New interview, so far a lot of the concerns regarding previous philosophies among the Dev team Design Goals, More Account-wide Progression , Gameplay Beyond Power Progression, The Min-Max Mentality , Borrowed Power and Lessons Learned…etc
IMO, everything is just words until we see those design changes on 10.0, 9.2 has a lot of changes due to feedback from forums and now community council, however the game still needs a lot of changes, for example, i don’t get why we must wait 5-6 days for some Cipher research. the first week of the patch could provide a better engagement if we could start farming the mounts for the new systems since day 1 as mentioned by MrGM.
IMO one big topic, it’s that during content drought each Holiday should have a good gameplay but this lack on updates, they could desing a M+ Affix (Complicated but they can for each holiday), PvP brawls, Worldquest on Azeroth, questlines…etc, there’s a big focus on the current expansion ignoring some side activities that could help during Content droughts like Holidays and Legacy content (we can’t farm BFA yet, hopefuly 9.2.5 enable BFA legacy) and that could be evergreen systems with new things each year.
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“Imagine having all your talents, plus your full artifact weapon, plus Azurite powers, plus covenants.”
I don’t need nor want that. Maybe the artifact weapon. The rest I could throw away easily. I understand the pressure to add talents and abilities each expac. But I don’t feel like it has to be that way. And if it has to be that way, make it just an expac talent row.
But we’ve gotten into a situation where we get these temporary abilities and the systems to go with them, they become overwhelming and a lot of them impossible to balance. They aren’t well received. Then the team wastes the whole expac trying to fix the issues that the temporary powers and it’s systems brought about.
We approached Shadowlands systems in a much more structured way that didn’t have open-ended grinds to them, but still allowed for meaningful additional choice and gameplay depth. Looking back and continuing to look at covenant abilities and the way they’ve transformed gameplay, those have been tremendously successful. We’re already hearing players saying, hey, I hope I can keep invoking spirits forever, because I can’t imagine playing a druid without this ability. That’s a sign of success.
I don’t think he gets that they did not do that. They removed choice by making things very limited, streamlining everyone into the same path. The same gameplay. Some of the abilities are great, but they have to figure out how to give those abilities but not the layers of systems on top. And balance all of that.
And Covenants came off like generic forms of our class halls, without the class fantasy. And felt like they just took whatever story there was out in the world and locked them away in these different covenants. When this should always have been just a talent row, and you pick that talent you want to use during certain content. It didn’t even make sense during gameplay to have these locked the way they were, because we helped each one of these covenants. Making people pick only one just felt bad. Especially when things would get balanced a certain way or people wanted to play a certain way.
I don’t know how he’s this far into this not resonating with people so much that people dropped off like flies and still trying to sell it as a success. They had to eventually lift every restriction for a reason.
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The min-max section makes me anxious. It’s leaving me wonder if there’s a place in WoW, or even gaming in general these days, for those who just want to play what they want. For those who don’t want to pursue the “meta”. For those who want to play a class/spec/talent/covenant/etc combo because it means something to them, because it’s something they can identify with, even if it’s not “top tier”.
I like MM hunter and affliction warlock. I couldn’t tell you where they rank on a tier list, but flavor-wise I like the classes. I even picked “non-meta” covenants for them, and I’ve paid the price by essentially having to play SL entirely alone. It’s a bit depressing and that is why I continue to wonder if I’m just out of place these days.
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