All you had to say was listen to feedback and implement changes accordingly in a realistic way… no arrogance, simple solution.
I.E, low loot drops in raids, how hard would it be to change 3 drops to 5?.
1 Like
I would shut down WOW and release a new Starcraft game.
Casual players can over-gear overworld content by about 10%, Heroic Raiders is 21%, M+ is 27%, and Mythic raiders like 28-29%; for not participating in higher-end content that gap is quite nice.
With the Covenant gear-set… and weekly rewards + legendary at 235 a casual player could reach around 18%; obviously won’t happen overnight but it’ll happen before the tier is over if you played for ~7 hours a week.
You could be heroic-ready just by doing casual content without ever touching foot into Normal raids or Mythic+; that’s a huge win for this expansion.
Course you can, tune and adjust; what do you consider “fun” things historically that were removed?
I don’t know about that one. MoP was a big yikes for me. Big Warcraft fan, skipped most of that expansion until Siege of Orgrimmar. You know why that patch was good? It went back to a more traditional Warcraft flavor and the open world end-game progression was locked to a zone without flying. Timeless Isle was so good that it basically became the foundation for how Blizzard has tried to create zones, with explorable little treasures here and there, no flying, etc. And it has been working. Shadowlands is the first expansion in a long time that has seen an uptick in subs over the previous one. Don’t fix what ain’t broken. Blizzard has solved the open world design at this point.
Lol? If thats so, kudos to them, but Im leaving.
1 Like
Later gator.
Maybe its just that i got old, and youre still some young idiot, is that it?
The only real thought I have is to have all content provide some form of points/badges, so every piece of content provides some form of progress. Harder content provides more, so the benefit is that you get gear/upgrades faster than someone more casual, but the more casual person is not excluded from it by not doing certain activities.
So for example imagine a piece of gear costs 200 valor points, and has 7 upgrades (similar to PVP gear). A world quest might provide 5 VP while a dungeon might give 10, a mythic dungeon might reward 20, a raid boss might award 25. A weekly cap is in place so people don’t feel that they need to do everything to “stay up to date” since that’s degenerate, but you aren’t limited in the activities. So you might do a few world quests, and a couple of dungeons, and kill a few bosses to reach your cap.
But the idea is that no matter what you do, you can eventually get the gear and upgrade it, but doing lighter content means it may take you several weeks while someone doing raids/mythics might get it within a week or two.
I mean, they do? There’s a ton of people playing, and paying subs for it. Wow is one of the only mmos that can actually still run a sub model, most are FTP with a shop. Not seeing anyone else thread the needle better, even if there are some flaws with the game that can be tuned.
There’s really only so much you can do with PVE content. I’d personally rather they go back to the more MMO style of classic, but I know that won’t happen for reasons above.
In what world are they catering to m+ers? Raiders I can see. But they’ve basically given people that prefer m+ a giant middle finger this expansion
The reason for the absolute mess is inherent in constantly trying to build upon a pre-existing foundation rather than starting anew. The early expansions had free reign because, relatively speaking, they were absent of a lot of bloat and less encumbered by player expectations/pre-existing mechanics.
There is so much more that the developers have to keep an eye on right now. A good example of this is Wintergrasp. A BG that is quite old but is (rightfully) pointed to on these forums and elsewhere as requiring some sort of overhaul. More classes, more races, more expectations, and I expect a shrinking team of people who are employed to deal with all of it.
Now, let it be said: I think we both know you meant your post to be contentious. And I don’t think there is a need to veil it now in magnanimity. The point is well taken: the task of fixing the problems in this game is gargantuan, especially as the motivation to do so will likely wane as time continues to pass. If I’m being honest about my own perspective, the smart move would have been to start completely fresh years ago, but I have made big goofs in my life over the years, so what do I know?
-
Add currency system to ALL gear progression and remove RNG; let players pick and plan their gear and feel rewarded
-
Fix really broken things (like the kyrian mission board)
-
Stop the silly grinds like renown and anima collecting… trust that the game is FUN enough to keep playing… and not just add chores and time-gates because you are in terror of people leaving
Totally disagree with you about what was good about MoP. We are never going to agree on what WoW needs because we are really on opposite sides in terms of what we enjoy.
Remove a lot of the things they unpruned, actually spend some time balancing the game, increase loot drop rates. Finally I would work on a lot of the CC in the game as its insane how much CC is allowed with little to no ways to break it.
Why is LFD/LFR an issue?
I think you’ve confused WoW with SWTOR.
I think this is the biggest, though brutally realistic, constraint that Blizzard is facing. The price for being a multi-billion company ruled by investors.
Assuming total control i would begin by
-
Hiring people specifically to answer concerns as we used to have. Sorry corporate execs, you get a pay cut if necessary. Dont like it, leave.
-
Work in tandem with the community to address concerns that satisfy the widest breadth of people in pve with regard to
A) loot drop frequency
B) difficulty
C) class balance and dps
For pve purposes i would make it critical to ensure all specs are viable within a 5% margin of eachother and tune as much as possible to ensure this. Nothing is more important than this.
- Work with the pvp community and take feedback from the 1% as well as the masses. For the immediate moment though
A) convoke nerfed to 20% of its current damage. Its a covenant ability. Not an i win button.
B) fire mage combust reduced to 30% critical and increased throughput elsewhere to balance this out.
C) prot paladin healing reduced 50% in arenas and rated pvp.
Ret wog reduced by 25%. Ringing clarity reduced by 25% or made unable to chain proc.
D) arms defensive stance reduced to 15%. Too tanky as is.
Increased rage cost for ignore pain as well. Maybe a 5% damage nerf as well.
E) windwalker sustained reduced 7% overall. Dance of chi ji nerfed from 200% to 100%. Touch of karma increased to 80% of the users health instead of 50. Too squishy outside karma.
Fortifying brew increased to 20% dmg reduction.
F) frost dk obliterate damage increased 10%. Frost strike increased 5%. Ams now absorbs and heals baseline.
Icebound fortitude increased to 35% damage reduction.
Pillar reduced 5%
G) Unholy necrotic strike increased to 10%. Festering strike increased by 15%.
Off the top of my head. Thats what i think.
Another thing, I just wished Blizzard would address the majority of the comments made on the forums or social media. Druid forms, better rewards for torgast, removing borrowed power, adding unique transmog, class ideas, etc. It feels like the dev team doesn’t care or listen to their players. I’m not saying they don’t care I’m saying that actions speak louder than words. Example: it took how many years to give Demo lock a real interrupt.
Lot of strange suggestions in this thread, which is why blizzard usually doesn’t listen to feedback (no offense). Everyone has very specific things that they think are making the game “bad”, but chances are those specific annoyances are not shared by more than 1% of the player base. Sad but true.
Here’s the truth: there are three types of players. 1) Professionals - earn their living streaming the game, competing in tournaments, etc. 2) Hardcore - ~40 or more hours per week played. 3) everyone else. Games thrive on their hardcore and professional population. These populations form communities that benefit every aspect of the game, as well as generating publicity for the game (think about what LCS does for League of Legends as an example). However, the casuals usually generate more revenue. They take more shortcuts, are excited by cash shops, and look to the game purely for enjoyment.
WoW is currently great for casuals. You can do lots of different content that all feels relatively fun for 4ish hours each week. This in itself is not a bad thing whatsoever.
WoW is also a great game for professionals. There is very, very challenging or competitive content in the game which world best guilds use to generate revenue for themselves as well as the teams they play for. People watch it.
However, WoW is not a great game for hardcore players. It is very easy, as a hardcore but not professional player, to feel like there is “no content”. You’ve done hundreds and hundreds of the same mythic plus dungeons, cleared the heroic raid 40 times, and you’re just simply bored. You’d like to continue to play 40 hours a week, but you can’t because there’s nothing left to do, or nothing left WORTH doing. Mythic plus and Raiding are the only ways to increase power level for a hardcore player after the second week of a patch.
So how do you fix the game for the Hardcore player (read: not professional, not casual). It’s actually not that hard to imagine how to do this. Some ideas:
- Release more dungeons with each patch (at least 2). Dungeons are the most exciting and most approachable content in the game. The rewards scale, so the content is relevant for a while. 5 man groups are easier to form than 10 man, 25 man groups, etc. Additionally, new dungeons mean new ways to experience mythic+ affixes.
- Create unique 2, 3, or 5 man experiences that are rewarding. aka new experiences that are not dungeons or raids. Hardcore players shouldn’t be limited to just mythic+ and raids. Mage tower was one of these that people liked. Island expeditions were another, but they were widely hated by the player base. Bliz needs to continue experimenting with unique small group content that gives WORTHWHILE rewards (not random currency).
- Create unique PVP content, and fix PVP gearing. There are people that are only interested in PVP, and PVP gearing should represent that. It should feel continuously rewarding to PVP via power upgrades. Additionally, people get tired of the same old arena gameplay over and over. There should be more small group PVP challenges than just arenas. Unique PVP -only abilities could be a fun thing to experiment with. Additionally, seasonal affixes in PVP (recycling the idea from mythic+) would make PVP feel refreshed.
- Timewalking Raids with Heroic and Mythic difficulties. A hardcore player doesn’t care about mediocre rewards from timewalking raids, they want amazing rewards for challenging timewalking content. Think of how interesting it would be to get a high ilvl trinket from an old raid and apply its unique bonus to current content. This would necessitate balance changes as necessary, but that shouldn’t make the idea any less worth while.
- Professions and Player Housing. Other MMOs are doing this with great success, and Bliz only tried this once via WoD. Usually Bliz doesn’t get things right the first go around, doesn’t mean player housing was a bad idea. In fact FF14 implements it with incredible success. With housing comes new professions. The good old professions we have had forever should be expanded in terms of usefulness and interaction. For example, as an herbalist, imagine completing an epic quest chain to discover a new type of herb in the shadowlands. You can share knowledge of the herb with alchemists to invent new concoctions with specific or general uses across content.
These are just a few easily implementable ideas that I’ve had from years of playing the game. I think the most valuable thing to take away from this post is the proper identification of the problem. Hardcore gamers have been ignored for too long in WoW, and any new expansion should target this subset of the population aggressively to reinvigorate the game.