Even though i dont agree at all with his stance, i appreciate the discussion. Its more than we’ve been getting. I assume it will lead nowhere but ya gotta start somewhere
3 Likes
Well it just saddens me when someone gives up on finding a good group of people to play with. I guarantee if you joined my main’s guild on WRA that you would thoroughly enjoy the experience. We have a large diverse group of people from code/programmers to store clerks, from teenagers to retired persons, from ultra casual to mythic raiders. Our leadership permits no toxicity and we’re on good terms with all the large guilds on the server and have a great server reputation. I’ve been with them for going on 4 years now and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I wish everyone could experience something similar.
1 Like
How am I wrong exactly? Because last I checked gear from World Quests(Easier content) can titanforge to raid level gear(harder content). Through titanforging, you can easily get a basic piece of gear to higher raid level quality, removing the need for you to ever enter the raid and acquire gear from it.
And yes, you can be done with an MMO. An MMORPG like WoW has tons of different things you can do, whether its Raiding, PVP, mount collecting, leveling, pet battles, and so forth. There are enough options so that you shouldn’t need to constantly grind out a tiny upgrade every week just so you have something to do. If you progress and beat end-game content, but don’t have any interest or want to do anything else, that’s a personal choice. But that doesn’t mean everybody should be forced to grind out the same content over and over.
1 Like
I have stated my partner and I once had a raiding guild. I have had this Guild name since those days. We found it way to involved and annoying to keep it going. I also hated being a Holy Priest lost without group function. It was harder than all get up to do solo questing for herbs and such. I gave up Insta Que for a different character. I have never looked back and have found more enjoyment doing things on my own.
Gratz on finding a place that suits your gaming needs and are appreciated for your presence. IRL I am pretty much a recluse that might be why I solo. My days of group time playing- is over. Instead of wallowing in that fact, I choose to continue what I love doing and one of those daily loves is logging into this game . I was very nice that you took the time to be friendly with your kind response.
I wish you the best then at doing what you enjoy. Good luck on your travels!
1 Like
As I wish you luck in yours.
Did we just kill the thread? <3
1 Like
You talkin bout emissaries that come around maybe once a week? That isn’t reliable. Maybe someone that only does warfronts and world quests can be heroic raid geared by the end of the patch but by then it doesn’t matter cause a new patch is coming along with new gear. This thought that tf/wf breaks gear progression is just straight up false.
Titanforging removes the adventure from the gearing process. Before, you could make concrete BiS lists and start a hunt for those items, knowing exactly where you needed to go, which was an adventure that you set out on.
Now you can still technically have BiS lists, but it won’t matter if you just randomly get a +30 titanforge on an item that has inferior stats, if the throughput gain is higher regardless. It randomizes the gearing process completely and I don’t appreciate it one bit. I want a clear goal so I can being a project of obtaining it, and set out to do that.
1 Like
At times I feel there is too much to do in this game. In a lot of cases this would be a good thing because there shouldn’t be a content drought. The problem is time invested + effort invested vs reward. If I were to run a multitude of M+ or do raids every week, I would expect gear back in return. Knowing which pieces of gear and where to farm them allows me to target certain aspects of the game. Knowing this I can set goals to pursue, with time and effort I will eventually be rewarded for the work I put into the game. The problem with Titan/Warforging is that those goals are no longer clear and in turn will place an opportunity cost on what I do in this game. Now we have to consider random variables with TF/WF because it is implemented everywhere and places emphasis on all aspects of the game. Due to this, I now feel the obligation to play certain aspects of the game I normally wouldn’t in hopes that I get a very low % chance return that could benefit me for the content I want to do. Now I find myself running all over the place doing various types of content that I don’t find as enjoyable as the content I WANT to do. (part1/3)
Let’s say I kill a world boss or do a world quest that drops a fully upgraded piece of gear through TF and is better than my current piece of gear. GREAT I have an upgrade. Now I have to figure out how that fits in with my gear because maybe it’s not the substats I want. I then have to change where I need to allocate gear. So if I spent a large amount of time pursuing a piece of gear from a raid boss or a M+ dungeon. Then I get this random piece of gear from doing something out of the blue Not only did all that time + effort I invested into content I chose or wanted to do feel meaningless, but I then feel obligated to pursue aspects of the game I that do not want to take an active part in. I am now presented with the opportunity cost. Do I participate in all the content the game offers, be it fun for me or not, in hopes that I will randomly be rewarded with pieces of gear to make my character grow, or do I participate in the content I truly enjoy with the chance to get stronger being limited?(part2/3)
I enjoy challenging aspects of the game. I feel that if I participate in challenging aspects that I should be rewarded with stronger pieces of gear. I don’t look at world quests and think to myself, man I wish I was ilvl 400+ because this is just too challenging without that ilvl. I will look at M+ or mythic raiding like that however, these are hard bosses with high health pools, good mechanics, and large damage outputs. While Titanforging will help me overcome those obstacles, it will make it feel less rewarding knowing that I had to rely on a very random chance at gear from trivial content to help push me over the top rather than investing time + effort into that challenge and challenges on the same tier to progress. Sometimes it’s nice to get a helping hand from something out of the blue. However in my mind TF/WF is not a helping hand, but rather a time slotted gambling machine that says you can now skip some of this challenge because you were lucky. I will end with this in mind. While I think Titanf/ Warforging has a place in the game to allow people to catch up, I do not think it should be a substitute for where the end game lies. It should be there to allow people to enter the higher tiers of content rather than replace it.(part3/3)
Why not just put all the parts in one post? And why make it bold…
Sorry, last time i posted there was a character limit and I just copied from word so I could write it out, bold must have came from there.
Personally, I found it far, FAR more annoying that my best pieces had to titanforge. My stat priority is a little wonky and it leads to me having difficulty in getting better gear in places that should give better gear.
For example, the best bracers that I had found were a 355 world boss drop with a socket. I had mythic Vectis bracers, and weekly +10 chest 380 bracers, but neither of them were better than the 355 piece. I was also relegated to pugging at this time after the guild I was in stopped progressing and melee slots were full on other guilds. Now then, the problem arose in that as I was continually gearing up, my ilvl was continually going down because sockets are just fantastic and I was running lower difficulty content in order to get more chances at titanforges or socketed items. This compounded with the fact that classes with a more normal stat priority (wanting main stat over secondaries) were getting titanforges that meant something to them, made me start comparing unfavorably in queues to them. I actually had to shelf better items for worse ones where it was only a ~5% downgrade, just in order to get my ilvl to a point where people wouldn’t question it on the pug invite screen.
Most ironically of all, because I needed to stack janky, low ilvl pieces that just had a better stat distribution overall, the titanforges i would get I had no use for and then was unable to trade them because they were the “best” items that I had found. Likewise, when other people actually hit the un-lottery on the titanforges with terrible stat priorities for every other leather wearer, they were unable to throw them my way because they were the highest item levels they had found. You cannot target drops when the odds are so low of getting what you need and the time cost of making a single attempt is so great. (Only 2 coins, 4 runs per week for of all difficulties of the seasonal raid, wide M+ loot pools, and the RNG of getting the correct keystone you need or even getting the party invite running anything not FOTM.)
Is it strictly a problem of the titanforging system? No. But titanforging exacerbates several other underlying issues with how loot is designed, the perception of player skill associated with item level, the lack of being able to target upgrades with any reliability, geared players filtering out of content to allow new players access to it, and certain classes just not being properly itemized for on raid loot tables. Worse, it obscures these underlying problems because it attempts to fix all of them without properly addressing any of them.
1 Like
Start up a +10-+12 key in the finder (just say you have one even if you don’t). Look at people who sign up. I’ve seen PLENTY of IL 400+ havoc DHs or tanks or whatever sign up with a score of about 500 (so +5 content which is about 385) and be 3/9 H (it all shows up in front of me). Please tell me how they are over 400 IL when they have killed exactly 3 bosses that drop 400 gear.
Call me a liar but provide no examples or proof as to how I’m wrong. Nice work.
You’re right, WF/TF isn’t a common occurrence. Re-read my first sentence. I’m not saying WF/TF is the issue. I’m saying it’s one among many issues that cause WoW’s progression to feel awful in recent years.
I often times in discussions are on the same side as you are. WF/TF doesn’t bug me at all and I just see it as a tool to push into content a little easier. This comes from someone who raids Cutting Edge and might even be getting Hall of Fame this season.
I personally don’t much care about parses. The loot system is throwing more and more loot at us, and at higher ilvl. Which causes tuning issues for one and it causes the gear gap to be smaller.
I personally don’t think you should be able to get Mythic quality gear from heroic content. Even M+ should be capped at 410 outside of the weekly cache. Also, much like how the Azerite from the PvP gear is determined by your rating (you can’t just grind out a 415 Azerite piece over time by doing 1600 arenas), the Azerite you can buy should be determined by how far you push. You should have to push a +15 to buy a 415 piece.
The big issue my friends seem to have with the system is Parses. These days some of the top end guilds finish the content pretty fast. With WF they can’t really shoot to round out their set for one, but it also causes other issues.
Past a certain point, people want something to strive for, and in current culture, they like to compete for Parses.
The skill gap at that level is pretty narrow. What often decides where someone ranks is a combination of luck and gear. Someone with a 415 weapon or key trinket just physically can’t compete with someone that’s gotten lucky with WF. It feels bad to lose out on a competition on sheer luck that is entirely out of your hands. It’s one thing to have to roll a specific piece. That’s always been a part of the game, but having to roll that and get lucky enough to have it WF feels bad. It feels even worse when you lose to someone with say a 425 trinket that they got off of M+.
Mythic gear should be the absolute pinnacle of what you can get. Maybe even raise that gap to 425 and let heroic WF to 415.
3 Likes
Obviously this is a problem. Ever invite a 395 player to a +10 and watch them flounder through mechanics and ruin your key? I sure have. And every time it makes me want to die. Im forced to beg people for achieves or use third party sites because the apparent stats in the game are not an accurate representative of their ability to handle the shatstorm of BFA mechanics
At the end of the day, this is the crux of it right here. Your company is terrified of people leaving from having nothing to do, like in years past. So you have fully dedicated yourselves to designing the game in such a way that there is ALWAYS something to do (i.e. artifact power, titan-forging) and you can never truly say you are done, even temporarily until the next patch.
This is not a game design decision, it’s a business decision. And the overall game design is suffering for it.
5 Likes