Shadowlands Game Designers Protecting Us from Covenants

[Sentenza-alexstrasza]

@Cruelzebub-zuljin

Say whatever you want.

I will say whatever I want. I don’t have to say anything at all. That’s literally my point. It seems like you’re figuring it out.

[Vadimier-tanaris (Vadimier)]

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

I don’t have to say anything at all.

You’ve said an awful lot for someone that doesn’t have to say anything.

[Zoxpox-proudmoore]

Covenants are still just a borrowed power grind that gives talent trees so designers don’t have to fix the broken classes/specs and current talent trees.

[Cruelzebub-zuljin]

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

I don’t have to say anything at all.

Well, you don’t have anything to say, either, which is why your only debate technique is to call people names and tell them they’re “entitled”. And basically act like an immature piece of trash.

If you didn’t have to say anything, you wouldn’t be spamming this threads like you’re an on-duty PR flack working for a company that pays pennies per post.

[Voxplaga-ravencrest (Voxplaga)]

@Phoenickz-sargeras

People will keep playing the game as long as there is nothing else better on the market.

Which would have been the case 5 or so years ago, but WoW isnt the only big mmorpg anymore.

@Phoenickz-sargeras

They played through Azerite

We saw a large population drop with azerite.

@Phoenickz-sargeras

through Artifact stuff

They did the legion artifact right imo.

@Phoenickz-sargeras

and will play through covenants unless there is something better on the market.

There are several big mmorpgs on the market that people have, and will, play.

[Phoenickz-sargeras]

@Vadimier-tanaris

You’ve said an awful lot for someone that doesn’t have to say anything.

You read the entire statement fully wrong. You mixed up “I don’t have to say anything at all” with “I don’t have anything to say at all.” Big difference.

[Zoumz-zuljin (Zoumz)]

Population has steadily been going down in bad expansions way worse than good expansion with numbers we can observe. Yes they would still last a decent amount of time, many years of wow even if they keep printing not great expansion.

But saying that people aren’t ready to quit, I think it’s false. The core of players is getting smaller when bad expansions happen. A couple good expansions in a row would be needed to make it better.

[Vadimier-tanaris (Vadimier)]

Negative. I misread it at first, commented, realized, and changed the statement–you just quoted in the 10 seconds it took me to do so.

Thus making this reply of yours irrelevant!

It’s okay though. I still respect your opinion.

[Phoenickz-sargeras]

@Voxplaga-ravencrest

Which would have been the case 5 or so years ago, but WoW isnt the only big mmorpg anymore.

They will play them for a short while, then realize that WoW still, even if it doesn’t suit them now, it offers a lot more than the others currently, especially when Blizz figures it out and then incorporates what the others do. That’s why they’ve been so successful for so long. They’ve taken concepts from other games better than theirs and added to theirs, making theirs better.

Also, right now I think on the market the biggest rival to WoW is FF14, which is fair but it also goes against what a lot of people on WoW love; meters and pp measuring contests. According to a lot of people who play it, you are not supposed to be running any kind of logs at all, and if you do and post anything you get banned. Apparently guilds on there post to themselves, not publicly.

[Zoumz-zuljin (Zoumz)]

You can only get ban for it if you post them ingame or basicly are trying to be toxic about it. There is also not that much to do at high end, but sims are starting to get better in FF14 since a lot of wow players have switched to it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

[Madbeatz-illidan]

@Nadirah-amanthul

There needs to be incentive to NOT switch.

No there doesn’t. What WoW diety made this a requirement?

[Vadimier-tanaris (Vadimier)]

ESO is pretty big too. It’s my main MMO these days, really.

I log into WoW a couple times a week at this point. I raid, I push a few keys for the week, and I swap to a better game.

Truthfully the only thing that has kept me playing has been my friends but I’ve already told them I may be skipping Shadowlands outside of leveling a few characters.

Here’s hoping they improve the system though!

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

@Madbeatz-illidan

It was odd that I just watched a video called " How Game Designers Protect Players From Themselves" on Youtube.

Here’s the part of video that stood out to me:

There’s a famous story about World of Warcraft - in the story, Blizzard didn’t want people to play the game for too long - so they introduced a system in the beta where the longer you played, the fewer experience points you’d get for killing monsters and whatnot.
But players hated it. They hated seeing the numbers going down. It felt like a punishment for playing the game. So Blizzard did something pretty clever: they flipped the system on its head.

Now, players can build up a rest bonus whenever they’re not playing the game, and then get an experience points boost when they next log in. It’s essentially the same numbers, says Blizzard, but making it a reward rather than a penalty made it much more agreeable to fans.
So, it’s often better to encourage the behaviour you want, than discourage the behaviour you don’t.

This is exactly what I had covered in another thread and where many people gave some great ideas that oriented around a reward system rather than a punishing system:

@Madbeatz-illidan

• Provide discounts on repair bills to players who stay committed; with the discounts possibly increasing the longer you stay committed.
• With the new M+ cache being change to picking from 6 options - committed players could earn an extra choice.
• Players could be given extra Anima out of their weekly chest; perhaps scaling with each week committed to that covenant (capping at some point).
• Consumables could be awarded on a weekly basis; also scaling the longer a players sticks with their covenant.
• Providing additional xmogs/mounts that connect and tie in to the covenant themes.

Blizzard - please avoid punishing systems. Take the ideas from players around rewards and implement them in place of the restrictions and punishments currently planned for covenants and being able to swap them.

This reads like the common players psyche is incredibly fragile.

[Phoenickz-sargeras]

@Zoumz-zuljin

You can only get ban for it if you post them ingame or basicly are trying to be toxic about it. There is also not that much to do at high end, but sims are starting to get better in FF14 since a lot of wow players have switched to it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

Ahh ok, I do not personally like the FF game itself, but I like that idea of theirs there. Competition is fine, but too much bragging just gets annoying and obnoxious at times.

@Vadimier-tanaris

ESO is pretty big too. It’s my main MMO these days, really.

I log into WoW a couple times a week at this point. I raid, I push a few keys for the week, and I swap to a better game.

Truthfully the only thing that has kept me playing has been my friends but I’ve already told them I may be skipping Shadowlands outside of leveling a few characters.

Here’s hoping they improve the system though!

I log on every day, but I mostly just do a few things. I do not have full corruptions on my Afflction and Guardian specs yet, and once I get that vita trinket, I will be good then for my Affliction. I will be good on my Guardian once I get my full Versatile build I’m going for. Currently, I have 45% versatility and when my proc happens for the 800 versatility, I can get up to 75%. I’m wanting to see if adding another 3 more versatile rank 3s will get me to 100% or not.

I got extremely disappointed today though with that stream as they did not announce when prepatch will hit or when the xpac will release. They also gave conflicting opinion, as before they stated it would be out in Q4, but if i recall in the first 10 minutes or so the first dude said it would be out in the fall, unless he was talking about something else.

[Phoenickz-sargeras]

@Argorwal-ysera

This reads like the common players psyche is incredibly fragile.

In most cases, it actually is! If you grew up in the 90s or prior, you got called bad words and got told to get thicker skin and to get used to it. Growing up in the 2000s-20tweens and onwards, though, you’re apparently discouraged/not allowed to call someone a bad name. Instead of strengthening your psyche to withstand insults via thicker skin, we are now protecting egos and psyche instead. If you called a young person a bad name, they immediately start crying and you can be hit with hate speech or some other weird nonsense.

[Thòrhammer-proudmoore (Thòrhammer)]

@Phoenickz-sargeras

In most cases, it actually is! If you grew up in the 90s or prior, you got called bad words and got told to get thicker skin and to get used to it. Growing up in the 2000s-20tweens and onwards, though, you’re apparently discouraged/not allowed to call someone a bad name. Instead of strengthening your psyche to withstand insults via thicker skin, we are now protecting egos and psyche instead. If you called a young person a bad name, they immediately start crying and you can be hit with hate speech or some other weird nonsense.

I think that’s dramatizing the issue unreasonably.

At the end - I just see paying customers wanting to play the game in a fun way that doesn’t impact the physical gameplay of others.

That’s not unreasonable to expect, especially when you consider the request is for a game with such a broad player base with so many combinations/avenues of playing the game.

[Vadimier-tanaris (Vadimier)]

Overgeneralization to an extreme. It depends on where you grew up and who raised you.

I was raised with a “grit your teeth” mentality but I also try to look at every argument from multiple sides and to try my best to remain as unbiased as possible in debate. The downside to that is I have a bit of a tendency to play devil’s advocate on occasion.

Anyway, the argument that we are discussing in this thread is an odd one. You’ve got one side with nothing to lose regardless of what happens pushing against the other which is at risk of being subjected to the inability to enjoy the game in their way.

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

@Thòrhammer-proudmoore

@Phoenickz-sargeras

In most cases, it actually is! If you grew up in the 90s or prior, you got called bad words and got told to get thicker skin and to get used to it. Growing up in the 2000s-20tweens and onwards, though, you’re apparently discouraged/not allowed to call someone a bad name. Instead of strengthening your psyche to withstand insults via thicker skin, we are now protecting egos and psyche instead. If you called a young person a bad name, they immediately start crying and you can be hit with hate speech or some other weird nonsense.

I think that’s dramatizing the issue unreasonably.

At the end - I just see paying customers wanting to play the game in a fun way that doesn’t impact the physical gameplay of others.

That’s not unreasonable to expect, especially when you consider the request is for a game with such a broad player base with so many combinations/avenues of playing the game.

The example the OP gave was the designers having to flip a system, while keeping the functionality the same, because so many players can’t understand how things logically work and instead need to feel better.

[Zoumz-zuljin (Zoumz)]

I still think in any case, rested xp is a failure to gate people and doesn’t affect endgame. It’s fine that it exist, nobody would miss it much if it didn’t.

[Thòrhammer-proudmoore (Thòrhammer)]

@Argorwal-ysera

The example the OP gave was the designers having to flip a system, while keeping the functionality the same, because so many players can’t understand how things logically work and instead need to feel better.

Again, over dramatizing. Especially when Ion has already confirmed that some of the developers also feel that these restrictions are negative and friction within the design team has and continues to occur.

Making the system more flexible isn’t “flipping it”.