WoW has been so demoralizing this expansion with it’s gear “progression”… you get a blue set of AZ gear that has the traits you want… then you get a purple set of gear that has the same stats but WAIT, you can’t use those traits you’ve been using all along with blue gear because you haven’t farmed enough islands.
Yuck.
MHW gave me that old feeling of knowing exactly what I’m working towards and knowing exactly when I’m getting it. Much like back in the day of WoW when come Tuesday reset you knew you’d have enough of the currency you KNEW you were getting rewarded with to get the next set of armor you were after.
No RNG. No forging. Just nice, rewarding, feel good progression. Whenever I played WoW, I knew I was working on something… that’s not the case any longer.
Currently in WoW you have to HOPE you and/or your friends get a mythic key for the dungeon you want that has the gear you need to have a CHANCE to get that gear to drop, and if it drops you have a CHANCE that it’ll forge into the best version of itself. Same applies to PvP/Raids.
The RNG I’ve had so far in MHW has been waiting for certain Missions to pop up where I can hunt certain monsters that reward me the materials I need to craft the armor set I’m after. That’s a welcome change of RNG, especially realizing just how excited I got when I saw the mission pop up on my list last night and letting out a “oh hell yeah.” because I knew all I had to do was get in there and defeat the creature to get the reward… not hope against hope that I get SOMETHING after having to wait for it to pop up.
I hope this makes sense… I’m multitasking a bit at work and I’m hopped up on coffee while looking up more monster hunter guides. Hope everyone has had a great holiday!
TL;DR: MHW made me realize just how much RNG has been crammed into WoW and made me miss the days of static progression in WoW where I knew what I was working towards at all time instead of praying I get the right mythic key and on top of that praying I get my time to drop and on top of that praying it forges to it’s best version.
I just read somewhere - RNG = Artificial replay value.
Add that with M+ and the never ending quest to get higher keys for more chances at RNG.
The RNG on everything in this game is becoming too much and you can either stop playing some content, stop playing at all, or just come to the realisation that this is it and if you get something you can use than good for you.
Maybe if we all came to that realisation and the number of people completing content dropped they would have to make a change.
RNG in Motherlode for my engineering mount.
RNG in M+ caches.
RNG in Warfront.
RNG in Emissary caches.
RNG in plane caches.
The only guarantee you can get in this game is your first M+ key at each level until your get your first 355 item that may or may not drop from the original BfA world bosses, your first Emissary, Warfront or Assault 370 item, and your first 8.1 world boss drop. And lastly your AZ gear vendor items.
Everything else aside from the specific azerite cache is now a non guarantee since it may be another item for a slot you already have a piece for.
I’ve been playing MHW with a few friends and while it does have that strange “wait for player to watch cutscenes before joining” feature, I really do love the multiplayer aspect of it.
An MMO version of it would be an absolute delight, but for now I’m really loving what it has to offer. This is my first Monster Hunter game as well so there’s a lot for me to catch up on hah
That being said, it all just made me miss that feeling in WoW of static progression and knowing I was tangibly working towards something at all times. I hope WoW goes back to that because I would love that feeling back in this game.
Sadly I can never see that happening again unless they get another form of income like loot boxes. They need players to stick around o we can keep paying for very obvious reasons.
But what they can do is give us a progression system that takes time. I mean you look at the current rep progression, it takes no time at all to get Pathfinder part 1, a few weeks easy and you now have all factions unlocked to max rep allowing you to purchase whatever they have to offer, but sadly as we know by the time that happens unless all you are doing are WQ’s than you don’t even need the gear.
Allow us to farm rep the hard way, or a form of currency that takes time, I like the new AZ vendor, and while it seems hard to get, I already got two 370 items out of it and than some.
Instead we need progression towards item we need, items we want, but make it a journey to get there so we have something to do and work towards.
But think about this, you start a new character and hit 120 when Darkshore is on, you go and kill the world boss over there and get a 385 item. What does that actually now mean? Everything outside the specific AZ caches could very well be for that same slot meaning everything you do is pointless.
You have zero guarantees at getting any upgrades aside from your first AZ item and whatever the WQ’s offer up. You may get a 385 wrist and from than on in every drop outside the WQ’s is a wrist item and not an upgrade unless it goes WF or TF.
As long as it’s a journey with a clear progression path not filled with “get x item from boss” and that’s locked behind a big fat RNG wall… then yes, this would set things in the right direction.
Even if it’s something that takes me a LONG time. Something I loved about Artifact Weapons were the hidden apperance unlock requirements.
“Clear 100 dungeons while using this skin”
“Kill 200 players of enemy faction using this skin”
etc etc. Very clear, non RNG related goals that took time that gave you a reward you KNEW was coming.
Sprinkle that approach across all your systems, Blizzard!
I can get behind this. I don’t care if I have to be here for a month at a time to get one item (OK, maybe not that long), but as long as I knew what I could get I would stick around and do it.
I even changed my main character to my DK since I was getting nowhere on this guy, at least than I could start again and get the WQ’s done, my first of everything and than sink into the RNG hole for the time being until the new raid and iLVL increase comes out.
I’m wondering if they changed something in warfronts as well. When it first came out and i was gearing the first set of characters I was getting a new piece of gear for every under leveled slot then when I had the full sets I started getting duplicates that my or may not get an upgrade forge proc. Now I keep getting dupe after dupe when some equipment slots is still sporting a green. This seems way too big to be a coincidence.
Serious question and I am sure I am missing something. How is the rng now different from vanilla when you had to run a dungeon over and over again in hopes for the 1 item you needed to drop, often times just leaving empty handed after a few hours in the place. Or vanilla raiding where you would run weeks with your guild for upgrades?
However at one point (and I can’t remember which expansion it was) they added currencies in game for PvE and PvP that you got from doing content for each. For example PvP gave you conquest points based on your rating at the end of the week. After the Tuesday reset, you could use those points on the PvP vendor to buy the gear YOU WANTED/NEEDED. You had a very clear, non RNG filled approach to gearing out.
RNG is good for an MMO. Always has been. But WoW has taken on the approach of layering RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG… quite literally.
RNG mythic key -> RNG mythic key run loot -> RNG mythich key run loot forging.
Add to that the Azerite Armor system that gives you your best in slot traits before you hit 120 with blue gear, then takes them away when you replace that blue gear with epic gear and says you need to run more content before getting your traits BACK.
I noticed that too, my hunter (my first 120) got a whole set of gear and 2 weapons (bow and polearm) in order, targeting every slot that was under 340.
The rest of my alts have been getting random pieces, even repeated items back to back.
First it was decent but boring, now it is random af, very time consuming and boring.
It is clearly a time sink tactic, they changed the way you obtain gear so you stay online for a longer time.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that RNG for the gems in MHW is a pain in the butt. I know people who have been talking about hundreds of hours playtime still waiting on certain build defining gems to drop. This was when I stopped playing MHW in about October, not sure the current state of the game, but that was annoying a lot of people on PC around then.
Fun game overall, and worth sinking around a hundred hours or so into, but it got repetitive to me.
![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")