Bored after 2 months of DF

[Alroxas]

We need to talk about what grinding means. Nobody forced you to grind your brains out to be able to clear content. You turned it into a grind yourself. The difference between Legion and DF is that almost every kind of activity in Legion provided a meaningful reward and some kind of progression.

That is highly dependent on the player and what they really want to do. For instance, a solo player might not care about it because to them it's just a way to gain player power without engaging in group activity systems (i.e. Raiding and M+).

However, for the sizable wow playerbase that does those group activities without an established group (aka PuG life) then it is more or less required. As those power gains translate into higher probability of success which leads to other benefits like gearing and M+ score (or in the case of Legion, KSM acheivement).

[Glorious Leader]

That is highly dependent on the player and what they really want to do. For instance, a solo player might not care about it because to them it's just a way to gain player power without engaging in group activity systems (i.e. Raiding and M+).

However, for the sizable wow playerbase that does those group activities without an established group (aka PuG life) then it is more or less required. As those power gains translate into higher probability of success which leads to other benefits like gearing and M+ score (or in the case of Legion, KSM acheivement).

Designing around the perverse psychology of individuals with evidently no self control who are participating in an enormous epeen competition enforced by social pressures is a fools errand. It will only serve to alienate literally everybody else who is not a sociopath

[JustaRandomReindeer]

That is highly dependent on the player and what they really want to do. For instance, a solo player might not care about it because to them it's just a way to gain player power without engaging in group activity systems (i.e. Raiding and M+).

However, for the sizable wow playerbase that does those group activities without an established group (aka PuG life) then it is more or less required. As those power gains translate into higher probability of success which leads to other benefits like gearing and M+ score (or in the case of Legion, KSM acheivement).

I have pugged raids in Legion, BfA, and Castle Nathria too. Nobody ever checked my AP level. It never hampered my ability to clear group content. What matterd then, and always has, is your ilvl. You can have 0 artifact traits unlocked, if you are the appropriate ilvl people will take you in their group. You could have your AP maxed out but if your ilvl is low nobody is gonna take you in their group. It's as simple as that.

[Sinx]

The cutting edge mythic raiders are ~2% of the entire playerbase. Nobody else had to "grind" AP to clear content. Why should 98% of the community lose features they like so the 2% can play raid simulator? Explain this to me.

This comment shows your complete lack of insight into player mentality, competetive gameplay and end game communities. It's not just Echo members that seek to push as far as they can get. It goes for huge amounts of players that do both raiding, m+ and pvp. You get booted from guilds and thrown out of m+ groups if you show up with a lackluster character. You're making assumptions about things you clearly have no knowledge about, cause you play the game in a different way than many others. Like I said before. Stop assuming that you're speaking on behalf of everyone that doesn't raid at the absolute highest level.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

This comment shows your complete lack of insight into player mentality, competetive gameplay and end game communities. It's not just Echo members that seek to push as far as they can get. It goes for huge amounts of players that do both raiding, m+ and pvp. You get booted from guilds and thrown out of m+ groups if you show up with a lackluster character. You're making assumptions about things you clearly have no knowledge about, cause you play the game in a different way than many others. Like I said before. Stop assuming that you're speaking on behalf of everyone that doesn't raid at the absolute highest level.

This literally never happened. I just said that nobody ever checked your AP level. You are just making complete bullshit up. You were thrown out of groups for having a low ilvl or failing to get out of lava pools. Nobody cared about what your artifact level is. Nobody. I know because I played it.

Now give me one good reason why I should care about the ~2% and the people who needlessly forced themselves to grind when they didn't have to. I'm still waiting.

[Alroxas]

Giving people a reason to play the game is certainly not good for the game. With each expansion since Legion, Blizzard have been giving us less and less until we reached the abysmal WoD levels of content once again. That's undoubtedly what's good for the longevity of the game.

Not quite true. There's content there that player can opt to do but they just don't grant player power progression. If anything they only grant transmogs if you really are into that sort of thing.

For instance, there's nothing player power wise gained from maxing out Tuskarr rep. By the time you reach 30 with them, you're likely to have better gear and the only thing they provide is transmog (like tuskarr backpacks). So if you're into backpacks, then here's something a player can choose to do and log in every 3 1.5 hours to do the community feast event for faster rep farming.

I am not sure how many times we need to explain to you that nobody forces you to grind. It's a self-control personal problem that you need to figure out. It's not a design flaw, it's not Blizzard's fault, it's YOU(and by that I mean all the people who are REEEE-ing about AP in case it is not clear).

No it's also a Blizzard issue because if the ability to grind for AP is removed or even limited then there are hard stops that the player cannot do anymore. SL renown is a good example of this: You can ONLY earn 2~3 renown levels per week back at the start of the expansion. Didn't matter if you cleared the entire SL map of WQs, a player could NOT go beyond that cap. Eventually the cap was naturally reached and THEN blizzard added in catch-up mechanisms for alts to jumpstart and reach cap relatively quickly so you didn't feel behind on a new toon.

Don't folks see this inherent problem yet? Player progression systems that are not tied to gear and don't have a cap means that min/max players will optimize the earnings out of that system to get ahead of their peers. And in an effort to "keep up with the Jones", the rest of the playerbase that care about progression (or being competitive) are dragged along into doing those systems regardless if they want to.

But you don't care about "keeping up with the Jones", ok that's good for you but how about the rest of the player base? Can you truly say that it would be good for the health of the game for the rest of the player base when they have to endlessly log in every day to farm some kind of player power system?

- - - Updated - - -

Oh yea, Solo shuffle, which has completely killed 2s and 3s activity, making them completely irrelevant.

I mean the player base wanted to be able to queue as solo players in rated PvP. Wish granted, reap the consequences.

[RahEndymion]

This literally never happened. I just said that nobody ever checked your AP level. You are just making complete bullshit up. You were thrown out of groups for having a low ilvl or failing to get out of lava pools. Nobody cared about what your artifact level is. Nobody. I know because I played it.

Now give me one good reason why I should care about the ~2% and the people who needlessly forced themselves to grind when they didn't have to. I'm still waiting.

You shouldn't care about the 2% of the player base.

You should care about the value hierarchy.

If you can get incremental power increase of 1% (for arguments sake) from AP and an average increase of 3ilvl on an item is approximately 1-3% increase, you completely destroy the value of the 3ilvl.

If you have a finite system that has a cap and another infinite system, the finite system becomes secondary.

If the system is infinite, having the ability to gain 1% increase with 0 RNG has a massive impact on the perceived value of the gear drop. Even if the gear drop is a 5% increase, knowing you had to roll the dice and land on a 6 to get a 5% increase versus roll the dice and get 1% regardless, the 1% has a substantially higher perceived value than the 5%.

It's also not entirely just perceived value as factoring in RNG you're likely to spend more time waiting for a drop than you are to farm the equivalent increase in deterministic currency.

This is literally just the valor system we have now, without a flashy UI and with a hard cap.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

Not quite true. There's content there that player can opt to do but they just don't grant player power progression. If anything they only grant transmogs if you really are into that sort of thing.

For instance, there's nothing player power wise gained from maxing out Tuskarr rep. By the time you reach 30 with them, you're likely to have better gear and the only thing they provide is transmog (like tuskarr backpacks). So if you're into backpacks, then here's something a player can choose to do and log in every 3 1.5 hours to do the community feast event for faster rep farming.




No it's also a Blizzard issue because if the ability to grind for AP is removed or even limited then there are hard stops that the player cannot do anymore. SL renown is a good example of this: You can ONLY earn 2~3 renown levels per week back at the start of the expansion. Didn't matter if you cleared the entire SL map of WQs, a player could NOT go beyond that cap. Eventually the cap was naturally reached and THEN blizzard added in catch-up mechanisms for alts to jumpstart and reach cap relatively quickly so you didn't feel behind on a new toon.

Don't folks see this inherent problem yet? Player progression systems that are not tied to gear and don't have a cap means that min/max players will optimize the earnings out of that system to get ahead of their peers. And in an effort to "keep up with the Jones", the rest of the playerbase that care about progression (or being competitive) are dragged along into doing those systems regardless if they want to.

But you don't care about "keeping up with the Jones", ok that's good for you but how about the rest of the player base? Can you truly say that it would be good for the health of the game for the rest of the player base when they have to endlessly log in every day to farm some kind of player power system?

- - - Updated - - -



I mean the player base wanted to be able to queue as solo players in rated PvP. Wish granted, reap the consequences.

You are not dragged along into doing anything. You were never left out. There were always people around your level. You didn't have to force yourself to keep up with world first raiders. Your ability to clear non-world first cutting edge mythic content was not hampered by AP. Nobody ever checked what your AP level is. Ilvl and raider.io score are all that mattered. I know, because I played it. Just because you saw one group that's been listed for 10 hours with 5 people in it where the group leader is asking you to link your cutting edge achievement to invite you for a normal run, doesn't mean that's how every group operated. Again, not a design flaw.

[Alroxas]

I have pugged raids in Legion, BfA, and Castle Nathria too. Nobody ever checked my AP level. It never hampered my ability to clear group content.

So then because your personal experience means that it never happened at all? Just because it didn't happen to you doesn't mean that it didn't happen elsewhere.

What matterd then, and always has, is your ilvl. You can have 0 artifact traits unlocked, if you are the appropriate ilvl people will take you in their group. You could have your AP maxed out but if your ilvl is low nobody is gonna take you in their group. It's as simple as that.

Can you actually show me a case where a regular player (i.e. Regularly plays wow, doesn't use a boost) has gotten max AP level (without the Blizzard super-charge artifact à la Sword in the desert) without having a decent ilv? Conversely can you show me a case where a regular player has gotten high ilv without leveling their artifact weapon while the content was relevant.

These seem to be non-existent examples.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

So then because your personal experience means that it never happened at all? Just because it didn't happen to you doesn't mean that it didn't happen elsewhere.

If it happens so often how come I never saw it happen in 4 years of Legion and BfA? You need to decide if it was a real problem or not.

Can you actually show me a case where a regular player (i.e. Regularly plays wow, doesn't use a boost) has gotten max AP level (without the Blizzard super-charge artifact à la Sword in the desert) without having a decent ilv? Conversely can you show me a case where a regular player has gotten high ilv without leveling their artifact weapon while the content was relevant.

These seem to be non-existent examples.

It's a hypothetical case. It's me telling you that Group Leaders never cared about what your AP level is. Ilvl and raider.io score have always been all that mattered.

[Sinx]

This literally never happened. I just said that nobody ever checked your AP level. You are just making complete bullshit up. You were thrown out of groups for having a low ilvl or failing to get out of lava pools. Nobody cared about what your artifact level is. Nobody. I know because I played it.

Now give me one good reason why I should care about the ~2% and the people who needlessly forced themselves to grind when they didn't have to. I'm still waiting.

This literally never happened. I just said that nobody ever checked your AP level. You are just making complete bullshit up. You were thrown out of groups for having a low ilvl or failing to get out of lava pools. Nobody cared about what your artifact level is. Nobody. I know because I played it.

Now give me one good reason why I should care about the ~2% and the people who needlessly forced themselves to grind when they didn't have to. I'm still waiting.

I'm still waiting for the arguments for why making people do content they don't want to do is a good idea. From about 10 pages back. And god please don't start with the sales numbers again, cause they're quite irrelevant metrics compared to the massive dropoff in the player base during both BfA and Shadowlands. Legion was a good expansion overall, sure, and it even increased the player base through the expansion, but to credit that to AP grinds, when far more frequent content releases and the introduction of M+ were likely far more significant contributions to that. But I guess it's just easier making up your own reality, coming up with random numbers and pretend you're speaking on behalf of the majority of players. It's been quite interesting to read. And again, it's not just Echo and Liquid that play WoW competetively you know. In fact, quite a lot of raiding guilds, pvp'ers and m+ players enjoy pushing to see how far they can get. Either they're at 3000+ rating or more casual and trying to get their KSM mount for the season. All of which would require significantly longer time if having to do daily chores. Give me _1_ good argument, why it's not a better idea to allow players to progress their character while doing the content they want to do, instead of having them do a bunch of other stuff they have no interest or joy from doing.

[Alroxas]

You are not dragged along into doing anything. You were never left out.

Going to call BS on this one. If there exists an infinite system of power gain, you had to participate in it because of the power gain. Just look at the difference between the first and second "infinite" traits that the artifacts had back in Legion.

In the first version, you gained 10% more throughput for a 20 point investment in that trait. This represented too strong of a throughput gain: 0.5% throughput gain guaranteed for point of investment? Players grind that shit out because it was consistent power gain.

Now consider the second version named Concordance of Legionfall. The first point was worth into this system was worth it because it enabled the proc but the additional points only slightly increased the primary stat proc by a tiny amount. The fact that it was a proc and the primary stat bonus only went up a tiny bit per additional level mean that this trait was much more difficult to measure. Hence grinding for it was less "rewarding" for most players.

Granted, once you got a whole bunch of points (à la Sword in desert) then sure it was a huge power gain when the proc happened but at that point the expansion was over anyway.

There were always people around your level. You didn't have to force yourself to keep up with world first raiders. Your ability to clear non-world first cutting edge mythic content was not hampered by AP. Nobody ever checked what your AP level is. Ilvl and raider.io score are all that mattered. I know, because I played it. Just because you saw one group that's been listed for 10 hours with 5 people in it where the group leader is asking you to link your cutting edge achievement to invite you for a normal run, doesn't mean that's how every group operated. Again, not a design flaw.

Conversely just because you didn't experience it personally doesn't mean it didn't happen and with enough frequency that it became the social norm within WoW to do those grinds back in Legion and BFA.

And how is it not a design flaw? If the feature was never there (take Artifacts in Legion but NO AP grind, the game just gave you a +1 AP level once per week) then there would have been zero complaints about "grinding AP". Instead we would just have complaints that Blizzard time-gated AP progression.

[BeepBoo]

If it happens so often how come I never saw it happen in 4 years of Legion and BfA? You need to decide if it was a real problem or not.

It's a hypothetical case. It's me telling you that Group Leaders never cared about what your AP level is. Ilvl and raider.io score have always been all that mattered.

Getting into a pug and getting into a good pug when content is relevant are two different things. Besides that, what not being AP 50 or whatever during those timeframes DID mean for you (if you got in to groups when they were actually relevant) was that your DPS was absolute shit. And you probably weren't pugging heroic or mythic versions of those raids, or actually high m+ keys.

I'm still waiting for the arguments for why making people do content they don't want to do is a good idea. From about 10 pages back.

It's not and they know it, but this is literally a case of "either them or us" from a design standpoint, specifically because the "must always have power upgrades available from faceroll overworld content" people would never accept their power being disabled/irrelevant in group content.

[Sinx]

It's me telling you that Group Leaders never cared about what your AP level is. Ilvl and raider.io score have always been all that mattered.

Wrong. You get/got booted (or not invited) if you have the wrong spec, if you have the wrong talents, if you were missing a specific legendary, if you didn't have optimal azerite traits, if you were missing vital talents in the artifact weapons etc etc. As well as ilvl and raider.io score of course.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

I'm still waiting for the arguments for why making people do content they don't want to do is a good idea. From about 10 pages back. And god please don't start with the sales numbers again, cause they're quite irrelevant metrics compared to the massive dropoff in the player base during both BfA and Shadowlands. Legion was a good expansion overall, sure, and it even increased the player base through the expansion, but to credit that to AP grinds, when far more frequent content releases and the introduction of M+ were likely far more significant contributions to that. But I guess it's just easier making up your own reality, coming up with random numbers and pretend you're speaking on behalf of the majority of players. It's been quite interesting to read. And again, it's not just Echo and Liquid that play WoW competetively you know. In fact, quite a lot of raiding guilds, pvp'ers and m+ players enjoy pushing to see how far they can get. Either they're at 3000+ rating or more casual and trying to get their KSM mount for the season. All of which would require significantly longer time if having to do daily chores. Give me _1_ good argument, why it's not a better idea to allow players to progress their character while doing the content they want to do, instead of having them do a bunch of other stuff they have no interest or joy from doing.

Ah, yes, the brilliant idea of catering only to the people who want to play a raid simulator and fucking over everyone else. See how that works out.

Going to call BS on this one. If there exists an infinite system of power gain, you had to participate in it because of the power gain. Just look at the difference between the first and second "infinite" traits that the artifacts had back in Legion.

My dude, I never grinded a day in my life and I was able to clear all Legion raids on heroic, I'm sure I would have been able to clear them on Mythic too if I cared eough to do it, without grinding. Explain to me how that miracle happened.

[BeepBoo]

Ah, yes, the brilliant idea of catering only to the people who want to play a raid simulator and fucking over everyone else. See how that works out.

Again, you people wouldn't accept your infinite power being turned off in a raid, so you're forcing the issue of making this design a "them or us" because your fucking mentality of always needing that next hit of crack is unreasonable.

Wrong. You get/got booted (or not invited) if you have the wrong spec, if you have the wrong talents, if you were missing a specific legendary, if you didn't have optimal azerite traits, if you were missing vital talents in the artifact weapons etc etc. As well as ilvl and raider.io score of course.

Note the person you're talking to never said anything about WHICH raids they were invited to, WHICH patches they were doing said raids in, etc. I can almost guarantee either they were scrub tier normal raids or one-patch-behind clears.

My dude, I never grinded a day in my life and I was able to clear all Legion raids on heroic, I'm sure I would have been able to clear them on Mythic too if I cared eough to do it, without grinding. Explain to me how that miracle happened.

You were either a patch behind the cycle OR you got fucking carried with sub-par (read: not 90th+ percentile, likely 60s or lower) parses.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

Again, you people wouldn't accept your infinite power being turned off in a raid, so you're forcing the issue of making this design a "them or us" because your fucking mentality of always needing that next hit of crack is unreasonable.



Note the person you're talking to never said anything about WHICH raids they were invited to, WHICH patches they were doing said raids in, etc. I can almost guarantee either they were scrub tier normal raids or one-patch-behind clears.



You were either a patch behind the cycle OR you got fucking carried with sub-par (read: not 90th+ percentile, likely 60s or lower) parses.

You are either being completely dishonest or you didn't play Legion and BfA at all. In either case your opinion is irrelevant to the discussion. I cleared all heroic raids in Legion and BfA. I was able to clear them with pugs too. Nobody ever checked my AP level. Nobody ever checked what traits I have unlocked. Nobody ever checked if I have the right legendary. You're just trying to galsight people with your bullshit. It doesn't work on people who have played through it tho.

[Alroxas]

My dude, I never grinded a day in my life and I was able to clear all Legion raids on heroic, I'm sure I would have been able to clear them on Mythic too if I cared enough to do it, without grinding. Explain to me how that miracle happened.

Again, we shouldn't just look at your personal experience but the experience of the player base as a whole. From Legion, BFA and SL, if there are power systems that require daily/weekly grinds for measurable power gains (outside of gearing) then players will feel compelled to do it.

Additionally, I don't believe that these systems only affect the top 2% of the player base because the numerous complaints back in Legion and BFA seems to indicate a lot of players were not happy with these "endless grinds".

Again, maybe you never experienced any of this but that's not the point, as it did happen to a sufficiently segment of the playerbase.

[BeepBoo]

You are either being completely dishonest or you didn't play Legion and BfA at all. In either case your opinion is irrelevant to the discussion. I cleared all heroic raids in Legion and BfA. I was able to clear them with pugs too. Nobody ever checked my AP level. Nobody ever checked what traits I have unlocked. Nobody ever checked if I have the right legendary. You're just trying to galsight people with your bullshit. It doesn't work on people who have played through it tho.

As a mythic raider, I also played through it. The cross-section between people who are good and have good performance and people who just flat refuse to engage in the grind because "I don't want to" is next to zero. You're not an exception. Again, either you were one patch off the current raid tier, or you were absolutely dogshit at performance. So just tell me, which is it?

inb4 "Yeah I got 50th percentile parses, but what does it matter?! I still got the kill!"

Also, would you accept your infinite power being disabled in competitive environments of raids and m+?

[Sinx]

Ah, yes, the brilliant idea of catering only to the people who want to play a raid simulator and fucking over everyone else. See how that works out.

So no arguments, just the same rambling, avoiding the question, over and over. Got it. If you ever do decide to stick on topic though, do please answer this question:

How do you prefer to progress your character ?

A) Doing the content I enjoy doing
B) Doing the content I don't enjoy doing.