8.3 Catch-up for alts, rerolls, and returning players: Issues and Feedback

Community General Discussion
1

So I want to leave my feedback here, although I doubt anyone will see / care.

I find the catch-up systems to be largely too little.

A new character has to do the cloak quest-line on any character they wish to play. Then needs to run at least 15 visions for cloak ranks. This will likely take a couple weeks due to Visions being limited. During this time, unless they are getting carried through their visions, they are not gathering the full amount of echoes available from those visions. This feels especially bad since visions are the highest return of echoes. Then, once to get your cloak to rank 15, you are now looking at a min of 9 weeks to catch-up to cloak resist (if you rank 15 today) as you can only earn 2 corruption resist upgrades a week while catching up. A character starting today is very likely looking at around 3 months to catch-up in time-gated progression outside of gear.

If that player has essences to unlock, they will very likely have to use what echoes they earn (remember, at a lower rate, since they dont earn all 750 from their Visions yet) and canā€™t yet spend it on the corruptions.
And these corruptions are only available for a limited time on a multi-week rotation, which can be very punishing to miss.

And this doesnā€™t really speak of the horrors if you were coming back pre-Shadowlands but donā€™t have essences unlocked yet.

Honestly, it might be an improvement over how it used to be, but itā€™s still punishing enough that itā€™s not worth the time investment. I have multiple characters where itā€™s not worth the weeks of work to get them functioning and Iā€™ve had a couple friends ā€œjust wait for Shadowlands, I guess.ā€

In all, Iā€™ve not really met a single person who cared how long it takes you to get to current, but Iā€™ve been refused from groups even with friends because my character is not current enough for the content they are doing. Yes they can carry me through things, but Iā€™d rather be able to, I donā€™t know, actually play with them.

In conclusion, I donā€™t think the catch-up mechanics, as implemented, do enough to get players actually caught up. Thereā€™s a strange ā€˜protectingā€™ of time gating cloak corruption levels. Also, utilizing the same currency for unlocking essences as for purchasing corruption that is on a ~4 week rotation leaves the player with a poor choice where the optimal solution, in worst-case scenario, is buy the corruptions now even if you canā€™t use them, since it will likely take less time to earn the essences later than wait for the rotation. And almost all of it being further tied to time-gated Visions runs where class discrepancies are already documented is especially annoying.

30 Likes
2

I agree with youā€¦ I just got my druid alt ready to go: which means, cloak and essences unlockā€¦

But the path ahead is so jarring because I canā€™t really afford to spend echoes with essences because I need the most vessels I can get my hands onā€¦ Which means I have to obtain essences in the old way. (Iā€™ll probably bite and purchase the ones unlocked with rep though).

Iā€™m almost giving up and just staying with this mage until the expansion ends.

Heck, the catch up mechanics in Legion were quite satistactory, I donā€™t know why they dropped the ball with the ones in BfA.

5 Likes
3

You have to actually play the game? Oh noes.

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4

Iā€™ve noticed that they are sticking to the malfric core cloak resistance to the two a week thing pretty hard which either tells me that they are trying to inflate there raid stats or saving for a better catch up down the line ā€œaka shadowlands pre-patchā€ for sub numbers. I can understand the frustration of leveling alts as well, maybe the cloak questline skip would be nice for a minimum.

4 Likes
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Took me 10 days to get my most recent alt to cloak 10, all needed essences and 460ish ilvl.
10 days and I already outgear heroic NYA; if thatā€™s too much for you then perhaps you donā€™t enjoy playing the game.

6 Likes
6

Congrats, if you can do it in ten days that is great. I have maybe around an hour or two a day to work/take care of family so it would take a bit longer for me and most likely many others. I think the gearing and vision pace is fine, its the end where you need the malfric core where you get behind and can not catch up. I cant blame others however if they are in a similar boat as me seeing getting an alt up to speed as a bit daunting.

2 Likes
7

Sorry , not sorry ?

To be caught up you need cloak rank 12 , thatā€™s it .
You dont need the corruption vendor to catch up ā€¦ Ive had more corruption than i could wear before the vendor came out and still do .

The only valid thing that is somewhat hard to catch up is FRESH essences , not those on your alt .

Youā€™re talking catch up mechanics yet mention endgame stuff that people whoā€™ve been grinding since 8.3 droped have ā€¦

This one gets to me , fyi it took me longer than freaking 9 weeks to get my cloak to its current resist , why the F would the catch up shorten it when cloak is current content >.<

TLDR :

Catch up mechanics a meant to be small and only to help speed things up a little , if youā€™re on par with someone who hasnt stoped playing with 75% less effort , something is wrong in this game .

3 Likes
8

I have 17 minutes to play per day, because of work (6 jobs) and 2 families. Itā€™s okay, just play the game. It shouldnā€™t take a week to catch-upā€¦ Whats the point of even playing when an expac comes out if they are just going to add systems for players like you to faceroll through and get max ilvl with /played 17 hours?

1 Like
9

I have done this catch up system on a few alts and an old friend has recently started playing again.

Pro

  • Leveling and gear catch up systems are great
  • Essence catch ups for rank 3 are also great
  • Azerite catch up also great.

Con

  • Levelling up the cloak is a bit tedious, mostly because until you reach much higher in the tree to elite extermination, you are probably not full clearing visions and thus not getting enough momentoā€™s to progress at the rate you are running them.
    Overall 1 run per vision would be fine IF players had elite extermination prior to needing to 5 chest.
    -Corruption catch up, after getting rank 15 and having 50CR instead of 80CR feels bad, if you vision/raid clear every week it will take you 10 weeks to catch up.
2 Likes
10

Sorry, you might have the wrong idea from my post. Agree with you, it takes a while to get caught up on gear and cloak, week or month that doesnt bother me. Its the malfric cores, I can understand with the players who have played longer and have higher cloak resistance deserve it, its just terrible for doing multiple alts going into raid to get cores to catch up.

1 Like
11

Great post, hoping they do something about this. Iā€™d like to raid on some other classes without having to go get the cape and level it up!

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12

Cloak grind - still tedious.
After you have 2-3 toons with level 15 cloaks, your alts should only have to do 3-5 quest steps to get to level 15 ( so 3-5 cloak levels per quest).

Malefic Core catchup - very inadequate.
Like above, if you have 2-3 toons with level 15 cloak then you should be able to get BoA Malefic Cores from any vision run. It can even be masked runs if they donā€™t want to deviate from the ā€œletā€™s-stick-it-to-our-customersā€ philosophy.

Corruption rotation - extremely dumb.
Just put them all up at the same time, ffs.

6 Likes
13

Also, my idea of playing the game is not so much running around doing dailies and running visions over and over. Those are the chores so I can raid and push keys.

And while itā€™s possible to be in a raid, you certainly arenā€™t much use without the appropriate corruptions and you arenā€™t able to perform enough for a mythic guild and itā€™s calendar gated behind weeks of chores rather than skill or even gear. 30 corruption is a lot of power to be just locked behind arbitrary time gating.

To those outraged by it taking less time than it took you, wouldnā€™t you rather have a larger pool of players to play with? And how would you even know if someone got it done faster? And nothing would be stopping you from doing the same with another character if, say, you wanted to play fire mage since itā€™s really strong?

2 Likes
14

Youā€™re trying to shame me without knowing how much hours Iā€™ve spent into the character. :clown_face:
Cloak quest takes ~ 2 hours.
Assaults take like an 90 minutes total to complete.
Visions take 20-30 minutes.
Assaults x2= 3 hours
Visions x 10= 5 hours
Cloak quest = 2 hours

Thatā€™s 10 hours total in two weeks, you still have 4 hours left to run M+.

1 Like
15

If you donā€™t mind me asking, how do you do 10 visions in 2 weeks on a fresh 120?

Not doing dailies only nets about 37,000, which is less than 4. Am I missing something?

1 Like
16

Yeah, imagine not wanting to do boring, grindy content a SECOND time around. Amazing, right?

17

Youā€™d be able to continuously farm echoes and buy vessels (if you wanted to).

In regards to this thread, not sure I agree. I made this character at the start-ish of May. Iā€™m happy with the progress Iā€™ve made so far. 6 weeks of cloak catch-up to go but I know Iā€™ll get there easily enough.

(Still a fair bit to catch up to my main).

18

Curious what corrupts do you have, and how much damage do you do?

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cant play as much as others then you shouldnt be at their level of gear .

took a break or started late - no you shouldnt be able to get to the same level as people who have played all the time without putting in the effort

Leveling alts - same thing - put the same amount of effort in as you did on your main if you want it at the same gear level

1 Like
20

If you find it boring why do it once , why play the game at all. The content is far less grindy now then ever . Its the basic game play of an RPG .

The whole game is based on RNG , every thing you do is based on invisible dice rolls.