the worst part about raiding and m+ is wiping because of other people
when player A didn’t make any mistakes , but the game punishes them anyway because it’s " group content "
and in WoW, we’re forced to do the " group content " because there’s no solo option
the game is an mmo , true, but that doesn’t mean that your fate should depend on other people, I’m not saying " remove group content " , obviously there are people who like it I’m saying there should be an option to play solo for the people who prefer to
I prefer to play alone , or with the least amount of people possible, and I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels this way
If I’m playing alone , and I die, there was a mistake and surely it’s mine , there is room for self improvement so I fix the mistake and move on with my life, or learn the boss or whatever
another good point is that difficult group content breeds toxicity , or hate.
none of us wants to be the target of the blame
when you’re alone there’s nobody to ruin the game for you
in torghast, you could play alone or bring a friend as you like , say what you want about torghast but i never once heard anyone say that it’s toxic
I don’t want to interact with other people sometimes , and many of us are like this, WoW has some solo content , but if you want to gear up , WoW forces you to go out of your comfort zone
I’m quite happy with the gear I am am able to get currently. About 389 and then about 4 crafted that can go past 400. Finding/getting the crafting ability is the solo end game but I am content at 389. I actually really enjoy doing the WQs, soup, siege and obsidian citadel quests once a week and slowly improve my gear.
There should be an option to run at least dungeons like in FF with an npc party - I too felt crazy stressful at first because there’s even a timer to finish the duties (for dungeons, 90 mins in general), but it was much easier when I was the only player. I could explore on my own what to do, and could go in my little pace.
But, with how dungeons are like in here… it’d be an option up till Pandaria leveling dungeons at best. (If it’s ever added which I doubt.)
As the season goes on, the average ilvl could go up with it… For example, now the events such as siege or soup could drop something like ilvl 400. After a few weeks, maybe 405 etc. so eventually, at the end of the season, everyone is caught up. It would at least encourage people to replay content.
True, but I won’t. Not because I view it as ‘my comfort zone’, but simply because I don’t enjoy the activities you need to do to gear up. That’s the reason I refuse to do it.
It would be nice if solo gameplay had its own progression that didn’t impede on the group based content and the rewards that you earn there.
As you can probably see from my gear, I play alone.
However, I have been in a Danish guild before where I raided all the time. (in Warlords of Draenor “Hellfire Citadel” i raided ALOT )
But after my social phobia has gotten really bad, I play for myself, as I am afraid of making mistakes and become panicked if others start criticizing me in front of others.
So I’m just happy that we who play solo also have an option for reasonable gear, and actually think that the gear we can get now and what is crafted is quite good for solo content…
but would like to raide again if I could find a Danish guild that was not super hardcore minded
There is a solo gearing system, as there has been since at least Cata.
Dailies and World Quests. And, in DF, Events like Siege and Feast. And in DF, crafting.
(And, of course, there is always boosting, as the ultimate solo gearing system.)
They tweak it a bit from expansion to expansion, and patch to patch, but there always is a system.
You really want to say what your problem with the DF incarnation of the system is.
I suspect your problem is item level, and I sorta-kinda have some respect for that, but I don’t endorse it whole-heartedly. You can get near-Normal level solo, without blowing Tokens like s drunken sailor, and that’s not terrible. It’s not as solid as Mists, say, but it suffices for most purposes. M+ mostly ate the raiders’ lunch, but it took a bit out of solo players’ as well.
My problem is with some of the implementation and the curve, but that’s likely a different topic.
What the OP is saying is there is not enough challenging solo end game. Siege is fine, but it’s not the challenging solo content the OP is asking for. Actually, you can go AFK and get the chest.
Mage tower is the closest thing we got for challenging solo end game content. You can’t actually gear up for it (unlike the legion version where you could). It gives only cosmetic rewards.
With raids or M+, better gear can offset lack of skill (some a certain limit ofc). If you fail a higher difficulty, gear up lower difficulty to gear up. This is not the case in mage tower where there is no progression path, and no power rewards.
Thorghast in shadowlands was potentially a good way to give players solo challenging content. It was doable in both groups and solo, giving players choice. It scaled in difficultly. However, Blizzard didn’t add gear progression to it, and instead forced M+ and raid players to run it every week for currency causing them to hate it.
So dungeon(s) that can be run solo (either only solo or optionally solo), with increasing difficulty like M+ and increasing gear reward.
What if there are solo (or optionally solo) M+ dungeon? Scales the same way like current M+. Rewards comparable item levels gear to M+. Unlocks better rewards in weekly vault like M+ (may be a new separate row in the vault). And is balanced in a way that makes it challenging yet doable for all specs. For example for tanks NPCs hit harder but have lower HP, for DPS players NPCs don’t hit as hard but have higher HP, etc.
I’m the same, a casual, solo player, mainly due to family and work etc etc.
I gear up slowly, do 5 or 6 mythic plus runs up to level 5 at the moment to actually gear up, even if you do 1 M plus 5 a week you’ll get 1 half decent piece of gear a week.
at the end of the day this is a MMORPG, mass multiplayer on line role playing game, so the best gear will be end game raiding, high end M+ and high end PVP.
There’s more to come from this expansion I’m sure, solo dungeons are coming out where players have to solve puzzles etc etc.
I don’t see that. Where does he say that? Where is “challenging”?
Just to check, I asked ChatGPT to make bullet points of the post:
Summary:
Wiping in group content due to other people’s mistakes is the worst part of raiding and M+
WoW does not have a solo option and forces players to do group content
There should be an option to play solo for those who prefer it
Playing alone allows for self-improvement and avoids toxic behavior from other players
Torghast offers the option to play alone or with a friend and is not known for being toxic
WoW has some solo content, but players are forced to do group content to gear up.
And I agree that this is an accurate summary. (BTW, it’d be cool if Blizzard offered an automatic option to do that against every post )
I dispute OP’s assertion that there is no solo option, no solo system. There clearly is.
OP says: “WoW has some solo content , but if you want to gear up , WoW forces you to go out of your comfort zone”
This is not true either. You can gear up to 390-ish just fine, 400+ with a bit more investment.
What I’d like OP to do is state clearly what gear level and system he wants.
I’m sympathetic to the general idea that solo play doesn’t get players quite as geared as it should, and very sympathetic to the proposition that solo progression caps out too soon, but specifying how, and how high, is necessary to evaluate the idea.
WoW always has solo casual gear, but I think you’re downplaying the current ilvl gap. In BfA (my first expack) I’d be around 20 ilvls below Mythic raiders by doing casual content (about 10 in 8.3). In DF I’m 30 ilvls below.
In BfA, a lot of elite players complained about the “loot piñata” of good gear in casual PvE, so the devs nerfed the PvE gear outside of instances AND removed the instances where solo casuals could gear up (Warfronts and Visions). SL Torghast rewarded no gear outside of currency for the legos, which was really where the game fell down and I believe one of the main reasons the expack was a failure.
Fortunately, casuals can still get tier sets in DF, so it’s not all bad. The irony is that in casual PvP the complete opposite is true and it’s very easy for a casual to gear up. My main is 390 PvE and 422 PvP. That’s a 32 ilvl gap in the two types of content. And professions is not “gearing up” - it’s a garbage system that shouldn’t be in the game.
On the whole, DF is better than SL but the area of casual PvE gearing is not an improvement and, especially on alts for non-PvP players, is probably even worse for alts due to the lack of other players in the storms this late in the patch. You ask what we should have, well, we already know what we should have because BfA had it. The problem is many vocal elite players don’t want what the OP is asking for.
I have some sympathy with this. I only do dungeons for the story probably LFR once for the story. I couldn’t handle competitive or skill based pvE. For example I hate rushing dungeons, so I guess my world beating M Plus trophy will never arrive.
For some reason I do really like pvp and don’t feel threatened by it, no idea why.
As another poster said, OP should say what exactly they want - what kind of gear, what level?
Having something challenging back like Torghast in each expansion would be good. Torghast was sometimes super frustrating (like unkillable end bosses that were 5 times harder than all the other bosses, initially stupidly bad drop rates for Leggos) but towards the end of the expansion I thought it became really good solo content.
Personally I would like everything you do to earn a currency if you don’t get an item, so everyone can “get there” eventually. OK so an HC raid gets you an item, but maybe a large number of WQ get you a currency where you can also get it - much slower than the raider, but you get there some time.
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