This man gets it

Community General Discussion
44

But for some people (like myself), that sort of thing will never be a push.
I’m not doing M+, rated PvP or Raiding beyond LFR no matter what.
I’d sooner quit the game than do that content because it simply isn’t fun for me.

So a system like Soul proposes would indeed fix things for players such as myself. There are MANY people who will never set foot in any of those 3 activities for many different reasons. The people who would be nudged by power to do higher content, would still be nudged because with a system like this it only gives power for open world content, nothing more. If you want REAL power, do M+, PvP or Raids.

The meaning of that statement was actually; Here is a guy who does heroic raids, some M+ and maybe even PvP, but he still UNDERSTANDS why there’s a problem for other types of players. He isn’t being egocentric like most people tend to be (unfortunately). THAT is what I meant.

But by all means; try to troll me more. :heart:

4 Likes
45

I thought it was a good video (jump to 17 minutes or so for his ideas). What he proposes doesn’t impact me - my main(I am already above the thresholds he talks about) but I do think what he suggests has merit and is worth considering.

There is a lack of progression in the game right now at many levels and I miss some of the mechanisms that have existed in the past, for example I capped conquest every week on numerous alts in BfA to eventually get a Heroic level weapon (I think it took 15 weeks to get there) . I did this but doing assaults and unrated PvP. This was progression for my lower characters, it gave me a reason to play them.

At the moment, once my main has raided and done an M+ (I cannot bring myself to do more than one). I am done for the week (I get there is other content but this is about what I want to do) .

The system he proposes may have me spending time on alts, might have me playing more because there is a progression (collecting anima - slowly for a tmog is not enough for me at this point) and for those that don’t do instanced content it seems to give them a goal (but I will allow the people who are in that bracket to determine that.)

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46

… aaaand there it is! It always comes out in these discussions - it’s not fair to give them gear, because they didn’t do the current group content.

Where did I say anything about fairness, or deserving anything? or did Soul say antything about that?

This is not about your view, or anyone else’s, of fairness as between groups. This is about keeping people engaged.

When people stop progressing, they become disengaged - “semi-detached” is how I often characterise it. They lose interest.

People losing interest is bad all round, from everybody’s point of view.

For Blizzard it means lower MAUs, decreased marketing buzz, and especially lost subscription and microtransaction dollars.

For players it means fewer groups, longer waits, less economic activity, dead guilds, broken raid teams.

People losing interest is a BAD THING. Some of it is inevitable, yes, because you can’t keep the new-expansion smell forever, but what we are seeing right now is people losing interest because of a drought in the first patch. The only thing I can compare this with is Warlords - and 6.1 (The Selfie Patch) was out, at least in name, before now.

Blizzard brought in Artefact/Azerite/Anima Power to provide an endless progression, and that has lots of problems, but they have designed Anima to fail completely at the starting gate. Why?

Whatever the reason, the game needs a form of progression injected NOW. Now, when we can all see the activity falling off by the week.

I think the means of progression should be spread across the 200s, the 210s, the 220s, according to what they want to do in the game. What exactly do you obhect to in that?

3 Likes
47

@Gráinne: See what I mean? I wasn’t very wrong when I said “outright reject”. Tahra is not the only player on the forum that said that. I have read statements like this so many times.

And I am not saying they are wrong. They have every right to reject these types of content for whatever reason.

You are twisting what I said.
I said rewards from group content scale with difficulty. And the game doesn’t have challenging content for solo players that’s on par difficulty wise with the group content.

The reason it’s not fair is not about “solo vs group”. It’s about “easy vs hard”.

48

Well sure it is. But theres only so many times you can increase the rewards for people doing mundane world quests in some desperate attempt to milk it.

So then we get back to the root causes and they aren’t that easy to fix. All we’re really doing here is papering over the cracks / polishing the :poop: etc.

49

I said this many times - whoever purposely avoids grouping up for clearing content in an MMO is playing the wrong game.

If you deliberately avoid doing raiding/pvp/m+ and want gear from world quests, you should consider quitting and moving onto a single player game, as those kind of games cater much more to the type of player you are.

3 Likes
50

Reknown is a just crappy Call of Duty battlepass system.

I wouldn’t be suprised if Blizz puts in 9.2 , pay up 10 euros to skip first 50 lvls reknown.

51

Yes I completely agree. This is a huge problem. Unfortunately I’m not sure if there is anything to do about it.

52

Sadly yes, the gap between ilvl 194 player (casual) and ilvl 215+ is really big gear wise. Scaling was annoying in ways, but it did allow more casual players to stand a chance. As it is they’re just outright deleted.

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53

timegateing grinds of any kind of resorces does not fit a MMO with sub costs like rep grinds to unlock some cool rewords are a diff thing .

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54

I think he gets it but also he kind of doesn’t.

Take a look at ArcheAge - there is so much to do in that game. It’s not just about growing more powerful, although that matters. It’s about growing more… influential. You amass wealth, which you then use to buy a house. But wait! There’s a limited number of plots. So you start scouting out the entire world, looking for a plot that is either empty or abandoned. Abandoned plots are automatically freed when their owner doesn’t pay his taxes.

So, you secure your plot. Now you have to build the house. That takes some time, but then your house is ready. Now you need to furnish it, and that entire system is so insane, and furnishing a house opens up entirely new crafting possibilities for you. You can start charging people to use your house. But let’s say one house isn’t enough - you can buy the plots near your house and turn it into more houses, a bigger house, or farmland. There are so many different crops that you can sow, fruit trees, trees that exist to give lumber. If you’re lucky, a lightning can strike your tree and that gives you Thunderstruck Log - very rare and very valuable crafting material. Then you start trading around, you turn your house into an economic engine. You have to pay your taxes, and those increase with the amount of land you own.

But if you can’t buy a house, which in a well populated server it’s about half the players… what do you do? You can’t gain access to farms, you can’t use the ultimate crafting benches. Hm… you have to think. You can become a pirate - a 3rd faction of criminals, that’s hostile to both other faction, completely player driven, your gold comes from stealing and piracy. By piracy I mean you take the ship that you own, you gather a crew, and you attack the ships of other players, including pirates, with your goal being stealing their cargo.

Cargo, trade packs, is the most mainstream way of making gold in ArcheAge - you craft a trade pack at a specific place and you carry it to another place, trading it in for profit. This means the main way of making raw gold in ArcheAge is investing gold, then traversing the world. Moving around is how you make gold. This causes the entire world to constantly feel alive.

But if you don’t want to become a pirate? You can talk to someone to let you in their house, for free or for a fee, and you can still use the crafting benches you need. You can make “illegal farms” if you want to grow plants. In ArcheAge you can plant anything almost anywhere, but if you plant it on public land, the fruits can be stolen by other players. This is a problem, because planting itself has a cost. There are also public farms, which are rather small, but your fruits and veggies are protected there.

And you get caught up in this living world, 90% of what you do is still action, but it is in the service of these intertwined systems, which give you more things to pursue than just better gear.

And this is WoW’s problem - your only motivation to play is getting your ilvl number higher. That’s all there is to the game. And once you reach some power ceiling, there’s nothing much to do. You can farm transmog, but if you’re in love with your transmog, there’s no reason to do that. Same with mounts - if you love your mount, why would you spend dozens of hours farming something you have no intention or incentive to use?

In ArcheAge, you have a real progression of status. The first “vehicle” you get is a donkey and you can dangle a carrot on a stick to make it go faster. Then you get a stupid rowboat that is absolute garbage. But then… you build your first farm cart, then you start upgrading your farm cart to be able to carry more trade packs. You start being able to carry 1 trade pack on the donkey, to 2 in the farm cart, and that cart then can be upgraded to carry up to 9 :open_mouth: Your stupid boat? Forget it, you craft a schooner, a fishing boat, trade ships, war ships, all with unique reasons to use them, all different and worth getting. Remember your donkey? Well, you can craft a damned rocket skateboard and even a sports car. You have so much. And it is all so interesting.

2 Likes
55

WoW was always a 3D chat-waiting room for instances. I can’t remember an expac where anything outside raids/dungeons mattered.

56

Please don’t give them ideas…

57

The scaling system, if done right like Warlords, is a godsent for pvp. But if it’s done wrong, like it was in BfA, I’d rather have the current, no scaling system.

1 Like
58

Been saying for a while that Blizz have killed the casual endgame with no change in sight.

PvP upgrades could have been purchasable with honour or conquest, but they were tied to rating.

Valor upgrades could have been available to everyone, but they were tied to M+ achievements.

Anima could have been a way to upgrade gear, but it caps at 197.

For some reason, we are scared to let casual players upgrade 1 item by 3 ilvls every 2 weeks by grinding world quests and random BGs. Like they’re going to walk into our +15 with a full 220 set when they’re only earning 300 valor/week?

Result; casual players aren’t sure what to do after they hit 197.

Expectation; large drop in numbers of casual players staying subbed.

5 Likes
59

Im exaclty in that category of people he is talking about and i love this idea! Make it happen please! Thanks for the video share btw, gave me something to watch while flying my chars the long way to the WB.

60

That there hits the nail on the head.

These types of players are the bread and butter of the community, if you can’t keep these types of players entertained with basic stuff in a content then everything else breaks down.

You lose them, you lose players, queue times goes up, business loses money and you end up where we are now.

Annoyed and frustrated.

6 Likes
61

Well put - I’ve said similar for months now. The usual reply is either ‘what do they need gear for?’ or ‘tHeY dOn’T DeSeRvE iT’. Both attitudes are very short sighted. Look after the roots and the tree can grow strong (WoWs roots are rotting at the moment)

There was no reason to gate valor behind an achievement, everyone should be able to upgrade pieces to 220 (that drop from all dungeon level) even using WQ valor - now before you scream, work out how long that would take for just one item for someone getting heroic drops.

5 Likes
62

Ah, so gambling which isn’t legal or has age restrictions(Usually adult+ requirement) in a lot of places feels good but shopping doesn’t? I don’t know about you, but I still can’t enter a casino and I enjoy shopping.

63

TBC, WoTLK, Cataclysm where they literally revamped the entire game world to make it more accessible and fun for world content players.