Yeah. Big random surprises…
Right, it was the acquisition as big random surprises. How legendary items were acquired changed like… 6 times before being purchasable.
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And the funny thing was a lot of people were happier with the vendor then having bank on RNG.
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Raid trials have been around since… forever, and it hasn’t stopped as a result of Master Looter being removed (unnecessarily, but that’s another topic).
But you’re correct in that gear used to be a better judgment of a player’s ability to succeed in your group. Now that you’re able to obtain gear that is probably past the “suggested” content level for your gear, group leaders can’t be sure that just because you have heroic raid gear levels, that you know how to raid heroic.
Unfortunately, we can’t stop judging people. That’s how the group finder works; you are supplied with applicants and you are allowed to choose the best. Most group leaders don’t feel like running a charity and picking players at random; they want to pick players who provide the group with the highest chance of success.
On the topic of titanforging, I think it does a disservice to the people who are getting these massive titanforges. It massively devalues content that is level-appropriate if you get even a few low titanforges. As a mythic raider, I don’t care that Johnny got a 425 from LFR, but for Johnny, he now has one less item to hunt for at his level of content, pretty much for the remainder of the expansion. This is compounded with things like the Darkshore Warfront giving ilvl 400 gear, the Against All Odds quest (initially) giving ilvl 400 gear, and several other “easy” sources of high level loot. Individually, these aren’t a problem, but when combined, you end up with major issues for your average players. Titanforging is just one of these pieces in the puzzle.
Let’s use Johnny as an example again. Let’s say Johnny mostly raids LFR and he does his world quests, World Bosses, and Warfronts when he can. Let’s say his target content is progressing through some Normal Battle of Dazar’alor after finishing LFR. Chances are that after the first month or so (once LFR has fully released), Johnny has several pieces of gear at 385 - 400 ilvl. This is a result of the combination of several “over-generous” rewards systems (including titanforging), as described above. When he begins his goal of progressing through the normal raid, the gear reward from the raid has been greatly diminished, as he has several pieces that are equal to or better than the raid gear before even stepping foot inside.
I’ve personally run into this situation on several of my alts, where I end up with all of this great gear before I really even reach the content I’m aiming for. My tank is ilvl 390 after clearing normal once due to some lucky titanforges, warfronts, etc. I don’t think I’m ready to tank heroic, from a skill-perspective, but the game is now directing me to do heroic raiding since that’s where my only upgrades are now. So my options are to do unrewarding content that is skill-level appropriate, or do content that I am not prepared for. Blizzard has destroyed their own players’ progression curves with being over-generous with loot.
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IF they had a vendor at the start I wouldn’t have cared about legendaries after like a month cause I would have all the ones I needed.
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eh you’ll be fine, tanking is a learning experience if you got overgeared healers on your side you can mess up a bit and manage to get by with your low ilvl
I like how you declare what is and is not a problem for Johny while simultaneously declaring that you aren’t Johny. By and large, the people complaining about forging or higher rewards for warfront/emissary/world bosses are not Johny. While there might be an occasional person who could be classified that way who isn’t a fan, this thread serves as a very clear indicator that Johny doesn’t have a problem with it and the people that do are raiders. I do like your tact though, don’t talk about it from the “I’m so angry Average Johny got loot he didn’t deserve!” Instead try to pretend you’re speaking for Average Johny. If it wasn’t so blatantly obvious it might actually seem like valid feedback.
Actually I was speaking of the abuse of gear score to judge players. During wrath when that add-on was popular, the only way to get into a pug raid was by gear score or reputation. Or being friends with the raid leader.
I assume this is a factor in the new gearing system. More equal opportunity for people to show skills vs what they are wearing.
Just as the forums are blowing up over gear dropping everywhere for everyone. Back then the forums blew up over not being able to get the gear because they never get the opportunity based on gear score/ item level.
Clearly a happy balance has not happened, probably never will. Most likely this is a result of players not bad design. We created our own misery.
Most people won’t even realize it’s a problem, because a lot of people are looking at the game from an individual perspective. I mean, personally, it’s great when I get a super titanforged item. It’s really good for me personally. But my argument is that it’s bad for the game as a whole in combination with these other easy sources of loot; most players aren’t going to complain about getting more or better loot, so it’s often hard to tell when you’re giving out too much.
They won’t realize it’s a problem or they don’t agree that what you’re claiming is a problem is actually a problem? These aren’t the same thing. But you’re absolutely wrong about whether it’s hard to tell whether too much loot is being given out. It might be hard for us, as players, to assess what is too much. We have a lot of data on hand to try to guesstimate, but Blizzard has the actual numbers. Hell, Blizzard expressly switched their reported metrics to player activity, not subscription count for a reason. They know exactly how many people are completing world quests. They know exactly how many people are completing raid content at various levels. They know exactly how many hours players spend in warfronts. Do you not think if they saw those numbers go down dramatically that they would leave things as they are?
We had someone here who was opposed to forging that made the point that AotC was at a high point for Uldir. If your claim was correct that’s exactly the opposite of what we’d find to be true. Participation in content would be down across the board. But I don’t actually think it is. If anything I’d bet participation in these types of activities is up.
For losers with no skill or hope of aspirations that need to get their rewards from blind dumb luck. I’ll never understand that mindset, because I will absolutely never have to rely on it to get what I want.
What I don’t understand is you know gambling is set up to take advantage of the masses while selling a false sense of hope that will never come true. How can people even stand to entertain that hope knowing they’re being preyed upon? Do they just disregard the ill will and only see the “MAN! but what if I DID win!?”
You can just straight up look at AotC guild kills on WoWProgress. It’s been pretty flat for BFA/Legion (~18K guilds), slightly lower than WoD (~20K), and significantly down from Pandaria (~30K+).
Completion rates of content are also a terrible way of judging whether or not content is liked by players. People will do extraordinarily tedious and boring content if the rewards are good enough. Is it good design if I am doing world quest content that I don’t like with the hopes that I’ll hit the jackpot and get a piece of titanforged gear? Just because people are completing content doesn’t mean they like it.
Irrelevant because the sub count has been dropping significantly since Pandaria.
As a result of bad systems design such as Titanforging and over-generous loot distribution leading to player apathy and quitting?
Complete speculation but anyway the exodus of subs started before “over-generous” loot started or whatever that is.
Casual subs are the ones that matter as they’re the bulk of the playerbase. We can easily try to assert that the things we hate are the reason casuals are leaving but that’s just confirmation bias in action.
Regarding AotC…first, I didn’t make the point. One of the people complaining about forging did a ways back in this thread. I just thought it was funny that we have people arguing exactly opposite things and saying it proves the same thing. Second, you’re really going to try to tell us that people do AotC because they don’t like the content? Really? That’s the position you’re going to pretend is real? I mean, we’re not talking about people farming content for forges where you might be able to claim a segment of the population does it and doesn’t like it.
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I would hope that even casual subs want a challenge when playing a game. The method raid race to kill Jania was a huge event for WoW. The twitch stream had a lot of people playing attention. I doubt they were all hardcore raiders. Raiding has been core to this game since MC came out. It is what made WoW so much better then other MMO’s the ability to actually have end game content and finish. Games where you bop around casually with no direction never survive. You push the raiding community out of this game it will die. It won’t be overnight it will be more like a slow moving cancer of casual progression eating the soul of this game.
Are you actually trying to argue that someone who doesn’t put in the time should get the same gear as someone who does? That’s really the bottom line here, you’re trying to defend a trash system that punishes players who aren’t “lucky”. If someone is investing 9-12 hours a week into Mythic raiding, then yes they should be ahead of someone who puts in maybe 2 hours a week to do a M+ and a few bosses in heroic. The reality is, it does happen, it is happening, and it has happened many times since the introduction of this Titanforge system revamp from Legion. In fact the best geared player at the end of Tomb of Sargeras was a Rogue who never stepped into Mythic raid and only did a couple of 10s/15s each week. So the reality is, yes it does happen and no it shouldn’t even have a CHANCE at happening.
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Don’t worry eventually it’ll cause all the good players to leave the game, it’s already happening. The game will die because of Titanforging and trash class design, the problem is people like you who don’t want to work for or earn the rewards and that is what’s killing this game.
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The game isn’t dying, and nothing is killing the game.
I’ve been hearing ‘WoW is dead’ since 2010… almost 10years now…
Titanforging isn’t killing the game, it’s not a big deal - It’s only a big deal for the 1% and for the salty trihards.
Nothing much, move on and don’t worry about it it won’t be an issue.
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