As of now, there is no incentive to play Cataclysm other than for the challenge.
This would be fine if there was no other incentive to play this game, but there is - loot.
The loot system, as has been discussed in a few threads recently, is designed in such a way that it would take the average person upwards of a thousand hours to get all of the red items.
This means that any player who wants to get all the red items, or even half of them, has negative incentive to play Cataclysm (because it’s harder and gives the same loot), and thus even less of a reason to buy the Winds of Magic DLC.
This, combined with the fact that Weaves is pretty much a dead game-mode, and that playing Weaves gives you absolutely no progression in the main game-mode, makes this issue even more apparent.
Now you have made it so playing 2 of the 4 main features of the DLC be negatively incentivized for the average player who wants to collect his reds.
Why would I, who is still missing a ton of reds, ever play Weaves or Cata until I have my reds? It’d feel like an even bigger waste of time than grinding regular full book runs.
In essence, you made your game a grind-fest and then made a DLC which playing it gives little to no progression for that grind.
I suggest a small band-aid: make Cataclysm guarantee an Emperor’s Chest. It doesn’t have to be a completely new chest type (although that would be better), just make it so it doesn’t feel like a total waste of time to play when farming for reds.
P.S. I know you don’t absolutely need red weapons but it’s highly incentivized due to Cataclysm breakpoints and also basic human psychology.
Then they would be wrong, because Sigmar’s Chest would reward only the truly skilled players.
Pay 2 win would imply that you merely pay a transaction and immediately receive a product, whereas with Cata you’d have to earn the rewards through painstaking challenge.
So If I get hard carried through Cata I can get a guaranteed red? I know I don’t belong there but count me in! Surely those people who carry me won’t mind…
I mean, getting carried doesn’t actually make you better at the game, so that’s really a problem between you and the game, not the design of the game itself.
It’s the difference in mentality, i know not everyone plays legend for best chest and loot, but if we introduce better chest or loot drop on cata, one of the things that will happen is there will be players who just play cata even tho they arent’ ready for it, just to get the best loot. I’d rather cata stays loot mentality free.
But adding new achievements on cata i’m not against that.
Since the flood of double XP weekends, legend is already full with people who have nothing to do there. People have no idea how stuff in the game works (grim being lost when holder dies) nor do they know the basic mechanics (what pacing is, what boss triggers are and how the director works).
No need to do the same with cata.
Pretty sure doing a full book Legend run is a lot easier than a regular cata run, so I’m not sure I see the issue there.
Also, kicking is a thing you can do.
Still, I see where you’re coming from, so I will say that this change would warrant making a full book run guarantee an Emperor’s chest, without relying on Ranald. It’d make trying to get carried in cata even less appealing.
They should just get rid of ranalds gift overall, and give us something we have control over.
Give us a little objective to do in the map or something, or just remove it. I don’t mind a bit of chest rng but doing a full book run and then just not getting max loot is demotivating. I remember myself being frustrated at that in the beginning.
Edit: yes i know you can check every chest in the map and get 2 loot dies and get max loot that way, but cmon, who checks every chests in the map.
the idea that we need to keep cata some special club is just really weird to me. I would much rather new people are drawn to the mode and gradually learn it (just like they did with legend) than the reality now, where there’s just barely any cata games at all most of the time.
If people want to guarantee competence every game they should find a premade
I don’t wanna guarantee competence, i don’t mind new players in cata. I just don’t want them to play cata for the wrong reasons.
In my opinion, the way to make cata more available is to make non dlc owners join a dlc owner cata host or something like that. I don’t agree that adding new or better loot to cata would be a healthy decision to get cata popular. Yes it would bring alot of players into cata, no doubt.
I’m sure if you didn’t need to buy cata dlc to join that more legend players would try and obtain the cata frame.
It’s not because cata players don’t want to add loot to it or don’t want things to get nerfed quickly that it means we don’t want any new players or legend players trying out cata and getting better.
Since we can’t get cata deeds then its pointless to get legend loot