because, you know, usual rogue-like is challenge just for the sake of challenge. And we play RPG. Character progression - is our motivation to play.

You know I really dig that whole Casual Lives matter Banner. I also read underneath , what is wrong with current WoW's direction. I agree there needs to be account wide grinds so you can basically play any alt you want and progress towards overarching goals.

[paxen]

It's always annoying feeling that you have to go outside your preferred content to be the best you can be at it. That can be raiders having to fish for Titanforging procs, PVPers who have to raid if they want the BiS gear, M+ers needing to run SoD for socket gear (at least the set bonuses doesn't work in M+!) - or people who enjoy pushing Torghast needing to raid, pvp or run m+ to get any kind of gear progression. The ideal is that getting progression in one of the other "pillars" will help you starting out, but maxing out gear from one pillar should neither be a requirement for running a different pillar, nor trivializing it. (A mythic raider jumping into M+ after progression is done is pretty close to the latter, but given that M+ scales infinitely they can never just take their raid gear and "finish" M+, at least.)

Personally I would love a game that wasn't so reliant on "getting better gear", but...that's not WoW is it. WoW is *all about* getting better gear so you can push harder content*.



*Even if people overrate gear massively and forget how huge skill gaps are in this game, gear is still very significant.

[Hctaz]

Agreed. Whatever dropped in mythic should've been the cap, with lower and previous stuff being able to titanforge up to it. Having mythic be 30 ilvls lower than the cap so even THEY had stuff to titanforge up to was just too much. Come to think of it while writing this post the keystone gear is kind of like titanforging. You get this trinket, it's BiS. New patch happens. And you have to go farm the same trinket again now that the max ilvl cap has been raised.

https://www.darklegacycomics.com/689 puts it well.

I remember farming Withered J'im forever praying that, not only would a trinket drop (I literally never got one), but that it would titanforge up 100 item levels and add a socket LOL. Saw some lucky bastards who had the very thing happen to them.

It was really dumb IMO. I went from somebody who loved to Mythic raiding as my main reason to play WoW and then loving doing side things like farming old mounts, transmog, and leveling alts, to feeling burnt out from all the required grinds that Mythic raiding needed in Legion. Plus the RNG on the legendary items. I wasn't part of this group, but I remember the poor sods who got a bad legendary item so they leveled a whole new character to max because of the bonus to legendary chance for new characters. It was actually faster to level up a new character than it was to get a third legendary item LOL

- - - Updated - - -

*Even if people overrate gear massively and forget how huge skill gaps are in this game, gear is still very significant.

Well, there's lots of people from the wannabe hardcore group who actually could just get better at the game (probably) and not have to worry about the gear. Like if they're complaining that they can't down the third boss in the Mythic raid when the final boss has been killed multiple times by other guilds, there's probably not a lack of gear going on there.

But the real concern for most top players is that the skill gap between players at that level can be VERY small. The difference between being the best in the world and being second best in the world legitimately can come down to just straight up RNG on their gear drops or getting that PvP item which is, for some reason, slightly better than anything else that they could get in a raid. It's probably more of a concern the opposite way however (PvP players trying to grind out the top spots feeling like they have to get raid gear in order to do so) since the PvP seasons last way longer than the race for world first Mythic raid clear. And I think that sucks. Imagine being the 2nd best PvP arena team because you were only a teeny tiny bit better than number 1 but they got the better gear which made up the difference in skill. Would be a sad day.

[Candlewick]

Visions were the closest we had to single player content tied to progression in wow and I'm not really sold on those being a success. Wow really doesnt have classes built around single player challenging content. Mage tower I think is the closest we can get.

[Candlewick]

While part of me wants to say "That's a YOU problem" to the people who felt this way, I can also get that if you're into a competitive mind frame in a game then even the smallest upgrade might feel mandatory. The problem is if you have no method for the more casual, easier-content, players to advance then the game is over for them pretty quickly.

The thing is, other games have solved this problem in a variety of ways and I don't experience this issue in any other MMO I play. But, for some reason, Blizzard is adamant that this is the way it MUST be, hardcores and casuals at each other's throats, insisting that any catering to the other wrecks their own style of gameplay.

It's because blizzard is terrified to let the players who suck at the game know they suck at the game.

It is why world content and torghast have conduit upgrades tied to them despite it being a reward only top end players want. Blizzard dreads the day their worst player logs in and can't one shot a world mob to progress anymore. It is why content quickly just becomes another system to grind. There is the player base that understands the game and slowly improves with time and the player base who screams and hurls insults when they are faced with any kind of obstacle.

You can not we'd these two groups together so serving one harms the other.

[Krawu]

I doubt I'll ever return to the game, but Torghast WAS fun at the start.

The main problem I see with this is that to be fun, it needs a good degree of procedural generation.
To be fun for 2 years per expansion whilst having procedural generation it needs an ungodly amount of prebuilt assets (enough to provide meaningful variety of content to someone running Torghast for hours every day, for 2 years) or an intelligent procedural algorithm that actually understands good game design, which doesn't exist. The main issue with procedural generation is that it can easily become bland.

I really do like this idea, but I doubt it'd be economically or technologically feasible to implement in a way that would make players want to perpetually engage with this content.

As a comparison: Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth has

-50+ different bosses
-over 100 base Enemies
-well over 1000 room designs
-over 450 items, most of which alter gameplay in significant ways and some of which need to be unlocked

As much variety as it has, I'm not sure that it can stand up to all-day-play for 2 full years.

What makes this even worse for WoW:

-WoW is 3d, not 2D
-due to how WoW plays people spend much more time in a single room in Torghast than in BoI, which means they need to have a much more intricate and interesting design
-WoW needs to be balanced between classes somehow, BoI doesn't

So even if they wanted to to provide the required amount of content variety to a Roguelike gameplay pillar in WoW, the amount of work this would take is exponentially greater than in 2d offline Roguelikes.

[AcidicSyn]

Just play an actual roguelike.

WOW classes isn't balanced around solo content, and even if they did, a slight imbalance would cause these nerds to cry a river.
Just play an actual roguelike.

Are there any roguelikes set in Azeroth?

[DeltrusDisc]

Sure, if they make it fun, why not?

That's the kicker, though, isn't it? Easier said than done.

This exactly. And it needs to be made better and also, made fun.

Torghast lost its flair very early on - spoiler alert: Not changing the scenery much at all gets old, very fast.

How about a sort of tower of the hErO/cHaMpIoN where it has you facing off against random mobs of a given element or something each floor or even room. Backdrop changes constantly (as in each room or floor could be different) or even not based on element but just like a given look and monsters that go with it. It absolutely should have both options for having an end and also being endless. Torghast fails a lot purely because it's the same damn thing over and over.

Look at Binding of Isaac. If it was all basement levels and the backdrop never changed, it would quickly lose appeal, too. You want to see "what's next" and if the "what's next" is the same thing, maybe you last for a few levels, but you'd get bored mighty quick.

[Niwes]

Currently the endgame evolves around the three "pillars", rated pvp, m+ and raids, all group content. One distinct feature of this system is that you mostly progress your character for a pillar by playing that pillar (it's not always successful in that regard, but players always dislike that). Blizzard has been experimenting with implementing roguelike play with Torghast, and it hasn't been that succesful. But I think that's mostly due to two reasons, a) it's not a separate pillar, but instead a roadblock you need to pass to access the three real pillars ("choreghast") and b) class balance is rather nonexistent.

Could the next Torghast be a viable fourth solo pillar if it fully gained its own internal reward structure? Ie you don't have to run alts through if you don't want to, and it provided at least half-decent loot (possibly through the vault)?

title/thread is perfect for a poll. why no poll ?

[DeltrusDisc]

I doubt I'll ever return to the game, but Torghast WAS fun at the start.

The main problem I see with this is that to be fun, it needs a good degree of procedural generation.
To be fun for 2 years per expansion whilst having procedural generation it needs an ungodly amount of prebuilt assets (enough to provide meaningful variety of content to someone running Torghast for hours every day, for 2 years) or an intelligent procedural algorithm that actually understands good game design, which doesn't exist. The main issue with procedural generation is that it can easily become bland.

I really do like this idea, but I doubt it'd be economically or technologically feasible to implement in a way that would make players want to perpetually engage with this content.

As a comparison: Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth has

-50+ different bosses
-over 100 base Enemies
-well over 1000 room designs
-over 450 items, most of which alter gameplay in significant ways and some of which need to be unlocked

As much variety as it has, I'm not sure that it can stand up to all-day-play for 2 full years.

What makes this even worse for WoW:

-WoW is 3d, not 2D
-due to how WoW plays people spend much more time in a single room in Torghast than in BoI, which means they need to have a much more intricate and interesting design
-WoW needs to be balanced between classes somehow, BoI doesn't

So even if they wanted to to provide the required amount of content variety to a Roguelike gameplay pillar in WoW, the amount of work this would take is exponentially greater than in 2d offline Roguelikes.

The nerds exist who have played this every day for yearS. They're definitely not as common as WoW players... or are they? Could it be that the only reason BoI doesn't have more of this is because unlike WoW it:

is not multiplayer and doesn't have that shiny "Warcraft" name attached to it? idk but you bring up very valid points. I also will likely never return to WoW, but I still dream of the glory days and what could be for its future.

[cparle87]

I remember farming Withered J'im forever praying that, not only would a trinket drop (I literally never got one), but that it would titanforge up 100 item levels and add a socket LOL. Saw some lucky bastards who had the very thing happen to them.

It was really dumb IMO. I went from somebody who loved to Mythic raiding as my main reason to play WoW and then loving doing side things like farming old mounts, transmog, and leveling alts, to feeling burnt out from all the required grinds that Mythic raiding needed in Legion. Plus the RNG on the legendary items. I wasn't part of this group, but I remember the poor sods who got a bad legendary item so they leveled a whole new character to max because of the bonus to legendary chance for new characters. It was actually faster to level up a new character than it was to get a third legendary item LOL

Well, in that case it was because it was tier one world boss loot. To compare it to current the lauch world bosses drop 187 gear. We'd need it to titanforge 40 ilvls to match current normal raid and nearly 70 to match mythic. That kind of titanforging is a once in a blue moon kind of thing. Whether it was a good thing or not to string that possible carrot in front of players' noses is pretty much the core of the argument.

Not really sure about the legendaries. I didn't get any the entire first patch of the game. That was about three months. Then they upped the chances and I got my first one, the feral kitty energy ring, from a regular mythic boss I killed on patch day, and had all of them by the time Nighthold opened.

[ZazuuPriest]

all group content... in a MMO... you don't say?

if you want a single player experience there are plenty of PlayStation exclusives for you to enjoy and like 2 or 3 xBox titles

[Kaleredar]

Progressing through torghast currently doesn’t help you really progress any further.

Tower knowledge and ven’ari powers help here and there but eventually you get to a level where an elite decks you in the face for your entire health pool because your gear simply wasn’t good enough, and torghast does nothing to help you progress in that way.

Add gear to torghast, and put it in a setting that’s more interesting than an endless series of copy past dismal corridors and enemies, and maybe you’ve got a new form of content.

[paxen]

title/thread is perfect for a poll. why no poll ?

Eh, it would just be a yes/no poll wouldn't it? Not that interesting. Better to have some discussion.

[chiddie]

This exactly. And it needs to be made better and also, made fun.

Torghast lost its flair very early on - spoiler alert: Not changing the scenery much at all gets old, very fast.

How about a sort of tower of the hErO/cHaMpIoN where it has you facing off against random mobs of a given element or something each floor or even room. Backdrop changes constantly (as in each room or floor could be different) or even not based on element but just like a given look and monsters that go with it. It absolutely should have both options for having an end and also being endless. Torghast fails a lot purely because it's the same damn thing over and over.

Look at Binding of Isaac. If it was all basement levels and the backdrop never changed, it would quickly lose appeal, too. You want to see "what's next" and if the "what's next" is the same thing, maybe you last for a few levels, but you'd get bored mighty quick.

It’s not a scenario issue, it’s the structure of Torghast issue.

I can run D3 rifts every day one after another and have fun for HOURS, while I get bored after 1 floor of Torghast.

Guess why (hint: they are fast, they are fun, they always change in pattern and mobs and they - oh my - give meaningful rewards).

Whatever solo activity in WoW not giving proper power progression in the short-medium period is bound to fail.

At this point I would rather prefer Blizzard to invest all their time in the 3 pillars and stop trying to mimic other games for solo path, they are so worried to not make them giving proper rewards that they just can’t make them fun in any way. Also they would probably put AGAIN a sort of timer (see horrible visions) and just ruin them for the majority of players.

“But D3 rifts have timers”, yes they have but unless you push really high (for the sake of leaderboards, NOT for the gear since past T16 you start going higher for gems leveling and no more for gear), it’s a very generous timer and I can’t really see any1 taking more than 5 minutes to clear a T16 even with the dumbest spec ever.

[Venziir]

God no, roguelikes are awful. Almost as awful as soulslike.

[chiddie]

God no, roguelikes are awful. Almost as awful as soulslike.

I don’t like roguelikes, but I love the pace of soulslike, especially the fact that gear is not so important once you get used to the combat system. You can choose the way to approach the game and many ways can do the job, while in WoW if you don’t have enough dps, you don have enough dps and gg. But mmorpgs cannot be like that.

[rayvio]

Torghast-like content would be a nice addition to the options. ideally it should be Rated Battlegrounds, Arenas, Raids, Mythic+ and Torghastish as viable options to earn gear (and whatever other system happens to be in place that expansion for max level advancement) with the option to dedicate to just one or a combination to prepare for higher levels of those forms of content. the more options we have at end-game the better, so long as they do feel like options