yeah this time I’m waiting for full details of character pointless grind before I buy expansion- no pre order
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The amount of Corrupted gear players are likely to run into I think is going to catch people off guard.
What I keep hearing from people who didn’t spend time on the PTR is that 8.3 systems are complicated and unclear, particularly when it comes to clearing Horrific Visions. One player who asked me to explain the process of upgrading the cloak and corruption resistance elaborated more to say that he felt it was a lot for one patch, and this was something that should have been layered in over the course of an expansion so players had time to adjust to one element at a time. Another comment I keep hearing is the amount of coalescing visions that is needed is drowning out all other game activities - “I’d like to run a dungeon” or “I’d like to do some PvP” but “I can’t get behind on the cloak”.
What a I’ve tried to explain is that if you can hit rank six this week, as the cloak is capped at rank seven next week, you only need to worry about one upgrade/successful Horrific Vision at that point so things “should” slow down - but I’m also hearing about a lot of failures to kill Thrall, particularly from non-tanks - so there’s a lot of people who are going to need to do extra work next week to be able to make up for those lost cloak ranks.
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The increased focus on and importance of rental systems may be a sign Blizzard lacks either the manpower or expertise to develop the game to past standards.
In early expansions there was less focus on generic systems that applied to every class because each was given more tailored attention via tier sets and abilities. Now we have generic armor sets for multiple classes, and essence and corruption systems which demonstrate just how homogenized the game has become.
The Shadowlands covenant system is a continuation of this. Generic abilities every class will be given access too. At least players will be given four choices, but regardless it represents a watering down of class flavor that was so much more prevalent and potent in vanilla.
Then again, why should we be surprised? Blizzard ain’t what it once was, virtually everyone who made those great games of the past are long gone and Activision is now milking what remains of the brand’s currency with fans. The corporate mindset isn’t one that naturally lends itself to creativity and innovation, just ask Kathleen Kennedy. (admittedly poisoning your product with militant feminism doesn’t help either)
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I’m mixed on this…
“external power” has it’s pros. We can stop increasing in levels and just have a hardcap at 60 and we “level up” in each expansion through the new external power source. It also helps Blizz with balance… as I’d imagine every new spell exponentially increases how hard it is to keep everyone on even ground.
The cons… it sucks losing those powers at the end of an xpac. You don’t feel like you’re making any permanent gains with your character. I already feel that way with gear so I couldn’t care less what my ilvl is… but if they do that to your character? How long before I don’t even care about my character?
I wish I had your fortitude
I agree that is the best path but I always end up impulse buying the xpacs
I trust Ion and his team about as far as a starving pet bear
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buddy a major con is literally regrinding the same exact abilities again. There are direct parallels between abilities we are grinding now and ones we grinded in Legion. It feels super bad to regrind our own abilities every xpac.
leveling is apparently of no value to bliz as we get nothing for it anymore, where before the reward for leveling was these abilities
these guys are REALLY breaking the gameplay loop and dopamine experiences
Oh I love it, I had prepared for 8.3 to instantly race change into a panda DK the moment it was out since I was planning on playing back then, I love how a Pandaren DK looks and their animations.
I am just sad that 8.3 is just more timegates and grinds and really I am fed up with that when I can go to swtor and enjoy the gameplay, story, pvp, pve and everything in general without any need for huge grinds and external power sources.
Like I wish i could play WoW because I love the new panda DK class but damn, it is just getting so bad
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They are all very easy to acquire…
The external rented ability systems do serve the purpose of allowing them to add tons of abilities without creating long term ability and power creep. Essentially they are self pruning.
That being said, the power creep intra patch is insane. It’s lore and immersion breaking. I can walk out of an instance with the focusing iris being 25% of my damage. It’s to the point when asked what spec I play, I say “Focusing Iris that does cat things between firing my BFLazer.”
puggable bosses btw LMAO
Only WoW devs would think that way, Swtor had multiple expansions that add abilities to their classes and had no need for prunning as mmorpgs are about having a ton of abilities to use.
Yeah ok Ms. 2/8H girl
It’s called mogs, pets, mounts, and achievements.
You could make an argument that the core game is a collection game. It’s the only thing that matters in the long run.
But there needs to be some balance between people who played for 15 years and people who just started. Without it the game dies as only the players who have accumulated all the power over the years can compete.
Personally I think there too much catch up intra patch, but I also thing there’s way to many grind systems that require it.
That’s the thing, a game is about having fun, not forcing yourself through grinds and timegates you dont enjoy so your character is decent and you could possibly do content you enjoy.
This whole notion of “old players deserve to be rewarded because they did nothing skillful other than playing a lot and consistently” is silly, a game is about fun, in swtor you dont have to deal with huge grinds and timegates, and they also dont remove content from the game outside of a silly launch title that doesnt even matter much compared to the amount of content WoW has purposely removed over the years.
New players can enjoy the game just like older ones, and have fun, because that is what games are supposed to be about.
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All devs need to think about things like that. WoW’s been out a lot longer and didn’t really start getting into the need to prune things for quite some time.
In the end it’s a trade off, same ole progression and you get rank 58 of ability X, or mix things up make mistakes and prune later.
Rented abilities aren’t inherently bad, they’ve just gone way over the top with them in power and acquisition systems. Just real bad implementations.
Lol, achievements, Oh boy, I got a line of text! Don’t care about pets, don’t care about mounts, Mogs have been crap this entire xpack, but that would be a semi decent end game progress reward if they look cool. Seriously though, looking pretty only goes so far. I’ve been playing ESO since launch and I’m still not max champion. it’s developers actually take player time into consideration since the progress you gain is progress you keep. They just increase the max champion level once in awhile. It’s a MUCH preferred system to borrowed powers.
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The think is, there was no reason to prune, many buttons isnt an excuse, they decided it was a problem. That ended up ruining classes and making them feel trash with little ways to outplay other classes unlike how things were back in MoP.
And after the huge prunings of WoD and Legion the rental abillities only make it worse.
It would be ok if rental abillities started in WoD without the pruning, but now classes are just a shell of their former selves and external systems cant save them, especially not in pvp
i agree OP hit it right on the head
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Sadly as you ve seen from this very thread, there are many who will happily defend blizzard so I doubt we ll see any improvements when people unironically defend trash design.
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