best expac was Wrath and all they did was tack on 10 levels and some ability revamps with new final abilities.
MoP had the cloak, no different than WoDâs ring.
It was much better with talent tree and tier sets .
Iâve been saying this for a long time. Blizzard keeps trying to reinvent the wheel and massively failing. Unless thereâs some MAJOR fixes between now and release I donât think Shadowlands is going to do very well. After getting my hands on beta and checking out all the classes & Covenants I can really only come up with two words to describe the state of Shadowlands right now on the beta.
Dumpster fire.
Yup. I doubt they will learn. They make too much money off the overly dedicated. I will give SL a chance , but after a few months of playing BFA Iâm exhausted with how awful all the system are, how bad gear is, and how bad just daily chores are. 50 Rep for a daily is a joke. the 100% Rep boost should always be on for all places not current.
When have they not done this?
From Vanilla to BC, they added dailies, currencies, ârep that matteredâ, heroics, catch up mechanics, 10 man raids. Oh, and more talents that had to balanced and maintained.
BC to Wrath, Yet More Talents. Large events, new class, more formalized catch up mechanics, spamming heroics for currency, daily heroics, weekly âraidsâ (i.e. trivialized raid content), ToC with its large reputation grind and more dailies.
Wrath to Cata. Reset on Talents to the new system (that was here, right?), end game content ala Firelands, more dailies, more grinds, more coins/ducats/lucre. LFR arrives.
Cata to MoP, 8 zillion dailies, walled off quest spaces (IoT, TI, etc.), spamming heroics went to an entirely new level with the tabards and tokens, the shift from âflight early, often, and everywhereâ to âwait just a second, maybe this flying this isnât that great after allâ, plus the Cloak.
WoD, More Cloak^H^H^H^H^HRing. Heroics are now very short term content. Dailies collapse, rep is by raw grind only â+3! yay!â. Pathfinder. Garrisons and all they bring, mission tables, followers, âmission currencyâ to farm for. TJ ânot quite likeâ TI, enormous catch up at the end prior to Legion. Challenge dungeons.
Legion, âClass Hallsâ instead of Garrisons, the new artifact system, more new phases with new currencies, new rep, new gear. The beginning of the M+ system. More pathfinder, more pathfinder PLUS a âno fly zoneâ. Massive catch up mechanics, legendaries fall like rain now. New currency.
Then BfA.
And none of that includes all of the fundamental class changes over the years. The âI want my Frost Tank backâ lament.
The game has never stood still. Each expansion has some new dramatic element that is tossed out, or modified.
Does SL still have Mission Tables? Central to Garrisons in WoD, a nice to have in Legion until finally shoved in the corner of a rotting boat offering not a whole lot to anyone in BfA.
The talent system didnât scale.
The new talent system isnât fun, and it canât scale either. âOoh, a new row!â
Building up the legendaries and artifacts and granting new power each expansion, is fun. âLook, new shiny thing, more power, another small event accomplished, my paper doll getting more filled outâ.
But it, too, doesnât scale. Can you imagine what weâd be like if we kept the Legendary powers plus all the junk we got from the artifacts and essences and what not, PLUS, however many zillion talents weâd have today if they just kept going and going and going?
Half my screen would be toolbars.
I look forward to the reset. I look forward to the humbling of my once powerful toon in the new land getting her pink butt kicked from here to Hyjal as we encounter the âmore powerfulâ creatures. I like the early phases of the game were I look at mobs in the wild with trepidation and resolve instead of just annoyance and anger.
Nobody here would want to do Legendaries again. No one here wants to do the Artifact again, even though theyâre both very similar. But who wants to âdo the same thingâ over again.
No, we want something fresh, we want our characters to grow and thrive. Itâs âfunâ to start small and build big, which you canât do if you start big. Hard to go from big to bigger to biggerer.
So, here we go again. All the old world is one shot material. All the new world is fresh and powerful and dangerous. For everybody.
Remember being eager to get those 370 chest drops in BfA? Notice how you nose up at them now and vendor them for cash without thinking about it?
Looking forward to the new â370â gear, whatever it is (200? 213? whatever?).
1 Like
Yes, by you.
The talent system in Cata was an extension of the same one we had the entire time. All they did was require us to complete one tree before moving on to the next one. The âcollapsingâ youâre speaking of took place in MoP.
~https://www.wowhead.com/news=163300/new-cataclysm-talent-trees-updated-talent-calculator
Not really. In every expansion you mentioned, the classes progressed. Yes, they added new stuff, but this was mostly to make the unfeasible⌠well, feasible (i.e. Paladin and Druid tanks). Moreover, these new abilities (where they worked) were refined and incorporated into the next expansion. There was some trimming and modification, but there was a general trend upward from expansion to expansion.
This is no longer the case.
1 Like
As a person who enjoys complexity and multiple options to customize my character, I do not like trimmingâŚ
But I also understand why it needs to happen.
Great, but thatâs not what weâre talking about.
The OPâs points are that:
- The development time invested in these rental systems could be better spent elsewhere, and that the rental systems themselves create their own problems, which require even more development time.
- This problem is solved by sticking with a system, and evolving it across expansions.
My point is that the idea that expansion-specific rental systems are required for player enjoyment is untrue, and is unsupported based on the history of the game.
1 Like
Wrong, every expansion changed character class customization/progression significantly.
This is simply a different flavor of the same thing.
Classic, which has no systems or rentals and is in fact extremely tedious and boring from a gameplay perspective, is doing quite well. So this idea that we need junk piled on to keep the game interesting is ludicrous.
Most companies strive to maintain the status quo while slashing budgets to stay in the black. Doing something that costs tons of money needs to have a huge expected payoff or itâs not financially worth it.
3 Likes
I agree. Why build up all the fluff just to see it go away? Employment opportunities?
My guess is theyâre building a system with end game in mind and want to create an environment similar to evolution, if the best players can get through the thick of the fluff and get to the top end game it leaves behind the players who will die off.
Eventually, you will have players left over who want to make money using âwow as-a-serviceâ for their competitive professionalism - which is then streamed through various data collection agencies and then followed by players who want to be the best, but donât realize theyâre dying.
insert advertisements here
Thatâs all I can think of right now.
Incorrect.
The history of classes in WoW has, until relatively recently, been one of refinement over time; reworks, while they did exist, were relatively rare until the WoD-Legion era. Moreover, the changes that did occur have generally carried over to newer expansions.
Rental systems are, by definition, not carried over between expansions.
Also incorrect, for the reasons I cited above. The AP grinds have increase player power in a way that is specific to an expansion; the new powers we gain are now treated more like gear than class abilities.
The rental systems are a different thing.
1 Like
Like every other expansion, I appreciate the character and power changes.
This is not what is making the game worse.
What is a bigger factor in my opinion?
-Better leveling experience and progression. This game has turned into where the âReal Gameâ is endgame, everything leading up to that point is just chores. Leveling needs to be a core part of the game experience with itâs own economy and gameplay and stratifying replayability.
-Better balance. If you notice a class or covenant is doing really poorly or does not have any sort of niche that is relevant to endgame⌠make adjustments.
-
Better profession integration. All Professions should be relevant and feel good throughout the entire experience.
-
Better Creativity in class/spec diversity. Every class/spec should feel different and feel like they have a niche. They all should have their own perks in the open world as well. For example, survival hunters get a damage boost against beasts in questing zones equal to 2%+quarter level rested XP. Sub Rouges can pickpocket humanoids for a chance of finding a rare item(That is balanced, but relevant). Resto Druids can create living bridges in the world in places to cross rivers easier and stay there for 10 min. Holy Priests can bless graves out in the open world and get a buff that lasts 10 min. Random things like that.
Our class/role/covenant choices should feel special.
I could add more, but they are more personal taste than anything. For example, I really liked the mythic+ when they came out in legion⌠I was entirely bored of them when it came to BFA. I want new a better ideas⌠the rush rush play and hyper meta of mythic+ is a turn off for me. I want the game to reward strategy and patience more, personally.
Youâre basically saying you want everything to go back to how it was in vanilla: long/slow leveling, long dungeons with cc etc, and niche specs that arenât actually balanced because some specs are a lot better at specific things. A lot of people say they want these things, which means they want Classic with new zones and art essentially. Classic classes/dungeons/etc but with new zones every expac would cost a lot less to develop than all the crazy new systems they keep making, which is the point of this thread. Sticking with what people like (the status quo) while adding in a few new things is cheaper and easier to make with less risk of financial loss for the company.
1 Like
No, I think actually during this entire thread I have been defending how blizzard has been implementing design decisions lol.
I do want long leveling, but I also want it to mean something and to be fun. Right now leveling is a pointless chore with no sense of progression.
I donât want niche specs that disrupt balance. You are actually able to have both. One in the open world, things donât have to be as balanced as in raids. Two, if raids have a diverse enough of fights where different classes and niches have their time to shine, diversity in playstyles should not be an issue.
There are fights where AoE damage is more of a priority, others with cleave, others single target, high mobility, melee range obstacles, ranged only obstacles, tank and spank, class/spec raidwide buffs and utility, magic damage vulnerability, physical damage vulnerability⌠there are literally countless ways you can incentivize a diverse group of classes and specs in a raid.
Classic was not balanced enough. There were classes spec that are literally trash doing a third of the damage as others in EVERY situation. That is not good design.
I do like the strategic pace rather than the rush pace of a mythic +⌠but mythic plus did have a time where it appealed to me⌠now, itâs just boring and completely Metaâd. They are creating new system in Shadowlands that could make things fresh, like torgast⌠something BFA failed to do (Islands and warfronts failed to be fun). So BFA just ended up being a LEgion 2 that was worse.
If blizzard didnât spend so much time making unnecessary systems that are just going to be thrown out by the end of the expansion maybe they wouldnât even need to delay the game but what do I know
1 Like
this aged like fine wine