All of my characters kind of "feel" the same

Community General Discussion
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This is going to be a little bit abstract, so I’ll try my best to define the “feeling” I’m talking about.

It’s certainly not a criticism of the specs or how characters play. I’ll admit, I would like to move away from so many classes being cooldown-reliant (more situational abilities, imo), but that’s really neither here nor there.

More what I mean to say is, when I look at my character list, despite having every class, and almost all of them being different races, they just sort of “feel” the same.

Playing through Dragonflight, none of them feel like they have anything unique to offer.

I don’t feel like there are cool Rogue things to pursue on my Rogue. Realistically, my Outlaw Rogue may as well be my Ret Paladin or my Frost DK, because functionally speaking, the game treats them all pretty interchangeably. There’s no sense that I feel like I’m playing a Mage, or like I feel like I’m playing a Warlock.

They all kind of play the same roles in groups, they all do the exact same content, the “experience” doesn’t feel distinct. I feel like this expansion, I’m just playing “generic Dragonflight hero”.

And this isn’t saying “I want to farm stuff on every single character”. Not grinding, anyways, and certainly not the same content.

But I do want to feel like when I’m playing a Rogue, I feel like I’m playing a Rogue. When I’m playing a Death Knight, I want to feel like my character could be a Death Knight that formerly fought for the Scourge, who has certain goals or ambitions that are completely different from my Paladin, or my Warlock.

One missed opportunity that comes to mind, is the new Gorehowl 2hander. That was a weapon I’ve wanted to see added for a long time, that I wanted to pursue on my Orc Warrior. But it’s just “a weapon drop”. There’s no lore to it, no sense of meaning. My Warrior is still sitting at 60, and I have no ambition to play him. Because after all, I can just run that dungeon on my Paladin or my DK to unlock the transmog. Which… kind of takes the wind out of my sails to play any of them.

Because it’s not just about having a character-sheet that says my characters are different. I want to feel like my characters are different. I want to feel like they each have a unique experience from one another, even if they share the same world.

Instead, it just feels like I’d be just as well off to play a single character, and never venture out, because nothing is actually any difference, other than the buttons you push.

The thing that sort of worries me, is that I worry that is intentional design. As we’ve seen with classes opening up to every race, regardless of lore, I feel like it’s having the reverse effect of making your “Race” actually feel pretty meaningless and purely visual. Which is dispelling the illusion that your character actually exists in the Warcraft universe, and instead it’s little more than a totally non-canon facade, basically a moving camera that you can watch the Warcraft world, but can’t actually be a part of.

Now, I know that doesn’t necessarily give a lot of actionable feedback.

I’m just trying to share why I’m personally feeling very disconnected with the game right now – a feeling that seems shared by many others – despite Dragonflight actually doing a lot of things right.

For my own part, I feel like things that would help in that feeling would possibly be things like the “Renown” tracks, but for your Class and/or Race. Maybe more quests could have you doing class-oriented things, just to help make you feel like you’re actually playing your class. Just like the Heritage armor quests, maybe you would engage with your actual Race’s faction in a unique way, helping advance their place in the Warcraft universe in some way.

As things currently stand, like I said, everyone just feels super generic. It doesn’t feel like I’m playing anything in particular. I could just as well be playing a Human Peasant with 36 different Specs.

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Have you played aug evoker? They definitely feel different to play, to me at least.

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Yeah, homogenization did damage to how classes felt to play, imo.

They largely got rid of class-specific devs too. I’m sure one dev is responsible for several classes now, no wonder they feel the same to play.

Builder-spenders, or just bar-fillers like Warriors, or reverse-bar fillers like Hunter, or a combination of those like DKs or Rogues.

Playing Classic right now, feels super different in terms of class mechanics, but in a good way. No class feels the same as another.

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Well yeah.

This is what everyone wanted right?
All classes for all races, just make everything a cosmetic skin right?

The players making anti RPG wants are what diminishes any meaning that an RPG should have.

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this is a pve thread right?

Cause in pvp especially factoring in pvp talents every class has its own thing going on. Very few overlap significantly and even then its probably user error in playing a mage like a warlock or a fury warrior like a frost dk

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I’m fairly sure this is pretty much a PvE perspective.

PvP, classes still manage to be somewhat different thanks to PvP talents, mainly unique defensives.

But every class has, like, a burst cooldown or two/three they gotta line up for kills, for example. It’s pretty same-y for a lot of specs, especially melee imo.

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All utility is going to be boring in a pve environment tbh. I get why monks and warlocks both have an aoe stun, but the application is completely different up in the air in pvp whereas in pve its significantly harder to create a unique situation where lock stun excels, unless you just want another “adds spawn out of a doorway” But thats probably like two bosses a season, if that.

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They have been fed by the path of least resistance management.

Instead of balancing various flavours its been year after year of balancing by homogenising.

There are still plenty of differences between melee and ranged, tanking and healing, but nothing like we had in the early years.

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Need more story feel. Warlocks should be treated with distain and maybe some apathy. We’re the “hero” people dont like to work with, but accept that they can use our power.

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I think part of the reason legion is regarded as a good expansion was because of the class halls and fantasy which Blizzard put a lot of focus on. Classes did not feel the same and the stories of each were so different.

Each class had their own story to play through, whereas dragonflight has each class playing through a story.

By default the story and feel has to be generic because it’s not tailored to any one class.

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Yeah it’s very much intentional. As popular as Legion class order halls and related stories were, Blizzard considered them to be a failure.
Because most people apparently only plays one class, maybe two, making the rest of the class related stuff effectively wasted work for the vast majority of the playerbase.

Which is probably the reason why people either seem to love Legion, or really hate it.
Because if you were one of the people who only plays one class, you’d have about 2 weeks of content then all that remained was to pray for the right legendary, grind AP, and Titanforges, for the rest of the expansion.

Hence why they have been moving in the opposite direction of making almost everything class and race generic in the past few years. Probably the reason why they are taking their sweet time with the heritage stuff too.

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19 years of development will usually balance all the fun out of the equation :slight_smile:

This is what people wanted, all classes for all races, all classes have all tools. Big reason why so many played classic, was to play a version of the game that felt so different and unique.

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This is why I felt like Legion was a such a good expansion. Going to the Rogue order hall and doing the class quests and the artifact etc. Characters felt different from one another

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I’d say until I play classic I hadn’t really fully immersed myself in the aspect of class fantasy.

Simple things like mages, offering, portals warlocks, offering portals and certain really essential utilities that make your group survive.

Now it’s like people have alternative methods to do things and aren’t as restricted but at the same time it takes away your essential role.

I can see how over a long period of time people want to be able to be more versatile, rather than stuck in yet the same roles forever.

And I imagine overtime that will see all races be all classes and the talents and skills adapted to others. Either have alternatives for each of the classes or just an overall greater spread of the same utility. As in each class and spec, probably will get a strong self heal. And in theory it could challenge the whole triad.

:ocean: :dragon: :ocean: :dragon:

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Hmm… I do not feel the same, I feel they all got their own gimmick. Most casters, melee, tank, etc etc are going to have similarities. I guess I can see the difference because I played FF14 for a little bit and it was the epitome of everything feels the same.

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Every class pushes buttons to do things. Some classes push buttons in different orders/frequencies. Some classes can even push buttons while the last button they pushed is still going without disrupting the previous button push (i.e. Fire Mages).

My devastation evoker feels massively different from my affliction warlock which feels different from my shadow priest even though they all have buttons they push followed by channels. My arms warrior also feels way different from my blood/unholy DK even when just comparing mobility, let alone their rotational differences.

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I think Blizzard is just following the trend that games like D&D are doing. Making every race generic and able to play any class.

To me, part of the fun back in the day was deciding what class to play and seeing what race, or race and deciding on a class. It gave a bit of feeling to the character from the start. Limitations let you focus on what you can do.

I find when I have so many choices (In D&D) that effectively makes a race all the same, I give up caring about the race at all. It becomes meaningless. There is no built-in story to hang off of.

For that reason I wasn’t thrilled with the trend of every race for every class.

It’s the old ‘if everyone is special no one is’ syndrome.

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Are you playing DPS on all of these characters?

Try switching it up a bit and doing some tanking or healing. You’d be surprised how differently you have to engage with the game, especially if you don’t typically heal.

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There is no way I believe this is an honest and unbiased statement.

Where many melee just relied on turning on auto attack? What?

What is this complex and varied class design yall think took place.

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Yeah a lot of people did.

But I’m not sure they wanted this.

Blizzard took the lazy route instead of the route that would have enriched the story in game.

I’ll use tauren Mage, Rogues and Warlocks as an example. Most people don’t know that the Grimtotem are not all evil and that they have been working closely with the Horde from vanilla to the end of Wrath then in Cata they officially joined the Horde. Most people don’t know that because Jevan swearing loyalty to the Horde was in one of the stupid books or comics. Don’t know which and I don’t care because I think it should have been in game but that’s a whole different complaint that I’m not going to get into in this thread.

ANYWAYS

The Grimtotem have always had Rogues and they originally had Mages until the Cataclysm changes turned them into Shaman or Druids. It would have been really helpful and put all the dumb “hurr durr tauren can’t be rogues” nonsense to bed if they would have put a Grimtotem NPC in the starter zone and a questline to explain their origins.

“You’re Grimtotem and you sided with Jevan instead of Magatha blah blah blah and we Grimtotem have never shied away from forbidden magic blah blah blah”

It’s the fourth generation DK starter zone all over again.