Maybe you should first provide a clear definition of a casual and hardcore player since no one can agree on what they mean. I have heard people say if anyone does any end-game group instanced content then they are no longer a casual. By that personal definition and logic anyone who even buys boosts are no long a casual.
Still irrelevant…
Again, does that make it universal truth and apply to all guilds? No it doesn’t.
I bought 4-6 tokens this expansions to pay for legendaries and consumables. I know many other players who did the same and bought more than I did.
Oh gosh, is it so hard to believe that not everyone agrees with boosting?
You seriously put words in my mouth from the onset to make this about boosting when the quote you referenced to had nothing to do with boosting. For real, you are just looking for an argument.
You don’t have to believe it. It’s also not objective fact either. It was my opinion. Only Blizzard knows the real data and statistics which was my entire argument in this thread, to which I have stated as such.
Honestly, I would love it if Blizzard could actually put some type of progression that casual players can advance through. Casual doesn’t necessarily mean wanting to just sit down and tap two keys and get maximum loot. Working for things, and it getting more difficult as you go (like raiding) but being able to do at your own pace, by yourself, and not requiring nine other players would be totally awesome.
I mean, Blizzard might currently have three raids that can be run before you reach the potential to be maxed out in the game (Mythic on the last one?). Why can’t Blizz make a path for casuals that might say, take 30 steps to get there? They do not have to be easy, they do not have to be short, they just need to make thing interesting.
Also, to further pacify hard core players keep the casual progression a bit behind until the top of current content is reached. This way what is done in raiding & M+ will always be superior to what is available until the current raid level has plateaued for a period of time. This will also prevent the feeling that hard cores might need to run casual content in order to either prepare for raiding, or stay geared.
One last thing before somebody jumps on the “it’s an MMO” argument:
Notice the phrase: “Story Driven”
It also references “interacting” not necessarily playing with.
I’m not against Blizzard horizontal progression for more casual players; however, over the last few years I have continued to see the same kind of behavior from the general casual playerbase, which is to say that Blizzard spends a ton of money and time developing a load of casual, horizontal progression for them, and by-and-large it gets ignored. The very people that Blizzard is making this content for do not want to play it. My only conclusion that I continue to draw, as mentioned above, is that the casual players that clamor for this kind of content really just want content that is extremely easy for them to complete that also gives some of the best gear in the game.
Of course, they can’t just come and say “I want to put in little to no effort, and be greatly rewarded,” because that is, optically terrible. Instead they hide behind this veneer of wanting more open world and solo content.
In fact, you can see this happening right now. The pre-patch event being tested on PTR has had it’s gear rewards nerfed from 252 item level to 239. And people are furious about this. 239 is a perfectly reasonable reward for doing content that practically requires negative effort, and yet we’re seeing backlash.
So, I don’t mind when Blizzard adds things to the game that you can do to fill your time. I think the sanctum/covenant rewards are really good for that as completely optional horizontal content that rewards no power, but gives fun cosmetics. I just want us to be honest about the fact that this content largely got ignored by the people it was developed for because it didn’t reward power.
Shadowlands had more casual, outdoor content than any other x-pac yet most players ignored it because it didn’t have power rewards.
We had Visions in BFA that was actual solo/small group content that had scaling and high end rewards and the forums were flooded with complaints about the difficulty. The same thing happened with Torghast and the Mage Tower.
There’s also the continuous issue of GD posters conflating casual and solo. Maybe it’s because it sounds better to label themselves casual (which infers an active real world life) as opposed to saying they’re solo players (which infers social anxiety).
Horrific visions gave good gear once a week and wasn’t “free”. Why couldn’t Torghast have done something similar?
Warfronts were free, but were full rng, didn’t cover all slots, were at most twice a week and I believe heroic ilvl or slightly less.
What is the harm?
Exactly. We are playing 2 different games. Then the raiders/m+'ers turn around and say “open world isn’t challenging enough”. Yeah, duh. There is a ~30 ilvl gap it needs to account for.
It was literally insinuated right there. There are plenty of folks who say “open world is a joke”. It is a large chunk of their argument for gatekeeping loot (“why do you need high level gear”).
No source for that, huh? At most, that’s 200k which isn’t a whole lot lol.
Not really, but the main thing Blizzard needs to control is the ilvl bloat. In TBC it didn’t feel so awful, all PvPers got the same gear and only a couple pieces required rating. It also meant that you were only behind by some ilvl if you just got honor gear, or heroic dungeon gear.
The problem with group content, even pugging these days is too many people are ‘meta’ minded, have to know all the skips, correct routes, gotta basically know everything about it and try to be in ‘pre-raid bis’.
You talk about ‘social groups’, but so many people are not too social in game ESPECIALLY in groups. You see it even in Classic, so “LFD” and “LFR” were not the cause of the problems. People ended up boosting to max and so forth anyways, and GDKP is the norm IE buying the loot you want.
The real reason raiders don’t like world content having decent gear, and they prefer huge ilvl bloat, is because it makes it easier to sell boosts and because it makes them feel ‘superior’ for ‘raiding’ in which they often get carried (Like we’ve seen between the parses from a lot of people in this thread.)
This person isn’t advocating for an challenging open world. Read their whole post and you will see that what they are suggesting is that Blizzard doesn’t want to reward players with excellent gear for doing MINIMAL work. Yes some gatekeeping is good. The fact that you have to raid Mythic or do higher keys to get better gear, is good. The game game should actively reward you for doing the harder content it offers.
The open world HAS to be a joke, because otherwise the forums are lit ablaze with people complaining about difficulty. Blizzard has to accommodate literally everybody, so it has to be braindead.
If I follow what you mean here, and throughout your response, horizontal is not what I am proposing. but rather a parallel “vertical” progression. As I said:
Three words that get said a bunch are “You don’t deserve it” or more often “You don’t need it.” I am looking for a casual path to progress through the game and earn higher level gear as I go. I want to earn it, I want to be forced to need it. Increased difficulty, increased work. I don’t mind increased time provided it is not being forced to sit on my hands and wait for weeks.
I don’t know if I am a lone wolf on this philosophy or there is just poor communication going on. Maybe one side cannot make their point or the other is unwilling to listen. I do agree that there are people that will log in with their pixilated hands out demanding the best things in-game simply because the subscribed.
EDIT: I was not aware of this:
Personally I do think this is a bad move. I believe in the past things have bumped up a bit, but big deal if that doesn’t happen. The fact that it is not equal to where things end is a bit of a slap in the face. Blizzard is basically stepping backwards into SL before a new release rather than picking up where they left off. Not a good sign of things to come.
Did you consider warfront gear to be “excellent”? It wasn’t.
No, it isn’t.
And you do and have had to in the past, present and future. That isn’t what the OP talking about. Nor the thread about the changes to open world loot.
It does.
Or again the fact that it needs to be able to be done by fresh/returning players or players being gate-kept by the fact that there is no “accessible” loot.
Perhaps I’m just cynical. But I really think, that if there is any level of difficult solo content that is introduced into the game, that offers similar gear to the best raid / M+ gear in the game, it really just won’t get played. I tend to think that the minute that most players come in contact with content that is remotely challenging, they are far more likely to either quit, or complain about the difficulty in hopes of nerfs rather than work on improving their own play to overcome the obstacle.
You’d think people with social anxiety wouldn’t be spending all day on the forums arguing back and forth about how they are owed gear for afking in Zereth Mortis.
You have it already. Sandworm relic Tier and Cypher bonus gear.
Blizzard only needs to try once, and actually put some effort into it. The concept of things like LFR and M+ were not part of the game at first and are still around and used.
Slapping a fancy new name on grinding dailies for currency to upgrade what is already there. Patch drops on Tuesday and there is no change until the next patch. Day by day, do it, rinse then repeat . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. . .