It’s that time again where I’m feeling the need to step away from World of Warcraft for a few weeks to get my life straightened out a little. But in reality I’m somewhat frustrated with the game. Most of what I do is LFR but it’s just a tedious grind at this point that lacks any substantial rewards. The loot system is particularly atrocious most of the time and pretty discouraging overall.
More than that, the average group quality is severely lacking. I’m not the greatest player in the world by far but I find the attitudes of players in LFR to be at the bottom of the barrel. I’m somewhat desensitized by the whole thing and pretty much examine that world with great cynicism. Now, I could deal with this issue but it gets compounded when you wait for long periods only to get into some of the worst groups possible. There isn’t any compensation for the times when you get griefed by LFR, especially after waiting 30+ minutes for a queue to pop. It just isn’t worth the time.
Looking ahead to patch 5.4, I’m actually not excited at all by that patch. It’s quite obvious that Blizzard is attempting to make Flex Raids a success by lowering the loot ilvl rewards and taking out valor point gear. What this means is that gearing will be entirely up to that crappy random loot generator and meaningless coin rolls. At the moment, I’ve heard that the average drop rate for the current tier is between 15-17%. If these numbers stick into patch 5.4, then that means anyone not doing normal nor heroic raids will be gearing extremely slowly. Now, I have my interpretations of all this so bear with me. The thing is that with the removal of valor gear, you only can use the Siege of Orgrimmar to improve beyond what the vendors from the Shado-Pan Assault and ToT provide. In turn, valor points themselves will only be used to improve the ilvls for gear.
So here’s my interpretation of how all this is intended and will end up working out. Blizzard essentially wants to draw out patch 5.4 until the next expansion, aiming this dangling carrot in front of casuals. So they’ve somehow mathematically figured out a rate for people to gear up based on randomization. Considering that patch 5.4 is coming out on September 10th, I don’t expect the expansion to be released this year (if Blizzard does release anything, it’ll be a full version of Hearthstone for Christmas). More than likely, the expansion will be released next year around say April (and may coincide near the release of the Diablo 3 expansion to get some sort of joint marketing). That will provide seven months of gearing as well as leaving room for people to play Hearthstone for a few months and give that game some momentum without taking away anything from the other titles. So in truth, the real bulk of this patch will be played out over the next three months.
Yet for the average person who probably will rely on LFR still, the gear progression will be exceedingly bad. Right now, you can get roughly 1 useful item a week. This progression will be cut even lower since you won’t be able to plan your gear progression anymore. The end result will be something similar to Diablo 3 and we all know what happened to that game.
So people already are complaining about the issues with the loot system. Just like Diablo 3, the random loot system is just not satisfying, which is why the people working on Diablo 3 at the moment have been forced to revamp how loot works. Yet despite the protection buff against bad rolls that you get supposedly, people still get crap loot which causes immense amounts of frustration.
I have a feeling that the way things will play out is that LFR itself will be pretty easy (except for the usual cast of griefers and n00bz) so Blizzard won’t be making any adjustments to that. Their eyeballs will be on the Flex Raid system. Everyone has high hopes for it so if Flex Raid proves too hard then people will fall back to LFR because Flex Raids won’t be the cure that everyone is looking for in the end. Either way, people still will be subjected to the horrible loot system. As Pugs on servers fail for Flex Raids, people will specifically target the loot system as being a huge part of their frustration. The thing is that you’re still being subjected to all the problems of a Pug no matter what but here you’re at the mercy of a crappy loot system that will make the situation psychologically worse.
Since this is the last raiding tier of the expansion, Blizzard usually introduces various nerfs progressively to entice people into the harder modes of raiding. However, I think that most people still won’t want to do normals and may even become disillusioned with Flex Raiding. Instead, people will continue to cry about the broken loot system, which will have a severely low drop percentage rate. So that’s the part which will progressively increase over time as the expansion nears.
The thing is that I think people will drop out after 2 months of Flex Raids and LFR similar to what we’re seeing now. As the difficulty levels of these systems should be mostly tuned appropriately (unless they completely miss the ball again and produce another Durumu, Lei Shen or Garalon), the only way Blizzard can re-entice people to return is through improving the drop percentage rate. However, I think by this point most people will be completely turned off by the situation and will be setting their sights on games like Final Fantasy or Hearthstone.
We might see a small percentage of returnees once patch 5.4 is released because it’s the end of the expansion and it represents a major tier of content. However, I also think that what’s planned will end up being really disappointing and may cut off another few hundred thousand subscribers. Right now, the way things are being set up it’s too focused on trying to funnel people towards Flex Raids but not improving the overall experience of the game. Sure, there’s the Timeless Isle but that’s experimental and not entirely a sole reason to continue playing the game. Similarly, I don’t think Flex Raids will be that answer everyone desperately is looking for.
Instead, what’s necessary is the illusion of success. First, Flex Raids has to be made on the difficulty level of the current LFR (if not easier). It needs to be so easy that a Pug can complete with at most one wipe. That’s the requirement. Second, the drop rates for the randomized loot need to be set to 25-30%. Since there hasn’t been any improvement to how we can select a certain piece of loot from these tables, then we need to reduce the probability of failure for consistently missing key pieces. Without Valor gear that can substitute for drops in raids, it’s highly possible that someone can run LFR or Flex Raids for weeks without improving their gear.
Now, Blizzard might retort, “Well, if everyone gears up too fast, then they’ll just leave!” Let’s be honest here. People are leaving already because they’re sick of the current system. It really burns you out and discourages you when you’ve worked for hours or waited for hours just to get something you really want. So here’s the important question Blizzard needs to admit to themselves: do you want your players to leave on a high note or a low note? From what I’ve been seeing, people are leaving in droves on low notes because they’re too frustrated. At least, if people gear up and leave, it’s because they’re at a content state and can move on with their lives rather than not ever wanting to come back because Blizzard is too greedy and continues to create discouraging dangling carrot situations.
There’s also this group out there that complains about loot dropping out from everywhere. That’s not really the case. That’s a hyperbole created from people living in a small, shallow world. The thing is that Blizzard provided the ability for access to loot for everyone so that the content does not go to waste. Exclusive content doesn’t do anyone besides a few egomaniacs any good. Loot in particular has no meaning as I mentioned in a previous post and acts as a function. The only types of loot that might have some semblance of meaning is vanity gear (hence the name “vanity”) and heroic gear. Epic loot has forever had a misappropriated stigma and demonstrates just how divisive some people can be. But it exist for a reason, not just to show off to others.
I have a feeling that the people who think along those lines grew up (literally grew up) with World of Warcraft as their first major RPG. But if you play enough RPGs, you’ll realize that loot/gear/magic items are a necessity in helping adventurers perform better. Since the game is dependent upon others for the most part, it only serves the community at large better for everyone to have the best gear possible.
The thing is that the game is on a decline. I don’t care what all the supporters say, but numbers don’t lie. The game back in the day was designed around the dangling carrot, but that business model can’t sustain the game any longer. It has to move away from that model to a more community and individual serving model. It has made some progress but many more steps are needed since the engine itself has limitations on improvements. But at the very least, improving the drop rate should prevent people from complaining as much and that always has to be a positive.
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