From my perspective, we continue to see a larger portion of development time spent on the major portions of the game. More specifically spent managing them. Patches go through a month of tuning after being released, raids seem to have a similar thing - Stone Legion Generals, now potentially Painsmith.
If you like that stuff, I’m sure its fine for you.
I’ve given up hope that PVP will ever be normal again. But now I’m worrying we won’t ever get a patch with customization options, new races, better transmog options because eSports, raid tuning, and Covenant Powers require so much babysitting.
Obviously content should be king. And I’m guessing I’m not their target audience but does anyone see a point where the content is released - on time and bug free - to the point they can devote time to creating non-content stuff?
What makes you concerned?
Within the last 1 year we received a LOT of all of that.
They JUST did major race customization, major class overhauls, and major customization development.
Just 2 weeks ago we received one of the biggest customization options ever thanks to the shoulder transmog changes.
If anything, its the big stuff slowing things down, such that there might be MORE of the “small things” again.
Its not like the raid encounter design team is the same people working on putting sunglasses into the game right?
Another small thing just added!
Instead, what I am worried about is how much gets sacrificed story-wise to accommodate gameplay.
I don’t truly worry, because this has always been a thing, but it does feel like they develop the story years in advance and that must make creative design difficult on a small scale.
Just getting it out of the way. Pandora’s box has been opened. Weve defeated dragons, space aliens, gods and now even death itself. It’s pretty much too late to worry about saving homes, towns or even cities.
How did I “defend the drought” in that post at all? What does that even mean, or have to do with this post?
I did the opposite. I reminded players that even during this time, they have produced a LOT of what the OP was concerned with.
I see no reason to be concerned at all.
If anything, its the opposite.
The small things are easy and will always be there.
Its the big stuff that is causing the delays.
Ever since the “what endgame content do you want cut to dedicate resources to rebuilding Silvermoon” comment from Blizz I long gave up getting anything fun in the game since apparently it’s all-hands-on-deck for every raid, dungeon, and daily-quest gameplay loops (that they also don’t test apparently and need the playerbase to beta-test for them)
I’ve been gunning for player housing / guild halls since the late 2000s.
God forbid we have anything that isn’t raid-raid-raid or prep-for-raiding
I agree that they’ve been pretty good about cosmetics, and I think you’re right that the real concern is about not getting more stuff because of the big stuff bogging things down.
I don’t know if this is what you meant, but to me, the “big” stuff mainly makes me think of systems, spending so much time dealing with systems, and they’ve created too much work for themselves, more than is necessary.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I would much rather they spend more time on things like professions than all of these systems. It was nice having profession quests in legion and the fun fishing stuff in BfA. But, now, they’ve gotten rid of First Aid, and most likely Archeology, and who knows what’s next.
Less time on systems bogging them down that will be gone within 2 years, and more fun stuff that stays with us in perpetuity.
To me, the content feels very low effort. It’s small, time gated, and uses a sickening combination of FOMO and dullness to suck any enjoyment out of it. Wanna raid? Gotta do dailies first. And weeklies. And Torghast (a glorified weekly). And have to do it every day/week, because you can’t catch up if you fall behind.
Oh, and there’s still a 40% delta between the top and bottom specs. Fire mages we’re almost bad for like 2 weeks so they got fixed (in case those guys didn’t want to play frost or arcane), but hey warlocks have demonology so who cares about affliction. Meanwhile feral is over here for its third expansion in a row living in the dumpster just because.
Customizations must have turned out to be hard because they stopped that program real quick. Sorry night borne.
Do your 30 minutes and only your 30 minutes every day. Like a mobile game. Zynga proved that if you meta game human psychology, the actual gameplay doesn’t need to be high quality. And here we are. FOMO and timegating. Remove features to add them later. They still haven’t delivered on talents. The encounter still dictates the talents, not preference. AoE be Single Target talents aren’t a choice. They are a reaction.
It’s just been too much for too long. 9.0 drought and 9.1 dud is just a bridge too far for a lot of gamers. And it’s not just here on these forums, either. It’s other gaming forums, news and media outlets, content creators, streamers, etc. And all of this happening on the backdrop of radio silence from blizzard. We don’t even know if they hear or understand the frustration, which doesn’t give us hope that they are going to correct the course.
For sure. I do think that the systems carry with it stuff that will be here for good though.
A lot of cosmetics and collectables come alongside the stuff too.
Its not just power, and it does seem like said power will stay too, at least for Shadowlands content.
But ya, sadly they have designed themselves into a trap here.
Hopefully they can keep up with their own expectations, but from what I see, there is nothing stopping the normal flow of the small stuff.
Shadowlands has easily had the best however many months of that so far.
At least for me.
I think I differentiate between Covenants and the systems that come with the Covenants. For example, I actually tend to love Covenants. I love how each one has a different story, and cosmetics, mounts, etc. All of that is great. But, unfortunately, the systems, that were impossible to balance, and cause players a lot of consternation, came along with the Covenants. I wonder if Blizzard can’t just give us fun things like Covenants and Order Halls, but without the systems and borrowed power elements? I’m not sure what that would look like exactly, because I know players do want some sort of power progression. But, I think it’d be better to separate the fun Covenant stuff from the player power Covenant stuff, because we know it’ll be gone. I’ve leveled most of my alts through Legion because I want all the cosmetics and mounts, and it’s cool that that’s still there. But, at the same time, I don’t get to really experience what Legion was like because they’ve removed all of the systems.
Of course, I’m not saying we should keep every single system. That’s just wayyyyy too overwhelming. But, at least they could have let us experience the work that they put into the expansions. I can’t imagine having put in so much work as a designer just to see all of it gone in 2 years. It would drive me crazy.
I do not find this to be true.
We have a long time guildy who basically works 80 hour weeks right now.
The dude barely can log in during raid hours let alone outside of that.
We are outside the raid summoning and he is getting hit by the old eye of the jailer affects haha.
Hasn’t even STARTED the patch effectively.
He is 1/10 mythic now!
None of that stuff is mandatory to raid.
Not by Blizzard, at least.
Try to find a reset in perspective though. Don’t be so attached to whatever balance issues you are seeing.
Again, that’s a player made concern. The game is not made hard enough that you can’t succeed despite any composition.
Anyway, for real though, if the game is depressing, take a break. That is not a healthy thing to be saying about something that you are willingly paying money to play.
Really. Think about it!
I have 4 toons now with the underlight angler pole, two with maxed rep in all the fishing reps and all the toys and mounts.
I wouldn’t mind seeing more stuff like that added to the game, it was fun. I do wish they would go back and increase the drop rate of the items that created pools, its near impossible to find groups now.
