The current loot system will fail - here's why

Community General Discussion
1

So, after 40+ Mythic-Plus runs I finally got a 200 ilvl weapon for my warrior. I literally screamed at the screen and my chest bursted in excitement, since I had spent the last one and a half weeks since the beginning of this season inside of the raid and M+ just to get a new weapon.

The grind was real, let me tell you. Hours and hours of (sometimes frustrating) dungeon runs with recurring empty chests (well, at least I got Anima LOL) had left me exhausted. Bad luck I’d say, since I saw a few people getting weapons on the first day of the start of the season.

When I finally got the weapon, I felt so happy, I can’t even put it into words. The satisfaction was rising up inside my body and my heart was filled with joy! All the hours of grinding M+ and the Raid finally paid off, I got the weapon!

But then I realized it… this is ONLY for Season 1. When Season 2 kicks in, all the hours of grinding M+ and the Raid for gear will become completely worthless, since the cycle begins anew, only with higher ilvl.

And that’s where the big, big problem is, folks.

I can totally understand the concept of loot scarcity and meaningful loot. It is something that I actually support. since I love the feeling of loot (epic loot, tbh) to be scarce and to be meaningful. I really want those ilvl upgrades to matter. I really want to remember where I got that helm, that weapon or that trinket from.

But do you know what I also want? I really want my loot to MATTER in the next tier, in the next season. At least a bit, so that it does not feel like I completely wasted my time in Season 1.

Let’s take Classic WoW for example, since Blizzard seems to take a few steps backward with their Shadowlands game design approach. And let’s also take the warrior as an example, since it’s the easiest example I can think of right now:

No matter which phase kicked in in Classic WoW, I always felt that Molten Core (the FIRST raid) remained relevant to me as a warrior, since Ragnaros drops the Onslaught Girdle. Until Naxxramas, that item is actually my BIS girdle. I haven’t seen a better one in BWL, ZG or even AQ. To have it drop and to know that this item will be totally viable (and awesome) in the next raid(s) is the ultimate satisfaction to me, speaking warcraft-wise.

If I would have known that even though I’m spending hours and hours of my time to get that item, just to have it DEVALUED a few weeks later already by the next “phase”, I wouldn’t have bothered to begin with.

I have seen this exact problem in the last expansions way too much: Loot gets easily and quickly devalued. In BFA it actually wasn’t that much of a problem, since loot came simply from everywhere, and you always had your bonus rolls.

But now, in Shadowlands, loot is scarce, really scarce. So the only way to counter that (following the meaningful loot approach) is to NOT devalue the loot we got in Season 1 when Season 2 begins (meaning that the ilvl should not increase that much like in BFA) . This would also mean that every hour we are spending now grinding for loot will also matter in the future, and that is a pretty nice and solid return on investment.

That is, in my opinion, the only way to make the current loot system work successfully in the future. Otherwise, the grind will just get more and more frustrating, reaching its peak with the complete devaluing when Season 2 begins.

People are already beginning to get frustrated. And from a psychological perspective, I can totally undertand it. Having 3 items drop for 20 people and 1 item for 5 people while NOT knowing if these items will get heavily devalued in the future is frustrating and not really motivating

The clock is ticking, Blizzard.

34 Likes
2

Tbh, I am starting to worry about the affects of this on peoples mental health, especially living under the conditions we are in at the moment.

Reducing drop rates will encourage players to go on the grind until that item drops. Like yourself. We even saw this with the Legendary farming a few weeks ago. People NEEDED to get their BiS legendary and we prepared to farm until they got it (spoiling the game for others in the process).

The Time Invested vs Reward is completely inbalanced in this game right now.

Causing players frustration due to lack of reward must be playing hell on peoples mental health. Blizzard should be encouraging less play time, and but keep it rewarding enough to get people to keep coming back. It’s better for their servers anyway.

I know I’m not talking for everyone here. But how many of us could be spending out time doing something more productive than spending hours farming for things that just don’t drop for us.

18 Likes
3

And people say I’m addicted to the game just because I play a lot. Lmao.

I’d never sit and grind for an item, I’ll get one when I get one.

5 Likes
4

I agree with op, it will be one of the many failures of this expansion

6 Likes
5

Good for you :).

I’ve only been on that grind myself once and that was when I needed to have Sharkbait (I eventually got it btw).

There are certainly different levels of addiction though. Some people just can’t help themselves.

6

No, this item may be devalued next week by GV. Literally next reset you may have like 213 or something weapon that will erase your “precious loot” you worked hard for. And GV will say “phew! what for? look, I have better just like that”. And you are not going to drop anything better from M+ most probably.

There is no meaningful loot in Shadowlands, only welfare is truly meaningful.

1 Like
7

So upgrades are memorable now?

Thats good, right?

8

I agree. Blizzard made a wrong bet and it starts to show more and more. There is a lot of frustration in 2020 in people in general, after all we talk not just about Covid, but the year in which there are yellow jackets in France, BLM and George Floyd in US, lockdowns and protest in Germany, Brexit, Trump, you name it.

The pressure, the anxiety, the frustration are very high while the general level of happiness and the quality of life is quite low at the moment even in Europe, one of the best places to live on Earth, when everything is closed, when you have mandatory masks and lockdowns, when you can’t have a drink in a pub, when you can not travel or see a football game.

Designing a game around frustration, annoyance, timegating and try again metric is clearly a mistake in this age. Does Blizz has a back up plan? I don’t know, but they need to change so many things in game right now that doesn’t look possible. Nobody knows what they had in mind for this expansion, flying is unknown, how the story would evolve, but looking at the number of complaints, how wide they are, they need to change the approach and they need to do it very fast.

6 Likes
9

200 ilvl
paid off

choose one xDD

this is far more important than the weapon my friend

what do you mean “will become”? if you dont enjoy your time, they already are
if you are, then they wont…

i wouldnt worry too much about that. according to the forum posts ive been reading since begging of bfa literally nothing has changed…

yes, but not for the the reasons you think.

work harder not smarter… oh wait

“there is nothing to do in the game, blizzard bad, bad game, not worht 15/month” if they do that …

? are you grinding those items at gunpoint? are you in a slavecamp? nobody… literally nobody forces you to do anything… you choose… you know what this is getting silly you get what i mean…

2nd week of raiding and you arent fully geared out yet? BAD GAME DESIGN OMG xD

2 Likes
10

it won’t work, you can already see, there’s a 50 ilvl gap between the gear you get initially at 60 and m+ gear, they’ll have to make the level big enough that “it counts” because ion’s ego won’t ever allow him to say he’s wrong.

2 Likes
11

Not at all. and I imagine the vast majority of the player base are not either. However, my post is about mental health during an already taxing time on peoples mental health.

Anyone can say “time management” and “personal priority” or even “work smarter not harder” in response to anything I have written… and that is completely true. What is also true is that many people don’t have the mental strength to organise their time or prioritise themselves… especially during a time when access to the outside world is limited, wow might be the only way some people get to socialise right now, when they could have the opportunity to reach out to real people or work on putting their life in the right direction.

Decreasing drop rates so a player has to run an instance/raid more often is a pretty cheap way of adding more content to the game.

1 Like
12

If people get to that level in a video game where their mental health is screwed because loot drop chance, they should’ve gotten professional help long before.

3 Likes
13

Nothing is good about WoW’s current gearing system… as they invalidate all your progress with the next tier content… so getting loot less or later just means you have less time to use it before it becomes obsolete and useless.

This gearing worked in classic since some items from the first raid were still quite relevant by the 3rd or 4th raid.

1 Like
14

can i be the one who will blow your mind ?

in 4 weeks everyone will have similiar 200 itlv weapon from ccovenant for anima :slight_smile: alongside with most of other slots :slight_smile:

congrats on amazing achievement :slight_smile:

2 Likes
15

frustration coming from not getting upgrades influences the mental condition quite a lot

and i agree - people should unsub to show blizzard what they think about those changes in order to protect then mental health

16

In all honesty, there has always been like that in WoW that sooner than later, the hard grinded gear, became obsolete. You can’t expect the items you grinded in 2006 to be relevant in 2020, just because you invested hours into it. Heck a lot of gear has never been relevant more than the raid tire it was dropped in.

Going from Vanilla to TBC and see your hard worked Naxxramas gear get replaced with green items. Devastating, but then again there was the lure of new gear to be obtained and grinded out.

WoW has always been a gear driven game. I find the gear grind a lot more enticing then the Legion and BfA approach of the gear. You finally have specific ways to gear for certain classes to fill the BiS list. Some do Sanguin Depths, others Halls of Atonement. In that respect I feel that both gear and dungeon matter again.

And grind, well, that’s a core concept of any good MMO in my book. And the higher the tire of the content you grind, the better the gear you get. And in a gear driven game like WoW, it should always be about “the next step”. What I hated with Legion and BfA is the sense of “why bother”. I never got into the feel of grinding out gear in BfA, it was just “meh”. It never felt relevant or good, it was just slots you filled for bigger numbers, that was its only purpose.

17

Yeah, that’s the problem with this “meaningfullness”. It’s not meaningful, people’s frustration is literally for nothing.

18

everyone is responsible for his own mental healt, this virtue signaling of yours on behalf of ohters is really low man…

case closed.

this already starts outside the game please do not bring your virtue signaling into the game, it is not necessary and it certainly wont make anything better…

there is plenty of content and you have more than just chainrunning m+ to gear up… m+ isnt even the best way to gear yourself propperly… you clearly lack understanding on how to gear up or you are just pretending to for some reason… there is plenty of guides on yt on how to invest your time in the game most effective depending on what you want to achieve in the game…

this guy hasnt leveled in BDO and yet thens of thousands of people are grinding this game every waking hour, wow aint even that timeconsuming…

and you are doing what exactly to gear up? please enlighten me: what have you done in the past 3 weeks to gear your character…

ah ye if you are frustrated then maybe seek help? like i dont know seems kinda obvious to me?

as it always is, this is the natural order of things…

19

Well. Honestly. Its obvious that the next tier will be an upgrade over current. Its a natural cycle.
I personally like castle Nathria, but I will eventually tire from it. I would hate to do castle again in patch 9.3 cause it still drops my bis item in case I change my main or create a new alt and etc…

20

Frustration and mental health issues as in what he is describing arnt ya know serious issues and has no similaritys at all.

Being unhapply is a mental health state. This makes people unhappy. But they wouldnt need professionial help for that.

in 4 weeks everyone will have similiar 200 itlv weapon from ccovenant for anima :slight_smile: alongside with most of other slots :slight_smile:

In 4 weeks I still will be super far behind, cause I didnt play the game. (I am letting my time run out. Got 4 days left then I am taking a much needed break from no progression in 5 hours of my time). If all must be dependant on catch up mechanics its imho not a correct thing.

1 Like