Preach had an interview with Ion Hazzikostas, which I’m sure many of us have watched already, and a response that got my attention was when borrowed power systems were brought up. Before I go any further I will say that I played endgame mostly during cataclysm, late MOP, and early WOD, I hardly played during legion and started getting back into wow when 8.3 dropped so I skipped most of artifact power.
What Ion said that caught my attention was that the reason why borrowed power was continuing to be a thing was due to the fear of class homogenization as continuing to add additional abilities to classes will eventually cause them to just become the same. During MOP this was the most evident as every class could do at least a little everything. I can agree with this. Having every class be unique makes the game more interesting IMO.
The solution that Ion said in the interview he wanted was to have some kind of mix between borrowed power and “permanent” power. If this becomes a thing I recommend bringing back essences from BFA. I loved essences and thought they were super cool. It was stupidly annoying getting them for each character so it was much better when we got them account wide. I think this would be a great solution to the problem the developers envision with continuing adding abilities. It allows you to retain power gained from previous expansions while not getting homogenized with all classes becoming the same. Lets say you find an essence in the shadowlands that allows you to call upon the power of your soulbind in the future. Or maybe you can get an essence that lets you channel the power of your artifact weapon from legion.
I’m curious what you all think about this topic. Do agree with the classes becoming homogenized with new abilities being added every xpac? if so do you think that’s a bad thing? Do you agree with Ion that the solution to this supposed problem being creating a mixed system of borrowed power and “Permanent” power? If so do you like the idea of essences coming back? if not why?
TLDR: Borrowed power is here to prevent classes from feeling the same due to getting too many abilities each xpac. Bring back essences that draw power from previous xpacs so we don’t keep loosing power at the beginning of each xpac.
covenant for raid st, raid cleave, raid aoe, pvp burst, pvp survivability, world grinding, timewalking.
soulbinds/conduits for raid st, raid cleave, raid aoe, pvp burst, pvp survivability, world grinding, timewalking.
Ledgendary combinations (imagine legion + shadowlands leggos all working) plus legion raid trinkets, plus wod leggo rings plus mop cloak AND gems.
See how the list will constantly grow and be worse that if they just had class ability bloat?
AND MORE IMPORTANTLY HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO BALANCE ALL OF THAT FOR NEW PLAYERS THAT NEVER UNLOCKED ANY OF IT? SEND THEM OFF INTO PAST EXPANSIONS JUST TO UNLOCK THE POWERS THAT THEY WILL NEVER GET A GROUP INVITE IF THEY DONT?Think of your alts and having to do all of that.
At this point I hope Blizz just starts overhauling specs and class design to get them to a point where they’re more sustainable long term. Too much investment into borrowed power means that players can easily feel like there’s no point to investing in something that will just disappear with each expansion.
For some reason it feels like Blizzard is locked into borrowed power and new abilities being the only way to mix things up when that is…not the case.
GW2 does it by keeping a constantly shifting meta where specs can change quite a bit with just a few changes. This also springs from how their class system is designed, though, and WoW just doesn’t have that sort of flexibility. Still, a good thing to note.
ESO also does it by making use of how flexible its class design system(s) are - the best example would probably be new gearsets that let players tweak their setup even more, though they also have a rotating meta where a certain skill is garbage for a while only to be buffed into the meta.
Of course I’m oversimplying, but currently it feels like Warcraft’s classes are built around the idea of having borrowed power each xpac. This doesn’t seem to be working as well as Blizz thought, and I really hope they start combing through classes and stealing ideas from other games on how to keep peoples’ interest in a class.
Folks gripe about borrowed power, but as long as we don’t get another “legion into bfa” or BFA, I don’t see a problem. The only reason to why “borrowed power” feels bad is because some powers are so insane, that losing them breaks certain specs; that’s more of a class/spec design issue. If Blizz wants to change it up so that homogenization, borrowed power, and bloat don’t become an issue, they need to re-evaluate each spec and actually take player feedback into account. I’ve mained my warlock since TBC, and even if I love the class, I hate how we’re basically gimped (in comparison to other classes/specs) for an entire raid tier just because of how the class was built to be so gear dependent.
Yeah, but the meta will always be glass cannon…unless you’re the designated “tank,” then you’re allowed to equip a single piece of toughness gear.
The problem is that they are largely recycling the same borrowed powers over and over again. They give us a bunch of powers and passives. Then they take them all away. Then they rework them into talents, or the new borrowed power systems, again.
It is a horrible circle where nothing really feels like it changes. And that our classes end up feeling good to play with all of the powers and passives. Then have them taken away, only to grind them back in new gated systems again.
Watch, next expansion, some legendary powers will be talents or tier set bonuses. Or even worse, passives and bonuses on the next borrowed power system. Some covenant abilities will be talents for some specs. Just making us work for things. To take them away. To make us work for the same things again.
And worrying about ability bloat and skill bloat is a platitude. They dont have to add new skills on top of existing ones. Just take under-performing specs, or under-played specs, and rework them each expac. Give all classes new talents in place of ones that arent used much. Just change and alter what is there instead of adding onto it forever.
Idk where you guys get this mental block in regards to borrowed power. Everything is borrowed power. You gear is borrowed power. In order for it not to be, it would have to remain powerful, and it doesn’t. Just keeping it doesn’t mean it’s still not borrowed power.
Destiny 2, for example, has spent the majority of the time it’s been out with the exact same gear being infused up to tier after tier after tier. People using guns from years ago. Do you have any idea how stupid that is? They started implementing sunsetting, and the community was in uproar, and still is. They’re idiots. I legit wont go back to that game, even though theres awesome stuff going on, just because theres people still using gear from years ago.
Oh this stupid argument again. I know you’re intentionally misunderstanding the point to make this stupid argument, but I’ll explain the difference amyway. Your class/spec isn’t designed around tier sets. You didn’t need the tier sets for your spec to play the way it’s supposed to. When the tier set goes away, your class doesn’t then feel terrible to play.
No, I dont get it. I’m not even referring to just tier sets. It’s all borrowed power–all gear. You keep it, but the power is no longer there because new borrowed power [gear] replaces it.
And the but about, “when the power goes away, your character feels bad”, that is completely irrelevant. they always replace the system with a new system. How the heck else could they sustain a game for years and years? Adding 3 permanent new abilities every tier or expansion? That would be an absolute mess, and be boring, and take like no time at all to complete.
These systems are content. What else are they reasonably supposed to do every two years? Give us 3 raids and 15 dungeons a tier? Thats nuts.
When I was recommending getting power from previous xpacs I didn’t mean in getting literally every power. That would be absurd. You do bring up a great point in forcing players to go do old content in order to obtain a power that would suddenly be changed in a patch to become stronger.
I understand but where do we draw the line to keeping borrowed powers? What i dont enjoy is currently losing something we had only to have it be implemented in some form again in the future. I dont mind borrowed power, i dislike having to farm the same borrowed power in the next xpac.
Eg: Legion leggos and artifact traits that became azerite options, that then again became slands leggos.
Borrowed powers are a problem for two reasons, imo.
1 - Scaling! It makes us feel weaker as we level and makes the loss of borrowed powers sting even more. We lost a bunch of haste/vers/mastery procs along with damage skills and procs.
Then as we level our secondaries get weaker due to the way levels and secondaries work.
On top of all that scaling, both while leveling and at max level means we never quite reach that kind of “power overwhelming” you can get in many RPGs.
2 - Class design is based heavily on the borrowed powers since Legion.
Without Essences and Azerite we lost a lot of abilities, both passive and active.
It was replaced with one single choice, no more swapping active/passive powers at rested areas or with spec change.
Without corruptions we lost a massive amount of either secondary stats or damage procs.
Combined with the squish and class changes and it left a lot of specs feeling absolutely gutted with massively reduced stats and loss of powerful essences.
Legiondaries did the same thing in BFA as we crossed the threshold of activation with them on our way to 120.
I didn’t feel like that mea culpa was really anything new. I don’t follow the interviews all that closely, but I feel like that’s basically what they’ve been saying about borrowed power for a few expansions now: it’s a necessary evil and they’re looking for ways to make it better.
I did like what Ion said about the example of the mage going through the expansion and coming out a better mage. Every now and then you’ll get the faintest glimmer of recognition for that type of enjoyment of the game from Ion, but it’s quickly overshadowed by how hyped they are for players to upgrade their 255 gear to 257, and how much fun it is to compare key times and IO achievements with your friends.
I’d rather have one or two new abilities I could reasonably count on to be there in the far future than the dog’s breakfast of carnival goldfish powers we’ve been slapped with these last few years.
And no, I don’t care about the “sustainability” argument anymore - better devs could find better ways to do it. They just don’t want to take the time.
Besides, the baseline balance would actually have some fleeting hope of getting better if they didn’t have to reinvent the very concept of “roundness,” never mind the wheel, every single expansion. You can’t hope to balance the game if every single “season” you’re clearing the board, tearing out half the rules, and inventing new ones.
Now, to give credit where it’s due, Shadowlands did some good things on this front. No new talents (boo) but new abilities that weren’t explicitly tied to some stupid mayfly concept like Artifacts or Covenants. Sure, some of the “new” abilities were just slight upgrade to old ones, but you know something?
THAT’S PERFECTLY FINE
I’m much rather have a slight boost in effectiveness, or even just quality of life than the alternative, which for far, far too long has been absolutely nothing.
Yes, “too many buttons are scary!!!” is a thing, but walking away from an expansion, from new levels, time and time and time and time and time and time again with nothing to show for it, no actual growth or improvement? … that absolutely sucks. There has to be balance somewhere in the middle, but for far too long, it’s been chained up behind the developer’s fears of having to support things longer than the absolute minimum.
The problem with these systems is they give them to us broken and by the time the implement any fixes people have been suggestion as far back as the Beta for an expansion we are in the last patch of the expansion . In which Blizz goes see we lilstened we did good , then a few months later the cycle repeats because we are in the next xpac with its broken systems.
Blizz needs to implement fixes sooner or even better don’t put systems in that they know are broken so that people can actually spend more time enjoying the game and les time being frustrated.
