The Man Behind the Loot Speaks

[@Indalamar]

I enjoyed your review. Context for people, I gave this talk 2 years ago, I haven't worked on WoW personally in almost 7 years, and I left the company last year so I'm not part of the development team. The ideas expressed here were my personally take aways and lessons from working with WoW and Diablo reward systems. I wanted to give the talk mostly to give people insight and perspective to help other developers who may be tackling similar problems on their own games.

[@tukkek]

Hi Travis, have your views on WoW (or loot in general) changed since you wrote this comment a few months ago? On top of that, would you recommend any particular resources about loot to a fellow designer not necessarily working on MMOs or loot-based aRPGs but more on the traditional cRPG and JRPG side of things? There seem to be a lot of interesting GDC talks on the topic (like yours) but with so many great talks to go through and limited time, I'd love to have a bona-fide expert on RPG loot point anything particulalyr worthwhile my way (including books, articles, etc). Thanks a lot, if you can even find the time to read and reply to this!

[@ModeKaioken]

Sad part is out of every expansion, which I did play, I enjoyed the badge of justice system the most as I felt it gave me the most control over my progression. Oddly at the same time you could target pvp gear to buy with honor and I thought that was the best iteration of that too. I think having power to pick what you grinded towards made it more interesting and motivating to try content you didn't normally try. For example if you never did pvp you still might be interested because maybe you needed a bracer and there was a pvp option you could get relatively fast. The type of reward structure made you want to venture outside your normal play style in a fun conquest to gearing up on a progression path you created yourself. When your forced into content fearing you'll be behind without the reward I find pushes me away because it feels more like Im a hamster on a wheel then exploring content I find interesting.

[@choonbox]

Justice/Valor Points & Honor/Conquest Points

[@durandal4546]

TL;DR back when WoW was actually good and /felt/ good to play? oh yeah. I remember that....... :')

[@Traumglanz]

And in most of those iterations you still had plenty of random loot as well.

[@BilguunsparKO]

it's funny people who can't wait for vanilla gonna get really upset with it

[@durandal4546]

Best gearing was hands down WOTLK. You had some rng involved but you also had set goals with badge grinding to do. Azerite residue system is a step in the right direction but...too expensive. The point is to avoid some rng. Not get random loot from that system as well, blizzard.

[@M0du5Pwn3n5]

That isn't quite what the overjustification effect is about. It isn't just that rewards cause people to do things they aren't intrinsically interested in and removing the reward consequently causes them to stop playing. The point of overjustification is that when you offer a reward to people for something and then remove that reward, their motivation to perform that actually doesn't just return to the pre-reward state, it gets worse than if you hadn't offered a reward in the first place. It isn't about situations where something wasn't fun, but a reward got you to do it, and then you stopped because the reward stopped. That's an obvious problem that anyone with a brain can diagnose. You don't need experience to tell you that if the only reason people are doing an un-fun thing is the reward, they'll stop if you stop rewarding it. Overjustification is about situations where something was engaging enough for you to do it without a reward, and a reward made it even more engaging, but when the reward stopped you basically forgot that it was intrinsically engaging and quit anyway. Which is a huge problem for reward structures in game design - as soon as you add a reward to any activity, you have to keep offering rewards or people basically forget that the activity is actually itself a fun activity. A better example than WoW would be to look at something like Overwatch. Most people are presumably not playing Overwatch for the loot box rewards. Most people who are playing it are playing it because they think it's fun - they're not forcing themselves to play because they want loot boxes (obviously some are, but not most, and Overwatch's reward scheme is pretty simple compared to something like WoW). The loot boxes definitely make it more engaging though - they might make you play a bit longer than you intended, they might make you decide "eh, I could play one more game before bed", they might make you slightly more excited about winning a game. It isn't that the loot boxes are papering over a fundamentally boring game. It isn't that there are tons of people who have been tricked by the loot boxes into playing a game they don't enjoy. But nevertheless, if they removed the loot boxes it would probably be disastrous. The falloff in engagement would be WAY worse than if they had never put the loot boxes in there in the first place. You see this happen in other unlock-based shooters: people who are playing mostly because they enjoy the competitive shooter, who were happy playing older entries in the series that didn't have unlocks at all, stop playing nearly as much as soon as they've unlocked everything in the modern ones. That's overjustification. The classic experiment here has two groups of people solving puzzles. They come in on three different days. Each day, they get a break - during the break they can mess with the puzzle or they can do whatever they want. The first day, both groups do the same thing and no one gets paid, and the people in both groups are equally likely to spend their break messing with the puzzle. The second day, one group gets paid and the the other doesn't. The group that gets paid messes with the puzzle significantly more during the break (no real surprise there). The overjustification effect happens on the third day: both groups are unpaid again. You might expect it would be like day 1 again since it's the same setup, but it isn't (you might alternatively expect that the group that was paid on Day 2 would mess with the puzzle more during their break again because they remember being paid to do so before, but they don't do that either). In fact, they mess with the puzzle LESS during their break. This funnels into the thing you were saying about "solutions to problems that no longer exist". The problem of overjustification occurs in that situation. If you have a system that's broken, so you change rewards to help incentivize it anyway, then you fix the broken part, you can't just remove the rewards now. If you do, motivation doesn't just regress down to the intrinsic motivation of the fixed system (as if it had been fixed from the start and the rewards had never existed) - motivation goes down more than that.

[@whiskizyo2067]

"as soon as you add a reward to any activity, you have to keep offering rewards or people basically forget that the activity is actually itself a fun activity." Problem with BfA is most activities aren't intrinsically fun (worlds quests, islands expos, warfronts any1?) Then on top the rewards suck as well. Too much rng for some (titanforging) just plain suck for others (azerite power) and too easily accessible (titanforging, high ilvl gear on easy content like AFK warfronts etc)

[@M0du5Pwn3n5]

@@whiskizyo2067 I totally agree. I am definitely not saying that boring things papered over with extrinsic rewards aren't a problem, just that they aren't the problem the guy was trying (pretty clumsily) to talk about. He was trying to talk about a subtler problem that can occur even with fun gameplay and well-designed rewards.

[@HiddenEvilStudios]

Very well said.

[@Marclivis]

Commenting so I can reference this later. Watching Day's talk I was just shaking my head. They "learned" so many wrong lessons over the years. They made assumptions and thought they understood things, made the wrong conclusions, and have just drilled down that road for years now. Their view and philosophy is so fundamentally broken now.

[@kyubii972]

I could say that happened from legion to battle for azeroth, mythic plus is far less rewarding now. Although I as a player still find them interesting I haven't done Beyond a plus 4. Just because I don't really get any artifact power for it and the azerite gear isn't worth my time.

[@kalad2405]

I just want to mention the "carrot on a stick". It's all well and good, as long as it is possible to obtain. One we figure out that the carrot isn't obtainable, we stop trying, and just go with the hay that's in the trough, because it'll sustain us anyway. I actually find the Titan Residuum vendor a step in the right direction. As a prot warrior, the C'thraxxi Binders Pauldrons are amazing, and I know that if I get that at 415, I will have obtained my carrot. But that's only doable on 3 pieces of gear.

[@aylmao9045]

1. I don't remember people stopping to play when they were BiS in vanilla, or TBC, they actually played more because they were more OP.If you became bilionare in real life, would you just stop earning money, or become even more richer? 2. Can't find vendors, what do you mean??? I can remember 100 mehanics of a boss, every single zone, quest and NPC, but I can't remember a vendors location??? 3. Adding every item to a vendor was a mistake, adding badges to drop from everything wasn't. Gearing in TBC was best up to T6 since your pieces would come from alot of different sources. 4. Unique items & abilities made game fun for alot of people, since they allowed people to explore the game and do alot of cool stuff. 5. If they really want to balance out the game, then they should play the game and listen to the community. Can you just admit that your game is shit, and then work on fixing it? Edit: I feel sad for people who didn't experience old style of MMORPGs. Hopefuly one day you do, then you will understand how it is to see a guy with BiS gear in the game, one shotting people. A player who can instantly buy BiS gear from the next patch when it arrives (talking about BoEs, Recipies). A player with 1% drop chance item, that has insane effects like Felstriker dagger or Ironfoe mace, or maybe even a legendary. Then you will realised that gold that you would use to buy strong gear is changed for mounts and pets. Drop chance for rare (talking about 1% drops) items is changed for mounts and pets. And then ask yourself: Would you rather have WoW developers to work on improving the game in this case on the loot system which is the worst it has ever been, or to work on creating a Pokemon GO version of Battle Pets?

[@Murzac]

Well technically for #1 the problem with that analogy is that it'd be more like asking whether you'd stop earning money when you get so rich that you can't get any richer. If you're in BiS gear you can't get any more powerful, period. You have reached the maximum so you won't really gain anything in terms of power from playing more. At least not in the immediate future. When the next patch hits if you've got shitloads of currency from the playing then yeah sure you'll hit the cap faster next time but for the moment it won't do you any good.

[@Mr91Jmay]

Badges dropped from too many things. Should make it only raids, doing braindead dungeons for badges in WOTLK onwards was stupid.

[@cloudstrife2131]

FFXIV uses the "salary" system for gearing with the tomestones. Now if it's so bad, you have to wonder why all wowfugees are flocking there...

[@Argonaut1ka]

Just to point 1, I do know a lot of people who when reaching BiS in Vanilla and TBC (although yes more so in Wrath - BfA) that would play for a bit, enjoy reaching that peak, and then stop until new content came out. And I knew even more people, myself included, who would have wanted to stop, but didn't because they felt they had to support the guild that helped them reach that point by continuing to play. And, for me, were I a billionaire I for sure wouldn't care about making more money. I likely would make more money because such a large amount of money will make money on it's own with investments, but I sure wouldn't be doing anything just to earn more money. I say that while not being a billionaire of course, but I am already like that now given enough money to sustain my lifestyle. I know a good number of other people like that as well. EDIT: For points 2 and 3, the badges were absolutely annoying for a lot of people, being unable to find vendors is maybe not a great way to highlight how annoying it is. Just mentioning how many badges there were is enough to highlight how annoying it is imo. Different badges for each set, different badges for each tier of content, it was dumb. I do think there is a way to fix that while keeping badges. I actually like the current azerite scrapping thing is pretty good. Allow for drops and excitement for them (despite azerite not being exciting) but then allow for getting rid of them, or working up to gear over time if you keep doing content. I agree with the other points, I will say for point 4, they can definitely add interesting items that are also number based and able to be balanced. Hellfire Citadel in WoD is a great example of this. The trinkets in there were wacky and fun, Soul Capacitor and Spinners were great, giving effects you can see and play around with, but they were number based. And I can *see* they didn't even like that and you no longer even get trinkets like that.

[@aylmao9045]

Wotlk was the start of casual expansions. In TBC you had to grind rep to even access a HC dungeon. Grinding rep meant that you would spend alot of time, especialy as a casual player who had no organized guild that would do grind reps with him . In WOTLK you could just access them. In WOTLK they didn't tune dungeons to be as difficult and time consuming as in TBC, and later on LFD. So no item requierements, no reputation requierements and dungeons werent tuned to be as difficult as they were in TBC days. Also 10, 25 man raids, and later on normal & hc raids, LFD. Ofcourse you are gonna swim in badges, badges were never the problem in WOTLK. It was how you got them and what you could buy with them.

[@Kaypers]

I feel like Blizzard has less than 2 million subs for WoW at this point. I’ve never seen so many people leave so fast this early in the expansion.

[@ParadoxicGer]

In the West, without a doubt. Don't forget that Asia mostly plays in internet cafes so what one could consider a sub there is a bit muddled. But yeah, in the west I wouldn't be suprised if it's in the low 1 milions, like 1,2 or 1,3 mio.

[@Kim-tr5op]

@@ParadoxicGer rarely people play wow in asia

[@Metaphix]

WoD

[@Kim-tr5op]

@slim jim i said wow, not mmos. anyways if u compare mmos to mobas, mmos is almost non existant. China has 27 league of legends servers for instance.

[@TheUmbrex]

legion was still going strong at this point. it's insane to compare the interest in these 2 expansions at this relative time

[@nestorasbellas6604]

I was watching the red bar of the tube on display behind you being half way, and i was thinking there is plenty of time left in your video! I was shocked just before you said "bye bye" to the sudden realization that your video was about to finish!

[@volrag]

It does seem that they focused so much on what they perceived problems that they lost sight of the original goal. For instance is it really a problem that most loot seems to boil down to a maths problem (technically if you're good enough at maths that's always the case)? I don't think it is, I think the real problem is that it's a maths problem that the average player cannot solve in game. I thought they actually made some progress to this in WoD with the stat atunements basically telling you "this is your best secondary stat and you'll get more of it". Now I could understand if this extended to your second best secondary as well to really make it easier. Now I think that would work for the majority of the playerbase, because while you might get slightly better results with a more complicated stat build as long as they do it correctly it shouldn't be too massive a difference for the typical players to care about.

[@user-go7mc4ez1d]

I thought the most hilarious moment was when he was talking about how someone could ask him which item was better and he would be "erm I don't know, I split it three different ways and its complicated and errr".. I don't really see how this is a bad thing?? If it's that hard to differentiate between two items then just say fuck it and use whichever you want (or have both and swap between). Classic was fun precisely because it wasn't black and white which item was better or worse. Sometimes a green item would be miles better than an epic. But now we've just fallen into seeking the highest ilvl scores

[@Autipsy]

Preach, I haven’t played in years at this point but I still love your videos. Thanks for the consistently entertaining content!

[@KhamStronk]

I don't quite understand why Blizzard knows that just getting stats is boring, but then proceeds to remove stuff fury warrior Blood Thirst criticals enraging the warrior. That mechanic alone used to altered your play style and made boring stats "interesting". Reaching certain caps in order to smoothen out your rotation and being able to get closer to that maximum dps efficiency was fun to me. On the other hand I also understand that it sucks when you start a class and for 99% of the leveling and gearing process it plays vastly different from what you get once you're max level and have decent gear with stat caps in place. I don't know if I have a solution to this problem, I probably don't. I only know that I liked the previous system a lot better because I felt more powerful once I started getting somewhere. Right now the power curve of a character seems so flat and slow that I get bored of gearing. Everything's a 1 or 2 percent upgrade to your overall power that's not really felt, unless you get a big weapon upgrade, which doesn't happen anymore either because weapons don't drop from the final bosses anymore and their titanforging is reduced (not saying titanforging is fun). When I got Deathbringer's Will or the Betrayer of Humanity, those are moments I actually remember fondly. I can't remember any cool item from the past years of WoW except for the Warglaives from ToS and my max titanforged Toe Knee's Promise, because these items were broken as fuck and I could do ridiculous numbers in M+ with them. I rather have that than all those boring ass trinkets nobody wants but has to equip you get from Uldir or M+ nowadays. Anyways I quit the game and am pretty happy about it. It just doesn't feel fulfilling anymore.

[@ThePipeMonk]

They removed Blood Thirst? Woah !

[@HiddenEvilStudios]

@@ThePipeMonk Nah, Blood Thirst is still there for Fury, just the interaction with Crit is gone. Now it's just a random chance of...I think 25% to Enrage you.

[@KhamStronk]

@@ThePipeMonk No they didn't. They removed the chance for Bloodthirst to enrage the warrior based on his critical strike rating. Now Bloodthirst still enrages the warrior but it's a fixed 25 or 30 percent chance (not sure haven't played in a while). So basically now critical strike is relegated to an undesirable statistic, while the only thing you can do to keep your enrage up is stacking haste. Anyways that was just an example and probably a bad one, since the fury warrior actually plays well in BfA, I just wanted to point out that stat caps were something that could make your playstyle more interesting and/or powerful and making raw stats less boring in the process.

[@Nonamed70]

Your videos always hit the nail on the coffin man, its really great to see someone being so subjective and doing his own research! Keep going Preach

[@ajeba98]

18:15 The moment you realize your parents didn't know what they were doing and were full of shit the entire time and everyone was covering for them.

[@FaolanHart]

Honestly legit interesting video. Gonna go over & listen to the full thing.

[@zeidrichthorene]

You misunderstood the overjustification effect, and that's partly because he did a poor job of explaining it. It's not that a group of people who are extrinsically rewarded will do the thing for longer just because they're rewarded, it's actually kind of hte opposite. It's that people who are extrinsically rewarded will be more motivated to do it initially, but their desire to keep doing it will be directly and inextricably related to the reward. The people who do it without an extrinsic reward will not be as immediately motivated to do it, but they will continue to do it potentially forever, as long as the intrinsic reward goes away. Take something like PvP. Back when we had no PvP rewards, people enjoyed the southshore vs tarren mill battles for no reason at all. And people would have continued to do it, just because fighting with eachother is fun. But as soon as PvP reward systems came in, everyone stopped doing the world PvP. SS vs TM stopped, everything went to the BGs. And then participation in the BGs pretty much tie directly into how we reward people for them. Overjustification effect is not about "We need to keep giving better rewards to keep people interested." The overjustification effect is "Once we give an extrinsic motivator for a task, extrinsic rewards outshine intrinsic rewards, and this is not reversible." An easy example of the overjustification effect is this: I ask my friend to come over and help me move. He says "OK" because the intrinsic motivation he feels about helping out a friend is helping him want to do this. Now instead, imagine that I say "Hey, can you help me move? I'll pay you $10?". Now all of a sudden he stops thinking about helping me out, instead he thinks about the value of that $10 and how much he wants THAT, and how worth it is spending the hours that it will take to help me for just $10. He's way more likely to say no. Similarly, if I were to ask him to move, and offered to pay him $200, if he really wants that $200 then he might say yes, but if I continue to make requests like this, eventually the value of that payment isn't so meaningful, and he might figure he can just say no now, and say yes again later. But it's no longer a question of what he thinks of the process, what he thinks of the result, whether he actually enjoys it, but just about the relative value of the rewards. In the example of the kids with coloring, the overjustification effect is that the kids, who enjoy coloring, stop doing what they enjoy because they had previously been given a reward for it, and now that's been taken away. Or even if it's not been taken away, the decision on whether or not they color is based on the reward they get from it. In contrast, kids who just enjoy coloring will just color when they enjoy it. But the overjustification effect is the somewhat unexpected reality that extrinsic motivation reduces the capability to be intrinsically motivated to do a task, and the alignment of the decision to do that task with the reward.

[@user-go7mc4ez1d]

Totally agree, the problem is that Blizzard has felt the pressure to create a system that 'compels' people to play WoW for as long as humanly possible. They have decided that offering a constant stream of gradually improving extrinsic rewards will make people play for longer than if they relied on the more uncontrollable intrinsic reward. Their fear is that the intrinsic reward isn't controllable by them, it's down to how the players perceive the game. So they created a rat race because firstly, they can manipulate it, and secondly they can have a more reliable estimate for how long someone will play (until the gear/mounts run out).

[@kutyamen]

@@user-go7mc4ez1d Of course they did that, when the only thing the majority that play actually share as an interest is earning rewards, and of those the most common is player power. If Blizzard offered the most fun and incredible content ever seen by humanity and ploped it into the game, a fraction of the playerbase would even touch it without a reward system tied to it. Everyone LIKES being rewarded and most will always choose the activity that offers a reward. WoW was built upon the backs on a way too diverse group of players for development to please everyone(new Raids back in the day were not content for the VAST majority, despite often being the only real piece of content in a patch). By WotLK Blizzard finally peeled away the majority of their massive timegating used to extend content(overly slow leveling, lack of information available and extreme vagueness on objectives, slow travel and lack of fast travel options, low amount of rewards for the amount of players taking part in the instanced content, extreme lenght of instanced content, etc) which led to stalling the growth of the game as despite millions joining millions also left at the same rate, as people kinda chewed up the game far earlier and that showed its flaws far more, after all the fraction of the game you care for can only last so long if you are no longer slowed down artificially. And the only way to keep up with the demand was to make the majority take part in the content produced and the only way to do that is to tie the only thing the majority cares for into the content being worked on, REWARDS. WoW is in the end unsustainable because it was a directionless mess at the start and the community latched onto completely different directions, and the only thing that kept WoW from bleeding out with WotLK was making everything rewarding pushing everyone to do as much as possible in the game to stay rewarded. In the end if WoW was just an RP sandbox, or a Raiding simulator or a Dungeon Crawler it'd be a more stable experience, but when it is all of that and more and people want EVEN MORE added to it every expansion, the end result will always be that REWARDS need to make people do what content they can create regardless of liking or disliking that content because the majority of WoW players don't wanna raid, don't wanna do dungeons, don't wanna WPvP, don't wanna instanced PvP, don't wanna RP, don't wanna quest, don't wanna collect transmog, don't wanna collect pets, don't wanna collect achievements BUT DO WANT TO EARN REWARDS.

[@TheUmbrex]

Reason why i opted out of playing BfA was due to the fact that it felt like they dumbed down the game to keep people playing for longer.

[@Localpref416]

This, don't tell me I need to grind easy content to get titan forges because you put a weekly cap on Harder content.

[@eXileLies]

What do you mean by 'dumbed it down'? Has the game become easier or is less farming & grinding involved?

[@Metaphix]

@@eXileLies the class abilities are pretty much bare bones on a lot of the specs now, legion imo was perfect for class gameplay, most classes were fun and flowed well. Dunno why they felt they needed to make it simpler other than pandering to people who arent really fans of WoW. IT all started with the stupid fucking GCD change. We warned them too, mike told them their garbage systems were garbage. But they dont listen.

[@eXileLies]

@@Metaphix But WoW's classes were always 1 button classes since their inception. Whether it's spamming Shadowbolt, Frostbolt or sunder armor, was it not?

[@voinyhelvetti]

@@eXileLies most classes had more than 1 button to dps with since BC. Of course you COULD play any class by just spamming one button over and over again but you wouldn't get very far.

[@JabitHighlystrung]

IMO TBC / Wrath era had the best loot of Wow. There was a progression, crafting had reverence, I remember farming motes in TBC for The shadow frost set and it had a cool effect. I remember farming Titanite bars for The big doofy mace that I used before entering Nax. things like mongoose enchant drooping in raids. Badges were cool, and there was a clear progression tied to the gear that meant that you always had something to look forward to, instead of skiping all the raids before the current tier. Random loot makes the items loose that memorability even in mop we had things that were memorable Like the snapshot lock trinket from Lei Shen, the random items are boring and the Azeraite armour is boring because it's the same ability's with differing random stats there is no change real change up because your lazer focused on the best Abilities rolling on that Azerite peace if it doesn't its a dead item to you.

[@trulsrohk470]

Watched the video and loved the insight! I actually wish they did more presentations on the different aspects of design to give the playerbase a little more insight into the issues they encounter on a day to day basis and the lessons they learn. Instead of Q&A sessions that appear like more PR sessions to address issues at that point in time. Loved how open and honest he was. Also brought back a fair bit of nostalgia for BC and wrath lol

[@madaggar9765]

Man, I actually liked the badge system in Wrath, it let me set goals for an alt or two. Same thing in MoP (I skipped Cata), the character I ended up getting CE Garrosh on was an alt that I was having fun gearing up and playing around all the different procs, got recruited by a guild for not being terrible on a dying server. Then they gutted those in WoD, but kept deterministic rewards in PvP so I had goals through that for alts to get them decent enough gear to have fun with in comparison to my raiding main that had all the good stuff. Then Legion hit and every single character was funneled into the exact same skinner box with slightly different coloured levers. I took a break until the last patch after beating Gul'dan on Heroic, I just couldn't take the RNG anymore to push further. Taking a break again in BfA. As far as overjustification goes, it hit me with casual BGs. Vanilla, once they got added, through Wrath and then MoP through WoD I did "casual" BGs for fun and had a blast. MoP and WoD had conquest to gain from randoms, but that had a weekly cap that was pretty easy to hit if you won regularly. Then Legion introduced honor levels and prestige, which started making the BGs feel like a grind, but it wasn't that bad since there were fairly okay rewards every few honor levels once they decided to scrap the "lose and relearn honor talents" garbage system. For BfA they decided to not only greatly increase the time between the major rewards but they also got rid of all the small rewards, so I ended up getting 20+ honor levels with nothing to show for it except some stupid number going up in between getting rewards that I already had unlocked because the conversion from Legion to BfA was super well thought out. That, combined with just how far away the final reward is, actual months of solid playtime, really made casual BGs seem like a massive grind that wasn't fun. The biggest reason I'm taking a break from BfA is that even casual BGs are no longer fun for me and that was always my fall back activity to relax and have fun with the game in the past. I don't actually know why I typed all of that out, but whatever I guess.

[@Spulwarre]

Hey Preach, nice topic you made a video of. I really appreaciate your vids that cover such interesting stuff. Shows that you are a person who can think outside the box.

[@necrobale]

I loved this video mike. You should do more videos in this format.

[@chriseggroll]

This is a really interesting discussion and always tough to solve. I feel like towards the end of Legion they found the sweet spot of deterministic vs random: you could still drop legendaries, but also had titan essence where you could get one for sure every week or so depending on the content you did. You had catchup gear available, and Tier sets obtainable fairly easily from raids. In BFA you have just boring gear again and all the randomness on top of it, just not a good mix at all. The legendary effects were great as well, Azerite is no comparison.

[@benderbg]

They removed the RPG aspect and introduced casino aspect to the game. Its MMO ROULETTE now and people are getting tired of gambling on every corner.

[@HiddenEvilStudios]

It's no longer an MMORPG. It's not even an MMO anymore, since Blizzard's focus seems to have been on removing the two M's so all we're left with is a big, fat, gaping O.

[@elvianel]

This was a really good video, I love the commentary and thoughts that you have, very interesting to watch!

[@TheNickster1212]

Loving your videos recently Preach. Really interesting topics and discussion going on.

[@NateTheScot]

I watched the whole video and agreed with most of what he said completely, EXCEPT for the badge system being a disaster. I remember playing so much back then on both my hunter and druid, and LOVING it. I was able to get bits of my set, fill gaps in my gear, and never found it confusing. Hell if anything i LOVED the huge variety and having so many vendors felt like there was so much to do with the currency you got from just doing content as normal. It felt like bonuses to me. I LOVED playing in vanilla BECAUSE everything felt overpowered. They focused way less on balancing anything deemed "op" and far more on just making everyone have fun. I remember before weapon speed nerfs, i could do 4k with an aimed shot as a Diremaul/giantstalker geared hunter, using the Alterac valley reward crossbow because it was the slowest ranged weapon in the game at the time, so had massive damage scaling from aimed shot. I remember oneshotting a warlock with holy fire + power infusion (originally just a big damage and healing increase similar to arcane power) + ZG trink + Warsong gulch berserker buff, and feeling SO SICK because of the revenge after being oneshotted by so many mages and locks myself. That was just what crazy good geared people with the right trinkets and know-how could do back then. I used to equip my MC fire resist trinkets to duel my fire mage friend on that same priest, and just spam mana burn on him until i won to annoy the shit out of him. The game used to be "everything is OP so you feel amazing" .... now it's "nothing is OP so it's all boring and samey"

[@barahng]

Well it wasn't the TBC badge system that was a problem. Its when they got to 5 badge types/vendors and it felt like a paycheck that it got out of hand (Not imo but Blizz clearly had a different opinion). Which was the impetus for adding randomization to loot, which eventually became titanforging and ruined loot in WoW entirely. So while I also enjoyed the badge system, and don't remember being bothered in the slightest by 5 vendors or the "paycheck" feeling, it leading to titanforging makes me reconsider somewhat.

[@csimmeri]

4:03 Fun Fact: Spacebar is NOT the default pause button for KZbin. "K" is. "J" is rewind and "L" is fast forward.

[@Mewi987]

great video as allways preach

[@TheGoldblaze]

ONYXCEPTABLE

[@Sarlyx]

The point you made about the firelands staff also applied much earlier to Atiesh in naxx40, it was exactly the same

[@Seig_CC]

damn what a great inside this was. Thank you Preach!

[@iyaramonk]

As soon as I saw this video last week I was hoping someone would tackle it, thanks Preach

[@dravot]

I think the first bit there really captures why I don’t enjoy playing the game anymore. The story about the two groups at the tables sounds like a good lesson for Blizzard to draw from. The problem I see is that they are looking at the lesson to be learned ass backwards. The kids at the table that were just told to carry on and do what they want did it until they stopped having fun. Once it wasn’t fun anymore, they stopped. The second group continued on just because they could get paid. They were not having fun anymore at this point. They were working and not playing. I like to log in so I can play and not so I can work. I remember logging on every knight and telling my wife that I would be to bed soon but I needed to do my WOW work first. Seriously, these were my exact words. I would log in and do my emissaries, send out followers and maybe and island or two. It did not take much time, but I really did not want to log in. I was doing it like a chore list. If I didn’t get my chore list done, I would not be effective enough come raid time. Is this one hundred percent true, no, but I still felt I did not want to watch myself slip down a couple of slots on the damage meters. I am sure if the kids at the first table had more interesting content to color i.e. mazes puzzles, sticker books you name it and the kids getting paid were only allowed to color essentially the same picture over and over and over again the results would be different. Sorry for such a long post I just wanted to give my two cents.

[@MJ-ik4ne]

Sadly I slipped down the dmg meters due to class balance (ele shaman 8.0) and being unlucky with rng, that's what killed raiding for me. No longer was skill in any way portrayed in dmg meters. Oh and ofc the people who wanted to grind their necklaces to level 40 lol. I'm sure they weren't having fun but A+ for dedication. edit: and those lucky people who got titanforges left and right lol.

[@itsJoshV]

I think Travis is more in favor of the current system though. He feels that the reward structure we all miss, is a disaster. In the Q & A that girl mentions not getting the trinket she needs in 96 drops, not including bonus rolls, and that she misses badges, which she thinks was a wonderful idea. His response to that was to cut her off and apologize for the badge system... She literally just said she misses it lol. He also said the bonus loot system was implemented to solve that problem. She literally just said that even with bonus rolls, she didn't get the item and missed badges. He also seemed to contradict himself a couple of times. So, I like the dude but I think it'd be good to get him on a hour long podcast with preach or bell or both.

[@SNDLKaraoke]

Since the release of this expansion, I have yet to receive a single piece of gear from a world boss, most mythic plus gear I receive are unwanted items for others because those end of dungeon chests give me NAFF ALL!!

[@CrZ0004]

and thats the problem.. instead of good gear being this exclusive and relatively hard to get thing they made gear super easy to get, you get really good gear for being pretty much afk and the only way to get better gear is to get lucky with tf procs.. yes there are ways to get even better gear still with mythic raids, but because the difficulty curve is fucked and everything you did b4 mythic was much easier it doesnt feel worth to do mythic raids or high end m+ for a reward thats not going to feel justified for the amount of effort you have to put into it.. i also legit dont see badges as a problem.. i dont understand how TF/WF etc. in any way mitigating anything, layers of rng are never a good thing, having control over things is a good thing. Ofc you shouldnt be able to buy a piece of gear in every slot from vendors, cuz thats definitely a bad thing, i think that vendor gear should work as an actual catch up system, not as an actual reward system(it could be a reward system for more casual players, but it shouldnt ever be giving you gear that has the same ilvl as the actual raids that are open at the time)

[@SNDLKaraoke]

I quite enjoyed the old honor token system, it made pvp gear farming more fun imo. I could see a 2h sword and be like, I want that, and save up.

[@ceropuntocinco]

The badge system wasn't bad, but it was bad when they start giving high level badges in heroic dungeons.

[@kidman2505]

Also surprised there was no note that he's in fact, Indalamar, and most players I bet have no clue who that Warrior was, or what he meant to stats, gear, etc,.

[@RDaneelLovecraft]

I agree with you, I had no issues with the badge system, and that was the time when I actually played Wow the most.

[@williamarthurfenton1496]

There's another very business friendly method of retaining players though, and that's actually making it so players want to log in to feel part of a community. Indeed it actually means churning out content constantly is far less required, because what keeps people playing is doing things with friends and feeling part of the server. The peak of the game was achieved before LFG and CVZ came, namely middle of WoTLK.

[@kutyamen]

Lol no, WotLK was when the game started dying community wise. Millions of old players were replaced by millions of old ones, it was a massive generational shift. If WotLK was the top then it'd have shown consistent growth with the new players which it didn't, that was TBC. As for there being no community because you can play cross server, that's just hilarious. If the only reason that the community existed was because you were forced to be part of it, the game would have died. What happened and keeps happening is that at time went on the internet changed from more tightly knit communities to everyone, and when it is everyone it becomes far more about meeting strangers than making nonstrangers. The modern internet's communities are far less I remember that guy and more I have this interest and I see so many others with it that there is no way I will consistently run into the same people. And that shift came in WotLK with nearly half the game being replaced and not many of them being interested in such tightly knit communities.

[@Sivedwar]

First: Thank you for linking and showing this! I actually quit BfA because its boring as hell (Mythic Player - cleared HC started Mythic and just couldnt bother anymore with the game) Travis talks about being generous and at the end of the video he also talks about the effect of having pretty much all the loot you want, which is that they (blizzard) could tackle other problems! Like lets make content where you can actually USE the cool loot that you got, variety of content to do, the experience of the player and how to give players a cool experience. And this is what i loved about WoW going from expansion to expansion: The loot was pretty much always the same, just a diffrent name and new stats that you wanted with caps etc blabla.. but your avatar the character the Class that i was playing, which is the death knight, just to give an example (cause i have all classes), had a lot of versions! The Wotlk Death Knight is not the same as the MoP or the WoD or the Legion DK. But since bfa they are pretty much saying, well the gear you get is not changing the gameplay as much, but we want the gear to be the things to make new and interesting and FUN new version of the same class instead of giving you the 9th version of the DK. I never rly cared about the specific loot, i just wanted to get loot and to get to a point where i could use my new gear, trinkets and weapons and ofc be more powerful to do the harder stuff, like i said mythic content, challenging content. So i had to relearn the DK everytime when i saw the new talents, figured out new builds and so on. I remember playing WoD in Highmaul and being one of the few people to use the Necro plague they introduced for the Twins fight. Instead of going with the build that the internet was saying will do the most DPS in theory and i didnt need a specific piece of gear to do that. I didnt need this or that Azerite Armor piece to be able to change my gameplay, because they already game me a new version of the DK with a new and fresh talent tree / builds that i could swap and learn and get my new and better gear to test new things out again and again! I love to play my DK because i love the fantasy aspect of it. Having meaningful gear is important, but like i mentioned in the beginning, travis also said, if we have our best gear and we have a chance of Titanforge and all that BS, its great for the average user, and will be awesome for the hardcore player, but the problems to takle wont be the gear, because i will be able to use my gear. If they want to create new gameplay with the same class that i am playing since MoP and i played every other class aswell and i still want to have a sense of coming back to the game and having FUN, then i should be able to gear my character in a good and reasonable time so that i can try to learn how to actually play that character on the specific Itemlvl that they have as a max or the certain caps. I think i wont be able to fit everything that i want to actually say into this one comment, but to finish it up: Gear should be awarded in a way, that you can play the Version of your class that would be the max at the point of the expansion (as in Itemlvl 370-ish at the start for BfA) so that i can play all the content with that strenght and care more about the content instead of being frustrated with the gear, so that blizzard can actually focus on cool new content instead of having to fix Azerite armor and investing their time into the Gear-monster, because all the time they invest into that is lost for cool new content that they could be doing. Oof ^^' ty as always for creating a dicussion around something that i actually still feel attached to, but i just lost hope in the BfA life cycle and i hope they will change it up. Would you rather keep trying to get gear or would you like to have a good / the best gear set you can have and experience all of the content that is created for you?

[@killidaenarrameos1216]

this was very interesting. For the moment my favorite loot system in an mmo is still fxiv (boss drop items no modifiers and bosskills give every player a token and if you have 4-6 tokens you can buy items from that boss his loot table), that way you have guaranteed progression to Best in slot and still excitement for every time the boss drop that it will speed up the time table.

[@Zippytvx]

Theyve basically brought badges back with the new azerite vendor. Its more or less determined by your weekly M+ cache when you will get the piece, and the majority will agree working towards that is far better then doing 200+ M+ runs and being no closer to that piece than when you started pre 7.1.

[@sc0p0art]

This was a fantastic video. Really like your content as of late preacher

[@uatdafac92]

Badges were good, overused.. maybe.. but it was a better system than any other wow had. Full random or Full deterministic is a bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad thing.

[@killionayr2077]

uatdafac92 so the problem with your point is that the system used before badges in TBC was not a full random system, and the system for badges was not full deterministic either. The system was bad enough to have a major psychological effect on player expectations for the reward system. BfA is the furthest representation of “full random” that we have ever witnessed in the wow universe. Mainly due to war/titanforge and the wacky azerite armor. In vanilla you targeted gear through bosses and dungeon/raid quests for the most part.

[@Traumglanz]

And they were originally not even overused. Having the same kind of badges in all content was perfectly fine. There was no problem with that. It was a solid catch up as well, it was a motivation to farm old content for the average joe, it was a back up system for the hardcore guys to fill in slots in which they had no luck so far, etc And the discovery elements in vanilla are purely based on designers not having a clue what a good item is even back than. Else bears would be able to aquire good tank gear in the first place. Now that was an issue with classic, not some silly ingi trinkets killing bosses which should be solved by making some boss abilites simply to powerful for the reflector and/or capping the max damage you can do that way.

[@killionayr2077]

Traumglanz part of what you said is why im sad the development of the game in the generous direction has become insanity in BFA and detrimental to the game as a whole. The average joe in BC still didnt even reach max level until far later in the xpac. The leveling process is supposed to be great for the average joe. Max level is for when you put your serious face on. When he talked about few people only have legendaries in vanilla and bc, that is a GOOD thing. It helps fuel the idea in the players mind that the world matters and helps fuel aspirations for people who are thinking of raiding. Players were once lost in wow. Now players just play because they have been playing for so long. Communities in wow were built by a NEED to come together to accomplish something far greater than what your character could accomplish on its own. Now all you NEED to do is press a button, go afk and eat poptarts.

[@uatdafac92]

@@killionayr2077 Well this was my point exactly, now we are going to extreme random (maybe legion legendaries was more random but w/e), while random drops + badges, which in the end acted as bad luck protection, overall was more balanced and didn't took away the excitement of getting a nice random drop while also being sure you are getting rewarded for your time invested.

[@killionayr2077]

uatdafac92 yeah i hear ya... that legendary system is why i quit legion right before tomb of sargeras released. I got all 10 legendaries but i did not get my bis until the tenth one dropped. I was doing every difficulty of every raid every week and absolutely burnt myself out. They should have implemented a cap on bad luck protection so i didnt need to kill something like 70 bosses a week across all difficulties.

[@reeven1721]

So the core take away is that they let rewards carry their game instead of the game just being... fun.

[@onakaxy]

exactly. Was shit broken in vanilla? Hell yes it was with gear from dungeons out doing raid gear up to BWL. Or enginering trinkets that where so OP that you had to go engi for highend pvp. Or a item in gnomaregan that had charges on it that could potentially be the best druid weapon in-game even in naxx. But was it fun? YES. The fact that you could combine so many things and see what crazy shit would happen was part of the whole fun factor in classic. Crazy shit like kiting kazzak to stormwind or pet bombing the AH or infesting the entire world with the blood plague. You never knew what would happen and that is what made it so cool back then, you wanted to explore and even exploit it just for the fun of it.

[@kutyamen]

No, the core is that WoW is a disfunctional mess built upon a directionless base because everyone who played WoW latched onto different aspects of it. The majority didn't find raids fun, the majority didn't find dungeons fun, the majority didn't find rping fun, the majority didn't find pvping fun but everyone liked some aspect of it. The only thing the majority liked was WoW itself and getting rewards. You can only get away with just making your game fun, when your game has direction. What makes a Souls game fun lies in its gameplay that specifically attracts those who enjoy the challenge and getting better even through repeated failure, very much a single player version of what makes raiding enjoyable. But in WoW how many resources should be put into just creating that style of raiding experience when the vast majority does not even raid? The only way to make WoW just fun is to try and please anyone, which is a well known fool's errand especially in WoW where making one thing more fun can and does lead to other forms of fun suffering because of it(even now having moved to generally useful items to make people not have completely different effectiveness and having to regear from scratch for each content type, especially to the positive effect of WPvP where previously you'd either gimp your PvE or PvP performance despite doing both. Yet that leads to people being best off doing raiding and m+ and PvP just because their rewards are now all applicable to what they actually want to do from the three.). M+ is the best example, it gave those looking for shorter 5 man content that is still difficult a niche, yet as long as they make it give gear it will massively disrupt those who don't care for it. WoW is a Hydra, its body is Rewards, its heads are Content and the only way Blizzard can afford to regrow those heads that an individual cares for is if they are all tied to that body of Reward.

[@play.through]

Try to get him on a 1 on 1 video or podcast for an hour or two. Maybe get some Method folks on. I believe there would be a lot to gain from high end players like Sco and you talking with a designer. Not that anything will be fixed, but there would be a lot of insight to be gained.

[@Mr91Jmay]

I like Scott but honestly he is more of a great mechanical player than a great thinker about game design. Rogerbrown would be best

[@chiangsean9554]

The game would be dead long time ago if you actually let those world first raiders to balance/design the game. lmao

[@WingZX1103]

Love the icon dude

[@itsJoshV]

Yeah, someone that does scheduling or managing of a world first guild and preach. Preach has feedback from "average users" as well so that we get a large perspective.

[@puffin-onehandedgamer1164]

Honestly... letting players in on design of the game was WoWs downfall. you might say "what the hell is he talking about?" and my answer to that is Ion Hazzikostas. He's a former raider, a WoW player from Vanilla and BC, he's now designing the game and its worse than ever! Gamers do not make good game designers, it sounds weird, but Ion proves this.

[@darkstrike055]

Badges in TBC was the AP of today, maybe you outgeared heroics/Kara or maybe you raid BT and get no loot. Game says; here have some badges so your game time wasn't a total waste and eventually you can buy a piece of gear.

[@crystalheath6510]

So as a player that started in the middle of Litch King I have to say it was a little confusing being thrown into the middle of it since i maxed my level just before Icecrown released. It was hard to figure out what you needed to chase without using an outside source like a website, guildies or other players. I mean you could eventually figure it out but it took a bit for a new player.

I think they forget one thing, vendors and badges weren't supposed to be the main source of loot, they were kind of a backup mechanism, in case you would be extremely unlucky, then the badge system was there to save you. If I remember correctly, I've usually bought maybe 1 or 2 items and meantime I got better loot to drop for other slots and I would need higher tier badges to get upgrades. Then situation repeats with higher tier badges. I don't think it was as bad as he tries to say.

[@Ecrious]

I believe that loot should be a resultant of content. The following action. In my view, I feel fun well designed content starts off with imaginative discovery, following with a challenge or puzzle. Completion of said challenge is a reward climax, anything that follows should be a tool or utility that will help you with similar challenges in the future but the reward should be a surprise which leads to further discovery of how that item could be useful in future challenges. A good example of good designed gamplay is breath of the wild.

[@tegrity5822]

I'm all purple and literally just birdboxed warfronts, feels like it means nothing anymore. And ive gotten the same slot item about 20x. I don't need anymore bracers blizz.

[@HiddenEvilStudios]

Pants for me, mate.

[@Troopertroll]

I like how he unironically opened up with explaining how they're treating the players based on a children's behavioural study.

[@Onshki]

I find it interesting that I was linked to this video from a Bellular video where he was discussing a WoW q&a. In the video he went over Ion's thoughts on currency for pvp gear. Ion thought it was too complicated to introduce currencies. Bel pointed out that the system they are looking implement something even more complex and difficult. It looks like Blizzard learned the problem, but didn't learn the lesson. They're missing the core issue for what is on the surface.

[@shillionaire]

Mike Preach always gets the scoop. gj man!

[@hypedmaniac8444]

The most obvious issue with Warforging/Titanforging is how it completely invalidates getting a piece of gear for the same gear slot from the difficulty level above the one you’re on. For example, about a week ago I decided to participate in a run of Mythic Underrot. The ilvl gear given by this is usually 370. That type of gear is good enough to get you into most normal Battle for Dazar’alor raiding groups, so there’s obviously a progression path in place. Most of my stuff is already 370+ and I’m beginning to get accepted into BfD’a pug groups, so I’m just doing this because I want to relax. Then, on the third boss, I got a Titanforged cloak... which boosted its ilvl by 25. So, in the moment, I was thinking: ‘HOLY CRAP! THAT’S SO GOOD!’ Because of that, the cloak went from 10 ilvls below the one I was using to 15 above. So, as you could probably tell, in the moment, I was a pretty happy lad. But about... say, ten minutes later, after that initial burst of happiness goes away, you start to realise something: What’s so special about getting a cloak from Normal BfD’a now? I’m new to that difficulty, so am I now MEANT to feel happy that I’m putting tons of time into the game and getting rewarded with something I don’t need, just because RNGesus was on my side back in Underrot? You know what people will see in chat about ten seconds after the boss is killed: [Donkeywarrior] says: gj guys [Hypedmaniac] says: does anyone need [Cloak of Grong’s Fur]? [Stariel] says: + [Violare] says: + Am I now supposed to derive a sense of achievement from GIVING MY CLOAK AWAY?! I want to feel like I earned that cloak for this new level of difficulty I partook in and triumphed over, yet here I am, trying to find the same level of satisfaction from a ‘ty so much’ whisper I get after giving someone my reward. Surprise: you can’t. Titanforging and, to a lesser extent Warforging is pretty much a progression-killer that creates a brief sense of achievement. I can’t take gear seriously anymore, knowing that anything I get from Normal BfD’a can be outclassed by something from regular mythic dungeons.

[@DoctorSinister1987]

I would like to hear Travis' assessment of the removal of master looting.

[@MrBigsmallguy]

Great video. Thanks for bringing this up

[@TheChronlc]

there should be a mix of rng and set time line for loot set time lines give you something to work for but also the bonus of getting a free unexpected piece of gear is cool too how wow was when i had the most fun playing

[@scottsch88]

Another Problem I see with the loot is the homogenization of the Loot. I play as a tank since Cataclysm and they removed more and more tankinteresting stats as dodge and parry, just that nobody is frustrated, if a tankitem drops from a Boss, if the 2 tanks in the raidgroup don't need them. it takes fun stuff away. I mean, give the DDs critdmg as a new 2nd stat or something only dmg orientated and no tank would want it or a healer, this brings choice back to the player if there are more then our 4 generic traits wich all of them can be converted into versatility for a Tank. (each stat gives dmg and buffs defence) And this leads direct to the next problem with the homogenized loot. Nobody has a clue which item is realy better. I as a Monk Tank at the moment, know I try to avoid haste and try to even out the other 3 stats. And then there drops an Item with warforged. 5 more itemlvl means more stamina, more primary stat AND the most important part: more armor. There is no reason to look at the 2nd stats anymore, because they are somehow all versatility and just need to look at the itemlvl. Because of that one of my guildmates complained, why the tanks have so much more itemlvl than the rest of the raid. The answer was simple. We scale just with itemlvl because of the 3 primary stats. we just don't care what kind of 2nd stats are there. Some DDs don't want specific items, because they have haste or another stat which is considered the worst. We tanks just called "Hey it gives me a true upgrade" and got the item if nobody wanted it. That's why I hate warforged and especially titanforged. It doesn't do any good. most people I talked to didn't even care if something warforges. What I would wish for, are more unique Items. When I saw the shadowreflect tinket I thought, just give us these things back and if you are afraid of breaking the game, just make it work only in that specific environment. An idea I just had, let the early boss drop such a trinket: Forcefield of patience X parry Equip: Each time you dodge an attack, you gain a stack of patience. Capping at 10 stacks. USE: If you have 10 stacks of patiance, you can unleashe a forcefield to avoid the next magical attack against you. Then create a later boss, which can use this mechanik for the tank. further lets assume as a Monk you usually stack dodge, now I see parry would bring me a benefit for the raid. Then I would try to seak out parry on gear in this raid, to get a better procc chance for this trinket. It's would be a goal to work for gearwise and suddenly itemlvl isn't everything I would care about. You could bring such things for DPS and Healers too and If this would be too strong for M+, let this only work in raids or let have M+ its own trinkets. Maybe this could be an interesting aproach for the azerite necklace. Bring back the RPG of the MMO-RPG and make us care about loot again. sry for my bad writing, but english isn't my native language ;)

[@felhunterdoge]

The only forging system that needs to be in wow is a forging system that keeps the BIS list but makes it slightly better so that BIS stays BIS but better

[@sabretoothau]

The badge system was spot-on. Players had control, could target what they wanted. The badges were tiered to each tier of content. It made sense. It was the game's inbuilt bad luck protection that gave players some agency to determine their gearing strategy. Constantly losing the dice rolls trying to get an item isn't fun or satisfying. Being able to buy a badge item when RNG fails me makes me happy. And then because they don't like a couple of aspects, they threw the whole system out.

[@Tinomentoll]

My favorite time in WoW was in the time of massive spreadsheets and simulators, it might have been boring to those that didn't care, but I loved the community that flocked the forums and doing the math and making the tools that allowed you to tune your DPS like as if it was a car. I spent hours honing and practicing and when raid night came the payoff was excellent for the work I put into it. It made sidegrade items interesting since it could mean that I might be able to push some stats around and bring in another item that would get me a few more DPS. It was all a grand puzzle that you had to figure out of what enchantments and gems and other slots got. I'll admit one thing that did piss me off at this time and it didn't go over well for the Blizzard Devs, it killed the "cool proc" items. The Nibelung staff that dropped by Lady Deathwhisper in ICC, it procced an Angel that fought for you, a really f-ing cool item that I felt the art team was really excited about. But when the number crunchers got to it, they were telling the community that boring stat sticks will be better. They even buffed the stats soon after and it was still looked as weak for the community.

[@CrZ0004]

the biggest problem is with this thinking that people have to be rewarded with something for playing an hour.. how about reward being completing a dungeon(even if you didnt get any loot, you will get something eventually, dont worry) or raid, winning bg or arena battle not getting a piece of gear was at times frustrating, but it wasnt a problem until blizzard basically made it a problem when they started to add more and more loot into the game and making it easier to obtain that loot was when loot stopped being meaningful. So people stopped investing into the game, they started to play less, cuz they didnt need to play more to have that same loot, same people started to blame the game for being boring and not having enough content..

[@Karishin32]

I had no issues with badges but I also don't have downs.

[@kyubii972]

Fascinating video thanks for pointing it out to us.

[@theluo652]

I loved this video Mike. It's a nice way to break away from the TDP and other specifically wow related content while still remaining in the same "space". I know you looked at this through the lens of wow but it was great. If others like this content I'd love to see you examine the ideology of dev decisions from the point of view of a player. *cough* this is what the saturday show used to do *cough*.

[@Razkunn]

Personally, I find the loot problem is connected with the "class fantasy" problem, or in other words, how we have homogenization vs specialization. Let me elaborate: Currently, in wow, the goal is to balance out the classes, and that boils down to there being a tank category of classes, a dps (melee and ranged), and the healer category, for ease of balancing. The idea is so that you can take any class into any enviroment and not suffer penalties for it. The alternate philosophy would be specializations - give everyone, at the very least, options to fine tune their character to do certain things. As I mainly warlocked during vanilla (we weren't some top-dog guild or anything), I remember that one time, when our main tank got poached by a better guild, and since we couldn't find a replacement, I basically transformed my lock into a form of tank by playing around with my set bonuses, talents and items... And goddamit, I made it work. Yes, it wasn't 100% an official tank, but I could reasonably hold the trash down and make it focus on me instead of the squishies behind me. The legendary system was a foray in that dorection, but it basically failed miserably (at least in my oppinion), due to the systems not working together, but grinding against each other, like wayward marine vessels. I really like the video you're reffering to, and I'll give it a watch now, just wanted to share the thoughts you stimulated. Thanks for the insightful video, and though I doubt I'll be returning to Azeroth after bfa, I still spent an inordinate amount of time in the game, as well as other mmo's, and I love thinking about and analyzing the in-game systems. Keep up the good work, and greetings from Poland!

[@TheCaptnChunk]

I would love for you to address the first Q&A question about focusing on the individual or the group. I feel like in Diablo you totally should focus on the individuals experience with rewards but in an MMO it should totally be about the group most of the time. There can be SOME areas that focus on individuals but any time doing group content (dungeons and raids as examples) the rewards should be around the group. This would totally incentivize and reward guilds and communities.

[@MrRahbech]

I really loved the emblems in Wrath. It felt good so work towards a trinket or other item, and I honestly never thought there were too many currencies, or that it was any kind of a hassle. "5 vendors - rolling eyes"... That's not a lot of vendors, you can get acquainted with that in a very short time, especially since they were gradually introduced

[@islayprettylies9485]

4:01 Hey Preach and everyone, you can pause a KZbin video no matter where your mouse is or what you're doing on the page by simply pressing the "K" key on your keyboard. Much more reliable than the spacebar.

[@rek8193]

This is a quality video Preach. I remember when Kara came out in Legion and I thought we were headed in a new and wonderful loot direction, where normal epics were chock full of interesting effects and small set bonuses. Then when the BfA beta came out I was ready; they're getting rid of tier sets, this means they can cram the loot tables full of these mini sets and 2piece combos to really let us customize ourselves without the rng legendary system! I don't hate azerite armor, but oh man is it underwhelming... oh well, maybe next expansion loot will feel rewarding again :( Also, 10:50 : It was a shitshow. Obviously.

[@steveyoung3044]

Cant wait to watch that full video of the talk. This is very interesting stuff but I cant help but wonder if anything will really get Blizzard to make loot good again like it was in Vanilla and TBC.

[@colinmorin2884]

So I have another interesting thought about how this ties into BFA's economy too. Travis says to be generous with the loot, which ends up to over abundance of gold or currency to get more of the items. Current WoW feels like they clamped down on the ways to access gold easily while raising the prices for things like reroll coins, which just feels bad. Not only am I losing money on bad rerolls, but I also don't get nearly as many chances to subsidized my loss in the game.

[@InvadersDie]

the problem, and where straight % break the game is the path forward. If you keep having items with just 1 2 and 3 percent crit or dodge then fine, but you can't keep increasing the number and at some point a pice in every slot might have seen a high percent and a player just wears those pieces and becomes immune to damage or crits every time.

[@slavenbozic1237]

Gearing and professions MUST exist in synergy, if they don't... this problem will always exist. Fine, raid for boring base stats items, but use professions to add affixes to your gear. Farm mats in outside world for it. Go on epic solo adventure or small group adventure to get your class affixes. Once several affixes are added to your characters gear, that gear gets an option to become a set which you can name, add visual style to it, select desired set affixes from predetermined pool. Simple affixes ie. for Warlock, affix for chest, your - Chaos bolt now does splash damage around main target in 12yd radius, 50% of main target damage. - Immolate ticks gradually increase your haste, at 10% haste immolate explodes dealing x amount of damage to you, reducing your max HP by 10% and boosts your haste by 25% for 6 sec. - Every 3rd Chaos bolt you cast fires a barrage of fel flame passively, but increases the cost of your next Chaos Bolt by 1 shard Once these 3 affixes are applied, Bargain of the Grand Master Warlock set unlocks... with 3 tiers that require you to apply set mark onto 6 pieces of your gear (3 already and 3 on other gear you wish to apply, locking that gear from other affixes). Tier 1: every 3rd cast of your incinerate makes your imp go into fel craze, casting a fel comet on your target Tier 2: Chaos bolt siphons power from the nether with each hit, every 10 hits infernal spawns dealing 15% of damage to you, leaving a fel flame dot on you and buffing your crit and haste by 15% for 12 sec Tier 3: After 3 infernals were summoned via Tier 2, 3 dimensional portals are opened, sending a barrage of fel magic dealing damage to all targets active in combat (including friendly targets and you). Many problems would be solved, dead outside world, gear interest, progression fun, customization, relevance of classes etc etc etc.

[@watchthe1369]

Fix professions so crafters can make relavent items, and you will have some unique items out there that fit a quirky play style. A warrior stat shield that allows him to drop threat and go into stealth in a home zone. (A home zone means at least honored faction rating...) A warrior could use a mob bombing tactic on the opposing faction once he farmed up the faction rating. Tap some mobs to gather threat, kite them to a group of opposing players that are ganking, stealth in the middle of them or just past them.... It would give a smart low level player a way to mess with gankers.

[@Perid0tStar]

This was pretty interesting to hear right from the source like this. Great validation of all the analytics on the subject as well. I realize that there's an amount of hubris in even claiming something like this, but I have an idea that may work out. Imagine if there were a kind of enchantment scroll that had unique abilities or game-altering effects, and that you could apply them to gear slots. Systems-wise, they could maybe use the same framework that the glyph system did. They could just be called 'Seals of Power' or something, and could come from rares/treasure chests or other sources--even raid bosses. That way fun items could make a return, they wouldn't upset the gearing apple-cart, and people could be interested in mixing/matching stuff. They should relax about all this balance stuff so people can enjoy things again--and that goes for abilities too! I think that Ion may be overthinking things in his great ambition to not cause echoing issues from present day design, because if there's one thing we've learned from all we've noticed, is that that kind of thing is basically inevitable.

[@WingZX1103]

Me: so this is the guy who gave me shit RNG in legion? Preach: yup. Me: *gathers an angry mob* GET HIM!!!

[@lexzbuddy]

Ya, badges were ok. I liked the different sets in burning crusade where you went back to your faction vendor then got the one you wanted back at the city.

[@Nooctae]

Purely vendor based MMo reward structure work tho. GW2 is ONLY that, for everything. Play cvontent > get currency > go to vendor. It works. It's weird he would think it's a mess.

[@toaonua523]

As someone who has played a lot of WoW and Diablo, Blizzard has always overlooked very simple and easy fixes for WoW. Make "gamebreaking" game-play changing loot random from every style of content, that can synergize with other loot or mechanics. Let the player feel smart for doing something interesting, instead of punishing them with a nerfbat. Diablo makes this a part of progression, by having set bonuses synergize with legendary bonuses - each unique combination having its own playstyle that further augmented every possible class specialization. Thousands of examples could be quoted as to how this makes the game more interesting regardless of rarity. It could be a 1% drop from a super hard boss that can only be killed solo. It could be a tradeable consumable that drops from a raid and allows the player to summon 20 minions indefinitely until killed. Make flat stat-booting gear deterministic. People need to just have upgrades for playing the game they're investing into. Badges worked great for this, as it also gave the player agency. It would be nice if a game like Destiny 2 gave gear in more of a TBC style, since legendary bonuses and item cosmetics are very limited. Another implementation could be as simple as a BIS item being a unique quest drop, but make the quest a trek to travel to. My biggest issue with WoW loot was if you got a cool or useful item drop, and unknowingly vendored or disenchanted it, there was never really a way to get a unique item back without a GM. Because Blizzard have NEVER had any idea what they were doing with WoW loot, nothing was ever communicated to the player beyond surface level. This isn't necessary in games like Diablo where you can just farm for the items again, and the progression makes it clear what items are good and what aren't though simple visual cues. In terms of rewarding the player though, passive talent trees is a great way to get both the casual and pro-players invested, especially if making massive changes requires a new character. Talent trees give exactly what people want from game investment, with a more permanent feeling boost of >choice< to the toon they want to play. I've been playing a few non-blizzard games and there's a few reward milestones that seem pretty common in order for good games: 1. Level up with talent trees/upgrades 2. Get throw-away loot to learn how mechanics work 3. See skill improve as you explore and re-explore parts of the game 4. Start getting decent loot to augment playstyle 5. Reach high-end play where you min-max both player skill and item synergies, possibly re-roll to try different talent trees The problem with WoW is it kinda goes like this: 1. Kill nameless mobs till you get bored and boost your toon 2. Farm for bigger lootz just to do the content you actually want to do 3. Get bored and farm mounts 4. Ger bored and unsub

[@EpictheEpicest]

Badges were the best system because they gave you a concrete goal you could work towards.

[@Antisceptic]

Did you watch this on stream? I'd be interested to listen to you commentate the whole thing as you went along.

[@d1o2c3t4o5r]

At 22:00, you say that Legion had the best balancing in the game’s history, but they only accomplished that by ruining the design of some classes. For example, with the holy priest, even after the trail of light nerf, Flash Heal’s throughput was still way too dominant in the priest’s toolkit. In fact, it was so powerful, that both the Heals per Mana AND Heals per Second were better than renew, so that spamming flash heal had better throughput and better efficiency. Prayer of Healing wasn’t balanced either, as, out of all the non-cd spells, it had the highest throughput, and the most efficient mana cost, so the gameplay loop devolved into spamming Prayer of Healing, and filling with Heal (the only reason Flash Heal could be mixed in was when you were getting sniped by other AoE healers).

[@SoulOfFenrir]

Pretty sure he meant overall, we must remember preach is a raider before anything else, so seeing people perform similarly regardless of spec is probably what he meant.

[@mykulpierce]

I think if video games Incorporated some sort of learning mechanics such as real life learning within their game it can be a reward system that keeps on giving as the amount of knowledge that's available in the world becomes your currency to the players. And they don't feel like they're wasting their time if the knowledge is applicable such as helping them actually pass a course if they were to take one.

[@chrisr9764]

People were still excited for boss loot during WOTLK. The fact that he is saying is otherwise is complete BS.

[@Emajenus]

All that's left is for Asmongold to react to Preach reacting to the Loot Guy. BFA turned its content creators into reactors. And they're about to explode.

[@CHIPkrilk]

IMO, the main issue that there are always players to feel that they deserve better loot. Take for example, I play a lot of WoW, my main pre-season 2, an enhancement shaman at 385 ilvl, at the same time, a player in my guild, who doesn't have the same amount of time to play as I do had a havoc demon hunter with ilvl 378. This doesn't sound like a lot, but meant that I was able to beat him on dps meters in certain fights, and he always wanted to be top dps. This meant that he started to complain about him not getting the right loot when he finaly did m+ or when we raided, and that I was lucky and always got the right items, despite me only wearing 2-3 items from raid.

[@rasmus44]

Agreed on the wotlk badges, recently played it and it isn't bad, though buying set items might have been going too far

[@JesusFreakJH]

Preach what do you think about a Guild armor set earned as a progression guild. In other words the guild builds each set with progression then rewarding a main tank or healz for guild progression from within the guild and this armor could be equipped to a toon by a guild master or something depending on instance requirements and tank availability and such swap that Guild armor set to a different class and toon at will with the requirement being a guild member. My thinking is that would encourage guilds and allow high end guilds to set the pace for each instance?

[@Flamestormq]

Wotlk for me was still the overall best moment for me in wow for many reasons. The dungeons in most cases(the final three added were either really good or really bad depending on how you looked at it) were easy to read with decent variations and spacing that it didn't feel too long or a huge regret. Some classes and specs for the first time were viable(ret, feral dps, disc healing)! Zones were large and while sometimes empty, had great music or sights of grandeur. And some of the best raid fights/bosses/areas in wow history were done during this time line. I will say this is probably were loot overall started to feel like more of a numbers game instead of a high end way to gear or play your character, as with the introduction of haste, you had stats that became largely irrelevant. But the badges, the rewards and so on were still desirable, and I agree they were easy to follow and work with.

[@hondurez634]

WHERE IS THE TIER SET BONUSES, LEGENDARIES, ARTIFACTS AND ALL THE COOL STUFF WE USED TO HAVE REEE!

[@KelinSings]

I watched the entire thing. The eventual problem with badges that I perceived (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm a wrathbaby) was that basically everything was acquirable at some point via badges and vendors. That WoW's loot and gearing system had basically turned into "farm badges and spend badges". I personally don't think the system itself is inherently problematic, it's just that Blizzard would have to make it so that there is only a specific amount of gear types/pieces available through this system. I personally don't mind deterministic systems like this. It's fun to have something to work towards, as long as that's not the entirety of the reward system. I would be quite happy to see a deterministic system like this implemented into BFA. Even if the vendor only sold boots, bracers, belts and cloaks for instance, it would be nice to have something to work towards that you KNOW you'll end up getting after putting in a certain amount of work. I do feel like BFA has started implementing systems that are similar to these, though I think they are too small-scale and don't work as well. Titan residuum is an example of a system that I can personally not benefit from due to the way azerite armour works and the fact that I like to play all four of my druid specs. 7th legion service medals (and the Horde variant) is another one of these systems that I think works similarly, though the problem with this is that it in terms of character progression only rewards you with one ring that will soon be mediocre when Mythic Battle for Dazar'alor releases. I would personally be very content with the reintroduction of a system like the badge system, with a vendor that sells SOME meaningful items. It could also make the dungeon daily reward more interesting if we were able to obtain badges that we know we will be able to spend eventually instead of a small tiny drop of azerite in an ocean of azerite.

[@KelinSings]

Of course for any item to feel meaningful at base level we would have to get rid of titanforging. Of which I am a huge advocate (I even considered refusing to equip any piece that was war-/titanforged but I don't think my raid leader would appreciate that). I also think there is too much catch-up in the game, cause and effect of the complete gear reset every raid tier. I personally think it owuld be much more enjoyable to have a more vertical progression through several raid tiers, and having a BiS list that consists of items from not just the last raid. It would even drag out character progression and keep people playing for longer which seems to be what Blizzard is after. Booting people to the last raid just makes it so that they are done gearing quicker and therefore done playing quicker. Also WTB more RPG elements indeed. Fun > Balance!

[@z0h4ck]

Preach have you seen where the lead designer from MTG talk about game design? probably the best way to look at things in my opinion

[@ryvrdrgn16]

I did not mind the badge system at all.

[@jeremylawrence6041]

I don't get why they have things that get people to log in daily. If they are paying a subscription what difference is it if they play 3 hours a week or 3 hours a day

[@sam5634]

From legion to BFA, going forward I'm afraid what we will get in the next xpac. I want a little more normallcy between expansion.

[@TheIllegalGuy]

Something I've never understood is how quickly the badge system is just written off as "bad" okay its a little confusing that could possibly be re-worked a bit but there is nothing inherently wrong with having a deterministic system to supplement a mostly random one, instead currently were just forced the random one even harder on us. In the questions at the end a lady even brings up the fact of when a crucial bit of gear doesn't drop for you due to bad luck there is nothing you can do and it really sucks, and his response is to basically say that you want to soften the unlucky side of the RNG spectrum by giving things like bonus rolls yet the lady says it was during mists of pandaria, bonus rolls were a thing and she still had gone 97 kills dry, and got to the point it was effecting progression a lot and I am sure many people can also relate with similar stories. Yet this system is just to prop up the chance of getting that sick mega titan forged shoulders that you didn't earn, yet when people used the badge system to buy higher tier gear than they didn't earn in tbc it was a "problem". Then this is all to just makes sure a "simply awful" badge system doesn't exist. Lets also not forget the fix blizzard have taken with azerite gear is literally just the system the introduced for legendaries at the end of expansion which was the badge system... Sure you can get something good or if your lucky the bis bit you want, but I simply don't understand the problem with supporting an RNG system with a slower deterministic system that you have control over, yes don't make 100% of the gear gained all from that one system, but allow a person who has gone 97 kills dry to get a trinket they should have statistically gotten at about kill 15 but could work to it by about kill lets say 25. That way you have a very definite cut off point for your "bad luck" rather than just softening the boundaries with more randomness. Like with the legendary drop system, If you didn't get your BIS legendary you were frustrated, because you grind and grind at a random chance to get a random item from a pool of 15 or so legendaries, yet if you got lucky and did get your BIS it was "exciting" because you were glad you were allowed to play your class competitively. Forcing a 1 in 15 chance to be allowed to play your class competitively is not okay. God forbid you needed more than a single legendary! Lets say this problem only effects the hardcore but you decide to fix it by adding in purified titan essence, it doesn't mean the system can't benefit the casual player base either, okay they don't care about bis dps but they have the ability to also pick that fun looking legendary rather than being relegated random chance too. giving the player choice isn't a bad thing, yes the player might not make the optimal choice and do sub par dps, but let the player make that mistake, don't hold their hand and force everyone into a choice less decision of use the gear with the biggest number on it! Use the random legendary you got even if its shit just so you don't have to pick it yourself and possibly get it "wrong" Simply put the RNG in loot acquisition needs to be toned down allowing the player to have some agency over this isn't bad, with the introduction of way more ways to get way more loot at way more item levels can't be counter acted with the old system of just random loot drops. It's the legendary drop issue but then applied to every item slot. Back in the day there were a handful of items that could drop most of which were useful, now we have a billion items drop one of which is useful, before you wanted certain boots you killed certain boss, now you want certain boots GOOD LUCK ON THE WHEEL OF LOOT, GIVE IT A SPIN! Isn't hitting the 0.1% jackpot after months of grinding just really fun?

[@Tamorak]

....I'd love for someone to have a sit down talk with him based off what was said. The idea of simming is commonplace in WoW at this point, but it was something that they identified as a problem back in Wrath. They identified that items were too complicated by looking at one item VS another and not knowing what was better, but then why introduce more secondary stats back in WoD? Why greenlight titanforging, which was based off the artifact system in D3, which in of itself was based off the WF system in WoW if that wasn't gone fully realized and kinks worked out of? The lesson learned was they couldn't go back simply from the WF system, and that would doubled whenever the first increased loot drops in D3, which in hand started that snowball. The badge system was, as I remember it originally intended to offset bad RNG, which is primarily why it didn't fill all slots. So, why was the system pushed away from that instead of pushing more closely to a system where it was easier to identify upgrades as opposed to what's bad, and still retain that system of some form of RNG protection? With the advert of M+ in Legion, why was the ideal of WF\TF still pushed if a lesson learned was what happens when you inflate the number of gear drops into a the gearing ecosystem? With BfA, that monster got even bigger because they're trying harder to push MORE gear from more sources into the same ecosystem. It's odd to think they identified this problem when there was a raid or die mentality back in Wrath for the best items, and those being the only items on the PvE ecosystem and the PvP ecosystem being completely separate. Probably the most interesting WoW video so far of 2019.

[@theastralarchive9594]

Thank you Preach! This was very informative 😊

[@117Haseo]

speaking of the Shadow reflector they just recently nerfed a very funny toy that emulated same desk all drunk escape plan for basically no reason other than they couldn't stop it from being used in raids and dungeons so they made it to have such a long full down but it's not worth using anymore.seems people search strategy of well we can't fix easily so let's just make it so that it's not fun anymore to use.

[@Dantarn]

"Legion did the best job of class balance ever" *Guardian Druids laugh in the distance*

[@ImmortalSoul39]

Its true, doesnt mean it was absolutely perfect tho.

[@Destshade]

You think balance was better in previous expansions? Did druids absolutely eclipse every other tank like prot warriors in vanilla to the point where people didn't know other classes can tank? Or did mages make every other ranged irrelevant like they locks did most of tbc? I can understand your point of balance not being perfect in legion but that's not what he said :D