The Slot Machine Progression System Needs To End

[Darthvixen-terokkar (Darthvixen)]

[Hardwire-velen (Hardwire)]

@Anuke-hellscream

‘oh look, it gave me a downgrade for my highest ilvl piece, but if it was literally any other item at the same ilvl it would have been an upgrade’ box

But 8.3 fixed that with the addition of “Oh, it’s a 20 ilvl upgrade BUT it has such garbage corruption I can’t replace my 445 charity bracers with it” option.

[Mafic-emerald-dream (Mafic)]

No.

There were many more avenues to gear pre MoP that was more deterministic. You have it backwards.

[Bakkian-stormrage]

Exaclty, because bad luck is 90% of the game and it feels bad. Good luck always feels good tho

[anon89577673]

@Mafic-emerald-dream

No.

There were many more avenues to gear pre MoP that was more deterministic. You have it backwards.

No. There were more avenues to get raiding-entry gear, not raid tiered gear. Post MoP, there are far more chances at getting raid tiered gear without having to set foot in a raid.

You have it backwards.

[Mafic-emerald-dream (Mafic)]

No.

What you are describing is more RNG slot machined based. What we have now is not as deterministic as it was pre MoP.

You have it backwards.

[Natalìe-dalaran]

@Baratheon-draktharon

“Getting Lucky Doesn’t Feel Good”

Yes it does.

@Baratheon-draktharon

I think we should move towards expansion long goals to strive for in terms of gear & progression.

The best gear drops from high M+ and Mythic raiding. It’s always been RNG drops.

I liked the war/titan forge system. Titan forging was replaced by the corruption gear. Are you whinners happy now? No? What a 100% guarantee drop for YOUR gear at the end of dungeon/raid? That would be a stupid system. Once geared up, there is no more drive to do ANYTHING else in the game.

With the titan forging, I still did WQs and emissary quests for the miniscule chance of it titanforging. That is what was great about it. I didn’t have to deal with the extremely caustic mythic + and raiding environment. (An environment that is growing worse) It’s the environment that is slowing killing wow and the big reason I don’t play classic wow either.

[Mafic-emerald-dream (Mafic)]

Yup.

Legion and BFA slot machine progression system is designed to exploit people that are prone to this type of gameplay.

[Anuke-hellscream]

@Mikowo-norgannon

I’m just saying that’s the trade off. Even with the rng in place people can get geared faster in M+ than raid. There needs to be something in place to keep raiding relevant but also have M+ be rewarding.

I can’t disagree with this. Only being able to run 3-5 M+ and raid 4 hours a week makes the weekly loot box much more important for my progression.

Lets say I’m looking forward to 465 gear in my weekly. If the game looked at my gear, saw that I had 470 pants and everything else is 450 or lower, then removed pants from the drop table that would be thousands of times better than getting 465 pants, because thats more than likely what im going get today.

@Mikowo-norgannon

Personally I think tier sets for each would be pretty cool. Or just something that separates some M+ gear and some raiding gear so that your best pieces for each are more effective in the zone they’re for.

I like this idea, and I miss tier sets, but it sounds like a balancing nightmare. Maybe if they spread out the current tier raid loot to drop from all M+ 15 after the cross realm mytic raiding is opened up would be an acceptible compromise.

@Hardwire-velen

But 8.3 fixed that with the addition of “Oh, it’s a 20 ilvl upgrade BUT it has such garbage corruption I can’t replace my 445 charity bracers with it” option.

LOL I actually forgot about corruption during my rant.

[Madbeatz-illidan]

@Bakkian-stormrage

Actually it does feel good, but the 90% of the time you get unlucky it feels trash, case and point randomized gear from mythic+ residuum.

It actually doesn’t feel good to me. If I get an upgrade after weeks of farming - I think “about time”. When I get an upgrade right away, it doesn’t feel good, it just feels like I dodged a bullet.

[Libra-faerlina]

@Mafic-emerald-dream

No, I have noticed this sudden shift with slot machine progression systems starting with legion.

Which had a massive increase in players numbers, regardless.

All in all the lack of tier sets just made everything very rng.
And M+ spam pollute other forms of content because comparatevily it is spammable, gets better gear for less effort compared to 2,2+ arenas or mythic raiding. Should have certian rewards for certain brackets of M+ honestly.

After playing classic i can say 100% i barely notice a difference between farming m+ for a certain item and farming low drop items repeteadily in classic, the difference is pretty much 0, over 40 baron runs to see a cape drop and the polearm never dropped in strat UD either, A friend went for dal rend MH for over 100 runs and never saw it too.
Oh and i wanted the t0 helm too but gave up after 30 scholo runs.

And major issue with pvp gear right now is that several BiS pvp items are in pve content. I mean. Come on.
I dont even dislike the current system that much for pvp, if you only pvp you have a pretty straightforward gearing path, if you do m+, raids etc then you might aswell do those before selecting the pvp reward.
The issue i see is well if you want to play another spec in arenas you… can’t. If we could somehow buy items we needed after getting another item, for lets say, an amount of honor/conq/badge in an atleast week time and no PvE items for pvp then everything would be greatly improved.

@Nayaga-lightbringer

Increases Time Played metric,

MAUs is what matters for investors anyway. The less you play the less you cost therefore the more they do as long as you keep the account active everything is ok. Raidloging is their dream.

@Mafic-emerald-dream

There were many more avenues to gear pre MoP that was more deterministic. You have it backwards.

Nah only catch up gear.

@Mafic-emerald-dream

What you are describing is more RNG slot machined based. What we have now is not as deterministic as it was pre MoP.

Raids drops are intact the RNG you speak of are the new content which offers raid quality gear for a bit more work.
Pre mop and honestly mop(lol lost more players than cata) literally just gave you catch up gear.

@Mafic-emerald-dream

Legion and BFA slot machine progression system is designed to exploit people that are prone to this type of gameplay.

By offering a guarantee high ilvl reward weekly?
If you want to actually exploit people with addictive issues the classic pvp system is the way to go system to do so, because the more addictive one guy is the more addictive the others have to be to compete. Otherwise no rewards and you even might lose points! You lazyboy!
Retail literal gives you a guarantee absurdely ilvl reward for minimal effort weekly.

@Anuke-hellscream

Only being able to run 3-5 M+ and raid 4 hours a week makes the weekly loot box much more important for my progression.

And f you remove the boxes you will have less options to progress then. Soo?
You could argue in favor of the return of badge system but they were not exactly quick to have either but at least you got what you were looking for and that i agree 100% with you. I really think badges should come back at some point.

@Anuke-hellscream

465 gear in my weekly. If the game looked at my gear, saw that I had 470 pants and everything else is 450 or lower, then removed pants from the drop table that would be thousands of times better than getting 465 pants

The ilvl doest alone doest mean it is an upgrade.
I had 445 pants and got 445 pants with speed that went to speed gear which is rpetty sueful for farming mogs. And other time i replaced by 430 belt for a 425 due better stats.
I would rather have some pre bis raid items on tokens and not titanforged raid sets.

Tbh even legion legendaries with a descent system of how to obtain certain leggos would be better than the current state of the game where its all M+ or nothing.

@Madbeatz-illidan

It actually doesn’t feel good to me. If I get an upgrade after weeks of farming - I think “about time”. When I get an upgrade right away, it doesn’t feel good, it just feels like I dodged a bullet.

Hand of justice/SGC drop in a nutshell

[Anuke-hellscream]

@Libra-faerlina

The ilvl doest alone doest mean it is an upgrade.
I had 445 pants and got 445 pants with speed that went to speed gear which is rpetty sueful for farming mogs. And other time i replaced by 430 belt for a 425 due better stats.
I would rather have some pre bis raid items on tokens and not titanforged raid sets.

I don’t want a chance at an equal or lower ilvl ‘side grade’ from the weekly, I want a chance for upgrading a lower ilvl piece.

[Libra-faerlina]

@Anuke-hellscream

I want a chance for upgrading a lower ilvl piece.

Can’t have that without 0 customizations.

[anon89577673]

@Mafic-emerald-dream

Yup.

Legion and BFA slot machine progression system is designed to exploit people that are prone to this type of gameplay.

And there it is. Everyone is a victim of ‘exploitation’. Everyone is an addict. Calling everything that has chance ‘addictive’ is doing more damage to identifying the actual addiction than helping solve it.

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

@Anuke-hellscream

Once upon a time you could look at loot tables, see what you needed and what drppoed it, go kill said thing and the only rng was it dropped or not.

Granted, you could kill said thing for 10 weeks and never see your item, but it still felt better than the weekly loot box of magical ‘oh look, it gave me a downgrade for my highest ilvl piece, but if it was literally any other item at the same ilvl it would have been an upgrade’ box.

Raid bosses still have loot tables.

The weekly mythic+ cache shouldn’t even exist. It’s the largest welfare gear system out there. It’s a lootbox system.

Powerful mythic+ gear should come from timing high keys out of that dungeons loot table not Tuesday RNG.

[Anuke-hellscream]

I feel like you’re upset I got 470 pants from my 1.5 hour long +12 junkyard on week 1.

Edit: oops, it was 1.5 hour 12 workshop. The junkyard was a 10 and took over 2 hours.

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

@Anuke-hellscream

I feel like you’re upset I got 470 pants from my 1.5 hour long +12 junkyard on week 1.

Edit: oops, it was 1.5 hour 12 workshop. The junkyard was a 10 and took over 2 hours.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that horribly botching a dungeon and still getting a near mythic item AND residium to buy mythic quality Azerite in a few weeks is a pretty big flaw in the difficulty to reward ratio.

[Anuke-hellscream]

If I could change the name of my pants to ‘Horribly Botched Dungeon Reward’ I would. Just for you.

[Anuke-hellscream]

@Argorwal-ysera

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that horribly botching a dungeon and still getting a near mythic item AND residium to buy mythic quality Azerite in a few weeks is a pretty big flaw in the difficulty to reward ratio.

Sillyness aside, I wouldn’t mind if the loot reward for an untimed run was 5 ilvl less than a timed run. I’m glad it isn’t, but it would be fair.

[Ollin-uther (Ollin)]

@Baratheon-draktharon

Nothing felt more rewarding than looking at a piece of a loot from a vendor and then putting in days, weeks, and even months of effort & then FINALLY manually purchasing and upgrading your lowest item level slot.

LOL! You say that, but I seem to remember a ton of whining about how the whole process “takes too long!!!”

I mean, we had a similar system back in Wrath, and we even have one now with an Azerite gear vendor.

It’s never enough.

Because it’s never enough, and will never be enough, they honestly shouldn’t bother trying to please people like you. The gearing curve is imperfect, and that’s a good thing because perfection is boring.