Blizzard has mastered learning the wrong lessons

Community General Discussion
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On Tuesday, April 27, Ion and Preach interviewed about 9.1. It was a good conversation, and while I disagreed with some of what Ion said, I was hopeful for the future of Torghast, that it would be something awesome and fun.

Wednesday, April 28, barely 24 hours after this interview, the PTR was updated and completely and utterly contradicted everything Ion said they wanted for Torghast.

This critique isn’t about Torghast though, it’s about what the current state of Torghast represents: that Blizzard has mastered the art of continuously learning the wrong lesson.

We’ll start at Legion, which I regard as the third best expansion the team has made, after MoP and Lich King. It would honestly be my favorite of all time were it not for the legendary system that the expansion launched with. I was playing Resto Druid at the time and had already picked up Prydaz (the shield), which was not exciting, but it worked. Then about the time I was due for my second one, I was doing dailies as Boomkin and had forgotten to set my loot spec to Resto. I opened the emissary cache and POP, Oneth’s Intuition. Boomkin’s best, admittedly, but completely and utterly worthless to someone playing Resto. I was so angry, first at myself for forgetting to switch specs, and then at the game for making this situation even possible. I was so angry and frustrated that I was shaking and couldn’t even think about the game for the rest of the day.

Intentionally or not, Legion’s legendary system was designed to disappoint players in the most viceral way possible, but it didn’t have to be this way. For Legion, the WoW team consulted with the Diablo team about making gear drops more interesting. However, the WoW team failed to learn why legendaries work in Diablo: you get TONS of them (50 - 100 in a good play session), and every legendary is useful, even if it’s just blowing it up for a Forgotten Soul. So instead of creating the “wow I got an awesome piece!” experience the WoW team built “well there’s two more weeks wasted” or “finally, I don’t have to worry about legendaries anymore”. It was the rare player who had RNG bless them with the right legendaries early on.

Imagine my befuddlement, then, when the Battle for Azeroth PTR shows up and the premier gear progression system, Azerite Armor, was doubling down on Legion’s legendary drop system! Now you had three required slots that themselves had to also have the right Azerite triats, and you had to pray that Blizzard didn’t nerf the one Azerite trait that actually mattered for your class and spec (which, of course, they did, regularly). RNG on RNG on RNG was the Blizzard way. Somehow, the lesson that Blizzard took from Legion was that gear wasn’t RNG enough, so they added multiple layers of it, and in doing so made the most disappointing and frustrating gear system the game has ever seen.

Oh, and in case that wasn’t enough, Blizzard also somehow made the new version of the Mythic weekly chest even more disappointing. I can’t count how many times I got gear that was the same slot as previous weeks, or was the one slot that didn’t need an upgrade. Everyone I’ve ever played with or talked to has similar stories.

Blizzard knew they screwed up, but it took over two years for Ion and friends to finally publicly admit it. They understood that too much development time was wasted building out the replacement systems: Essences and Corruption, to replace the previous failed system, and that the expansion as a whole suffered because of it.

Now we enter Shadowlands, where Blizzard one again learned the wrong lesson, though this time they admitted it early on at Blizzcon not too long after Shadowlands launched. This time instead of building three systems throughout the expansion, they would build out all three systems right from the get go!

I’m sorry, what? The only reason BFA had three disparate power systems was because each previous one was fundamentally flawed and could not be improved! Why, and how, are we suddenly now at “all WoW expansions must have multiple power progression systems”? Covenant abilities, Conduits, Soulbinds, and Legendaries. To give a little credit, the legendaries are at least targetable and craftable, but that correct decision is overshadowed entirely by Conduits and Soulbinds. Why do these exist? Because Blizzard “knew” they needed multiple systems of power progression.

BFA was awful because so much effort was spent on building these rental systems that should have been spent on making the core gameplay actually fun. Instead of learning that putting so much development time into systems is actually detrimental to a fun game, they doubled down again on previous bad decisions, leading to systems that don’t make any sense and could disappear tomorrow and no-one would notice.

Shadowlands doesn’t need more soulbinds. Shadowlands doesn’t need more conduits, or empowered conduits, or whatever they will end up being. Shadowlands doesn’t need more lock-down of Covenant power with Covenant-specific legendaries.

What Shadowlands needs is fun. Shadowlands is not fun! And nothing takes this point home like the 9.1 PTR now re-introducing torments to Torghast. This was a system that Blizzard tried to enact during the Shadowlands PTR and it was rightfully reviled by the playerbase. SO WHY IS IT BACK NOW? There is nothing fun about punishing the player for playing the game (even the live version of Torghast suffers mightly from this). And then providing a “talent” tree to make the system less punishing? In what school of game design is this ever a good idea?

So, the only question left is: Why? Ion, why? Why is what you say so completely different from what we get? Why is Shadowlands just not fun? Why do you and your team continue to take the bad decisions, admit they were mistakes, and yet still double down on them?

Frankly, I’m done. I’ve been playing WoW, with periodic breaks, since Vanilla. It’s been a part of my life for over 15 years, and I keep trying to find the fun, but it’s gone. And now, the 9.1 PTR broke me. I can’t do it anymore. We tried for years and years to help WoW be the amazing game we all know it could be, but the WoW team is not interested in, or maybe they are no longer capable of, making a fun game anymore.

We have seen clear as day what the rest of Shadowlands will look like. It’s wrong, it’s not fun, and I have no more faith that things will improve.

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I’m just curious, what form of challenge do you find fun or acceptable? It’s a serious question because torments, along with affixes in mythic+, difficulty levels in raids that raise boss health or power, elite mobs out in the open world, encounters with a lot of mechanics , etc. are all methods of adding challenge to their respective game features. And here is the thing, I don’t think anyone would argue that a game without challenge is going to be fun. Games and their systems need challenge for any form of longevity, and feeling of worth.

So again, what form of challenge would like to see added to Torghast, raids, or really anything in game that you would consider fun, or acceptable?

I’m genuinely curious because there is HUGE difference between not liking the design of the challenge and not liking any challenge. And when you complain about Torments with a blanket, “Torments aren’t fun” … It sounds more like you are saying, “challenge isn’t fun”.
And For those that don’t like challenge in any form … honestly, I don’t even think your opinion should count for a game like WoW, but for those that do like challenge, but don’t like the current design of it, well then that’s where feedback outside of “this is trash” is more valuable.

Personally, I don’t mind challenge, and I certainly don’t mind that challenge being made easier over time, as that’s literally how progression works in any form of content. That said, the form challenge takes can be poorly designed … For example, in mythic+, I find storming to be a poorly designed challenge as someone that plays melee because the difference in how it impacts melee vs range is completely unfair, especially with the more melee you have in the group. But conversely, something like bursting, I don’t mind even a little because it’s one of those things that impacts everyone fairly and can be very easy in some situations and very punishing in others. And player / group skill can counter it,

So for me, my answer would be … challenge is acceptable and even fun when the player’s have the ability to use their own personal skill (or group coordinated skill) to counter. Where with with low skill and effort, it’s a burden, with greater skill and effort it’s easy or at least not difficult. And to that standard, there is a lot of it in the game currently and depending on the actual design of the torments, I welcome them, or at the very least don’t mind them.

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I would suggest spending some time on PTR. Basically they added annoyances then add a “research” tree to undo those annoyances that you have to grind for.

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Or in other words, they are adding challenge to content and giving us a means to overcome it. That alone is not a strong argument to not add torments.

What is a better argument, and one that I agree with is … what incentive do we as players have to keep experiencing Torghast after the first few times, especially now that they are adding more challenge to it.

IMO, this is Torghast’s biggest problem, because right now it appears their only answer is more soul ash (and now soul cinders), which we’ve been doing since release. I mean, there is the talent tree, but this only gives rewards relevant to Torghast. But without Torghast rewarding more than just legendary upgrades, no matter how much I actually like Torghast as content, I can only do repetitive content so many times without meaninful rewards before it becomes boring. The rewards is what makes repetitive, challenging content fun or at least feeling like it’s worth the time.

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First of all they arnt challenging. Losing 1% max health per minute doesn’t even actually do anything. A 4 second fear when you drop below 40%, a spell reflect shield that kills you with random procs…these things arnt challenges, they’re just annoying. And the worst part is that they only exist to justify a talent tree that make them less annoying.

It’s like they think “how do we get people to spend more time in torgahast?” “I know!ets make a talent tree and have random stuff like venari sells” “or what if we made super annoying affixes and the tre clears those affixes” like ok great, if you think that’s cool, more power to you, but IMO it doesn’t add anything…it’s just annoying until you grind enough to make it less annoying

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There was just no scenario where Torghast wasn’t going to be expanded upon. For better or worse, it’s one of the biggest additions to the expansion, if not the biggest. This is how this will play out. Within 3 weeks the difficulty will be significantly nerfed just like it was the last time.

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I believe they are trying to meet halfway from their perspective and ours . Its clear they wanted Tourghast to be done casually and have speed run potential . However their execution has always been so bad that they have screwed everybody .

The ppl who want to speed run are going fight these affix annoyances to only get slowed down and those who want to do it casually are gonna feel rushed due to the scoring system

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ive already come to the conclusion this expac is shot until 3 months into 9.3. then we get to see if they learn any lessons for 10.0.

maybe i misunderstood, misheard, or he was joking but didnt ion say multiple legendary equipping will be 9.3? well, that would certainly be a fun thing to do for 9.1, but like i said, this expac is shot until 9.3

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Hades answers all of this. The game at its base state is really hard, but every play through gains resources you use to make yourself stronger, and eventually you beat the base run. Then you get to choose your difficulty (the heat system) to make the game harder and earn more rewards.

And yes, combat in WoW has some limitations which means Torghast can’t be Hades, nor should it be, but right now Torghast isn’t taking any lessons from successful roguelikes, or even the failure of the initial version of the feature, in mind.

Torghast torments don’t even begin to compare to Heat. You can’t choose them and they don’t change the way you play. Nothing we’ve seen so far even comes close to making Torghast actually fun, and the fact that Blizzard is now just rehashing the failed experiment from PTR is not good.

I really, really want Torghast to be good. But Blizzard keeps going in the wrong direction.

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Who plays WoW for “fun”???

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And that’s great! I dont think anyone here would argue that Torghast is fine the way it is. Likewise nobody is saying not to expand upon it as the patches roll out. It is a primary expansion feature, we all want it to be iterated upon. But this??

They’ve spent so much development time on creating a rating system, creating a talent tree, and creating m+ style affixes. You want to good time score so you can fill out the talent tree in order to make the affixes less annoying. That’s a gameplay loop that doesn’t make any sense because after the talent grind you’re essentially back we’re we are right now. Like why couldn’t the talent tree just be cool perks? Why do the torments have to aggressively annoying instead of just challenging? And why does the talent system exist if it’s only to counter these ridiculous affixes??

Look I’m the biggest fan of Torghast, I’ll literally run it for funsies just for something fun to do if I’ve got some time to kill. But what they’ve done hasn’t made it more fun at all, it’s just an annoying slog now. And if I, of all people, don’t want to do it, I can only imagine what the people who already didn’t care for it must think

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Well…I already hate it so I doubt that I’m going to suddenly fall in love with it. I just think people are overreacting. It’ll be nerfed pretty hard before long.

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This is the optimistic way of looking at it because it’s either that, or maliciousness.

I’m starting to get the feeling its the latter.

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My favorite part is 100% the trees won’t be account-wide, so we’ll have to grind it on every. single. character.

Yet they claim they want to make Torghast more alt friendly.

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Wait, what?

Tons of us don’t even like Torghast, to begin with. Not even because it’s not challenging, but rather because the very nature of it isn’t interesting to some of us. I’m sorry but Roguelike gameplay isn’t something I want to engage with.

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The problem is that we keep running it. I don’t know if I’ve seen the player that just didn’t get a legendary.

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According to what they’ve said in the past, us “participating” in Torghast is enough for them to consider it a success, rather than realizing we only do it strictly for legendaries.

But there isn’t anyone who is trying to push endgame and doesn’t have a legendary, so this is on them to listen to feedback, which they clearly refuse to do, so it points to maliciousness solely based on time-gating our progress and power to keep us playing.

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That’s the tradeoff. If enough players refused to do it despite the reward, they’d probably listen.

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You’re assuming there’ll be a 9.3 It’s not an unreasonable idea that 9.3 may not happen.

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Behold! For I have no legendary because this expansion is pure garbage and I quit like 3 months ago.

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