One of the bigger issue of the game: Competitive vs Casual

Community General Discussion
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TLDR text below

I feel like moder WoW struggeling hard from the “only competitive” side. In the REAL vanilla era (where you didn’t have all the addons and guides) the game let you play and enjoy the journey in your own way.
You were picked because of your personality and skills not because of your spec or covenant.

What caused that this type community died out? Damage Meter

So damage meter the greatest and the worst tool of World of Warcraft.

Its great because it gives the players the option to min max everything out.
It created the competitive side of the game which is one of the top reason why WoW still the no1 MMORPG around the world.

But in other hand it completely killed the casual side of the game.
Not becasue ppl wouldn’t play necro demo lock just for the look even tho they know they wouldn’t be as strong as a night fae destro lock, but your available content is too limited with LFR content which is LFR HC dungeons, Random battlegrounds, solo torghast, LFR Raid. We all know its not even enough to enjoy the game. Its only enough for someone who likes to sit and wait for 30-60 min to nuke down a 0 mechanic boss. You still want the challenge you still want to be strong even tho you play necro demo lock but the game just doesn’t let you.

What should be called casual and what should be called competitive?

I feel like casual shouldn’t end in pet battle, flower collecting and limited mount collecting. Casual players are usually adults who doesn’t have 5-8 hours daily or anyone who just want to play other games aswell in their limited time.
So casuals still want to be strong still want to enjoy harder contents but they want to enjoy the journey aswell not just the very end where you get your title or mount.

But you just can’t enjoy it becasue community doesn’t let you enjoy it. Some ppl won’t care if you can do just enough damage if you don’t play the meta who can do more than enough dmg. Of course they want 100% succes and they don’t want to be the one who start to experience if they can finish a HC raid run if they inv a necro demo lock over an NE destro lock.

Competitive side of the game should be the real competitive side like Mythic Raid, Rank1 push for season glad title and the highest m+ key push that is possible in the game.
For this part you literally need the very best gear you need to min max every little number you need to spend days or weeks to prepare for the fight and you need 5 - 25 likeminded person and have hours of training before every fight.
But NOT EVERYONE WANT TO SPEND AS MUCH TIME IN THE GAME AS IT REQUIRES.

Its proved many many times that people leave the game becasue they are forced to play the best spec the best cov the best in everything if they want to clear a HC raid or a +15 m+ key or get the elite pvp set look.

Some ideas that would prevent boosting, elitist thinking and let casuals enjoy the game aswell

1. (I don’t even know if its possible BUT) Remove damage meter from:

  • Instanced content until M+ 16 and above
  • Instanced content until Mythic Raid
  • Random battlegrounds, skirmishes, brawls
    BUT if you want any registered progress or loot as dps or heal you need to do a certain amount of the overall dmg/heal so you can’t afk leech
    As a tank its not an issue you need to tank you can’t afk

It would solve the elitist mentaility that only the top meta specs can finish a dungeon or raid in time.

BUT KEEP DAMAGE MATER

  • In M+ 16+ and above
  • In Mythic Raid run
  • Mythic raid dummy
  • Competitive PVP (such as rated 2v2, 3v3 and BG)

It still let you min max in the content where it really matters

2. Prevent character inspection and public ilvl from:

  • Instanced content until M+ 0-10
  • Instanced content until HC Raid
    But keep minimum ilvl requirement for these contents so you prevent full green geared players leeching in HC raid content or a +10 key. So for example you can only step into the HC difficulty raid if you have 220 ilvl but the leader can’t make difference between a 220 and a 225 ilvl player.
    It also prevent players to decide if you are worthy to an actually really easy content based on your spec, cov and gear.

3. Add gear scaling to:

  • LFR RAID (10 ilvl above the current minimum requirement)
  • LFR HC dungeons (to current minimum requirement)
  • Random battlegrounds, skirmishes, brawls (to last season highest ilvl for example in s2 226 ilvl)

4. Add content making options to streamers

  • Make an in game option to easy organise ingame events / competitions in m+ / hc raid / arena / bg / epic BG.
    How it could work:
    Game would give you an option to create a temporary team. You could register 2 - 3 - 5 - 10 - 25 - 40 player teams and the registration would expire in for example 24 hours.
    Your team would get a unique ID for example BananaPealers #2222
    And the organiser could set up a public or non public event where you could register your team.
    So for example:
    Streamer wants to create a fast HC raid clear competition: 3 different team register themselves and they give their unique ID to the organiser. The organiser set the rules for example ( legendaries allowed or not, covenants allowed or not, scaled gear yes or no, damage meter allowed or not, healers allowed or not how much healer, tanks allowed or not how much tank, dps allowed or not how much dps etc. etc.) and register the 3 teams ID so only they can participate in the competition. Public events should where you can compete for example with Limit if you can beat them in scaled gear or not.
    Of course you wouldn’t get any loot from the bosses but you could get a participation token or a winner token at the end of the event. If you collect 10 winner token you can buy epic tmogs, mounts from it or a title. If you collect 10 participation token you can buy a bit worse tmogs, potions etc.
    It would be a really good way to give streamers content and they could also organise charity events which is pretty nice PR both for the streamer and Blizzard and we all know good PR leads to good money.

With these changes moder WoW would give more healthy options to casual players which is 80% of the current playerbase and it significantly decrease the toxicity and the elitist thinking where it shouldn’t exist.

TLDR

  • Dmg meter, ilvl, boosting created a very toxic enviroment among the players
  • Game has one of the best competitive options among the mmorpgs its important to preserve this
  • Separate casual and competitive content let non elitist players enjoy this huge and beautiful game
  • Give streamers more content making option. If they enjoy the game their audiance will enjoy the game aswell and if the audiance enjoy the game their friends wil enjoy the game aswell.
1 Like
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You’re delusional if you think not being able to inspect players will help casuals get into the content.

The only rational ways to tackle that from the standpoint of decent players is either find some other metric to determine whether you can pull your own weight, or ghettoization leading to people playing mainly (if not only) with people they know are decent.

You have no idea how bad some players are and how detrimental they are to key completion even on very low levels.

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To be fair I’m fairly sure pugs don’t care about your covenant.

Perhaps part of the issue, but you have min-maxers in games without dmg meters.

Disagree, casuals are doing their thing and while not nearly as vocal as the competitive side they amount for most of the playerbase.

Well you missed open world content and collection which are two of the main content for casuals, but yeah. It’s not the min-maxing mindset which is hurting casuals, but the amount and quality of available content.

Perhaps because there’s a middle ground between these two ?

To me true casuals don’t care about performances and barely take part in group content, treating WoW as a single player game with players running around.

Then you have the usual wow player, playing the game and what it has to offer. They are the ones clearing normal & heroic, or doing your usual m+ key or rated PvP. Might follow the guides since it’s easier than figuring things out by yourself, but mostly because it’s good rather than a desire to be optimal.

And then you have the competitive part of the playerbase, with both the pros & cons it bring to the table. Because honestly without a driven community behind the understanding of both classes & encounters I think the game would be in a much worse state.

They are the ones helping others understand a new raid. They are the ones funneling the economy. They are the ones giving a new purpose to the content ( [insert Pokemon’s intro “I wanna be, the very best…”])

In many ways the game needs its hardcore players imo. It’s an issue when their mindset bled through the entire playerbase however.

Won’t solve anything and will make it harder for casuals like me who just want to understand how important a spell or upgrade is to my character.

And the playerbase will find another way. In vanilla it was consumables, Wotlk ilvl an achievements, BFA RIO etc.

Why ? More ilvl doesn’t solve the underlying issues

Why shoulf we care about that, and how would a streamer with barely z few thousands viewers change things for the millions of players in the game ?

Weird priorities you got here.

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No thanks, I’d like to keep my dmg meter to at least have some point of orientation to find out if I play my character right, and how I do in comparison to others.

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Damage meter isn’t the problem.

Toxicity being allowed, with zero important consequences is the problem.

Being allowed to leave a dungeon whenever you want, simply because you don’t feel like it, or you suddenly believe that it’s not gonna be timed, so i’m not wasting “My time”, while simultaneously wasting 4 other player’s times by leaving is the problem.

So even if tomorrow, they suddenly decide to stop a damage meter or stop boosting or whatever else, as long as they’re not monitoring things properly, It won’t matter much.

The problems in this game are fundamental.

And are often the consequence of blizzard’s inability to properly monitor and control things.

2 Likes
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There were plenty of addons and Thottbot says hi.

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Of course I know that a lots of player can’t even do the very basics of a pve fight like standing out things but let me say damage meter is one of the main reason of this. You are focusing only on your dps to be in the top 3 or maybe you just fight to be in the top 10 so they won’t kick you out after the boss.
The question is pretty good how we should make a difference between skilled and non skilled players but purely ilvl is not an answer to this. You can have the best mythic gear without ever learning any mechanics in the game if you have enough money.

So while my solution doesn’t solve the skill issue since its person based we can’t say that the 230 ilvl DH is much better and stronger than the 220 ilvl DH.
But preventing inspection would give the skilled but less geared person a chance to shine.

If you really want to finish the raid in a specific time you need to join to a guild.

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I think that gearing should end around +10 keys difficulty, everything harder than that should be pure cosmetics and titles. People are toxic because progressing your character requires all players in group to be in high performance all the time. I don’t care about classes I got in +8 keys, it’s even fun to see feral druid but when I run +15 … I’m getting ele shammy, guardian druid and holy pala, everything else is burden and unnecessary risk.

But then boosting community will lose their customers and token sales will drop so… yeah

2 Likes
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Firstly thank you that you spent time to read and answer to my topic.
I feel like you just took out sentences from the context and some of your answers match with my ideas if you read it carefully.
Some example:
I actually did say that the competitive side of the game is very precious and it is important to save it while they try to give more space to casual players.
Competitive players make a huge impact in the whole gameplay (in a healthy way) but as you said this mentality shouldn’t corrupt the casual’s mind.
Like when an all season challenger rogue flame everyone after every lost game without thinking about that real problem.

or damage meter: I wouldn’t completely remove it. I would just prevent measuring lfg runs to avoid toxicity between non familiar players.
So you could still measure your dps outside of the raid on a dummy so you still have the option to make a decision between 2 items.
Or on pure guild runs I would still allow it and we know from guild achievements that the game is able to recognize how much player took part in a boss fight from the same guild.

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casual sometimes meet pro alts which ends in a left key

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Everything you mention would just make the game die at casual level because people wouldn’t be able to filter out players when making a group.

Instead of crying about not being able to do trash DPS in a dungeon and get carried, maybe try improving your performance in game. It’s not that hard as you people make it out to be.

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this thread is the perfect example of one of the devs saying “we should rely on players to identify issues, but not for finding solutions”

2 Likes
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Nah thanks. I keep the meters for my own analysis. Even for my ‘casual’ lfr/normal/heroic raids.

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You can’t put a policeman on every corner and even if they did hire a few GMs or whatever to investigate just m+ keys alone. It would take like a month before your key gets “investigated” simply due to sheer number of m+ keys run.

Not to mention that there is also the case where people promise a timed and quick run. You join up and its a disaster. The timer is up and the group hasn’t even killed the 1st boss. You signed up for a timed m+ run not 2-3 hour slavery.

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I had the exact same mentality as you a few months back.

I thought it’s an impossible thing to monitor toxicity completely.

Made it all justified.

Then i played FF14. And realized, It’s not impossible. you can put a policeman on every corner and you can control it. If they could, so can blizzard.

But of course, they’re not going to. Instead, they’ll just fire more people for the sake of bobby’s next 1.5 mil bonus.

As for leaving when you know it’s hopeless, FF14 has an answer for that too. A vote to abandon. You put it to the vote. Majority wins. You can start the vote, after 15 or so minutes.

You leaving immediately simply because you think it’s pointless, isn’t justified. It’s just toxic.

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I really want to thank everyone who took time to read the topic and shared his/her opinion but comments like git gud, thanks no, you are stupid, you shouldn’t share your ideas etc perfectly shows who are the main issue in the game.
You are more than welcome to share your constructive feedback if you have one. In every other case try to ignore the topic and move on.
Constructive feedback doesn’t mean that you have to agree with my opinion (as we can read some example here)

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And how will you do that? Creates an m+ group. Ready to enter dungeon.
Please wait for a free GM to babysit your run. Estimated wait time: 8 hours

And you are confusing some chill casual duty roulette or whatever with a competitive end-game mode which is m+. In every video game on the planet(which is played by multiplayer/online) people can get a bit more steamed in competitive setting than in a casual “free for all”.

I am no insta leaver but I can understand their logic. Some dungeons have very strict timers. A wipe or two on 1st boss is sometimes enough to RIP the key EVEN if you play flawlessly afterwards…

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Mists says “Hi” sometimes 1 wipe is enough to kill the key.

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There’s a report system for troublemakers.

And no. Not everything is chill mode in that game either.

And no. You don’t need a gm to babysit everything.

You report enough troublemakers and they ACTUALLY get banned for it, you’ll see them either learning or leaving or being perma banned eventually.

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let me guess. you think they got banned because you received a generic letter saying “thank you for your report, we have taken action against the evil player” :smiley:
if you think a company would ban paying customers over something like that, you’re out of your mind.
if there’s less toxicity in a game then it’s because of the game’s structure, and even if two fundamentally different games have the same type of content, it will be equally toxic.