Why would your opinion be a bitter pill for me to swallow? I don’t care what your opinion is any more than you care what mine is I am sure.
Some absolutely do I am sure. However, a lot of people don’t enjoy the fact that they have completely obliterated casual progression.
You seem to have me confused with a raider. I am not. I am part of the “mostly casuals play this game” group. What I am not, however, is someone that thinks handing out gear like tic tacs is a good thing. Progression should exist, even for casuals.
Because my opinion is, unlike yours, based on substance and isn’t entirely conjecture. I’m pointing at what Blizzard is doing and continues to do and trying to ascertain a justification that makes business sense and you’re speaking entirely out of your backside. If Blizzard could demonstrate causation of sub loss to the reward systems they would have course corrected. They have not. Not only have they not, they haven’t backed off the reward structure at all, they’ve expanded it to also include Benthic gear while leaving all the item progression in that mythic raiders complain about.
What is a lot of people when we’re talking millions of players? 50? Is that a lot? hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? That’s a claim you make to try to assert that you’re making a meaningful point. You aren’t.
And this is the dead giveaway. Casuals previous didn’t have progression. They literally sat on the sidelines for the bulk of the tier doing nothing after running LFR a few times. They do now. It’s time gated and takes 4 months to get to the same level that heroic raiders end up in a few weeks. And when they get there heroic raiders have progressed even further via repeated forged drops, progressing into Mythic, or M+ farming.
So the progression that now exists should exist. Great, we’re on the same page then. Except we’re not, because removing this doesn’t give progression to casuals, it takes it away. And I don’t see you advocating for what you’d replace it with. You can pretend you’re arguing for casuals here but we see right through that garbage.
Flat out lie or you are relatively new to the game. Prior to WoD there was most certainly progression. Normals gave upgrades to leveling gear. Heroics gave upgrades to Normals. Valor vendor gave upgrades to Heroics. LFR gave upgrades to vendors.
Now? Hit 120 and do a few emissaries/warfronts and you are done. 2 days tops.
I get that some people may be content with poof have gear, however, I can’t bring myself to believe that too terribly many would find that anything resembling engaging gameplay. I love the game. I want to play the game but right now there is very little point when I reach the limits of what I can obtain within a very short period of time. I can only level/gear so many alts (6 right now) before accepting that I am doing little more than making busy work for myself.
So you point at their actions, point at their Q&A’s where they explicitly tell us they believe forging has been a success and it does exactly what it’s designed to do, build a position predicated on facts, and explain why they keep doing what they’re doing in a way that makes sense from the perspective of a developer/company that wants a product to be successful. Your position boils down to, “I don’t like x, x is bad!” That’s it. Nothing more or less. If your claim was true Blizzard would have done a hard turn away, so we know your speculation is bunk. I’m open to other options but you don’t have any argument based on anything of substance.
I’ve played since the original open beta. Prior to WoD there were occasional catch up mechanics that very quickly resulted in alts getting geared to an ilvl wall and then stopping. If someone didn’t participate in organized group content they were shut out of the bulk of the power progression each tier. Until Legion that is.
Are you honestly trying to argue that a new player hits 120 and they are done after 2 days? I mean, alts sure, it’s not hard to send over some crafted gear to get them going. From there jumping to heroics or even timewalking dungeons gets them to 355/365. Invasions reward 370 at about once a day. Emissaries and WQ’s however scale, so unless you’re getting large bumps in ilvl from other sources for a lot of gear you’re not jumping immediately to 395/400 Emissary rewards. I’ve had toons I’ve twinked out that I logged out the day I hit 120 and they were 372. I’ve also had toons it took me 2 weeks to get to 370ish because of bad luck. And these were not my main. There’s literally nothing wrong with getting to 370. Because 370 still doesn’t get you 395/400 Emissary rewards due to the scaling.
Literally no one is hitting 120 and logging out 2 days later with 400 ilvl without some serious carrying. Which means your claim is a farce.
I wish someone would point out the bloody obvious here.
The gear is terrible and unrewarding because the gameplay is terrible and unrewarding. Where you get it doesn’t really make that much of a difference, but if you try to butter up a shiznit sandwich, all you’re doing is buttering up a slice of crap trapped between two slices of pumpernickel bread.
Which has absolutely zero to do with anything I have said. I am not talking about raiding. Not. at. all. I am talking about Normal dungeons being pointless. I am talking about heroic dungeons being pointless. I am talking about LFR being pointless.
These aren’t just catchup mechanics, there have always (well nearly always) been catchup mechanics, but at no point in the history of the game, until BfA was I able to hit the max capacity for my ilvl as a casual within days without touching anything that was not solo-able.
Granted, it is likely different for a fresh player, and I won’t argue that. However, what I am saying is this is the quickest I have ever geared an alt and it. is. not. fun.
Anyway, I have made my opinions known, as have you, so unless you have something new to bring, because I certainly don’t… I am going to dip out.
Then you’re out of your mind. The gear that comes from that content has been outscaled very quickly in every expansion. The only expansions where it wasn’t the case was when they were new dungeons implemented as catch up (ICC dungeons as an example) or when they implemented other content (i.e. badge farms) and then it wasn’t even about the gear in the dungeon. Even LFR got outscaled very fast last expansion by all of my toons.
This claim is ridiculous. And it’s also intentionally ambiguous. What, exactly, is “max capacity”? You aren’t hitting 400ish ilvl on a toon within 2 days doing solo content. Such a position is a lie.
And? I didn’t say that it wasn’t possible, I said it wasn’t possible as a casual player doing solo content. Getting carried by people to high ilvl has been a thing since the inception of the game.
Yep, this is exactly the issue. I like my characters. I want to watch them slowly get stronger day by day for at least a few weeks. As is now, I can’t do that.
That happens when you screw up quoting by trying to edit it. Lol.
That’s what I said. I’ve bolded the part you tried to deceptively cut out. Do you always lie to try to win arguments on the internet?
Duh? It’s at the end of a tier and you’re carrying the character to the overall ilvl of people who have done solo world content the entire tier and crying about it. Get out of my face with this idiocy.
He’s saying there’s no incentive to do difficult content because it rewards slightly higher ilvl gear than vastly easier content. It’s not always about what other people are doing. In this case, it isn’t; it’s just a problem with the reward structure. It’s too rewarding, plain and simple.
That to me doesn’t mean the lower content is too rewarding, it means you personally value the gear more than the experience and thus shouldn’t be doing it to begin with. If the difference between heroic gear and just doing the timegated content over a tier isn’t large enough, then just do the timegated content and get there over a longer period of time with slightly worse gear than someone who raids. Exactly how they said the initial 400 ilvl reward for AOO was too good because it was incentivizing people who didn’t actually want to pvp into doing it so they reduced it to 385. That’s the plain and simple of it.
Maybe I can put your mind at ease and tell you that questing is just as bad. What rewards do we get? Azerite and resources. Occasional gear upgrade but nothing to write home about. Can’t even sell most of it. Mats are worthless. Professions are worthless. Quests are mind numbing.
Could we, maybe, focus on uninspiring gameplay rather than sniping at casuals or raiders. Fighting among ourselves rather than focusing on putting the blame where it belongs only serves to give Blizzard a pass.