Itemization and Character progression are two elements that are essential behind an MMO’s success. I can’t forget the first time I walked into orgrimmar in 2004 and I saw a fully decked out level 60 character. All I could think at the time was “I want to be just like that guy.” I believe it’s almost impossible to replicate this feeling, as the element of the unknown is required which is just something that’s gone.
As the years went by and the content philosophy changed, so did items, their design, and the way your character is able to upgrade through the content. Long story short, I think items nowadays are boring, obtaining something gives you minimal satisfaction and everything is just a big mess obscured behind ilvl.
There’s really no objective correctness behind how such a system should be done. But here are some of my subjective preferences and recommendations that I can think of based on my experience. I personally believe that the following changes for the upcoming expansion can refresh and hype up the game and start bringing people in instead of rapidly losing a substantial percentage of the player base a few weeks into the expansion.
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Redesign Primary and Secondary Stats. Main stats have been in the game since vanilla. Nowadays everything apart from jewelry has a main stat. It’s too predictable, it’s boring, it scales linearly with ilvl and it’s guaranteed to be there. Change that already.
Quad Off stats. Crit and Haste have been in the game since vanilla and tbc respectively. I love how they feel, crits are satisfying and attacking faster makes gameplay more engaging. Mastery should be redesigned to become a “vanity” stat, only on appearing on few and rare items. Mastery could also be tuned to be “better” than the rest of the stats for the majority of the classes. Versatility is just boring and should be rethought, nothing to say here in my opinion.
Hit and expertise did not feel very good, so I’m not sure if ever reintroducing them would be a good thing. -
I like the m+ and vault system and it shouldn’t change. I think +15 which give the highest possible ilvl are doable by the majority of the player base after some time into the patch. Also, the vault is something nice to always look forward to towards the start of the new reset. The whole system is rewarding and nice to interact with.
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The raiding itemization is just plain wrong if you ask me. Mythic raiding is just too hard for the average raider in order to even stand a chance of seeing the best loot. I’m not suggesting to make raiding easier, but simply follow a similar system to m+, where high level players that wish to test their skills can do so, however won’t obtain anything better by completing keys beyond +15. I’m not sure what’s the best way to go about this but I’m almost certain that the current state is just not good.
A perfect example of this is the fact that PVE content in vanilla and tbc classic is trivial for the largest amount of players, yet they still do it. The reason behind is because they test their skills and performance. People are speedrunners and parse monkeys. What if official kill time leaderboards, speedrunning leaderboards and parsing leaderboards in cooperation with warcraftlogs were incorporated? Just like what you did with mythic plus and raiderio. -
Previous tiers are completely invalidated and that shouldn’t be the case. Personally, I am a player that enjoys both retail and classic. In my classic raiding guild, currently in t6, we are still killing certain bosses in t5 and also doing t4 for DST. Having competitive gear from previous tiers. This does not only benefit you more because more content is available for the players, but it seriously doesn’t feel good when a new patch comes out and the old gear is just plain bad.
A good example of moving in the correct direction is legion timewalking. I personally believe this is only a first step towards the right place. Just reduce the gap between gear disparity in different tiers. Also add more timewalking raids. I’d personally love to go back to a few of my favorite raids and play them again. And when I say timewalking, I mean seriously rebalanced with the aforementioned speedrunning and parsing leaderboards. Current timewalking raids are kind of a meme and not enough people get to experience and take them seriously. -
Redesign dps roles. It feels like all dps are a lot of the same and just there to do plain damage nowadays and other than the special class buff that most classes have, and some specific mechanic soaking abilities, there is nothing to add to the table.
One possibility would be to introduce Glass canon DPS and Support DPS roles. Generally, glass canons would be a role that is purely focused on damage dealing and maximizing that aspect. Support roles would still deal damage, however, less damage than glass cannons, and would also greatly buff the damage of the glass canon players. That would be similar to how enhancement, elemental, shadow priest, or boomkin works in TBC.
I don’t really expect this to happen, as this would have to be balanced around raid, mythic + and pvp. However, I do think that class design is stale and a lot of the same nowadays and it could change abit somehow.
I know it’s a lot of stuff for a single post but there’s a lot more I could write about this. I hope you enjoyed the read, feel free to comment and discuss.