What’s boggling to me is that they can still drive sub numbers up if they encouraged additional gameplay with multiple characters.
Like what if they had some special achievement/reward/xmog if you complete AoTC/KSM/etc. on 3/5/7 different characters/all 3 roles/etc.
What if they made more QoL features account-wide, but they provided more aesthetic rewards for character specific rep that could still be ground out by players that wanted to do so?
Lots of potential for additional gameplayed metrics through encouragement and rewards rather than grindy restrictions.
And while there are a lot of nice things in 9.1.5, what hasn’t been addressed is the unavoidable catch all grind of 9.1, research.
To fully level conduits for a just one spec on your toon you need around 70k research and maybe another 25k for sockets.
And while they let you buy the upgrades account wide, it doesn’t really matter because that much research is double what is required for rank 6 anyways and you still have to earn it to buy them. So roughly 100 one hour grinds on your main, and if you want your alt competitive for end game, 100 one hour grinds on them as well.
So it looks like 9.1.5 isn’t addressing this and if 9.2 comes out and does with research what it did with anima, it’s still the shell game of hide the grind until they fix it in the x.x.5 “we hear you” patch.
I agree. What I would like to see in the future is proactive development for the playerbase they have rather than one they wish they have or one they think they can convert us into. That would involve doing marketing research to find out what people would be willing to pay for and what they would quit over, really basic stuff like that.
The current design philosophy seems to be that there is moral value in forcing players to make unappealing choices and live with harsh restrictions as a result of those choices. Old time games had restrictions and grinds, so the more restrictions and grinds, the more faithful to the spirit of the genre. This is, of course, complicated by the fact that these restrictions (and other features they knew were going to be unpopular) were implemented on the assumption that everybody who didn’t leave after the first month (ie, hype purchasers who were going to leave anyway, so why give them good content) was going to be so addicted they would never leave.
The game seems to be designed around the concept of the US health care system, where massive amounts of money and a plethora of programs are spent to make sure that people who don’t deserve health care don’t get it.
At this moment I just completed a Legion invasion on a new level 50 with AH gear, so ilvl 86. There is no way a leveler could solo this, and between the group finder redesign that keeps sub 50’s from using it to find groups and the fact that now grouping with a higher level player means the leveler gets zero xp, nobody was out there. I saw not a single player aside from me doing them, and if I had seen someone struggling, I couldn’t have helped them. A level 49 grouping with a level 50 now gets zero xp.
I don’t want the whistle - I want flying right at max level.
I want more RNG loot and less deterministic loot. In fact, I want titanforging back in at least world content. If raiders and mythic plus don’t want it in their content fine, don’t put it in there.
I actually don’t like that mount equipment business, those were too expensive to switch them.
I want less force feeding of lore when questing. Just bought Shadowlands because no more maw intro for all alts and I forgot I hated the questing because of that until I started to do it and then I remembered… it wasn’t only the Maw intro, it was all that forced RP crap.
I want MoP type of profession and daily content. In fact, just about everything in MoP was done well. The dailies, the farm, the gearing system, the professions, the 3 man quick scenerios.
I want this borrowed power business to disappear. Also, I want my character to remain powerful, I shouldn’t be weaker at 60 than I was at 50 when I do old content.
Your thread title is (deliberately) misleading. Your post is essentially positive but the title is click-bait which is a bit cheap.
In my view, expect good things from the new team leads if recent changes are anything to go by. I’d like to see reputation account wide. I’d like to see a facelift on the old world - bring it up to par with the lush landscapes we enjoy in later expansions and I’d like to see them wipe the world clean and start over back in Azeroth post SL. I’d like to see an immersive, living world, with weather, seasons etc.
On average it takes about on hour to get 1k. And that’s grabbing the 4 rift chests and killing the rare on the island. And that’s with a toon that can avoid a lot of unnecessary combat with stealth.
So 132 hours per alt is fast and easy to get for you?
What Legion, BFA and Shadowlands has taught us that Blizzard is willing to launch a system as it is regardless of how negative the feedback is, double down on it and months after launch they realize suddenly this system is a problem and they will fix it when it should’ve been fixed during beta/PTR when feedback suggests it, also fixing it this late just takes up development time when it should’ve been spent on new content which is why fixing these systems should be under beta/PTR cycles instead of months later and a mass exodus.
I can understand that we do come from a negative community but you no wonder why there is spite, resent and disrespect to development just because they think the system is fine to be released as is when it already is evident that it would be doomed to fail (i.e Covenants, Corruptions, Conduit energy, etc).
If you’re really slow, sure. But that’s been a general thing with Korthia all along: People are really bad at it. Hence all the people complaining about Archivist rep when a bunch of us hit Tier 6 back in July.
Or the people complaining about “I do the dailies every day why is my Archivist rep so low” without even realizing that most of the dailies don’t give Archivist rep at all.
This was much less the case in Legion than the others.
Legion didn’t even HAVE the flight whistle in early development. I posted a bunch of detailed numbers showing that a huge amount of my playtime was running back from world quests after having completed them. Lo and behold, the flight whistle went in a few weeks later.
I also posted full data showing the huge disparities in acquiring “gold dragon” artifact traits on the early artifact weapon trees. Havoc DH’s could get all 3 with a few thousand artifact power, while Shadow Priests required tens of millions. A couple weeks later, they added a bunch of connecting lines to turn the “trees” into more of a matrix, and that’s the artifact system that Legion launched with.
So in Legion they were pretty good about acting on detailed feedback. BfA & Shadowlands were another story entirely, though.
It has nothing to do with slow, all the sources have daily limits with diminishing returns.
Other than the bonus items from assaults the difference in getting 500 a day or 2k is luck in how many quests reward research items and how many 48 and 100+ items you get before you hit the caps.
And it still takes about hour and that hour averages about 1k worth of research.
Personally, I would rather not have the inmates running the asylum.
I have not seen anything that indicated these were ideas of moral value; my understand the current expansion’s restrictions were to interfere with min/maxing and create challenges.
It is unfortunately so many members of the playerbase found it too difficult to rise to the challenge.
I also haven’t seen anything indicating this was about being faithful to the spirit of the genre.
Restrictions give a frame to the game and challenge to the content. In fact restrictions give a frame to all games. For example in Monopoly you can only move one way around the board, buy properties you land on, are unable to collect $200 when going to jail, ect. Restrictions are just rules but with a negative spin on the label.
As for grinds, if you are referring to the mandatory repetitive grinds at end game, those are there to make up for the downsizing of leveling content which happened because of the playerbase crying about the length of leveling.
Which brings me back to my original point about not letting the inmates run the asylum.
