Difficulty Preservation
When it comes to WoW and other MMOs most of your difficulties can be broken into two categories:
- Skill-Based Difficulty
- Time-Based Difficulty
One of the best examples of this is the typical end-of-the-mythic-raid mounts. Raids that clear the content while it is current are guaranteed 1 or 2 mounts from the boss. Depending on when this raid tier is available, some may come back later in the same expansion to reclear with better gear. So, to a small degree, the availability of these mounts may get easier (skill-wise) depending on the details. However, whether it is at the beginning of the expansion or the end of the expansion, it still requires a significant amount of skill.
Now, once this same raid becomes legacy content, the mount-drop chance changes from 100% to 1%. For the first year or so, you will still need a group of people to clear the content. However, instead of 20 people, you may only need 10 or 15 (again, depending on timing, gearing, group overall skill, etc). So, you still need people to know some degree of the fight, but mistakes can be made, and some fight mechanics can be ignored (though some may still 1-shot a player). At this point, there is a transition of skill-based difficulty and time-based difficulty (in other words, it’s a little of both).
The trade here, is that the content has become easier with respect to skill, but the odds of you seeing that mount-drop has drastically reduced – raising the time-based difficulty. As the content becomes older and older, you will need less and less skill, but you are still paying in time with RNG and on a macro-level. What I mean with ‘macro level’ is that if you would like to have the lowest skill requirements, and simply solo the content, then you may need to wait a year or two. This is still time spent waiting, but not necessarily playing the game. In addition, you are not guaranteed the mount, so it may take quite a bit of gameplay time too.
The reason this is important is because difficulty should be reasonably preserved. I say ‘reasonably’, because it is a rough judgement call and not a perfect science (and due to the various input factors, it never will be). For example, there are 4 mounts that can drop from BfA dungeons, and these mount’s drop rate are roughly the same today as they were 2 years ago. However, during BfA you could run mythic dungeons as often as you want, because of the M+ seasons. Today, you may be able to solo that content, but only once a week.
Here, again, your difficulty is roughly still preserved, because despite a lower need for skill and being able to solo it in 5 or minutes, you are limited on a macro-level.
The Assumption that Older Content is Less Valuable is Flawed.
So, let me say here, that I don’t believe you are saying mounts, transmogs, pets, toys, achievements, titles, and etc are less valuable than current content items. However, there are many posts across social media that are similar to this one, leveraging the misconception that just because an item has been in the game for 2 years or 17 years, it is less valuable. Again, I don’t think you are saying this, but I want to make sure to state this assumption is flawed now, so that we can build on it going forward.
Skips
In short, if skips are available in current content, then they should carry-over to legacy content. This is already in the game, so that statement may not even be necessary. However, I do think there is room for improvement here. These skips start as quests – the same type of quests that are limited to 25 per character for who knows why. Honestly, if I can take a moment here, my request would be to remove quest limitations or break up the limitation by expansion. There is no reason for there not to be a tab system where you have your Burning Crusade quests in one tab and your Legion quests in another tab. (I am sure there is a technical reason, but conceptually I would be very interested to know why this could not be done.)
Anyway, adding new skips to old raids has a devaluing aspect to it. For example, at one time you could share lockouts within Heroic ICC, then they removed that ability. Understandably, right? You completely skip the time requirement to get that item, thus devaluing the item, because it takes much less time to get something that took a bit of skill to have the chance to earn when current. And again, from those who ran the entirety of the raid once it was legacy. So, my push-back here would be if you can’t be bother to spend 15 minutes clearing ICC or 45 minutes clearing SoO, then maybe you don’t really care about that item as much as you think you do.
Naturally, this will lead into the conversation, “Well, I have cleared ICC 1000 times, and I still don’t have the mount. So, I clearly want it.” This is fair, but needs to be addressed with a different topic in mind – bad luck protection. I don’t want to get into that here because it could derail your topic. But adding skips for people who can’t be bother to spend 10 – 15 minutes in an instance, sounds like paving a road for people who are unwilling to drive.
Speed
I want to make sure we are talking on the same terms here. When you say, “…it becomes a very, very long run for classes who aren’t very mobile.” If we are being honest, this difference in speed is going to be 3-5 minutes at the most, and many times less than that. Also, if you really want a faster experience, you can craft gear with speed on it. If you are not utilizing the crafted gear, then I would find it hard to advocate for more movement increases.
At some point, someone will utilize everything and move around dungeons at 400% speed, which would be fun, but also broken. So, I don’t know for sure if more speed is absolutely better.
Armor Types
I absolutely disagree with this. As a player, you have a decision to not only make but also maintain for the time that you are in that instance. If you take a druid into SoO and the Tusks of Mannoroth drop, then that is on you. You made a judgement call that those shoulders would not drop while on your druid, and then you continued making that decision for the next 45 minutes. This is asking Blizzard to protect you from your own decisions. And I would be very wary of pushing Blizzard to introduce elements of behavioral control for everyone just because some people like to live on the edge and kill Garrosh on anything other than plate. This attempt at behavioral control is one of the reasons we have a 10-instance-per-server lockout to begin with.
Also, if I could run though dungeons with a druid and pick up everything, then why would I entertain the thought of running with any other class?
Legion Dungeon and Raids
As much as I disagree with the previous point, I agree with this one and I would like to take it a step further.
I can only base this off my personal experiences, but I feel like there is a technical bug regarding doubling, tripling, quadrupling, and centupling drops. The frequency of seeing 4 copies of 1 item and 2 copies of a 2nd item, seems unnaturally high – especially for bosses that have 40+ items on their loot table. These encounters seems fairly common in Legion raids, but also older raids like Dragonsoul, Naxxramas, anything in MoP, and etc.
Furthermore, while I do like the idea of increasing or decreasing your odds of relics while having your artifact with you, I am still curious why Legion bosses only drop 1 item. Legion is the only expansion where this occurs, so it would be nice to see the quantity in drops a little more consistent across the expansions. If that is not possible, it would be nice to at least know why.
RP Speeches
I can understand the frustration here. It is similar to having to fly back and forth for your MoP extra loot coins simply because there is an arbitrary and antiquated cap of 20 coins. Building off my previous points, you could say this is just part of the time-based difficulty transition, but I think you could make a valid point that no actual gameplay is really happening here. Most of the time for RP like this, people tend to tab out like they do on flightpaths.
I don’t have much of a additional suggestion here, but I can definitely sympathize.
Legion Raid Solo Ability
I agree that the scaling of legacy did not really scale well for legacy content when we were shifted from level 120 to level 50. However, I think we should be specific in what types of changes are being requested. For example, in Hellfire Citadel, it was impossible to solo Gorefiend, because a mechanic would activate that would pull you into another phase causing the encounter to despawn. The mechanic initiated so early in the encounter even for character that could easily solo the last boss. So, those types of chances need to happen.
On the other hand, if someone is taking massive damage due to the boss’s power, their own ilvl, or maybe their own character level, then that is a player problem and should be incentivization to develop your character further or team up with others. If you are getting wrecked on legacy content, bring a friend or two. Maybe post in group finder. Maybe post in the local General channel.
So, in short, would it be nice if you could go through and solo all raids from 2+ expansions ago if you are a moderately (Normal raid level ilvl) geared? Sure. And if that is a goal going forward, I am all on board. However, I have seen people complain that they could not solo Mythic Antorus on their 174 ilvl Rogue. I just think there needs to be a middle ground of expectations from development and players alike, followed up with consistency from one expansion to the next.
Returning to Time-Based Difficulty Content
The reason I dove into the discussion of preserving difficulty content, is that there needs to be a core driver for changes being made. Otherwise, changes and adjustments will be random, sporadic, and inconsistent. Preserving the difficulty also roughly preserves the value of the items being sought after – which is what you want for any game you play.
In other words, many of the suggestions here are only good for the individual player but takes no consideration for the game and other players in the game. Sure, the players that can’t be bothered to clear SoO for the Tusks of Mannorth will benefit, because they would be able to 1) Skip to Garrosh, 2) Sprint there in half the time, and 3) do this on their druid, because their warrior might be a bit slower. How would you justify this to people have put in the time and skill (depending when they received it) for the Tusks of Mannoroth? And all this for those who don’t care enough about items to put in the effort themselves?
Let me see if I can put this another way: Let’s say that I really, really want the Mythic tier variants of Castle Nathria for my Death Knight, but I told you that I don’t like doing content more difficult than the equivalent of M+5. In this hypothetical, let’s say that I find completing content that is more difficult than M+5 requires too much min/maxing, time, and effort. Furthermore, the guild I am in wants me to have 3 separate classes to be able to switch between to run with them. However, I don’t like leveling, so I tell them no. So, I am unwilling to level other characters, I am unwilling to deep-dive into min/maxing gear, and I find content above M+5 unreasonably difficult. At this point, it would be unfathomable for me to then say, “I want Mythic Castle Nathria gear, please reduce the difficulty level to match my effort level.” That is what is happening with legacy raids and other suggestions like account-wide Balance of Power completion.
So, if we didn’t reduce the skilled-based difficulty of content (aside from feasibility adjustments) when it was current, then we don’t need to reduce the time-based difficulty of content when it is legacy. Some people have more skill than others, and they reap the rewards. Other people have more time than others, and they also reap rewards. In every facet of the game will their own respective extremes - Mythic level raid gear, Elite PvP sets, gladiator mounts, Love Rocket, Battle Pet Dungeons, Tusks of Mannorth, Invincible, and the list goes on.
