I really love the idea of catch-up mechanics, but the fact that I myself have to catch up every time a major patch comes out is already getting a bit tiring, even this early on. I understand the intent of the mechanic, and it does make it easier to swap classes I suppose - to get an alt to the level my main was at, or better, but it makes the actual accquisition of gear feel … empty.
Are there any other more casual players out there that share these thoughts? I feel like if I’m going to spend a little bit of time on the game, the reward should be valuable long after, instead what was meant to help people catch-up and get into the meat of the game feels like it just incentivizes re-gearing every patch or so - to play the same content I was before, because it’s now been boosted up…
What you call “catch-up”, I call “the game”. I guess I must be more casual than you.
( I would be open to tiers lasting a little longer - but I suspect the balance between “reaching a comfortble plateau to putter around the world” and “bored now” is probably different for each person )
I hate catch up mechanics…they make me feel like my time is wasted cause just wait a couple weeks and it’ll be easier then b4 Is just stupid. It makes me feel like the task I’m doing is not worth doing
New tiers, higher ilvl gear, cap on neck increased, harder content is released. It’s all cyclical. You progress through the xpac in patches of content.
And as someone wise once said “Nothing lasts forever”.
that’s the end game. To keep players continue to play the game must continue to provide reasons that people played it to begin with.
People play mmo to level up and get more powerful while getting cool gears.
When that stops, end game players stop having anything to do in the game.
Thats why back in the good ol days then it wasn’t that easy to level up. leveling up was the game, once people get to the end there wasnt much to do, they either pvp, socialize or make a new character.
But now for WoW most of the game doesn’t start until you hit max level.
So at max level in order for people to continue enjoying the mmorpg experience.
We have reputation grinds to have something to work towards. Artifact level grinds to still "level up"and get more powerful
new raids with higher ilevel gear so max level players can still have progression and get more powerful gear
Because of this, you will never stop trying to “catch up”, since seasoned players always need something to do
I’m fine with cyclical, but they’re not even adding any new dungeons or anything, just affixes…
Seeing as there’s only a few dungeons we can even be bothered to do most of the time, I don’t know how much longer we can keep going like this. It’s fun now, but if we go a few more patches without anything new to do, why would we bother gearing up again?
In the “good old days” they also kept people subscribed by NOT having catch-up mechanics. It also kept raids relevant throughout the entire expansion.
Example: My friends and I started raiding in Burning Crusade about 6 months after the expansion had started. We STILL had to do Kara, then the rest of Tier 4, in order to get the gear to do Tier 5, and then do Tier 5 before we were able to move on into Tier 6. The only catch-up came when Sunwell was released, and even that only covered a handful of gear slots for each character, not a full set by any means.
It was great. We got to experience all the raids in their full stature, instead of facerolling them with OP gear afterwards. And we always had challenging and fun things to do.
Blizzard’s new model is to invalidate EVERYTHING that came before it every 4 months, writing off tons of development work. And for no benefit to them or to the playerbase.
Since WoD, for me the game has always been one big gear grab. Constantly looking forward to the next upgrade and feeling deflated when you go days, often times, weeks on end without anything to show for the hours you spent, oftentimes daily completing the same content over and over.
My problem is that I get a fair bit of anxiety whenever I even think about m+ dungeons. Back in Legion, when you failed a timer your key got depleted and you couldn’t run your key for the week. Week after week, I’d run my key, and someone would ruin it, or we’d wipe and someone would leave despite still having sufficient time. This is still the case, but at least now the key just drops in difficulty. I still worry about folks leaving and me wasting my time.
Time is the one thing in my life that I hate wasting. I sometimes wish I didn’t have to sleep because I enjoy being productive (beyond just playing WoW of course). When people waste my time, when I run into something that stops me while I’m on my mount, when Horde slaughters me in WM, when we lose a BG, etc, etc. I get stressed out. I travel 70 miles to get to work each day. It takes 1 hour and 15 min for me to get to work. I work swing shift and only have Sunday and Monday’s off. I can only raid in the morning or on Sunday. My schedule is so prohibitive to anything I’d like to do in WoW, most of the time, that my TIME is the most precious resource. I can make money no problem. Heck, if I need gold in the game, I can just buy it with a token, and it’s really not an issue.
Every expansion more and more of my time is being taken in a desperate attempt to enjoy this themepark of an MMO. It’s like going to Disneyland but you only have time to enjoy 10% of the rides…
Without catch-up mechanics though, we’d go back to the problem where guilds could be stuck in a raid all expansion long due to poaching and being designated as a “feeder guild”. I don’t think anyone would find it fun if they couldn’t progress past Uldir because people keep using their guild to gear up, then jump ship to the next progressed guild.
That’s a social problem. Social problems need to be solved by the players. Not by momma Blizzard sticking her big fat nose in and telling everyone how to play, every minute of every day.
No one gave a damn about the problems of that system though. The higher-ups never cared and the people affected by it had no recourse. So it was necessary for Blizz to step in.
The “wow” way…new expac, new gear, ready set grind. Repeat every 2 years. hell every month as they drop new interim gear in. Many MMO’s do this, but since a wow forum and most copy wow in some way they get the credit.
Option 2: the eve way. Now after a few years i will promise you barring new racial ships (like eve dropped new racial ships about a year or 2 ago actually unique)…you never have to gear catch up ever again.
Note I said after a few years. Being realisitic I was not done training all races to battleship and below, all weapons systems, all tank systems (eve has shield and armour tank concepts, both have their own skills) and support skills in place for a while.
Say 2-4 years with dedicated train for all that. Its varied based on how many skill level 5’s you want to be “perfect”. Then you are done…for sub capitals.
Really big ships like capitals and super capitals and titans can be fun. Loads of “fun”. Per race. Good news is most pick one. edit and those last 2 are end game ships for when you have 10’s of billions of game money to spend. I don’t even have them trained with 8 years. Didn’t want or need them.
That’s not true, though. I had mentioned my experience in Burning Crusade, we had people join, get geared, and then jump ship. We kept going anyway, it’s not a big deal.
Hell, we run into people like that every year or two these days even though we’re regularly getting Cutting Edge. If somebody didn’t want to play with you, then they didn’t want to play with you. It’s not a big deal. There’s no reason for Blizzard to wreck the game because of it.
Since when have WoW players been anything other than whiney entitled spoiled effeminate children? They expect Blizzard to do everything else for them. Such as…
They expect Blizzard to give them the rep for allied races.
They expect Blizzard to officiate players leaving M+ runs or vote kicking people from groups.
They expect Blizzard to hold their hand through any quest that requires even a little thought or research.
They expect Blizzard to magically switch their gear to BiS every time they change specs.
They expect Blizzard to sit them down in a corner for storytime when a cut scene references a part of the story they did not personally experience in the last hour.
They expect Blizzard to perfectly balance WPvP so that “your” faction is always in the majority, yet provides plenty of easy targets for the quests and honor.
There are plenty of players who expect Blizzard to wipe for them after they use the toilet. Expecting these people to solve issues like the ones mentioned above is ridiculous. They had years to do so and failed miserably.
But if the mechanics bother you that much you can always solve that problem yourself instead of asking Blizzard to change an entire system. Just delete/vendor/scrap any gear you don’t feel you deserve.
And those people will never be satisfied are just going to quit in a huff anyway. Blizzard shouldn’t bend over backwards, ruining their game, to try and please people who can never be pleased.
I’ve heard stories from people who raided in the Burning Crusade about how much of a pain in the butt it was to have to go back to older raids for new raiders doing Black Temple to attune them.
I think any “fix” should take into account the small casual guild who wants to progress without being fed upon by guilds higher than them.