some people cry hard in this game if a solo player gets any type of decent gear, and it doesn’t even affect them , solo players won’t be in your dungeon, why would Blizzard not throw the solo players a bone here and there, they pay their 15$ like every one else, and they probably out number the m+ crowd.
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Something to consider: Anyone who watches streams, Dev Updates/Interviews, etc. that is a relatively-hardcore fan. (I’m talked to a few CMs about this). Casual players don’t, or rarely, watch any media related to the game.
I wish they would remove much of the story away from raiding. I feel like raids can have a story, but they shouldn’t be as critical to the storytelling. I think WOTLK set the need for LFR in that sense. Major figures should be in the raids, and LFR would still exist, but you’d be able to complete much more of the story with raid content. Dungeons and Raids should tell their own stories, rather than be the climax and conclusion to all stories in the questing content.
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That would feel terrible to have non-characters in raids, how boring would that be to beat faceless monsters without any story to it, that’s what you’re asking by taking the story away. Hell I’d even argue to keep adding secret phase to mythic. Yes people should be able to complete the story, but you should want to face those foes in a content that can represent them better. People have said that about Nerzul in WoD that he shouldve got his own raid because facing him in a dungeon was rather dull.
Been playing off and on since Vanilla. I play solo, or with a couple family members. I’ll dabble in LFG occasionally and like random battlegrounds, but after a two year break as long as Blizzard keeps cranking out a good amount of solo/small group friendly content I’ll keep enjoying wow.
Well, here we have the crowd who think they’re being generous and understanding of solo players by saying they’re fine with solo players “as long as they don’t think they get things I’m getting.” I’ve never seen a good argument for why someone can get carried repeatedly to get great gear, more transmogs, more mounts, and all the story of the game, but a solo player who puts in more time and effort every week just gets scraps.
FFXIV is over there getting rave reviews, bringing in tons of players, doing storytelling that everyone seems to be happy with, and also just so happens to be now giving the opportunity for solo players to run instances with story NPC’s instead of other players, if they choose to. And everything is fine, and people are still happy.
Been a solo player in every MMO I’ve played since EQ was brand new. We’ve always been second class citizens, and it gets old when a chunk of the population who gets everything calls solo players “entitled” for wanting a more engaging experience. Both types of play style should be fun and rewarding, and neither should be forced onto someone who doesn’t want to do them.
Unless people really think you’re getting a better game experience by being tossed into a group finder match-up with real people you never talk to to do content that’s pretty much trivial, rather than just being able to go do it your own way at your own pace. Maybe the community wouldn’t insist on doing any group content at breakneck speeds just to get it over with if they could just go do content rather than sitting in a 45-60 minute queue first.
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I’ll take this part alone because the rest of it isn’t really about that.
What people are saying (or mostly what I’m saying) is that each content needs his own niche.
Gear has been raid niche since forever and people that raid or do pvp don’t really want to do stuff outside because that’s the content they enjoy, putting high rewards or unique power rewards create this distortion to have to play more time outside of raids than in raids, which decent guilds already spends in average about 12 hours a week. You shouldn’t have to play 20+ hours a week just to be able to raid at a decent level and that’s what happens when raid gear isn’t bis in raid or that ap is mainly given out in the form of wqs.
Raiders would be more than happy to burn trought ap/reps and never do it till never patch but by forcing timegating with wqs and knowledge for ap they can’t, same thing with M+ not having lockout, it makes it so people have to keep doing that or they are not doing their best to be able to get in raid.
Now what your answer is, but then don’t do that to yourself? That’s what I did I decided to play another game instead of hurting myself just to raid on a dk, a class that got destroyed with bfa/legion reworks, which is the content I enjoy the most.
Solo players need love too. Our gear should be comparable to M+ raid gear. When we get dragged into a PVP situation by our friends, our solo gear should be sufficient in helping repel enemies. I have my own war stories from the crossroads, and how raiders were somehow able to curbstomp PVP geared players. When you play solo, it shouldn’t be detrimental to your experience, it should be rewarded.
If you like to play with friends, that’s fine, but your challenge is based on the collective, not the individual. The individual more often than not faces greater challenges than the group.
Imagine yourself having to defend against a group in PVP. Under the usual circumstances we see now, you have everyone the same level, but the solo player is easily victimized by the group because it’s a solo player VS a group. The solo player builds up this reputation in-game for being a real hardcore hero who doesn’t rely on others to get the job done for a number of reasons, be it the “I don’t want anyone else getting hurt because of me” altruist, or the “Other people get in my way” pessimist. Soloing should be rewarded.
In this case, we can also expand it to duos, players who formed tight groups of 2 where they count on each other to survive, the brothers/sisters in arms duo, or even the mixed-gender duo.
Solo players go through more than groups even consider. And solo play is growing because fewer older players stay. If you DO have a group, you have them for what? The lifetime of an expansion? Which is about 2-2.5 years? Honestly, it’s not worth the overburdening focus on group content.
Make a solo mode for instances, watch how big it explodes! Watch as solo players deal with trash mobs, fight bosses with brawler’s guild mechanics(minus that stupid annoying timer that makes it from a tactical battle to a DPS race and gear check). Make boss mechanics that can adapt to solo play.
I’d be fine with having to fight Jaina 1-1 and have to spend maybe half the fight running around avoiding icicles that rain from the sky or pop from the ground! Just don’t time gate good stuff like the mage tower!
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It’s just gear, completely obsolete a patch down the road. I can understand if you’re talking about special armor transmogs or mage tower things. But we’re talking about item levels. That’s it. People find that their character “progression” is completely tied to the item level. You could remove your gear and your character is identical to any other player at your level that is also naked. Your character is literally nothing in this game.
People, especially in 2019 with mobile games, f2p, micro-transactions, buy to save time and whatever, they want to feel like they’re progressing - no matter what they do. That’s why you see so many things Blizzard do to appease these players because there are a LOT of them. If they stop feeling like they’re “progressing” like giving them handouts they’ll just quit the game and play something else. It’s just that simple.
You could say they just want to be rewarded for paying and playing the game, regardless of the difficulty tied to whatever it is they are doing.
It’s normal in a mmorpg that people that are more geared can kill more easily people with less gear. The main problem you see is because of the artificial progression systems they have created by splitting raids into 4 difficulties that each add 15 ilvls, each new raids add 30 ilvls because they want to keep reseting gear each “season” and systems like ap which can unlock very big advantages. So while yes it’s true that people shouldn’t be stomping that much new players, it’s not because of raider getting gear that it’s caused, but mainly because of how they scale content now.
Have to say also that gear is an incentive to “get better” and do raids. Yes there is fun, but like you keep saying for solo players, there should be rewards. And there is less rewards if you gear comes from elsewhere. Gotta note that it has usually been that way for most video games, you get better rewards for doing harder content, only wow, phones games and pay2win games basicly disagree with that. That’s not adding that doing raids need organization, which isn’t needed for solo play.
Also I’d like to add that if you think mage towers were near hard, I wouldn’t put them over heroic raid difficulty. With the right gear you could 2 shot them, people that did them the first weeks had a challenge over that, but most people didn’t.
As for solo dungeons, they exist in FFXIV and no it hasn’t broke everything. Because groups are way faster and get more loot. Also gotta note that those dungeons are pretty much normal dungeons, there isn’t really that hard dungeons in FFXIV comparable to M+.
As fun as an MMORPG is, with Blizzard’s storytelling driven narratives it’d be far better suited to a single player open world adventure like Skyrim. MMOs need to be player driven and blizzard seems to have a problem with this now.
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If storytelling is your thing, well I don’t want to say but FFXIV story in shadowbringer is probably the best out of pretty much all video games in a while.
Ok now that we did our product placement. 
As for wow, they have problems telling the story ingame. Books, novellas, etc. you gotta read them all to understand what’s going on really. What we see ingame even get retconned all the time.
It would be interesting for them to fix that, or atleast create other video games based on warcraft lore, like warcraft 3 was. Really hoping for warcraft 4 oneday but I feel we’re gonna get half life 3 before. xd
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You sound terribly unhappy. Show us on the doll where the bad solo player touched you.
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This. I play a little of both so I understand why some people are afraid to play with others. But this is an MMO and it should always stay that way. Asking to be able to raid all by yourself is asinine and deserves every bit the “go play a single player” response.
I absolutely agree solo play should be supported. Playing the lone wolf type is just as much a part of RPGs as parties and raids. That being said, there has to be limits. If a solo player were allowed to go into a raid an clear it by theirselves, that would, as a matter of lore, mean they are basically gods amomg men, because the rest of us need 10 to 20 people to accomplish the same task. It just wouldn’t make sense.
I would totally support and participate if there were solo dungeons, but I’d still want to see the rewards reflect the level of skill/effort required to obtain them.
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It’s a matter of how the culture has changed, some driven by the players and some by changes in the game. I used to heal and tank dungeons all the time and raids some, but LFD, LFR, and M+ changed the equation. Everyone has a short attention span, no one waits for the tank, you’re not given time to even read quest details let alone run things like profession quests if they aren’t something that is needed or would naturally be completed by simply running the dungeon.
The equations need to change. One thing I’ve felt for some time is they need to add cross realm guilds for people on low progression servers. Otherwise they should probably make more allowances for solo players. Maybe raids simply aren’t the best end game with the current structure and community.
Or… you could actual create a progression system that isn’t tied to random dopamine kicks. Developing a game without those Pay-to-Win elements isn’t any more difficult. People developed games like that perfectly fine for decades.
This comment insinuates companies should develop their games targeting their playerbase/consumers as wallets.
Any game based on some element of skill will actively prevent players from continuing until they get good enough.
If you are a Bronze-tier player – you do not deserve to play with Diamond or Grand Master level players in a competitive setting. If you want to complete Dark Souls and one part keeps killing you, you don’t deserve to get past that roadblock.
Progression “was” tied to gear; now it’s tied to RaiderIO, Arena Ratings, etc. Blizzard made gear obsolete each patch. This is strictly a BFA thing. It wasn’t that bad in Legion, nor WOD. Progression doesn’t exist in today’s game.
Making the previous patch’s content effectively obsolete… it’s effectively a new game every patch. It gives me no motivation to play right now because there is no point. I could simply wait for the final patch and play through all content in months.
It’s great if people enjoy playing the game. I genuinely don’t want to impede on enjoyment. However, simply paying for a game does not entitle you to same rewards as other players. You need to play the game to reap the rewards. If you cannot acquire those rewards, so beit – but your money shouldn’t be a factor.
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man this is the best mvp comment i’ve seen in my entire time in WoW (since vanilla)
I’m one of those people too, primarily because of the points you mentioned. For the longest time that was fine. Now however, the problem for me is they keep forcing you to partake in aspects of the game you have no interest in…pvp, mythic dungeons, raids, etc. I get that it’s an MMO and you are fundamentally supposed to do things with other people, but you should do these things because you WANT to…not because you HAVE to. Given that gamers have a much higher statistical probability of being introverted, it baffles me that this escapes people. Forcing people to do things they don’t want to for no other reason than satisfying stupid metrics is an easy way to drive people away.
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Because this is an MMO, and solo play shouldn’t be as rewarding as grouping with others.
(3 words) Fus Ro Dah (end topic)