His latest interview with Bellular had him talk about the nature of soulbinds and conduits and their design goals, and like I repeatedly said, the devs are going to a more heavy RPG DIRECTION, you know how I was saying you are supposed to create your own build instead of being a meta slave where everyone is the same?
Ion understands that and he wants to add more interesting choices in game where people choose their own build because they gravitate towards that gameplay instead of copying what a guide tells them to.
A few important quotes of his: “The decision of how to customize your soulbinds in a way that hopefully makes you a little be different than other people”
“The build you have gravitated towards that has these strenghts and weaknesses that ther eis a core of RPG customization that lies in those differences”
*““As opposed to if it is just a checklist and everyone ends up ultimately being identical and you are either following the ““right”” path or you are doing it ““wrong”” and there’s conformity or you know going your own way and thus doing it ““wrong””. NOTHING IS TERRIBLY INTERESTING ABOUT THAT””
“Product of choices YOU MADE”*
Source: From his latest interview with Bellular
Honestly THANKS ION, this is a serious issue WoW has been suffering from a long time so fixing it by adding more real customization options for us non meta slaves is great. Please continue like that.
New player zone, level squish making max level seem easier to achieve, faster leveling, more RPG focused elements, more single player activities, and all that other stuff point to the fact that this is their hard reset.
Yes, the Covenant things pissed a lot of people off, but I think that this expansion is really their full effort in trying to get new people to come to WoW.
Only if you are one so you instinctively try to attack an extremely accurate term as slaves have absolutely no freedom or ability to be their own people and instead are forced to do what they are told, same thing happens here but from a class guide.
Hence why you see so meta slaves whining about being “FORCED” to do something they dont like.
That’s really cool man. I think it’s also good, correct me if I’m wrong because I don’t RP, from an RP perspective to be able to level through one expansion, like Blizzard says we can. It seems that the story will flow for someone so much better if they fully level and develop their character through something like Northrend, or Outland; basically whatever they choose.
Agreed, when I first show the announcement it felt like they added many boring silly minigames but after checking in for more details I started changing my mind.
The auto battler thing for missions actually looks awesome, It isnt extremely complicated, you strategically build a team and place them in good positions and let it go, easy, simple and fun.
The unlocking of your zones through anima which seems to change and improve your zone but visually, story wise and gameplay wise as well as unlocking rewards is a great progression system, plus dont forget about all the covenant rewards.
The weekly covenant event also looks awesome, making a party and trying to find the right combination for which guests you like the most looks great, and I cant wait to see how detailed the flesh factory of the necrolords is.
All these are heavy single player RPG systems and I love them, and even gameplay wise Ion keeps pushing for more customization since he understands RPGs are about making choices and building a character that fits you, it feels great.
Yes, for example I just created a panderan Monk. I can now go straight to Pandaria to create his story instead of having to level thought azeroth, outland, northrend, etc.
This new system gives more freedom, which is a welcome change.
I think a lot of people get that, especially in today’s culture when all the best builds are just a Google search away. But I think certain people, to a degree, resent that mindset and specifically customize their character to their liking knowing that it isn’t the best build because that’s what they like.
It’s a more casual mind set and seems to be the mind set Blizzard has going to this expansion.
Yeah I figured. Well that’s awesome for you, sounds like you’re going to have a blast next expansion!
Obviously, THe build I have rn is used for casual pvp like bgs, mythic raid bosses and m+
I never change talents or azerite or anything, I find a build I like, I might occasionally make changes if something fits better, but I use the same one for all content.
It is a fact that you dont need the optimal build to do m+ or mythic raids, the only time you need optimal build is world first and m29s, and pretty sure you arent in either category.
People are just going to use the conduits that give the most useful utility, the strongest survival and the highest DPS. Given the choice, people will always optimize the fun out this game.
Yes, when I do need to pug I can find or make groups without many issues.
Even Preach, your elitist lord in his fresh account series confirmed that the whole “Oh nobody is inviting me because of X” is bs, it takes higher amount of rejections than usual but he always got into groups sooner or later so you cant pretend you need to be optimal and play fotm to get invites.
Unless you are bad, and let me tell you, when I make a m+ pug I never care about class or IO score, there’s far more useful data in your raider io page than those 2 things and surprisingly we time stuff just fine, last week for example easily timed a td with me, a shadowpriest, a destro warlock and frost dk.
Facts are facts: “you dont need the optimal build to do m+ or mythic raids, the only time you need optimal build is world first and m29s”
And that is what covenants are doing, forcing meta slaves to realize they dont need meta to actually do anything in this game outside of world first/highest m+ possible.
Ahh, the if your not the best of the best then you shouldn’t even try argument.
I mean, i get it to an extent that the variability of one choice might not be that big of a deal but wow is full of choices that have a huge disparity in the numbers. Like 10% or more. If you want to play a sub rogue, thats your deal but if youre going to do 50% less than another spec ill take the other spec all things considered.
I am not the best of the best, I am playing spriest, dont use the dominant crit build, or dominant shadow word void talent and would benefit more from crit gems*(And sometimes based on sims the 470 alchemy trinket instead of vita because I assume I pass some haste breakpoint)* yet I am able to do m+ and mythic bosses without problems.(New guild and on our 2nd raid night we are 4/12, monday probably 5-6/12, and yes, me a casual player without top build easily competes)
That’s the thing you need to realize, the game is not designed to need the FOTM to do mythic or m+.
Let’s say fotm does 10k dps
Your fun build does 7k dps
The hardest content requires all dps to do 6k dps, you are more than well enough to do all content, if you fail it is because people fail mechanics or underperform, not your fault.
WoW content (outside world first and highest m+ possible aka 29s rn) doesnt have huge requirements including mythic, if you are decent mythic is done with any spec
