World of Warcraft: Current Year

Mist said:

I actually think this is good design. Wanting different gear for different circumstances instead of just getting +gooder gear is way to make progression meaningful without having to just keep inflating the numbers.

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Right, I dont mind needing multiple sets, but part of the BFA M+ design was in response to complaints in Legion. In most of Legion M+, you could switch gear anytime out of combat, like everywhere else in the game. So the meta was to have 2+ gear sets; one for bosses, one for trash, and maybe more for different boss/trash mechanics.

Obviously, if the leet players didn't see Mr & Mrs Casual switching sets and back, for every boss, they would get yelled at by the leets. This generated complaints ("wahhh, multiple sets r hard"). Raiders lost an enjoyable mechanic in tier sets, and we still have multiple sets. Furthermore, some Tyrannical M+ bosses need the single target traits, usually used in raids, and some raid bosses need the AoE trash traits, usually used in M+.

So shitty players will still get the blame for failing a key, but they wont blame themselves for being shitty, but instead it was because they had the wrong gear on for that week (and then go complain on the forums).

Mist said:

My complaint is just why can't they be on the regular drop tables? Have 415s drop in +5s, 430s drop in +10s and 445s drop in 15+. Make them as rare or slightly rarer than the weapons on the table.

The Mythic Raid Azerite pieces can be differentiated from the dungeon pieces by giving them special unique traits like Undulating Tides, and/or giving them an extra choice per ring, etc.

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I think remembered things slightly wrong (I dont think heroic raid equivalent azurite even dropped in M+ at the start?), so I edited the first lines of the other post, a bit, and afaik, 415 should drop in M0, right now.

As for why nothing scaled past heroic raid level, from the start of the M+ system, until the end of this month, they wanted a clear differentiation between Mythic raids (445), and M+ base ilevels (430). Therefor, there could be no reliable 445s dropping from 5 man content that has no lockout timer.

That was one of the things that lost me in this expansion, not being able to swap gear in m+. I normally swapped out as many as 4-6 different sets in a run. Small low hp trash was 1 set with one trinket, a threatening boss with high MD (prot warrior) was another, etc. It was fun playing with trinkets, gear etc to see how it changed the run. Couple that with the affixes and it kept M+ runs fun all expansion.

I still cant put my finger on why the other m+ aspect of the dungeons felt so bad. Its probably just because I am bad at the game, and dont feel like I can do as well as I expect I should. Our group was a solid group for not being a "meta" group last expansion, this expansion our normal group of friends being so caster heavy (ie NO melee most runs) means the dungeons started off brutal and stayed that way. So many of the packs have 1 mob that NEEDS to be interrupted, and 1 or 2 that should be interrupted, and then a mob or two with an ability that can be dealt with without interupts, but they make it easier. So we end up limited in our pull size potential. Then add in the stupid fucking seasonal affixes...

Our guild is odd, we have a tiny pool or people interested in really doing m+ and next to no melee in the guild, so it meant back to 3 range, a tank and a healer lol. Just seemed more brutal this expansion compared to last.

I LOVED mythic plus in legion, not so much now, I do my 1 a week, and thats it, up until I realized I didnt care anymore .

Also, this expansion it felt to me like the zones we too small. The alliance side just felt like shit to be in. I felt bad for them. I ended up avoiding the other 3 zones so much that by the second character I just didnt want to play any more. So alts suffered from extreme boredom for me.

karma said:

Also, this expansion it felt to me like the zones we too small. The alliance side just felt like shit to be in. I felt bad for them. I ended up avoiding the other 3 zones so much that by the second character I just didnt want to play any more. So alts suffered from extreme boredom for me.

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Haven't played the Horde 3 zones (although I like the look of them much better overall than Alliance ones) on a Horde alt at all this expansion, but the only Alliance zone really worth a shit was Drustvar. Tiragarde Sound and Stormsong valley were largely whatever...some good stuff in there but real mixed bag so it never felt like a contained zone story.

Neranja said:

There were a ton of things that people pointed out as early as beta. Things like the loss of the active abilities from the legendaries that in some specs were even incorporated into their rotations, but there were others like "Ignore Pain", which was for many a defining ability in prot warriors. The very hard power reduction with each level that made you NOT excited for leveling up, the boring Azerite treats and the re-farming of this shit.

People like Preach pointed out the problems months before launch and were in turn roasted by the fanboys. What pissed off people the most in hindsight: Blizzard didn't care one bit about the feedback, so why even have a beta if you can't turn the ship around? Instead we got apologies from Blizzard like "You just don't see the whole picture!"

But the fucking best response from Blizzard was: "We can't fix classes until 9.0, sorry." So why are they up to this day still sending out surveys for this?

(Sidenote: My guess is that the combat system code for WoW inside the server is such a convoluted mess with all the procs, buffs, ratings, item abilities, level scaling and the changes made throughout all the previous expansions that only one developer can work on it at the same time. With all the experience with it they have to be at least a highly functioning alcoholic.)

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Beta is just 'advertising' for Blizzard. They make some changes but it's pretty rare. Perhaps I'm not as jaded because I have the bar on their skill for game design set pretty low. There is functionally no difference between the weapon and the neck. Both are just linear advancing stat sticks. Azerite is not an awesome system but if you aren't pushing mythic content it doesn't mean that much.

Fyff said:

There is functionally no difference between the weapon and the neck. Both are just linear advancing stat sticks.

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Prior to essences in 8.2, this was completely false for anyone whose weapon gave an active ability that was essential to their rotation previously. Even with some/most essences, it's not nearly as built in to the rotation of certain classes as the artifacts were.

The weapon also didn't drop, it was just given to you, and you didn't need to farm for the right version of it that unlocked what you were looking for. This late into the expansion you could max the entire artifact in like... 4 hours. Try getting the azerite traits you want in 4 hours...

Azerite is more like Legion Legendaries than the artifact weapon. Or more correctly it's a combination of the two. A very bad combination of the two.

Big Phoenix said:

Azerite gear sucks. Nothing better than getting a piece of gear that has lackluster abilities on it.

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Or actually getting the best one...ilevel 445 and knowing you'll have to get the exact same item but +ilevel next patch.

Burns said:

Obviously, if the leet players didn't see Mr & Mrs Casual switching sets and back, for every boss, they would get yelled at by the leets. This generated complaints ("wahhh, multiple sets r hard").

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I never got this argument every time I saw it on reddit. The players that gave a shit about m+ just simply didn't do m+ with the players that didn't have multiple sets.

It was yet another problem that blizzard felt they needed to solve for.. no real discernible reason lol.

I think this perfectly describes what happened between Legion and BFA. Fun detected.

Mist said:

LFR raids are harder than Normal raids.

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Only due to the magical combination of AFK Players, mouth-breathers, and cats-that-are-jumping-on-the-keyboard-while-human-is-away making up 75-95% of each LFR group.

Rime said:

Only due to the magical combination of AFK Players, mouth-breathers, and cats-that-are-jumping-on-the-keyboard-while-human-is-away making up 75-95% of each LFR group.

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I tried to get the 15th anniversay mount but quit after the 4th failure of TLK. At some point, they are going to have to design LFR raids around a simple DPS check and nothing more. Most online games have way too many idiots in them and no way to weed them out. World of Tanks is common to see people with 50,000, 75,000, 100,000. 150,000 games under their belt and they still don't know anything about basic mechanics of how the game is designed. I ran into a guy the other day that had 144 ,000 games played and had appalling stats....almost every single player that ever played was better than he was.

As someone who had never heard of those Corgi Goggles, they do look amazing. I can see where the salt is coming from.

It's been a while since I joined one and stayed, but the one I did stay with.. I didnt even think about "what I could be doing". I just didnt care that much lol. I lead them all the way through Naxx and we still kept a good pace for a bunch of casuals in WoTLK. Didnt start to have problems up until Ulduar, but that was more of a schedule crunch for the main family.

Neranja said:

But it shouldn't be, as in: There should be a really good incentive for Blizzard to listen to player feedback before the situation escalates and lots of people unsubscribe, after it will only get harder for them to win them back. Which is the point where the bean counters start breathing down the necks of the designers. Remember the first time that happened with the Cataclysm heroic difficulty, and how Ghostcrawler tried to make a stand for the long-term health of the game? But everyone wanted heroics to be a loot pinata. If Blizzard would have dialed down some of the heroics in Cataclysm and introduced a basic Mythic+ system at the same time the current state of the game would be totally different.

Let me repeat myself here: The biggest problem Blizzard has with WoW is the current playerbase. Management doesn't want them to upset the remaining loyal subscribers, but at the same time they have lost so many players throughout the years that it's mind boggling. Take LFR for example, which has basically killed raiding at the low end and many family and friends guilds at the low end. This ended the social relationship network people had in the game, was a huge driving factor for player retention. But they can't get rid of it now, because it would upset the remaining loyal bottom end of the raiding spectrum.

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Sure, I will agree that they should listen to people but they don't. They also have a lot of information we don't as far as population numbers and metrics.

I don't think LFR killed family guilds. I think hero worship and everyone thinking they should be in a mythic guild that takes anyone has. I don't know about many servers but on mine there are 20 guilds spamming daily that they need people for mythic and every idiot thinks they can do it.

The society of the game has changed where no one wants to be on a bench and build a community. Everyone wants to log in, get some loot and then use the LFG tools to group with randoms.