Most people don’t like gambling so it is not surprising it doesn’t translate to the gaming world.
Can you explain how the WF/TF system feels more rewarding and fulfilling than something like the gear upgrade system we had in MoP? Or the effort = rewards gear systems of prior expansions?
3 Likes
Bornakk don’t you feel like WF/TF damages the creation of a proper itemization system as a whole? I fail to see how devs could balance a reward structure in a game if it adds so many random variables.
Imagine if in the game there was a progression path as the expac advanced. Such as before you can topple the enemies in X you have to train and gear up in Y. Wouldn’t you feel more attached and intimate with your character if you were glad you got an awesome item in a dungeon that will help you progress to the next content area? Now its just “I just got some #s that are bigger than my current #s…yay…” WF/TF is a crutch that the dev team relies on to “generate content” but in reality it over inflates item levels which ends up trivializing content.
4 Likes
WF/TF gives me a reason to keep playing through Mythic content even when it’s on farm status.
Legion and BfA are the first expansions I really hung in there, because there was always a carrot to chase.
In previous expansions I would always quit about 2/3rds through the tier because I knew my Ilvl was pretty much going to stop at that point.
Whether the above is good or bad depends on a person’s perspective. Constant character progression is important to a MMO, but there are probably betters ways to go about it than the current system. I disagree with removing it and replacing it with nothing though.
1 Like
I’d say a better system would be to cap it at 10 ilvls and allow players that weren’t so lucky with forging to put in work to upgrade their gear.
2 Likes
A combination of a 10-15 cap + being able to dump a meter (valor) into gear for ilvls up to that cap would be ideal in my opinion.
4 Likes
I’d be fine with this to be quite honest.
Oh and just saw this on Twitter.
Boy howdy what a fun system.
7 Likes
Wow wtf is that?
Everything we do in BFA is like buying a lottery ticket. It looks like this guy won.
1 Like
BuT iTs So RaReeE!!!
A mythic ilvl titanforged cape from an arena skirmish. And here’s the kicker. He lost the arena apparently.
So since we’re just pissing into the wind a lot lately, I’ll try to put us back on track a bit.
Do I like forging? Yes and no. The why requires a little context.
I play a lot of toons. I’ve always done so. I like trying each spec out, tinkering with it, coming back to it later in an expansion and seeing how it is. By the end of the expansion I typically have every class leveled to cap and have raided to some degree across every spec even if it’s just alt raid nights. I generally have 2-3 toons I play heavily besides my main, often times those toons are capable of doing different roles than my main can. I like to be able to switch in and heal when we’re missing a healer or tank if one of our tanks needs a night off. I like that diversity. This expansion I have 2 primary toons, 1 that I raid on, 1 that I do M+ on. I learned that lesson from Legion, the toon I raided with was only really good at raid content and it wasn’t good in M+ at all.
So that probably explains why I like forging (and 385 Emissary quests, 400 ilvl warfront rewards, 370 invasion rewards, etc.). I like gearing up and trying out a lot of different toons. This makes it easy for me to try each one out, see if I like it, and if I do to invest more time into gearing up to be good enough to run more difficult content. I’m not worried about what the next guy has, I’m worried about getting my toons geared enough to do the content I want to do with them. Forging and all the various reward systems allow me to get there over time with efficient time investment.
What I don’t like. The randomness of what forges. But it’s not just forging, it’s the randomness of everything. It’s overboard. Random equipment caches. Random Azerite pieces when we want/need specific traits. Random forges. Random trinket or ring from Tortollan Emissaries. Huge pools of rewards for end of M+ completion chests make it very annoying to farm for specific things. Weekly M+ cache that could literally be almost anything. In general, player agency is just very poor right now. I’d love to see player agency increase and if sacrifices have to be made to give us that player agency, more control over what upgrades we get, I’m down with that. As long as the end result is still the same. If that means reducing options for players to appease Mythic raiders who feel these rewards devalue their time/effort, I’m extremely opposed to that. My entertainment/enjoyment isn’t impacted by what other people have, I just don’t work that way. But when someone starts trying to take things away because me having something on an alt makes them feel bad about their own toon? That’s something they need to find a way to come to terms with that doesn’t involve screwing me to do so.
Catch up systems that allow people to gear up alts to be just high enough ilvl to enter current raid/dungeon content is a great thing. I really like it a lot and support it fully. I just feel like the ridiculous lottery ticket system for gear upgrades needs a major overhaul or to be completely done away with. When I go out to do a catch up event for gear to be able to get my alt into current content then I feel like I should only get that minimal ilvl gear. After that I can step into the raid/dungeon/pvp I want to do and progress from there as each item from that raid/dungeon/pvp would be an upgrade, more than likely. One step at a time!
I used to love playing alts too but Legion and BFA killed it for me with the AP system. I would much rather farm badges for gear on alts than farm islands and world quests to keep my necklace up to date. But everyone has their preference.
That’s an issue distinct from forging. I presume you also have a problem with 400 ilvl gear coming from Darkshore warfront completion and Ivus, 385’s coming from Emissary quests, etc?
Yeah I would say more like 370 would be appropriate so that people could step into BfD and still have some challenge.
1 Like
I really like the WF/TF system, it’s a nice bonus for doing content I’m already expecting to get gear from. Granted there are outliers here and there (like getting a 415 belt from a wb on an alt) but overall I think it’s a great system. The idea of getting a surprise bonus to a piece of gear is very fulfilling akin to getting a full size candy bar when trick or treating. I don’t foresee someone having a full set of titanforged gear becoming some 415-425 god without ever stepping into a raid or even without stepping into anything outside of LFR, if they do it’s an outlier and not part of the statistic. the WF/TF system gives me plenty of incentive to do stuff that I would never do otherwise, I would even argue that it’s healthy for the game overall because it puts higher level players in lower leveled content (LFR, WB, Heroic Dungeons, ETC.). I honestly don’t see the issue with a system that constantly allows you to progress your character, albeit randomly. The entire point of an MMO is that there is no end, that’s how it was and forever will be. The carrot on the stick will always change but the result remains the same.
A valor point system just wouldn’t work, imo, for a few reasons. First, what would be the end point of it, would you stop after so many iterations on your gear? Say 4, 6, 8, 10? You couldn’t just let players consistently upgrade items as there would be a huge disparity between the lower geared and the higher end ones. Granted there already exists such a disparity but it would be more apparent with a VP system. There would either have to be an end point or make it infinitely upgradable with VP hard to get or with a limit to how much you can have or farm, but I would argue that it’s not a fun system as it makes it seems like a rat on a treadmill type of reward system. Just take a look at some of the many, many, many currency reward systems that already exist in the game, to me none of them are rewarding enough for me to consistently do them, adding another layer to that with VP would just make me feel like I’m constantly just farming all the time and that’s not very fun gameplay. Second, what would happen when someone gets an upgrade? Could you scrap your old pieces to get your VP back? If so then that is just the old issue of having to wait to get back into the main town to equip your gear so you can upgrade it properly. If you can’t get back that VP you already used then why even get the new gear as you already have this big ilvl piece, getting a new piece of gear would set you further back in progression until you can farm up enough VP to upgrade to a similar ilvl at least. Granted you could possibly hold onto VP until you get that perfect piece of gear but that would limit progression as you aren’t as powerful as you could be by holding onto that currency. Imo, a VP system of upgrading gear is just not a fun, rewarding option, the WF/TF system doesn’t require any extra effort on my part and let’s me, on occcasion, give me a better piece of gear than I was expecting make things more interesting.
Early to mid Legion was brutal. After they implemented weekly incrementing artifact knowledge and Broken Shore/Argus gear catch up it was a lot of fun. With BfA it started better than Legion’s start, but with tweaks since then such as the rep on a main allowing us to unlock Heart ilvl quests on alts it’s been better.
But I don’t try to farm AP at all, on none of my toons do I go out of my way. I get what I get playing those toons. It took me a while to approach AP like this in Legion but now I simply don’t care about it at all. I just can’t invest a lot of time now that in a few weeks the time investment will be trivial to get the same reward and that reward (a few ilvls or unlocking an inner ring trait) isn’t going to make or break anything. And to stay ahead of the curve requires that type of investment essentially forever.
Why would i explain something you dont like? For me is simple, i like it because it means any drop i get from the game can be come an upgrade in all my toons.
1 Like