In what way is what I described abuse of the system? The cost to get champion track gear is a coffer key, which I’m doing just as much as you to farm each week. The system is tuned such that I am able to solo it whilst very undergeared (relative to the recommended item level), so I do. I am using each of these systems exactly how Blizzard intended them to be used.
What I think the solution would be would do nothing to change delve loot nor how it interacts with M+. If players want to continue to gear up through delves before trying to jump into a +7 key, they still could. I just think there needs to be more incentive for players to elect to jump into a low level key rather than delves when the current limiting factor on their key progression is gear they can get from either.
I think both of these are a problem. From the perspective of a player who will reach +7s or heroic raid, delves only matter at the low end. That is the side of the gearing equation I was commenting on.
But it is also problematic that players who aren’t able to reach that level of content will wind up 20 item levels below max regardless how much they want to play. This is mostly due to Blizzard deciding to add 2 more upgrade levels on myth gear than anything else, for whatever reason. I still don’t really understand that decision.
Feeling the need to wholly exaggerate to try to prove your point is showing your intent. Because mythic raid gear isn’t dropping from anything but mythic raids. We are talking about casuals having slightly higher levels of gear than they might otherwise have.
As I’ve repeated numerous times off of these forums, it’s completely feasible to grind your way to 619 without touching more than a few delves. Farming them simply speeds that process up. A pure casual that does nothing but time walking raids and dungeons and weekly quests and the odd LFR here or there (say for BRD boss) can stock up on a LOT of champ gear, and several hero pieces, without even touching delves.
five 619 crafted items (renown and story raid boss)
champion gear weekly from anniversary
champion gear from BRD emp quest
champion gear from whenever the TW week has a raid, both from said raid and from the quest for dungeons/bosses (and the heroic raid quest too)
so much veteran gear that you swim in it
enough crests via renown maxing and all of the above quests to eventually get to 619 via upgrading crests.
The issue isn’t casuals getting to 619. Because you can completely ignore delves and do it anyway. So the issue isn’t them doing it via delves either. It’s them doing it “too easily”. And it’s really “sweatlords being able to abuse the system”. So yeah, it’s two-fold I guess. Casuals aren’t being forced to ‘earn it’ properly, and sweatlords are able to abuse it.
Neither one is of concern to most casuals. This is an elitism issue.
If fully upgraded Mythic raid gear dropped regularly from pet battles, do you see any problem it could cause to endgame balance? Or would any concern here be simple ‘elitism’ and ‘jealousy’ as you say?
I’ll only repeat myself once, really interested in a genuine discussion here.
Yes, that would affect in-game balance, which is something you don’t acknowledge as mattering whatsoever.
There are also degrees of balance, not just the exaggerated example I gave. People are speaking to the degrees of that balance between endgame pillars, and this balance does very much matter for the game’s health.
I understand why you want to avoid answering directly, it’s the crux of your opponent’s arguments. But I think there’s a solution that can allow for meaningful rewards in delves while also addressing endgame balance.
LOL… I’m not avoiding answering. I’m just ignoring the knee-jerk exaggerated comparison you made. I’ll address it though, to prevent you feeling some sort of bizarre superiority complex from making it.
Yes, if “pet battles” dropped mythic raid gear that would be an obvious balance issues. Although frankly this veers almost towards the PVP/PVE balance type issues, because pet battles have absolutely nothing to do with PVE gameplay. But I digress.
As I quite obviously and clearly stated, the issue is one of non-casuals abusing a system designed for casuals to better themselves and skip content. THIS is the issue, beyond the epeening and elitism, which has always existed in this game anyway.
We can’t have the poor sweatlords getting their gear too fast, and coloring outside the lines, and even moreso if it happens to benefit poor little Billy Badplayer. This is nearly the exact same argument though that mythic raiders made back when M+ started giving out comparable loot. “IT’S NOT FAIR”. In that case the argument was especially that raiders only got gear once a week and M+ dropped like candy behind a truck.
In this case, it’s simply not even one of volume, but one of ease of play. And it’s not negating M+, it’s only negating the lower keys. Which if Ion and Co hadn’t squished down, might have offered other players more of an entry-level into M+ and made little Billy less of a Badplayer.
But I digress. Nerfing the rewards from Delves does nothing but force the try-hards back into their lane, and punish everyone else in the process. If you wanted to prevent bads from joining M+ you would talk about restrictions on M+ entry. Because this conversation isn’t about ‘bads’ having good gear. It never has been. It’s about people feeling things are ‘earned’ properly. Which is a construct designed around ‘fairness’, which is itself a construct designed around some sort of ‘folks have to walk uphill in the snow like I did’ notion.
Casuals at this point? We simply don’t care. This is a sweatlords problem. Go deal with it in your sweatlord yurt and leave the casuals alone.
I hope the irony isn’t lost on you here, with how you’re choosing to engage and then claiming your opponents are toxic. Try to bring it down a peg, this isn’t life or death?
No, it provides balance to endgame pillars and gives players meaningful choice between gearing options.
Just as mythic gear dropping from pet battles would disrupt this balance, acquiring gear through any one means too easily does the same. A balance needs to be struck, and it has nothing to do with putting “Billy Badplayer” in his place.
But since Daddy Blizz only loves M+ and raiding changing anything about either would be admitting to a mistake. So we know they’ll just nerf delves, which may drive me to FFXIV again, especially if they also restrict flying in 11.1. Besides, nerfing delves would be a direct shafting to the solo/ casual players and we all know that’s Ion’s favorite thing to do.
You hit the nail almost square on the head here. What you missed is those that do things like world firsts and the like don’t really care what casual Joe gets. You Methods and similar are more then happy doing what they do and letting others fall where they will.
The ones raising the fuss are the wannabe elites, those that tie their worth, or whatever, to things they have that others do not. I could care less if one has better gear then I do, I can work to get it, what gets me is the idea that I should not be able to work for it just because some whiner got theirs and needs to feel “special” in a game where most don’t know their fellow player from Adam or Eve.
Truer words, seriously. All the notions of “balance” at anywhere beyond the top of the gear chain are just kind of chuckle-worthy at best. And there will never be an argument to motivate folks to do lower keys, it’s always just nerf all other options.
Newsflash, never should have squished the keys. Should have left keys 2-9 for the pups, the casuals, and those that wanted to dip into the pool without getting destroyed (both by the game and their teammates) if they screwed up. A place to learn. Instead we got the nonsense that is M0, and buffed up heroics (that no one wanted), and the immediate jump to what used to be a +12, now erroneously named a +2, to make it seem trivial, when it’s not, for the less-good.
So we discourage them from playing the low keys, by artificially inflating their difficulty while still calling them low keys, we give them an alternate gear path (that everyone takes), and then complain when they have that option.
I do seriously sometimes wish, as I’ve seen suggested in other places, that m+ and raid have different gear sub-stats or something, like PVP, so that the try-hards can have their special loot, and the rest of us can simply be competent and successful with our world content. You wanna be good at M+? Go get M+ designated loot. You wanna do anything beyond LFR in raids? Go get Raid designated loot.
Stop whining because everyone is competent now, without having to ‘earn’ it the way you specifically feel they should have.
This was a Blizzard monkey paw, people wanted “queueable” mythics, so Blizzard made heroics, which are queueable, the same as an old M0, boosted mythic (which is never queueable) to M10 and went from there.
It might not be that people did not want the boosted heroics, but that they did not hink of how they could get that difficulty for queued content while Blizzard still kept mythics non-queueable
