Bellular’s video covered so many great topics. I didn’t agree with him on all of them, but thought it would be nice to hear what others thought about any topics they were passionate about.
Here’s my summary of his points and some of my thoughts/reactions:
Essences
- “It just makes sense” He doesn’t spend much time on it, but also comments that it’s an 8.2 system and doesn’t jive well with the theme of “8.3 resetting BfA”.
Agree here completely - but this isn’t new and is very common across the community, so I won’t comment further.
Covenants
“Put them in a talent tree and give players choice” This feeds into Blizzards statement about “player agency being at the core of this expansion”. Pigeon holing people into a covenant because of gameplay goes against player agency.
“Covenants look awesome” and “taking a covenant based on what you think is the coolest and not having your abilities be tied to that is the way to go.
Would eliminate a lot of the negative aspects of feeling forced into one covenant over the other.
He also references some excitement he felt from back in WotLK.
The separate Shadowlands talent row seems like an ok option. I would be fine with simply being able to swap covenants in general without a cost.
Either way, there are plenty of ways to offer meaning to covenant choice and loyalty that doesn’t punish players for simply wanting to play the game optimally in all of the various formats.
Personally I don’t enjoy getting some subjective benefit from my choice when it’s “meaning” is derived from the fact that other players are punished from that system - especially when the objective reward really only goes to Blizzard. I’d rather have the value go to the players that choose one path over another without ANY negative charge/fee/punishment imposed on players that choose to play differently.
There’s a feedback thread somewhere that hits on a bunch of alternate ways of doing this that I think are rewarding for players that maintain loyalty that doesn’t charge people for just wanting to play the best they can by making strategic decisions about what abilities they bring to the content they’re about to play.
Conduits
No consumables - make them a library.
Work like 7.3 relics and gems. Gems are consumed because it balances the economy. With conduits - there’s no economy on time. So you “basically punish the player for existing and wanting to do stuff with your character it’s just this kind of weird arbitrary punishment that Blizzard just likes to throw on you for no apparent reason.” Then he references the reforge costs on Azerite traits, “Is that really needed?”
Make conduits a “library” thing that players can unlock and then choose from freely as they’re strategizing and planning on the content they’re going to go do.
The consumable approach does feel really weird; I library system like the essences would be more enjoyable.
Of course, this then brings up the account-wide conduit system discussion - but maybe the conduits won’t be so painful to earn on each character/covenant?
Treadmill feel to the game
He mentions the idea of feeling like you need to keep slugging away at a treadmill, especially in relation to power level.
He calls back to WotLK and MoP about how when he wasn’t thinking about his gear he could focus on reputations.
9.0 seems like it is getting better - time will tell.
I’m not sure I agree here - I like the ability to continue gaining power over time, but understand that the execution has been a bit off.
Personally I liked the Reorigination Array system in Uldir - rewarding players with power level the more time they spent in the raid, regardless of whether or not they made progress on a new boss.
The legendary cloak resistance infinite trait seemed ok to me - but I kind of like the fact that they replaced it with an upgrade from the last 2 bosses in the raid, similar to the ABT trinket.
Account-wide reputation boost
- Made alt progression “pace” feel a lot better.
Personally I’d prefer account-wide rep, but I’ll take this idea as a compromise.
GCD changes
- “I honestly thing it’s the single worst thing you’ve done for World of Warcraft’s gameplay”.
- CD’s used to be instant, so you could pop them all at the same time and you’d have a good period of being in “super” mode. The application of the GCD to these CD’s “homogenizes” this “super’ mode period and “smoothens” it out.
- It made specs’ “high points not feel as good” and “for no good reason.
- He goes on to reference the visual animation, particularly in PvP but also mentions the fact that weak auras eliminate any “need” for the visuals.
I didn’t like them at first - but I’ve gotten used to them.
I think the ones (especially the defensive ones) they reverted earlier in BfA were necessary though.
The initial rollback was pretty bad.
World Quests
“IMO these have massively sucked since Legion”. They’ve been “homogenized” and tied directly to the reputations without there being anything unique about those reps.
He references TBC and WotLK and how each reputation felt a lot better because there was more diversity and that they felt different. He does mention the tortollans and some of the Naz WQ’s - but I get the sense that he’s wanting to see more delineation like these WQ’s provide.
Starting in Legion the WQ’s between the reputations mostly felt the same.
Actually another place I don’t agree.
I’d actually rather have less travel to do the quests instead of diversity, and even a “hard mode” that may be instanced for 1-3 players; similar to the Legion Invasion finishers.
I prefer to take on a bit of extra challenge in exchange for time savings.
That being said - I’m always up for more diversity, I just value those other things more.
Flight and Pathfinder
He used to be a proponent of ground mounted travel.
Where WoW and the Flight/Pathfinder system are today - Pathfinder does not feel like a reward, it feels like a punishment.
He suggests restriciting players to ground mounted travel while leveling, but once they’re max level, let Pathfinder (1) unlock flying.”There is no reason to jest arbitrarily delay that.”
He also suggests that they give us flying much sooner, and use the great art/design team Blizzard has to make zones more oriented around flight. He references old WotLK zones - Icecrown and Storm peaks; both of which allowed flying to unlock a real strong sense of fantasy and immersion.
Having flying associated with the Pathfinder 1 and 2 respective zones seems like the most logical approach.
I’m definitely in favor of earlier flying and love the idea of more flying based content/zones.
PvP Vendors
- Just add them. He makes a call to earning a PvP currency for gear - tying into the player agency statement from Blizzard.
I don’t PvP much - but vendors make logical sense. The approach they took in BfA boggles my mind.
Makes me feel like they were actually trying to push PvP players away from WoW.
Weekly checklist
Islands/Warfronts - “just more stuff I’ve got to do before I get to the thing I actually want to do.”
Reduce the length of the checklist. Players used to have other things to do when the checklist wasn’t as long as it is now- alts and/or reputation (as previously referenced).
I would rather spend more time in game across multiple characters rather than more time on a single character for the “check-list” type items.
I’d also like better content than Islands and Warfronts.
I think Islands and Warfronts had potential - but in practice, they turned out to be pretty bland. I think Blizzard can definitely do a lot better.
Tier Set Pieces
- Let’s get them back. The addition of warfront, benthic, etc. set pieces weren’t good enough to fill in the void left by their removal.
I actually like the armor type approach. I think they could move into a hybrid approach where in one tier the sets are armor based, and in the next tier they become class-bassed.
All of that being said - I would prefer the tier bonuses to switch automatically between specs the way Legion bonuses did.
Azerite traits were a pain on their own between a bad UI to manage them - but even worse that you had to pay to switch them when you changed specs.
De-systemitize
- Makes a slight reference to WQ’s but notes that this can be applied generally to the game.
The only other area I can think of is with gear - and mainly just because of the need to sim. The layering of the systems and combinations of abilities makes simming necessary and quite annoying when you have to piece everything together from multiple smaller sims without paying raidbots the premium fee.
Mage Tower/Visions/ Torgast
Will be fun solo because of the stakes on the line - dying means dying; but the rewards aren’t there to account for the increased risk.
Playing the latter 2 solo feels more like the Mage Tower and creates a sense of a unique game style. But with those latter 2 likely having limited access - you’d never be properly rewarded for trying out the content in that manner.
Make a mode for these latter 2 that was repeatable when done solo for cosmetic rewards.
I never really thought of this option - but a 1 player mode for cosmetics seems cool.
It was great in the Mage tower to work towards. I can see them doing it well again.
Whether you’re a troll/Blizzard-hater or a Fan-Boy/“Bootlicker” or anything in between - share your thoughts.
I’ll be quoting some of the more mature responses and ideas.