Titanforging and Warforging make me upset

[Minusthemage-thrall]

saying the subs are find is the WoW equivalent of being a climate change denier.

[Haavi-barthilas (Haavi)]

It’s entirely anecdotal and thus meaningless. But according to you the time investment thing doesn’t happen. You stated the person plays more on his alt than he does his main, unless I’m misunderstanding something here. And finally, the answer is no, the main doesn’t run heroic or equivalent or higher content. Prettymuch what I expected.

I said that from the start that it doesn’t happen…You do realise that don’t you.
They said “this system is clearly in game”
I said “no, it’s a fallacy. Time will be the rewarding factor not the game giving you benefits because you aren’t playing”
So…what’s your point except trying to be controversial?

Also what is your second point? Because the content isn’t Heroic or Mythic that it doesn’t matter that you get better gear through non-organised content?
I forgot that the other 90% of the game was irrelevant and didn’t matter. Thanks for reminding me. Oh wait? Wasn’t that the exact opposite of what you were trying to argue before? I believe it was.

I’ve said from the start that while it affects the high tiers of organised content, the ones it affects the most are low tiers of organised content as it severely devalues it. That is the content that is important for players to breach the gap between solo/LFG content and high tier content.

But of course that content is irrelevant and they might as well not have it. Understood

[Spiçy-area-52 (Spiçy)]

I think a reasonable compromise at the moment would be warforging only

That would be perfectly acceptable in my eyes. +5 is a happy surprise. +30 is content altering

[Avagon-sisters-of-elune]

Changing anything for either end of the spectrum changes the status quo but it really depends upon the details as to how it would be received I think. I’ve mentioned if I had free reign to design progression I’d change some things so it’s not like I think what we have is the best it could possibly be. I’ve just come to terms with the idea that what I think would be best isn’t what Blizzard thinks would be best. As examples, I’m not a fan of the 30 ilvl increase between normal of tier a and normal of tier b. I’m a fan of old badge style reward systems rather than forging and I agree there’s too much rng in loot distribution as I’d much prefer a more deterministic system. I could go on, but I’m just making the point that there are plenty of things I don’t like. But at the same time, I understand casuals need progression too and the kind of progression they get now is better than the nothing they had before.

Though, from the way you’re talking about casuals and the solo play 2 months and then unsub thing I don’t think we’re on the same page about casuals either. I believe most casuals are just long duration sub folks who don’t do organized group content. They play as they can, don’t sweat when they can’t, and they jump into the content that’s available when they do have time to play. They are given perpetual content, whether there was a big patch with lots of new content or not. But that’s just what I think of when I think of the bulk of the playerbase. Unfortunately we don’t actually have real numbers on that.

[Orctang-area-52 (Orctang)]

That would be perfectly acceptable in my eyes. +5 is a happy surprise. +30 is content altering

No, it isn’t or a lot higher percentage of guilds would be getting CE and AoTC.

[Sladdaboy-draka]

This seems to be a key part of the discussion. There are 2 opposing approaches to gear:

1. A realistic chance at, and opportunity for, completion is priority
2. Always having a chance at an upgrade, however small the likelihood, is exciting and keeps the game fresh

Solution: Either players who prioritize completion shift their mindset, or Blizzard returns to a gearing system that allows realistic completion. Barring one of these, some players will remain understandably frustrated.

The problem is, players don’t universally hold to approach #1. Many would back one or the other, and some either. So Blizzard has to make a decision on which group to risk frustrating. And we have to make a decision on whether we can adapt to whatever choice they make.

[Avagon-sisters-of-elune]

Doing multiple things here and rereading that it didn’t come across very clear.

My point was that time is the factor that matters, but also the content one engages in matters too. If I play 10 hours a week and you play 5 hours a week, if you’re doing normal content and I’m doing solo content I could be better geared than you pending forges and randomness (i.e. whether the tortollan emissary gives me a trinket or a ring when I need a 385 ring). It’s different paths to the same progression with slightly different time investments. You invest less time in group content, I invest more time in solo content. As soon as you step into heroic or above that changes. You can put less time doing heroic and outgear me because you’re going to have a larger number of opportunities to acquire 400+ ilvl gear. The only thing that invalidates anything is the amount of time and the type of content one chooses to do. If you are comfortable with group content and want to do normal, it makes hitting every invasion and hoping for a forge less valuable. If you are skilled enough and want to invest the time to do heroic, it invalidates content below it. And so on.

[Paeldryth-hyjal (Paeldryth)]

The actual solution is being able to upgrade gear with valor like you could in past expansions.

You can still complete your BiS list, and you still have a reason to keep playing and get stronger when it is completed.

[Haavi-barthilas (Haavi)]

Wanna know what happened to Wildstar, the mmo that catered to hardcore players? It’s dead. And I don’t mean dead as in very few players, I mean dead as in they’re shutting down the servers. If I’m remembering the email I got said April. Hell, people still player the original Everquest. Right now. The game that catered to ultra min/maxers. Dead.

So lets go from this “Look what happens when you cater to hardcore”

to

I actually played it. And I liked a lot about the game. The problem was once players hit endgame there was a giant wall of attunements. Getting attuned required a group of other highly skilled players who wanted to invest that time with you. Attunements were essentially a series of challenge mode dungeons from WoW if you remember them. Speed runs of dungeons where you had to hit certain marks. And those requirements were extremely high, far beyond the skill level of the typical player. This is on top of the game being far more skill based than wow due to the nature of combat anyways. The game died entirely because raid content was locked behind those attunements. They had some casual content (the player housing stuff was amazing) but there simply wasn’t enough for people to do at level cap. The casuals quit. The bulk of the playerbase that believed they were awesome gamers couldn’t hack the attunements and they quit. The remaining people who did the attunements that were doing raid content weren’t enough to sustain the game.

Which is clearly more hardcore than WoW has ever been.

Don’t you think there isn’t a happy medium between the two?
Between “super hard timed runs for attunements” and “raid equivalent gear is easily obtained through solo unfailable activities”?

There a lot of room between those two ends which you can play around with and find a compromise.

[Zur-khadgar]

I just wish the gearing system was more linear and transparent then it is. Like having trophies that drop or something in PVE that lets you have better control on your progression of gear.

[Haavi-barthilas (Haavi)]

That would be perfectly acceptable in my eyes. +5 is a happy surprise. +30 is content altering

No, it isn’t or a lot higher percentage of guilds would be getting CE and AoTC.

So I guess the fact that the AoTC completion rates have jumped up to 30+% in Legion from the 9% completion of Blackhand in WoD is irrelevant?

[Mirzim-thrall]

tbh, I wonder if that has as much/more to do with M+ than just TF. It used to be that you farmed earlier Heroic bosses to gradually gear up for later Heroic bosses, now you M+ your way to outgearing the whole raid by the first month and zip zip.

To be clear, I really enjoy M+ so I’m not saying it was a bad addition to the game at all.

But the gearing curve has gotten weirdly frontloaded, and I’m not sure the weekly cache should be rewarding near-Mythic levels of gear when +10 is much closer to Heroic in difficulty. Between M+ and TF, I feel like “just outgear it” became a really viable strategy for Heroic raiding.

[Heidiho-kaelthas]

As a casual player myself, I can imagine how irritating it is knowing that I got my 425 trinket by doing a few minute quest, where as they worked for weeks and weeks, and FINALLY got their trinket drop on mythic…and it’s a 415 ilvl.

[Avagon-sisters-of-elune]

Yes, Wildstar was a hardcore pipe dream that killed itself. That’s what happens when people that are hardcore make a game for hardcore people without realizing the echo chamber they’re in isn’t actually representative of the whole nor is it remotely close. Kinda like all the people here patting themselves on the back and liking each others posts as they talk down to the bulk of the playerbase. All the while they’re confused about why their vision which is clearly the majority is being ignored.

But we do have a happy medium. We don’t have super hard timed runs for attunements. We don’t have a situation where heroic or mythic raid gear is easily obtainable through solo content. We have a situation where the lowest difficulty of organized group content (normal) rewards the same quality of gear as solo content except the organized group content has 9+ (bonus rolls, people passing gear, etc.) more opportunities per week to get 385 gear over solo play. That’s an honest assessment of what we have, not your hyperbolized version.

[Spiçy-area-52 (Spiçy)]

As a casual player myself, I can imagine how irritating it is knowing that I got my 425 trinket by doing a few minute quest, where as they worked for weeks and weeks, and FINALLY got their trinket drop on mythic…and it’s a 415 ilvl.

If you enjoyed that loot im happy for you. My dislike for the system had nothing to do with what you got, it has more to do with other aspects

[Mirzim-thrall]

We don’t have a situation where heroic or mythic raid gear is easily obtainable through solo content.

Not for the first or 2-3 months, maybe, but then the mid-raid patch increases the solo rewards to Heroic ilvl, because catch-up happens before the next tier of content is released now for some reason.

[Elynos-sargeras (Elynos)]

Time walking quest takes longer than a few minutes

[Avagon-sisters-of-elune]

We have warfronts that offer a single piece of heroic quality gear every 2 weeks and a weekly quest that’s in the rotation every, what, 6(?) weeks that gives heroic quality gear. People who do not engage in organized group play can acquire 8 pieces in 3 months and those pieces can be duplicate slots. Heroic raiders get more loot opportunities than that in a single weekly reset and they can do all the other stuff too. Such a comparison is laughable at best.

[Elynos-sargeras (Elynos)]

No sir it’s every 3 weeks for warfront rotation not 2

[Heidiho-kaelthas]

Oh I understand completely. I’ve never gotten upset at a person for their mount drops on first Sha of Anger or Nalak kill, etc. lol

I used to be a fairly hardcore raider back in BC and WotLK days and even in late Wrath I was starting to get irritated by seeing fresh 80’s getting Wintergrasp PVP awards that were similar gear to what I was earning in raids. It has only gotten worse from there of course.

I miss the days when epic gear was truly epic and meant that you put in some serious time and skill to earn it.