‘the whole process of gearing taken away’ is hyperbole. But yeah, I get that there were also people who did not like it. And they were, unfortunately for players like me, the vocal part of the playerbase.
Agree to disagree.
You can deny it, but that doesn’t change facts.
I’m not claiming everyone liked it. Of course not. But there were people who DID. And that’s factual.
It was a soul destroying system. It made loot feel terrible. I’m glad it’s gone.
For some. For others it was fun.
It made loot feel exciting. There could always be a nice suprise.
Same reason why I loved the Legiondaries.
Not everyone likes the same things. 
I still miss it. And honestly, from my perspective: World content never really recovered and I think that’s a huge shame.
Yup… Arcanocrystal anyone ?
Yep, because 90% of the time when you looted your BiS item, it wasn´t BiS at all because it wasn´t titanforged.
All it did was artifically extend the grind by makig sure you could never realistically finish gearing, and cause most drops to be disappointing no matter how good they actually were just because they didn´t War- /Titanforge.
And to Rub salt in the would, when you did get a forge, it was usually a pos item that would get vendored or disenchanted.
I get your position. But world content enjoyers have always been a minority. You can see it today: Just compare how many people are actively doing WQ vs people sitting in dungeons summoning people.
This morning I did a key. And in the gate of Priory I could count 18 people summoning others. At 9am on a Thursday. I flew to the WQ area of Hollowfall. I was the only one there.
And yes. Its sad that WQ will never recover from forcing people to do content they dont want to do… for a chance at the Titanforge slot machine… But overall, its better.
True. 100%.
But when people say “nobody” liked those grinds. It has meaning. It dosent mean 100% of people disliked it. It means more than 50% of people. And that is true.
That mindset is the problem; not the system.
People expect insane things. It’s like buying a lotery ticket and losing your mind when you win ‘only 10,000 euros’ and not the jackpot of 5,000,000. It’s an insane type of mindset to have. Really.
That is because world content isn’t worth doing (except on reset day when you can get a few quick easy keys for delves). THAT is the issue. It’s being kept down ON PURPOSE. It’s not a fair comparison in the slightest.
If the same level of gear dropped in dungeons as it does in world content, guess where most people would be?
Exactly.
Not for me. Not by a long shot.
And no amount of ‘solo dungeons’ aka ‘delves’ is going to help. Because it’s NOT world content. It’s a dungeon. And that’s not what I want to do all the time.
I don’t actually think it is true. Because only the fanatical side of the playerbase complains on websites, forums and social media about a game. And that is a minority in itself.
Indeed, it was simply too much RNG. Endless grinds are generally despised by most of the playerbase I know. But ofc that is totally subjective.
I disagree.
This is not Diablo 3where once you have your gear, your next job is to go out and hope for RNG drops of ancient versions (which you can at least force using teh cube), and then once you have all of those spend endless hours farmiong for RNG drops of primals.
If I run the highest content in an MMO, then I want the highest gear as a reward, period. Not something that will be replaced by a random world quest item the next day.
We had war + titanforging for 5 or 6 years starting in pandaria, and while WQ players might have liked it becaus eof the random power boost, more or less everyone that was doing anything actually competitive absolutely despised it. Because you would never, ever, finish gearing even one toon, because there was always another upgrade to chase…
It was disliked for the same reason people hated the AP grind and the Azerite grind: because there was no end in sight, ever, and therefore every second you didn´t spend on your main was “wasted”.
I’ve had lots and lots of conversations about this back in the day and I’ve always said that yes, TF should have been changed a bit. Don’t let it go past a certain ilvl and don’t make it possible for mythic raid level gear to proc.
I understand why that part of the playerbase didn’t like it. But it was a fixable issue.
But no: Instead the fun of many others had to be ruined and it was flat-out removed. I still take issue with that.
Hell, I would’ve been happy if TF only existed in world content and the proc was exclusive to that type of content (so it wouldn’t be any good for raids, M+ or PvP). But nope… Just remove it. In classic Blizzard fashion, fix with a huge sledge hammer what only needed some fine tuning.
I also disagree it’s nothing to do with mindset. Whilst I can accept you liked it you have to accept it was awful for others for justified reasons. Accepting something doesn’t mean you’re agreeing with it.
The system was based on RNG but now we have deterministic ways to upgrade our gear, get sockets and the only RNG is the tertiary stat. This is a good balance. It puts control in the players hands and is relevant to the content they do.
I think titanforge might work with a current upgrade system. But as it was back in Legion it was just an awful RNG fiesta.
I don’t agree with that last part though. In my mind it’s not justified.
In my mind it’s obsessive compulsive behaviour and I think players should take responsibility for that instead of blaming a game system.
But yes, as I said above:
It’s not that I wasn’t open to having it be fixed so it wouldn’t be problematic for certain types of players. I just hate that it was flat out removed.
It isn’t obsessive compulsive behaviour when the content you want to do is designed with titanforged gear in mind. Blizz made that mistake in the first raid and it fell over because people had way higher gear by TF than what blizz expected.
It is like scaling WQ’s for 650 ilvl with a 615 ilvl loot, but the option to TF to 680.
Kind of indicates that an issue with your mindset rather than anyone else’s. You like something so therefore it’s a problem that everyone else doesn’t like it rather than accepting that the downsides to that system caused problems for players. I can see why people do or don’t like systems, even if I don’t agree with them.
The McDonalds analogy demonstrated the issues very well.
In reality the only RNG we want on a boss is whether or not we get the loot, not whether or not our loot has a socket, an extra stat, higher ilvl etc. That made loot unrewarding and eventually Blizzard accepted that a good portion of the playersbase despised the system.
I far rather have the system today, it started in M+ and was extended to the rest of hte game. So that everyone has equal access to upgrading their gear, they aren’t reliant on having to do the same thing a million times to get the best reward.
As for the vault itself, I am fine with it, sometimes it gives me something good, other times it’s just making the best of the choices available and the booby prize of getting sockets works nicely.
Well since it would be one shot each week. Like each dungeon would be more like a raid boss, so once you did it on m12, the mythic track loot chance is gone for the week in that dungeon.
It would be just as much forced as mythic raid is for m+ers imo, so it should be fine.
It would be something to do for the week if you are done with the hero track.
It would also diminish the significance of the vault which is very much needed imo.
Right now, mythic track gearing is just running your weekly 8 keys which is done at least by the weekend and then nothing until reset and even that could very well be nothing.
Thats not how I looked at it. To me what mattered is that I have a chance to get upgrade even from content which would be low level and even if the weekly chest gave garbage (and it usually did, apart from TR currency).
The aspect which I miss the most, is the fact that your midweek activity always mattered.
Not getting loot from the weekly was not nearly as devastating as it is 8.3 onwards and especially since 9.0 (SL LootCrash).
Nothing was ever really in vain, unlike now where anything beyond the 8x10 is in fact in vain, after the hero track. You could attend someone’s normal raid to help and still hope for useful loot, unlike now, where you are guaranteed to get zero upgrade from it.
It sort of promoted helping others with lower content which was imo good for the overall health of the game.
I dont mean the aranco crystal, that trinket should have been hotfixed asap. I mean lower keys and norm/lfr raids.
Maybe. It is certainly preferable to this current system where m+ is pretty much a russian roulette when it comes to mythic track gearing.
I play since the start of the season.
So far:
1: garbage neck, quickly got changed to a better hero track one; no idea why did I even took it out
2: good shoulder, converted to tier
3: feet with bad stats, but at least ilvl upgrade
4: garbage trinkets on all slots, took nothing
2 mythic track items of which one will have to be changed.
It would certainly improve the vault, but I still think m+ should have a way to drop myth track midweek as well.
Weekly logging is a terrible game design.
+12 would be a fitting place for that.
Don’t get me wrong. Gearing wise, I as the type of player I am, is having it better than I ever did.
The issue for me is mainly the fun factor. Delves are not fun. They’re ‘a chore’ to me.
I don’t hate them, but I don’t want them to be my ‘bread and butter content’ either. But as it stands right now, there’s no other way if I want to continue gearing.
So what’s the problem? Easy raiding is fun. Numbers prove that every time.
Attendance is ALWAYS up when a raid is easy and it ALWAYS goes down when a raid is hard and punishing.
To me that only demonstrates the obsession people have and how utterly jealous they can be. I would not care AT ALL if someone else gets something more than I did. I only care about what I get. Is it an upgrade? Then I’m happy. That’s all that matters. Other people don’t factor into it at all.
Anyway… I really don’t want to continue these discussions. TF is gone. And that’s that.
And as I said in a previous post: Gearing wise, I’m happy. I’m getting higher gear and being able to get that gear up to max easier than ever before and I like that.
It’s the lack of fun in that whole process that I would like to see addressed.
And there’s multiple ways to do that for me (delves being more than just dark, underground places is a big one).
I don’t mind the vault. It’s a lottery and if I don’t win a prize I want, I get upgrade currency. That’s fine.
Well then I just don’t see how random extremely empowered gear drops make anything better. If anything it makes it mush worse imo. But maybe that’s just me
I’d still be in the keys. I’m a Demon of Keys, I just love playing them. The magic of getting a group going and not knowing what to expect.