Last edited by kubaje; 2019-01-22 at 12:08 AM.
If they don't up the ilvl for dungeons/world content and only introduce the new raid there is nothing to do for people like me. All I do is M+ and world content. I have 3 characters all 380+ and no interest in raiding (anymore). Currently all I do is a m10 each week and log out, I need new gear or I won't resub when my 6 months run out in a few weeks.
And that is what ruined the game. Blizzard tried to make everyone happy, which you can't in basically any aspect of life, and by doing that they made everyone unhappy. It's better to focus on the core audience and just make a good game. People will join and want to play more than just casually. When you make a game where casual players reach the end of the game with way less effort than "hardcore" players, it makes no sense to be "hardcore".
They shot themselves in the foot by trying to do that. Now they think they can't reverse that because they would lose to many subs. They are right, they can't fix that by "soft fixing" it. The game has to change drastically and have "unpopular" changes likes removing automated group finding, getting rid of at least 2 difficulties, slowing the games progression pace and sooo much more.
Will they do that? No, they just won't take that big of a risk.
Well, the 4/26 Q&A talks about the GCD changes being for the longterm health of the game, and classes being designed with a base that can be added to every expansion to be reset at the end. So they've been upfront with this at least. Apparently, people had a problem with MoP bloat... who would have thought.
I think the design philosophy isn't necessarily detrimental to the game but their execution doesn't always seem to hit the mark. You have to be careful when messing with the core systems of the game. Catchups and prunes are more keenly felt than squishes and pathfinder.I could make a subjective case that this might be hurting the overall game more than the advantages. To wit: Most of the criticism of BfA is expressed in "It used to be like this and why don't they go back to that." That misses the point. Developers who imagine that each expansion is more of a stand alone game are very likely to make most old concepts irrelevant. That extends to content and now apparently even to patches.
RoI for Content development has always been an issue probably since raids were introduced. Player segmentation is likely exacerbated by Ghostcrawler's information about your average player. As you said, catchup does a decent job at desegmenting the core player base but I'd say the current cadence of catchups for gear/AP+AK has been turned up to an apathy-inducing level. That, or I've grown bored with the game.WoW is still at heart a raiding game and if you're not raiding (as most aren't in any organized way) the game just sweeps you along on all of its changes while concepts like "the world" and "RPG" no longer apply. Catchup mechanics are specifically designed to do two things: 1) Make it easy to qualify for a raid spot in the newest raid and 2) for non-raiders the progression pace is breathless and more or less constant.
It's a profound shift in thinking and explains much.
ilvl determines the stats budget, so it means plenty. ilvl isn't the cause of the problem, it's a symptom. It wouldn't be an issue if WF/TF and the millions of ways to get loot didn't diminish the value of gear (which is the point of the video about players not caring about gear anymore)
See for those reasons I completely agree with the squish.
I don't agree with it on this standpoint. Sure, add the squish for technical reasons, but when people start demanding the squish because they feel that certain numbers seem too big... which is what the OP seemed to be doing, then you lose me in the argument. If you're numbers-obsessed enough to care that much about your ilvl, you should be mathematically inclined enough to like an increase regardless of how big the numbers are.
I already answered this part many times. Last time it happened here:bloodkin
Sure, hit and expertise are certainly not sexy stats, but at least you felt gear progression as you went up in tiers and had to gem/enchant less and less hit/expertise and more of your favorite stats. This type of progression, of hitting caps in hit, expertise, haste etc. is currently missing. As long as you know your soft/hard caps, you didn't need to sim every piece of gear you got, back then you had to enchant and gem most items, which also fed into the (server)economy of the game, and most people I knew always had a few spare gems/enchants for loot during raids, so waiting wasn't that much of an issue.
As for ilvl... scaling calculates number (size of force) of characteristics drawn on item during its generation, that in current "stupid" RPG customization realities (which is almost non-existent, due to fact that all characteristics don't affect normalization of outgoing digits, but their absolute growth - burst) is main indicator of item “usefulness”, and since "characteristics” (stats, holes for jewels) themselves aren't part of items, but are randomly drawn at it, so basically player has no control over what wears (luck and randomizer are only conditions alone). Before you start denying this, answer the question "Which indicator they use as a pass for automatic search system?"
So ilvl and its growth, as this generally means growth of strength (they tried to add AA as an alternative for "without stats progress", but only confused everyone, since only character must contain everything "class"-related; sets were exclusive and I already talked about my attitude to them, but okay, this is another theme) -> and therefore "imbalance" between characters of different levels -> and therefore "imbalance" between characters of different progress levels, etc., etc. - is an important part of game design. It has always been like that and it always will be and they will have to turn very strongly to cut it out of its design and players memory.
Although, to tell you the truth, I don't see any special positive moves in this, since all this game elements so far, without looking at all persistent attempts to destroy ties, are interdependent. Therefore, either they will follow design and not fool people, or they will fight with system and exacerbate current situation... I don’t see the third option in current conditions.
Therefore, problems with characteristics growth are naturally associated with design approach which I have already designated earlier "content vs progress" and of course this has a direct bearing on forge items as a source of inflation, analogy of which we have already discussed for example here:
As for symptomatology... I won't call them so, rather "illness complications", since connections here isn't direct, but mediated, but these are purely my semantic reasoning (although friends tend to hold opinion that this was not even symptom or complication, but underlying cause, which, together with “medical error”, led patient to coma (this at least I see from their logical reasoning, not sure); maybe they're even right, don’t know; I'm still getting used to role of the one who explains, because it's usually other way around). Same true for overall game design (from here):
Last edited by Alkizon; 2021-08-31 at 09:25 AM.
__---=== PM me WHERE if I'm unnecessarily "notifying" you ===---__
So your saying rpgs use upgrades as a reward to make players feel good like thats a bad thing? lol wut.
+2 sword better than +1 sword was news in 1974, feel like its a part of games as a whole and has been forever.
also people in any game will reach a point of power or skill that its no longer possible to get any stronger the gear/skill hardcap. the better the player the faster they will reach this point. Please tell me a good game that has a point in infinite progression?
best example i can think of is diablo 3's paragon system...and thats super fun..../s please grind more rat runs ugh.
That's another angle in all of this that I'm just not knowledgeable enough to really understand what to think. I personally don't care for PvP (but do enjoy city defense) and view the PvE game as solo/co-operative instead of competitive. So I've just really ignored all that. Someone in this thread or elsewhere was talking about how the skills purge was to set the game up for e-sports. That whole idea was new to me. Just really hadn't thought about it like that.
I don't believe your cynicism is misplaced. I simply don't know and perhaps don't want to understand how the general design has catered to that. I've expressed my dislikes elsewhere (too much math...not enough soul is the TLDR for that) and have come to the conclusion that whatever the design was supposed to do at the start they've lost that. Whether it was because they felt it was in a rut or a reaction to very casual players running out of stuff to do in Warlords I can't decide. I don't hate BfA but I think it a disappointment and the more I play it the more ambivalent I am about it. I'm playing more Guild Wars 2 in any seven day period than WoW and finding that I like it better (for now).
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
erm thats not what im talking about- im talking about how people percive numbers on psychological level - and how you can manipulate "numbers" to get better percived resoults. the most basic case would be 0,99 on prices in shops , other is how you present data - for example 14600 can be presented as "nearly 15k "etc etc - here you "percive" +15 itlv upgrade as much higher if it goes from gear that has 300 itlv then 1000 whether you like it or not . in case of 1000 a lot of people woudl simply cba with 5-10 levels of WF because - "ye who cares" - in case of 300 - hm maybe this 10 itlv is worth it. and they jump on gear threadmill.
yes warforge and titanforge are the major issue.
but when people say "ilvl is going up faster then any other expansion and thats bad" thats not true is the slightest... that is not the reason for the issue...
cause ilvl is literally just a fucking number, its the catchups and the RNG of titanforging and sockets/etc that is the issue among many other things.
ilvl are literally not just "spiking" they are going up now the exact same amount they went up in wotlk for example (then 13, now 15) but we have another difficulty to deal with.
In terms of story, yes, they had an outline - but even the stories are mostly self-contained within one expansion; and I even feel that expansion tie on to each other at least as well now, maybe even more.
But in terms of game-play they either planned to be disruptive (TBC and Wrath were on separate continents) - or didn't have a plan, and unsuccessfully tried to just add more - until they realized that they had to be disruptive.
- - - Updated - - -
You are literally unable to add 1 and 1 together and get 2 (raid tiers), and that's why your predictions for the future are completely off. And trying to hide behind "from one tier to the next" is just a failed attempt to justify your error - since you don't compare one tier to the next, but the lowest of one tier to the highest of the next tier; those differences are within 2 tiers as 1 one plus 1 is 2.
Since wrath there has been two trends for loot in raids during expansions - an increase with difficult in the current raid - it was 13 during Wrath and is now 15 (the difference between 13 and 15 could be due to titanforging; so stop blaming it for everything) - and an increase between raids, but not so that the entry level for the new raid exceeds the final level in the previous raid.
During Wrath the entry level-loot for the new raid was between the top two difficulty-levels for the previous raid; now it is equal to the heroic difficulty level-loot from previous tier.
OS: 200, 213, 226
FL: 219 226-232 239
Jaraxxus: 232 245 258
Marrowgar: 251 264 277
(Yes, there were four difficulty levels for these, but 2 of them had the same level of loot.)
Uldir LFR 340, Normal 355, Heroic 370, Mythic 385
BoD LFR 370 Normal 385 Heroic 400 Mythic 415
This will likely continue - possible with
8.2 AEP LFR 400 Normal 415 Heroic 430 Mythic 445
8.3? LFR 430 Normal 445 Heroic 460 Mythic 475
I have some vague memory of some side-raid as well, that might push up main raid 5-15 levels, unlikely more - and clearly not 45 levels in 8.2 and not 90 levels for 8.3 (assuming 8.3 will come with a raid).
Last edited by Forogil; 2019-01-22 at 08:19 AM.
What bothers me even more is that my tanking gear and my dps gear is exactly same.
I just switch shield and sword from two hander.
1k io both as tank and dps.
I am hardly beaten in dps in m+
I do not even bother changing traits, i simply pick the ones that benefit both specs.
oh I have 6 pieces of TF. 383ilvl.
got 370 weapon from pvp at the start of bfa which i used until 3 weeks ago.
i do not know the names of any of my items. except the trinket which got 395tf. big red button or something i guess.
absolutely retarded design or way clever, i cannot understand.
All I read in the OP is a more clear and loud definition of the "carrot on a stick" concept, which has been driving WoW since TBC.
However, now it seems exacerbated. Not going to stick around to see if it ends well for Blizz, but that's something I want to do for some time now. In my "low WoW love" periods, I was still logging for the raids, but now I just prefer to watch a Brooklyn99 episode or something.