If this were the case, why have they not pivoted and made content to better accommodate the solo player?
I don’t know where this notion comes from that whoever you feel you represent is the highest population segment the game features, but I am quite confident in saying that there is not a significant portion of this community who both hates grouping for content simply due to grouping, and also has a meaningful drive to improve their characters that isn’t being met.
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Why don’t solo players have anything to do? The game has only been out for a few months and there’s tons of non raid/dungeon content out there. So much of it that it would take 100+ hours of time played to achieve a portion of it.
At what point is it not that WoW doesn’t have game play for these players, but rather some of these players are playing the game way more then the average player?
I do actually. And it’s part of why I enjoy tanking when I do it and why the M+ scene appeals to me. The gear caps, but the difficulty doesn’t.
Not in the full sense that you’re thinking. As I mentioned in my post, there’s multiple tiers of difficulty, resulting in different caps of gear. If you remove those tiers, and allow the max level gear through the easiest content, everyone will drift that way. It’s the way the universe works. The path of least resistance.
In doing that, we’d essentially kill the game by having no need for the tiers. You’d just go from world quests to mythic raiding, cutting out a lot of content from the game.
Because some content is made for difficulty and progression, and the gear we gain over time acts as a way to gradually impower our characters past it.
If very easy or zero commitment content gave gear that was equivalent to high commitment or quite difficult content, the entire game would break.
So the best you will ever have is how it is now, likely.
“solo content” is either challenge-type (zero additional reward content that you make yourself for fulfillment) or farming of things like transmog or other world focused rewards (non-power reward content.)
At what point did I say that solo players were the highest population?
I’m also not the one who is limiting players to a specific playstyle. I haven’t once said that players who group shouldn’t get gear that represents their efforts.
You’re the one who’s stating that others shouldn’t have any other options to a progressive path equivalent to what’s currently available.
More choices bring life to a game.
I wasn’t replying to you with that comment.
The purpose of progression is to feel that a character grows. Not only in experience, but in strength. You don’t go from 1-60 without that, why should it stop for some once they hit max level.
You even said that you choose M+ as means of challenging yourself, and that’s cool. Though for some M+ just isn’t something that they can enjoy. Why limit them to a lower cap, if they can have a different path?
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I think this mentality is backwards and honestly pretty destructive. Saying there’s no good argument against solo progression is not really taking into account the systems where it was at the forefront as part of the main progression system. Which was with AP in both Legion/BFA and to a much lesser degree SL. Shadowlands in my opinion showcases Blizzards lack of foresight or straight up inability to create an engaging world without needing to rely on things like AP. You can only help those turtles to the water or play Candy Crush so much before you start to hit burnout.
And that’s not even mentioning Benthic gear which was so good it was used in the WF Race and in Mythic progression. This led to players feeling like it was mandatory since the power of those items were so good that it passed over raid gear. One of the complaints of Eternal Palace was there wasn’t anything to look forward to in the item slots Benthic took over.
So when Blizzard creates a progression system that’s meant for solo play, it becomes mandatory for everyone to do. At least to me, it has nothing to do with denying others a chance to gear up.
If the suggestion for more solo content is to be rewards for things like tabards, items, hell even professions, then sure fine. Buffs would be weird because then players would interpret that to be mandatory for progression if it could be used in instances and it’s tied to power growth.
Now to the last part, I’m calling bull. Nobodies sub matters more than others. Everyone matters as they play a part as to why WoW has been successful over the years.
You’re right, my apologies on that. Sometimes the threading in here gets a little convoluted when replying to multiple people.
You just pointed out one of the glaring issues, and you’re claiming to be confused?
It doesn’t. If that were the case, you’d be capped at ilvl 150 instead of 200. You’re given 50 ilvls of progression.
What paths do you speak of? And they’re not capped. They just choose to not do more difficult things that result in shinier things.
To get more things, select a different game mode. You’re rewarded for the difficulty you select
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Funny, I still remember when they released that “Tier 0.5” stuff, and thinking “Who’s going to do all this work for sub-Molten Core level gear?” I think they released it around the time a lot of guilds were already progressing through BWL/AQ40, though it was so long ago, I can’t remember. I only remember thinking it was a puzzling use of time for a mediocre mishmash of blue/epic stuff with the dungeon blues model set, especially since that was around the time people starting daring to pug MC.
As a mage, I died in ZG far, far, FAR more than any other pre-BC raid…
That’s not difficulty, that’s gameplay style.
There are many legitimate reasons why someone would not be able to play as others. Why are they being limited?
You’re trying to turn the conversation into something it’s never been. You guys keep putting up this strawman, knocking it down, and declaring victory. Who said that the highest rewards in the game should be given out without a group? The whole point is that the current system effectively limits progress for non-raiders to two hours a week for the first six weeks. After that, progress is no longer time gated, but the time played metrics for non-raiders to cap out their gear are still pitifully low. Contrast that with the raiding experience. Many heroic raiders (myself included) are far from capped. We still have months’ worth of play ahead of us in terms of gearing out or characters. What do non-raiders have to look forward to at this point? Absolutely nothing. They get to unlock vendors that, honestly, should have been available for free to begin with, just like they have been in every prior expansion. After that they get to grind out a ton of anima for even more mounts and pets to supplement collections of mounts and pets that already number in the hundreds anyway. Yet you guys keep putting forward this argument that Mythic raid gear shouldn’t be widely available as if it had any relevance in this context.
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Is this a rhetorical question? Because of whatever legitimate reason is limiting them from playing as others.
If you want to elaborate and give a solid example, I could further my discussion/explanation
I mean, have you read the threads including this one on the subject? The main complaint is that players are capped at an item level, and that item level already interferes with progression difficult levels.
There is no “strawman.”
That is literally what is being said.
Can I ask a question as it’s something I often see come up here?
It’s popular to refute gear-rewarded solo progression because raiders or M+‘ers would feel obligated to do it for that gear…but then the same people will say (often in the same post) that if a solo player wants gear, they have to M+ or raid. If I recall correctly, this was one of the drivers behind removing gear from Torghast.
Isn’t that kind of the same thing? Both arguments are “I don’t like doing x, so please don’t make me.” So why is it so difficult to see that solo players want progression without having to group? Can’t we have a selection of challenging content that cater to your play style and then no one is forced to do anything except have fun?
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You do understand that it it’s taken some of us a few months to actually reach the “normal” gear point, right?
Heck, I think it used to take me about the same amount of time to actually gear up this one when I did raid because RNG absolutely hates me. Heck, maybe more time.
Bliz does stuff like this for a reason.
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There can not be balanced renewable difficulty in solo content in the game.
This is why they don’t have 1v1 arenas too.
The game is made from the ground up in a way that involves multiple players interacting with each other and that impacting the gameplay loop.
The way the game sees it there are no “solo players.”
Just players that have yet to form a group.
To specifically address the issue of gear for solo progression becoming an effective required grind for people who do group content also.
Well, in my idea, Johnny solo could grind out the best solo set and be ahead of Joe Normal raider, who would have to either do harder group content for better gear or grind the solo set too. I would never advocate reducing gear effectiveness.
I’m just offering a solution that works for both sides. This is all positive for the solo guy, and if they decide to go do group content, they get gear from it.