For you.
For others they were enjoyble and enhanced their experience.
I will say though: An AP grind needs a FUN and ENGAGING power system behind it.
Are you? You asked why people do keys higher than +16s and I explained to you that it’s because it doesn’t give the highest rewards if you need the end of dungeon loot.
Yes some players do keys higher than 17s, just like players in the past pushed beyond the max gear rewards, but that number is very low.
You need to learn how to use words. Words have a different meaning depending on the context you use them in. I’m sorry but 5000 players still doing keys is a dead game mode.
By your definition RBGs aren’t dead even though there’s only 5 teams playing. Everyone you ask, except people like you who argue semantics because you have no other argument, would tell you the exact same thing.
Even Ion said they would kill raiding if they made M+ loot too good. So yeah blud, you’re just completely wrong. Take the L.
Take your own advice blud.
Lol, it’s not a stretch lil bro. It’s a fact.
Yeah that is defined as dead.
Learn how to use a language.
How is that relevant? It’s literally the game director saying if the content doesn’t give good gear rewards it dies. But i’m sure you know better, even though you don’t know how to use a language properly.
Bro you’re just arguing semantics.
It was the best source of gear for everyone. They nerfed secondary stats & buffed main stat in Shadowlands. Ilvl was king, it was by far the highest DPS increase. You also didn’t need to get into gladiator range at all, the majority of players stopped at 1800 because that was HC ilvl which was more than enough for 99% of the playerbase and the content they were doing.
It would absolutely die. You’re just arguing semantics. A few thousand players like you who don’t care about rewards isn’t enough to justify Blizz investing all the manpower & resources into making raids or M+ dungeons.
Yeah and guess what? It’s also the most dead season we’ve ever had. 
Blud if all you’re going to do is argue semantics and say the content isn’t dead because 500 people are doing it then it’s pointless talking to you. Everyone uses the language this way, even the game director does. You know exactly what I mean, so bring up some actual points or i’ll just ignore you.
No. You couldn’t grind renown it was gated behind weekly quests.
I should probably clarify as well, the rewards need to be good as well. Players enjoyed AP way more in Legion & later half of BFA than they did in the beginning of BFA. The reason why was because artifact trait unlocks were significant and felt good to get. In BFA after 8.2 we got essences and we unlocked minor essence slots with AP which felt good to unlock.
I agree, but alas here we are. Blizzard needs to salvage the current situation before the entire game ends up dead like PvP is right now.
That’s not the issue though. DF actually has a lot of content outside of raids & m+. Now the content is very boring which obviously doesn’t help, but it’s primarily an issue of rewards not being adequate.
I don’t. I never thought wow was anywhere close to being a “second job” like people meme’d about. Different was that I didn’t convince myself I needed to grind and act like i’m a WF raider, which a lot of people did.
I mean fair enough but it’s just incorrect.
He’s the game director. He knows everything about how the various game modes affect each other because he actually has access to the data. You can disagree with the choices he makes, but if he tells you grass is green then that’s just a fact. Are you gonna argue it should be taken with a massive grain of salt as well?
I understand being skeptical to things he says, but not when he’s just giving us facts.
But it literally is rewarding higher ilvl loot?
M+ didn’t give a fraction of what islands did. Again, just playing content you’d normally play gave you more than enough AP to do what you wanted to do. Players just convinced themselves they needed to grind AP because they saw what the WF raiders were doing.
And like I said, they don’t need to copy paste it back into the game. They should iterate on it.
Right i’ll give you mana pearls. Although that was gear you got from a currency and not rare drops themselves, but fair enough. The issue was Blizzard letting it proc sockets and having the bonus effects work inside the raids.
Legendaries in Legion are a very different thing. That was one item you equipped, 2 later. It wasn’t the best source of gear.
It was less efficient than doing Islands, but it wasn’t 35 AP. I just looked at someone’s youtube video from doing a realm first +15 back in BFA.
He got 330 AP for doing the dungeon. The amount you got scaled with key level as well so if you did higher you got more.
Why do you think i’m in a WR 9 guild? I was in casual guilds in both Legion & parts of BFA. I never experienced any pressure to sit & mindlessly grind AP from the leadership in those guilds. When I was in a WR 400-500 CE guild during BFA we were expected to unlock the 3rd minor essence slot and I did that after only a few days. Other players in the guild who didn’t take time off work just played normally and they got more than enough AP as well.
Again it’s an MMO. Not having it be a complete lobby simulator isn’t a negative thing in my book.
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Would it be removed at the end of the expansion meaning we feel rubbish again?
Will we have to re-invent another similar system for the next expac or just keep the same system but get it reset to zero?
Will it be a simple grind 10,000 thingies to +100 DPS or would it have a dozen abilities like Artifact weapons or Azerite Armour?
It’ll either be so weak that most won’t bother or it’ll be so strong that (some)folk will be forced to do it.
Won’t matter much to me as I won’t be doing it either way.
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I don’t know. I want them to iterate on it, cook up something that’ll alleviate the negatives of AP.
They tried, for 3 expansions.
They couldn’t mitigate the negatives of AP well enough to keep players playing. Rather than make it simple they went and added Domination thingies (no idea how that worked, didn’t raid). They can’t do these systems without over cooking it (too many chefs maybe?). They love adding systems on top of systems. This expac they moved their system folk to Professions and I’m not sure it’s made professions better (Work Orders might have some merit but otherwise).
The game works best when kept fairly simple. Perhaps gearing is a little too fast for those doing the Big 3, for me not doing those it feels quite slow but meh.
Not sure how they slow it down without pissing off a huge number of players. The complaints in SL about how slow it was is probably a good chunk of why so many players have not returned.
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Don’t we all “feel rubbish” again even when another season hits? I got my diurna healing trinket 2 weeks before new patch, and next season I had to grind rashoks (another broken healing trinket). How is that different? Gear is “borrowed power” too. More than any other system. Stop using this “borrowed power” nonsense as an argument.
Personally I don’t care if it’s removed and we’re sh*t again. What I DO care, are emotions during playing new expansion. Emotions of leveling artifact, opening new levels of essences, opening new traits in azerite armor. Yes, it was basically removed in new expansion. And? I was happy during this time. And that what game should give to you.
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It was the scale of loss after Legion and BFA in particular (SL was mitigated by the fact that a lot of what we had was added to the Talent Tree).
We lost so many buttons from our Action Bars and many classes felt like they were half a class for quite some time after the removal of those abilities.
Sure with regular gearing the stat scaling makes you feel weaker than your were but it’s not on the same scale.
I remember having some Azerite Traits that changed how I played the game, like where it healed me when in Ghost Wolf. This was handy in tricky situations I could Ghost Wolf and run around for 10 seconds and be healed. It’s removal changed how I play the game, it’s not that it took 10 seconds longer to kill mobs as my power was less.
And in next season we’ll lose our tier set bonuses. As a disc priest I will lose an ability to cast my Radiance instantly. And It’s cost won’t be reduced by 50%. I won’t be able to cast a very strong aoe healing ability while running. It’ll be a very big loss for me in M+. So what’s different? Tier sets are bad now?
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one ability (which works a little differently, not removed).
As I said it’s a matter of scale.
The whole Borrowed Power (included AP) was just a convoluted mess of abilities that came and went. So much wasted time and effort on these.
Keep it simple with some minor power boosts here and there. Trinkets, Set Bonuses and a few things like this is fine.
Whole-scale redesign of classes every expac (or patch like with essenses) is not good for the game.
I don’t understand why do you care so much about what will be in the future. Everything you should care about is FUN while doing something. Why do you care about the state of your character in 2 or 3 years? Oh no, I won’t be able to use heart or my artifact weapon in 2 years, so the game is BAD! I don’t care if I have fun playing right now, I know that in 2 years I’ll lose it and that is all that matters! I can’t imagine how do people play single games like Dark Souls. They create level 1 character, leveling stats, getting new weapons and armor and then they end the game. All that matters if they had fun.
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Because it isn’t the future, I’ve lived through it, several times. It wasn’t fun. I don’t want to do so again.
I’m glad Borrowed Power is gone. Good riddance.
Let them use their resources to do better things.
Unfortunately they haven’t figured out how to make enough good open world content yet. Too many event with schedules and requiring groups that are dead after 3 weeks. But at least they have the time and resources to work on this issue instead of trying to fix whatever nonsense convoluted mess of a power system they’ve concocted this expac.
It wasnt wasted as it was meaningfull throughtout the entire expansion. Each expansion is its own entity.
What is a COMPLETE waste of development time though, is all the silly current “play once and forget”- content that dominates DF.
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It was still a grind, even if it was being weekly capped. Or you could grind it if you were being late.
Rewarded or kept away from weapon and armor traits ?
It didn’t, because in between there were 3% stamina or something like that, which…Does not change how my class play, therefore is barely being noticed.
At the same time, AP is clearly not a solution.
I mean, WQ shouldn’t be more rewarding, since it’s trivial content, wether one likes that fact or not. Unless Blizzard ends up inflating M+ and raid rewards which would still lead to the same issues.
Because wow is a social game, which implies social pressure to do X or Y at a given time. The guild I’ve progressed with in sanctum asked every single raider to max Archivist codex by august, which…sucked. In the end, we’ve got CE but that’s being expected to get max rep. Same was going on with AP, aka me taking the boot in 8.0 for not farming AP.
Then why did he try the idea of pushing players into content they didn’t like with essences to only back down afterwards ? He has data, for sure, but I work in banking so it’s pretty much easy to twist facts and numbers to our liking.
He also used to be a corporate lawyer, so he would tell grass is green even if it’s actually dark, but he would say in such a way that people would end up being convinced grass is green.
It is but some people are pushing the idea Mythic raiding should only be about cosmetics rather than ilvl increase, which from a RPG stand point does not make sense since harder content should reward better gear.
But also, I get the idea that Mythic ilvl leads to agressive ilvl inflation which implies blizzard would have to squish quite often.
Well…Depends on guilds, as always.
To waste ressources again on reinventing the wheel leading to half cooked expansion progression ?!
I mean, at least I felt I was done once I’ve got all of them, even if I still think it should have been what it was intended to, aka a catch up gearing.
Some specs couldn’t work if they didn’t have their bis legendary. It also kinda felt bad playing with Agrammar’s feet when I could have gotten a belt or a ring which would have made improved my wings. Or cloack.
That was my bad, it’s just how I felt about it !
So that explains :
Because they were casual guilds, which weren’t aiming for CE.
It took you a few days ?! It took me way more than a few days to unlock that slot while I was literally playing 8 Hours per day thanks to me being in uni vacation for 2 months.
And that’s the thing : I don’t want wow to be another kind of lobby game, which I don’t like. Does not mean I would want it to become a Korean MMO either with a heck ton of grinds and checklists to go through. If anything, I’m asking for more evergreen content which I can play on the side. Heck, I used to dive into pvp but I haven’t since 8.2 and essences, so now my brain thinks pvp is a chore.
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Bro, I wasn’t able to fully unlock azerite armor in the whole of season 1. Earlier in the season I had gear that I couldn’t even use because my heart was too low, I’d lose traits by equipping it. I had to wait WEEKS to be able to use it.
So that’s just plainly false.
“hurr, here’s an armor piece with the same trait that you have on your lower ilvl item that you have the trait unlocked on but because your heart of azeroth is too low lvl you can’t use it because you lose the trait you have even though it’s on the new armor piece as well:)) come back in a few weeks :))))”
Horrible design. When I get gear, I should be able to fully use it on the spot. If we ever end up in a situation similar to the azerite armor again, I’m probably permanently out from the game because I’m not putting up with that again.
I’m sorry but it literally wasn’t a grind. Categorizing everything as a grind diminishes the term. You could unlock them by just playing how you’d normally play, you never had to go out of your way to get it unless you wanted it unlocked instantly.
That’s like saying M+ & Raids aren’t rewarding, we’re just being kept away from gear & tier sets.
It absolutely did. Not everything can be a massive increase, but beyond the minor essence slots & the 3% stamina nodes the power of our essences themselves went up with every level. It capped out at some point, I don’t remember what level exactly, but we were being rewarded properly.
It absolutely is a solution. You might not like it, but it’s still a solution.
I’m sorry but WQs should absolutely be more rewarding. How do you think a new player is gonna experience the game if the content that’s adequate for their skill level early on is extremely unrewarding? They hit level 70, do zone events, WQs & get geared relatively quickly. Then what? The only option left is for them to go into raids & m+ and that’s a big ask.
Having systems like AP & Titanforging allows them to continue progressing their characters at their own pace. There is no need for them to very quickly dive into the endgame systems while they’re still brand new. Once they’re more experienced they can dip their toes into endgame. Right now there is no gradual progression for new players, they either jump off into the deep end or they quit.
Like I said. Some players gaslighted themselves into thinking it mattered when it didn’t. But i’m sorry bro, but you & some other CE guilds making bad decisions like that doesn’t mean the rest of the game should be punished because of it.
Choosing how to design the game and what he thinks is best for the players is VERY different from just reading objective facts the data gives you. And like I explained earlier, they learned the wrong lessons after Shadowlands. The way they’re designing DF is around fear-based decision making.
Cmon… You’re just making up random stuff irrelevant to the topic at hand because you realize you have no argument. It’s an objective fact that raiding & mythic+ would die literally over night if they removed gear from it.
Who cares what a handful of M+ spammers on twitter asks for? Their opinions are completely irrelevant.
It didn’t. Unless you were a WF raider, you always got more than enough AP by just playing how you’d normally play. Unless of course you want to raidlog at the beginning of a patch, but then at that point why are you even playing the game?
To spend resources into a system that will actually save the game. Designing the game for players like you is clearly not working when we look at the DF numbers. It’s an MMORPG not a Mythic+/Raid lobby. There are a ton of amazing lobby games out there, why don’t you guys play those instead of wanting wow to get ruined?
A large part of the vocal minority always likes to talk about how wow should be designed the way it is in DF and yet every time the game is that way it’s also the least popular expansions/seasons. I wonder why.
Again, how is this relevant to overall gearing? Legendaries were their own system and had their own issues. But you didn’t equip full legendaries in every slot, so it’s irrelevant to the topic of gearing.
I mean I was in a CE guild for most of BFA. Almost killed Jaina, my guild killed it but I was on vacation during the kill and I got CE during EP & Ny’alotha. Not once did I have to sit down & mindlessly grind AP. I obviously played more when the patch launched, but I always do that because I like wow. By just playing how I always played, I got more than enough AP to unlock the minor essence slots.
You just admitted to being wrong about dungeons giving 35 AP. You’re probably misremembering & exaggerating here as well.
Well what you’re asking for is turning wow into a lobby game. It sounds weird but MMOs need character progression & aspirational content for solo players. AP & Titanforging gave that to solo players. Not only was it good for solo players, but it also good for more serious players. You could always play if you wanted to and progress you char, you didn’t need to align 4-19 other schedules.
Like I said, I want them to cook with AP so they can maybe come up with a solution that works for most players. But AP wasn’t even remotely close to how grindy Korean MMOs are. If you think that then you’ve never played a Korean MMO before.
It did not take weeks. Yes it required you to play some, but what do you expect? To just raidlog on day 1 of the patch? Again wow is an MMORPG you should expect to actually play the game and not treat it as a lobby-game
With that said Azerite Armor did suck. It was very, very flawed in season 1. However, Azerite Armor’s flaws weren’t tied to AP. Blizzard making the requirements for unlocks bad wasn’t AP’s fault, that was Blizzard just mishandling the Azerite gear system.
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It did.
Not “some”.
To be able to fully use gear I obtain, on the spot when I obtain it.
Blizzard removed reforging for exactly this reason.
The original intent behind Reforging was to offer a way for players to customize their gear, but in practice it offered little in the way of true choice. Players attempting to optimize every piece of gear were well advised to look up how they were supposed to reforge an item in an online guide or tool that had already determined the optimal choice. It added yet another step to the list of things that must be done to a new item before it was ready to be equipped, reducing the joy of getting an upgrade into a chore.
If an upgrade drops, we want you to be able to equip it with a minimum of fuss. It is for those reasons that we’re removing Reforging from the game.
My playtime dropped in Legion & BFA due to the stupid systems. My playtime has increased considerably since Legion & BFA because there’s nowhere close to the same amount of things I have to do in order to be able to play what I want to play.
It was in a way.
Everything’s a grind in this game, even gear.
I mean, I’m glad I was not raiding on wednesday during most of SL since coming back at 19:00 to then be ready at 20:30 does not leave enough time to get done with weekly reset buffs given by renown or AP or whatever system.
Then again I don’t play for gear since it’s being replaced when following patch launches anyways, on top of the game offering a heck ton of catch-up. Reward is completing the raid by itself, not the shiny 447 gear that’s gonna be replaced by brand new shinny 477 in 10.2.
Not everything has to be for sure but it kinda feels like hearing people asking for classic trees being brought back, aka “feels good even if minor” but wouldn’t be noticed, besides some outliers such has minor Conflict and Strife and Vision of perfection which were quite strong, the former adding more CD usages.
Essences were capped by their ranks instead of Heart of Azeroth levels, besides the 4th which was cosmetic only. And essences had one major flaw, aka shinning in situation in which we couldn’t get them. For example Blood of the ennemy being bis for melee in M+ and raid encounters with add was coming from a whopping 50 k honor farm at launch which was thanksfully nerfed down to 35k. On the other hand of the spectrum, bis major essences for PVP were coming from the raid. How is that a proper reward to become stronger in a piece of content that has no link ?!
I meant not the solution.
What, do you want 447 from clicking on 10 items and killing 10 basic mobs ?!
Because gear is properly scaled to content.
So that’s why we have normal raiding and low keys levels. Just step by step.
Ap probably, TF not so sure since it was RNG.
As for now, the game is full of checklist to complete so if anything, I think we should remove some dots from that list rather than adding some more. I don’t see why adding back on top an artifact weapon with traits would be a good progression system since there were traps, not obvious ones, but traps anyways.
And that’s why I wouldn’t mind about AP if it didn’t interract with raids and M+. If that were the case then good, I can choose when to engage or not with such system.
And why would that be fear ? They were told AP sucked so how would that fare if they’ve kept it ? I mean, as a sotfware engineer, if users complain about something, then should I double down on it, claiming I know better or just give what’s my customer is asking for ? It’s just rational to hear opinion’s from the ones paying money.
No, I don’t make up stuff. I’m just pointing out as to why no one should trust Ion. I mean dude is not playing the game anymore, so he’s not even experiencing his vision of the game. https://www.wowprogress.com/character/us/mal-ganis/Gurgthock he is still 60, and iirc he hasn’t been playing since SOD. How could he be factual about something he ain’t experiencing ?!
And no, that’s wrong, many players are running keys or doing raid without getting gear from it. Even remaning pvp players are just trying to push themselves rather than getting another vers piece of gear.
It sure is, but the idea also came from casual players.
Sometimes, IRL just happens and all of the sudden, I’m getting way more responsabilities for a short timeframe. I’m not saying I’m raid logging when patch launches, far from that idea. But it felt bad being able to just get enough room in my schedule for 3 raids nights to then being told I should invest more time outside of raid nights which I couldn’t afford to. It felt bad taking a break from CN mythic progress because I knew I wouldn’t be able to farm ashes, M+ for vault on top of 3 raid nights. I still wanted to but the game clearly told me to either drop what I’m enjoying of my IRL life.
Truth be told, I’ve slept for 3hours per night during most of 8.3 because I had to regrind my char from 0 as I’ve switched main while having a hectic IRL schedule. I’ve done that and it didn’t feel good, because I had these damn corruptions and cloack to farm. Oh, you might tell me I shouldn’t have to which I’m saying yes, but it would also imply me not getting progression at getting more corruptions.
There should be a middle ground and I don’t believe Blizzard can achieve it, as they’re always either go all-in or nothing.
To be honest, the entire game needs overhaul, which won’t be corrected by small systems.
I’ve always asked to get something in between or to completely segregate content. If one likes AP sure, they can enjoy it, but it shouldn’t be interfering with raiding at all.
I could also say it’s an MMORPG, not a mobile game with daily tasks.
Because I don’t play 'em. Simple as that. Besides, I wanted to go back to its root of simplicity, not adding layers of complexity on top of layers of complexity.
Correlation does not imply causation. And when was the last time game was like in DF ? WoD ?! Wrath ?
It was tied to gearing, as it would lock a slot, so if my bis legendary was cloack then it means I shoulnd’t be rolling on cloack during guild runs.
And that’s what I kinda disliked about them, I’ve passed on rolls so that I wouldn’t deprive my mates for items they need knowing I would throw this away once I’m getting a legendary. They were tied.
I do like it, and I do play 7/7 regardless. But I wished I had more agency about spending my time, 8.2 and 8.3 being prime examples of not offering agency.
Yeah, I was wrong but still, it’s leaving thoughts that no matter what won’t be gone. The part of me playing a lot is not an hyperbole, because I had free time. I’m probably mixing due to the complexity of essences on top of AP, which in my book, was not necessary.
I fail to understand why asking for content outside of M+, raid and PVP would end up in wow becoming another generic lobby game.
Yes, if they can live on their own ecosystem, which blizzard does not want and clearly stated they didn’t want, when it could have actually been a middle ground solution.
Heck, I think mage tower is a good piece of content, so could have been islands and thorgast. Mage tower only rewarded a weapon appearance rather than actual power, but still, it was popular and I really wish blizzard explored more into that.
TF was frustrating for me, unless it would have been a shortcut for upgrading. I mean, getting downgrades from mythic raid sounds silly but I’ve encountered this situation many times that I ended up disliking it or praying Blizzard would bring back gear upgrade. It’s silly they’ve brought the former back without thinking it could be working with the later.
I mean, I kinda liked wow being accessible. I didn’t try them because I already was into wow and I simply didn’t want to commit on multiple MMORPG at the same time.
Kind of like how flapping your arms when you fall off a cliff is a solution. Not a very helpful one.
Introducing any sort mandatory (and let’s face it, even if you think players should have the free-will and / or will-power to not do it, they don’t for many reasons) grind the collective /groan /quit would make the disturbance in the Force caused by the destruction of Alderaan pale into insignificance.
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Literally the most casual friendly expansion
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Did you actually even read my post and what I was responding to before quoting me ? I somewhat get the feeling the thought process was not engaged at all else you would realise I was essentially saying exactly what you just did.