Would you enjoy WoW more if it had a more Diablo-like loot/gearing up system?

[happyreech]

I've always found the loot in WoW boring (at max level), I loved the game in spite of it not because of it.

It's just very odd to me how you don't really get gear upgrades that often. Feels like a whole lot of time you get nothing, and when you do get something, your power increases only by a few %. A few upgrades a week and none of them too exciting.

Maybe implementing something more exciting isn't possible in an MMO idk I'm not a developer, I'm sure it's hard.

But idk just feels weird how few and far between the dopamine rushes are in WoW. Can't say that other mmos do it better though so it's not a WoW-exclusive thing, maybe it's an MMO thing.

[kranur]

We had something like that which peaked in BfA iirc with rng on top of rng on top of rng and it was shit. Let diablo be diablo and WoW be WoW. There's a lot of upgrading going on just slows down as you reach bis.

[Relapses]

I think the closest we've had to something like that was with Legiondaries in their initial implementation. That system felt like shit, though it improved once they made them more deterministic. But then we had deterministic Legendaries in SL and that just became a math equation that got solved so... nah. I'd say it's pretty incompatible. I wouldn't mind Blizzard giving something like Corruption a second go though.

[caterluke]

Yeah I get what you mean. WoW loot system def feels slow compared to Diablo. In Diablo, every run can drop somethin exciting, but in WoW, it’s mostly waiting weeks for a small upgrade. Would be cool if they added more random procs or unique effects to gear to keep it interesting.

[Lochton]

I've always found the loot in WoW boring (at max level), I loved the game in spite of it not because of it.

It's just very odd to me how you don't really get gear upgrades that often. Feels like a whole lot of time you get nothing, and when you do get something, your power increases only by a few %. A few upgrades a week and none of them too exciting.

Maybe implementing something more exciting isn't possible in an MMO idk I'm not a developer, I'm sure it's hard.

But idk just feels weird how few and far between the dopamine rushes are in WoW. Can't say that other mmos do it better though so it's not a WoW-exclusive thing, maybe it's an MMO thing.

I wouldn't mind the loot system of individual view of loot dropping, but the gearing system of Diablo, no thanks. The cosmetic system, sure.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

No, not really. I like ARPG's for that style; not MMORPG's.

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Yeah I get what you mean. WoW loot system def feels slow compared to Diablo. In Diablo, every run can drop somethin exciting, but in WoW, it’s mostly waiting weeks for a small upgrade. Would be cool if they added more random procs or unique effects to gear to keep it interesting.

Both games are fundamentally designed differently.

[NineSpine]

The gear in retail WoW is incredibly boring. It's easily the most boring loot I've ever seen in a game that is essentially a gear grinder. This problem was already "solved" in the initial design of the game. There was a very large variety of bonuses that could appear on gear, and there were no rules about how powerful something could be depending on where it came from. It was not randomized, but it didn't have to be. Since gear had fixed bonuses and a handmade quality to them, they became iconic and memorable, and felt amazing to receive.

The move toward the very bland current system was part of the larger effort to over engineer the game in a misguided attempt to eliminate friction. Everything is designed to fit into a very small set of constraints and rules. Honestly, designed is a strong word to use there because it is very clear the gear that is spit out these days is algorithmic, not designed. The bottom line is that it's pretty much textbook bad game design, but it doesn't require a shift to a randomized ARPG style system because that brings with it a lot of other issues.

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I think the closest we've had to something like that was with Legiondaries in their initial implementation. That system felt like shit, though it improved once they made them more deterministic. But then we had deterministic Legendaries in SL and that just became a math equation that got solved so... nah. I'd say it's pretty incompatible. I wouldn't mind Blizzard giving something like Corruption a second go though.

Legiondaries were a great seed of an idea that were ruined by WoW developers being WoW developers. They were at odds with the forced blandness that gear had by that point. The system was largely copied from Destiny, and it could have been a really cool evergreen system like it is in Destiny, but they couldn't help themselves. They had to make most of the legendaries bland power increases that had little to no impact on play style. The legendaries should have been focused on utility and switching up how it felt to play your character. They should have leaned hard into situational usefulness, but that kind of design is very much at odds with their design philosophy. Emergent gameplay and creative problem solving is seen as a flaw in the current design model, not something they encourage

[happyreech]

Yeah I get what you mean. WoW loot system def feels slow compared to Diablo. In Diablo, every run can drop somethin exciting, but in WoW, it’s mostly waiting weeks for a small upgrade. Would be cool if they added more random procs or unique effects to gear to keep it interesting.

Yep 100%, this is what I mean. I wish there was something exciting more often. Knowing that every boss has a decent chance of dropping something that's 50% better than your current item is exciting. Sometimes even a lot more than 50%, which is even more exciting.

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The gear in retail WoW is incredibly boring. It's easily the most boring loot I've ever seen in a game that is essentially a gear grinder. This problem was already "solved" in the initial design of the game. There was a very large variety of bonuses that could appear on gear, and there were no rules about how powerful something could be depending on where it came from. It was not randomized, but it didn't have to be. Since gear had fixed bonuses and a handmade quality to them, they became iconic and memorable, and felt amazing to receive.

The move toward the very bland current system was part of the larger effort to over engineer the game in a misguided attempt to eliminate friction. Everything is designed to fit into a very small set of constraints and rules. Honestly, designed is a strong word to use there because it is very clear the gear that is spit out these days is algorithmic, not designed. The bottom line is that it's pretty much textbook bad game design, but it doesn't require a shift to a randomized ARPG style system because that brings with it a lot of other issues.

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Legiondaries were a great seed of an idea that were ruined by WoW developers being WoW developers. They were at odds with the forced blandness that gear had by that point. The system was largely copied from Destiny, and it could have been a really cool evergreen system like it is in Destiny, but they couldn't help themselves. They had to make most of the legendaries bland power increases that had little to no impact on play style. The legendaries should have been focused on utility and switching up how it felt to play your character. They should have leaned hard into situational usefulness, but that kind of design is very much at odds with their design philosophy. Emergent gameplay and creative problem solving is seen as a flaw in the current design model, not something they encourage

I agree it's incredibly boring, I'm actually surprised that so many people agree.

I don't have any motivation to grind in retail wow, I don't understand this design, who is it for? I'm sure many people enjoy it since they're sticking with it, but I can't wrap my head around why they enjoy it. It seriously feels like you get several +5% better items per week. Who enjoys that? Honest to god I don't understand.

[NineSpine]

I agree it's incredibly boring, I'm actually surprised that so many people agree.

I don't have any motivation to grind in retail wow, I don't understand this design, who is it for? I'm sure many people enjoy it since they're sticking with it, but I can't wrap my head around why they enjoy it. It seriously feels like you get several +5% better items per week. Who enjoys that? Honest to god I don't understand.

As much as it upsets some people on this forum, I think all you need to do is look at the developers, look at their backgrounds, listen to the words they say, and the design makes "sense" insofar as this looks like a game those specific people with their specific priorities and interests would design.

For example, Ion originally became known in the WoW community for writing speedrun guides for raids. The game LOOKS like a game designed by someone for whom speed running raids is interesting.

Brack's famous "you think you do but you don't" was accompanied by examples indicating that he believed the game should be "hit a button to do the activity you want" with no friction and that nobody would want the game to work any other way. The game LOOKS like a game that a person with that attitude would oversee.

There are plenty of these kinds of examples. You can find clips of developers talking about how if players engage with something, it MUST be fun because the spreadsheet says so. That's the type of attitude and perspective these folks have, and when you contextualize retail WoW inside of that, everything becomes very clear. They are so tunnel visioned that they did not pick up that one of the reasons people loved Legion was that it leaned into class fantasy, so they threw class fantasy out with BFA and never went back to it. Those kind of design complexities, the things that people are having fun with for more dynamic and complicated reasons than just "3,498,000 RUNS OF THIS DUNGEON HAVE BEEN COMPLETED THEREFORE THE ALGORITHM TELLS US THAT PLAYERS ENJOY THIS" really go right over their head.

Bottom line, if you can't quantify it on a spreadsheet, these guys do not understand it at all. The idea that power fantasy is a big part of why a lot of people like RPGs is baffling to them. The idea that someone wants to equip a big fuck-you sword and feel like they just gained 10 levels as they smash shit that was killing them 20 minutes ago, those types of things are just absolutely lost on them. They are too busy designing a new gear producing algorithm to ensure that every player has the specified and acceptable amount of power at the precise gear level that is appropriate for the content they have completed in order to make the math on the spreadsheet work.

[happyreech]

As much as it upsets some people on this forum, I think all you need to do is look at the developers, look at their backgrounds, listen to the words they say, and the design makes "sense" insofar as this looks like a game those specific people with their specific priorities and interests would design.

For example, Ion originally became known in the WoW community for writing speedrun guides for raids. The game LOOKS like a game designed by someone for whom speed running raids is interesting.

Brack's famous "you think you do but you don't" was accompanied by examples indicating that he believed the game should be "hit a button to do the activity you want" with no friction and that nobody would want the game to work any other way. The game LOOKS like a game that a person with that attitude would oversee.

There are plenty of these kinds of examples. You can find clips of developers talking about how if players engage with something, it MUST be fun because the spreadsheet says so. That's the type of attitude and perspective these folks have, and when you contextualize retail WoW inside of that, everything becomes very clear. They are so tunnel visioned that they did not pick up that one of the reasons people loved Legion was that it leaned into class fantasy, so they threw class fantasy out with BFA and never went back to it. Those kind of design complexities, the things that people are having fun with for more dynamic and complicated reasons than just "3,498,000 RUNS OF THIS DUNGEON HAVE BEEN COMPLETED THEREFORE THE ALGORITHM TELLS US THAT PLAYERS ENJOY THIS" really go right over their head.

Bottom line, if you can't quantify it on a spreadsheet, these guys do not understand it at all. The idea that power fantasy is a big part of why a lot of people like RPGs is baffling to them. The idea that someone wants to equip a big fuck-you sword and feel like they just gained 10 levels as they smash shit that was killing them 20 minutes ago, those types of things are just absolutely lost on them. They are too busy designing a new gear producing algorithm to ensure that every player has the specified and acceptable amount of power at the precise gear level that is appropriate for the content they have completed in order to make the math on the spreadsheet work.

Thank you! That does explain a lot.

The part about spreadsheets especially, that clarifies things. Because we keep playing when all we get are a handful items a week that are marginally better than what we already have, then that means that everything is great, the systems are fun in their eyes. With the added benefit that they don't have to put a lot of resources into making something actually fun, that would take too much time and money.

Maybe they just asked themselves "what kind of gearing system would take us the least amount of resources to implement, but will still keep them playing?". Feels like we're experiencing exactly that.

[NineSpine]

Thank you! That does explain a lot.

The part about spreadsheets especially, that clarifies things. Because we keep playing when all we get are a handful items a week that are marginally better than what we already have, then that means that everything is great, the systems are fun in their eyes. With the added benefit that they don't have to put a lot of resources into making something actually fun, that would take too much time and money.

Maybe they just asked themselves "what kind of gearing system would take us the least amount of resources to implement, but will still keep them playing?". Feels like we're experiencing exactly that.

I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and not say its laziness or resource issues. I think they are designing the game they intend to.

There is a certain kind of designer, and anyone who has worked in design can attest to this, who does not derive their satisfaction from making fun things. They get their satisfaction from solving the math problems and puzzles of game design. They want to see all the pieces fit together and logically work out in a satisfying way. That's their impetus to design. It's about uniformity, order, and efficiency.

They don't ask questions like "If someone plays a Warlock, what can we do to make them feel like a Warlock? What are the things they are looking for? How do we advance the class fantasy of being a Warlock and juxtapose it with the other class fantasies available? How do we make sure that when a warlock is in your group, it feels like an ally is commanding dark forces?"

Instead, they ask questions like "How can we mitigate the damage of DoTs so that the DPS of the Warlock is as similar as possible to all other classes in as many scenarios as possible? How can we make sure that whether your ally is a Paladin or a Warlock has the minimal impact on your throughput and the overall flow of a Mythic+ dungeon?"

They derive a lot of satisfaction from this borderline OCD fixation on order, and unfortunately they also tend to be totally blind to the fact that they are doing this, and are genuinely confused why people don't understand that their math works out so well that the game MUST BE FUN! Fun is when the math is most uniform, right? And that's how you end up with these god awful gearing systems we have now.

I think the best example of this is borrowed power. Borrowed power was plainly unfun, and anyone could have told you it would be unfun right up front. Tons of people loved artifact weapons, and they were concerned about their removal even before Legion came out. But these guys doubled down and doubled down and doubled down for multiple expansions on this borrowed power nonsense. Why? Because borrowed power solved the puzzle! It created a uniform platform by which to introduce new systems per expansion and then deprecate them. It works out LOGICALLY so it MUST BE FUN, right? Every year they would explain over and over again that the players just weren't understanding how good borrowed power was because they didn't appreciate the puzzle that had been solved. The fact that they doubled down on this insanity for three expansions is wild, and it really shows you their mindset. It was inconceivable to them that people didn't give a fuck about the puzzle being solved.

I mean let's look at Warfronts. What a shit show. They had an opportunity to introduce an amazing PvEvP feature that harkened back to warcraft's roots, but out of fear of making something even a slight bit chaotic, it was a bland PvE grind fest.

[uopayroll]

as long as it is not D4

[Daedius]

I've always found the loot in WoW boring (at max level), I loved the game in spite of it not because of it.

It's just very odd to me how you don't really get gear upgrades that often. Feels like a whole lot of time you get nothing, and when you do get something, your power increases only by a few %. A few upgrades a week and none of them too exciting.

Maybe implementing something more exciting isn't possible in an MMO idk I'm not a developer, I'm sure it's hard.

But idk just feels weird how few and far between the dopamine rushes are in WoW. Can't say that other mmos do it better though so it's not a WoW-exclusive thing, maybe it's an MMO thing.

No.

Different types of games.. Diablo is a looter-fest, WoW has static drops.

[NineSpine]

No.

Different types of games.. Diablo is a looter-fest, WoW has static drops.

Hahaha static drops. Good one. Static equipment that comes in 982 different quality levels.

[happyreech]

I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and not say its laziness or resource issues. I think they are designing the game they intend to.

There is a certain kind of designer, and anyone who has worked in design can attest to this, who does not derive their satisfaction from making fun things. They get their satisfaction from solving the math problems and puzzles of game design. They want to see all the pieces fit together and logically work out in a satisfying way. That's their impetus to design. It's about uniformity, order, and efficiency.

They don't ask questions like "If someone plays a Warlock, what can we do to make them feel like a Warlock? What are the things they are looking for? How do we advance the class fantasy of being a Warlock and juxtapose it with the other class fantasies available? How do we make sure that when a warlock is in your group, it feels like an ally is commanding dark forces?"

Instead, they ask questions like "How can we mitigate the damage of DoTs so that the DPS of the Warlock is as similar as possible to all other classes in as many scenarios as possible? How can we make sure that whether your ally is a Paladin or a Warlock has the minimal impact on your throughput and the overall flow of a Mythic+ dungeon?"

They derive a lot of satisfaction from this borderline OCD fixation on order, and unfortunately they also tend to be totally blind to the fact that they are doing this, and are genuinely confused why people don't understand that their math works out so well that the game MUST BE FUN! Fun is when the math is most uniform, right? And that's how you end up with these god awful gearing systems we have now.

I think the best example of this is borrowed power. Borrowed power was plainly unfun, and anyone could have told you it would be unfun right up front. Tons of people loved artifact weapons, and they were concerned about their removal even before Legion came out. But these guys doubled down and doubled down and doubled down for multiple expansions on this borrowed power nonsense. Why? Because borrowed power solved the puzzle! It created a uniform platform by which to introduce new systems per expansion and then deprecate them. It works out LOGICALLY so it MUST BE FUN, right? Every year they would explain over and over again that the players just weren't understanding how good borrowed power was because they didn't appreciate the puzzle that had been solved. The fact that they doubled down on this insanity for three expansions is wild, and it really shows you their mindset. It was inconceivable to them that people didn't give a fuck about the puzzle being solved.

I mean let's look at Warfronts. What a shit show. They had an opportunity to introduce an amazing PvEvP feature that harkened back to warcraft's roots, but out of fear of making something even a slight bit chaotic, it was a bland PvE grind fest.

Thank you, that was quite enlightening actually. It does explain what's happening, honestly there is no other explanation. Thank you for that.

[Just Passing through]

As a long time D2 player back then, I found the soulbound and BoE system weird...being used to send stuff around.

But as it is now....like...since we have the Adventurere / Eplorer / Veteran / etc path with upgrades...I am pretty ok with the stuff.

I almost feel that I (as what would be called a casual, as I don't raid or do mythic 5 mans) get "too good gear" and with patch 11.1 it gets even "worse" - but hell...I love it. Anything that makes me burn through the stuff I do faster is welcome.

[Sansnom]

Yep 100%, this is what I mean. I wish there was something exciting more often. Knowing that every boss has a decent chance of dropping something that's 50% better than your current item is exciting. Sometimes even a lot more than 50%, which is even more exciting.

That can't work in WoW. In Diablo 3, the boss and mods scales ever upward. So there is a cycle of better loot -> beat harder level -> better loot etc.

WoW creatures scales but there is a level cap which means there will be a item level cap.

[NineSpine]

That can't work in WoW. In Diablo 3, the boss and mods scales ever upward. So there is a cycle of better loot -> beat harder level -> better loot etc.

WoW creatures scales but there is a level cap which means there will be a item level cap.

I don't like this idea, but ARPGs generally have level caps too, and WoW also has the same difficulty cycle.

[Itisamuh]

I don't have any motivation to grind in retail wow, I don't understand this design, who is it for? I'm sure many people enjoy it since they're sticking with it, but I can't wrap my head around why they enjoy it. It seriously feels like you get several +5% better items per week. Who enjoys that? Honest to god I don't understand.

Some of us play games simply because we enjoy it. I would be perfectly happy if they removed gear altogether and made it only cosmetic.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

The opposite problem with OCD systems developers are RP ones who don't bother to think through how anything will actually be used in practice. You can see this in everything from video games to card games and whatever else. Tons of "cool" stuff that's functionally useless because it doesn't meaningfully interact with the real game, like a bad card in Magic or whatever that nobody plays. Or the 50% of covenant abilities in Shadowlands that nobody used.

Blizzard has generally done a pretty good job of having both. They always seem to start with a thematic thing then try to figure out how to "make it work," but it usually takes a lot of iterations. An example would be how resistant they were over giving out more raid buffs to guarantee that classes have a spot, but they eventually had to cave with hunters* and shaman. That's the rubber hitting the road with concept vs function.


Always a fun thing to find out when you sit down and play a new TTRPG or board game also. After a few sessions its usually pretty obvious which abilities were purely designed to be cool but never got reviewed for "will anyone ever actually use this in practice?"


*still an embarrassingly dumb buff.