This onion has too many layers

Community General Discussion
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Picture being a new player in WoW. First time reaching 120.

The learning curve for this games micromanagement for fresh lil 120 skyrockets with about 7 layers of ‘what kind of fresh hell did I subscribe to?’

Layer 0: our foundations, the Talent trees. You’re introduced to these as you level up, and they make practical sense. Players have 2 - 4 specializations to pick from in their class and their entire leveling experience to learn from it.

Layer 1: at 120 your talent tree grows a tumor and you learn about pvp talents and warmode- the new pvp server. Makes sense still, and a pretty nice symbiotic relationship with your normal talent tree.

Layer 2: at lvl 110 you are handed an amulet that requires sweet sweet dirt sustinance, and with it, the remains of a legion inspired weapons linear lvling system.

Layer 3: thankfully you gain access to azerite gear at 110 too, so you can get use to juggling with the new and (questionably) improved revival of gear set pieces that you can learn to pick and choose what ideally works for you.

Layer 4: Surprise, your azerite amulet also has ranks and essences: scattered through dozens of rep walls, quest lines, expeditions, azerite grinds, pvp, mythics, and raids you can unlock dozens of these azerite essences from ranks 1 to 4. And each essence has a major and a minor ability. Wacky!

Layer 5: Feeling bored still? Here is a legendary cloak that has it’s own talent tree: only you can have to collect the ‘exp’ for this doing visions (no not THOSE other daily visions, THESE visions!) Only catch is you can’t do THESE visions unless you collect spooky stuff through dailies (not to be confused with world quests) in the two infected zones.

Layer 6: We aren’t done! Your cloak had an entirely separate ranking upgrade mechanic that you can only achieve through gateway visions and defeating select bosses! Rank it up so that you grow more resistant to corruption. ‘What’s corruption’ you say? Hold on…

Layer 7: Thought you’re done trying to fine tune your gear with their flavors of unique stat priorities, azerite traits, and bonuses? Well screw that- corrupted gear lets you try balancing your sanity. With more corruption resistance, you can wear more corrupted gear without suffering as many penalties for cosplaying as an eldritch horror. Each piece comes with random bonuses that you will need to get lucky in finding the right gear with the right bonuses that work best with your class.

Layer 8: oh, don’t mind this. It’s just benthic stuff.

I know its low hanging fruit when I ask ‘how overwhelmed do new players feel about these talent/gearing systems being slapped together in end game grinds?’ Because there is always going to be some more complexities to feed the end game player base between raids/seasons.

But it’s sort of a bit much, isn’t it?

At some point it just starts feeling like layers of redundancies to an already bloated series of things to micromanage.

What I’m saying is ogers are like onions. Onions have layers…
blizzard, do ya need to talk with someone? Get some things off your chest maybe?

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We’re going to need Drek’Thar’s help with this onion. :crazy_face: :onion:

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you forgot to mention “simming gear” as well as how trinkets tend to play a role and for anyone that actually cares “min maxing”

im not new but i quit for personal reasons after bfa tier 1 besides the fact that i disliked the expac after so i took a long break but when i came back i already felt lost. been playing WoW for many years as well not as long as others but a pretty damn long time.

also not sure if you mention ESSENCES as well. and another thing. Racials and how they play a huge roll in not only pvp content but also in PvE.

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Ya but the onion fits on the burger just fine. And the onion don’t know it.

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I didn’t wanna get as long winded as I already was. Games will always have a bit of learning to do, especially MMOs since they are built for long term play, but BFA def has been the messiest I’ve seen

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I haven’t read this yet but I imagine this is what talking to Sylvanas is like… jk I’m not imagining. I’m not working because it’s like this

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yes mmo’s have learning curve to them but i often find people are lazy to do any learning for themselves thats why even at low levels they are already starting off sloppy.

it’s something that gradually takes time to learn. i myself learn after many years of playing and thus got better. i do ask others for help with questions and take initiative to learn though on my own for others maybe thats not something they are interested in and rather just smash buttons and hope they are doing well.

the system in BFA imo is dumb tbh so many little things to learn and it’s mostly temporary as well. in legion it wasn’t this bad.

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It does begin to feel somewhat tiring, learning all these systems when they’re ultimately going to be short-lived. Some of them barely even lasting a patch.

I’d rather play my class than play the patch, but here we are.

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Somewhere along the way, some game developers in general (not just wow’s dev team) started to confuse “bloated menu-juggling systems used for skill trees and stat adjustments” with “fun, immersive, and challenging gameplay.” The real tragedy here is that nearly all of this will end up in the garbage once its no longer current-patch material.

Isn’t that right, benthic gear, Legion Artifact weapons, etc?

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All I can think about is ogres now.

If ogres are like onions, would they be good on burgers?

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Because of this system in place linear and layers. I will never refer anyone to play. Not even my worst enemy :joy:

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It’s not just a problem for new players. I have actually enjoyed BFA a fair bit, but once I got a few characters to 120, I have not been able to find the motivation to keep going.

Before the new patch dropped, the nonsense with the necklace was enough to put me off. Seemed like an impossibly long grind for little return.

When all this new stuff came out recently, I wanted to try it until I saw all the comments about how complicated it is.

It’s like… I actually want to play… but I am not ready to put the effort into even trying to understand and engage with the new systems. It just doesn’t feel like it’s worth it, considering the current state of the game.

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Never thought about it before but this sentence means that instead of Blizz’s stance on alts being much weaker than mains accomplishing who knows what it instead makes people not want to play at all. Interesting.

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There is big bucks in fried flower onions.

edit. Thx for the likes. Donny! a memorable forum goer. :star_struck:

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Shhhhh, don’t give 'em ideas. Just complaints!

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$10 for a Blooming Onion is fair.
I have paid $20 without complaints. :smile:

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The time gating required to take a fresh 120 to at least viable for mid-high level content is just staggering.

iLvl is possibly the easiest. Between emissaries, weekly quests, conquest capping, weekly pvp chest, mythic+, mythic+ weekly chest, warfronts, etc etc, its easy to get a decent 445 base to work with. You will likely get the Azerite traits you want through this, though if not that is another thing to work for.

Pray you don’t have a class that want’s specific traits such as 3x Glimmer, 1x Grace of the Justicar, 1x Breaking dawn. Benthic was sort of devalued with the new patch, but some of these azerite traits are so important you may find yourself farming pearls just because they have the right trait. At least until you can get enough titan residium, else continue to pray to the RNG gods from the sources above.

Essences are a pain. What essences you want and the activity to unlock them depends a lot on your class/spec. You may just have to do 30min-1hr worth of dailies each day for rep, or you may find yourself having to dive into rated PvP or Raiding old content. No matter the case, there is generally a cap on how fast you can reach rank 3. Count on roughly six weeks for most essences.

And essences make a huge difference. The difference between no essence and a rank 3 essence can be in some cases several thousand DPS.

Your cloak? In order to level from 1 to 15 you will need a total of 35 vessels. Assuming you get what you needed to get done the first time every time you go in. You can earn a max of 4-5 vessels per week. That means between 7-9 Weeks to hit max level. Fail a vision? Add another 2-3 days.
And this cloak is needed to absord the corruption, which some of these effects are massive. We are talking one piece of gear account for +25% of someones DPS.

Taking a fresh 120 to have 445 iLvL with 4 rank 3 essences, and a rank 15 cloak will be a 9 week full time job. Screw them if they can only play a few hours a day.

Sure, there will always be time investment needed in an MMO, but come on. People without jobs and a life shouldn’t be the only ones able to play the game.

Keep the sources of the best sources of performance enhancing gear in the mechanically hardest content. But don’t gate the gear, essences, traits behind weeks upon weeks worth of content, just so they could even consider stepping foot into this mechanically challenging content.

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Oof, whatever argument you may have had just went down the tubes right there.

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Who, besides those who can play 20+ hours a week would ever be able to catch up?

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The game throws gear at you. “Catching up” has never been this games issue.