The game should be casual friendly

Community General Discussion
1

background: im a high schooler with tons of free time. in the summer i played 5 hrs a day every day from mid-july to early september. grinded from ilvl199 to ilvl242 off basically clicking through group finder and random guild hopping. took a hiatus from the game to cultivate a healthy social and academic life. never touched it on most days except when I nabbed AOTC in November. if i wanted to keep up my real life while playing WOW only get to play 30 mins a day mon-fri and 2 hrs a day on the weekends. just got back into it for fun this week on vacation.

yo this game is mad hard to progress for normal people. i logged on the past few days and did my callings, korthia sweep, and torghast for renown - swapped from 80 NF to Venthyr because 9.1.5. and im looking at the clock and its taking THREE HOURS to do all this stuff. THREE HOURS of chores. yall lucky Torghast is fun. because theres no way a regular person can do this in a week and also have time to run Keys and Raids.

lets map out the time sinks the devs expect players to play through.

to progress your character to the most common end goal - BIS - I had to spend an hour everyday in Korthia for 2 months to get Tier 6 Archivist Codex so i could get the socket thing. though, now theres the alternative of running like 4 torghast wings and getting 1000 soul cinders. that takes 1 hour for each run. but most players aren’t powerful enough to do those in just 4 wings
then you have to spend average an hour everyday running 2 Keys for 3 choices on your great vault.
then you have to spend 2 hours every week in the raid. 4 hours if your healers are bad.

add it all up and thats 17 hours a week you need to spend playing WOW. thats disregarding all the extra time you’ll probably need to spend grinding Keys for ilvl and IO.
I get like 6 hrs and 30 mins a week max to play this game. the required time to play to keep up basic progression is almost TWICE as much as me the average guy can play. its just silly.

imo to fix:

  • get rid of daily max level zone grinds for sockets and let us always do Torghast for sockets because Torghast is really fun.
  • make mythic+ dungeons drop a piece of loot for every player at the end of the run like in BFA. i should have IQD by now blizz come on.
  • make LFR available 4x as fast. im sort of fine with the principle that it should release later than mythic, its just it shouldn’t release 2 months after, instead 2 weeks.
  • get rid of one raid difficulty and one dungeon difficulty. idc which ones they have to technically be - normal, heroic, mythic - whatever. it shouldn’t be IMPOSSIBLE to progress to max ilvl for the average player, it should take a big chunk of free time. because a lot of people want to put in the skill-building to tackle hard content, they just don’t have the time to progress through 4 difficulties to get there.
  • make callings and world quests always drop some sort of slightly weaker loot for an alternative to running dungeons. and make them work like emissaries again. i shouldn’t have to waste 10 minutes flying back and forth in the big shadowlands to Turn In.
  • make systems like conduits 100% drop rate

yeah make the game more accessible pls i want to play 9.2 it looks cool. but its dawning on me that i probably won’t clear HEROIC until like 3 months in with my schedule and how the game currently is.

45 Likes
2

I’m unemployed and without a family to tend to and I still don’t have the time or the patience for this mumbo jumbo on even one character alone.

40 Likes
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this game is already super casual friendly compared to what it used to be

6 Likes
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You get renown from doing keys and raids. Just do that.

4 Likes
5

Yeah, all of the systems and other nonsense has ensured i have zero alts. In the past i’d level up alts with some gathering, BG’s, maybe kill grinding something or gathering here or there until i hit cap, then i’d do some dungeons with friends and start gearing up.

Now i’m forced into so many massive quest chains and grinds just to make my character functional, i just can’t be bothered with all of that stuff, after doing the same long unlock quest a couple of times, it’s like dragging fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

Now i have one character and play for a tiny fraction of my old “normal”, maybe that’s a good thing :joy:

12 Likes
6

I got this far in and expected an anime intro song to start playing.

10 Likes
7

Why do you think Squeenix is eating blizzard’s lunch? Because they’re the new casual kings. Blizz is too stubborn or scared to change their ways, and they’re paying for it.

10 Likes
8

And previously to progress your character to bis gear you had to raid. Which meant preparing yourself, getting all the consumables and what lower level gear you could manage and then spending however many hours required to raid to get that gear. At least now there are alternatives to obtain gear in other ways.

I’m not saying that the game can’t be improved for alt play, but this constant nagging and complaining about how difficult it is to get good gear bothers me on some level. The best gear should take time to get, should require skill, effort and dedication.

It isn’t impossible, it just depends on what you call ‘average’. Average players should have access to average rewards. I dont raid or do M+ and I dont feel I deserve the rewards that come from those things. Im happy to get the items I can get if I decide I want them.

You make some decent points OP, but Im just a bit wary when it comes to “make things easier for me to get” topics. I’d be very happy, for example, to see improvements in crafted gear (except no more legendary crafting crap systems please). If you could craft decent gear and upgrade it through the game that would give casuals like me a way of working on decent gear sets.

9 Likes
9

Never going to happen, while I agree it could be lessened. But at the end of the day WoW is still an MMO thus there will always be a level of grind that comes with it.

Whether it’s grind like we’ve had for the past 3 expansions, or a different form like back in Cata or MoP. Grind and MMO go hand and hand, not to mention Blizzard loves grinds as they extend the played time stat.

I don’t see why this was changed anyways. So why not. :man_shrugging:

Skipping this and I’ll say why later.

Maybe I severely underestimate how many players actually use LFR as a genuine form of progression. But here’s a tip… stop. :neutral_face:

Unless it’s changed in the past 2-ish expansions, LFR gear is not worth the time. Sure if you want to see the raids, go ahead and queue for LFR I genuinely don’t care. But it’s not and I don’t feel like I’m alone in saying this. Maybe ignorant, but not alone in this thought.

It’s not a vital stepping stone in the progression ladder.

Sure it can be, if you really want it to be. But as a player of 10 years, having only started a year prior to LFR being introduced as a thing entirely. I can say I’ve never once considered it a genuine stepping stone of progression that I’ve been required to do.

Not to mention, If you just follow the main campaign and story, 8 times out of 10 there will be gear that you can purchase with some non-sensible currency if need be. To help push your ILVL a bit higher for Normals or even Heroic dungeons.

LFR isn’t it.

I agree with the last two, but Shadowlands is pretty much over so the last one is less important now. They actually decreased the variety and upped the time it takes to do WQ’s in Shadowlands for the play time stat. :upside_down_face:

Don’t you just love intentional slow down of a already slow-ish game. /s

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It dropped more loot, but not for everyone.

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yes a game where u log 4hrs a week
lol

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I don’t even understand the discussion.

If OP wants bis gear he’ll have to do the hardest content in the game. Actually such a tiny percentage of players will ever reach that point that it’s in no way a “common end goal”.

2 Likes
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Put in the time, get the gain.

The onlllllly thing that I would like changed is to remove the m raid lockout. It would help casual people/people who cant raid with a group/guilds (like me. I work when they raid) and help us get our bis

1 Like
14

it’s the same as it’s always been.

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Start by rewarding collection more, we have had 400 mount achievements since pre patch to bfa

1 Like
16

Compared to other MMO’s, WoW is a casual haven. It doesn’t get much more casual than WoW.

And I say this as the most casual of the casual that players maybe 10 hours a week (0 in the last weeks).

What you want is high level gear without the high level work.

2 Likes
17

blizz tried it this way, they would have stats on player retention and participation. if 10.0 turns out like SL, you know what the stats said.

ok but your ilvl is 235, thats not casual, AND you have a legendary, thats not casual, i should put my main on these forums and you can see a true casual lol

wait… did you buy all that from korthia? wtf? nice

1 Like
18

Why do you want BIS gear? Does BIS gear hamper your ability to play the game? Does it stop you from enjoying the game? Why do you want it so bad but not want to put the effort in to get it?

To me, it seems like you play the game for the gear, not the gameplay. And if that is the case, I think you should take a break from WoW.

1 Like
19

It seems like every time someone wants to the game to be more “casual friendly” they really just want more stuff handed to them with less work.

5 Likes
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actually what i want is more conntet for me to do as a casual

8 Likes