Yep, pretty much.
This has nothing to do with abilities. I used to raid a lot, but setting aside hours a week to run a raid isnât something that really works in modern gaming for a lot of people.
Even then, the game should not put too much stock into content exclusive to certain skill levels in order to get something worthwhile out of it.
Games like FFXIV handle this really well by including the badge system that a lot of people have been asking for from this game forever, that they refuse to implement. WoWâs just behind the rest of the market at the moment.
This isnât saying Iâm not having fun. I wouldnât be subscribed if I werenât having fun. Itâs just this current reward design makes a lot of the more casual content rather worthless, unless you like the current xmogs that drop from these things, which definitely havenât been Shadowlandsâs strength. Perhaps the addition of tier will change that.
I still enjoy WoW, but itâs the least accessible-feeling game I play currently. Between the plateau you have to reach to get any sort of quality out of your time and the toxic people like the person Iâm replying to who like to tout âbad playerâ at others because they donât play the game the same way, itâs a wonder this thing isnât doing so well.
4 Likes
Solo players - We want meaningful character progression.
Also Solo players - I just want max ilvl loot, and donât want to work for it.
1 Like
I base it on contextualizing the information surrounding the game. I donât have subscription numbers that are irrefutable, but what I do have is this:
A plethora of content creators abandoning the game because of its direction, or expressing their discontent with its direction.
A decrease in viewership on Twitch (the game used to average 35k and now routinely sits around 25k, if not around 17k in some spots).
Blizzardâs desperate attempt at framing patches as a âdirect response to player feedbackâ, something theyâve never done prior, and something theyâre probably doing to save face.
Blizzard having to make statements about the state of the game and player dissatisfaction.
9.3 being scrapped because Shadowlands was an abysmal expansion that performed well initially, only to have its player engagement decrease by 40% two months after its release, which isnât good for any live-service game, no matter how much you want to justify it.
And lastly, the massive boom in growth over at FFXIV, which is so popular that they had to give out free game time to players because of the lengthy queues, and had to halt sales of the recent expansion because it was performing so well.
Wrath of the Lich King touted twelve million subscribers, which is still unheard of for an MMO to this day.
Shadowlands touts a very small fraction of that number. Just because youâve heard that for years doesnât somehow negate it right now, because everything surrounding WoW currently points to it fading to obscurity if something doesnât change. There are games that have died for less, and itâs only because of WoWâs legacy that it has remained, but even that can only go so far. Context matters.
Simply put, WoW is the least casual-friendly game right now when stacked against other games. This whole âgo play another game if thatâs what you want!â is completely ignorant of how markets shift and trends change. If Blizzard wants WoW to stay relevant, then compromises need to be made. Phil Spencer wants more players playing WoW. The only way to do that is by designing a game that caters to everyone, not just a select number.
2 Likes
Solo players - We want meaningful character progression that doesnât infringe on the character progression obtained in raids and M+. Hereâs how we can do that.
Raiders - âLOl casUALS waNT HanDoUTsâ
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FFXIV has a âcontent droughtâ a month after a major patch drops. Itâs hard for me to take it seriously as a game that WoW should ape.
Heck, FFXIV itself tells its fans to go play other games every so often. If you told WoW players its okay to unsub from the game as if to encourage them to take a break and that it was their fault for running out of things to do, they would lose their minds, because WoW has been so dominant that it has been possible to play just WoW for 17+ years.
Okay, youâve got open-world, and youâve got LFR. Which do you think should have higher ilvl? Any answer you make is the wrong answer because it makes the other one worse, and if theyâre the same ilvl, LFR is worse because open-world is more accessible. One is worse than the other, and because you donât play for fun, and you only play for loot, one is always âworthâ.
You need to step back and think rationally and admit that itâs okay for LFR to be worthless. Because thatâs really the truth. Itâs okay for LFr to be worthless because it already derives its worth from acting as a tourist feature. It doesnât need to be the source of loot, because if LFR gave better loot and had its own intrinsic worth as a tourist mode, it would invalidate the open-world.
It kind of does though. There isnât 12 million people who are just sitting on a bench waiting to play WoW if WoW does X. Thatâs not how it works. The market has changed. You can make excuses as to why we should use that 12 million but Blizzard doesnât and their investors donât either. Youâre simply wrong and trying to port wrong-think into the conversation because you canât really argue your point otherwise.
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I didnât insinuate that there was, but the general trend of how games work is that people leave, and more people come in. I donât expect the same twelve million people to be playing WoW today. I donât expect there to be twelve million people in general playing, but you should be bringing in new players to compensate for the ones leaving, or to at least mitigate the loss in growth so that itâs not substantial.
League of Legends still retains 10 million active daily users. Itâs 14 years old.
If you were a board member for a massive company whose gameâs subscription numbers decreased significantly, and all you did was shrug about it, youâd be fired on the spot.
Says the guy whose argument boils down to âlol casual players badâ because his ego is intrinsic to his precious AotC achievement.
And anyone who plays FFXIV would tell you that the game doesnât need consistent updates to keep players engaged, because unlike WoW, Square Enix actually invests in parts of the game beyond dungeons and raiding.
4 Likes
Anything that provides alternative methods of gearing is good. it should not be raid/keys/arena or bust. The original concept of Torghast they talked about sounded like it would have been that: scaling endgame content with progression for the solo/duo/small group players e.g. imagine a player who only plays with their spouse or kids and doesnât want to involve strangers.
This demographic, the one that wants a MMORPG in the sense they can see a world alive with other players but arenât necessarily required to engage with them, has been almost completely ignored in favour of a system that listens to the small minority who want to feel better than their peers. Itâs quite telling that the people who think the current system is great are the ones who directly benefit from it and have no problem doing it while the people who have it do not and get shouted down/insulted (âyouâre just badâ or selfish âitâs not job to help scrubsâ type replies) by the former.
Itâs fine if the gear takes time for the people only engaging in open world content. Nobody is asking for it to be as fast as raiding/keys, despite the constant straw man argument from the tryhards about âcasuals want free lootâ . It needs to feel meaningful to people doing it, however, and not like doing chores to save enough allowance to buy something.
5 Likes
Sounds great.
Your âsolo playerâ peers didnât want that though. They shouted it down and had it nerfed to oblivion.
Maybe we could be living in a world where Torghast in 9.2 was a great solo progression like Visions of NâZoth, but we donât live in that world because the most vocal solo players have demanded that solo gearing be stress-free, easy, and something they can abandon at any time and only engage with for as little time segment as possible - which has led to solo content mostly taking the form of the same Timeless Isle / Korthia / Zereth Mortis style grinds over and over and over, because itâs the design that checks those boxes.
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Nah, no solo player has come out with a meaningful argument at all.
Its been just âwe want higher ilvl to solo rares and do old raidsâ while being given normal/better than normal raid ilvl loot, for doing dailies.
Thats theâs the absolute defintion of
The game has never been this casual friendly (outside of the awful SL pvp gearing system), and yet casuals still whine.
Vanilla - Epics only came from raids/PvP/exalted rep rewards which didnt give out every slot
TBC/WotLK - Epics were slightly easier to get, due to Justice/Valor but otherwise the same, and the odd exalted rep rewards
Cata - introduction of LFR lol (along with still having Justice/Valor) but otherwise still same
MoP/WoD - See above.
Legion - Same, minus Artifact weapons (which scaled with Relics, and Epics were from gasp raids/mythic plus)
BFA - Benthic gear lol
Then we have SL
Korthia gear being 233 ilvl after upgrades (while normal Sanctum, the current raid tier gives 226 ilvl and Heroic is only 239).
Literally 6 ilvls behind heroic content⌠for doing dailies, killing rares and looting chestsâŚ
Unbelieveable
So yeah, explain to me again, how SL is super solo/casual unfriendly, and doesnât have a âsoloâ player progression methodâŚ
Lmao
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I think they should, dare I say, bring back âTitan Forgingâ.
**runs and hides
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Iâve actually said multiple times that perhaps gearing for solo content be significantly slower, capped out at heroic raid-level gear, and have the gear rewards in heroic raids have higher drop rates. Raiders get the gear faster, solo players still get the gear but it takes longer.
Seems reasonable to me.
And a quite a few BiS items came from outside raids, so solo and casual players still had the chance to get great gear instead of average gear.
Also, Iâve also countered this argument by saying that the power gap between pre-raid gear and raid gear in Vanilla/TBC/WotLK wasnât as significant as it is today due to a lack of multiple difficulties. Blizzard has done extremely little compensating for that power gap with todayâs game.
But even so, saying itâs been like this for forever is irrelevant to me, because my entire argument to begin with is that it should change. So pointing out to me WoWâs history is a tired argument.
3 Likes
Hahahaha
No.
Queue up.
K O R T H I A G E A R
Is literally better than normal raid tier⌠and 6 ilvls behind heroic.
Youâre like a starving man being given a free burger for nothing, and then complaining its not a Big Mac.
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No, no I donât think I will.
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And it should be equal to heroic.
Why?
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Yes you certainly do.
Embarrassing.
Youâre not even in korthia gear yet, and complaining that you canât get heroic ilvl gear.
Do you even play this game, or just whine on forums?
Not really.
Stay mad.
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Iâm not the one crying on the forums that Iâm not being rewarded end game gear, for doing literally WoW chores lmao.
Stay bad
Certainly seems like it.
You havenât even cleared SoD on heroic, never mind normal, and your highest key is 11 timed at 50 minutes.
How embarrassing for you.
4 Likes