Raiding isn’t mythic or bust.
What about heroic, which is by far the largest guild focused raiding difficulty?
And mythic raiding is about the worst reward to difficulty ratio its ever had in the game. It is truly only for those that feel the satisfaction of the kill beyond 3/9.
No. Method was 410 3 months ago. Not “people who do mythic.” I’ve been in mythic nearly since it opened up and am 414. I’ve been 414 for the past month. The gradient is present I agree, but it’ll be very narrow: 400-415. Which blizzard has said so themselves, that this is equivalent of 1 jump in power (15 ilvls).
TF we can safely keep out of this, as it’s not a reliable method of gearing (IIRC that was yours and others stance in the TF thread). Even if it is, all parties equally can receive TF gear, so it nulls itself out in the end.
Ok… 15 minutes then. Yes that’s approximately how long it takes me to do an emissary on any of my toons except maybe not a brand new 120. I don’t think anyone has stated that Crucible has been replaced. We said BoD. Which it will be.
If you want to die on the hill of 5 ilvl difference in power between emissaries and heroic BoD (something Blizzard has stated is an insignificant jump in power), then you must surely admit that Normal mode will be completely obsolete. Heck LFR is currently obsolete, but now Normal mode within it’s own tier will be obsolete…
2 minutes is how long it can take to do a WQ that awards 370 loot… the same ilevel as LFR, which CAN take hours and doesn’t award guaranteed loot.
An emissary quest obviously takes longer. Maybe 15 minutes. But that’s still a lot less time than the quickest LFR and awards much, MUCH higher ilevel loot.
I’m all for having multiple avenues to get gear upgrades. But there’s a problem when the easiest possible method awards better gear than those which require much more time and effort.
As a Heroic raider/m+ player, there are maybe 1-2 items I can use from CoS and then I will also have zero opportunities for gear upgrades.
Another reason I liked MoP’s upgrade system better, it would give both the causal players you’re talking about progression and also give players like myself progression. It would give Mythic raiders progression too. Where’s the downside?
The reasons are plain. The change is to shift the goal post for the casual player base keeping them running the same hamster wheel, while also giving a boost to the norm/heroic raiding base and nerfing their content.
For the former group, I’d rather we get new content to them, or maybe pace out the rewards better in their own content than simply go “GOTCHA! Now you can go up to 395/400!” Keep doing the same thing!
For the latter group, my solution worked for over a decade. Not sure why it was a problem before. It also still maintains the ability to continue power progression without turning most of them into ground zero.
Method was 410 and they were that ilvl predominantly from chain running M+. Which wasn’t exclusive to Method. If you’re only 414 after working on Mythic for just under 3 months I don’t know what to tell you. I have a toon that’s close to your ilvl and I only do heroic and M+. I don’t see a problem with a small gradient personally, but then again I’m not someone who cares about gear other people have at all. In my mind, the important question is if someone does Mythic are they going to be better geared than someone who does Heroic? Is someone who does Heroic going to be better geared than someone who does Normal? M+ muddies the waters here but the gist is generally the same. I’m actually not an advocate for large gaps between tiers.
You keep making the statement as if this is a binary situation. It’s not. People will still do LFR, normal, and heroic after the change goes in. It’s not a “if it happens then BoD normal/heroic are obsolete!” situation. If you have a 370 weapon and BoD reset happens are you going to say, “hrm, well I’m gonna wait for an Emissary!” or are you going to go do normal BoD like you used to do? Your argument is all slippery slope silliness.
But that’s my point. This isn’t about other peoples gear. The gradient your suggesting for everyone for themselves is 400 - 415. That means everyone except mythic raiders and people who chain run M+ will be around 400-405. That includes Casual players, LFR raiders, Norm raiders, and even casual heroic raiders. Meanwhile Mythic raiders are around 411-418 (that’s my 6/9M raid group); My guilds main raid group (8/9M working on Jaina) averages at 416. The most geared raid group in the world averages 418 according to wowprogress.
That’s your gradient. 400 - 418, at best. Bliz themselves have stated that this is only a single jump in power progression. Do you not see how that just may be a problem? There’s no where to go… for anyone at this point.
The people who enjoy progress, enjoy their social interactions, and enjoy the challenge? Sure. That’s why I’m still here. Heck you even said it yourself, you’re as geared as I am, yet I’m vastly ahead of you in progression (not a knock on you, just a statement of fact).
The people who prioritize gear? No. They’ll just unsub. I don’t know why you can’t seem to accept that such people exist. Whether you think they’re right to do so or not is irrelevant. They do matter and we do want them playing the game. Give us an actual gradient of power acquisition for people to ascend.
That’s basically a description of the entire game. It’s a progression hamster wheel. It’s been this since vanilla.
I’d be more than happy with more deterministic content or new content to work on as opposed to utilizing existing systems because, well, it would be new versus repeated content over and over again. But that takes money to develop the content and it doesn’t change or address the underlying issue. Casuals deserve progression regardless of the method we’re talking about. We can throw out hypothetical systems all day that would be better, but what we have is dailies and Emissary quests. That’s where the rewards are going to come from. But the problem isn’t that you’re okay with them getting progression but that you don’t like the specific source of progression. It’s the specific ilvl they’re getting bumped too because it’s too close to your ilvl. This boils down you sweating the ilvl of gear other people are getting, to which I have zero sympathy for such a position.
To some extent it is binary.
Once my characters are geared enough that LFR no longer is likely to give an upgrade I stop running it.
The same applies to normal and heroic raids. Why waste a whole evening killing stuff I’ve killed many times before when there’s no realistic chance of an upgrade.
With WQ and emissary loot being better than LFR and normal mode raid loot, there’s even less reason to run those raids. I could waste 3 hours raiding in the hope that I’ll get an upgrade or two. Or I could just shelve that character and wait a few days for the necessary WQ or Emissary and spend less than 15 minutes to get a guaranteed upgrade that’s better than I would have gotten in LFR or normal.
There’s a cost-benefit analysis to raiding. If the benefit (loot) doesn’t outweigh the cost (time), then it’s not worth doing.
And I’m saying that you’re crunching that hamster wheel into a tiny circle for the vast majority of players.
Once you achieve maximal results from the new WQ system:
LFR - Does not progress your character
Norm - Does not progress your character
Heroic - Barely progresses your character
M+ Dungeon reward chest - Barely progresses your character
M+ Weekly chest - Progresses your character 1 tier of power
Mythic - Progresses your character 1 tier of power
Again, the main reason people are complaining is not that this is happening, but WHEN it’s happening. We’re in the middle of the tier. Not preparing for 8.2…
Oh I thought better of you Avagon. I don’t know how many times I have to state that I don’t care what you’re wearing. What I see is that you’re pretty much turning the vast majority of the current game system into obsolete content. That’s what I care about, and to state otherwise is just blind ignorance. Do you see anyone running Uldir for character progression? Neither do I.
You seem incapable of understanding that there exists different types of player in this game. There are those who prioritize progression (sounds like you and me) and those who prioritize gear progression. You’re blatantly ignoring the latter to the games detriment.
And you don’t expect that that will increase between now and the release of 8.2? Somehow the bottom is going to come up with the introduction of the changes tomorrow but the top isn’t going to move? That’s a tad deceptive, particularly since Crucible Mythic is about to open.
400 is up for all of my alts, some more than others. My highest that I don’t do group content on is 396 so it won’t be a huge increase there but it will be an increase. In the least I can say that I don’t do Emissaries on that toon anymore and after this change I will. But the increase isn’t going to be instantaneous. It’s going to happen over the next couple months as Emissaries come and go. And I’ll probably end up getting a ton of duplicate slots or 395’s for slots I already have 400’s in. That’s the way it goes with time gated random rewards though.
I said I’m close to you. My highest toon is ~409 or so. I’d have to check as I have 3 that I’m doing M+ 10’s and raiding on atm and they fluctuate.
I’m of the opinion that any decision made probably pushes some people away. It’s not a matter of denying that people who value gear exist or debating whether they have a right to value things that way. It’s a matter of what’s practical as a business. If the casual folks are unsubbing because they have no item progression left, do you deny them progression to keep a much smaller population happy? Do you honestly believe that people who don’t engage in organized group content are less prone to unsubbing than people who do engage in organized group content? The latter group has social connections that keep them around even if aspects of the game aren’t as fun as they used to be. The former group just stops playing because they don’t have those social ties. I mean, we could delve into a big pit of tangents about player psychology that I’d find interesting, but ultimately my guess is as a company the goal is to keep casuals happy and paying even if their needs are at odds with the more vocal and competitive players.
Im so happy they keep invalidating previous raid tiers by upping caches because people don’t want to do the main PvE thing at level 120.
Wait, the main thing is M+ now? Welp, guess im swapping to a rogue/demon hunter so that I feel needed/useful.
A character that has been 120 since the first week of release should be miles ahead of a character that hit 120 last month. The amount of catch up mechanics is too ridiculously high and the rewards from raiding is too low to warrant anyone to want to raid. The transmog sucks, the mounts are invisible, the titles are nowhere, the achievements are a dream, and noone is truely enjoying the actual raids because they’re flat out not fun.
Get rid of emissaries, this isn’t diablo. Get rid of titanforging. Get rid of personal loot for guilds. Get rid of bonus rolls. Get rid of IE’s. Get rid of warfronts.
Make M+ not mandatory. Make raids fun. Make classes more balanced. Add in 110 and 120 talents. Get rid of azerite. Add back tier sets. Add back Master Loot for guilds
Ok. Let’s change the goal post to that then. Let’s assume the absolute best. Every mythic raider is 425. (FYI, this is also disingenuous, because a lot of the gear in CoS isn’t that great anyway… So… At most you’re talking about a few pieces for the entire raid)
Your gradient is STILL only 400-425, which according to blizzard is at most 1.5 increases in power, which you’re stretching across 4 difficulties.
So you being 5 ilvls behind me (a value blizzard, not me, has determined to be relatively insignificant) doesn’t in anyway seem flawed? AGAIN… Before you accuse me of this, I do NOT give one rats iota what you’re wearing. I’m coming at this from a design perspective.
Please show me your sources that indicate that such is happening? I think we have a fair bit of complaints from the “smaller population” and how their leaving, but where is your evidence to support that argument. Those same players had the same systems in place for all of Legion, yet they didn’t require similar bumps to maintain their subs?
Yes, we’re in the middle of a tier. And we also just had a 2 boss raid zone put out that has gear that goes up to 425 ilvl. Which is kinda explicitly why they stated they are upping ilvl. You keep glossing that over and only comparing it to BoD when BoD isn’t the only raid zone out for this tier now.
It’s interesting, but that’s my exact position. I’m talking about the group of people that you seem to think I’m ignorant of. Except I’m talking about people who don’t do organized group content. Just because people choose not to engage in organized group content doesn’t mean they don’t care about gear. And I’ll be honest with you, for my alts that’s exactly how I play them. When I no longer have a reason to play them due to hitting a cap of what I can get with solo content I simply stop playing them. That’s exactly why I understand that side of the fence. If I wasn’t raiding or doing M+ with guildies I would have almost no reason to login anymore because I hit a wall with most of my alts.
If the logic is “when casual players run out of opportunities for gear upgrades, they stop having a reason to log in, so Blizzard needs to inclrease the ilvl of their rewards.”
Then why does this not also apply to raiders? Because a lot of raiders have exhausted the gear opportunities from BoD at this point, but Blizzard isn’t scaling up the ilvl of BoD gear drops.
As it stands, this isn’t about making sure no-one hits a wall in gear progression, it’s about minimizing the gap between raiding and non-raiding players.
Not to beat a dead horse, but Blizzard could have made Emissaries drop an upgrade item that boosts the ilvl of one item (an item of a particular slot even, if they want to preserve the RNG…) by X ilvls. It would still accomplish everything you’re talking about in terms of giving non-raiding players gear progression, but it would also give raiding players gear progression. With the added bonus of not making raid gear feel obsoleted, and even potentially breathing some life into LFR/Normal raid gear.
Now I’m not sold on the idea that heavily nerfing the content (or functionally doing so via gear upgrades) midway through the tier is the best thing, but if we’re on this train of mandatory constant gear progression we should at least keep it even across difficulties.
It’s the same tier. Blizzard has stated so. Curious, but did we see a similar increase with ToV opening after EN? So much so that the WQ literally out-paced EN rewards?
I guess I side with the people who are actively trying to improve their characters and are being artificially reset to zero by Blizzard mid tier, rather than the people who are intentionally halting their own character progression.
The only people standing in the way of the those you’re seeking to aid, is themselves. Again, they didn’t need this bump in Legion to stay subbed, and you’ve provided zero evidence to indicate they are unsubbing currently.
The answer to that is no because emissaries didn’t give squat for gear for a majority of legion. Even in Tomb I am pretty sure emissaries gave like 840 IL purples.
For EN, ToV, and NH, I was a Norm/Heroic casual raider, and I never remember thinking to myself: Oh I should go do those WQ because the emissary gives me equal gear.
Yet I don’t remember seeing a mass exodus then? Heck Legion is considered in general a success.
I think it’ll be closer to low 400’s to about 420ish by the time 8.2 releases. I don’t have a problem with that at all.
No actually I don’t find that problematic. I think it’s ridiculous that the gap in ilvl (and consequently performance) was humongous between tiers of difficulty in previous expansions, particularly from top to bottom normal - mythic. I find the reduction in the gap a very welcome change.
If you don’t believe casuals make up the vast majority of the playerbase I’m not going 3 rounds with you while you deny it. Which prettymuch makes the discussion moot. You can stick your head in the sand and believe whatever you want. While speculative, I believe that’s at least partly why this change is happening, to which the outcome is to let them sit for upwards of 2 more months while we wait on 8.2 at an ilvl cap with no content to do or bump up the ilvls of gear through solo world content. If you have no response to that, well, cool, but we’re left with nothing else to say on this point.
Pretty sure for most of Legion Emissaries just gave you a phat amount of rep and then a bag with an 840 purple and some amount of order hall resources/gold/ap.
The later reps added the respective currencies (Veiled Argunite for the two antorus reps and then nethershards and the donation currency for Legionfall).