They should focus more on evergreen content that carries forward than bothering with abilities that they will cut at the end.
New battleground content.
New arena content.
Mount skills.
More dungeons.
Racing.
Revamp professions in a meaningful way.
Player housing.
More class aesthetic customization.
More character customization.
Wow was always so much better when they said “here’s fun stuff to do!”
Than “have you finished all your lockout/grind activities this week? Yes? Ok now you can do whatever you want!”
Thanks im so burned out now I think I’ll do anything else but play.
I think borrowed power was an easy solution to a very complicated problem. The problem is diminishing returns. It works great used sparingly, but when you take the same powers away that you give back in the next expansion, people catch on.
I mean if you’re just going to give us the same powers you took away, just make the powers permanent, and the whole borrowed power problem would be over.
People can see when things are being stretched too thin like butter over too much bread. We won’t know if it’s a management problem, a lack of creative ideas, a vengeful designer in charge, a stubborn person who refuses to listen to the community, or whatever. Imagine if they somehow opened up all four covenants to all characters, we’d have 4 times the story content.
I wish borrowed power systems worked somewhat akin to the way abilities work in ESO - a variety of different skills and things we can tailor to our own desires - but only slot a certain amount thereof.
So basically talents with extra steps, but if we could only “equip” a couple at a time, they could add to them basically infinitely without necessarily bloating the skills we have on our bars.
Then, if they add a feature that makes a class feel really fun to play, or introduces a new playstyle, we don’t have to weep and lament its absence when it’s inevitably removed next expansion. We can just keep playing that way, if we want to.
They could just re-implement actual talent trees, like they had in classic, bc, and wrath (maybe cats too, don’t remember). They would need to actually balance them though, instead of their being only 1 viable way to spec each class. Also, borrowed powers just seem like an extra set of talents… So why not give more talent options instead of making them borrowed?
To this day, RIFT early on did talents the best that I ever experienced. Passives built into points invested into each tree. Not talents really in and of themselves from what I can remember except very early on in trees to provide hybrids versatility.
The problem is ultimately the unobtainium that is balance. Because that depends on perspective.
Redoing talents from expac to expac is fine. At least leveling is worth more than a pacing mechanic then. The layered alternative advancement following leveling behind time gates is annoying. The entire conduit system is obnoxious, imo.
Lol they are just giving or using the same abilities again and again and calling it something new.
iE in legion DH their weapon had an ability that’s the same same as GT just a different name. When legion is over they took it away and put it as a talent.
IE SV hunter all their Lego in SL is the same thing they got from BfA borrowed powers just a different name.
So no these borrowed power system is just lazy design and doesn’t do anything. Of they want the new borrowed power to succeed or have to be a brand new talents not recycle crap with a different name and call it a day.
We had the best borrowed power ever invented. It was great. We all loved it I would imagine.
Then we got borrowed power and everybody looking the same. The borrowed power, funny enough, makes us all look exactly the same (without mogging) and still feels bad.
Tier sets were a journey. You wanted to get your bonuses that would change how you played. Blizzard has always had the answers to all of their problems. They just keep looking for answers to the problems they do not have until they create them.
If Ion wants to avoid class homogenization the solution is to steer the game away from things that call for it, mainly anything that tries to hammer the square peg that is WoW into the round hole of small group e-sports. So no more MDI, no more AWC.
WoW is not well suited to small group competitive anything. Small groups mean that class weaknesses and strengths are magnified 100x, especially in PvP where your enemy is another human. Arenas in particular are permanently broken and tilted, and the only way that’s ever going to be fixed is to turn all classes into grey blob reskins of each other.
If Blizzard must make any part of WoW an e-sport, it should be raid-sized activities where the number of players is large enough to paper over gaps in capability and reduce the impact of strengths of classes/specs to not be so game-defining, shifting much more importance to the strategies used, which is what competitive play should be about anyway — the classes and specs picked should be secondary at best.
Agreed. I would also like to see a return to the days where each next “season” doesn’t invalidate the raids/ content of the previous season.
What I mean is, fresh Max level characters should have to progress though ALL of the content of the expansion, like they did back in TBC.
In recent years, each new content patch invalidates the previous patch. Pushing everyone into the current “season” might not be the best strategy. ALL content in an expansion should be on the table for people to progress through.
In fact, they should move away from “seasons” altogether. They should just be “patches” that just add more stuff to the existing pool of content.
I remember from each expansion from bc/wotlk/cata/mop… My character felt like it was getting more powerful… Heck, even WoD did a good job with PVP (they did prune though)
However, Legion was fun but then subsequent expansions didn’t FEEL like I was getting more powerful… I know the first raid tier stats pools are low etc but my priest doesn’t FEEL stronger than he did in wrath (with dot snap shotting etc) I mean heck, we JUST NOW got devo plague back without having to use shadow orbs (MoP)… What im trying to say is, I don’t think blizzard seems to care about the players journey anymore, they focus each expansion as one big DOTA/LoL game where we gain power over the course of that time (which kind of sucks). I can’t hop on my DK from 2-3 expansions ago and FEEL like hes gained more power since then… Similarly, my rogue feels the same way as well as some of my other classes, it just doesn’t feel like i’ve gained anything.
It sucks honestly, I kind of wish they let us keep some of these old things we earned in someway kind of like everquest did it, you could go get some old item and buff yourself once per hour with it but since we’ve scaled so much the buff doesn’t give you 20% of something it would be more like 1-2% etc. Heck even the old glyphs system was nice, you swap major glyphs to augment your playstyle a bit, you want your bubble to have thorns? here ya go etc…
It just feels like blizzard builds the sand castle up each expansion and knocks it back down. I’m not a fan of this kind of game play and personally I agree with the sentiment that they should just have kept the talent system going because it worked… Honestly i’d prefer to see them use a system like that for current tier, you have like 12 options of glyphs/talents but you only can choose 3, that way you have utility options, damage stacking options, or just could pick to augment one specific skill because you enjoy it… then leave that system in place for the next xpansion, essentially say ‘at row 60’ you have a drop down menu at each talent spot you just pick one options of the 12, similar to how the pvp talents work except it remains in place after the expansion.
Not a fan of borrowed power. Legion was fine because it was the first round of the modern borrow power system and tied heavily to class fantasy.
Though with borrowed power every expansion it feels like classes don’t matter. Borrowed power is taking importance over the class choices.
Though if they must keep on this route I prefer they go the WOD or argus route. So it doesn’t feel like I’m borrowing this super special power for 18-24 months but tie it to the zone. Instead of borrowing power that makes or breaks the class anywhere I go, my class is untouched and I take advantage of the zones resources like if my faction has a barracks I can call a military strike or something if things get to ruff. Something like at if I must keep using the borrowed power system
My guess is next expansion has no borrowed power and the forums are filled with complaints about how players have nothing to do or work on other than raid/PvP/dungeon and the game is boring without a new thing to work and power their character not always tied to gear.
PvP has had seasons since TBC where you just get better gear every patch for doing the same thing (BGs/Arena).
Changing back to 1 single raid difficulty to me is too drastic of a change for the modern game. The skill gap is SO massive that many players would be left out on a PvE experience that is enjoyable for them.
There was a reason multiple difficulties were added in the first place throughput wrath.
Changing back to one difficulty would be a great idea. It would assist in bringing back an MMORPG back to it’s roots. I would also like to see gear last longer than a patch/expansion, quest worth effort, etc.