Your Season design philosophy is trash and Season 4 tops it all

Community General Discussion
1

I will first say the following :
I was kind of exited for Fated Season , as I expected a leisurely season , where you can do anything and progress at your own speed . All world first are done , there is no race , you can just play and explore the expansion .

But the reality check was so hard this time around , that I really struggle to express my thoughts without using worlds that would get me banned . So I will try to narrow it down to points and you feel free to insert !@%#%$&!$%!$^&! wherever you wish .

1: The cap .

Why the hell is this thing here ? Who asked for this ? How many times do you need to see this on the forum , to understand that GATE KEEPING IS TRASH .
This was supposed to be the time of the expansion , where gatekeeping is gone and you can actually progress at your own speed .
But No . You will get 1350 conquest , 8 trophies of stripe , one Spark and 200 crests and THAT IS THAT . You wait till next week .
Why is my PvP Gear tied to these stupid PvE sparks ? Couldn’t you just let me slot honor tokens in the gear and boost it’s PvP item level ?
Why do I even need WEEKS , to get those sparks in the first place ?!? Who am I hurting , by playing at my own pace ?

Right now if you just want to play for like 5-8 hours on the weekend , you need to have 3-5 alts , on which you do your weekly’s , do the cap and log of .
ZERO satisfaction .
ZERO fun .
You are ticking off a bullet point off your list and just grind the same thing over and over and over . Next week comes , you do the same.
THIS IS NOT A GAME , THIS IS A CHORE .

2: Gear reset .

If number 1 was not so annoying , this one would definitely take the cake . You spends months grinding trough point 1 . You finally get your dreamed pieces and crafted gear . At long last YOU ARE DONE … Now we can finally play the game , says Eric Cartman .

BOOOM …
You gear is now vendor trash . Better start over again boy .
Good job to whomever designed this . Here’s a cookie .
I bet now you are patting yourself on the back and thinking , you got em good . Those players gonna start grinding again now and you ain’t got to do nothing no more .

You only forgot one thing . This is an RPG game . In an RPG game people invest in their character . They progress it . The feeling of growing it is what is important here .
And here comes blizzard with the axe. Hacks your tree house down , laughs in your face and says . Start again .
Yea thanks .

3: Scaling .
Because 1 and 2 you need to invalidate all player gear … But how do you do that ? Maybe we just delete it all . Nahh too harsh … Yea here’s an idea . Lets SCALE IT UP .
Does anyone even remember what HP , we started up in this expansion ?
Here’s a tip . At level 60 we had just above 100k . At level 70 we were around 300k .
Now ? I saw a guy in bg with 4000k . A tank in Ashran had 8000k .
I’m pretty sure back in WoD before the squish we had like 1000k tops . And that took us more than 10 years . Now we went from 100k to 2000k-4000k in just a year and a half . Cant wait for 100000k in TWW
I get hit for 700k sniper shot and think . Is that big or not ?
The number don’t even matter anymore .
I press a button , something flashy happens and than we roll the dice . Creature is dead or not . Who knows ?
That new piece of gear has +150 haste ? What is that ? Why should I care ? Gotta go ask a simulator AI to tell me if it is worth it .
BiS ?!? I laugh at you . You will be vendor trash in 3 months anyways . You can take your 3% drop chance and shove it .

Entire gear now is just item level . All stats look meaningless and i could care less what is written on it .

So tell me why should I play this season ? Why should I even bother paying any season at all .
This is not RPG .
This is not WoW .
I have no idea how to even describe this thing . And perhaps it is better to leave it at that.

Thank you, to anyone who decided to read my rant .

20 Likes
2

That’s one of the reasons why I actually understand that Bungie removed relevance of power level in my former main game Destiny 2. Because feeling like nothing matters anymore sucks.

Of course that can go both ways. But I rather have activities always scaled in a way that I feel like I am doing something instead of playing activities where I feel like am either overdoing it by doing nothing or feeling like I’m not doing anything.

Maybe it’s time for WoW to do that too. Put in “activity brackets” where the requirements are just an entry point and after that entry point nothing matters and everyone is on the same level within that activity.

Would that mean a guy with 512 ilvl would deal the very same damage as a 480 ilvl player in a 480 ilvl activity? Yes. Would it hinder you all to enjoy the game via teamwork? Not at all.

In fact even, such a system would actively discourage any form of elitism, because everyone is pulling the same numbers gearwise.

3

This is WoW, this is how it’s worked as long as I can remember. The game would become pretty stagnant without the resets, new raids/dungeon pool etc.

I am having a blast atm because we are at the start of a new season. I am doing so much M+, got back into a raid schedule etc. Because I need everything. All the items I get make me stronger. Normally we’d have a new raid but this is S4 so the difficulty goes up via Awakened.

I’m not a fan of the concept of S4 at all but even if this was S3, people have returned from their breaks, guilds are lively again, everyone is busy, we’re all in the same boat trying to get some score/gear etc.

It is RPG and certainly MMO to play the game to get stronger, gather your best armour to go forward to slay whatever it is. This isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea and if you want a game where you have to play to gear then maybe something like Overwatch, League etc would suit you more? You don’t have to do anything but log on and take part.

7 Likes
4

Unfortunately vertical scaling has their own issues. Such as remvoing one avenue of retention. Like with wow you usually have to spend the month gearing up to do content on highest difficulty.

In GW2 or ESO you can jump right into it often meaning that all the content is done in a week.

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By and large this thread appears to be about the number scaling and how it’s invalidating your gear and how the game is keeping you back from attaining the best gear very quickly.

I’m going to brush the latter part aside because quite frankly it’s doing this less than it has ever done, so I don’t really know why you’re getting upset about it.

As for the number and general gear scaling: Yes, I think it’s an issue. The truth is that Naxxramas vanilla gear was more useful in SSC (2 tiers and an expansion later!) than last season’s gear is in this season. That’s completely outragoeus due to the sheer frequency of it happening.

The numbers themselves are also growing comically large, yes, and I have created addons that solve this problem, but obviously that’s not good enough.

The main reason the numbers grow so big is because of the exponential scaling, and the reason the scaling is exponential is that otherwise the difficulty doesn’t rise as much with each season.

The only way to combat this is to instead of scaling players’ stats up, you instead make attacks against players with better gear weaker and attacks against players with worse gear stronger.

This messes with healing though.

So… all you can really do is get numb to it and if you want my addon just ask and I’ll upload it again.

1 Like
6

If there is no gear reset and grind all again till you are OP and you can do harder content easily and push yourself to the limit of your character or yourself no one would play this game
And if someone will remain it’s those that likes to RP and collect tmog and those people are small minority
you can see that when season ends there are only pushers and few collectors runining around

8

Why must you put spaces before all your punctuation… this is horrible to try and read.

1 Like
9

You mean space after every punctuation?

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No, I don’t.

15

I don’t like Seasons in WoW.

They’re boring.

They don’t embrace the idea of Seasonal gameplay. Something that changes how you play the content. WoW Seasons mostly just make you repeat the content.

The Seasonal design is much stronger in Season of Discovery.
Existing content, shake up how you play it a bit, and play it again. Simple formula, it works, lots of games do it well. Retail WoW ain’t one of them.

I think WoW adopts Seasons as a way to reset progression and introduce catch-up mechanics. And that’s fine for new and returning players, but for active players it does nothing good. The old Classic style where content was just peals on a string and one big ladder of progression felt a lot more satisfying and true to the genre, I think.

And of course Fated Seasons feel especially luke-warm because they’re not accompanied by any new content, so the sense of it just being a reset and a catch-up opportunity for returning players is very strong. Active players aren’t really getting anything they didn’t already have, except being told to do it all over again for slightly bigger numbers.

Personally though I’m inclined to believe that somehting Blizzard would like to achieve with their faster expansion releases for the World Soul Saga is to also reduce the number of Seasons in a given expansion, so that WoW becomes a more content-driven experience again. They are stretching it a bit currently with 4 Seasons in an expansion with only 2 major patches.

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16

They’ve also made changes to the Mark of Mastery. For those who aren’t familiar, the Mark of Mastery is awarded from the Dragonflight Season “x” Master achievement, allowing players to purchase a piece of Tier Set from a vendor using this item or currency. Previously, players could choose any one item from the 5 main Tier Set pieces, ranging from LFR to Mythic Raid Tier Set for PvE or Elite Tier Set for PvP. However, this season, they’ve decided to change this. While you can still obtain an [Awakened Mark of Mastery], the vendor now only sells Heroic Tier Set pieces or Regular Gladiator Tier Set pieces.

I’m so disappointed. For context, I’m terrible at Enhancement Shaman, so when I found out we could still unlock the season 3 Elite Tier Set for them, I was ecstatic. I managed to achieve 1.6k+ again and obtained the [Awakened Mark of Mastery]. I went to the vendor feeling happy, thinking I would no longer have to suffer playing my Shaman. However, all my excitement went out the moment I saw what Tier Set pieces were available from the vendor.

I know this does not perfectly align with the topic being discussed here but I felt like it was still worth mentioning.

17

I just think the item levels between seasons should be a little more flat or at least interwoven. Like LFR gear shouldn’t be quite better than last season mythic gear, if you know what I mean.

2 Likes
18

I kinda feel ya since I have zero friends to play with and random people tend to ignore me, more or less. Start of the season sucks if you’re lonely.
Also:

Like LFR gear shouldn’t be quite better than last season mythic gear, if you know what I mean.

This is so true. I feel weird about going to LFR and getting stuff that i didnt get in high level keys. But oh well.

4 Likes
19

It really makes a situation where it gets clear that it’s more than waste to cap it each season unless you are the 0.00001% hell-bent on being in the top charts.

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you were able to buy an lfr piece with mark of mastery? who would do that anyways?
I didnt check the vendors yet, but i assume i still can buy heroic track tier set, which would be fine and intended.

didnt understand what they changed?

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Someone who’s playing an alt late in the season and doesn’t need tier from the vendor may still want a piece for their transmog collection.

The Mark of Mastery vendor used to give you the ability to choose a Tier Set piece ranging from LFR to Mythic, and Elite PvP.

22

You got the wrong attitude.

Just PLAY. That is all you have to do. You like M+? Play that. You like PvP? Play that. Just play.

And forget about the caps. 5-8h on 3-5 alts you will NEVER reach any cap whatsoever. You dont need to either. You can just perfectly play whatever you want.

The cap are only in place for the swetlords like me that play just 1 character very often.

So. It IS A GAME. Its YOU that makes it a chore.

You dont grind to max gear and then BOOM you play the game.

You play the game and little by little you get more powerful as you play the game. Bizzard’s job as a company is to provide that sensation for as long as possible.

YOU make it miserable. Just play the game. Gear will just fall from the sky on its own. Season or not season.

So? Its a colaterall effect from giving you infinite “power”. Eventually you reach the “goku super-sayan problem” and every 4-6 years we get an ilvl squish. It has happened 3 times already.

Its just that. A rant.

I have seen things like this before. Its because you are seriously burned out.

Take a break. Leave for 4-5 months. Then come back (if you want).

Because its YOU that are sabotaging your own fun in this game.

5 Likes
23
  • When your gear turn to trash, its a way for blizzard to make you less depressed (no reason to live, i mean play the game)
  • So they downgrade your gear so you HAVE a reason to do the new content, this is how This game works for YEARS its not something new, You cant complain about THAT you have to understand.
  • For example Im BIS right? Why would i do the new content for? Im locked in already
  • Or How about you tell them hm im BIS in this season, next season i can just speedrun the new Mythic raid tier, Huh? Whats that? I dont have a purpose in doing that anyway? well time to quit, this game is pointless to play.
  • That’s What i thought
1 Like
24

Why would anyone need to ask for this? We are customers, they are producer, we dont ask for anything. We consume or not consume their product, we continue or we quit.
Timegating has to exist, it was explained zillion times. Yes, we dont like it, but it just has to be.

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U really need to go to a shrink a good one. If u can be so upset by a game holy damn thats actually amuzing.