What's the point of the crafting changes if the rewards dont change?

[Unholyground]

The easiest solutions would be to make them weak, add gold alternatives to NPCs and some kind of token system / badge system to buy better ones that are stronger than either of them. And of course conjured group versions so that those who can't / don't play as much can still end up using one in content that they're doing together.

For gear, as it stands now, it has a good base system. Make it so you have to gather things yourself, and you use crafters to make the gear itself through commissions. Otherwise, have the normal crafted gear be mediocre and just a catch-up / fast-pass to just enough ilvl for current content (LFR / Flex and Heroic dungeons) at max. Honestly turning professions into cosmetic focused and commission focused paths are way better than having them give you a bunch of useless gear / consumables over time.

At least IMO - because the effort to actually make crafters relevant again would be very difficult to balance both fun and frustration dealing with commissions. I'm totally fine with them going back to Classic / TBC days and making crafting actually fast-path you to greens or blues earlier on. While the more powerful purples are only gained through content itself or rare recipes for the crafters themselves / commissioned.

Just spitballing at this point, but you get the idea there are multitude of ways to decouple gold value from power. Not all equal to one another, but it's better for them to try systems out than to just keep it the way it is now.




I forgot the b.net currency exchange existed, lol. Remove that and then the token loses an insane amount of botting value as well. So if you did that, while also making gold a lot less useful for any power gain in-game - it'd definitely help a lot. As keeping the token there would still deter RMT bots. But at that point removing the token would be a morals choice from Blizzard - not a large monetary gain one I suppose.

But now that you mention the first part about buying things with gold outside of WoW, I doubt Blizzard will ever remove gold for b.net currency, which is sad.

They will because all those games are going to gamepass as MS owns Blizzard. I doubt they wan't people getting full games and not gamepass with currency, they want maintained subs and the currency conversion actually hurts their gamepass retention.

[overjoyed-goose]

Can someone point me to when has WoW ever had a gear progression for folks that don't want to do any form of end-game content (m+, raids, pvp) that offered gear on par with those?

[ellieg]

Can someone point me to when has WoW ever had a gear progression for folks that don't want to do any form of end-game content (m+, raids, pvp) that offered gear on par with those?

Literally never. Some ignorant person gonna start talking abt badges, ignoring the fact that it took months to save up for 1 piece and you could only buy 4-5 relevant pieces. Some being pieces such at trinkets that weren't actually good for ur spec, or pieces with or without hit/expertise that you wouldn't wear because of that.

[Nymrohd]

Literally never. Some ignorant person gonna start talking abt badges, ignoring the fact that it took months to save up for 1 piece and you could only buy 4-5 relevant pieces. Some being pieces such at trinkets that weren't actually good for ur spec, or pieces with or without hit/expertise that you wouldn't wear because of that.

Conquest in BfA covered every single slot with superb gear at Heroic ilvl and you could easily conquest cap by doing PvP world quests.
Valor In MoP covered all slots except for trinkets and weapons once tier below max; during ToT you could also get a weapon at high ilvl through blacksmithing; during SoO you could upgrade a trinket to high ilvl with coins and every armor slot could eventually be covered from Ordos' massive loot table that was half a tier from max.

Speed doesn't actually matter; if the progression track is there and it is dependable, that's what people ask for.

[ellieg]

Conquest in BfA covered every single slot with superb gear at Heroic ilvl and you could easily conquest cap by doing PvP world quests.
Valor In MoP covered all slots except for trinkets and weapons once tier below max; during ToT you could also get a weapon at high ilvl through blacksmithing; during SoO you could upgrade a trinket to high ilvl with coins and every armor slot could eventually be covered from Ordos' massive loot table that was half a tier from max.

Speed doesn't actually matter; if the progression track is there and it is dependable, that's what people ask for.

I'm pretty sure conquest gear ilvl was still tied to your rating.

Correct me if Im wrong but I thought vp in mop just let you upgrade a piece twice at 4 ilvls each. So if you got a normal raid piece, it was normal raid ilvl +8 after upgrading. But the best pieces could be upgraded +8 as well, so you never got closer to the top.

[Celement]

I'm pretty sure conquest gear ilvl was still tied to your rating.

Correct me if Im wrong but I thought vp in mop just let you upgrade a piece twice at 4 ilvls each. So if you got a normal raid piece, it was normal raid ilvl +8 after upgrading. But the best pieces could be upgraded +8 as well, so you never got closer to the top.

That was during the last patch of mop as well. Gear whores will tell any lie that advances their twisted ambitions.

[Nymrohd]

I'm pretty sure conquest gear ilvl was still tied to your rating.

Correct me if Im wrong but I thought vp in mop just let you upgrade a piece twice at 4 ilvls each. So if you got a normal raid piece, it was normal raid ilvl +8 after upgrading. But the best pieces could be upgraded +8 as well, so you never got closer to the top.

Nah during BfA conquest gear was on a track and not tied to rating. Every week you capped you'd get a piece of heroic gear. It was four different options for most slots (so you had a lot of choice with stats) and the Azerite pieces were often BiS for their ilvl. Was by far the fastest way to get a weapon and pvp trinkets were great (well they almost always are great). Fairly bad for actual pvpers since it was slow as a progression. You could cap with invastions (and could cap even faster by doing the Nazjatar or Mechagon weekly). In the final patch you could also get 5 pieces from Horrific Visions at 5 ilvl below Mythic.

Valor Upgrades only came late in SoO (not in the patch that released SoO and Timeless Isle). For the ToT patch you could buy pieces of gear at Normal Ilvl (Heroic was max at that moment) for every slot except trinkets and weapons locked behind the raid rep (you could grind the rep easily through LFR which had far faster queues back then); you could also get 2p at that ilvl from world boss at a high gear drop rate (and get two more from LFR at a lower ilvl to complete the set) and a warforged item from Oondasta (but that one had a small loot table). For the SoO patch by far the best way to get gear seemed to be Ordos who dropped a LOT of gear (more than half the raid would get something) at warforged normal (upgraded to warforged HC when Mythic was added); you could get 2p from the Celestial world bosses again (and then you'd get the OP trinkets from LFR, those trinkets were OP at all ilvls)

The important thing is, both expansions when a casual could get very high ilvl gear (a tier below max) it was a slow process. You effectively had a progression track that lasted for most of the patch giving those players progression over 4-5 months, keeping them active and interested. It was not really a threat to instanced gear acquisition either; at most you could participate in that progression to fill in any gaps and in MoP you'd cap valor naturally if you raided.

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Gear whores will tell any lie that advances their twisted ambitions.

Shows us on the dolly where the "gear whores" touched you. Dude, you need to reconsider your life choices.

[Celement]

Nah during BfA conquest gear was on a track and not tied to rating. Every week you capped you'd get a piece of heroic gear. It was four different options for most slots (so you had a lot of choice with stats) and the Azerite pieces were often BiS for their ilvl. Was by far the fastest way to get a weapon and pvp trinkets were great (well they almost always are great). Fairly bad for actual pvpers since it was slow as a progression. You could cap with invastions (and could cap even faster by doing the Nazjatar or Mechagon weekly). In the final patch you could also get 5 pieces from Horrific Visions at 5 ilvl below Mythic.

Valor Upgrades only came late in SoO (not in the patch that released SoO and Timeless Isle). For the ToT patch you could buy pieces of gear at Normal Ilvl (Heroic was max at that moment) for every slot except trinkets and weapons locked behind the raid rep (you could grind the rep easily through LFR which had far faster queues back then); you could also get 2p at that ilvl from world boss at a high gear drop rate (and get two more from LFR at a lower ilvl to complete the set) and a warforged item from Oondasta (but that one had a small loot table). For the SoO patch by far the best way to get gear seemed to be Ordos who dropped a LOT of gear (more than half the raid would get something) at warforged normal (upgraded to warforged HC when Mythic was added); you could get 2p from the Celestial world bosses again (and then you'd get the OP trinkets from LFR, those trinkets were OP at all ilvls)

The important thing is, both expansions when a casual could get very high ilvl gear (a tier below max) it was a slow process. You effectively had a progression track that lasted for most of the patch giving those players progression over 4-5 months, keeping them active and interested. It was not really a threat to instanced gear acquisition either; at most you could participate in that progression to fill in any gaps and in MoP you'd cap valor naturally if you raided.

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Shows us on the dolly where the "gear whores" touched you. Dude, you need to reconsider your life choices.

Points at the destruction of heroic dungeons for several expansions and ever increasing grinds for the min ilv to get into progression content from ilv inflation.

" here judge"

[talmir]

Crafting has been in a weird place for a while now. I'm gonna wait until launch and see how things shake out before I make any kind of judgement on the new system, as I hope that with some feedback it'll change about a bit.

But as long as I can make an engineering portal (Best profession item by far in my humble opinion, so much travel time saved) and enchant my gear I'll be happy enough.

[Amariw]

Kinda agreed. They said you could make raid worthwhile items but only if you're already raiding. I think its reasonable to allow some dedicated soloer to gather mats for a long time and make an actual mythic or at least heroic level piece. It won't break the game, and will give people who don't engage with that content more to work towards for.

[Nymrohd]

Points at the destruction of heroic dungeons for several expansions and ever increasing grinds for the min ilv to get into progression content from ilv inflation.

" here judge"

Heroic dungeons were only ever relevant on the long term as a decent way to grind valor. Which is what casual long term progression is about. People did Heroic dungeons regularly in MoP under such a system. They did not even touch them in WoD when no such progression was available. So you need to search for an actual argument.

[Celement]

Heroic dungeons were only ever relevant on the long term as a decent way to grind valor. Which is what casual long term progression is about.

Puts on the track " What could of been..." and looks at cata heroics.

Yeah... just grinding valor...

[talmir]

I dont know what you guys are on about heroic being dead. Sure, fewer people run them, but I do occasionally queue up on an alt to do some mission thing, or even just to get some starter equipment without having to search for a mythic pug or be carried and the queues seem to be active enough. Dont think I've every had to wait super long for a heroic.

[overjoyed-goose]

So what I get is we had a total of 2 or 3 patches during MoP and maybe a patch in BFA, did all the people who don't want to do end-game content started playing during those patches? Because people are clamoring here that the "casuals" are the biggest part of the player base and they will all quit.

For BFA, at least on the first season the gear was capped to normal Uldir level on the weekly cache for unranked people.

Considering that MoP ended 8 years ago, how have these people not all quit yet? I think if you take out the big end-game activities, WoW is a pretty shitty game and you could always have a better experience in some other game.

I think either the problem is a lot smaller than some people would lead you to believe or WoW should just die if it can't get the majority of folks to do the 3 axis of content that they want to focus on.

[Alcsaar]

Agree with OP at worse you should be able craft gear for one content their higher than what you are actively clearing/progressing. Best option would be you could craft max ilvl gear (not BiS per say) via crafting and solo material gathering, opening crafting into its own mini-game/end game content/progression path.

No. The last thing I want is to have to buy a full set of crafted gear going into progression raiding.

[overjoyed-goose]

You'll probably need to do that for the first raid, as they said that specialized crafters would be able to make normal raid quality gear. So I would expect to go into it week one with 5 crafted pieces and whatever else you got from mythic 0s.

Shouldn't be an issue for the second raid tier though.

[Celement]

You'll probably need to do that for the first raid, as they said that specialized crafters would be able to make normal raid quality gear. So I would expect to go into it week one with 5 crafted pieces and whatever else you got from mythic 0s.

Shouldn't be an issue for the second raid tier though.

I doubt any crafted items will be used beyond off pieces for slightly better stats.

The real question we have to ask ourselves as mythic players is how much are we going to charge crafters to make us armor for xp with out mats.

5k,10k,15k? Will really depend on the rarity of the bop items.

[Chickat]

Crafters dont need to raid to make mythic gear. Raiders give their bop raid mats to crafters to make gear.

Gear starts around normal item level and even casuals can get that without ever raiding. I believe even heroic raid gear item level will be earnable without raiding through mythic+ dungeons and PVP. Its a much better system than Shadowlands.

[overjoyed-goose]

I doubt any crafted items will be used beyond off pieces for slightly better stats.

The real question we have to ask ourselves as mythic players is how much are we going to charge crafters to make us armor for xp with out mats.

5k,10k,15k? Will really depend on the rarity of the bop items.

There were some interesting abilities that crafted items can get. It remains to be seen if any of them will be strong for raids. For progression at least, the food buff persisting through death sounds really good if your entire group has it.

And after 2 weeks of not seeing a weapon drop you'll probably be paying a lot for a good crafter to take your mythic level weapon work order, not the other way around.

[LazarusLong]

I doubt any crafted items will be used beyond off pieces for slightly better stats.

The real question we have to ask ourselves as mythic players is how much are we going to charge crafters to make us armor for xp with out mats.

5k,10k,15k? Will really depend on the rarity of the bop items.

You won't charge jack shit. It is you who will need our services, not the other way around.