Why can't gear just be gear? Why all these shitty systems?

[Biomega]

Option 2 also costs them subs. Like mine. In BFA, the amount of subs certainly dropped precipitously and it was often directly related to option 2. I think they have made the wrong choice in attempting to keep people subscribed by putting out as many shitty grinds as possible.

Yes, but I think they'll lose subs no matter what because you can't please everyone. They're doing the calculations, and trying to find the way that retains the most players. Retaining ALL players will be impossible by definition.

That's not to say there isn't room for improvement, of course. Nothing says they've found the perfect solution, far from it. In fact, I think that much of BFA's attempts at player retention has backfired spectacularly. We'll have to see how SL handles it.

[Depakote]

gear cant just be gear because there are 4 stats in the game.

Therefore making gear interesting is 100% impossible. All gear feels the exact same.

Then maybe they should reverse all the idiotic changes they've made to the game.

[Ghostile]

who likes it?

now that we've had it for however many expansions, nobody seems to like it. nobody is really happy with the current state of anything.

if some people do like it, whatever. but they're vastly outnumbered at this point. i'd 100% bet money that the vast majority of people that called for it deeply regret doing so.

People who like things dont post on forums. For all we know the silent majority might consider bfa the best expansion. (Which I doubt, but the lack of evidence makes it possible)

[arkanon]

This is how I'd want items to be found...
Bosses drop particular trophies.
These trophies are turned in for a varying currency.
Currency is spent on buying an item.
Items have set bonuses that augment a particular class ability.
Items have Stamina + main stat + random secondary stat.
You'll have to purchase a new item to get the desired secondary stat.
Items have experience needed to reach peak strength or max rank.
Each rank increases stats and bonus.
Bonus is increased based on an average of set ranks.

Example item:
Brethren Chestguard of Critical Strike
Rank 1 of 5
100 Armor
500 Stamina
400 primary attribute (changes based on current spec)
250 critical chance
Set Bonus (1/2): Causes [ability] to reduce your next ability cost by 5%.

So you think its a good idea to have full RNG on secondary stats? You like the idea of having to buy 5, 10, 25 of the same item to get haste because haste is your main secondary? Yikes man, this is exactly what players have hated for a long, long time.

[Biomega]

What I think they're going to realize after this expansion's debacle is that it cost them a lot of box revenue. A lot of people who buy every expansion haven't been playing for like 18 months now because bfa was so bad, and they're not going to buy Shadowlands. The problem is the bridge is burned now. Even if they realize it they've lost so many people that all that's left are the play every day group.

That may be true, however it's exceedingly tricky to establish causality here. All they'll see is less people bought SL than expected - but WHY people didn't buy SL, that's a whole different matter. It COULD be because BFA = Blizzard Fucked Alts. But how do you know for sure? It could also be a number of other things. Maybe people didn't like the raiding, maybe it was AP grinding on mains as well as alts, maybe people don't like the lack of a core new feature like new class/race in SL, or any of 10,000 other reasons. It's really hard to conclusively draw the line from lost subs/sales to one specific cause like treatment of alts. Of course there's always going to be a multitude of causes anyway, but even just saying how much one particular cause contributed is very, very hard to do.

[Sondrelk]

Well the simple reason is because Blizzard listens to the community.

Players wanted gear with cool effects like in Vanilla.
Players wanted diverse systems that all can be a viable form of progression.
Players do not want to farm PvP to be optimal for PvE, or vice versa.

Solution= Infinite gearing systems where all gear can have interesting effects, and you can get said interesting effects without having to commit to a gamemode you do not enjoy.

[Biomega]

You're right that it's easy to make up alternate arguments, but I don't buy any of those. It's just how Ion's going to justify things to Activision... another big dumb corporation focused on short term profits without realizing that they're driving their product into the ground.

The real issue, though, is that it's not about what WE think - it's about what THEY think. We can be convinced all we like that it was certain systems (most of which screw over alts) that caused BFA's sub plummet, but we are not the ones who make the design decisions of the future. Plus, we only have incomplete data. We don't have access to Blizz's surveys, their market research, their questionnaires when people cancel subs, heck we don't even have a comprehensive view of forum opinions, which I'm sure some interns at Blizz HQ have put into an Excel sheet and converted into numbers. So while to us it may SEEM like thing A is the problem, it could very well turn out that the data Blizzard has tells them it's more likely to be thing B. Whether or not they're RIGHT about that, well, that's the next question.

And all that doesn't even go into the real core of the issue: their goal isn't satisfying all customers. It's satisfying enough customers to enough of a degree that they generate maximum profit. They're totally and 100% fine with pissing people off, as long as it's the right number of people.

[Sondrelk]

You're right that it's easy to make up alternate arguments, but I don't buy any of those. It's just how Ion's going to justify things to Activision... another big dumb corporation focused on short term profits without realizing that they're driving their product into the ground.

Or, counterargument. You have a narrow view of how the game works woven solely from how you want the game to be in your head.

You might not want infinite gearing, but there are other players who do want to be able to bum around the game outside raid hours and get something out of it.
You might want difficult raids with massive attunements, but other dedicated players who have grown up would also like to be able to experience the game with their friends without treating it like a second job.

What one players likes another might enjoy immensely. I enjoy seeing Blizzard experiment with new gamemodes like Islands, because i think it benefits the game long-term. Others might enjoy PvP and WPvP, and would love to see it flourish further, yet i cannot stand it, what would be a terrible viewpoint for me to have however is that WPvP is awful and a waste of time, because there are other players who enjoy it.

[Metrox]

This expansion has gear that requires me to do something that I had to do in Cataclysm expansion...... go to a third party website for gear advice. I would opine that close to half of players have used Raidbots or run their own Simulation Craft program during BFA. This seems to be an indication of gear problems to me.

In Cata, I could reforge and aim toward my best traits. I could turn a "meh" piece of gear into something that was better than I had equipped. Granted it took a third party website (Mr Robot IIRC) to help gem everything back to cap Hit....Expertise....etc. However, I did end up with a better piece of gear than I started with and an acceptable replacement for my current equipped item.

In BFA, I get an item that may have a socket, corruption, or a random proc besides being an item level upgrade. Off to Raidbots I go just to see if it will "sim" better than what I have. If not, then I keep it in the bag for item level increase (worthless but necessary if you need item level to get into pugs). You breathe a sigh of relief when you get a piece of gear that is "clean" and has no proc....just stats. Even you can probably figure out whether to equip it.....congratulations....no third party website needed!

Current gear drops from world quests or wherever are a convoluted mess. I remember when a Blizzard employee told us that it was not going to be necessary for us to have to use a third party program just to choose a piece of gear. That sound I hear is the backup bell on the Blizzard truck. Meanwhile, have fun and stay safe in the game!

[Rogue Karl]

Any reason I can think of doesn't really sound positive...

Either there are game mechanics designers that have to justify their existence or blizzard thinks super random drops are popular but given the reaction of the community I don't think they are...

I know I miss the days I didn't have to sim every drop I got.

[Tumble]

I agree. I like having a BiS list for the current content level I'm doing. Having multiple rings/boots/bracers in my bag that have better stats and higher item level because of corruption is annoying and doesn't really encourage character progression.

The idea that this system is somehow content is absurd. Most people I've played with over the years don't quit when they get their Bis, and the ones who do aren't going to hang around any longer, the don t quit because they get geared, they quit because they are bored with the content.

In an ideal world for gear for me goes like this.
Questing>regular dungeons>heroic dungeons>Regular raid>heroic raid>mythic raid.
Linear progression is great and gives you something realistic to work towards.

I also think they should put more focus on things like the mage tower and horrific visions. I love the concept of challenging solo play. I just wish it wasn't gear based and instead skill based. With nothing other than transmog/titles/mounts and the new socket as rewards it would keep people going. Put times on them the same way with M+ and give people records to break and add a version of competition for solo play.

Just my thoughts.

[Kralljin]

Well the simple reason is because Blizzard listens to the community.

The community has been pretty vocal in their dislike of Titanforging since Legion.

And Titanforging+Sockets essentially is Infinite Progression.

[RumbleShakes]

So you think its a good idea to have full RNG on secondary stats? You like the idea of having to buy 5, 10, 25 of the same item to get haste because haste is your main secondary? Yikes man, this is exactly what players have hated for a long, long time.

How many secondary stats are there? Mastery, Crit, Haste, and Vers... that's a 25% chance. 5, 10, 25? What are you talking about? There's a 25% chance. I don't think it would take everyone 25 attempts to get a 25% chance. Please go back to math class and pass it this time.

Since you can't think well... let me give a quick scenario:

Player wants haste version of a set which has 3 items (boots, legs, belt).
Player kills bosses enough to get 5 items.
Player buys boots of the set, but it's critical strike.
Player buys boots of the set again, and it's haste.
Player buys legs of the set, and it's mastery.
Player buys legs of the set again, and it's vers.
Player buys legs of the set again, and it's vers.

You could even add in a feature where if you buy an item and it's critical strike, then you won't get another critical strike until all secondary stats are made of that particular items. This would mean you'd have to buy an item 4 times to get the stat you want at most.

[Vakash]

Urgh yeah it's such a royal pain and catch 22. If you're having fun, you used to log in and play for hours charmed with the game even though there wasn't any need to, exploring wintergrasp, having fun, finding herbs, dancing with buddies, etc or screwing around on a roleplaying server having some fun times with buds with a couple ice cold drinks of choice.

Nowadays it's like the more time you play the more they do to keep you on a endless meaningless +3% more dps on your 1k dps cloak design for a whopping 30 dps increase but you need it for the corruption resist so the thing doesn't blow you up.

[rrayy]

Yes? I don't understand how this question comes up every single time a topic like this gets created. Of fucking course i'd rather have nothing to do and quit. I want to be able to ""complete"" the game, at least temporarily, to free up time for other things, other hobbies. No game should keep you on the hook the entire fucking time. Why would you not want that? Do you want to be addicted? To play the same game every single day?

There is nothing that absolutely requites you to do every grind. You can quit at any time. The problem here is you, not the game. Stop blaming the game for your inability to quit when you don't want to play anymore.

[diarx]

Gear can't be gear because they believe obfuscation of power can keep people distracted enough from the mind-numbingly boring one dimensional class design.

[Itori]

I think id like it more if there was a finish line for raiding. Im the type that once i finish my stuff for the week ill go back and do side things for stuff i missed. I really enjoyed it during WotLK, my druid ended up with max rep for almost everything with all enchanting and alchemy recipes and being proud of her.

[Vakash]

So what, it seems like no matter what you do, people on the general discussion forms are on a spectrum from say casual questers, once a week dailies doers. People with lots of talent but no time, gurgling wowBabies with no talent yet but lots of time. dead raiding even on alli high pop and horde medium pop and a 10th the population the game used to have.. And proceeds to release a legacy server of one of the oldest, most crudest versions of the game, and triples it's expansion.

Look at Rs3, look at OSRS, runescape once had 200k players and dropped to 70k concurentl before the EoC combat update. They went "Players just don't want to play this old game anymore, we need to revamp it", made the EOC (Evolution of Combat, and put microtransactions and BAM, population instantly halved overnight, people quit in droves not liking what the game became, then they brought back what they liked and got all their subs back. The EoC was such a unmitigrated buggy disaster, good intentions maybe, terrible execution and not thought out for the playerbase and years of economy and the target audience. aka it's like if you played chess for years and one day chess decided it needed to be the next action rpg and mmo game and then accidentally left half it's pieces without moves, the rook could now one shot everything in existance, the queen now loaded and died on contact with the queen, and pawns could now instantly only promote to naked warlocks and solo everyone in a game with 2000 different mobs and a economy of 8 million gp dragon claws (in a day when 100k gp a hour was bank), massively dropped and became alch value overnight."

Modern WoW screwed up like RS3 did to 2009-2011 having a sweet time than crashing it. WOD was a mistake, but they've just fumbled every ball since(BFA) even when they caught it (Legion), then they hurled it away and invented AzeriteNgesus so you could get 2 hour tank ques from lack of proper azerite gear traits on the gear you need even rolling..

[Kithelle]

"Worked for ages". Of course you don't remember growing "nothing to do" and "AFKing in capital" problem that reach it's peak during WoD. Now you don't even have to remember this, just watch what 60s usually do in Classic.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't, it's boring I have nothing to work for...I'm tired of grinding for better gear!

[Rappy28]

You dont enjoy character progression? I guess you should stop playing wow or mmos in general. LOL.

Yes because that is exactly what I said. How did you even get this from my post ?

I enjoy progressing on multiple characters, and also maybe, just maybe, having a life beside the game.

Your point is moot since another MMO precisely allows me to do this.