Among the criticisms he makes regarding Battle for Azeroth, one that resonated a bit with me was the distinction between Fulfillment and Excitement. Essentially, Blizzard used to give you a 8% chance to get a specific piece of gear that was your Best-in-Slot piece. It might take a long time to get it, but once you finally got it, it was an event. You were complete. Done.
When Titanforging was introduced though, suddenly BiS gear was rendered largely impossible. You might receive your “BiS” piece, but if it didn’t proc with an extra gem socket and/or numerous bonus stats, it wasn’t actually BiS. Moreover, it was entirely possible that someone just dicking around in Warfronts could luck into a piece of gear that surpassed something that dropped from Mythic Uldir.
What I did not realize at the time was how destructive that notion really is. You are never “done.” And not just in a “there will always be another content patch with better loot” kind of way, but in a more literal “never experience satisfaction in current content” way.
Then he offers a “solution” to the “problem”. Except there is no problem. Titanforging is annoying by design. Just like everything in WoW, it’s getting worse not by mistake, but after careful testing. The reason: we aren’t the target audience. The moron is. The one who is “dicking around in Warfronts”. He doesn’t want to do quality work (top raiding). He doesn’t want to do quantity work (farming tokens). He just want to get top gear for nothing. Since giving top gear to everyone would make it not top, gambling is introduced. Now everything you do in WoW is essentially buying a lottery ticket. Every mob is a ticket that can give you a jackpot. This is awesome according to the morons and slackers who made the gambling industry rich.
Remember the days when WoW was designed to force good players to carry M&S into performance? Those were the good days. Now there is not even the illusion of performance anymore. Just gambling.
It’ll get worse, believe me. Next expansion you’ll be all whining “back in the days of BfA…”.
.
PS: I did OK. The enemy was … well, random battles:
Gear resets and mudflation has always been the way of Blizzard design since day one. Why are we still talking about it almost 14 years since Dire Maul/UBRS/LBRS started the whole affair in Vanilla?
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@NoGuff: back then at least you had to do a new and challenging content to get the new gear. Now you just have to get lucky with the random drop.
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Did you check the video at 6:32?
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I wonder if the release of classic will act as a testing ground to see if the current market is more willing to support a skill based mmo over one focused on gambling.
I might be giving blizzard far to much credit but I could see classic assuming they don’t change it to cater to terrible players as a way to test the waters on designing a new mmo.
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The problem with Auzerials concept of ‘done’ is that if people get all the gear from a raid, then they stop raiding. It is in Blizzards best interest to keep the carrot one step ahead of the player, because if someone is done with the content then they stop raiding, and I assume the chance of them to stop playing completely increases greatly. This then becomes a trade off between the lack of fulfillment described, and players achieving something that results in a them quitting.
The concept of achieving Mythic raid quality gear from “dicking around in Warfronts” is a different matter, but presumably for the same reason, in that someone who only dicks around win warfrants will continue to subscribe if there is a small chance that they can continue to achieve better gear.
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That is why you make “done” a very long goal, instead of a 3 week goal. So BiS only completes in the later half or third of the tier.
Of course they won’t do this because morons would never complete their BiS in within one tier and get stuck on bosses forever (hence titanforging to soft-nerf the raid over time).
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WoW now teaches a real life lesson: remember means are means, not ends.
Gear is a tool. It should be used to achieve some goal, not gathered as an end in itself. If you have enough gear to achieve the goal, then you have enough gear.
Indeed, now there is no BIS gear, then it may force certain guilds to actually evaluate the gear and the player wearing it on merit, rather than outsourcing judgment to ilevels.
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