What’s the harm? Other then most of it is crap you can’t use.
I agree gear has to feel more rewarding. I could only use one of the three items my “great” vault deemed worthy. That item was an ilvl upgrade, with awful stats.
At this stage, fine. I need Ilvl more than anything else, really, but the problem remains. Junk gear, that I had to wait a week for.
Gear needs to drop more frequently, al la BfA, and then maybe one out of ten was an actual upgrade.
Or, drop at roughly the rate we are getting now, but as a tailored piece that’s actually good. I. E., stats that don’t make my want to cry, or punch my monitor
Rank 1 Base Items (Item Level 190) give 5 XP per crafted item and the Total XP you need to unlock Rank 2 is 75, meaning you must craft 15 Rank 1 Base Items to gain access to Rank 2.
Rank 2 Base Items (Item Level 210) give 10 XP per crafted item and the Total XP required to unlock Rank 3 is 150, so you need to craft 15 Rank 2 Base Items to learn Rank 3.
So. To get to level 3 takes crafting 30 items with 30 shards each at 30 gold a shard.
Interesting, the one time I tried to join a group in the Maw I just assumed they had WM on and left the group, then I decided not to even bother with the quest I had cause they were the only group available.
I would have to argue that having players essentially have content expire due to no longer needing it, and them then leaving the game until more content (i.e. another level of BiS to chase) drops is actually worse.
Which is exactly what this current system is promoting full stop.
Once BiS has been achieved, why are those players still in the game? Carrot is gone…how much replay-ability is there really in the game for those players…whose basic goal was gear progression to BiS?
They’re done. Raid beat. BiS achieved. Shelve the character until next content patch and they’re off to another game.
According to most everyone posting here, it’s the vast majority of the “real players” of this game and has been since history was first recorded on cave walls.
The only things that seem matter to the opposite side of this argument is validating the no-lifing grind to stay current, achieve BiS.
You can’t prevent that any more than you can prevent an exodus of people over things the OP identified…the loot situation in general is turning off swathes of players for one.
But it’s okay for that to happen since we’re stinking up the place (given the utter, dripping, contempt most posters have been exhibiting).
And, by virtue of it being the “right” opinion people who get their characters where they want are going to keep plowing into the cheese-grater grind…because funsies?
Absolutely no one is saying either of these things.
Gear is the carrot to keep on playing.
Currently, it’s coming too slow to make the carrot appealing to a lot of people.
Does the carrot need to be the same size as mythic carrot? No.
But there needs to be an actual carrot for running content, not just the promise of one…which is what a lot of players are currently experiencing.
TLDR: Gear has to come fast enough to matter for “fully” participating in end game systems. Outside of no-lifing the game, playing in-game systems that aren’t “fun” to players in general, or buying loot funnels, the game isn’t achieving this.
I don’t agree with all of these, but I see a general issue with how sharding and phasing are implemented in Shadowlands. A lot of times, I felt they are done at the wrong time.
For example, I shouldn’t be keeping killing other people’s quest mobs and not getting credit, but if I leave the area there is almost nobody around. Or, when there are 2 full raids on the world boss already, can we shard, so that other players in the same zone can complete their quests and not to be lagged out? Or, why is my quest NPC in a different phase at all?!
It’s a disease that’s spread everywhere. Last expansion you couldn’t even do daily quests without having to dance with every other trash mob or die, and even trash mobs which you’re not even looking at.
This design has infected every part of the game and it’s not fun, it’s just plain obnoxious.