Maybe the game isn’t for me even though I have played for over 15 years? k
Spare me your faux elitist chauvinism pls. I’ve played the game at the highest level and I’ve played as an LFR scrub and everywhere in between. I really do not care. The game always allowed a decent group of dedicated people to pug. It was never this punishing.
This is the “git gud” expansion. The problem is that people don’t git gud. When the content is unrewarding and punishing, people will just quit. That is what you are seeing happen. It’s what you saw in cataclysm as well. This should shock no one. It’s fine to cater the hardest content for the best players, but average content should be catered to AVERAGE players.
Remember how in Karazhan, the most difficult boss abilities were to stand still or soak a beam? That’s where WoW’s difficulty for pug stuff should be at. I actually do enjoy increased difficulty, but then they need to not penalize you. The timers need to be really generous so it doesn’t feel like a soul sucking waste of time to fail the run because one guy didn’t know what was going on and made one mistake.
Yes, people change and games do too. Maybe you’ve just outgrown MMOs. You seem to hate consistent social interaction and want the entire game to cater toward you and your play style
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If you have now decided that you no longer want to make friends, join guilds or do raids/ dungeons. Then yes.
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That’s crap. Guilds haven’t been required since BC. And I do like doing dungeons. I don’t like having 30-45 mins feel like a total waste because some hunter didn’t dismiss his pet or some tank didn’t kite and drop stacks or someone butt pulled another pack or some guy stood in swirlies or…
It’s just dumb.
I think quite honestly that you are just being a little over dramatic op. You are either impatient, or lazy.
Of course you need a guild to raid which you have. You haven’t made it to the last bosses with higher Ilvl loot yet, which is part of your complaint.
On a side note, I pugged my way into 17 keys before I stopped. Was #23 havoc NA in s4 bfa 5.4kio, but havoc isn’t in a good spot so I just stopped caring about keys and found enjoyment elsewhere. So pugging keys is completely do able.
I pugged 2.1 in Rbg’s between last week and this week…and I never pvp so this was new to me but I found it super fun. Learned a lot.
And I pugged 1.8k in 2’s, planning to dive deeper into arena once I get warlord in rbg’s.
My point is that it’s completely do able to pug whatever content you want. It just comes down to patience. I sat at 2050-2090, just below 2.1 in rbg’s for a number of days going up and down before I hit the mark today. Was super frustrating, but I pushed through and kept pugging.
Stop being lazy
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Right now? last expansion I was complaining that they need to fix things so locks can do mythic plus without having to pay for carries. They did not listen needless to say I am pissed and raging and carry no good will towards the development team of this game. BTW i only play warlock i don’t and will not ever chase FOTM classes. OP is correct on all points.
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lmao this thread is about sl, not bfa
I mentioned a previous expansions experience to add to the context of my wording.
My post wasn’t about a previous expansion. Either you can’t read, or don’t like what you read so you try to throw some shade on my comment.
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Stop being lazy by spending even more time in LFG finder? idunno man, I don’t think it’s wrong to want to spend more time actually playing. I’m just confused why it’s a bad thing to want to actually play more. The LFG pug fatigue is real whether it affects you or not.
The trolling this would allow would be a gold mine if they streamed it.
I wouldn’t say it’s anti-pug. You should certainly try to form groups with friends or guildmates, but you can still pug a lot. You just have to be careful with who you pick.
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It’s not just anti-pug; it’s anti-fun in general, OP.
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- 10/10 N CN
- 10/10 H CN (All parses are epic, legendary or even higher for N/H)
- Have XP on Shriek, Hunt and Hungering all sub 30% wipes on Mythic
- All +10 to +13 M+ Keys for all dungeons
- 8/8 layers on all Torghast including Twisting Corridor
I only PUG. I’m in a guild, but I don’t play with them most of the time, nor am I anything more than a “social” recruit to them. I think the expansion isn’t as anti-PUG as it is anti-fast track for low ceiling players. I’ve noticed a lot of unforgiving mechanics combined with lower loot drops makes a lot of players unable to compete and clear content as fast as they used to. I’m not sure it’s a bad thing either. I don’t see anything wrong with fewer players getting AOTC.
A good example is a druid healer I was in a group for Sire with today. They are still not AOTC, but have been in my group a few times in the last month. I am on my 5th Sire kill already, and even though we started progression at the same time that druid keeps getting kicked for failing mechanics and not doing much healing. Is that Blizzard’s fault? NO! Move out of the damn mechanics, son, you’re over geared!
pugs aren’t meant to be easy and the reason pugs are bad is the playerbase not wow.
Every xpack i’ve played has been bad for pugging because of the PEOPLE who pug.
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I’d also like to point out that many guilds are STILL progressing in normal. I usually do my normal clears with guilds who don’t have the raid cleared yet and try to givem pointers. Have helped get quite a few guilds their 10/10N. So TBH I think a lot of guilds/players just aren’t very good. The better players are going to either join better guilds or find/form higher end PUGs that exclude low performance players.
This is the way.
I have spoken.
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I agree with everything but the difficulty curve. The game needs to do more to bolster player skill like avoiding negative ground effects, avoiding enemy attacks, interrupting, dispelling, etc, and stave off the degeneration into “pull it all and let the healer sort it out”
In this way, I think whenever we have an introductory scenario to an expansion (think Broken Shore in Legion, or Nazjatar in BfA), there are situations incorporated that remind players of their toolkits. Like enemies with a buff that can be interrupted, dispelled, or spellstolen and some kind of highlight (maybe it opens up the player’s spellbook and selects the skill?) to point out what they should do.
Most of the difficulty in this game goes away if you prioritize personal survival over damage (kinda like how the ret pally mage tower challenge was). In SL, I think the dev team did a great job in balancing boss mechanics - they are simple to execute for the most part, but will absolutely mess you up if you fail them.
Players have gotten better compared to vanilla but there is a limit to what you can ask of the general population. There is a distribution in the population. When you consider the fact that the average player has a choice reaction time over 400 ms, that puts some serious constraints on what you can ask of people – especially when they need to mentally process what to do next. A lot of people also just have things going on. Wife aggro, strict limits on how much they can play, kids, lag, etc. Every little thing contributes to an escalating probability of failure for a random group.
You can vet people, but it won’t keep you safe from inevitable mistakes or random issues. If the content is so unforgiving, people will not rise to the level demanded. They will fail horribly. I don’t know if any of you have any experience with education or have observed similar issues in something like math scores. You can set the bar as high as you want. People have hard limits on what they can do and how much they can realistically improve.
None of this would be an issue if gear were more abundant and if KSM/AOTC were more on par with past expansions in difficulty. The difficulty creep is real, and Blizzard seems to hope it will motivate the average player to improve. I think they have substantial empirical evidence from past expansions that this doesn’t work.
There is nothing lost by using the approach they had in the past where elite high keys are challenging and get extremely difficult, but most people can pug their way through lower content and enjoy it with a bit of dedication. There is simply no need to gate gear this way. It ends all progression and makes the game feel meaningless and wasted when keys are failed. They had more success with the old paradigm.
Nobody is asking to pug +25s or pug full clear mythic prenerf. All I am asking for is a progression route for people who enjoy pugging where they can feel they have not completely wasted their runs. There need to be fewer harsh penalties for failure or better incentives to do the content.
Right now, the game offers fun content for serious organized play and terrible content for casuals and pug players. It also forces hardcore players in serious groups to do ridiculous chores and does not reward them with much gear either (though most do find the difficulty compelling at least).
They need to reevaluate their design philosophy because they really are slowly murdering the game.
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And varying degrees of difficulty to suit them all. If heroic is too hard, come down to normal or LFR. If +10 is too hard, hit up +5.
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Those difficulties offer players no rewards. There is no incentive to do that content and it is too easy at the gear levels most people are at when they try harder content. The difficulty curve and rewards are all screwed up.
Take like 14s. I assembled a crack squad of io champions for my 14 pf yesterday. Tank didn’t drop necrotic and our group was slow on breaking assassins out for domina. Wiped twice to her before we got our act straight. Failed key as usual, but at least I completed it for vault. I applied to a few 14s and got rejected. There is also almost no reason for me to try to time 14s except to get io score. I could try to do 3 more 14s but it seems pointless this week considering the affixes.
So now I am just out of stuff to do. I will bum my friend’s alt raid heroic today hopefully. Aside from that, there is nothing to look forward to this week. There is no exciting hope to further push my io up and try for ksm because this week feels like russian roulette and more trouble than it’s worth.
They give appropriate rewards for the difficulty. If people want better they gotta push harder stuff. The harder stuff shouldn’t just be made easier.
You can get geared enough to start heroic raid prog without doing much at all. The door is wide open for everyone. They just gotta be able to down the bosses. And that’s coming from someone who’s plugging away at it myself.