The alternative to adding ‘borrowed power’ each expansion is, what, adding permanent power? You want more and more abilities until we’re using a second keyboard with our feet and using abilities via Siri voice commands?
Or you just want nothing new when an expansion’s releasing?
I agree with you 100%
Borrowed power sucks.
Tier bonuses were borrowed power as well, but they weren’t as drastic as the ones we have nowadays. Blizzard had like the perfect measurement with this, but they threw it out of the window when they decided in Legion to make this borrower power concept something bigger and intrinsically tied to the storyline of the xpac.
I don’t think you completed the Suramar campaign if you believe this fallacy.
And even if the player character is a night elf. In Legion specifically we (as players characters) did not represent our faction, we represented our Class Hall.
There doesn’t have to be ‘nothing new’, as it’s pretty easy to add new stuff. But expansions are becoming so compartmentalized now that they’re becoming less like expansions and more like separate games, with each new one only barely being connected to the previous one. I think there’s no better way to illustrate this than with the leveling changes coming in SL. New players will see the starting experience and then BfA, and that’s it. This is obviously to make the game easier to get into for new players (and less tedious for vets leveling alts), but it really shows how easy Blizzard’s made it for them to toss aside an expansion when it’s time for a new one.
Anyway, that was a tangent. The important thing is that we shouldn’t be looking at it as though ‘borrowed power’ and ‘permanent power’ are mutually exclusive. Up until Legion, we had both with each expansion. I don’t see why we can’t still have both. But because of the current design, I can basically skip Shadowlands entirely and come back in the next expansion and I wouldn’t have missed a thing as far as my character’s concerned.
New stuff is either going to be temporary (borrowed power) or it’s going to be permanent (button bloat).
No, the pruning began before legion because the developers saw how unsustainable it was to add more and more new abilities without taking any away.
I think this is the issue. Anyone who goes “REEE borrowed power shouldn’t exist” is just parroting the same non-constructive nonsense they hear on the forums.
Borrowed power should exist, but the potency of power and amount that is currently in the game for the last 4 years is absolutely absurd, like you said. Set bonuses were fine, I’m not sure why they took that rough idea and multiplied it by 5000 in Legion.
You know there’s a middle ground in between nothing new and the convoluted mess that is Essences, Azerite Gear, and Corruption, right?
I don’t recall advocating for those things. I’ve been pretty consistent in speaking out against them.
Hopefully the two covenant abilities and the legendary system will be that middle ground. Legion legendaries plus the artifact weapon line was a bit too much imo and what we have now is definitely too much.
With Blizzard often is either 8 or 80. They rarely find middle grounds for their design philosophies. Although I’m seeing this changing a bit with Shadowlands, so there’s hope.
Alright, well I’ve never seen that so thanks for clearing that up. I agree, you can’t just keep adding abilities until we have 12 actionbars and 100 keybinds, but you also don’t have to make a class literally useless until that expansion’s power systems kick in (see 8.0 Shadow Priest for more details).
I think if they leave it as is it’s a great balance, like you said. Couple new abilities, new talent tree, some conduits, and boom, there’s your expansion’s power. But if they continue to add slots to the soulbind tree, allowing us to equip and upgrade 3 Legendaries, and then pull a Blizzard and throw in tier sets (to satisfy the playerbase) then you’re going to have this same thing happen all over again for the 3rd expansion in a row.
I hope they don’t take it much farther than what they have on Alpha, because it seems pretty good right now. It seems like Blizzard forgot that good content, ALT friendliness, and different, non-mandatory, activities within the game are what keep people playing.
I didn’t like set bonuses at all, personally. I much prefer the shadowlands direction. With set bonuses, you couldn’t equip upgrades that would break the set- it was really unintuitive. The only cool part of them were the transmogs unique to each class but those can exist without set bonuses.
There also wasn’t any choice to be made between bonuses. You either had the latest set or you didn’t.
The entire problem of this “borrowed power” is the time spent to build something only for one expansion. The entire expansion is Blizzard trying to fix a broken system.
It impacts DIRECTLY on how much content we’ll have. I would like them STOP to recreate these systems from scratch every single expansion and put effort and focus on new content.
We wait for 2 years to receive expansion and then you see “new zones, covenant, dungeons and raids, tower of the damned”.
We have only 1 new thing on this expansion the TOWER and that’s it. We will not have new classes, specs, races, new challenge modes, PVP content, housing, etc and etc. It’s a waste of time working in a feature that will be dead at the end of the expansion.
Seriously, just STOP" Put some effort and change the talent tree! Why add talents to the Artifact, Neck, Essence, Corruption, or Covenant? Doesn’t make any sense. Add this to the class talent trees and give us more options about how to play with our classes. Use the talents to create new specs for the classes we have today. Give us new classes!
They have a lot to explore for each class just take a look at the class areas, a lot of suggestions about new specs, some of them REALLY GOOD STUFF, it’s the “flavor” to the new expansion and keep the game identity.
If you have a balanced system you have time to think in other aspects of the game and not only how to fix a broken one. Also, you can better balance the classes and will not be mandatory to do raids as BM hunter because SURV is trash, or because only FIRE MAGE is viable.
I cannot even believe that someone would prefer these broken systems over a new spec to your favorite class.
Why do you people keep making the same debunked argument? No. No that wouldn’t happen. Wrong.
If we didn’t do this, then those systems wouldn’t exist and so they wouldn’t pile up on top of each other. Think. Use brain. Brain good. Think good.
I like borrowed power.
Because without it we have to read 1000x threads about X class dps being 2% lower than the top class and needing nerfs for “balance”
Legion had the artifact, relics, legiondaries, NLC, and tier sets…that’s a lot more borrowed power than just 1 system. And yes I agree, it was fine.
Fully agree with the OP here to a degree.
Said in other threads about the class and spec design issues, if Blizz would design fully realized classes and specs, then have these rental power systems as a way to compliment and enhance said classes and specs I wouldn’t have such issue with them. What we see now though is exactly what you describe, half-*** classes and specs that rely on these rental power systems to be complete, and when those systems are disabled classes feel terrible again. It’s honestly, IMO at least, laziness on the part of this current Dev team.
To those who point to tier sets, yes they were borrowed power, but they enhanced the class usually and weren’t required most of the time to make a class function properly. Also they stayed active until you the player chose to break them. Admitted there were a few occasions where some tier sets stepped way beyond, but honestly how many times did you need set bonuses make your class/spec to function properly.
Agree with this.
“Borrowed Power” has always been a thing, and I don’t think it taking the form of a system vs simple gear is that bad of a thing. Legion was kinda fun with it, and BFA’s big problem was too many systems and it just sucked. Azerite was too core to the character; if it would have been Corruption from the get-go, I think that would have been better, since they don’t feel like something you need to make your character function. It’s literally just added power.
Also making them usable while levelling would be great and help them not feel completely abandoned as soon as they’re not relevant. I hope this is a thing through Chromie Time.
How DARE you speak for me OP!
You are right though, I don’t like the whole borrowed power thing.
I wish they would work on making the classes interesting instead.