Yeah that’s what I meant. And I agree for the PvP part.
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Raid gear is still gear.
And what would be the problem since you and I will not be playing together lol…
My playstyle would essentially make me want to do different things. You would have way more chances at gear wheras the solo player has less and almost never anything bis for the spec.
Nobody dislikes people who choose to play WoW solo.
The problem arises when those people clamor for solo means of seeing raids, completing group quests, obtaining top end gear, or doing other content that is intended to be grouped for.
Every single opportunity is in place for a solo player to have relevance should they choose to step into competitive game areas, but some people want the FULL package in a solo experience, and that is when others tend to jump on them and say “make some friends”, “join a guild”, etc.
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Funny, because I remember how in Legion when they made the really lazy profession quests that were just “go pick up trinket next to last boss” to tie profession progression into group content that a lot of people suddenly decided that profession leveling ALWAYS required instanced content.
Or how they changed it up from the questing for a zone gave you the achievement and then had feeders to go into a dungeon into needing a dungeon to finish the questing achievement. There’s a lot of stuff that you’ve historically been able to accomplish on your own that got looped into instanced small group content for no good reason, and plenty of people came out of the woodwork to explain why it’s wrong to not want those things to be taken away from people who don’t like dungeons/raids.
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I don’t see how raid gear still being gear changes what I’m saying. A World Quest does not equate to killing a Normal - Mythic raid boss. So I question why rewards can exist that give you something that’s just as good as wiping +100 times on a boss for just killing some npcs out in the open world that barely fight back.
I don’t want to do World Quests. But as it stands if I continued to play the game I would have to in the off chance that I might get something good. But in the process I’d be bored to tears because in all honesty World Quests are a bland addition to WoW. It was okay in Legion because it was a new concept, but they did nothing with it in BFA to improve upon the original in my eyes.
As for the BiS stance, what are you really doing that’s requiring BiS gear for you to complete? I’m fine with the Benthic gear progression system itself. But for Benthic 420 gear to be better than 455 gear just makes no sense.
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anyone who does high end m+ in Warcraft should be grateful there is tens of thousands of casual players that pay 15 $ per month to keep your dungeon going.
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MMOs were not designed with solo play in mind. Sure some elements of it exist, like WoW leveling, but it is just not sustainable to create good content that last longer than a few weeks. Players burn through solo content at an alarming rate.
Good single player games that have content around 30-60 hours takes years to make. How can you expect a MMO team to keep pumping out solo content like that, that is on par with a good single player RPG? MMOs rely on repeatable group content that is a respectable difficulty to keep players engaged during content cycles and grindy mundane repeatable solo activities.
When I see people spew this nonsense that WoW always catered to solo players, I just roll my eyes. The only part of of WoW that really has solo play is the leveling. Everything, once you hit end game requires other players to accomplish anything maybe except for gathering. The game has ALWAYS been structured likes this.
Stop demanding that the social barriers to get gear be stripped away! This silly thinking has eroded so much of the core of what made this game fun. The people and the crazy stuff they do!
Good MMOs were always about the player interactions. Almost all the great stories from WoW that have become legend in the gaming world, usually involved a bunch of players interacting with each other, creating memorable experiences.
Blizzard has made so many bad decisions over the years, trying to cater to solo type players. These players don’t pay the bills. They don’t build communities, or write player guides or do anything for the game other than just consume the content for 1 month cycles then unsub until the next content patch.
This demographic is so over represented in current MMO design and they are not even the majority of casual MMO players. They are just a loud minority that complained too much over the years until finally they got their own way.
Also, if this group of players was you cash cow, then why are MMOs suffering so bad? Maybe, trying to chase people that don’t want to play MMOs was truly bad for business and please don’t mention Wildstar. That game failed because it was just a bad game period.
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You have statistics to back that up? I never have seen any company post any kind of numbers on the demographics that make up their player bases.
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And yet this is basically the content for casuals.
And in all honesty, I feel bad for them. There’s almost no imagination in the WQ system. That’s not Blizzard trying to create a quality experience with their players in my opinion.
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Solo content does not have to mean just world quests. Killing rares. One man scenarios like withered army training. Rare chests/ rares/ farming mobs/ custom parties with followers/ professions/ single player dungeon modes.
All sorts of stuff if they wanted to have single player options.
Mmos mean interacting with players but some of us dont feel like it all the time.
Mage tower was fun. I didnt like the gear being gated behind group content untiñ the argus patch.
Just throwing out my opinions on things I would like to see. I play a sub. Im still playing the game so Im guessing that counts. Im looking forward to the RTS
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And all of those things are wonderful. But I still have a problem with the single player aspects of the game seeping into things like gear progression. Solo content is fine but I completely disagree with the notion that there should be solid gear upgrades when I’m putting in effort to make sure that I have a group to run with every week.
And interacting with players doesn’t have to be a 24/7 thing. But in order to progress and advance in the game there should be some kind of level where you’re dealing with players. Because the strongest thing that’s going to keep an MMORPG afloat is if the community is strong. I can name off a ton of events that have occurred in the game. And some of them even giving the game publicity in the public eye.
I don’t believe that an MMO should be focusing on the single player experience as hard as they are right now. I’m fine with solo content being made in the game, but I don’t believe it should be rewarded as much as it currently is.
We all have our own definitions of fun. I liked doing dungeons back when I had friends in game, but they’ve all gone, had a nice run in Wrath where 3 of us were steamrolling all the heroics as they came out (although I’m pretty sure the two of them on their paladins were the big part of the success) But, I’m not really drawn to doing repeated runs of dungeons, especially with randoms.
And I’ll disagree, WoW’s actually got one of the better designed questing systems out there, they have a nice spread of variety. I tried to get into GW2 as some friends love it, but man, in the bit I played before I got bored by it, it was all the same thing, go to area, kill x things, interact with x things, and pickup x things or something like that, over and over and over again. So with WQs you can kind of tailor things to how you’re feeling in a day as there’s a good spread so you can run a dungeon if you want, do some killing, some crafting/gathering, or play memory with a tortoise.
I felt like the real lack of imagination were the legion dungeon quests for traditionally solo activities like professions, since for the most part all the devs had to do was make a piece of decoration interactable and bam, quest done. Although, a few had a neat set up (the alchemy quest in the Warden’s dungeon comes to mind) that then ran into the problem of being a pain to get done with a random group. Because no matter how neat optional boss that you need to use an item to see sounds, not too many people seemed to be willing to do it if it meant any sort of minor delay, which was a great impression on people already iffy on having to run so many dungeons to level a profession.
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Mythic players will always gear the fastest. Right now im happy I get shots at decent ilvl of 430 without being in a group. I will never be 455 unless I do group contebt again. I like having options. I understand I wont ever get bis. But Id like to have solo options. I thank the devs for giving solo players options. I hope to see some more with some fun gameplay. I once suggested an island expedition mode with your followers being party members. Or basically a party bodyguard system.
I hope we see something like that in the future. I liked upgrading my withered to be beasts!
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What you explained for GW2 quests is how I feel about WoWs WQ. For the most part I’m doing mundane tasks that just feel repetitive regardless of the zone I got into. Even the World bosses are just a big zerg fest that at least GW2 got down by making the encounters visually interesting.
And I’m not trying to dictate what’s fun to others at all. Not saying that’s what you’re trying to put on me. But I don’t see the quality in anything they’re doing for the game. When they make changes and people give their feedback on things we’re just talked to like children.
I could go on and on about all the aspects of the game that I dislike but I feel that the list is too long and it doesn’t matter because Blizz doesn’t really take in feedback.
Meh. I personally disagree with all of this. If you’re having fun more power to you. But right now I hate WoW.
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I understand what you’re saying and I agree with it. I also agree with the people that say the solo experience needs to be rewarding. I think there needs to be a middle ground where raid sets are thought out and not some randomized collection of stats and that the reward structure of solo play can lead to higher level content and give a player a path to progression.
Why is Blizzard rewarding solo play? Because people aren’t grouping up for raids and dungeons (or PvP, for that matter). I had a discussion with some raiders and the stats I saw indicated ca 30-40% raid completion rates including LFR. Blizzard has always had a majority design philosophy, I absolutely agree it’s very frustrating when your play style isn’t the majority.
I think the issue, in part, is the emphasis on gear. I guess it’s much easier to design (and randomize) gear than other possible rewards. Since they decided a PvE gearing path for PvP it’s been doubled down (good English!).
What I’m getting at is the issues are more fundamental than who gets what rewards, it’s the gear randomization that is a basic cause. It’s also easier to have a gear randomizer than to balance gear drops and we’re seeing a lot of cost saving measures and money hustles in the game right now perhaps indicative of much worse population statistics than we suspect.
If raiders want a better system they need to work on making raids more inclusive. Help people who they might not normally help, get participation numbers up. I don’t know if it can be done, surely the actions of any individual or even guild is just spit in the ocean but any complaints you see are just tears in the rain of complaints from the various sectors of the game.
The next time someone messes up in raid remember this. Your future may depend on it.
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The game just needs to focus on what solo players loved in the past. The leveling experience. This is and was always the best content for solo players. Trying to dumb down group content to make it accessible or solo friendly was the biggest mistake this game ever made.
They have been eroded away their community little by little trying to pander to a demographic that doesn’t want to play a MMO.
I don’t care what people say here on these forums too. Casual MMO players never wanted a game like this. These changes they have made over the years to cater to the solo player that plays 20 minutes a week have been killing this game. Catering to these players is just not sustainable. They are fickle, all want different things and they want loads of easy and mindless content. It is just way too expensive. That single player, story driven content with tons of cut scenes is probably just as expensive to make as group content.
Why does the game feel like a ghost town? BFA really isn’t even that bad. What has changed is that Blizzard has brought way too many systems that just shower players with gear for menial easy content.
There is no encouragement to join a guild or to push yourself into the group content that keeps players engaged longer than a month. LFR is horrible at retaining players, I bet most only run it 1 time then unsub until the next patch.
Blizzard basically has given all their toughest content away for minimal effort required. This is why the game is boring, you don’t have to ever push yourself into finding a guild to see the final story, you just click a button, afk and bam final boss completed.
No wonder there is so much apathy towards the game these days. Classic is going to show the developers how WoW used to work It will show that slow progression and requiring players to socialize in order to experience end game content is way better and more sustainable for MMOs.
TLDR: WoW has always been a grouping focused MMO. This idea that WoW has catered to solo players in the past in a myth.
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This.
I play both. Skyrim has a brilliant and active, living and breathing mod community that makes the game infinitely replayable, and it is one of the most immersive solo RPG experiences ever created in the gaming world.
You ain’t got to be like that about Skyrim.
Don’t play Skyrim if you don’t want to, but you’re missing out. Just saying.
Really? That’s how you opened? Not a good call. So aggressive and condescending. If you want to actually “educate” people, you can’t start by antagonizing.
That would be me. October 2005, hey hey!
See, I don’t find this to be true at all. In our guild, there are several from my 2005 days, and there are some who just started playing in BfA for the first time. We have age ranges from 15 to 52. I think these are blanket statements spread over a population of millions of people…based on your personal experience.
A better way of saying this is to speak about why you play solo rather than projecting why you think so many other people don’t as though it were a fact. I’ve been playing video games since the mid-1980’s. Yeah. I’m that old. I’m the same age as the kids in Stranger Things–I just never ran into any monsters in the Upside Down.
I like solo play and I like games that require groups. It’s not as deep as generational divides and cultural differences. It’s just what people like on a given day. There’s no deep psychology to mine here. It’s about preferences, and people are all different.
SUPER valid point. I find almost every non-MMO unsatisfying for that reason right there. The expense compared to the content I get out of it is a total mismatch. I’m with you on this entire point.
Having typed all that to mess with you a bit (and because I think I have a few fair points there), I get it. I solo played for almost a year when my people all left the game, and I enjoyed WoW as a solo player tremendously.
You do you.
I loved EVERYTHING in your post (not just the TLDR version). /golf clap.
Seriously. When I play solo, I level alts. It used to be FUN to level up to 60/70/etc. There was a STORY. There were connections to dungeons and connections to other zones and allusions to other zone content and past lore. OMG, it used to be so fun to level in this game, and now it’s just throwaway grinding to get to the end.
Leveling my first toon to 60 took me months. MONTHS. I leveled five toons from 1-120 during BfA in less than a week per. That is saying something huge about the direction they’ve taken the game.
100% agree.
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No I won’t go play Skyrim
“No thanks, I don’t like salad!”
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I think a lot of raiders prefer Skyrim style of play but they want a multiplayer Skyrim experience, but a sizable portion of the population want a PC based RPG rather than a console ported RPG. The majority of WoW players do not raid, and a lot that do only do it once for the achievement in LFR. It makes no sense to design exclusively for the minority.
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