Systems are fine so long as when they are over they have a permanent cosmetic application/recognition of your work done when current. And when they are current, said systems should not have QoL be timegated to slow down top level play, while also saving said QoL to be used as an adrenaline shot to stimulate falling player participation.
Additionally systems should not encourage apathy to wait for more effective binge periods because of catchup. And don’t get me wrong catchup is needed 100% but for most of us we are in the middle of the bell curve. We likely do not have the luxury to play wow all day even though we want to do so, and if you do play the tentpole features you likely also don’t want to do poorly in them either. So that leaves most of us trying to chase after the top brackets while worrying that catchup (which is needed) will eventually end up reaching our level of progression done. Which then instills apathy. Big example is artifact knowledge. Never was it smart for people outside like the S/A/B tier mythic players to just spam out content for artifact power. Better to wait for AK25 in 7.1/7.1.5; AK40 in 7.2.5, and then again later on in bfa to do the same for the neck.
Lastly, don’t overburden currencies for systems. Echoes of ny’alotha were 100% an improvement over wakening essences but the inflationary 5x math from blizz for intake and essence costs was not a good thing. Should have kept essences at 500 echoes with all the other values for corruption being as they were (also no stupid vendor rotation or waiting for Hall of fame to close for account-wide essences and spec specific conduit upgrading like for 9.1).
Keeping a system in the game past the life of the expansion is a good thing they did for essences and azerite armor. Able to be used for all old content and transmog runs. Imagine if somehow artifacts (barring select traits) still functioned in pre-8.0 content just for fun!
In short I like systems but don’t make the grind think I am at work. I play for fun and goal progression. Artifact weapon skins were a great system. And the ranks for essences in bfa were great as well. Got me to care for the game. Korthia and shards, plus corruption rotation (plus stat scaling specs having better math for corruption vs others) really turn me off from wanting to do them.
Lastly, make research trees for “solo” content be account-wide. No reason why visions, box of many things and hell even chromie research are stuff I have to remember consider on alts. Not fun and it is annoying. Should be fixed and applied to all characters.
“No one asked for a lot of things” they asked for when they asked something else that was attached to it.
I understand, because the problem is actually the people not knowing what they are really asking for when they ask for something they cant see 5 minutes past their own noses.
They refuse to believe this. I’m ok with not liking systems and even not having suggestions to fix it, but I think people sincerely and utterly forget how the game used to be.
People were flipping out in SL pre-patch wondering why they were losing against others in dungeons or pvp cause we still had 2/3 power metrics going. Like they were upset why people still had an edge over them when the expansion was considered over.
So then on one hand people want permanence for power. But then how much permanence? Still farming molten core for thunder fury in 2022 for bis tanking weapon. Or lore items to carry over? But then you get to multiple unforseen overlaps, like in early bfa where feral druids were using triple iron jaw azerite trait plus cata? pvp gloves in order to fix the genuinely broken and subpar damage output of the spec at the start. Do we wanna go down the Path of Exile way of player strength? People can’t even sort out betrayal these days, and for new league starts, I have seen people genuinely forsake doing the newest mechanic (scourge rn) because of how rippy it is. Instead falling back on old reliables, which then warrants nerfs from ggg to make certain aspects of the game not be OP, like what harvest was for a while (extreme version of deterministic crafting).
Like I am pretty sure they know that we’ll opt toward taking the path of least resistance which is usually older content in order to get stronger. If such things had a longer shelf life. Which then calls into question why even make new gear if the old stuff is that bis etc.
I think stuff like lore weapons should have genuine life beyond the patch/expansion. And cosmetics for said things should sort of outlive the usefulness of the gear we got. But for all other gear even old tier sets, I would say no. Maybe only giving exception to having the current raid tier and the former being things that were valid toward current power. Which is sort of what we did starting in Tomb, with certain classes being able to have a 4pc 2pc tier set bonus rolling if they didn’t have legos in those slots. But really beyond that, I feel like that opens up the path to straining the playerbase out.
I didn’t start raiding until Dragon soul and didn’t complain about nothing to do when I started in the Wrath pre patch - all of Wrath and most of Cata.
I felt I was progressing during that time as I leveled and slowly got better gear .
Sub count plateaued for wrath right at the start to the very end. Quoting a maximum on a graph without context for it is disingenuous.
Which in wrath’s situation it had a zero sum of new subs and people leaving for the entire duration (or we somehow accept that next to no one unsubbed and no one new subbed, aka the only other possibility because of math). Of which when wrath ended the sub loss was no longer obfuscated for a variety of reasons.
So no wrath is not a good model to appeal towards. Pre-tbc and tbc are much better models to aspire toward (and yes I am aware there is no such thing as infinite growth).
I think the big problem is the single minded focus ONLY on progression, not on what to do after you get there. Rep grind/McGuffin Muffin Farm isn’t a fun, or rewarding thing. Yanno what was rewarding after you got to max level in say…MoP? Expanding the farm and working on secondary professions like cooking (seriously, MoP had the BEST cooking, and I will fight you on that. Unlocking all the stuff for the farm the first time and such felt like you actually accomplished something too!)
And hell, the ‘mcguffin’ currency from MoP was the Iron Paw Tokens which are still useful for a toy, or mats and the like, so it’s still a useful thing, unlike Legion/B4A/SL with the hard borrowed power systems where they go ‘farm this thing, but we’re gonna take it away later!’
To be honest the problem with the systems is they make up a good chunk of the players passive abilities . If you look at them they are all basically passive talent trees .From the artifact weapon to the soul binds/ conduits.
If they want to make engaging systems stop taking our passives and renaming them to fit the theme of the expansion and just put them back into our spell books and make the systems more like glyphs that enhance either our active abilities or passive abilities or better yet both .
People who talk about the old times but clearly never played the old times usually cant make good arguments about “old days”.
A lot of people did not go to instances in the “old days”. Being a raider at those times was something “special”, because it had real relevancy. Today, you binge dungeon and raid to level and gear up, and most people dont even know what they are doing or why, they just know “the target” and not even “what to do” unless DBM tells them.
The subject in question goes topic after topic talking about old days as if no one else played at time and know his crap for what it is.
To be honest I feel less improvement over the last 3 xpacs .
I have no problem with greens in a new xpac making my purples useless because even so I was progressing my character . It is the going into a new xpac and feeling useless with either my previous xpac purples or the new xpac green because I haven’t built up on the new xpac system that completes my class that I find frustrating
What do people really mean when they reference the ‘systems’ they’re tired of? When I think of game systems, I think of, like, the world quest systems, which I do like.
This was the dumbest response I’ve ever read. Its okay to have 1 big system to sell the game, the problem is what happens when said system goes unbalanced for X amount of months, tons out cry from the community that it needs to be looked over, only for it to fall on deaf ears because we can’t seem to get anyone but Kaivax to respond when he damn well chooses. That means that the system that was created, the Devs themselves, dont know what to do with it.
Great example of this currently is Torghast, they couldn’t find away to actually make it fun and rewarding, just a chore, so they instead took the chore out and threw it into Zereth Mortis. Renown is now Cypher of the First Ones, System on top of an already in place system. This is the problem, not a system that is designed to make a game, thats called DEVELOPMENT.
Don’t need anything for that besides time, a 60 (cause you get talent row and 50+ SL leveling passives vs a 45) and gemmed to the nines. I was a little worried before their blue post about it being something for current SL characters, and that entailing domination shards and preferably 252 conduits and sockets.
But thank god nope. Just do the zone for cosmetic completionism, which is way more chill.
Sad how korthia wasn’t a library or something was thinking it would be like a mix of blizz version of SCP, the Librarians movie/show universe, plus like actual buildings.
Zone was dumpstered even before zobald did his thing.
It’s more in reference to things like having to farm artifact power/azerite/anime/souls basically, all the random bs currencies they add which, when an expac is done just poof and become meaningless, or sit on you, unable to get more so you can’t buy that thing you were trying to save for before they used the fomo predatory bs strat they’ve been using since MoP