Someone needs to sit Blizzard devs down in a room with a playful cat, and give the Blizz dev a toy on a string with one of those little plastic wands.
Play with the cat.
If you keep yoinking the toy away at the last second before the cat can actually catch it, and pay attention to the cat’s body language, the cat will eventually get frustrated, you’ll notice the cat swinging harder with its paws and its tail will start flicking and eventually the cat will just lay down and stare at the toy with its tail lashing and will refuse to chase the toy and only give lazy swipes if the toy is practically bopping them on the nose or something.
Then, the next day, try letting the cat catch the toy now and then. The cat will play MUCH longer because you’re letting the cat actually succeed at its goals sometimes. Let the cat get the toy and then let it hold the toy for a few moments, the cat will hold onto it, nip it, bite it, pull on the string, etc. Then a few moments later, tug on the string a few times and eventually the cat will let go of it and then you have the cat chase it again.
I really wish Blizz devs would understand this.
The cat analogy fits so well, because it’s exactly how players tend to feel when RNG screws them over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Eventually we say F- it and log off and only log on a little to lazily peck at something and log off again waiting for content we can actually enjoy.
People got used to being able to freely change talents since MoP. BfA and Shadowlands have walked that back with systems that force you to make a choice that can’t be spam-changed.
I don’t think that particular thing is a big deal. People tend to overeact to something being better than something else without actually looking into how big the gap is. People were screaming over 2% gaps in covenant choices in some cases early on, for example.
Nothing in Shadowlands is about fun, it is about retention. They want us to feel obligated to log in and do our X amount of daily chores to keep up with the pack and keep the shareholders happy. Gearing has been an ugly mess, PVP is the worst it has ever been, and only M+ and Raiding really have any repeat staying power. Even the continent isn’t really a continent, just a in-cohesive mess. I barely even use flying because I have to take portals to get anywhere in SL, so I just flight path from one zone to the next because it is way easier.
If they wanted to make a fun game that players played for actual fun, we would have had a totally different expansion. It is painfully obvious that they have checked out on caring about the game.
If only we could convince the players to be the cat that lays down and refuses to chase the toy around, then.
But some people will just keep on truckin’ and doing these systems.
Heck there are people still fighting world bosses from Pandaria and they still don’t have their mounts and they just keep doing it over and over again like happy little robots.
We need players to put their foot down and refuse to do this crap anymore.
I’ve refused M+, Raids, and dungeons because they are a complete and utter waste of time. If only I could get more people to join me in that.
Hate to say it, but as long as you are paying the sub, Blizzard doesn’t care if you like or do the content, they get what they are after.
That is why they are focused on a game model that keeps us playing out of obligation, fear of missing out will get us to play like clockwork instead of playing just for fun. I’ll bet they make a substantial amount of money from token sales for carries, at this point. All they need to do is make content frustrating so that people will buy their way through it, which means more money for Blizzard and less time worrying about if they did a good job or not.
Then you’re in the very small <3% minority. For the rest of players, the slop in their spec skill will make 5x the dps difference vs what a few conduits would do.
For example: A 50th percentile mythic SoD ret paladin averages 7.9k dps. A 95th percentile averages 9.7k dps. To account for that 23% increase in dps, that’s really not a matter of having good conduits, that’s a matter of knowing how to play. Pretty safe to say they are mostly all following the same cookiecutter builds and using the same conduits and legendaries.
That’s great and all, but if 97% of the players just slap conduits in there and forget about em, basically not interacting with the system at all, and the other 3% have a worse gameplay experience because of conduit energy, then why is it in the game at all? It has no positive effect on anyone, only neutral and negative.
They interact with them just fine, they just don’t bother obsessively min/maxing them for 1-2% gains. The system was designed to intentionally prevent that. In BfA, it got pretty ridiculous with people constantly redoing traits in raids.
Best advice, take the middle ground approach and make builds that work in multiple situations. Make a build that’s okay in ST and AOE. Doesn’t have to be the best. If you play multiple roles on a class, make a bind for each role. If you don’t, then make a hybrid bind, ST bind and AoE bind.
Conduits are fine. I wish all the upgrades were obtainable outside of the annoying “get exalted with this annoying reputation and spend a limited currency to RNG them to their max ilvl” aspect, but as a whole they’re mostly fine.
Conduit Energy, on the other hand, is without a shadow of a doubt the single most useless and asinine mini-system ever added to this game, and that’s saying a lot considering how universally-reviled the Legion legendary acquisition system and the Azerite armor reforging system were by this point in their corresponding expansions’ lifespans.
Seriously. If the absolute best thing any player can say about Conduit Energy is that they barely notice it, it shouldn’t exist. The best-case scenario for something that exists in any sort of video game shouldn’t ever be “I almost never notice it but when I notice it I absolutely hate it.”
Conduits are fine on my mains, they suck on alts
Conduits should be more cosmetic and flavourful additions than completely game changing
I rerolled to a resto druid and its already an uphill battle being 30 ilvl lower than everyone i’m facing, she also has no conduits so the uphill battle is so much more than 10k-15k hp, 500 main stat and 10% vers less now. Its not having a significant healing increase legendary because i hit 60 the week after the world boss i needed was up. Its abilities healing for flat % less, its defensives providing flat % less survivability. It just adds more needless power gap discrepancies
Hate is too strong a word, but the effects are mostly not very noticeable and they take a long time to upgrade. I think if the conduits were more interesting it might help, I’m never excited to find a conduit.
Because of the nonsense you have to do to get them, which is another barrier to entry involving most forms of content.
Wanna go arena? Well first you have to level and gear (which is fine). But then you have to grind renown. Oh, you also have to go farm Torghast for your legendary. By the way, you have to actually go acquire the legendary - which, some of the best in slot ones are on world bosses which have rotations associated with them, so if you’re unlucky, you’ll be waiting a month to get it. Ah, that’s right, you also have to go get your best in slot conduits, and for the record, some of them are on world quests. Oop, sorry - did I forget to mention you also have to grind out an absurd amount of honor just to not get 1 shot, and all the while, actually get 1 shot? Ah, right, I also forgot to mention you have to do the story line.
By the way, lemme tell you about a glorious system called conduit energy where if you’re wanting to experiment with different builds, or try a different spec that’s in the soulbind which is best for a specific type of conduit, you’ll have to probably wait a couple of days after you screw yourself.
It’s terrible. I would take BFA over this nonsense.
Ah i knew i forgot something. Let me go edit that into my rant above because i’ll have gone 3 weeks without any hopes of seeing the bis lego i’m supposed to be using
It’s another tedious, chopped up power system we shouldn’t need to worry about.
Except Blizzard has made it a tedious, chopped up power system because alts have no means of catching up quickly in renown. If we had access to a token that say gave your alt characters up to renown 60 across the account we might have some incentive to gear them up.
But that is regrettably impossible, since some genius thought it would be a fantastic idea to tie up the story questline chain in with the renown system, making it near impossible for the now depleted and fragile development team to invent a work around.
