You have to be generous with your customer base at least some of the time or you will find yourself without a customer base all of the time.
I’ll agree with you there. It shouldn’t be as fun as it is but I’m actually kinda hooked already.
I don’t think this is necessarily true in Blizzard’s case. They have the unique qualifier of being, well, Blizzard.
They’ll absolutely maintain a huge enough customer base to rake it in for years. They’re Blizzard. I think it’s more of an issue with the general game design loop than some cynical want to make all of the money.
… Okay, they’re a business, there’s at least some cynical ‘make all the money’ in there. But BFA’s problem comes down mostly to its awful reward loop.
This entire expansion is just “play the game, things will happen.” That’s their mentality with azerite and it’s grind, it seems the be their mentality with gear too – just play the game, the gear will happen/drop.
Can’t force the system beyond the restrictions they’ve set in place. And the ‘guaranteed gear’ has high costs and only applies to their vaunted Azerite armor.
If I bust my a$$ to time high keys all week to help myself and guildies and anyone else I meet, to get nothing… then get nothing from the weekly chest… how long do you think I’m going to keep playing and just accepting that? That’s rhetorical, the answer is, not very long.
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Curious… what specifically are you wanting to get… considering you’re not hoping for full 450+ titanforged pieces. Aside from the hearth-cloak you forget to swap back last time you logged off, I don’t see a whole lot of potential upgrade spots coming out of a 440 chest every week.
Join us… come to the dark side of WoW and make a Classic toon!
This RNG problem is the most discouraging mechanic I’ve ever encountered in all the expansions.
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Being that I cannot get high level weapons from M+, I am hoping to get them from the chest since I have not seen a single one drop from EP yet unless it was a base 430 downgrade.
Higher trinkets and rings I still need as well…
@Romulus:
I started a Night Elf Rogue on Faeranor or whatever it’s called, I’m level 9 I believe and just enjoying the game.
Yeah and I know exactly how this feels because I am going through the same thing with the shoulders from The Battle for Stromgarde warfront…I’ve done it pretty much every single chance I’ve gotten, sometimes even on two plate characters (one is horde one is alliance) and I STILL don’t have them. It is the only piece I still do not have and its incredibly frustrating. Sure I know I shouldn’t just get them for free but holy crap by now I have earned them.
There needs to be a system in place to prevent stuff like this from happening to people who are dedicated to completing something. I’ve put in the time, I want those shoulders finally.
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They could, but they would need to nerf emissary, benthic, warfront, and weekly event gear rewards.
Not who you’re replying to, but I don’t think the problem is necessarily that it makes getting your BiS harder. That is a problem, but really the biggest and most damning issue is that it devalues regular loot.
Anything that doesn’t forge in some way feels less like a regular drop, and more like something lesser. Classic isn’t perfect (in fact, it’s incredibly forged flawed), but the fact that every drop has a relatively static strength works very well in its favor.
The RNG of just getting an item can be bad enough, sometimes. To have something on top of it that makes you feel (subconsciously) like you aren’t getting the ‘real’ item? That sucks!
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Forging in MoP was perfectly fine because it had a reasonably high chance of happening that was substantially increased in 25-man raids, you had your +6 item levels to a piece, tier was specifically excluded from the equation, and… that was it. Most people who did that level of content very realistically saw those 572 pieces before the tier ended, and literally anybody could upgrade those pieces another sixteen item levels not much later on for relatively little overall investment.
Nowadays you have the 400 LFR version, the 405 LFR version, the 410 LFR version, the 415 LFR version and the 415 Normal version, the 420 LFR version and the 420 Normal version, the 425 LFR and Normal versions, the 430 LFR/Normal/Heroic versions, the 435 LFR/Normal/Heroic versions, the 440 LFR/Normal/Heroic versions, the 445 LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic versions, the 450 LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic versions, the 455 LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic versions, the versions of each of increments of five item levels with sockets, the versions of each of those with any of four vastly different tertiary stats that in a select few cases can make a huge difference, and even a combination of all three of them at once. And at no point do I feel like any of that crap is an assured drop, either: I never have a sense of excitement when and if the 430 Heroic piece drops because it could’ve been a 445 Heroic piece that is so much better that I don’t even have to do Mythic for that piece anymore.
Benthic gear is taking this somewhat in the right direction by having pieces that you can realistically, feasibly work towards that are very strong and BiS until a certain level. You can “farm” for sockets+DPS bonus effects on them and you can do so at quite a high rate. But it just redirects an obscene amount of randomness towards something that you simply have more chances at. You still need to roll that Benthic Socketed Akana’s [insert armor type here] Boots in the first place, and if it has no Socket it has almost no value because it’s so easy to grind out Manapearls that you could spend those Manapearls getting a better Benthic piece than you could spend upgrading it.
Why can’t I just identify a piece a boss drops, kill that boss, and get the BiS piece when the boss dies if it drops? Why must there be literal thousands of potential combinations for a single piece of loot that still only has but a small chance to drop in the first place?
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The problem with RNG is that it takes all choice and power away from the player.
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This is probably my biggest problem with the current system. Add to that the seasonal ‘resets’ (at least if you’re mostly playing M+ - I doubt this is as much of a problem for full-time raiders) and it can feel like you’re simply farming and re-farming the exact same item on a repeated basis. Heaven forbid if you have to get it to forge to be an upgrade.
I wish I were good enough to push Mythic raiding, or had the schedule to match, it seems like they’ve got a much more interesting loot situation going for them. But the content is just too hardcore for me…
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I’m already sick of these current dungeons. At least if I felt I could go after a specific drop with a decent chance of getting it, I’d go and help guildies etc… but the idea of running the same BS affixes and busting my a$$ for hours and maybe timing if we’re absolutely perfect… for the tiniest chance… no thanks, effort vs reward just isn’t there.
How about we remove the RNG by just removing stupid weekly lootboxes?
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I don’t understand the argument of “if you have your bis you’ll stop playing” if it weren’t for the endless loot pinata and heart of azeroth bs I’d be playing an alt instead of classic and ffxiv
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Exactly, it’s a low IQ argument.
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The issue is definitely made worse by the fact that, so many patches in, we’re still playing the same batch of dungeons we were in the base expansion. Mechagon aside, nothing’s changed save for affixes.
Affixes can be fun, but they don’t change the dungeons or the fights in them in any meaningful manner, they just kind of add little annoyances on top of them.
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I would run the dungeons if I had a real shot at something and could set a goal, go in and have a chance at getting it, but the chance is just too low to make it worth the effort.