You’re personalizing the argument for the content that you aim for. Most people aren’t even raiding, let alone doing high M+, heroic, or mythic raids. No content that’s having dev time spent on it should be irrelevant; yet the generous gearing is invalidating content and its rewards before people even reach it. People are approaching content that is at their gear level, but above their skill level and having bad experiences as a result.
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You keep saying this as if asserting your opinion forcefully, repeatedly, makes it any more than your opinion. Mega-jackpots are fine. See? I can do that too.
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Wrong, wrong and wrong.
See I don’t know that you can claim it is making content irrelevant. Do people that gear through solo content who then overgear normal, would those people ever go into normal raiding in the first place? If they wanted to be they could have gone in before they overgeared it. But if they do go into normal, does it matter that they overgear it? It’s content they wouldn’t have done without overgearing it in this scenario anyways. And can you honestly argue they’re skipping normal and going into heroic?
Some guilds focusing on normal might end up overgearing normal and skipping to heroic, but that’s only because they’ve been farming world content for over 2 months and normal content that they have done for a month. That’s a product of the staggered release schedule more so than forging or world/solo content anyways. But for this tier I think that’s a valid complaint. But it’s not a normal tier.
Honestly, I see your position is entirely hypothetical. “People are approaching content that is at their gear level, but above their skill level and having bad experiences as a result.” Where is there anything that supports that this is a real systemic issue based upon loot rewards this tier?
I mean, that’s pretty much what happens now anyways. I went into heroic the first week at nearly 400 ilvl and ended the week well over that due to heroic clear and m+ spam. Now I’ve only killed 3/8M, but I’m already halfway full of 415 gear, due to all the ridiculous avenues of gearing. So if the incentive for me to keep clearing mythic is supposed to be better gear, and I’m probably in full 415 gear way before I even clear the tier, then there’s a problem. For a lot of people, the gear is what drives them to do the content, but if they have the gear before they do the content, what’s the point of finishing?
So there’s not anything that supports your claim. Because your claim is “people are approaching content that is at their gear level but above their skill level” and your anecdote is “why bother pushing mythic when I’m probably going to be 415 before I clear it.” Those arguments aren’t the same.
Nobody has any empirical evidence to support anything here except for Blizzard. Anecdotally, I see that people generally seem to have more gear than skill nowadays, and experience this regularly on my own alt characters.
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How would you define “skill” since everyone defines it differently?
The complexity or difficulty of mechanics you can handle. What I’m saying is that people are less able to handle mechanics than their gear level would have you believe.
Depends on “how okay” you are with breaking RPG elements. Flexing a bit is okay. Mega-Jackpots don’t actually add anything of value. It’s rare enough that mega jackpots occur. But there’s no point for them to be huge. I’m fairly confident anyone who gets a max-bonus-roll will be happy.
And that’s different from today… how? You don’t need Heroic gear to beat Heroic bosses. It helps. But it’s not mandatory. Ditto for the World First races – they limited gear until raid launch, they can do it again quite easily.
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I think “skill” is very hard to quantify in the game. I mean now you have to define what is “complex” and what is “difficult”. I don’t think item level needs to relate to “skill” or “perceived skill” anyway.
Do you realize during Legion both of my guilds got AoTC for all the raids, but we had several members in both guilds that could not complete a Mage Tower solo challenge.
You could say these same members were “skilled” because they could do some Heroic raid mechanics and you could also say they were not “skilled” because they could not complete the Mage Tower.
Fair terms then?
Skill - You ability to complete a task relative to the success rate of others. (Includes success rate, total wipes, and average time spent).
Perceived skill - Your skill relative to another group. (Think of a histogram – what side do you fall on relative to that group?)
Complexity - Number of sub-tasks within a single task. (Imagine a “dance” mechanic – Heroic Rag for example – 3 times you need to move to beat the mechanic.) Punishment is also a factor. (Insta-kill is extreme, and “can be ignored like in LFR” is also an extreme.)
Difficulty - Complexity metric with an additional layer. Includes number of complex mechanics and their frequency. (mechanics over time with relative punishment.)
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Mega-Jackpots add value to the people that get them. They also motivate some people to do content for the chance at that mega-jackpot even if they don’t ever win. Now you can say you think that’s a bad way to game psychology people into specific behaviors (putting more time into the game) but it has value. Whether you’re confident that people will be happy with max-bonus roll isn’t really relevant.
There are tons of different styles of RPG that are gear centric with various amounts of randomness and in light of that I have no idea what you mean by “breaking RPG elements”.
Do you farm WQs with the thought “maybe this time?!” – I’m willing to bet no one actually farms WQs to get huge upgrades.
More effort = better reward; mega-jackpots undermine that ideology.
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Yeah, so we are back to this: I think “skill” is very hard to quantify in the game currently.
That’s not an RPG element. That’s your opinion. Know what a Monty Haul campaign is?
But regarding the first question, it depends on the WQ. Generally once I get to the point where something would have to forge 10+ I don’t bother doing them personally. But I know people who do. Different people are different. But it’s not just world quests. It’s warfront/Ivus rewards. It’s invasions. It’s 385 Emissary quests. I do invasions on all my toons until I have enough to buy the ring generally. By then the gear would need to forge more than 10 and I stop. Everything else I do as much as is feasible across 10 toons heh.
We have WCL and IO scores to help. Mage Tower was pretty good until it was outgeared.
Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we can’t try to find common ground on that topic.
These may help, but they are not in game so we can’t relate “skill” to item level as was suggested earlier.
I feel like the Blues are actually looking this, so I’ll add mt 2 cents.
I don’t dislike the concept of WF/TF. I just wish you’d cap how far it cand go. I got a 385 ring in the first or 2nd week of M+ out a +2 or +3 Freehold, and had it equipped for the entirety of Uldir. True, that was one slot I never had to worry about as an heroic raider, but once I got a second ring (380 I believe) any drop from that point on in those slots was basically meaningless.
Sure, I could now pass those on to guildies, but the initial shock snd excitement from getting a huge titanforge is quickly forgotten, and the constant disappointment of getting drops you can’t equip really starts to wear on you.
In the first chest for season 2 that could give 410 gear, I got a 420 cloak. Again, as an heroic raider, I’m more likely to have this cloak for the rest of tier than i am to get a drop i can actually equip. Now i realize that M+ is another form of end game, but if i happen to get loot from any source, and it’s a cloak that isnt an upgrade, i just feel like I lost out becsuse it wasn’t for a different slot.
Bellular made a really good video where he discussed what i feel is a really fair compromise, and I for one eould be thrilled if it was implemented.
I tried following the thread of this conversation a few jumps back so forgive me if this misses the mark but…
We shouldn’t only be worried about what the “average” player experiences but also what the farthest oddities of the system produce.
Imagine the player with a ton of McForges and the player that experiences rarer McFroges than the Big Love Rocket.
Neither represent the “average” player but we should still have concern and be conscious that both tails exist.
A player that, compared to the quality of effort exerted, is regularly and to a vast degree over rewarded.
And a player that, exerting the same quality of effort as those around them, is by comparison constantly receiving “lesser” rewards due to poorer than average luck with the system.
I mean… when things like WQ and Warfronts are offering Normal+ gear from as close to a “zero effort” activity as something can be. I don’t exactly think you are making the same argument.
It’s perfectly plausible for someone to reach very near 390 with just the WQ system alone. Considering the rewards are constantly positioned 5ilvl above the player’s current progress; up to a maximum of 385.
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