IMO this misses the point a bit. The next logical steps for “harder content” (dungeons, LFR and normal raid) do not yield higher gear. Your gear from Emissaries/Warfronts/Weekend quests can bring you straight to needing to do heroic raids and M+7 for upgrades which require significantly more coordination than what a “casual” player is probably interested in.
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To be clear, I’m just clarifying what OP is talking about. I’m not OP. I’m actively progression raiding and doing Mythic+ on my main.
But I think the issue here is that OP didn’t have this issue in Legion. The amount of upgraded gear and sheer number of sources giving gear is making the content they prefer to stick to more shortlived than normal.
400 ilvl from the Darkshore World Boss
400 (now 385) ilvl from Against Overwhelming Odds Quest
400 ilvl from the Mythic 0 “Weekly” Quest
400 ilvl from the Darkshore Warfront Quest
385 ilvl from the Timewalking “Weekly” Quest
385 ilvl from Emissary Quests
375[?] ilvl from “Weekly” Conquest Cap
370 ilvl from the Arathi World Boss
370 ilvl from the Arathi Warfront Quest
370 ilvl from Faction Incursions
Then there’s Titanforging in general, there’s crafting going well beyond the “catchup” quality it was in Legion, there’s BoE’s (even some of the original set are worthwhile still), and for those doing low M+ keys or rated PvP, there’s the freebie Tuesday boxes rewarding higher than the content you’ve done that week.
All of that piles on to make Heroic Dungeons, Mythic 0 dungeons, LFR, Warfronts, Random Battlegrounds, and potentially early Mythic+/Rated PvP meaningless very very quickly (outside of a couple associated cycled quests), while lessening the feeling of progression even above the few cutoffs present among the freebies.
So yeah, it’s a problem OP puts on themselves by not seeking out harder content, but it’s also a problem exaggerated by Blizzard’s handling of effort vs reward in BfA.
This isn’t true in all cases. I like having options, that way I can pick and choose which content I want to do.
I don’t think you can even blanket state that even people raiding mythic don’t want variety. I remember complaints from mythic raiders about having to do raids on 4 difficulties for gear - mythic plus dungeons was the response to that so those players can do other things instead.
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One of the bigger and more recent problems in WoW.
WoW has been more or less a one raid game since MoP.
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That’s assuming they do both pvp and pve, which as a true casual seems like it’d be a lot. But lets say they do all of what you mentioned for all 15 slots (unless they’re a 2h weapon user then 14). With rough estimates, and conservative numbers assuming you get pretty lucky it would take at best 2-3 months of doing ALL of the content you suggested to fully gear up to about 390ish. There are 10 items listed, most of which are only available once a month or so and require above casual skill level to complete / know about each opportunity.
I absolutely understand where you’re coming from, and appreciate the discussion. It’s easy to list all of the available options, but that doesn’t mean you can complete everything in a week and also get lucky with drops/rolls. If you’re doing progress I’m sure you know how bad it feels to open your weekly chest and then go salvage it a couple seconds later. It’s similar for casuals, but their gear options come less frequently and much more random (usually bad).
- 400 ilvl from the Darkshore World Boss
Up once every 3 weeks or so, and even with a coin roll you could run this 2-3 times with no drops. We can estimate 2 kills and 2 coins for one piece, but it also only has 3 slots available. - 385 ilvl from Against Overwhelming Odds Quest
If you’re a casual it’s unlikely you will have more than 1-2 of these available at your time slots a week, and that is if you purposefully do them while also getting lucky with time slots. For example I’ve only been home and online for 3 invasions ever. For a more conservative estimate we can say you get 1 unique slot a month from this to compensate for them running it frequently and also getting usable gear. - 400 ilvl from the Mythic 0 “Weekly” Quest
I think this is up once a month or so. You also need to be not so casual that group content is an option, and most casuals won’t step foot into a m0. 1 more piece a month - 400 ilvl from the Darkshore Warfront Quest
Infrequent, up every 3ish weeks. Also need it to roll for a unique gear slot and have good stats if it doesn’t (or if it does, since a well rolled 385 is more useful than a poorly rolled 400…depending on sims) I’ll stick with 6 weeks similar to the boss above - 385 ilvl from the Timewalking “Weekly” Quest
Once a month, and need it to be a unique slot again which some people get really lucky on. For your first month absolutely a high upgrade chance, after that it is much less likely you’ll need/use the gear from this - 385 ilvl from Emissary Quests
3 of these a week I think, but correct me if I’m wrong - I don’t really do these anymore unless gearing up an alt. This is where I find the most repeatable / easily accessible gear coming from. The problem is you don’t get flat 385, you have to be somewhere between 370 and 380 to get 385 gear. Otherwise it’s closer to 355-370. It will be several weeks until you get 385 rewards if you’re only doing these easy sources. - 375[?] ilvl from “Weekly” Conquest Cap - 370 or 375, not 100% either (not going to bother checking). This is really helpful the first week because you’re guaranteed a weapon…and after it’s a specific slot per week. Maybe helpful, maybe not depending on your other RNG rolls. Several weeks and hours to grind this out. I’m also assuming a casual will not be dominating BGs/skirmishes or have a group to make this go faster.
- 370 ilvl from the Arathi World Boss
Helpful if it’s up, but if it’s not up when you start gearing unlikely you’ll get a usable drop from the 3 available. - 370 ilvl from the Arathi Warfront Quest
Same comment as above - 370 ilvl from Faction Incursions
Same comment as above in regards to the invasion timer and casual playtime
This is knida how all gearing systems work. There is always a slow down when you hit a peak. I’ve raided regularly for a long time. There always comes a point when you peak in gear and your upgrades dramatically slow down. That just how the balance of gear works. You can’t continuously grow at an exponential rate. It isn’t sustainable. But, there are other activities you can do. Like mount or pet collecting, playing the AH, RPing or like me Mog collecting. There is a lot to do in this game besides farming gear.
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I like the period when I am done farming gear.
And yet you need a way to reliably advance a toon or the game becomes pointless and people leave. While you may not see the issue with something that doesn’t impact your raiding guild or M+ group, Blizzard will certainly see the point, and are likely seeing it now, with decreased revenue because of subscription losses.
If you only log in a few hours a week you should be able to feel like during those few hours you are working towards something. The old vendor systems always seemed to provide that. The new system, apparently designed for bad luck protection only for the raid/M+ crowd, falls flat in that regard.
I hope there are enough raid/M+ and diehard fans to keep the lights on.
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Here’s the thing. You no longer work for your gear as a casual, you gamble for it. Like Vegas.
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I miss the JP and VP vendors as well… Having to put in a little work to upgrade the gear we had, pieces we chose to upgrade, wasn’t such a bad system (MOP).
Desperately miss honor points and the vendors to buy lower level PvP gear with them…
100% agree here. I have a resto shaman that I mainly PvP on, and I don’t want to feel inclined to do PvE content to gear up, especially WQs (I do enjoy healing dungeons though). But it is so much faster to gear up through PvE content. I miss earning honor points from BGs and buying the gear I wanted with those points. Same with conquest points. I could do BGs over and over and over and still be able to gear up at a decent pace. Makes me miss WOD PvP, and I am by no means a fan of that expansion overall.
I didn’t write this, and it’s about the Legion professions, but I think it still applies:
“Whoever decided that professions needed layers upon layers of RNG in this expansion needs to be chained to a slot machine in the worst casino in Vegas, unable to leave until they win the jackpot, and forced to beg for quarters from drunken tourists.”
Edit: Clarity
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I completely disagree with this sentiment. I am by no means someone who blindly supports Blizzard. I have a slew of issues with this game and the dev team’s approach to things, and I’m not afraid to voice my opinions/thoughts. But this is how I see things… After the recent layoffs, especially CMs, people were very concerned with our thoughts not being heard, that there would no longer be any communication between the players and the devs.
But I’ve seen Bornakk make a lot of effort recently to be more engaged with this community. And these questions may seem to have obvious answers to you, but I would much rather he ask and get a bunch of answers to get a bunch of different views, or even see how many share the same opinions, than to assume what we want.
I’ve actually been paying close attention to the Blue presence in General Discussion as of late to see if anything would change with the layoffs, and I am liking seeing the Blues around. Yes, of course, they respond in funny/fun/light threads, and I’m finding that to be okay (a few years ago, it may have made me a bit upset, I will admit) because it shows that they are here, hopefully reading what we’re saying in other threads as well, even silently. (Plus, I think they are allowed to have some fun at work.) They are answering questions they can answer and, like Bornakk here, asking questions to actually get our opinions. I find that to be important.
Now, I think we need to remember that just because the CMs are active here, it doesn’t mean that the devs will necessarily make the changes we feel are necessary, so I have to remind even myself that we can’t shoot the messenger or liaison so to speak.
TLDR: I’m glad to see him asking questions to get clarification and find out what we actually want.
I think M+ should scale up +5 every level, to some herculean level that only the best would get to. Then just throw some baseline ilevel requirements that also scale up - and boom, you have a scaling difficulty system that rewards work put in.
Raiding, in my opinion, should be eliminated from the game. It’s time is over. They need to double-down on M+ and take the game into the future.
You realize 392 isn’t good right?
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Completely disagree. This games roots are in raiding and dungeons that tell big parts of the story. They make a huge part of the lore in this game.
Non-sequential (mainly zone) bosses are told in dungeons. Major storylines for the zones (the big, big bads)/expac are told via raids.
Plus, not everyone is into mythic dungeon content.
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Gear really didn’t mean anything back then either if you weren’t doing raids you were just gearing just because. There was no progression for that type of casual. The dad gamers that play 2 hours a week. And there never will be
Since ToC in Wrath which obsoleted Ulduar.
You shouldn’t play the game just for gear. Gear is not the goal. The only time you NEED gear is so you can do higher content. Gear is a tool to do higher content not the end of the game.
Actually, the current gearing systems are casual friendly.
Not sure what annoys me more, Blizzard throwing high ilvl gear at everyone for very little effort in easy content, or people complaining about how gearing up is somehow hard these days.
You could fall over in BFA and accidentally be geared for m+10 / heroic raiding. All my 8 alts are 370-390 ilvl and I don’t raid at all, or even do high m+. I do random BGs and low rating arena with friends and one mythic dungeon a fortnight, maybe. Casual as it gets as I don’t have much time these days.
The only thing I even need gear for is to progress through the heroic/mythic raid (don’t have time), or to push high m+ keys (can’t be bothered, arena is less time commitment and having more fun there this expansion).
So if I don’t need gear for any content I want to do, I’m effectively BIS for the content I do, which is … fine? Isn’t it?
I used to really enjoy LFR. Yes enjoy LFR. As a person who can’t commit to a raiding schedule anymore (haven’t hardcored it since vanilla) it gave me a chance to upgrade gear and to at least collect some version of a tier set. Now I mostly have gear that is better than LFR gear and there really feels like no reason to do it.
It is a weird situation where I don’t have to try at all to get good stuff. Feels like a bit too much stuff is handed to me just for logging in.
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