Current gearing systems are not casual friendly

[Althalthir-earthen-ring]

I blame the failure of the Azerite system in this particular case.

As a casual, I could a give a crap less about raid-quality gear, I just want to progress my character for the story and normal/heroic dungeons. In Legion I could do this via the artifact system, via the class order hall quests, via crafting quests.

I have none of those anymore. I mean…it’s cool that I’m getting raid-level gear, but I have zero interest in raiding or doing mythic keys

I’m glad that Raiders are having fun but I’ve been on a break for a while. Debating coming back to level a Zandalari druid once 8.1.5 hits but otherwise I’ll be gone until 8.2

[Leiloni-area-52]

Which is precisely the complaint, yes.

For those players who do not engage in M+ or Raiding, the game has become significantly less rewarding significantly faster.

Where, previously, it could take a week or two (or a month or so way back when) to get geared up when you hit max, it now takes days. Once you’ve exhausted the progression available to you, you’re out of things to do.

It’s not a matter of continuing to put higher and higher gear into the hands of casuals, but rather to keep their progression between “Ding Max!” to “No more casual progression” relevant for longer.

It’s very popular to ask why casuals want gear, or why casual content should have any rewarding progression, but the according to prior expansion statistics more than half of the population didn’t raid at any reasonable (above LFR) level. If that remains true, and I see little reason to believe it’s changed, it means that half of the players now have an unrewarding end game experience that caps out within a week or two.

That’s not good for the overall social health of the game.

This basically, yes. I do enjoy M+ and PvP but there’s only so far you can go. There’s less and less to do on my main each week and sure I love alts, but I’m enjoying my Disc Priest and want more reasons to play her. I don’t want to do content I outgear, because when things are too easy that’s not fun and not getting any rewards I can use is also not fun.

And I completely agree that this is bad for the health of the game. You hit the nail on the head. There’s a ton of people that comprise some level of casual and this game has always had a ton of them. That’s why WoW has been so successful. Legion had a ton of great systems and even M+ was better for casuals. They definitely need a change with BfA.

[Orctang-area-52 (Orctang)]

Casuals don’t need gear. Only people who no-life the game should have an easy time with world content. Casuals should cower in cities.

Hey, I see you cowering in town. Sorry, you get a 0/10 for your thoughts on the subject.

[Rockadee-fizzcrank (Rockadee)]

When you have more posts than achievement points you don’t get an opinion on anything.

[Turnberry-illidan (Turnberry)]

I am causal-ish, my wife would argue otherwise, but she isn’t here at the moment.

I find BFA very casual friendly. I don’t do dungeons I can’t solo. I don’t do raids I can’t solo. Yet my gear is far better than anything I would get in prior expansions doing questing and WQ quests (dailies in Wod and back). Sure it isn’t the best of the best, but it shouldn’t be and more importantly serves my needs.

You are 384 item level. This is what the OP is talking about. If you decided that you wanted to push yourself a little and get in a dungeon or a raid, you would have to do a +8-10 M+, or a Heroic raid to get an upgrade. You would not be anywhere near experienced enough to do either of those because you have skipped essentially 2 difficulty tiers of content through solo play.

Now I get you may not want to push yourself and try that harder content, but some people do. That’s the reason M+ 6-9 keys are the absolute worst to pug. Because they consist of people who did solo content to skip M0-5 gear wise, they aren’t ready for M+6-9, but it’s the only content that will give them an upgrade.

It’s really not at all casual friendly like the OP says.

[Caelin-boulderfist (Caelin)]

Well when you toss normal level raid gear at people for doing next to nothing, you tend to remove any reason for doing most the content a casual player would have once done for that gear. Catch up mechanics are fine for an end of the expansion type of even but we are now getting them every “season”…

[Felsavior-zuljin (Felsavior)]

I beg to differ, I am an incredibly casual player and sitting st 378 ilvl. I couldn’t be happier with the gearing system.

Now it sounds to me like you want high end pvp/raid gear for doing base level pvp/pve, and I disagree with that. I love being able to get up to Normal difficulty gear easily, makes me feel like I could raid if I wanted to. And the 1 heroic piece a week is super nice, but I don’t think I should be getting more than that unless I do the content or get lucky on a titanforge.

What we can get is great, for the first time since in was a progression raider I feel like I can compete in normals/lfr and I couldn’t be happier.

[Zindei-wyrmrest-accord]

“Rewarding” has different meanings depending on the person. They’re saying that they want to do the lower level content, but the rewards they get are too OP for the time invested, so that content becomes completely irrelevant, and pushes them into things that they don’t want to do. It provides an objectively better reward but isn’t actually rewarding because it was handed to you and instantly trivializes all other stuff you want to do.

[Stompypotato-durotan (Stompypotato)]

I get it. I had completely missed the OP’s point. I also get the point about gear score not being a good indicator of skill.

I would get smoked in any mythics not because my gear sucks, but because I don’t know anything about them since I never did heroics or even normals.

This one reason is why I liked the idea of the proving grounds quests being required before certain dungeon levels.

[Khëmical-shattered-halls (Khëmîcal)]

I’m beginning to feel like I don’t want to catch up to anyone

This is why I would love to see Valor, conquest, honor and rep tokens back and also the vendor that sells the gear instead of wasting time on a dice roll

[Leiloni-area-52]

This is why I would love to see Valor, conquest, honor and rep tokens back and also the vendor that sells the gear instead of wasting time on a dice roll

This is something I’ve been thinking about recently and I have mentioned in another thread about bringing back honor points. It’s a great way for people to work on upgrades, slow down the gearing process, while still feeling like you’re making progress. It’s a great thing to put into WQs, weeklies, dungeons, etc.

[Stenchbone-terenas (Stenchbone)]

I disagree. I am super duper casual, and I gear fine from WQs and Warfronts.

[Twibiju-staghelm (Twibiju)]

What Mangolassie said. I actually agree.

I have zero problems with LFR dropping gear: it’s still progression for some of us. I also have no problem with it dropping 370 gear. Note: 370 was last tiers ilvl, yeah, but that content is obsolete for people that raid normal and above BoD.

But I also think 370-375 needs to be the current cap on all non-raid content (including WQ’s and mythic+ (it’s an opinion, don’t yell at me.))

This is coming from a very casual player at this point.

[Yayayayayaya-area-52 (Yayayayayaya)]

Instead, I too easily outgear it and it’s not even worth doing.

The gearing system in BfA in a nutshell. I’m not complaining because it gives me other things to do, but it seems like they swapped gold inflation for gear inflation.

[Aedrid-zuljin (Aedrid)]

They add more avenues for casual players to get gear at a quality that they would normally have to raid or do high level keys for and the casual players complain that their “progression” is too fast.

… my head hurts.

[Vinel-frostmourne]

You casual plebs always find something to complain

[Feliciti-ysera]

Spoken like a true elitist.

[Atalanta-trollbane (Atalanta)]

They add more avenues for casual players to get gear at a quality that they would normally have to raid or do high level keys for and the casual players complain that their “progression” is too fast.

… my head hurts.

Imagine that you want to have an affordable restaurant that doesn’t require a reservation, but has fairly good quality food and a clean healthy interior. You’d also like the service to be fairly quick so that you don’t have to wait too long.

Now imagine that what you got was exactly that, but you only have 10 minutes to enjoy each course of the meal. Appetizers come out, and the plate gets taken in 10 minutes whether you’re done or not. Main course comes out and it gets taken in 10 minutes whether you’re done or not. Dessert, as well.

The problem is that you got the restaurant you wanted (gear progression), but it happened so fast that you left feeling unsatisfied because it didn’t last long enough.

In a nutshell: people want progression and diversity in how they acquire gear, but gear acquisition is always the end game and we wanted it to last longer. When gear progression is the biggest end game content we’re doing, what happens when we’re done with it in a week or two given the content that we want to do?

In the past, that progression was slower, so it took longer, but it meant that the satisfying metric of “Investment” > “Reward” > “Investment” > “Reward” was more drawn out. Like a languid meal at a really nice restaurant where no one’s forcing you to leave. Now it’s just “EAT NOW. YOU’RE DONE!”

[Pitagriffin-thrall (Pitagriffin)]

So because Blizzard gave you good gear, the easy stuff is too easy, but you don’t want to do the harder stuff? And you are blaming Blizzard for this?

[Pitagriffin-thrall (Pitagriffin)]

I have a solution: A Blizzard employee can follow you around for a while to determine if you are a “casual.” And if they determine that you are, they will make sure you only get low level loot so that LFR will remain competitive.