Disclaimer: This is going to be a wall of text in which I try to explain a shower thought I had that turned into a full idea that I fleshed out on paper.
TL; DR because I know you’ll need it:
Step 1: Give players more resources to understand what stats and items do to their class and spec so they can be more invested in fine-tuning their character.
Step 2: With players getting better at their characters at a faster pace, you won’t have to worry about catching them up via power levels. Lower warfront and LFR rewards significantly.
Step 3: Space mythic keys so that they align with raid tiers of the expac, making players have to engage in difficult PvE if they want to work their way up to current ilvl content.
Step 4: Stop making old raid tiers irrelevant with each patch, everything stated above puts players in a position where they have to do the old tiers if they want to progress to new content. If they don’t want to progress to real raiding and they just want to experience the content at face value, that should be the true purpose of LFR.
This is the absurdly watered down version, so please read the post below if you want my reasoning and explanation, I guarantee you it’ll answer whatever questions you have from reading that TL;DR.
The Current Biggest Problems: 1. Players are disgruntled because they feel they’re on a hamster wheel, farming for an unfulfilling currency that powers up an unfulfilling piece of gear, unlocking traits they’ve already seen on lower quality pieces of gear. 2. Players are disgruntled that Blizzard is excessively catering to new players and effectively making the hard work players have put into their characters irrelevant every patch. 3. Players are not happy with the current rewards system, being that items don’t seem to really feel that fulfilling or memorable anymore. People can name important trinkets from previous expacs and why they were good, but the same can’t be said of any item in the last two expacs besides legendaries in Legion.
Problem 1: Blizzard already addressed this in their Q&A and it seems they plan on implementing a system for Azerite that feels more rewarding than the current status quo, which is great. So I don’t really want to beat a dead horse here, Blizzard is already doing something about this.
Problem 3: I’ll address this before Problem 2 because, in all honesty, I don’t know how to solve this quite yet. I feel like my solution to Problem 2 partially solves it because it inherently raises the value of obtaining a high ilvl reward, but I think itemization has to be redrafted from the ground up if we’re going to bring back the feeling of getting your BiS trinket in BC or Wrath (which I don’t know because I’m 9 months into playing).
Problem 2: This is where the idea I had comes in. Blizzard has implemented multiple systems to keep new and casual players from getting disheartened from the (previously) monumental task of gearing your character and clearing current content. Whether it be LFR, warfronts, weekly caches, or world quests, there are multiple ways for a fresh character to get up to normal Uldir level within a week. The demon hunter I am currently posting on was initially an alt. But I was 350 within 3 days of hitting 120 because I got lucky with LFR loot, one of those 3 days was a Tuesday so I hit the weekly cache, and the Arathi warfront was in rotation when I hit 120. I had seen hardcore players complain about LFR and these catch-up mechanisms, but witnessing it first-hand as the benefactor gave me real insight into just how little sense it made. I had no idea how to play demon hunter, but there I was in a normal Uldir group within 3 days of making my character simply because of loot the game handed me. Obviously my case was very lucky, but you see how luck plays a huge factor in whether or not a character is up to par for current raid content? You see how that waters down the accomplishment hardcore raiders and dungeoneers feel from spending days gearing their character?
As a note of comparison, there are achievements to prove that on my shaman, which was my main going into the expansion, it took me two weeks to equip 340+ ilvl gear in every slot. And that was with me taking the first week of BfA off of work so that I can grind all day like a madman, running guild-first completions of most mythic dungeons day 2 of the expac. I grinded day and night to be able to join a competent group of raiders and get my week 4 AOTC. When I finally hit 370 2 months into the expac, I felt like I really conquered it all. Then, within 2 weeks, my demon hunter passed my shaman in ilvl and made everything done in the prior months feel like a wasted effort.
"Okay, we get it. You know what the problem is. How do you solve this?"
Right. The solution is, simply put, for Blizzard to pivot what they do to keep new and casual players from feeling like there’s no way they can catch up. And the way to do that is to change their definition of “catch-up”. Stop giving characters the tool to catch up and start giving players the tools instead. What this means is make the catching up the ability to dive into the world of WoW (yes I said world of World of Warcraft) without feeling overwhelmed, rather than give characters the ability to swim off into the deep end into territory they don’t belong. When you offer these catch-up mechanisms you effectively enable the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle is the idea that, within your career, you’ll be promoted until you reach a position you’re underqualified for, where you’ll stagnate. When characters are boosted so quickly to raid-ready ilvl, and with pugging being a huge part of gameplay nowadays, these new or casual players looking to complete the current content will find that they lack the fundamental knowledge or skills to perform up to par. They’ll then either be subjected to toxicity or be kicked from the group. What’s worse is the dedicated players in the raid will feel awful when they see a new player with half the dps of everyone else in the raid get the piece of gear they were looking for.
Instead, look to giving the player methods to catch up by giving them the resources to understand their class, spec, and how it fits into the game. One idea I had is actually to implement the same system Diablo has that shows you the % change to your damage or healing when you hover over the new piece of gear. The system will go off of cataloged optimal DPS/HPS with the character’s current talents/traits/gear. This gives players insight on how each stat affects their spec’s performance, which also gives new meaning to the secondary stats.
Yes, I understand there are addons that do the % upgrade/downgrade already. However, not in the way I’m talking about. I’m basically suggesting we make someone’s DPS/HPS visible in the character screen and fully integrate this % change system into the game’s base UI. Right now, with these addons and having to constantly tab out to check your DPS on various sites, there is little to no immersion. Instead of feeling like you are powering up, you end up feeling like someone on the outside looking in, tinkering with a puppet. This, I believe, is one of the biggest contrasts causing long-time players to grow disenchanted with the game.
"Okay, this sounds cool, but how does this solve anything? You’re just implementing another ‘this is how you should play’ system."
This is the part I’m really proud about. Give players a toy that puts them into a scenario where they get to sim their own DPS/HPS. Example of this in action: use the toy, sends you to a tiny arena. You talk to an NPC and set how many target dummies you want and how long you want the encounter to last. You then unleash hell (or heaven if you’re a healer) on the dummies in whatever way you’re looking to test out. At the end, the game tells you your DPS/HPS for the encounter. This allows you to test both AOE/single target encounters and for however long you want with whatever rotation you want. The game is showing you the most optimal possible DPS/HPS in the character screen, so this “self-sim” allows you to see how your current actual performance measures up and then fine-tune your rotation until you get as close as possible. This leaves room for theorycrafting to figure out what the best rotation for a set of talents with a specific spec are, which may change with balance changes. However, it lowers the barrier of entry for new players, which will lead to players better familiarizing themselves with their classes.
And of course, with this change, players will naturally get better at their spec way quicker, which means there won’t be a need for catch-up mechanisms that give guaranteed heroic raid level loot.
"This is cool, but you can’t just wish a system away. How do you plan on getting rid of these catch-up mechanisms?"
This part is easy. Drastically lower the ilvl of LFR so that the purpose of LFR is not to gear your character but for casual players to experience the raid content they wouldn’t normally be able to and for new players to practice the raid encounters before they try getting into normal/heroic raiding. People don’t hate that LFR exists, people hate what LFR does. So just change what it does. Rewarding players for practice content is like if the practice screen before mini-games in Mario Party gave you coins too. No one would be forced to do the actual mini-game anymore.
Lower the ilvl of items warfronts give. They are guaranteed loot and it makes no sense to offer players a repeatable scenario of zero difficulty that gives them gear they can take into a normal raid, without ever having stepped foot in a serious PvE instance.
Then, to close this obvious gap in power levels, you change the way keystone levels are laid out. Make 10 keystone levels for every raid tier that scale with difficulty according to that tier. For example, 1-10 should scale such that 10 rewards loot of heroic Uldir ilvl (as it does now) with the weekly cache offering loot just shy of mythic Uldir ilvl (as it does now). Then, when the new raid tier unlocks, make 20 offer heroic Dazar’Alor ilvl loot. Then, when Nazjatar and Wrath of Azshara unlock, make 30 offer the heroic ilvl loot for that tier. And so on, and so forth. Make the dungeons scale harder with each level, but the loot from the chest at the end of the dungeon guaranteed if they complete it in time. This forces the player into encounters consistently challenging for their ilvl, since you can’t be expected to get your character 15 pieces of (for example) 350 gear before hitting a (for example) +8 dungeon that essentially requires you to be a certain average ilvl before being able to clear it efficiently enough to do it in time. Let players feel accomplished for conquering certain levels of content, rather than giving them 370 loot, a bottle of milk, and a pat on the back just for subbing. And guess what? With players being able to get better faster with the resources I suggested, they’ll be able to clear this just as fast as you wanted them to, just with a greater sense of accomplishment. No hardcore player is going to complain about catch-up mechanisms if the players are actually earning their gear.
"What about raiding? You talked so much about raiding and getting people raid-ready but you mentioned dungeons as a solution!"
No, it’s just that this kind of solves the raiding crisis as well. If you lower the ilvl rewards from warfronts and LFR while also spacing keys to be aligned with each tier, you do essentially bring back the olden days of having to clear old raids in order to gear up to the standard of the current content. Of course, to do that, you have to make sure each new raid’s normal difficulty offers the same loot as the previous tier’s mythic loot. That way, mythic loot is still relevant when the new tier rolls out, but new players gearing up are allowed to just go from heroic of one old tier to normal of the next tier. Not everyone is cut out to be a mythic raider, and that’s how it should be. Yes, it will technically be much easier to climb ilvl if you climb keys with the way I’m suggesting…if you deserve it. I’m basically talking about making +10 keys as hard as what +15 keys are right now. Meaning unless you are serious about your dungeoneering, you are not going to see that guaranteed piece of loot because you are not going to be completing it on time. And you know what, if you do complete it on time, you deserve that piece of loot. You know what you can do if you don’t want to clear dungeons of that difficulty but want heroic raid loot of that tier? Clear the heroic raid of that tier. See what position this forces new players into? Want to gear up fast and get into the hardcore PvE scene? Become a hardcore PvE player and either clear the heroic raid or clear difficult high keys. Want to stay casual and just enjoy the world Blizzard created for you? Queue for LFR, do world quests, do warfronts, do whatever content you want. You just won’t be as geared as someone who is seriously progressing into the game. This is how MMOs were meant to be played, this is how WoW was originally played, and this is what players want back.
Note: I’m not suggesting we cap keys at +10, that kills the mythic+ scene for the god tier players. Let keys progress as far as people can progress them to, just cap the ilvl you get from the dungeons at heroic raid level for that tier. Example: Someone pushes a +12 now they still get 370 loot. Next tier, someone pushes a +12 they’ll get 375 (hypothetical) loot, if they push a +20 they get 400 loot, and if they push a +22 they still get 400 loot. This is essentially an extension of the current mythic+ system and thus wouldn’t be changing anything for anyone currently progressing and pushing high keys other than allowing alts to gear really fast since they’re really good at dungeons.
To emphasize: Yes, a lot of what I just said makes it technically faster to gear to a high ilvl…if you are good at the game. And if you’re not? Get good then. That’s how skill is supposed to work in any good video game that has ever been produced. You achieve as much as you are qualified to achieve.
Please clap.