[Spoilers] Shadowlands Alpha Thread

Wyrmrest Accord
1788

For the record I don’t think you’re arguing at me, I just think we’re having an interesting conversation. I’ve got concerns about Torghast so it’s nice to be able to discuss this stuff.

I can think of a few. Some of the bigger names, mythic raiders, meta-players… I actually recall some streamer or YouTuber playing as a DH, beating Torghast and proclaiming that is was easy to conquer. Uh. Duh it was, you’re on a class that’s top DPS-wise and this was the first testing round they’d done of the tower…

I get that. M+'s appeal to me was that I could do the content with a small group of friends. Raids are so big and full of people I am unfamiliar with that they are unappealing to me. I do not like speedrunning, I do not like M+'s timer but I enjoy the smaller group aspect. I was excited when I learned about Horrific Visions being able to be done with a scaled party… Only to learn it was somehow even more stressful than M+ runs. At least, in my experience initially.
A soft timer is a timer that shouldn’t really be thought of by the player, at least that’s how I feel about it. Sure, in the PMD games I know the wind comes eventually but I’m not rushing through the floor because of it. It comes only if you’ve spent far too long on the floor. I’ve maybe seen the warning come up like once or twice.
I really do hope they test and refine Torghast. I love rogue-likes and I love the idea of chill content that I can run with my partner… I don’t want more M+ or Horrific Vision-like content.

It’s so vital that as a Marksmanship Hunter I feel the need to always bring drums with me because Beast Mastery hunters get it with certain pets.
Which, after messing around as BM these last few days I much prefer using a Spirit Beast (no lust)… but most people want lust for runs, so I sacrifice a defensive for lust. Maining hunter has kind of made me hate the spell, to be honest.
And considering they’re nerfing drums next expansion… Ugh…

1789

Roguelikes as a genre sort of fall apart if you don’t have a timer, even if it’s not a timer timer. There has to be something something driving the decision between moving on to harder content and exploring every inch of every single floor, and to my knowledge, literally every roguelike has had some kind of mechanic to gradually reduce the amount of exploring you can do on one floor.

And I get that Torghast isn’t a roguelike roguelike, but I feel like the principles still apply. A Torghast without any kind of timer would likely end up just being degenerate and uninteresting.

4 Likes
1790

Cool. I come around mostly to trash post, criticize blizzard, and argue stuff. I just don’t always wanna sound like I’m being mean or whatever.

Preach man.

I can’t say I’m remotely knowledgeable enough to construct or deconstruct the game design inherent. It’s a situation where I have to use some parts of understanding and some parts of feel.

I don’t play enough roguelikes to be positive about the timer situation itself. Of the few I have, I always found the resource restrictions and rng elements too frustrating to enjoy because it always resulted in my playstyles being dysfunctional or losing out to something completely outside of control. (Or, in other cases, a cascading effect where even if I could identify the single mistake made a dozen links previously, there was no meaningful way to address it with the situations in sequence).

But beyond that the struggle I have is that WoW doesn’t necessarily need something roguelike. I feel like portions of the random elements will be helpful, and if I want to be unnecessarily honest, I don’t necessarily disagree that soft timers and the like are inherently negative. What they are, though, is antithetical to what the playerbase seems to be looking for out of Torghast. Or, some of it, at least.

So even if I’m being fair to Blizzard and agreeing that somewhere there has to be a negative reinforcement to push players forward and deincentivize degenerate playstyles, I’m still hesitant to leave my “I don’t expect Blizzard to nail this” camp. Which is, technically, a different problem sure, but since they’re all wrapped up in each other that’s how it’s gonna be.

At least, particularly for what Blizzard describes and how they describe it, I can’t take them at their word. If their worry was cooldowns and players specifically waiting them out, you have options in this completely new and unique content. Such as turning them off, or limiting their uses per floor, or adding effects that allow for massive reduction of those cooldowns. Those solutions may not specifically deconstruct the issue of players choosing to go unnecessarily slow, but it directly addresses the issue of cooldowns as the factor that causes them to do so.

So even if I agree about the reality of the content that is Torghast, I can’t trust Blizzard to actually be honest, let alone competent, in what they’re addressing.

Like literally every time they’ve given every class a new raid buff or big cooldown skill… Only to take it away. To make new lust drums. And then nerf them.

1 Like
1791

I guess a “timer” in a normal roguelike feels way different from an MMO timer because most roguelikes are turnbased. If I’m playing a game like FTL, for example, I am limited in terms of the number of jumps I have, which sort of functions as a timer. If I waste jumps, eventually I get overwhelmed by enemies. But at no point does FTL feel like a rushed game, because there is no real time element to the rebel fleet’s pursuit. I can take all the time I want between jumps to fiddle with my ship, read event flavor text, ponder my next move, whatever.

But WoW is real-time, so we get real timers. I don’t know what the solution is, I just think Torghast will be more fun the less rushed people feel.

It is great that they’re explicitly stating that they don’t want it to feel like Islands or Mythic+, but the best way to avoid that is to not have any timed element at all, and instead include some other limiting factor. They already have the grue which shows up after a certain number of deaths, maybe it could show up if you use certain abilities too many times on the same floor, if that is what they’re concerned about.

3 Likes
1792

I am painfully aware of how easily they could mess it all up. Especially with how silent they’ve been in regards to some class feedback; people like to point out how active the druid alpha thread is, but there has been slim to no response from Blizzard in regards to Guardian druids.
Shadow priests, too.

They have at least been speaking about Torghast and are changing/trying different things which is great, but it’s somewhat hard to stay optimistic sometimes. Especially when it involves Blizzard and timers.

I really want WoW to feel better than how it does now.

Have you ever played Risk of Rain 2?

In that game, enemies continue spawning while you explore until you locate the teleporter, activate it and defeat a boss or two. Afterwards you can explore the floor peacefully with no more enemies spawning, but that means that you cannot earn any additional money to buy the equivalent of anima powers. Your money also resets every floor.

I think this game is better to compare to WoW than most other turn-based rogue-likes as you pointed out, but WoW is still very different to Risk of Rain 2.

2 Likes
1793

in case anyone is wondering why I take the “complain about timers” position, I pulled too many monsters in old town today and I died and I am sad about that

1794

I just want some instanced content that isn’t timed like M+ or visions.

6 Likes
1795

Same. Just some nice, over the top, everyone is OP solo or grouping instanced combat. Torghast is much needed as a perma feature, even if it’s just for cosmetics/titles/mounts whatever in the future.

I want to be able to level my alts level 10+ within it as well.

1796

Bit late, but has anyone seen Preach’s video on Torghast Torments? Kind of a shame he got an interview before the torments went live on Alpha.

1797

Oribos preview. It’ll likely be added to the Alpha in a build later today.

1 Like
1798

Gotta chug anima protein shakes and lift 3 sinstone plate bars for mad gains

1799

Wow, Oribos is looking good. Though I can’t get past the point that it sorta looks like the legion warrior order hall, just with more muted colors (might just be a side effect of me leveling my warrior alt lol)

1800

Ok so this is going to be inline with, ‘is this an allied race’ meme, but…

I wanna be one.

It looks like they use the male Worgen model and their feet being pointed tips is hilarious.

Actually discussion points…they reminds me of Ethereals.

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1801

Who is she

1802

They look like a weird blend of Dullahan and some sort of Golem.

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1803

Looks to be a few variants. There’s one using male draenei animations too.

Now while the customization options so far are nice, there is one thing that would really allow a character to feel different in a more notable way. Being able to change idle animations or some animations. A simple idle stance change would do more to show a difference in personality than any hair color.

The only problem there is the game’s animation system requires every animation to be complied into the model.

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1804

Yay blood elf beardss

1805

Who wants to BLADES OF LIGHT with every type of shoulder

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1806

I know you’re not supposed to hug the messenger but have a :blue_heart: heart for this delightful news.

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1807

Forsaken are getting a ‘middle’ decay option.


2 Likes