[Speculation] Boosting is going to be banned fully

[Mysterymask]

you can destroying boosts if you remove all loot from bosses and gear is only acquired from the great vault. and vault rules would have to be tightened. yes i think that would work.

....so basically instead of MAYBE the boostee gets gear (cause always the chance) they basically always get gear

And what do you mean tighten rules of great vault some magical detector that sees they transferred gold or something?

[Relapses]

This is a bold faced lie and I'm really disappointed in you spreading misinformation.

Boosting was never part of the community since vanilla. It was always a black market, underground illegality. Nowadays it's promoted by Blizzard themselves because it directly influences token purchases.

That's some cute revisionist history. Boosting has been a thing since day one and it has never been in the black market or illegal. You're conflating boosting with gold selling.

[Super Kami Dende]

It's been happening since WoW came out. Why are people suddenly so against it these days?

GDKP runs were massive throughout TBC/Wrath and they were literally just Boosting in large groups.

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The sense of acomplishment is gone.

Dam losers.

It's a Videogame, chances are if your main accomplishment in Life is pixels in a Game, it's not other people that are the Losers.

[Onikaroshi]

It's been happening since WoW came out. Why are people suddenly so against it these days?

GDKP runs were massive throughout TBC/Wrath and they were literally just Boosting in large groups.

More visible nowadays.

[Swnem]

I've never boosted. I'm fine with the achievements that I can manage to get. Is my game undermined? No, it isn't. Do I care if some stranger's game is undermined? No, I don't. It's their game. If they feel great about it then fine. If it fucks up their game, well....that's on them.

Nevertheless I'd like to see boosting advertising in chat and on the LFG interface stopped. If it's out of sight, I could not care less.

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I posted earlier in the thread the idea that player-to-player transactions over a certain amount, say 10,000 gold, could be subject to a 72-hour delay and cancellable by either side. That would be simple enough to code in fact. It wouldn't stop boosting but it might throw a monkey wrench into the gears. I can think of a relatively simple workaround for that (worthless auction house item for 150K gold) but it would add more complication to a process that would have already gotten complicated to manage on a large scale. And even this could be flagged easily enough by Blizzard. It's not an outright ban. I don't know that Blizzard actually wants to drive it from the game. Again with them: There are words and there are actions and the two don't match up. It's the Blizzard way.

Umm... yes, it is. It cheapens your achievement. Makes it meaningless. Anyone can pay to have that done. The game becomes a paying to achieve game, rather than an actual achievement. That reward you got? Pointless. Everyone got it now. You can't feel special that you achieved something you can proudly display with your own merit as it's given as shop mounts for money.

As for advertisement, we agree.

[Mysterymask]

Umm... yes, it is. It cheapens your achievement. Makes it meaningless. Anyone can pay to have that done. The game becomes a paying to achieve game, rather than an actual achievement. That reward you got? Pointless. Everyone got it now. You can't feel special that you achieved something you can proudly display with your own merit as it's given as shop mounts for money.

As for advertisement, we agree.

I mean if you did it the hard way you fucking earned it versus letting "Let me solo her" do it...does the existance of that guy cheapen Elden Ring? Are the world first guys achievement cheapened cause they sold a mythic run to xxelonmuskxx. How about in a single player game you love but man some dude used a trainer and just flew through the game is it suddenly cheapened then?

[MoanaLisa]

It would also needlessly hurt regular players. Fixing an "issue" by hurting your normal players is NEVER a good answer.

Set the transaction limit at 20,000 gold then or higher. Please tell me how many "normal" players are exchanging 20,000 gold in one transaction. I actually expected someone to say this and it's a non-starter. Most people are not transferring that much gold from one account to the next. Yes, Blizzard could easily allow this between main and alts with no issue.

Anyway, there's nothing normal about this level of gold changing hands except for boosts.

[Onikaroshi]

Set the transaction limit at 20,000 gold then or higher. Please tell me how many "normal" players are exchanging 20,000 gold in one transaction. I actually expected someone to say this and it's a non-starter. Most people are transferring that much gold from one account to the next. Yes, Blizzard could easily allow this between main and alts with no issue.

Anyway, there's nothing normal about this level of gold changing hands except for boosts.

All the time? I still do face to face sales in trade for high ticket items. And my wife gives me gold when I need to buy things lol.

I've sold things for 100k-500k probably 40-50 times this expansion face to face.

[Mysterymask]

All the time? I still do face to face sales in trade for high ticket items. And my wife gives me gold when I need to buy things lol.

I've sold things for 100k-500k probably 40-50 times this expansion face to face.

She did say normal but this is a great example on how "simple solutions" end up hurting innocent players

[Zmagoslav]

What's the point of posting a screenshot of a quote?
Just type the darn thing out...

What exactly will this change?
Real money boosts were always bannable, but people still do them successfully... so i don't see what this "leak" will change.

[Biomega]

The big mistake in blizzards design is that they see all gameplay outside of premade group raids and mythic+ as catchup mechanisms and pre stages for raiding and mythic+, while many players simply never will play instances.

Blizzard's design philosophy has always been like that.

When faced with "players aren't doing X" their answer is usually NOT "okay, let's give them alternative Y to do instead". Instead, it's "okay, what can we change about X so they WILL do X".

That's why they keep adding incentives to PvP so PvE players will join (and vice versa) or tie quest lines into raid content so people who don't like raiding are forced to do it. Etc.

It's a very efficient design goal - rather than making lots of parallel activities you just streamline things so everyone does the SAME activities. But it's also destructive in the long term, because there's fundamental reasons people don't like certain types of content, and if all you're doing is prodding them to do something they don't like because there's a reward in there, you're slowly building to a critical mass of resentment and dissatisfaction.

[MoanaLisa]

All the time? I still do face to face sales in trade for high ticket items. And my wife gives me gold when I need to buy things lol.

I've sold things for 100k-500k probably 40-50 times this expansion face to face.

You still could. I did say that the transaction would hold for something like 72 hours before going through. That's not outrageous and easy enough for individuals to manage. So your wife could still support you. A guild doing a booming business in boosts would find it more difficult if they're doing a lot of runs for people.

[Lochton]

There we go with the same BS "since vanilla".

Just because maybe there was some boosting. It was the rarest thing in vanilla.
I had 360 days played till midle of wotlk, was allways in the top guild in the server since vanilla.

The boosting started mostly in zul'aman timed runs for the bear.

If was so common as you guys prefer to paint that picture, maybe was just in some servers.

My experience with the game includes vanilla naxx and every other raid title/achievments/multi gladiator, all till wotlk naxx with immortal till I stoped playing the game.

Never saw that BS.

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... on a side note.

The shame and disgrace of the minds of today gamers, that want stuff they cant do themselfs or got no skill for it.

The sense of acomplishment is gone.

Dam losers.

This is a bold faced lie and I'm really disappointed in you spreading misinformation.

Boosting was never part of the community since vanilla. It was always a black market, underground illegality. Nowadays it's promoted by Blizzard themselves because it directly influences token purchases.

Boosting was an active thing since vanilla, was not rare, nor overpriced as shit. It was a common thing of trade/need on the servers I played on. It wasn't a common folk market like now, as the ones who made it a business, were commonly 3rd party assholes, but you saw at least 10-15 boosting advertisement posts from players a day (and about 30-50 from 3rd party), with various prices (Price range went from gold, item claims, and in some cases among raiding guilds, position trade (If you help with our lower members, then we bring you into our 40man for a run).

[cparle87]

There should simply be no gap at all. If you invest the effort, you should be able to gear as high item levels as organized group players as a casual gamer if you craft for months. Also there is no real gearing progression, but simply welfare epics for casual gamers behind artificial time gates. A progression system would be if you startet at a low level, and had to work your way up to a higher level. As like mythic+ 1-15,. there could be a crafting system where you level recipes, world content with different difficulty levels and instanced content like torghast which starts at torghast level 1 and ends at torghast level 15. Instead of that, something like Torghast does not exist in Dragonflight anymore.

Yielding welfare epics for nothing is as dull as having no gearing progression at all.



No, it is no conspiracy theory, but simply the current state of the game. Raiders have multiple raid levels (normal, heroic, mythic), mythic+ players have different dungeon levels (1-n), but casual gamers have one set of dull world quests that yield welfare epics you do not really need for anything, only, if you used them as catchup for raids and mythic+, simply because blizzard designed the game not to have multiple progression pathes in pve.

So where do you see a progression in that system if you assume typical casual gamers play no mythic+ dungeons or premade group raids? And how is that a conspiracy to say casual gamers have no real gearing progression? They have a set of welfare epics you get for attending, but no real progression ladder.

The big mistake in blizzards design is that they see all gameplay outside of premade group raids and mythic+ as catchup mechanisms and pre stages for raiding and mythic+, while many players simply never will play instances. Many players never play mythic+. Many players never play raids. Many simply quit if they cannot progress in their gameplay anymore. The linear progression system which ends in gameplay only a few want to play is a general failure in blizzards MMORPG design, and literally based on the idea everyone would want to play either raids or mythic+. Numbers show a different outcome.

There's the Pocopoc research ranks so the gear you get from the outdoors is 252 not 233 where it starts. There's farming the sandworm relics for 246 gear that CAN be turned into tier. Also you seemed to have completely ignored everything I said in the first part. Your double legos, your 252 conduits. All are things you grind and earn from solo content. Both soloers and raiders have a linear progression system. Raiders just have a longer one.

As for your entire last paragraph, that's just your opinion. WoW is a multi person game and the absolute best gear SHOULD come from content that you need to work with other people to get. As I said, the gap is smaller than it's ever been and never has been so much of the raider's loot table been available to soloers. Sorry you feel it should be all of it.

[Biomega]

That is no reason not to change it.

I agree. And I'm only explaining it, I'm in no way advocating for it.

The players i talk about simply never will play premade group instances. No matter if raids or dungeons. Blizzard never managed and will never manage to lure them into their understanding of fun gameplay. Rather than that blizzard should start catering to their players and not expect them to play the gameplay they want to force them into.

That's what I mean by "fundamental reasons not to like certain types of content".

People rather quit than doing something they are forced to do. See millions of players leaving a few months after expac release.

That's why I said it's ultimately destructive.

No, it is not efficient, as the development of player numbers shows.

I'm not sure you understand what "efficient" means. It certainly doesn't mean "attracts the maximum number of players". That's not Blizzard's goal anyway. Their goal is to turn maximum PROFIT. And that involves not only the number of players, but also the amount of investment. Efficient design allows them to reap maximum rewards with minimum investment; that's why they'd rather have everyone play the same content than design lots of different content each of which only specific people play. This doesn't work forever, of course; you're very right to point out that it's in the process of collapsing. But the short to medium term is more important to investors than the long term. In the long term, EVERY game stops making money. It's all about how much money you squeeze out of it until then.

Blizzard needs to cater to their players. And not try to get them into gameplay they do not want.

They seem to disagree, at least to an extent. They're banking on players being invested in the franchise, and their market presence carrying them through design dissatisfaction. It's worked well for a long time. Whether or not it'll continue to work to the degree they find acceptable, and for how long, that's up for debate. Certainly they seem to realize that something is wrong - but a lot of what we in the community identify simply as "bad decisions" is no doubt something they KNEW was going to be poorly received, but they did it anyway because it was more profitable than the alternative. That kind of attitude may well come back to bite them in the near future. But it has worked well in the past, no question. They made a LOT of money with this kind of design.

[Enter Name Here]

You still could. I did say that the transaction would hold for something like 72 hours before going through. That's not outrageous and easy enough for individuals to manage. So your wife could still support you. A guild doing a booming business in boosts would find it more difficult if they're doing a lot of runs for people.

make it even worse by allowing only one pending transaction at any time

[klaps_05]

Sure thing, right after the expansion with tinkers and housing.

[MoanaLisa]

They seem to disagree, at least to an extent. They're banking on players being invested in the franchise, and their market presence carrying them through design dissatisfaction. It's worked well for a long time. Whether or not it'll continue to work to the degree they find acceptable, and for how long, that's up for debate. Certainly they seem to realize that something is wrong - but a lot of what we in the community identify simply as "bad decisions" is no doubt something they KNEW was going to be poorly received, but they did it anyway because it was more profitable than the alternative. That kind of attitude may well come back to bite them in the near future. But it has worked well in the past, no question. They made a LOT of money with this kind of design.

For what it's worth—and I truly have no clue how far they want to take it—Ion has now said multiple times about DragonFlight that players will be able to progress playing the content they want to play. They've never said that specifically that I'm aware of so I'm cautiously optimistic. Even if they do that there remains a question as to whether the big-brained engineer team leaders, some of whom were associated with EJ, will even understand what explorer/collector players will find engaging.

[Kokolums]

....so basically instead of MAYBE the boostee gets gear (cause always the chance) they basically always get gear

And what do you mean tighten rules of great vault some magical detector that sees they transferred gold or something?

maybe something like kill x number of raid bosses for 1 roll in the great vault. killing more bosses then x merely ups your percentage at getting a better roll but no guarantee. maybe x = 3. that would make boosting mostly pointless.

[Greyvax]

Boosting existed forever in MMO's. Maybe it wasn't as widely advertised like it is in WoW but it was always around.

Even in the EQ days, people paid to get into hard-to-reach areas like plane of sky, and also guilds sold nodrop (bind on pickup) items from raids by porting you in to loot the item.