Which is thing many in my guild have managed even with essences, because getting the actual essences to Rank 3 takes less time than gearing to 440+ even with funnels.
Sounds like you’re just not cut out for competitiveWoW now.
I kinda get what you and Primal are and are after : the Raid Logging scene. AKA : people who raid logged, and when they want to main swap or have a “2nd main”, they would raid log and hope the guild funnels them gear.
The WoW player base massively rejected your style of play in WoD. This gave us Legion and BfA and now Shadowlands, where “Raid Logging” is a dead playstyle.
Obviously, the devs agree. And I’d dare say a good part of the playerbase too. WoW is and always will be an RPG. That means progression.
When they did “eSport” PvP in Legion, it got massively dumped on.
What grind ? You can gear up and Essence up an alt in 3 weeks.
This is much easier than its ever been. Heck, go play Classic and see how fast you get into Naxx.
So you skipped the Legendary Cloak in MoP ? That required outside of raid content, especially the 5.1 and 5.2 parts. Same for the Legendary ring in WoD.
Yes these required less effort than what Legion/BfA asked of raiders, but then again, MoP/WoD had a serious problem of giving you something to do outside of raiding.
Yet everyone is enjoying having a reason to do things like Mechagon hard mode, Mythic+ dungeons and PvP outside of just raiding. My whole guild is filled with people logging on on non-raid days and doing things.
The type of gameplay died when WoD was so boring outside of raiding, that the forums collectively asked for more non-raid end game content.
They shouldn’t have ever existed. Why is it always the same 3 people arguing for essences? You shouldn’t even bother responding to Baspirath or Aedan it’s just a waste of time.
It feels like someone watched Preach’s video about this subject and came to the forums. I agree with his opinion on the issue and most of my 120s are staying shelved until Shadowlands at the moment.
They exist because you guys whined in the first place that the Azerite system was underwhelming, and as a suggestion you guys literally made : “Put the talents on the neck itself”.
I personally was fine with the Azerite system and thought it needed a few minor adjustments only.
This whole concept of alts is being used to punish the player for wanting to play the game. Rep grinds suck and barely count as content when you are forced to do them every time. You want people to play the game on their mains forever but there is no new content to keep the mains busy. Then when they want to level and progress through an alt you want them to do the same boring content that takes them away from their friends and into a single story mode that no one wants to do. No one asked for essences. No one asked for the essence grind to be injected to the game. There was a grind pre 8.2 that we had that we would like to go back to. Stop trying to pretend that the pre 8.2 grind did not exist. Essences suck
Uh ? The concept of alts is playing through the game a 2nd time, on a different class.
If you see that as “punishment”, well, you can simply not make an alt.
You’re literally not. All my BfA alts, many of which have run Heroic raids, even Mythic raids, Mythic+ keys over 10, have friendly/honored literred all over their Reputation window.
That’s when you make an alt and play again, or play a different game. I do both, depending on my mood. Sometimes I play an alt, sometimes I play Batman: Arkham, or Doom 2016, or even indy stuff like “Do not Feed the Monkeys” (great game, thanks GrayStillPlays!).
Your friends don’t play alts too ? Because that’s a thing you know…
This is an MMO, current patch stuff will always feel “grindy” to some. Essences have been the most out of the way “grind” I’ve seen in recent years. You just happen to stumble on them playing the game.
Except thats against every other system this game has. AP has catchup mechanics via AK. Gear has catch up mechanics as the patch ages. Raids get nerfed as the patch ages. Flying is account wide. The only thing that did not change was the essences grind. Arguably the most boring and dragged out feature of all the things I mentioned. So yes it is a punishment for me wanting to play an alt effectively. Forcing the essence grind with no other way to obtain them is bad game design. As a subscriber I am well within my right to complain about it.
Rep grinds all suck when they are forced. Just because you like 2nd grade math does not mean I have to. Forcing me to do the tedious and boring rep grinds only serves to drive up my /played time. It serves no entertainment value after the first time. Thats why when we are leveling 110-120 we can do so by questing, dungeons, islands or pvp. We are not required to only follow one path as the essence system requires us. There are no other ways to earn rep aside from sticking my head on the pile of dung and sniffing it until blizzard is happy.
I do play different games. It does not mean that I wont argue for what I dislike for the current game I am subbed to. If you dont like it then dont come to the forums.
My friends have limited time to play. They wont spend it with me chasing after world quests every night until I get my essences because world quests are garbage and are boring content.
They will do a M+ with me. I do it with them frequently. Pre 8.2 I progressed by doing keys on my alts. Now those alts are forced away from the content they love and into the content they hate because of essences. Blizzard even removed find a group feature for world quests to stick it to the player more. The result of the essences grind is that it took progression away from dungeons/raids and into a forced world content grind that has no imagination or fun involved. Which means that less people want to even bother with the process of making alts for the content we love to do.
Yea mmos doesnt give blizzard a pass for bad game designs. Ive grinded up plenty in BFA. Pre 8.2 I had 4 alts fully geared via the normal progression path. I grinded up plenty. The essences threw in another arbitrary 30+ hours of the most mundane content ever seen. So i disagree with you that I am stumbling upon a new revelation that I need to grind. No one is saying to stop the grind but rather to revert it to the way the grind was in 8.0,8.1 and everything else pre 8.2. The 8.2 grind is garbage.
Give players choices and agency in how to gear up instead of pigeonholing us to bad content
For players that can only log on 2-3 nights a week, this still presents a problem. Players used to be able to do competitive raiding with only those 2-3 nights. The game was like that for more than a decade. It’s been mostly this expansion and this last tier that have been the issue.
Having to do dailies almost every day for a month or more and even do content you don’t enjoy… PvE players doing PvP and vice versa.
Looks like I’m far more competitive than you.
This is hilarious.
This has been the games design for the majority of it’s life. Even in WoD and Legion you could still ‘raid log’ as you’re calling it. Players have lives outside of this game. Jobs, families, etc. Being able to log on 2-3 nights a week should be enough to be competitive. This is just a hilarious discussion if you think it needs to be more than that. This is why so many players have jumped ship to classic of have just quit all together.
The grind design isn’t what the majority want.
Obviously not. Lowering the requirements for the essences in 8.3 says exactly that.
Ah yes, the good ol classic argument. The one expansion where grinding was rewarded and the creators of the game said they would never return to that style of play. Back when getting pvp titles meant spending 16+ hours a day on the game. Great comparison bud.
If you think it’s easier, great. A huge portion of the games populace disagrees.
The cloak required next to nothing beyond raiding. I can’t believe you are seriously using this as an example. You got the cloak primarily from raiding, with very little questing.
What are you even talking about?
Everyone? More like anyone? Holy. How out of touch can you be. How many discussions have been spawned from PvE players along sick of having to do PvP for gear or essences?
Except this is treated more as an attunement then gear. Essences need to be grinded up over weeks like AP. Except AP has AK to help people catch up. Essences should have a catchup mechanic as the patch ages. The catch up announced so far for 8.3 (which I did an entire post giving Blizz some credit for) does not go far enough to alleviate the issue.
Actually we had an 8.2.5 patch in between that blizzard missed the chance to implement changes. Just as AP has catchup mechanics built into it via AK through the patch cycle so should essences.
If you want the essence essential for your class you are forced to get it the only way you can. Theres no other way you would get that power bump but to sniff Blizzards farts in the form of world quests.
And be a huge liability which would make the runs that much harder. Instead of a standard gearing cycle that we had pre 8.2 where I could farm ap/gear my way now I am forced to get essences the only way blizzard gives me. No player choice at all.
Wrong. I had plenty of alts before 8.2 and was fine. You are trying to convince me the pre 8.2 and post 8.2 grinds are at the same level. They are not. Post 8.2 essence grind added 20+ hours of grinding on alts minimum for content that is not good. If it was engaging and did not make me fall asleep by my computer I would not be here giving feedback. But it sucks. Its bad and needs to be removed yesterday. We already have a massive laundry list of things to do
Well in that case, no they aren’ t going to remove them in 8.3. Matter of fact they already said that they will exist into 9.0 but that they will only work in older content.
The problem with making a game that requires 2-3 nights to go through the most competitive content is it left people who log in 5-6 nights with absolutely nothing to look forward, a oft-repeated complaint of the MoP/WoD era that led directly to Legion’s design.
You can still be competitive with logging 2-3 nights honestly. You’ll just have an early patch push that requires more, or you’ll have to lower your expectations about what you can accomplish.
Nothing in BfA has required such an investment into dailies. Like I said : 3 weeks at most.
Where are you getting “month or more” from ?
No raid progression to speak of, you seem to be a Mythic+ player.
I’ve been raid logging for over a month now on my main because it’s completely done, even with side stuff I wanted to get done.
That’s entirely normal that later patches introduce catch-up for prior patches content and power upgrades. Where are you getting that it “says exactly that”. It’s no different than Timeless Isle gear tokens being introduced in 5.4 to help alts get into SoO and skip ToT.
How long from Fresh dinged level 80 alt did it take you to clear Heroic 25 LK ?