Is it time to end gear gatekeeping?

[ellieg]

Exactly. The only reason for those people who don't need the gear to cry is that their ego is for some reason hurt. Why would they otherwise care if someone has better gear if it doesn't affect their gameplay?

I have always agreed with this sentiment. You have players running around with max cypher gear, 2x291 legos, world boss gear, crafted 262 piece. Probably 255 ilvl overall. They can absolutely slaughter the content that they do but some are upset because they aren't 278. I really think if all else stayed the same, but everyone was forced equal down to like 230 ilvl, they'd be happier. More concerned about having the "best" gear, than what the gear does for them.

[potis]

Agree with everything and especially this last point.

I started 9.2 two months late due to IRL. And damn if it wasn't a better experience - much faster, more streamlined and a nice flow of upgrades that let me get into M+ and raids in no time.

This kind of experience should be baseline and not happening two months in the patch. With actual additional stuff to do over time - so, as you said, people don't get done in a month and leave (though most competitive players in the end play like this - or better, spend the rest of the patch boosting people for gold so they can pay the debts they made for the race XD).

Yes, but thats the thing, it is baseline, it was just converted.

Somehow people think, that doing dailies for 40-60 days in a row to reach Exalted and unlock a questline, is better than getting the questline unlocked every Wednesday for 5-8 weeks in a row.

So when people like you come back, will need another 2 months of grinding dailies to do what they wanna do, YEAH WHAT?

Its insane how clueless people are or how they considered that, "content", it simply baffles me, but thats the thing, these are people that simply want everything to be handed/unlocked the first month so they dont have to play a second month, which reverts to paying a second month.

And its good that Blizzard doesnt listen to the game hoppers.

[Sascatuan]

Gearing has become irrelevant in this game, at least in context to earlier expansions.
Gear in the old days of classic, used to carry a gravitas and a sense of prestige.

Now gear is just something to be discarded with each new season.
It is cheap, expendable, and is relatively easy to do for mythic raiders/plus'ers, and high end pvp'ers.

Because of this, I would assume that the majority of players in high end content are pursuing these goals because of the intrinsic fun involved in the activities, along with bonus titles and mounts.

My question is, does giving max ilvl gear to world/daily questers take away from the experience of high end players, or do they even care?

This is pretty much what legion implimented for pvpers, in rated pvp gear didnt give stats and stats were normalized based on class and spec, in the world the gear worked as normal. So everyone in rated pvp content was on the same playing fiend even if they had fresh alts

[WarpAvP2]

This old “Elite” prestige ego system needs to be shot like old yeller.

The game should simply convert to a system like Division 2 where playing the game is rewarding in every aspect and max level gear is obtainable through whatever way you want, with some difficulty. But WITHOUT FORCED RELIANCE of other players. The game should have the CONVENIENCE of other players but not the requirement. End game gear should never be gated behind elite time consuming garbage that the average person who has been supporting this game since day 1 never had to go through before, but now that they have serious RL management they shouldnt be fu**ed over in the endgame due to those responsibilities. You use to get max level gear through points and then be able to do other fun things in the game. THE GAME NEEDS TO BE A GAME, NOT A JOB.

[ellieg]

This old “Elite” prestige ego system needs to be shot like old yeller.

The game should simply convert to a system like Division 2 where playing the game is rewarding in every aspect and max level gear is obtainable through whatever way you want, with some difficulty. But WITHOUT FORCED RELIANCE of other players. The game should have the CONVENIENCE of other players but not the requirement. End game gear should never be gated behind elite time consuming garbage that the average person who has been supporting this game since day 1 never had to go through before, but now that they have serious RL management they shouldnt be fu**ed over in the endgame due to those responsibilities. You use to get max level gear through points and then be able to do other fun things in the game. THE GAME NEEDS TO BE A GAME, NOT A JOB.

At what point in wows history did you not have to go thru "elite time consuming garbage"? When did you " get max level gear through points and then be able to do other fun things in the game."?

Cause that's def not "day 1" with vanilla or tbc where u raided or had shit gear. Was it wrath where u could farm heroics once a day to get badges to get shitty lesser raid version gear in 4 slots?

You can literally do 45 mins a week to complete 1 m+ and hit 278 ilvl.

[Xaviaton]

While I am sure a lot of people just want free high level gear because it is high level gear, what I personally miss is a form of actually satisfying character progression from world activities.

9.2 has had some okay world progression with the cypher gear and tier sets being available from Sandworn Relics + Catalyst but you hit a wall pretty quickly, and can only progress your character via the three "end game paths". I don't really care whether the "1%" have better gear than me, but I would like a system where I can actually keep progressing my character over the course of a patch in the open world.

Generally, I think world quests are terrible as a system for gear progression as there is no progression goal to the activity itself. To me, progression does not need to take the form of difficulty but could easily be a combination of grinding and exploration. For example, if the Protoform Synthesis system actually provided gear (using rare materials) and the creation catalyst could transform these items to tier pieces, while a different currency (E.G. Cyphers) could be used to (slowly) upgrade them. Effectively, I think the five "systems" existing in ZM - World Quests, Cypher of the First Ones, Protoform Synthesis, Sandworn Relics, and Creation Catalyst should synergize better with one another as the the WQs now depend on cypher progression but is maxed out very quickly and then provides a random chance at slot specific items after maxing it out. The tier pieces will be at a lower ilvl than your cypher items since CreCat and Sand Relics are completely separated from the two others. Furthermore, the relic grind is incredibly static compared to the ProtSynth but the latter system is, of course, only cosmetic.

I am really hoping professions will provide us with something like this in Dragonflight. If there is something we have learnt from the last few expansions, it is that no one wants a system where raiders(etc) are forced to grind world quests for the first month of every patch to stay up to date. I also think it is completely reasonable that raids/pvp/m+ provides the fastest path to high ilvl with a pretty significant margin I also think it is reasonable that these three activities will be the only way to full BIS. It is just kind of dissatisfying that my ability to progress as a primarily solo player stops early in the patch while I know there is further to go. I don't technically need this to be vertical progression (IE gear) but since we have very little in terms of horizontal progression systems, gear remains primary way to progress my character in the game.

[Coldkil]

Yes, but thats the thing, it is baseline, it was just converted.

Somehow people think, that doing dailies for 40-60 days in a row to reach Exalted and unlock a questline, is better than getting the questline unlocked every Wednesday for 5-8 weeks in a row.

So when people like you come back, will need another 2 months of grinding dailies to do what they wanna do, YEAH WHAT?

Its insane how clueless people are or how they considered that, "content", it simply baffles me, but thats the thing, these are people that simply want everything to be handed/unlocked the first month so they dont have to play a second month, which reverts to paying a second month.

And its good that Blizzard doesnt listen to the game hoppers.

I was mostly referring to the tier crafting thing - which should be available as soon the RWF ends imho. But yes, you need to have unlocks staggered little by little and i'm perfectly fine with the weekly progression as it's something that doesn't require much time in itself and rewards regular gameplay while having leeway. The only thing that needs to be really present is that timegates/caps/whatever has to be lifted as soon the reset hits, so if i start a char 4 weeks later i can do everything up to the 4th week even the same day in a single sitting if i like to.

As i said, 9.2 did a pretty nice job about this kind of things - slightly higher and staggered ilvl for open world stuff and the tier crafting sooner would have made it erfect in my eyes. Free to disagree, it's not like it's been bad.

[arkanon]

The issue is an uneven playing field, undermining the very concept of a game.
WoW has always had a somewhat rocky playing field in that sense due to the balance between classes being iffy at the best of times, but this gear noneense compounds it.

By reducing the gap between the best and the worst you enable people to stop caring about it so much, in addition to punishing alts less; see Legion's pvp template in example.

"Git gud" morons aside there really is no point to a virtual game where you have to trudge through literally unfair / uneven fights just to get to the point where you can have fun in a fair fight.

If you fail to get that sweet spot right you just make "gearless" alternatives ("loadout" games) seem all the better; you actually undermine the rpg aspect.

Good news then! It IS an even playing field. You have access to every single piece of gear the other players have equipped! You must be very relieved.

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1. It is just a game, but the quality of the game decreases if the rewards lose value (by making them easier to get).
2. You can easily get high gear without much time spent playing.
3. Are you? What is your ilvl and M+ rating? Class and spec? There are plenty of reasons people don't get invited to a group. Maybe start your own group?
4. Ok, and? So you decided to get a kid and now the game needs to become worse because of it?

Oh dear, someone forgot to read the entire post didn't they? Someone forget to actually READ what they were responding to, didn't they? Go back, have a read, consider the context, and check back with me later today.

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This old “Elite” prestige ego system needs to be shot like old yeller.

The game should simply convert to a system like Division 2 where playing the game is rewarding in every aspect and max level gear is obtainable through whatever way you want, with some difficulty. But WITHOUT FORCED RELIANCE of other players. The game should have the CONVENIENCE of other players but not the requirement. End game gear should never be gated behind elite time consuming garbage that the average person who has been supporting this game since day 1 never had to go through before, but now that they have serious RL management they shouldnt be fu**ed over in the endgame due to those responsibilities. You use to get max level gear through points and then be able to do other fun things in the game. THE GAME NEEDS TO BE A GAME, NOT A JOB.

Division 2 is a single player game with optional drop in drop out coop and some tacked on pvp. Let's not compare apples to oranges and ask why one is orange.

[Akka]

Again, people with 0 knowledge think they get an opinion.

Lack of self-awareness is certainly a problem among some posters

[Fitsu]

Gearing has become irrelevant in this game, at least in context to earlier expansions.
Gear in the old days of classic, used to carry a gravitas and a sense of prestige.

Now gear is just something to be discarded with each new season.
It is cheap, expendable, and is relatively easy to do for mythic raiders/plus'ers, and high end pvp'ers.

Because of this, I would assume that the majority of players in high end content are pursuing these goals because of the intrinsic fun involved in the activities, along with bonus titles and mounts.

My question is, does giving max ilvl gear to world/daily questers take away from the experience of high end players, or do they even care?

the top 1% don't care about ilvl but the majority of the playerbase still do. The majority of players still play for gear progression, you take that away and they wont bother doing the content. Now you may ask if the content is only worth doing for the reward then should they be doing it in the first place? My answer is always the same which is people are free to have fun however they please, the reasons don't matter.

[Lathspell]

You say this as if that isn't a bad thing.
Casual players already get way too much high ilvl gear and tier sets without doing any content that you can't queue for. Why remove the reason to play for a lot of people just to give casuals even more rewards?

Giving tier set in LFR was already insane, now they get it from the catalyst where they don't even have to do a dungeon/raid to get it. For what? To do a world quest faster?

If heroic was tuned up slightly and dropped max ilvl you could just do that instead of mythic if you don't want the "challenge only" play. If your reason to play was getting the items you would get items. If your reason to play was beating the hardest content you could still do mythic, except you wouldn't need to gear up for it and it wouldn't get nerfed.

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the top 1% don't care about ilvl but the majority of the playerbase still do. The majority of players still play for gear progression, you take that away and they wont bother doing the content. Now you may ask if the content is only worth doing for the reward then should they be doing it in the first place? My answer is always the same which is people are free to have fun however they please, the reasons don't matter.

The problem right now is that mythic is too hard for most guilds at the start and needs to get nerfed several times during the season. This removes the original version of the raid completely. If mythic was item normalized and dropped only cosmetics the original difficulty could be preserved and gear progression oriented people could do the slightly harder than current heroic mode which is flex to accommodate more guild sizes and still have that gear progression. Who would lose in this equation?

[Fitsu]

If heroic was tuned up slightly and dropped max ilvl you could just do that instead of mythic if you don't want the "challenge only" play. If your reason to play was getting the items you would get items. If your reason to play was beating the hardest content you could still do mythic, except you wouldn't need to gear up for it and it wouldn't get nerfed.

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The problem right now is that mythic is too hard for most guilds at the start and needs to get nerfed several times during the season. This removes the original version of the raid completely. If mythic was item normalized and dropped only cosmetics the original difficulty could be preserved and gear progression oriented people could do the slightly harder than current heroic mode which is flex to accommodate more guild sizes and still have that gear progression. Who would lose in this equation?

I'm honestly not against the idea of Mythic being cosemetic-only because it fixes the M+/PvP issue as heroic is puggable. But, there are still a lot of people who aren't clearing Mythic and like to get gear from the easier bosses, there are people that raid Mythic because they like ilvl, they like gear, hell they like just having higher ilvl than other people. Also, this doesn't fix the Mythic is to hard problem, if you gave 99% of guilds full mythic gear they still wouldn't clear SoD pre-nerf, no chance. The raids would still be heavily nerfed.

Removing gear from Mythic fixes the M+/PvP problem, does nothing for Mythic being to hard and takes away from those who enjoy being rewarded with higher numbers for clearing the harder content so it is certainly a coin toss.

[Celement]

I always find this topic absurd... currently you can realistically get a few ilvs off the first half of mythic raiding ilv via world quests and weekly events.

In response the game has become more shut off with far stricter requirements for group play.

This free gear garbage always turns the medium difficulties to shit but that is always overlooked because little timmy wants bigger numbers.

[loras]

Good news then! It IS an even playing field. You have access to every single piece of gear the other players have equipped! You must be very relieved.

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Oh dear, someone forgot to read the entire post didn't they? Someone forget to actually READ what they were responding to, didn't they? Go back, have a read, consider the context, and check back with me later today.

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Division 2 is a single player game with optional drop in drop out coop and some tacked on pvp. Let's not compare apples to oranges and ask why one is orange.

Yeah, you don't really seem to grasp what an even playing field entails.
Unless I can fight, as the others did, towards those top pieces without facing overgeared competition there is nothing even about it.

[Lathspell]

I'm honestly not against the idea of Mythic being cosemetic-only because it fixes the M+/PvP issue as heroic is puggable. But, there are still a lot of people who aren't clearing Mythic and like to get gear from the easier bosses, there are people that raid Mythic because they like ilvl, they like gear, hell they like just having higher ilvl than other people. Also, this doesn't fix the Mythic is to hard problem, if you gave 99% of guilds full mythic gear they still wouldn't clear SoD pre-nerf, no chance. The raids would still be heavily nerfed.

Removing gear from Mythic fixes the M+/PvP problem, does nothing for Mythic being to hard and takes away from those who enjoy being rewarded with higher numbers for clearing the harder content so it is certainly a coin toss.

If mythic was only for the challenge there would be no need to nerf it because having exclusive cosmetics isn't as much of a problem as the gear. If you couldn't clear it you just wouldn't have the prestige rewards. Big numbers would still be had since heroic would drop the current mythic ilvl. If I had my way they could just move all the ilvl brackets of raid up one. LFR gear is currently completely useless. With current ilvl:s it would be LFR 252, Normal 265 and Heroic 278. Mythic with gear scaled to 278 always and character level to 60.

[arkanon]

Yeah, you don't really seem to grasp what an even playing field entails.
Unless I can fight, as the others did, towards those top pieces without facing overgeared competition there is nothing even about it.

But you can. Just like they did. Glad we cleared that up.

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If mythic was only for the challenge there would be no need to nerf it because having exclusive cosmetics isn't as much of a problem as the gear. If you couldn't clear it you just wouldn't have the prestige rewards. Big numbers would still be had since heroic would drop the current mythic ilvl. If I had my way they could just move all the ilvl brackets of raid up one. LFR gear is currently completely useless. With current ilvl:s it would be LFR 252, Normal 265 and Heroic 278. Mythic with gear scaled to 278 always and character level to 60.

What "problem" is this change supposed to address? Maybe I'm missing something...

[loras]

But you can. Just like they did. Glad we cleared that up.

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What "problem" is this change supposed to address? Maybe I'm missing something...

Yes, if time did not exist then you can.
It, however, does exist.
And you will now have to face them, at a disadvantage they did not face.

Glad we cleared that up.

[arkanon]

Yes, if time did not exist then you can.
It, however, does exist.
And you will now have to face them, at a disadvantage they did not face.

Glad we cleared that up.

What? You are saying that starting late is unfair because others got gear before you? That's absolutely, 100% a YOU problem.

Let me explain this to you one more time - there are systems in place to allow you to play against equally skilled players. Although it happens from time to time, you generally will not encounter highly geared players in arena or or rbg. If you want to play in the open, free for all gamemode, that's 100% on you as well.

[ellieg]

Yes, if time did not exist then you can.
It, however, does exist.
And you will now have to face them, at a disadvantage they did not face.

Glad we cleared that up.

I will never understand why ppl complain about gearing up in an mmorpg. The person who spends more time investing into their character, should have some sort of advantage. If ots not your style, there are FPS and mobas

[potis]

I will never understand why ppl complain about gearing up in an mmorpg. The person who spends more time investing into their character, should have some sort of advantage. If ots not your style, there are FPS and mobas

Because its 2022 and people cant tell apart game genres.

They were told that if they put money into something, they should be gifted things, participation trophies basically, Karens of the gaming world.

So a game based on concepts they dont understand or represent the rest of the gaming world, baffles them.