STOP making the game for the top 0.01% of the players! It’s killing this game

[RAWRF]

Why is end game content so hard? I’m seeing people having a hard time to pug normal raids. Is this the game that most people thrive in? The “average” are the soul of the community, this game is becoming depressing.

I remember the time in which the most amount of people were actually enjoying the game, and the community was thriving, the content was extremely easy with the exception of four bosses (Mimiron, Anub, Yogg-3/0 and LK heroic) during WotLK. When Wrath was released the hardest boss was Sartharion +3 Drakes, any decently organized group could kill it, I know we did it.

WotLK was the death of difficulty on wow. Since WotLK no one has ever had to CC in a heroic dungeon again. Tanks just AOE tank 2-3-4 packs at a time. I am glad they are bringing back some difficulty to the game. Hopefully next expac gives me a reason to put polymorph back on my fuckin bars. If content with ZERO difficulty is what you want then go play the game that gives it to you. No one is making you play WoW.

I remember really good top 1000 guilds wiping on heroic in 9.0, even after trying Beta on supposedly easy bosses on heroic. Is this the game that you REALLY want? A month after the Jailer was killed, 17 guilds have killed it. What psychos do we have working at Blizzard at the moment?

Good psychos. Psychos not willing to just hand whining little bastards what they want the second they start crying for it.

People take satisfaction in knowing that they’ve “beaten” the game by defeating the hardest encounters. That’s not even a dream to most players. Make the highest gear attainable by all within three weeks of release of patch; The top players already have the titles, mounts, achievements and glory. Stop licking their boots so hard. Game is in a terrible state. I remember Sunwell Plateau was the most brutal raid at the time, even the trash was a nightmare. They nerfed everything by 30% (don’t recall exactly) allowing most people to do it WELL ahead of Wrath. That should happen three weeks after the first kill across ALL difficulties. And just tune down bosses… What is this? I’m typing this as I leave of a heroic diefest on Anduin, and people weren’t awful.

Ever heard of LFR? Look it up.

I’m glad that popular youtubers including Asmongold are starting to point this out. You’ve made the game for 200 people, congratulations.

Asmongold got his start as one of the biggest trolling pieces of shit out of all the wow content creators. Anything he says is for likes, views, and subs. If he thought he'd get more by posting videos of his mom being raped he'd do it.

- - - Updated - - -

World bosses are lame in comparison to the atmosphere, originality, and story behind Onyxia's lair. World bosses don't enrich the game's fantasy, they're literally loot pinata's.

Yeah, great story.

"Hey, there is a long hallway here, with weak dragons in it, then a big room, with a big weak dragon in it, and the story is that you slaughter them all."

Great story. /boggle

[cparle87]

Odd I'm pretty sure that you can get 252 tier items via maxing out the cypher research and doing the creation catalyst thing. But yea, in general the ilv difference between ZM only (with double legendaries) should be around 255 vs ~280 for a CE Mythic raider.

I would wager most players that raid in the heroic/mythic space would be around 270~280.

- - - Updated - - -



Time to invest in ultra wide 4k+ monitors

Cypher gear isn't a valid target for making tier, so you'd have four 246 (sandworn gear turned tier if you don't get 259 from WB) and the rest being 252 cypher.

- - - Updated - - -

You're never going to get that in WoW. The developers are clearly in the mindset that if you don't do premade content you don't deserve a satisfying long term gear progression curve. If that's something that's important to you then you should play FF14 instead. WoW is a game for hardcore players only.

And what do you mean by "long term progression curve"? You guys always say things like this but never actual specify what you want so no matter what Blizzard does you can say you didn't get what you wanted. Do you want for open world and solo only players to eventually be able to upgrade their gear to mythic raid level through world quests, rares, and dailies? If so spit it out instead of being so vague.

[chiddie]

Cypher gear isn't a valid target for making tier, so you'd have four 246 (sandworn gear turned tier if you don't get 259 from WB) and the rest being 252 cypher.

- - - Updated - - -



And what do you mean by "long term progression curve"? You guys always say things like this but never actual specify what you want so no matter what Blizzard does you can say you didn't get what you wanted. Do you want for open world and solo only players to eventually be able to upgrade their gear to mythic raid level through world quests, rares, and dailies? If so spit it out instead of being so vague.

The answer to your question is of course “yes”, since the game offers no endgame progression besides upgrading your gear.

I don’t log in since D3 S26 came out because apart from trying to get lucky finding a desert rare up for my offhand in ZM and creating other 2 set pieces with the Catalyst I have NOTHING else to do in-game as a “no instance, thanks” player.

Blizzard is well aware since ages about what open world players want, they simply don’t care because creating challenging ow content is far more difficult than creating new 5 player maps.

[Polygons]

Yeah, great story.

"Hey, there is a long hallway here, with weak dragons in it, then a big room, with a big weak dragon in it, and the story is that you slaughter them all."

Great story. /boggle

Going into a dragon's lair is boring, you're right, we should stick with 12 boss raids

[Coldkil]

edit : if Normal mode was the highest difficulty level, people would just play M+ for the infinite challenge. Going back to dumbing down stuff isn't helping anyone in my opinion.

That's wrong. Most people only play for the loot and just do whatever is the easier/fastest way to get it. Most people play m+ because it's easily puggable and gives mich better rewards compared to raids for less effort/commitement. If world quests gave mythic ilvl gear, people would do those instead.

Most people don't even reach a decent level of challenge in game. KSM is done by around 5% of the playerbase and the great majority of m+ runs stop at 15 because it's what you need to get the best rewards.

WoW has challenging stuff but only a handful of players are actually interested in it. MoP challenge modes were fun as hell but since they didn't give gear they were largely ignored.

That's just how it is, people pay for boosts cause they don't even care mich about playing, they are in a looo where they want ti get stuff done and move on.

[arkanon]

Those are like flight simulators, not fantasy RPGs. Everyone who's whining about not getting good gear for doing trivial content should just go play one of those flight sims instead. Good gear belongs locked away safely behind hard content in MMORPGs, if you want it easier too fucking bad.

ah yes, the good old "i didnt expect anyone to be able to so easily answer my question, so ill just totally change the criteria and make it more challenging". Nice try buddy, but no - take the L.

Someone said this:

No, there are plenty of MMO's that do not have raids. That's not what it means at all.

And you responded with THIS challenge:

Name one, one that actually has people playing it

I named 2 - one is a space mmo based mostly on space combat, the other has space flight, but also has a full FPS combat component (which you entirely ignore)

Just accept your challenge was answered without hesitation, and you were wrong, then move on. Its really not a big deal - being wrong doesnt hurt you.

[MoanaLisa]

That's wrong. Most people only play for the loot and just do whatever is the easier/fastest way to get it. Most people play m+ because it's easily puggable and gives mich better rewards compared to raids for less effort/commitement. If world quests gave mythic ilvl gear, people would do those instead.

Perhaps. I'm going to assume that acquiring anything close to that level of gear from world content would take much, much longer to accomplish. Like 2-3 months longer. Maybe people would hate that but not everyone would. The idea is based more on "everything you do in the game" gives you something so every time you play you will progress in some way. It's not so different from people objecting to grinds except that people could choose the content they want to do and avoid the content they don't care for. Making everything you do in the game count for something can't be a bad thing. The "reward" for doing things would be based around difficulty. So given some target number raids would certainly give more than world quests, a lot more. But if you were persistent enough you could save up and get whatever you want from some vendor doing the content you prefer.

[arkanon]

Making everything you do in the game count for something can't be a bad thing.

It absolutely can if it then becomes a laundry list of activities that min/maxers (or anyone for that matter) need to complete to keep up with other players. If you can get 800X doing the raid, and only 200X doing WQ - MANY players will absolutely be getting 1000X. We both know that non-group palyers complain that they feel forced to group to get upgrades, you also know that raiders dont like having to farm WQ or any other mindless content to maxx their toon out either.

For raiders, even beginners, there is a clear progression path - start with LFR, move into Normal, heroic, and eventually mythic. they dont HAVE to move through the difficulties, but its there. If they want to raid, raiding provides them great gear and upgrades that make them more powerful in raids.

Currently, the same cannot be said with world content, BUT, whenever i bring up the following suggestion, open world players dont think its good enough: My idea has always been to allow people whos focus is open world content to move through the difficulties as well - start with WQ, but also world bosses, elite WQ, covenant style quest chains etc ---BUT--- and this is where we lose most ppl who claim they "just want meaningful progression" - the gear only boosts stats in the open world. You get set bonuses too though - reduced hearth time, instant mounting, faster mount speeds, greatly increased healing while out of combat etc.

I believe WQ gear should cap out at normal raids - if they want to raid, thats MORE than enough to get them started - they can start in normal raids and already be OP. I want EVERYONE to have a clear progression path ahead of them in their chosen gameplay style/loop, but i do NOT want Mythic gear aquired by spamming WQ for 1 day, 1 month, or 1 year.

One system they have tried previously is having the difficulty of mobs and the rewards scale with your ilvl - the problem with that, is its just tedious - for most players, if not all, WQ content is completely brain dead and extremely easy, so it really just......stays really easy. I do accept though that having truly challenging WQ is not the right way to go, as suddenly you have some players in a position where they feel they have to group up, or simply find it too hard, and i dont want that either.

[cparle87]

The answer to your question is of course “yes”, since the game offers no endgame progression besides upgrading your gear.

I don’t log in since D3 S26 came out because apart from trying to get lucky finding a desert rare up for my offhand in ZM and creating other 2 set pieces with the Catalyst I have NOTHING else to do in-game as a “no instance, thanks” player.

Blizzard is well aware since ages about what open world players want, they simply don’t care because creating challenging ow content is far more difficult than creating new 5 player maps.

As your first sentence, what do you think raiding and keys IS besides upgrading your gear.

As for the rest, congrats. Hitting the end of your progression path for a patch is not a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with being done and quitting. What I do see is wrong is coming into a multi player game and expecting to get the best of the best from soloing. No. This isn't a single player game. That should be reserved for people who do stuff with other people. Open world stuff is more generous than it's ever been. You can get your legos without raiding that before Legion was a complete impossibility. You can get conduits up to normal raid tier from reputation. You can get normal raid tier gear from chests. You can make tier without even looking at the raid, something that's never been done before.

[Coldkil]

Perhaps. I'm going to assume that acquiring anything close to that level of gear from world content would take much, much longer to accomplish. Like 2-3 months longer. Maybe people would hate that but not everyone would. The idea is based more on "everything you do in the game" gives you something so every time you play you will progress in some way. It's not so different from people objecting to grinds except that people could choose the content they want to do and avoid the content they don't care for. Making everything you do in the game count for something can't be a bad thing. The "reward" for doing things would be based around difficulty. So given some target number raids would certainly give more than world quests, a lot more. But if you were persistent enough you could save up and get whatever you want from some vendor doing the content you prefer.

Yeah, i wasn't really trying to design a solution. It was just an extreme example to say "people don't really care about the content, they want the optimal reward path". Even if yous et up a system where doing everything counts, people will just figure out what's the fastest and stick to that. Much like how Covenants were designed on the premise people will choose based on preference and not performance and we all have seen how it ended.

It will always end like this. If it was a currency faramable in multiple places without a cap, people would feel "forced" to do everything to sta on par even if they don't like it. My point was just that M+ are not popular because of the content type, but only because a) they have a consistent and streamlined reward system and b) they require literally zero commitement to the game as you could be done by doing a couple runs a week that don't even need o be "successful" (as in beating the time).

The only real solution to this is for Blizzard to make gear less relevant. And in M+ it is already in a way, since the ilvl rewards are way higher than the one you need to complete certain content, and after a threshold it just scales up based on skill and will of the players. Which i find totally perfect (plus it has also a currency system that works also as BLP).

It's the raids that have at this point a very outdated and not really "fair" difficulty/rewards scheme. I'm all for setting HC the same as 15s and design Mythic the same way M+ past 15 is (maybe even with scaling difficulty? don't know if it makes sense mostly because a raid takes hours to clear compared to a 20/30 minutes dungeon run).

[arkanon]

It's the raids that have at this point a very outdated and not really "fair" difficulty/rewards scheme. .

How is the hardest content rewarding the best gear not "fair"?

[Coldkil]

How is the hardest content rewarding the best gear not "fair"?

Prefix: i may have used the word "fair" in the wrong way. I'll try to explain. I also use a lot of quotes to identify terms i intend to use but not literally, more as a concept. Don't know if it makes sense.

The "issue" is that other game content rewards you better for much easier stuff. Mythic gear is for the most part "useless" - once you consistently farm Mythic, you don't really need gear or farming at all cause you have "beaten" it. So the reward is "less rewarding" by itself. Also "best gear" is debatable, since weapons/trinkets or other BiS can easily come from M+ due to stats allocation/procs/etc (until they artificially inflate such things in raid dropped ones to be flat out better).

I mean - raid structure in a bubble is just fine. You get to a difficulty, gear up and move to the next. But unfortunately you have M+ giving you Mythic ilvl gear for much less hassle, crafted legendaries, crafted tier sets; all things that technically undermine the rewards of Mythic raids.

It's a delicate balance. That's why in my opinion the Mythic raid rewards should move away from being ilvl increases and being really about prestige. I don't really even see how progressive "nerfing" of Mythic is a good thing anyway - when gear caps at a point, the the fight can be designed around the fact that's the gear cap and be much more balanced. And to people saying "but then everyone would ignore Mythic", guess what, people already do and the same happens with M+ past 15 because it's something a fraction of a fraction of players actually partakes in.

Also worth considering: it's not only that Mythic raids are harder than running a 15. The commitment/logistics required to raid at a high level are something most people just isn't willing to do anymore. So when M+ that are easily puggable and don't rely on a schedule give you very comparable rewards (if not better in some cases) people will just do that because it's less of an hassle.

It's literally the same debate that was running when they introduced 10/25 man raids. People were mad because keeping up a 25man raid was much harder than a 10man, so Blizzard ended setting the rewards for 10man lower than 25man otherwise most people wouldn't have even bothered to try 25man. Now we have flex normal/HC and Mythic, yet people for the most part go in M+ and ignore raids.

Another factor is that M+ is a self-sustained system. You can just do M+ and gear up at a decently fast pace with more than reasonable chances to get to gear cap even by yourself and at the pace you set. If you raid only, you have a progression path but it's completely barred by the fact you have one weekly chance at the loot and you're done. You can go weeks without looting anything - meanwhile you can spam another M+ to aim for specific stuff (and it's easier because dungeon loot tables are much smaller). And when this happens, raiders go into M+ because this way at least they can get comparable gear they weren't able to loot in raid.

[arkanon]

Prefix: i may have used the word "fair" in the wrong way. I'll try to explain. I also use a lot of quotes to identify terms i intend to use but not literally, more as a concept. Don't know if it makes sense.

The "issue" is that other game content rewards you better for much easier stuff. Mythic gear is for the most part "useless" - once you consistently farm Mythic, you don't really need gear or farming at all cause you have "beaten" it. So the reward is "less rewarding" by itself. Also "best gear" is debatable, since weapons/trinkets or other BiS can easily come from M+ due to stats allocation/procs/etc (until they artificially inflate such things in raid dropped ones to be flat out better).

I mean - raid structure in a bubble is just fine. You get to a difficulty, gear up and move to the next. But unfortunately you have M+ giving you Mythic ilvl gear for much less hassle, crafted legendaries, crafted tier sets; all things that technically undermine the rewards of Mythic raids.

It's a delicate balance. That's why in my opinion the Mythic raid rewards should move away from being ilvl increases and being really about prestige. I don't really even see how progressive "nerfing" of Mythic is a good thing anyway - when gear caps at a point, the the fight can be designed around the fact that's the gear cap and be much more balanced. And to people saying "but then everyone would ignore Mythic", guess what, people already do and the same happens with M+ past 15 because it's something a fraction of a fraction of players actually partakes in.

Also worth considering: it's not only that Mythic raids are harder than running a 15. The commitment/logistics required to raid at a high level are something most people just isn't willing to do anymore. So when M+ that are easily puggable and don't rely on a schedule give you very comparable rewards (if not better in some cases) people will just do that because it's less of an hassle.

It's literally the same debate that was running when they introduced 10/25 man raids. People were mad because keeping up a 25man raid was much harder than a 10man, so Blizzard ended setting the rewards for 10man lower than 25man otherwise most people wouldn't have even bothered to try 25man. Now we have flex normal/HC and Mythic, yet people for the most part go in M+ and ignore raids.

Another factor is that M+ is a self-sustained system. You can just do M+ and gear up at a decently fast pace with more than reasonable chances to get to gear cap even by yourself and at the pace you set. If you raid only, you have a progression path but it's completely barred by the fact you have one weekly chance at the loot and you're done. You can go weeks without looting anything - meanwhile you can spam another M+ to aim for specific stuff (and it's easier because dungeon loot tables are much smaller). And when this happens, raiders go into M+ because this way at least they can get comparable gear they weren't able to loot in raid.

Honestly i think you need to rethink your stance, because what you are saying is "mythic raiding rewards are an issue" but then when you explain the issue, M+ is ACTUALLY the issue. Honestly, if you nerfed the rewards from M+, or made the best gear drop from a +22 (for example) you "issue" goes away.

I absolutely agree that the process of obtaining loot from a mythic raid is far more complex for everyone involved than a m+15. No argument from me at all on that, i just think you are not really sure what the issue actually is.

[chiddie]

As your first sentence, what do you think raiding and keys IS besides upgrading your gear.

As for the rest, congrats. Hitting the end of your progression path for a patch is not a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with being done and quitting. What I do see is wrong is coming into a multi player game and expecting to get the best of the best from soloing. No. This isn't a single player game. That should be reserved for people who do stuff with other people. Open world stuff is more generous than it's ever been. You can get your legos without raiding that before Legion was a complete impossibility. You can get conduits up to normal raid tier from reputation. You can get normal raid tier gear from chests. You can make tier without even looking at the raid, something that's never been done before.

Open world stuff is not solo content. It’s simply non instanced content that CAN be also soloed to an extent. I see a lot of players in ow, I chat with them, help them, even group with them for tougher rares or to farm tokens/whatever.

I don’t know where this “multiplayer = instanced content only kkthx bai” came from but it’s just plain wrong.

You are mixing multiplaying with difficulty, a quite common mistake here on mmo-champ.

Oh and if there’s nothing wrong for me being “done” after two months in a patch, it should be for Blizzard, because if I’m done I will just unsubscribe and they won’t see any money from me.

[arkanon]

Open world stuff is not solo content.

Thats like saying raids are not group content, because they CAN be solod.

[Coldkil]

Honestly i think you need to rethink your stance, because what you are saying is "mythic raiding rewards are an issue" but then when you explain the issue, M+ is ACTUALLY the issue. Honestly, if you nerfed the rewards from M+, or made the best gear drop from a +22 (for example) you "issue" goes away.

I absolutely agree that the process of obtaining loot from a mythic raid is far more complex for everyone involved than a m+15. No argument from me at all on that, i just think you are not really sure what the issue actually is.

I'm not saying that Mythic rewards are an issue. I'm actually saying Mythic rewards are not rewarding enough. But also given how the gameplay loop is now and is apparently really popular and set in stone i think it would be easier to make the Mythic rewards about prestige instead of player power.

I agree that would be better to move the M+ ilvl rewards up to +20s or similar, but i think it would cause a huge uproar because you're "taking away" loot from a lot of people (you know what i mean) and Blizzard cannot really afford that. Players are much more prone to leave for other games now that they have the options than to endure through systems - reason why DF is taking a huge U turn from what has been from Legion onwards.

In 2004 when WoW launched it was both heavily praised and criticized for the fact it removed a lot of the hurdles any MMO had at the time - like perma death, losing gear and/or xp when dying - and it earned the definition of being a "casual MMO". And it proved to be the right strategy because while Everquest was the most popular MMO with 10k people at release and 500k people at its peak, WoW basically destroyed that immediately, set a new standard for the whole gaming industry and even now that it's in a dire state still has like 6 times the people EQ had at its peak.

So, they know what is the path to make the game better - again you see what they're planning for DF. To me, shifting the focus from a pure vertical progression to a slightly more horizontal one is a good idea (but that's just me).

One thing in one game i find to be really really good. In GW2 raids are basically just for bragging rights - no loot in there is better than anything you can farm or craft in the open world. But the raid drops (other than the skins) have a very interesting property: they can have their stats rerolled as much as you like. I think something like this could work well in WoW: Mythic raid drops have the same ilvl but since you can reroll their stats, you can minmax the shit out of them and actually gain some power. You can also reroll them based on what kind of content you're doing adding the great QoL of having no need for a full different set of gear.

Maybe it's just me daydreaming. I don't pretend this is a solution at all - but it would be interesting nontheless.

[chiddie]

Thats like saying raids are not group content, because they CAN be solod.

Uh? Which raids apart from old non relevant ones can be soloed?

Are we really debating about ow content not being multiplayer content also?

[arkanon]

Uh? Which raids apart from old non relevant ones can be soloed?

Are we really debating about ow content not being multiplayer content also?

I NEVER said OW content is not multiplayer content. You DID say it wasnt solo content though:

Open world stuff is not solo content. .

[MoanaLisa]

Yeah, i wasn't really trying to design a solution. It was just an extreme example to say "people don't really care about the content, they want the optimal reward path". Even if yous et up a system where doing everything counts, people will just figure out what's the fastest and stick to that. Much like how Covenants were designed on the premise people will choose based on preference and not performance and we all have seen how it ended.

Perhaps. I'm not certain that the crowd of people who don't do M+ and normal/heroic/mythic raids now will all of a sudden change their minds and leap at the chance to go faster. They are already passing up the best gear in the game and quitting after a few weeks. It may be true that min/maxers will drive themselves nuts doing stuff to stay up with others. I'm less worried about them because common sense tells you that min/maxers are relatively few in number. If that's what they want to do then fine. That's on them.

I'll admit that while I find "everything you do matters" is a better deal for players it seems as if it would be better business for Blizzard. Those that buy and expansion and stay for a month might stay for a month or two longer. That's a lot to leave on the table if they continue with what they've done for eighteen years. For those who say it can't work, it works fine in other MMO titles.

[Coldkil]

Perhaps. I'm not certain that the crowd of people who don't do M+ and normal/heroic/mythic raids now will all of a sudden change their minds and leap at the chance to go faster. They are already passing up the best gear in the game and quitting after a few weeks. It may be true that min/maxers will drive themselves nuts doing stuff to stay up with others. I'm less worried about them because common sense tells you that min/maxers are relatively few in number. If that's what they want to do then fine. That's on them.

I'll admit that while I find "everything you do matters" is a better deal for players it seems as if it would be better business for Blizzard. Those that buy and expansion and stay for a month might stay for a month or two longer. That's a lot to leave on the table if they continue with what they've done for eighteen years. For those who say it can't work, it works fine in other MMO titles.

Well, i'm not even considering people who don't partake in endgame content other than a rare try and stick to world content. As you said, that kind of player just logs in for a while and very likely will leave the game after a short time anyway, so whatever solution they can come up with they won't be affected by it, since they don't really are a part of the target playerbase.

Though i both agree and don't really mind if people is able to get Mythic ilvl gear from doing WQs only. I stopped caring about gear when i saw that there are just better ways to get decked other than raiding and everyone was basically more than fine with that while i was complaining about "free Mythic gear for 20 minutes pugged dungeon runs".

Really, the playerbase could get much better if the gear ilvl becomes much less relevant. The game is already just about being the fastest at clearing content and for that farming ilvl is actually detrimental to the race.