World of Warcraft: Current Year

Caeden_sl said:

I personally enjoyed SH, GB and Stonecore. (Although I wanted to cut someone over the opening trash packs there sometimes)

I would prefer it be like tbc with some heroic blues being very good. (devil shark cape anyone?!) they should be on par with lfr and feed to the new normal (flex). Hell, I might even make the gear blue but higher ilvl than lfr if they're genuinely tough.

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Cata dungeons weren't even that hard, we had the achievements done in the first week of Cata. They were just fun.

I think the whole risk vs reward idea is starting to become a bit long in the tooth. I think it might be a good idea to put all raid difficulties and 5 man heroics on the same base ilvl. You could reward the higher difficulties with achievements and higher chances of getting good rolls on the random stats.

I'd love if they managed to make 5-mans and raids rougly on par, both in difficulty and rewards. put normal dungeons between LFR and normal raiding difficulty, heroic dungeons and heroic raids similar, and mythic raids for the prestige hardcore raiding. No dungeon equivalent to the mythic raids.

They need to give out participation and honorable mention trophies, maybe provide the minimal level of aid and support for people attempting the content and trying to get their epics.

I think they need to rip scenarios out and make flex normal and mythic then put blues and greens at best in LFR. I don't mind the upgrade system so long as gear is only drops

Five mans? Tbc model with maybe challenge modes like now. In fact, MgT would be a great target for difficulty. My god that place was divine.

I will chuckle now that Furor is back on it if beta patch one is a huge nerf to hybrids and a return to old balance. Though I think that was more Kaplan than anyone. Still, some old guard are back. GC made it sound as if his position was disappearing or being spread out to the remaining leads.

I guess in the transition from FoH to rerolled you guys must have lost your balls. A few pages back you was bitching about PvP on PvP servers and now you want meaningful five man content? I just hope I was being trolled with five man loot being on par with raid loot. They put challenge modes in place to make the five man crowd happy. I will agree that raiding has lost its luster because of all the difficulty toggle switches they have now . People just burn themselves out because of all the ease of accessibility in todays game. For them to change their model now to cater to smaller groups is just absurd after they took the better part of an expansion to bring raids to the forefront. Not to mention ball busting hardcore five man groups is way beyond todays mmo player. If progression was funneled through five mans again it would be nerfed just like when they had to do it in Cata.

People talk like they nerfed it in response to bitching, but isn't that intentional on their part? Release content, make it at a certain level of higher difficulty. This gives the people concerned with world firsts and races and challenging content something to do. Then over time they do a combination of nerfing and things like "buff while on this raid" to open it up to more people, once the more-hardcore crowd has either already done it or isn't able to progress anymore anyways. All about getting more ROI from the content they created.

GonzytheMage_sl said:

I just hope I was being trolled with five man loot being on par with raid loot.

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I have never been convinced that it's a good idea to have raids drop better loot than other content. Sure, I have benefited a lot from it, but I think its poor design since it makes it very hard to create any other kind of meaningful content. Don't get me wrong, I think raiding should have perks, but it would be better if they did not make your character perform significantly better than if you geared up some other way.

I do know that I constantly try to improve my gear with only one end goal and that is to be viable in my guilds raid progression. We mostly do normal mode, so it's not like I *have* to go balls out and min/max everything but when things like trinkets and tier bonuses from the current tier in all difficulties (LFR, Flex, Normal) are so much better than my upgraded normal mode stuff from last tier, I feel like I should be taking all available opportunities for a chance at that gear even though it means running the same raid 3 times in any given week.

I don't know the best solution, but I do know that I hate running the same shit over and over and again, especially when I get to the point where I am cherry picking certain pieces of gear. God forbid it's on the last boss of a wing and fuck Blizzard even more when I get shit from the loot table that I absolutely don't need and have gotten 4 other times already. It actually makes me miss Valor purchased gear because at least it was a guaranteed eventuality. What I definitely don't want to happen though is them going oh hey now you can get BiS stuff from 5-mans, LFR, Flex, Normal, Heroic, Mythic, and Fuck-You modes! And it's not because I'm against 5-mans or LFR but it's because I'm against both having a chance for viable loot therefore compelling me to do both. So it almost seems like it would be a good idea to say you can get your loot via A. or B. but not both. But even then, I somehow see that going wrong and one avenue being more fruitful than the other or something stupid like that.

As long as there's a single BiS stat hierarchy "raids" will have to drop the item level gear. As long as there are minimal support and enhancement abilities from either classes or gear there will be nothing more than a DPS measuring stick. The combination of the two led to gearscore.

On top of that they have watered down "raids" as much as possible, you're no longer coordinating multiple parties it's just bring XYZ types and meet the size. Obtaining loot in a raid is meant to be way more complex than Need/Greed and that's why people designed systems themselves like DKP and loot councils to handle it. If the loot system for "raids" is the same as a dungeon, it's just a dungeon with more people and not a raid. If you can't have the guild slut social engineering for stuff, you have a shitty system.

I havent used LFR so far, but you guys make it sound like its faceroll easy text-while-mouse-turning derpmode. If that's true, I dont see any problems with appropriately difficult dungeons giving better loot.

Its more of a question of man power why pay development time to make hard and harder dungeons when the majority just want a free pass for loot. It used to be welfare PvP epics, then it was badge gear, and now its lfr gear. You can want all day but the game company is going to take the path of least resistance (watering down raids) to cater to the general playerbase. This is why gamers need to either be happy for their sandboxes or keep hoping for some competition in the market. I personally just gave up and take what's developed and play it or unsub. A game going on ten years old isn't where i would go looking for innovation even though Blizzard still leads the market in innovation. Where are you Titan.

The reason for different difficulties for dungeons is the same as for raids, retain as many different player types as possible. WoW is over the hill and they're not retooling the game into something entirely different, but dungeons arent a new concept, and they've got a couple per expansion. Its no big deal to make "wow this is difficult" and "rape you to death" difficulties alongside the current "let your cat play" and "mouse-only challenge" difficulty settings.

Mr Creed_sl said:

I havent used LFR so far, but you guys make it sound like its faceroll easy text-while-mouse-turning derpmode. If that's true, I dont see any problems with appropriately difficult dungeons giving better loot.

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That's not the problem though. The issue now with SoO especially, is that LFR (and Flex) gear is better than normal mode ToT gear and you have a shot at getting both. So now, if you don't get it in your normal, it's still good for you to run a flex for a shot at it and then if you miss it there it's worth it to also run LFR to completely maximize your upgrade potential because at all three difficulties the item is still an upgrade. Yes I know you could simply choose to not do it, but most raiders who play to progress with some level of seriousness will feel like they are compelled to because not doing so would leave potential upgrades on the table that could help you satisfy your ultimate goal of raiding normal or heroic with your guild.

JTheRuler_sl said:

That's not the problem though. The issue now with SoO especially, is that LFR (and Flex) gear is better than normal mode ToT gear and you have a shot at getting both. So now, if you don't get it in your normal, it's still good for you to run a flex for a shot at it and then if you miss it there it's worth it to also run LFR to completely maximize your upgrade potential because at all three difficulties the item is still an upgrade. Yes I know you could simply choose to not do it, but most raiders who play to progress with some level of seriousness will feel like they are compelled to because not doing so would leave potential upgrades on the table that could help you satisfy your ultimate goal of raiding normal or heroic with your guild.

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This type of logic always makes me think that someone could save all these poor fools if they made a phone app that measured every aspect of real life like an MMO. If you lift weights your strength goes up. If you do cardio your stamina and agility go up. If you are coding a game your C++ or whatever programming skill goes up, and so on and so forth. To bad it's pretty much impossible lol.

Ortega_sl said:

This type of logic always makes me think that someone could save all these poor fools if they made a phone app that measured every aspect of real life like an MMO. If you lift weights your strength goes up. If you do cardio your stamina and agility go up. If you are coding a game your C++ or whatever programming skill goes up, and so on and so forth. To bad it's pretty much impossible lol.

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I don't get it... Are you trying to make a min/max joke? Are you one of those "I play to have fun, bros," type of guys that doesn't do guild raiding?

GonzytheMage_sl said:

Its more of a question of man power why pay development time to make hard and harder dungeons when the majority just want a free pass for loot. It used to be welfare PvP epics, then it was badge gear, and now its lfr gear. You can want all day but the game company is going to take the path of least resistance (watering down raids) to cater to the general playerbase. This is why gamers need to either be happy for their sandboxes or keep hoping for some competition in the market. I personally just gave up and take what's developed and play it or unsub. A game going on ten years old isn't where i would go looking for innovation even though Blizzard still leads the market in innovation. Where are you Titan.

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Clearly most players want to upgrade their gear. In fact, a constant stream of upgrades is probably a very efficient way of keeping people that are only moderately interested in the game playing. This is really why I think loot should be the base line "thank you for playing" reward. That is, do whatever activity you like the most for a appropriate amount of time and collect your loot. Want more challenge, great! You still get the same loot, but you get other stuff on top of that like titles, achievements and other epeen stuff. If the only way we can enjoy raids is if they result in us having better stuff than the other players that would indicate that raids are not actually fun. If we look at other games, many people chose higher difficulties even though they rarely result in them getting better gear.

Mr Creed_sl said:

I havent used LFR so far, but you guys make it sound like its faceroll easy text-while-mouse-turning derpmode. If that's true, I dont see any problems with appropriately difficult dungeons giving better loot.

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The main difficulty in a LFRs is the other players. With a competent raid LFRs are clearly trivial. However, a bad LFR can be pretty nightmarish. My personal favorite is players that queue as tanks to get a shorter queue but clearly never tanked before (and are illiterate or just refuse to communicate).