Sure there is.
In every MMO on the market that features competitive end game group content, that’s where the gear progression comes from.
SL has been far too generous with free and catchup gear. In every patch, it’s been possible to outgear the normal raid via purely solo means.
Open world content is content. Soloable content like Torghast is also content.
By your standards, 99% of all games have no content and should not provide any rewards or progression because they don’t involve getting sweaty for hours on end in voice comms doing group content.
Is Candy Crush Saga, for example, some big scam that brings in billions in revenue despite the game having no content? Should it stop having any rewards or progression for the people playing it for years because you don’t deem those people worthy of getting anywhere?
The niche for group instanced content in the industry is getting smaller and smaller. WoW is continuing to lose subs because it refuses to accommodate a wider range of players and gameplay types.
SL has actually been the worst. It is the first time in WoW’s history for there to actually be such a low, hard power level cap on non-organized group content. I have gotten by better in every single expansion until now.
9.0 covenant sets were only 197 item level in 11/16 slots, while 9.0 raids provided 200/207 gear in all slots.
9.1 Korthia gear could be upgraded to 233, but raiding gear at 226/233 was ultimately much more powerful because of the domination shard bonuses and set bonuses.
9.2 Zereth Mortis gear maxed out with a mix of 246/252 gear, while the raid provided 252/259 gear.
In Season 4, open world players are still capped at 246/252 while Normal is 278/285.
Devs were careful to protect the sanctity of Normal raiding, but elitists still thought it was too “generous” and Normal raiding was invalidated.
Do you even bother reading the issues other people have in game? Raiding is in obsoletion for gearing.
If you choose to ignore giant swathes of content (it doesn’t matter your reason) then you can hardly be upset when you hit your power cap quicker than those that engage in those giant swathes of content.
Also, look how close those numbers are that you provided. Does it actually make sense to you that non competitive content should reward gear that is as good or better than what comes from any form of competitive content?
It absolutely does not in an MMO.
The dungeons were only overtuned because people got so used to the speedfest that was late Wrath dungeons. Instead of being like “okay, maybe I/we should follow mechanics so we can get this done” peopler were like “whaaaa I can’t zerg/speed my way through, nerf it”.
Baddies that hide behind the casual label got what they wanted, I won’t say this was a determining factor in declining subs but it certainly did not help
Yes, it does, but using your competitive argument: competitive content awards gear at a competitive rate, none competitive content, I.E. solo content, awards the gear a a rate that could be as far from competitive as the earth is from the moon. Do you think progressing gear over the course of a full patch, and taking that long to get the top gear, is anywhere near competitive?
To put it another way: The competitive argument falls flat when people are talking about the slowest possible rate of progression.
Apples to celery. Competitive gear coming from competitive content isn’t ‘gear rewarded at a competitive rate.’ It’s competitive gear…coming from competitive content.
The same as it’s always been. The same it should always be in an MMO. It is absurd to think that due to a players total intolerance to any amount of challenge or social interaction with other players that there should be a progression path that awards meaningful gear upgrades due to the simple fact that they don’t really like MMO’s.
To put it another way: You don’t deserve gear upgrades for spending huge amounts of time doing trivial content.
I never said the gear was competitive or not, just that the rate of acquisition was. Let me spell it out: the faster you get gear, the faster you move a head and the more competitive you are. Gear from non-competitive content can be the same as gear from competitive content, but by the time most would be getting it, if they don’t also do competitive content, the competition is over and one with and those that took part in it are already preparing for the next one.
To put it bluntly, you are essentially taking participation trophies away from the ones that did not enter to compete but to push themselves or stick it out all the way and did so. People deserve to have something to show for their time, to keep them engaged, to, oh, I don’t know, KEEP THE GAME FUNDED SO MORE CONTENT FOR ALL CAN BE MADE.
I do M+ and heroic raiding, I would look to a currency from world content to upgrade gear, I would also expect that currency to be available and usable for those who just do world content, but the rate of acquisition there would be slower then mine, as I also get it from M+ and raids.
Blizzard could easily cap the upgrades at a certain level or make block the upgrades at a certain point if harder content is not done (say need x rating in PvP, M+ or a certain amount of raid bosses at x difficulty) to progress.
if you want solo play, go play FFXIV
You’re attempting to reinvent the wheel. There is no faster acquisition of gear. There’s: Do the content, get the gear.
I’m not personally doing a thing other than simply advocating for people who do not engage in content that grants the rewards they want to not be granted those rewards because they didn’t do the content.
I want you to show me specifically these things:
Subs started dropping in WoW right around the time they turned WoW into a lobby game for people who want to engage in matchmaking content as endgame.
They do and have done. If you want to roll around and be a frog in ZM, you’ll be sitting around 253 ilvl when you’re done. That’s more than enough for people who ignore endgame.
I couldn’t possibly care less if the handful of those people that exist in game leave. It wouldn’t matter. They do not interact with the player pool in any way, so their absence will not be noticed.
Torgahst and visions could be done solo, it might not be the hardest content, but it would be a path for gear upgrades from solo players that others would not have to do if they did not want to.
Until this last season, Torghast is where you got your highest ilvl piece from. It did it’s job.
It could have been made like visions were, content for solo players that provided a path for gear. Torghat did its job for those who only did it for the lego, but it could have been more for others.
The thing is, there have been several things in game that could have been made to give casuals/solo content runners what they are asking for, yet because of cries like “I don’t want to be forced to do it”, the content was made so it did nothing for anyone.
They could have easily made what was needed for the lego the bare minimum and then let players who focused on Torghast gear up in a way to push farther into torghast, even if the gear was not better then world content gear outside of it.
Everytime content that provides gear progression outside of group content, raiders and such whine about being forced to do it, yeah, they might be forced to do a bare minimum but after that is done, why can’t they leave it alone for those that actually want to do it?
Oh, this is a good one, tell me, do those who start at heroic or mythic raid not get the higher ilvl faster then those who start at normal or even LFR? Thereis a faster aquisition of gear, ar least when it come to ilvl, even though that boiles down to where one starts.
As if the game isn’t losing enough subs you and many others want to push more away when WOW never as an MMO meant you had to group but keep pushing until you have your dead game.
You have to engage in content that rewards gear before even worrying about the pacing of gear acquisition. You’re not arguing in good faith.
Quite right. There are the real casuals-the ones who log on and bang out a few keys each night and raid a night or two a week who are good at the game and are able to get the rewards they want.
Then there are the players who sit on the game 60+ hours a week farming trivial content while being terrible at the game and wondering why they aren’t BiS. They play WoW all day, all week; all year long so therefore they ought to have something to show for it.
The real casuals don’t have time to engage in boring, meaningless chores due to the full time trivial content farmers having zero tolerance to any amount of difficulty or social interaction.
It should come as no surprise that in an MMO featuring steep vertical progression as WoW always has done, that the best stuff comes and always has come from group content.
Please provide a source for your claim. Show us that WoW, a seasonal; cyclical MMO is losing subs.
Then show that it’s because a handful of ‘solo players’ are leaving because they can’t get bis for shooting themselves out of cannons and playing flappy birds.
Uh, I do M+ and heroi raid, so I at least do engage in content that provides gear, part of my argument would be a system that allows upgrades via world content could be used by ones like me to supplement the gear I do get in case of bad luck or so.
There are also those that would be thrilled if things like Torghast gave them end game content they could do at their own pace in their own way (solo) even if the gear from such only worked to the full potential in Torghast.
To put it one way, how do we know that:
Might not include those who would do Torghast if they find themselves with extra time or don’t feel like doing group content at the moment? Maybt the goal of some is to add “do harder instanced solo content” to the list of the definition of “true casual”
It is not that there has never been content for solo players, but that it tends to be nerfed for them because group players can’t see beyond their own face and think how others might enjoy it.
wot
First of all, I’m not an elitist. I am not a min-maxer nor do I use gearing simming or anything. I’m between casual and hardcore where I raid and M+ but I don’t go full math mode either and squeeze the fun out of the game.
There actually is, but in the mind of casual players, anytime they are opposed its always a nonsense argument, and that’s how are brains are configured - if we do not like the opposing argument, we prefer to dismiss it as “ramblings of an old man” persay - things that have no logic to them. And that’s why this is such a huge issue. It makes casual players who think this way like you very close minded and never see our side.
Good gear should only go to players that actually are needing it for hard content. Don’t matter if its rated PVP, M+15s or 20s or higher, or heroic/mythic raiding - they deserve the gear because they are not farming wqs. And I hope it stays this way forever.
Nope. Raiding is in obsoletion as a game mode. People aren’t doing it despite it having literally the highest possible PvE gear rewards in the game.
WoW’s crisis has been caused by devs gimping all other game modes in order to save raiding. Open world content has been gimped the most.
Nope. That’s why I never actually suggested that non-competitive rewards actually be better than competitive rewards. All I asked for was the gap to be narrowed.
Source please.
Source please. Show me that ‘people aren’t doing it.’ I’ve done a good bit of it this expansion.
What crisis? Your forum thread hardly constitutes a crisis.
It’s plenty narrow. For the duration of this expansion, for no effort; players have been able to gear on par with or outgear normal raid in every patch. Non competitive rewards are as good as competitive rewards invalidating entirely a raid difficulty in terms of gearing.
Already doing that.
FFXIV gearing systems are loosely based on WoW during the Cata/MoP era, WoW’s peak of system and class design before the casual systems pruning and casual playerbase purge in WoD.
FFXIV experienced incredible rates of growth because it looked to its competitor rather than focusing on armchair elitist ideals about MMO design.
Now WoW needs to do the same, because overall it was has been declining while FFXIV has been on the rise. Queued, open world, and solo content need to be part of the Valor system, for example.