When even devs admit they have an issue

https://www.wowhead.com/news=319270/vg247-interview-with-johnny-cash-and-ely-cannon-borrowed-power-and-secrecy-surro#p4609313

Game Director Ian Hazzikostas stated that there’s been an acknowledgement within the dev team that the game has a ‘borrowed power’ issue. Going from expansion to expansion levelling up an artefact – like weapons in Legion, or the Heart of Azeroth in BfA – and then throwing it away at the end and feeling powerless again. Aren’t Covenant abilities, Conduits, Soulbinds, and crafted legendaries just more of the same?

you know when someone has a problem…the correct choice is to get help to not need it anymore. Caving in over and over is not healthy.

Ely Cannon: I mean, there’s certainly a ‘power’ element that we’ve talked about, and that’s going to play a part in the gameplay of Shadowlands. But beyond Shadowlands, there’s quite a few things that you’ll take along with you. There are so many systems in so many parts of the game itself that are wrapped up in your Covenant choice, whether that’s cosmetics or mounts or pets – all these wonderful things you can collect and take beyond Shadowlands with you. I think there’s value beyond the expansion for that reason specifically.

so defending borrowed power by sayign u can take rewards with u?

we had this b4 borrowed pwoer…rep rewards, achievements, rare spawn drops, etc.

Don’t need gate stuff behind a borrowed power system.

Over the years, as we saw with the old talent tree system, it begins to stack up to something that becomes pretty unwieldy. So, letting us say ‘okay, Azerite items are now gone’, we have all this new space we can explore and do cool new things in, and not have to worry about those things confounding each other and fighting for players’ attention.

then prune it every few xpacs…devs have pruned a few times already. and every borrowed pwoer is effectively pruning anyways.

so whats the difference?

But at the end of the day, I understand your point and as we have in the past with these systems, we’re of course open to the idea of letting things persist forward. No, you’re not going to bring your Soulbinds with you through adventures beyond the Shadowlands, but if you look at something like the Mage Phoenix ability from Legion from the Fire Mage artefact, that was something where the player response was really strong, with people saying, ‘we love this ability, the Fire Mage rotation would not feel correct without it, we can’t live without this ability,’ and we agreed and so it’s a talent now.

class-ism.

locks, druids, hunters, and more have all had stuff that was greatly loved removed by whim of the devs.

for example:
locks enjoyed meta form for example (it gave an interestign way to play in both of its prior iterations)
I liked it casue it was somethign different (and im one of ppl who didnt really mind it goign away). I understand with DH’s would be odd for 2 metamorphs, but you baked in an npc who uses the skill (and even included it in Legion).

also still only dps class (think maybe also spriest?) that has a huge restriction on spell interrupt not being in their base kit. (its tied to a specific pet)
with as important as interrupts are now-a-days for all content this forces them to run a specific pet. (why have multiple demons when you are nearly forced to run 1 specific one?)

druid had tree form removed from an actual form for resto druids…casue “we want to show off druid armor”…casue lets remove a spec form instead of adding a glyph option that just keeps you visually looking liek a non shapeshifted form :thinking: (this was basically doen for boomkins to have astral humanoid form recently…)
also lost ability to properly pick what travel form you wanted (was this ever harming anyone??)

bears lost MoU entirely. Was it too strong? yes. was it right to remove it entirely? no. Bears have NO way to deal with magic damage. Magic damage also tends to be THE msot lethal of stuff and if a boss is mainly magical…bears will suffer more than the other tanks. (and this doesnt count the fact that bears identity as high hp/armor tanks is no longer true and they are in a place of identity crisis)

hunters lost soem stuff they enjoyed and entire spec lost access to weapon types (they fix that this xpac? honestly cant recall as not played 1 in a long time)

back on topic borrowed power systems don’t NEED to exist for taking stuff with you into future.

They’re trying to make sure that players have many options to choose from, and that the most powerful choices will vary enough for there not to be one true way. For example, a Kyrian Death Knight might be able to absorb a blow a Night Fae Death Knight can’t, but the Night Fae Death Knight will have the advantage of mobility. Every choice should feel like it was the best one to make in at least some situations.
again why with a borrowed power system?
Bake the choice into the class by default. Let the player CHOOSE which they find more useful for their play style.
How many talents do you have that are seen as useless in 99% of situations?
get rid of em and add something different. or even add a 4th row of choices (as choices should be up to individual viewpoint)

and last bit

  • Extra time from the delayed release date was spent on polish and balance - particularly with regards to fine-tuning Covenant systems such as the Covenant abilities and Soulbinds.

you mean the thing where a mere 3% vers is the best choice for majority of specs?

imagine the defining “reward” being a 3% vers.
that alone shoudl show how weak the system is and should maybe BUFF the other options instead of nerfing 1 repeatedly.

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It’s the same systems just in different spots with different names. :frowning:

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Its an issue, but it’s too late to go back on it now. The forums don’t represent the entire playerbase and their stockholders/players are gonna be pissed if the game were to suddenly switch directions right this moment to remake. I’d probably expect next expansion to focus more on the game itself instead of borrowed power again.

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Rule number one when listening to what Ion says: Talk is cheap, look at what he’s been doing.

I’m convinced he is lying whenever he speaks, it’s what happens when you lie all the time.

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I’ll admit as someone who completely hates borrowed power that most of the stuff aside from legendaries isn’t as game breaking as 4 essences, azerite and corruption and I think it will be at a manageable level if they don’t stack more systems on later down the track

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He is a lawyer, after all.

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The guy’s been hyping up the Covenant system like everyone and their mother didn’t pinpoint the problem with the system the second they announced it. He even outright lied about the ripcord, so why should his justification for any system carry any weight at all.

And watch, YOU JUST WATCH. When the first major patch comes out, he’s going to roll out on some dev chat video and go “Ha ha covenants are a little bit awful, so let’s give you that ripcord!”

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I feel like we’re gonna be stuck with the covenants at least until halfway through the xpac, if not all the way. Pulling the cord on the first patch would actually be a blessing.

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We used to have class sets that we threw away every tier. What’s the difference?

" Game Director Ian Hazzikostas stated that there’s been an acknowledgement within the dev team that the game has a ‘borrowed power’ issue."

A while back I mentioned that he said this and a bunch of forum trolls called me a liar because I didn’t want to dig through his Q&A stuff to find it to prove it to them.

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I expect some half-compromise-but-not-really-a-compromise in some form.

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This is the third expansion we’ve heard this I believe.

Well, second time we said please don’t do it again, third time its been done.

I can’t wait for “Anduin’s Praise” ap grinds in the next expansion in 2022/23.

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First time Ion has acknowledged it and agreed to it though, have hope.

I guess step 1 toward reform is admitting you have a problem. That’s all the further they’re going to take it though unless they start hemorrhaging money on a massive scale.

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I really hope they finally learn their lesson with their love affair with borrowed power every expansion. They need get over it and spend the resources they would have wasted on those system upon striping down, rebuilding and balancing the classes.

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Basically what happened is the developers ran into a situation where every expansion they would have to keep adding new talents and/or new abilities, eventually leading to more-and-more button bloat. You can’t just delete talents/class buttons like that…

Borrowed power systems lets them work around that by basically saying: this expansion you get 2-3 extra buttons and then next expansion they start over again. It just leads to whiplash from the playerbase when they suddenly get depowered a lot.

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I’d imagine it’s also not very cost effective to reinvent the wheel every expansion either. What they should have done from the beginning was create a foundation and then expand upon it.

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Look at the WOTLK talent calculator and you’ll see the unwieldy mess the base game expanded upon just from two expansions.

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I’ll be honest I’d be happy if they just reverted everything class wise to MoP/WoD while keeping the stuff we gained past Legion and I’d be happy…

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Ion is nae tha right man fer tha director position.

J Allen Brack is nae tha right man fer tha head o’ Blizzard.

Ion is too focussed on identifyin’ problems an’ “fixin’” them when there was nae a problem tae begin with. And his previous position in PvE encounter design leads him tae be too focussed on how things are meant tae go rather than how they will most likely go, let alone how they actually go. And when either o’ tha latter conflict with tha former, he focusses on tha former. He’d be a good director fer a linear rpg, but nae a multi-faceted beast like WoW.

J. Allen Brack…all I need tae say is he said we wouldnae want Classic servers…and then Classic basically doubled WoW’s revenue stream and has maintained it, provin’ him wrong.

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