The game should be casual friendly

Community General Discussion
101

I actually have to disagree with you on this point. I actually had lots more fun with the old content. Raids and Dungeons were always available, had cooler gear and I resigned myself to not getting any of it as I did neither and my game play did not suffer for it. I had content and more importantly, story to entertain me and be ‘in character’ as it were and so enjoy the game.

The problem with the later expansions is that you are forced to do dungeons and possibly raids to progress in the story and the game. Given the pressure of being ‘good’ in a dungeon (and if you’ve done solo PvE you’ve NO experience and no way to get any) it’s more likely than not going to be a less than stellar experience.

The focus has been more and more on endgame rather than play in general. I recently created a worgen on a server and I have to say the initial intro-storyline was delightful. You could feel involved, in character and the story progressed and more importantly, I found it fun.

Shadowlands has so many systems that you must grind (and fewer quests/options than BFA had) it gets repetitive, boring and what little story there is becomes quickly lost.

I’m not saying not to have dungeons and raids. If I had the time to invest, I would enjoy them, but I don’t. The success with WoW in the past is that it had something for everyone.

Shadowlands has the feel of something for a subset of everyone with a nod to the rest.

I’m not sure the suggestions made to improve things are viable, but the time sink as well as the reward for time are definitely valid points.

102

Respect. Not many would admit that.

I will 100% say that the vast majority on both sides (raider and casual) did not support the covenant system.

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103

Curious. You say you’re an ‘average’ person yet you want to be doing heroic and mythic? It’s my perception that the tougher content is for the more dedicated players. I don’t see any reason to nerf content for ‘normal/casual’ players. You get out what you put in. Why should ‘they’ give you handouts just because you choose not to play the game that much?

104

What I feel that this game needs the most is some predictability and movement away from the brutal RNG Loot and Vault experience that currently exists in the upper end of the game that is making it actively unfun to play. Especially this late into the season and after the HoF has closed.

At the time of writing I am currently sitting as a 5/10m and a 2422 IO Brewmaster - a decent level of play by any means - and I have yet to be able to even SEE a Blood Stained Scale drop from either DoS or my vault this season (32 runs and counting) or to actually have ANY 252 Domination loot appear as a boss drop or appear my vault, despite having repeatedly cleared the first three bosses in SoD nearly a dozen times, giving me four weekly pulls at the respective bosses loot - all of which amounted to gear not suited for my spec or at parity with what I found in mythic dungeons. The few pieces I do have, were gifted from other players luckier than I, which while great and did advance my progression, is not reliable, nor really fun to count on.

I understand that the point of having randomized loot is to create a level of scarcity and excitement when finally getting something, but at this point I have hit peak fatigue at the drought that have personally gone through and I cannot imagine that I am the only one to be this unlucky. Yes, I understand that I am at the pinnacle of gearing and only have 6 or 7 more items to find, but the fact that I have no control over finding them, beyond going through the same motions as always actively makes me not want to play the game anymore. I am at the mercy of just random math that could easily work in my favor as easily as against it. Math that has kept me from getting a meaningful update for well over two months now despite having a minimum of 4 vault casino slots every week to better my chances.

What is needed at this point is some ability to determine the loot I want to acquire, be it by forcing the vault to only roll a specific item slot of gear for me or to follow the same example as the PvP vendor and simply allow me to buy it in exchange for a currency. Such as vault coins, which already exists. I know that if I had a predictable and targeted way of getting the loot that I wanted, that I would only play more. And continue playing even. Hell, I would quite possibly even make an alt to play with as well knowing that I had a clear and achievable path for my gearing them, rather than needing to account on simple RNG every single week.

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105

I had surgery earlier this year and decided to come back to wow. While I was out of work recovering, I played wow and had a blast.

When work started back wow time took a cut, no big deal. Add in time with my BF, school, and just having a social life in general, wow got cancelled. It’s not alt friendly or casual friendly enough for me to keep playing.

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106

yeah i feel what u saying. i dont necessarily want to get the BEST GEAR in the game. my issue is it takes a long while to gear UP to TRY to beat these bosses. also to gear up in general.
because without the appropriate gear you aren’t invited to groups and without the right IO you aren’t invited to guilds. luckily IO is straightforward to farm
if i could just hop in a group and tackle Mythic Sanctum of Domination at ilvl246 then I would. the hall of fame guilds did that right? but its unlikely for me to get that opportunity. sure i’m not the only one.
put it like this: I’m not asking for Mythic Sylvanas to fall over like a pinata in front of me.

107

It was the casual-friendly MMO in 2004 and it was a factor why WoW gained as much popularity as it did.

I was playing EQ way back in the day where you had to group to gain a level, but that type of MMO has been basically dead for a while (I do realize that EQ still puts out xpacs, but there are very few remaining players). I get that WoW is more casual-friendly than EQ, but that’s an outdated comparison that doesn’t apply at this point in time. Every MMO I’ve played since had ways to solo to level (and I’ve played quite a few) and the trend has been to be even more casual-friendly.

WoW used to be the most casual-friendly MMO out there, but that’s no longer the case (and it hasn’t been the case for a while). The devs have forgotten one key thing that made it as popular as it was - it was the most accessible, casual-friendly MMO out there at the time.

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108

i feel the game declined the more casual friendly it became. Casuals just aren’t MMO players. MMOs attract a different demographic. The hardcode elites prop up and support and nourish this genre.

109

for emphasis

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110

The phrase meaningful choice is just so much weaksauce, especially regarding covenants.

Yes, there is usually a good choice having meaningful results, however does meaningful mean the best results, and if so was it a choice at all.

Best in slot, is not a choice.

111

Most of those “strong supporters” were forum trolls who didn’t even play the game. A number of them admitted that the reason they really liked the idea of other players being locked into a restrictive choice they were forced to make at the start of the expansion was because they were sadists.

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112

Background: I work from home and avoid work as often as possible cause my man knows who his king is so I do what I want.

Response: Remove this because I don’t like it and replace it with this. Other characters be darned. I only think of myself and don’t have the foresight to consider that it’s possible to add things without taking things away.

113

Agreed, well said.

114

Thank god none of them play!

But you’re right, and I support your message.

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115

Wow is super casual friendly for me:

I ignore mythic/raiding and just upgrade gear on my own, super casually.

At the end of BFA I was as far as I was going to get, with Visions of N’zoth. Now I’m going to hit 60 and do similar upgrade things that I can do.

I completely disagree that Wow was “casual friendly” in 2004; the only way to have semi-good gear was raiding. Raiding was in no way “casual.”

I actually hated the game, most of the time back then, until Burning Crusade had “last season’s arena set for Battle ground Honor” (a set which got me through 7 levels of wrath until my Hunter fully replaced it) and then of course when MOP had “solo epics” with Timeless Isle near the end.

THAT was the REAL first time I felt Wow was “casual friendly.” I could chill on that island, at my own pace, getting meaningful upgrades on this character, my hunter and the priest I’ve had since vanilla 2004.

Legion continued solo casual gear acquisition, that was meaningful, as did BFA (actually had fun getting gear, then again replacing it with Visions of N’zoth.) So I’m looking forward to the stuff in Shadowlands too (now that I’m finally back in it.)

116

It totally was. Leveling was slow, but way less brutal than EQ. Dungeon groups were fairly easy to find. A friend applied to a casual raiding guild for her and me, and I went on to wipe many times while completing Molten Core, Onyxia, and part of Blackwing Lair. We ran casual guild strategies like naked zerg into respawned imps after Magmadar to get to Gehennas without having to fight all of the imps again, pulling Baron Geddon into the Garr room to manage bombs while not aggroing Shazzrah, etc. We were not great at it, and we took it just serious enough to get a little better each week. We also used zero sum loot rules, so if you didn’t show up, no biggie, other than not getting any points that week. Super casual.

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117

Raids, dungeons, cooler gear, and story have nothing to do with how casual the game is. Is the game easy to play? Yes! Does it require a huge amount of your time? No unless you want to get to end game content! Or need a story to entertain you to be in character. And if that is the case you are not a casual player.

A casual player is a person who plays games but aren’t competitive. Usually they are just there to be social and have fun but if they end up losing in the game they wouldn’t mind. They don’t put in a lot of effort to try to win. They may or may not.

And by how you are describing your experience. You are not a casual player. You may have played casually at times. But you went hardcore at some points in time.

118

I’m not sure I can totally agree with what you’re saying here. I think that Raids, dungeons and cooler gear (all of which I don’t pursue for lack of time needing to invest) is not generally for casual players. Not because they exist, but because of what they’ve become, which I think is a separate topic.
I do think a story is needed to entertain because there should be something holding things together and story is what has worked for WoW in the past (pre-SL). There should be some element of immersion and a reason to be playing, otherwise we’d be playing solitaire and space invaders still rather than in a social game.

It could be we define the term differently. To me, ‘casual’ means, plays when they can, likes to progress a character through story and levels but isn’t going to invest all their game time into improving a character for intense, high level (raids, mythics, etc.) play. I’ve never been hardcore in WoW as I think you define the term. I have focused characters through grinds for a certain achievement or rep or maybe even better gear, and join in a dungeon run with my guild when they were active to be social and helpful and maybe learn a thing or three about dungeon running, but that was brief and not all that often.

The thing about Wow, is if you’re not PvP or high-end play, there is no real ‘competitive’ to it, other than perhaps attitude you would get from other players by not measuring up to their standards of play. Do I want to improve my toon to play as well as I can? Sure I do. Am I good at it? Not very compared to many. Does this bother me? Not really, and I will go read up now and again and accept tips on how to play better because I find it improves my enjoyment of the game.

I think that the high end doing mythics weekly to get gear is fine for those that do those runs. I think it’s great there are slow, grindy options now for those that want to improve their gear (and maybe not to the same level but improve) in Korthia, grindy as it is.

But what I think is really lacking is that over time, the ‘things to do’, ‘story’ and ‘things to improve’ have drained away and developers focused on the high-end gear-getting, which makes it less appealing and gets everyone focused on max gear.

There is also a lack of support for a casual player or new player in that someone who plays less often and less intensely isn’t going to be as knowledgeable in what to do, how to do it, etc.

Though saying all that, I also don’t quite agree with the initial post in how to improve the game as some of the recommendations mentioned.

I will agree that shortening the time it takes to get from A to B in shadowlands would be a big plus. :slight_smile:

Apologies if I went off the rails on my response and got on my own soapbox of issues with play.

119

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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120

It’s all good. You are free to speak your peace.

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