These threads are always just full of people who can’t see past their own bias,
The statement that solo players have no gear progression is false. What you actually mean is that the top end of the progression is not high enough ilvl for you. Well guess what? All gear progression paths in this game are capped to an ilvl blizzard has decided fits the challenge required to complete it.
It is not possible in this game to make solo content as hard as Mythic raids or high M+ keys without intentionally scaling down the content of raids and M+. Solo content will never require any type of coordination. You will never have a boss that requires 1 player to do X while another does Y at the same time, or 2 players to juggle a bomb while dodging a bunch of 1 shot mechanics and doing your rotation perfectly to meet the dps check.
No it’s not. Do solo players start the patch in 252 gear? No? Then there is a gear progression. You just don’t want to acknowledge it because you want gear higher than 252.
Then what are you even talking about? If starting at ilvl 226 and PROGRESSING to 252 is not a progression system this entire debate is pointless.
Progression is defined by moving gradually to a more advanced state. More advanced state = higher ilvl. If your definition of a progression system is that it needs to be infinite then it has never existed in wow as there has always been a cap and/or list of BIS gear to reach. This cap exists for raiders, M+ players and pvp players. Not just solo players.
So what you want is content that gets gradually harder for solo players? So if blizzard implemented solo world content that started you at 226 and gave gradually harder tasks/quests until you reached 252 with the hardest solo content this would be good enough? Why do I get the impression most would still be upset. Probably because the loudest solo players are not being honest when they say they just want a progression system when they really mean they want the highest ilvl gear for content that can never be as hard as mythic raiding or +25 keys or pvp at the highest brackets.
That is what most solo players want that I know. Of course, it would be equal with any other progression system in the game so yeah the best gear can be rewarded as well.
That is a lot of development resources for something I don’t think solves the problem. I think in order for solo content to award top ilvl gear it has to be so over the top difficult that the players asking for this won’t be able to complete it. And if blizzard then makes a change for those players it creates a problem where the game shifts almost entirely to a solo player game because players will want to spend all their time doing that content for the easiest path to top gear.
I did not mean to imply solo content can’t be hard. IMO it’s just not possible to make a solo encounter as hard as a group encounter unless you intentionally water down the group encounter because coordination is a degree of difficulty you can’t incorporate into a solo encounter.
It’s your opinion the decline is due to not enough solo content. It’s my opinion it’s due to other factors. IMO this game has no majority other than “casual.” And casual is very broad representing a lot of different play styles. But if you are talking solo player vs raider vs M+ vs PVP then there is no majority.
Players want character progress and it should be available to every type of player. The game will just continue to die with only a limited number of player progression options.
I want a progression system around actual Roleplay. Roleplay out entire scenes, fights, tons of stuff and get items, currency, transmog, new emotes…
Kinda depends on the class/spec and what gear you end up using, to be honest. Lot of the time it’s not particularly hard if you found the broken gear for it, especially early on.
So I think many of us have played a lot of other MMO’s that do very compelling single player instances.
ESO Trials - available all the time
GW2 Queens Gauntlet - available periodically
Rift Chronicals - available all the time
The problem with single player content giving the best (or close to the best) rewards in the game is evident in ESO, where the vast majority of players in the MMO never play with anyone else. Sure, there are other people in the world, but most players do not do group dungeons or raids. They log in when there is a new story chapter, do the chapter, and maybe work on a set bonus for the season, then leave.
In short, when solo content is your endgame content, when there is no serious push to grouping, there is no social-stickiness to the game. You no longer feel compelled to log in to continue friendships or like you need to make friends to experience the content.
For many players, those friendships and shared successes are the point of the game.
Compelling solo content for cosmetics is great, but compelling solo content for the majority of your player power would undermine the entire community aspect of WoW.
GW2 avoids this by essentially not having ever-better end game gear. Rift and CatGirlFantasy14 avoid this by offering single player dungeons but they offer much worse gear than normal dungeons or raids.
The problem with OP’s suggestion isn’t in the content he’s requesting, it’s in the reward he wants for the content.
Still say they should build off invasions, and assaults like we had in Legion, and BFA for open world solo. or single player progression options. Mix it up. Have a few that are solo player friendly, and a few that would require more than a one, or two folks. Legion, and BFA both had a couple of the one boss type of invasion, or assault that you would have had a pretty difficult time soloing, because the boss could just about one shot you unless you had help, or until you out geared it. There were usually people around doing them anyways, and if not, you could just use group finder tool. Only other way to feel like characters are progressing without being constantly pushed into instanced content is to get rid of open world item level scaling. The game was fine without it, before they snuck that crap into non instanced content back in legion.