Awesomelaser

Yo have to admit- its a good trick to get the devs believing it. . .

I'm pretty sure he didn't mean the logs are personal only, though if they were I'd be fine with it. It means less tools for pugs to be successfult, but on content where dps matters, I've always been a fan of guild runs anyway. And guilds doing content where dps matters will make you submit your personal logs, so it wouldn't make much of a difference there.

Yes, and the easy availability of such gear isn't a good thing, IMO. Everyone wants the shiny, so BW makes it available too easy, and raid progression becomes too easy. I do not want to hit 50 and be decked out in a full set of awesome gear within a couple of weeks. I'd rather work for it and have it mean something. And if I move forward to the next raid, I want it to be because my team has progressed and earned the right to be there.

I haven't raided in is game yet, no. But I assume you get commendations as drops from bosses in the raids? I raided for about a year a couple of years back- never with pugs, but certainly not hard core. I respect the hard core raiders, though. My thought was not to increase the work at all for raiders, but to address the problem (as I see it) that getting raid ready gear from non raid sources causes.

Yes, which is why it is better if there is only one path for stat upgrades for beating raids- with multiple ways to earn the same gear, people get the gear faster and the content is beaten faster. My proposal is to make raiding a pure stat grind while allowing everyone to take part in wearing cool looking gear by allowing multiple paths to the cool looking gear. If it was craft able, as has been suggested, then it's all about earning credits and trading for the best looking gear. But that aspect of the game can be totally separated from the stat grind that keeps the raids going.

I dunno- I think of gear as simething you wear that people can see. Probably an incorrect definition- I was up too late when I wrote this, tbh.

Seems to be pretty positive feedback for this- I hadn't thought of how this in terms of craftable oranges, but I see how it would be a nice intersection between sandbox and theme park play. I think the mod system is really cool, I just would like to see it taken advantage of.

I think the general complaint is that raiding is only one way to earn rewards. Stat upgrades are essential to raid progression, and my belief is that allowing these stats to be earned outside of raids hurts the raid progression cycle because then the gear gets acquired too fast, or people star skipping ahead- all which makes the content get burned through quickly. And really, the stats aren't needed for other end game endeavors. The same goes with PvP stats, which are tweaked differently. That being said, there are lots of ways people play the game and are successful who will visually want to show off their success- to me raiding is really the only thing that I care enough to work at, but I know PvP, leveling alts (measured through legacy xp), and crafting are other things people spend time on once they hit the max level. If people are going to work through the game in a non-raiding way, they'll want to get rewarded too, and who's to say which is a better way to play the game more worthy of a reward? Really, we ought not to hold our own way of playing above others- and when someone sees the vid of the BA gunslinger space cowboy, they are going to want to be able to have a fun path through the game that will lead to that cool look.

Well, that's what I was trying to address. I guess, though, it depends on what you think of as a reward. To me stats are just tools used to do more hard hitting content, where a new "look" is the reward. In a well balanced MMO, I would expect not to get through all the nightmare ops, but at least be able to clear the normal ops and work on hard modes- this should keep me busy while devs work on new content. It would not bother me in the slightest that more hard core folks had better stats than me, but I'd love the chance at some great looking gear- the same chance that a guy who never steps in a op would have.

That's sad, because I really enjoy raiding, even if I don't get to do it as much as I'd like.

Well that's not what I was going for- obviously there has to be some reward to keep people going. That's true of any part of this- if there's no reward for maxing crafting, people won't- if there's nothing to gain from questing, people won't. What if there were no levels and the whole game was just a bunch of quests with no rewards? People wouldn't do them. But my point is that the mod system could allow BW to keep the stat carrot around (that is really only useful for raiders trying to unlock more hard hitting PvE content) while still letting everyone have access to the best looking gear and earn it in a variety of different ways (and it would still take effort, because the best looking gear could require a metric ton of commendations).

What if only mods were dropped in raids (and only the best PvE mods) to enable raid progression? The same could be done with PvP mods for PvP effort, and the best looking orange gear could be purchased with commendations (no mods). Through this system, those that want to grind end game stats (raid or PvP) could, while those who don't want to can still earn the best looking gear in the game. Seems to me that would allow people to play as casually or hard core as they want, or somewhere in the middle.

So what is the alternative to a gear grind? How else are they going to motivate players to keep playing the same content for 6 months while they create new content? What form of "progression" are you thinking of that will enable developers to create content that will keep people busy while they work on the next content patch? FWIW, I stopped playing WoW altogether when my wife got pregnant (I was running a casual raiding guild), so I understand where you're coming from- but now I have more free time to play so I want something to do with my game time. I don't plan on sleeping 3 hours so I can chew through content, but if you can get everyone geared through a handful of runs through a raid, even for someone like me I'm going to get bored very quickly when I finally get to 50.

The obvious solution here is to have people be able to earn cool looking oranges through whatever means they like- pvp/crafting/grinding dailies/raiding. Have them be purchasable through commendations. Then make the best pve mods drop from bosses and pvp mods earned through pvp. If raids ONLY dropped mods that kept the raid grind going, would that keep everyone happy, or would raiders QQ about sharing their look and non-raiders QQ that they can't have the best stats? Probably they would, but it still seems like a good solution to me. I will say, of all the doomsday stuff I've read on this forum, OP is the first that has given me pause. I am only level 34, but I plan to raid at 50 and I don't really want to level more toons. If I get all the available gear in a few weeks of hitting 50, I will get board really fast.