Other than “feeling special,” why do people care if others have the same gear as them?

Community General Discussion
662

That’s fair, generally I agree.

I just don’t want to see blizzard add an endless ilvl upgrade gearing path from doing questing content. I think at some point better quality gear should come from overcoming some form of content, rather than getting points from world quests or heroic dungeons, and then spending them at a vendor.

I do think there could possibly be gear drops from torghast. Not sure how I would implement such a system with layers and whatnot. Or if it would be capped weekly like the soul ash is.

Torghast is something I think they could expand upon because it can “flex” in the sense that it has difficulty layers, and can be completed solo or in a group. It could possibly be another avenue to get power outside of legendary crafting.

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663

Valor does this. The ilvl upgrade has a cap and you need the achievements to hit the highest tiers.

This would be cool. The whole Torghast idea seemed like it had potential, but it ended up being a pretty looking pile of trash.

664

Yep, I know. I generally like this new valor system because it is tied to achievement and overcoming content. What I’m saying is I don’t want to see the opposite, where people can farm points from less challenging content over and over and buy gear or upgrades from a vendor.

665

I would actually like to see a gear vendor.

As for farming the less challenging content - I don’t actually mind. I think it’s cool they put in the requirements for the achievements since it’ll motivate players to push themselves. But if the requirements weren’t there, I wouldn’t care. I just don’t get caught up on gear so much.

Too many times I’ve gone into an old tier with a raid that VASTLY overgears the raid only to wipe constantly. Having OP gear meant nothing, so I stopped caring that much about gear since skill is a much bigger factor to success.

666

That gulf is ENORMOUS. The power difference in that 10% is absolutely staggering.

Let’s see the difference between a 205 ilvl dps and a 225 ilvl dps. I’ll bet its a bigger gap that the dps difference between a 170 ilvl and 205 ilvl.

667

Because timing a +15 key takes coordination and is difficult until you finally get gear that allows it to be easy and you continue to push yourself into higher and higher keys with a true sense of accomplishment.

But part of the fun of doing this type of content is the struggle, which is then rewarded with gear that lessens the struggle.

If you get gear from doing world quests that is the same as from timing a 15, then timing a 15 would be no accomplishment at all.

Harder content should have better rewards, period.

And I’m playing an alt on which I don’t touch harder content, and it feels great. I’m not even item level 200 on my alt, and I cruise through everything and have a blast.

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669

That’s what the achievements, titles, and mounts are for. In addition to getting the gear/ilvl much faster than the casual.

No one cares about the gear casuals are wearing. But many casuals care about the cool mounts the raiders/M+ players are riding. Plus the xmog - which I wish they would add the M+ for 15s.

670

Torghast would’ve been a PERFECT opportunity(and I guess still could be if they reworked it) to offer a solo/small group focused progression experience to award similar gear levels to dungeons, pvp, and raids.

It’d take more work, because Torghast is tough to balance… but it’d be a perfect option.

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671

Hopefully someone asks about the possibility at blizzcon and they talk about their thoughts on how it might work

672

Already did a few days ago: Ask your questions for the WoW Q&A here! - #436 by Saliashra-sargeras - go flag it with likes and stuff if you want to increase its visibility and the chance it gets addressed.

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673

Thx, will do!

674

Ain’t much of a reason to do anything in the end game if they’re just gonna hand out all the best rewards for free.

675

Are you competing with mythic raiders for something?

676

I’m stating facts. You say “it’s ONLY a 10% difference in ilvl” and I tell you that gap is HUGE. It’s not “ONLY a 10% difference” the power difference is massive.

677

The inherent problem is: This isn’t a single player game; There isn’t a “disable access to raids” option; Loot isn’t just random. The loot system will be one and the same for everyone.

Which means, providing the ilvl some are calling for in trivial content: is placing it in all content. Any raider - from casual to “hardcore!!” - will be forced to go out of their way to do content they don’t want to do. (Just the same argument many casuals make about raiding). Failing to do it will drastically put you behind the curve.

Now, you might say: don’t equip it, no problem. But here is the thing – some will. And when those people do, everyone has to. The bosses will need to be tuned for this new base ilvl… or the entire tier is too easy and a waste of time.

So, just to start - either Blizzard is going to have to tune new raid instances to ridiculous difficulties to account for everyone having near max ilvl gear off the start – forcing every raider to have to go out and do this extra content. Or, Blizzard has to scrap the entire notion of challenge and difficulty from the raids altogether.

Either way, it fundamentally breaks raiding and mythic+.

So yes, players having access to gear from trivial content, that negates challenge content… DOES have an affect on everyone else.

Generally done by using government to be your hand of force… demanding the scales be tipped in your favor instead of competing within the underlying “system”.

There are two types of people: Those who understand capitalism places value on things/people/ideas that improve society and create wealth – and fundamentally undermining the meritocratic underpinning of such a system (by decoupling value created to reward earned) breaks the system that pushes society forward… and those that don’t. Artificially inflating the “value” of non improving people/ideas/things does one thing: devalues the value of actually useful things. Generally, rewards adjust as a result. [Handing out money to people for no reason will only lead to mass inflation… ]

To some extent: if you can’t see that the gear ilvls are rewards for doing the things in game that are “valued” (more difficult)… then I don’t know what to tell you. You’ll devalue, or require reevaluation of the content to such an extent it’ll lock out most players.

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678

The rewards themselves not only devalue and trivialize the challenge itself, but the players.

No one disagrees that there should be rewards for completing challenges, but they should never trivialize the challenge itself and other players. Give them apecial armor dyes, effects, make cool knick knacks that you can place on your character like shrunken head belt charms, shoulder and helmet pets, unique ability colors and animations, mounts, titles, endless things that show your skill, without devaluing the baseline of that skill.

Challenges (heroic/mythic/rated pvp) should be tuned for the baseline gear. I’m talking about stats. Having the rewards for elite level challenges be even greater power gains, hence lowering the value of the challenge itself going forward, is the opposite of preserving value.

Imagine if Michael Jordan only played against wheelchair basketball players. Would he still be the GOAT?

Imagine if every time you win the olympics you get a cybernetic implant that increases your physical prowess by a large amount per upgrade leading to a huge disparity between non cybernetic olympians when someone wins enough implants, and winning the Olympics is the ONLY WAY you can get the cybernetics.

Eventually the guy who won rocket legs, super jump boosters, a jetpack wings, superhuman biceps and leg muscles, laser zoom vision eyes, etc., is going to be so far ahead of the others, that skill isn’t even required.

Then people start bribing the decked out olympians to let them “win” the olympics (carries and boosts), meaning the only option to win the olympics is to pay to get ahead, because the olympic challenges keep getting tuned up to match the gear of the decked out olympians (new raids) making it EVEN HARDER to participate.

I feel like the reward for challenges being better gear is absolutely not skill related. It’s the opposite. It’s no-life dedication, forcing yourself to do something exactly how the internet guide told them to specialize(fotm meta).

If skill was an actual weighting factor for the ones doing the challenges, they wouldn’t be so worried about being able to trivialize the challenges and other players in the process.

Hardcore players are just scared that without the huge skill reward (gear) disparity, they wouldn’t be able to win against casual players in dungeon parses or pvp, because when stats are equal and it boils down to player ability choice and identity, as well as execution, timing and knowledge, they wouldn’t be able to win.

That’s not skill.

And if you can’t do double damage over someone who has a full time job and still plays 5 hours a day on weekdays just to keep up with the time gated everything grinds, then what good is your cool title/mount/armor color/transmog?

I mean the fact that pvr gear still trumps rated arena gear is evidence alone that skill isn’t the main concern when it comes to prosperity or value in this game. Nor the challenge.

The value is the disparity when you isolate a large group of players in order to bolster a smaller group of people that pee in 2 liter bottles because their guild doesn’t let them take breaks on raid night.

679

Why should the border of satisfying progression through skill and teamwork be spurned? For entitled players with no intentions of seeing the main courses of the game?

Seems to me this is just a way to express distaste for certain parts of the player base.

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680

Its a bit more complicated than that for the PvE vs PvP gearing issue. It started as PvE gear always being the best – raiding was the end game and PvP a weekend activity once raids were done. With the introduction of Arenas, there a new end-game format took shape and a move was made to isolate PvP gear for PvP use only – the community responded:

“I’m too casual to farm PvE AND PvP gear – this isn’t a job! Stop ruining the game for casuals! Let me get one gear set to run all the content!”.

Blizzard, ever trying to appease, made changes. And the community responded: “WTF!!11! Blizzard. You’re going to kill PvP. I shouldn’t have to raid to get the absolute BiS item for PvP! Letting these “elite” raiders have the best gear for PvP is stupid, stop catering to them!”

And changes, again were made – to great effect: “OMG Blizzard – stop handing the PvP gear out like candy. I’m tired of the BG afk’ers, who’ve never even tried raids, thinking they can come in and just roflstomp bosses! I shouldn’t have to grind honor to meet the ilvl to get into Raids! PvP for PvP, PvE for PvE! You’re ruining the game.”

We’re somewhere in the middle atm. So I don’t know which faction of casuals you belong too, but either way: people are going to be pissed off about PvP vs PvE gear.

I think that everyone wants progression on their character. PvP players want progression just like PvE players. “Hardcore” and “Casuals” alike want progressions. The easiest way to do that is with gear rewards. It’s fundamental to the games design in multiple ways.

Were you to remove gear rewards with ilvl increases: Nobody progresses. That wouldn’t be fun. And no, not simply progression over the course of the entire expansion – progression within the content for the tier as well.

If the first boss in a raid is tuned for the same ilvl as the last: that tier will suck. Bosses in the raid need to get more and more difficult the deeper you go in. The only way this can be achieved: awarding the players more power as they move through that content. Raid teams NEED to get stronger to kill harder bosses.

And that just assumes everyone in the raid is good. Lower skilled raiders need extra gear power to out-scale the raid bosses to be able to get kills. It’s a fine balance: enough difficulty to make a challenge, enough rewards to make it easy by the end.

The fundamental problem with the current requests for more ilvl for WQ casuals: it negates the fundamental progression paths of both PvP and PvE end game content. Just as those WQ casuals want the ability to see their characters improve: so do the raiders and the pvpers. It’s a key aspect of why everyone still plays. And while everyone does WQs and has alts: the super majority of players spend their time doing end game content.

I don’t see how invalidating the progression paths during a tier for the super majority of players benefits the game.

681

Their feeling special gets ruined when they see others walking around in their gear having put little effort.

In harsher words: Their ego. Simple.

In polite words: They worked for it. They want you to work for it or they feel like they got fooled into spending their time.

682

It a simply matter that goes like this. If you put effort towards something then you will be rewarded. There’s no point on getting the best gear for less effort, so stop feeling entitled, because I pay the same per month as you do for the game, just started.