I’m just waiting for someone to bring up FF14, where the best gear is also obtained through progression-oriented group content and solo players can never catch them with “time spent” metrics.
It seems like the meritocracy and community building is baseline for developers
This is the thing that makes me laugh the most.
How is it that people are content with putting in 10 hour days on WoW and never getting any better?
“I played WoW for 44 hours last week so that should count for something!”
You forgot to claim to be a casual while doing that 44 hours of world quests and pet battles as well.
Great.
In the overwhelming majority of Zelda games, that is not the case.
You are using an outlier.
Do you know why BotW is an outlier? It’s because Skyward Sword was criticized for being a game with dated systems and linear progression. It signified that the series needed an overhaul.
So Nintendo took that to heart, listened to the feedback, and made a game that is now considered to be one of the best games of all time.
" While critical reception of the game was very positive overall, fan and retrospective opinions were far more mixed due to its highly traditional and linear structure.[114][115] When development started on the next home console Zelda game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , the developers wanted to improve on what they had achieved with Skyward Sword and the feedback it received from both fans and critics, along with creating a non-linear world based on player complaints about the linearity of Skyward Sword .[115][116][117][118] Aonuma and Fujibayashi both returned respectively as producer and director.[119][120] Aonuma’s stated wish with Breath of the Wild was "to expand and make a better Skyward Sword “.[119]”
It’s almost like listening to feedback makes a better game for everyone.
Solo players don’t complain about the best gear in that game because Squeenix has appropriately designed an entertaining experience that appeals to their sensibilities.
Something Blizzard hasn’t done for years now. I’m sure that if FFXIV was a game that relied on gear as the main reason to play, people would probably complain about it.
You are essentially saying thousands and thousands of games that were highly popular and very beloved weren’t good games because they didn’t follow the gear progression that you liked.
You can by all means like what you like, but you’re pretending that it’s the only path to enjoyment and that’s honestly just pure delusion.
Breath was a great game. It is not the only great game.
I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that games need to evolve with time or they will fade away to obscurity. Zelda’s design worked for a long time. I still love Wind Waker to this day the same reason why I love Classic WoW, but just because Wind Waker was a phenomenal game doesn’t mean that franchise should remain the same 19 years later. I’m sure that in 19 years I’ll be saying the same thing about Breath of the Wild and the many other Zelda games that followed suit (since Nintendo has stated that they plan on following the BotW blueprint moving forward).
And here’s the thing, dude: I’m not against WoW giving the best gear to the hardest content, but they need to make a game that supports that system. What I mean by that is making a game that has something for everyone, not just one select group. Do you not agree that making cohesive, whole content that appeals to all varieties of demographics in WoW would be infinitely better for the game as a whole?
FFXIV doesn’t give the best gear in the game to people who don’t push the hardest content. Nobody cares because the game has other side activities, mini-games, and solo content that are engaging and reward the player in interesting ways. It has player housing, a substantial crafting/gathering system, scalable solo content that nets you incredible cosmetics, and an alt-friendly leveling system.
WoW, on the other hand, relies on world quests and braindead elite mobs to hamfist the same rewards we’ve been getting for years now and timegates all of its content for no discernible reason other than because they want to. Professions are a joke, secondary professions are a joke, one of which was literally abandoned because Blizzard just didn’t feel like expanding on it. Darkmoon Faire hasn’t been updated in 12 years, and leveling is nothing more than a vehicle to get you to the endgame.
So if Blizzard isn’t going to focus on any of this, then they need to expand on the one system that keeps people playing, which is gearing. Otherwise, the rest of the game will continue to fall apart and more people will continue to leave much like they have been over the last 3-4 years.
When gearing is the only thing worth doing in your game, it is. I’m not pretending. I’m stating hard facts that you can’t seem to cope with.
Which is saying that a game won’t survive unless it does what you want, and that is the delusion.
Games that have power progression tied to difficulty are doing totally fine.
That does not apply to WoW and nobody has agreed that it does other than you. You are creating a strawman using counter-factual argument and debating against it. It is weird. Stop doing that.
World of Warcraft has literally been bleeding subscribers for years now and in recent years has escalated to such a degree that Blizzard had to make a statement on the state of the game and do a 180 on everything they designed, and you want to act like it’s a delusion to think the game is in trouble? Shadowlands was such a failed expansion that they scrapped the last patch despite previous statements that they would have the traditional three-patch cycle, and then they shoehorned in a recycled content patch to keep what’s left of the player base busy.
OP literally has 263 likes and his sentiment is the same as mine in that the rest of the game doesn’t reward players or is as engaging as it should be. But sure, I’m the only one who thinks this.
I am telling you it is a delusion to suggest the reasons for any of that are strictly because the game isn’t how you want it.
I think WoW has declined since pet battles were introduced. It is pet battles fault.
Final Fantasy’s MMO has surged in popularity and guess what? The best gear comes from the hardest content.
OP’s main point was very much about mounts and transmog illusions. Not player power.
And again, your delusion is stopping you from being rational about “engaging content” and what is stopping it from existing to you
They don’t really want this game to ever grow again.
And yet he still highlights the progression issue in the game, anyways.
I’m also not the only one who expressed the sentiment that gear should be accessible to all forms of content. You can find plenty of other posters in this thread who feel similarly.
So you can keep acting like I’m delusional and the only one who feels this way, but when there’s a post about every other day on the forums with a bunch of likes that expresses the desire to have better progression in content not related to raids/M+, you will continue to be wrong about this.
Did you miss the part where I acknowledged this and explained why that was the case, or did that not fit the narrative you want to invoke with my arguments?
Have you completely ignored the part where I stated the the problem with WoW is that it has neglected the rest of the game?
Bro lol
You can’t possibly think what you are saying is the same as what he is saying. What he is saying makes more sense other than the 1%er trope, because cool tmog and mounts shouldn’t be reserved for just high end players.
But player power should absolutely scale with difficulty of content. That is a totally separate topic than his point.
I mean, he literally acknowledges it in his post, but okay. Sure.
It hasn’t though. They have introduced plenty of game modes aimed at the non-hardcores. Islands, Warfronts, Torghast, Dragon Riding, etc.
Blaming the 1%ers or whatever other cliche and then going on some tangent about how you not getting all the best items for doing nothing is preventing the game from being engaging is delusional and not actual feedback.
In the time you’ve spent in this thread whining about nothing you could have been 278 equipped without even raiding or doing anything high end or “1%er.” Your inventory is a you problem, not a game problem.
Wanting more “engaging content” is not synonymous with “shower me in BiS,” but you are trying to make it seem like your lack of items is the problem with this game.
Just get off the forums for a bit man. This meltdown isn’t good for you.
The fact this thread even exists just goes to show the lack of meaningful content is available for players that don’t want to slam their heads against competitive content.
The content available in WoW for non-competitive players just pales in comparison compared to the other MMOs on the market. The only reason WoW has been able to survive with this model, is because of the strength of its IP.
If this was any other game, it would have died off years ago due to the sheer contempt the current developers have for players that don’t want to slam their head against rated PVP, M+ and raids.
Make raids easier and you will have more players raiding - something Limit Maximum himself said was a problem.