Three things from Legion the next Expansion must Change

[Seranthor]

The 3 things that should be changed are : Ion, Celestalon, MAU metrics.

Changed to what? and why?

[MoanaLisa]

The wish list of someone who does organized raiding and whose vast experience talking to others in the game very likely does not include talking to anyone who's not particularly interested in doing anything with raiding above running Raid Finder once or twice. Which is not most people.

Those problems aren't even really problems as such for a lot of people. Sure, Legion's design could use some tweaks. Sure, RNG permeates the reward system to a degree that suggests that it's over-stepping. The rest of that falls into the category of something to do for casual players. There are more of them than organized raiders.

Having things to do is better than not having things to do. Whatever you can say about Legion it's been difficult to run out of things to do. You can look at the methodology for release of content as gating or you can look forward to new small slices of content on a fairly regular basis. Finish all at once and write 2000 word essays on how there's nothing to do or take it how it is and write 2000 word essays on gating. Admittedly, no easy answer there.

Designing the game so that it suits organized raiding's community is what sank Warlords. Personally I'd like to see a leveling system that takes much longer with more quests, more story to tell and a deeper telling of those stories.

Run fewer alts if you don't like the rep grinds. Be careful what you ask for. You may not like the results.

[Dalheim]

Rep should be like in MoP, but not have gear locked behind it.

[Phuongvi]

Rng is a problem and must go.
Fuck those items you buy, then click, and hope for ¨something not bad¨

[MoanaLisa]

The 3 things that should be changed are : Ion, Celestalon, MAU metrics.

Ion is fine in that he seems to understand there's a vast audience out there that needs something to do that isn't raiding. A step up from Chilton in my book.

Celestalon is a classic case of yelling at the wrong guy; the guy who communicates instead of yelling at the lead for class design who is really in charge. You want Adam Kugler, not Chad Nervig.

Business metrics are what they are and no one here is going to tell Blizzard/Activision what they should be. Subscription numbers are pointless and I suppose it's sad they took away that club from those who used it to beat Blizzard's brains out. Monthly Active Users is a standard metric for games, web sites and various other internet-based activities. It's not even curious that this is what Activision/Blizzard wants to use as a metric. No one--no one--in the field of MMO gaming is using paid subscribers as a metric. But if you want to compare how you're doing versus your F2P competition among other things MAU is a better way to go.

[Noxina]

How much time did you spend writing this rant?

1. Hell no, reputation is per character for a reason, its progression. You should be able to create a new char and be exalted with whomever you have done it on before. Want those recipe/mounts/tabards/etc, go farm it. This is after all CONTENT, which is something you insist is lacking.

2. RNG have been a problem since day one of Vanilla, its how it is. I remember raiding MC and rarely ever getting anything, simply because the loot table was too small to 40 man raid sizes. And when something finally dropped it was 2 hunter tier pieces and some other crap.
I can agree that the current legendary system is absolutely shit, and should be tweaked, and in my opinion they could fix it by making all legendaries survability/utility based with only base line stats - a lot easier to balance, thus it would be such a slap in the face when you "only" get your third BiS legendary, which is "trash" because that is what guides tell you. (lol)

Getting gear is nice, but having gear less valued by someone getting a slightly better version, is not.

What does that even mean? People have ALWAYS gotten better gear than others, its how it is, and have always been. Are you talking about people with incredible luck getting a 940 TF piece from WQs? So fucking what if they get that? If gear is all that matters for you, then I feel incredible sad for you and honestly don't understand why you even bother playing this game.
I love that gearing up is easy now, no more spending 15 hours/week on each char to keep em up to date incase my guild needs me to swap to an alt for a raid.

3. There is nothing wrong with timegating, if they didn't have it you would have altered your third point to "content is finished to quickly, they need to add mAOR!". So yeah, just bitching to be fair. Blizzard can't, and will never be able to please every player. Time gating is great, I personally like to have something to look forward to the next week, instead of blowing through a content patch in a day or two just to get it done.


So yeah, all this thread is, is another of those cry babies who think their voice matters. Try again.

[Cedon]

The Rep thing really just needs to go back to MoP's model. When one character reached exalted, they could purchase an item and use that that would allow alts to gain 2x the rep for that faction account-wide. In addition, you could "Champion" a faction once a day for 600 rep, iirc, by running a random dungeon.

Time gating is NOT going to go away. Sorry 'bout it. It's just not. They use it to control pacing because there are people who will chew through that stuff in 24 hours and Blizzard doesn't want that. There is no argument that the Broken Shore campaign was extremely bad in in implementation. There was no story, just a list of chores to do before you could actually get to the next plot point of the class story. The Argus one is actually telling us a story. Not to mention the time gate was a little less. Remember, the philosophy from Cata onward has been to avoid situations where a player can say "I don't have anything to do".

Pathfinder is not going away either. This is the compromise between flight at max level and no flight at all. It could use some work, yes, but it's not going away and it's time players got over it. Legion had the first true implementation of it (WoD's was a quick hack thrown in last minute). The only mistake with it that they've made was not offering a mechanism for new players to get it for Draenor now. That needs to be explored (e.g. a boost could give that pathfinder achievements for previous xpacs)

The gear RNG does need to go. It makes itemization a pain in the butt and also expensive when you just gem/enchant an item and then you get a WF/TF version of it the next day/week. Or how a 915 WF item w/ Socket is better than its 920 TF version.

[Asaliah]

RNG would be ok if it didn't put versatility on nearly every items when you don't need it.

[Jorah]

Reputation grinding should be in the style of "netherwing eggs farm". I don't really know why Blizzard abandoned this type of rep farming.

Casuals's tears will flood the Azeroth...

[TheWalkin]

I would have to say that the RNG thing is what really irks me the most. A little RNG is ok, but it's spiraled out of control. RNG for getting loot from a boss is one thing, I can stomach going into a raid and not getting loot but one of my guildmates finally gets a piece of gear, that gives some feeling of progress. The fact that now I have to hope a piece of gear drops, then hope that it might have preferred random stats, then hope it might WF/TF, and now hope that if it's a relic it RNGs with preferred crucible talents, that's a bit over the top. I'd much rather enjoy something along the lines of grind out rep with a faction to purchase an item to upgrade RNG loot to better quality. Also adding the RNG to PvP loot was a little annoying. Yes, you can break gear into marks to purchase the piece you need, but that just ends up being more work in the end. Overall, it's not anything super game breaking, but something I'd like to see changed.

Professions could use a tweak as well. I've been saying it for years, but it really irritates me that I'm some "Legion Master" fisherman, yet I still can't land a fishing line in a specific location. When my daughter flails her fishing pole all willy nilly and finally lands it in the water, she's about the same skill that my decade old character is...

Anyways, Legion is still a fun expansion despite some of it's minor quirks. Looking forward to raging about whats next to come.

[Lucetia]

Rep Grinding, The Tedium Of The Past:

Rep grinding is fine. You shouldn't be able to get it in a few days just because you have more alts. If they make rep account wide then you better believe they will make the WQ's the same. Meaning if you complete WQ A on Toon A, then Toon B-Z will not have access to it. Otherwise just because you want to play alts gives you a bigger advantage than those who focus on one toon. Blizzard prefers you to focus on one toon.

The RNG PROBLEM, is a PROBLEM, a problem that has been growing since around late Cata and has become extremely prominant beyond the current games content. In a time and age where many people like to play MMO's to feel a sense of progress, not getting loot worth your weight is just a stigma to that progress that is not helpful at all.

Your problem isn't with RNG in this case, it's with the value of loot. While RNG does suck, won't completely deny that, the problem isn't RNG it's the value of loot mostly being worthless unless it has X or Y stat.

But getting plenty of the same stuff that has no meaning or reward, or even doing an entire raid and getting NO gear at all is also, stigmatic towards progression. The reason blizzard added raid currency in Wrath was to tackle this problem, meaning it was ALWAYS possible to get something, over time.

They added tokens back in Burning Crusade (not Wrath) and it was so that even over the course of a few weeks you still ended up with 1 piece of gear. You know get multiple pieces of gear via multiple sources a week so currencies are redundant and serve no purpose. If you aren't able to get at least 1 piece of gear a week then that is more to do with you not putting in much effort. If it's because your raid doesn't give you loot then you have World Quests and Raid Finder and bonus rolls as well. If you want a guaranteed piece of loot for your effort (like how currency was) then run a Mythic+ for the week.

Blizzards current system isnt working, we need valor back, we need, reward, back, or, we need a way to upgrade loots itemlevels using bonus coins or other progress to actually make yourself feel like your upgrading over time. And not some RNG bullshit way or progress, a GUARENTEED one, that you EARN from your effort.

We do not need valor back. Valor serves no purpose other than to let you buy either a subpar or equivalent iLvL item just for the sake of buying it. You have multiple sources / chances at loot. The problem is there is plenty of rewards in the game and it is just that most people don't want to see how the paths to get the gear. Rewards are there, you just have to go out and do it. Not get a currency for showing up to a raid then go buy something.


The problem is if you aren't upgrading over time then you are more than likely at a ceiling where you are capped out due to whatever skill ceiling you are playing at (LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic). Otherwise if you aren't near your skill ceiling then you should be always upgrading via the multiple sources in game.


Giving out guaranteed things doesn't mean you earned it or anything. You could afk an entire raid, get carried, run different things build up your currency and go buy gear.

This RNG system creates a roulette of who gets into raids and who doesnt entirley on the merits of their luck, not, on their skill.


Its not healthy for wow.

How does it create a roulette of who gets in raids? Either you have the gear or not. With Legendaries aside you can still achieve the iLvL you need for X raids. The only thing holding you back is yours and willingness to earn that iLvL (by putting groups together, running content).

Combined into the previous two problems is the third issue of Legion, the rediculas amount of time gating that it takes to get any real progress in anything. The fact raids are advertised for a launch on a patch that then comes in a .5 patch is insulting, the fact that we are taken for granted is even *more* insulting.

So you are insulted they release raids when they are ready and give you a patch without having to wait until said raid is done? You would rather Path 7.1 be delayed until 7.1.5 was ready or 7.2 be delayed until 7.2.5 is ready same for 7.3 and 7.3.5. Unfortunately for you this is what the players want. They want something to do in between raids that gives them more stuff to do than raids. Doing it this way gives things to do in between while giving plenty of time to work on raids. Sadly for you, the game does not revolve around raids nor should it.

Waiting a week to do the story so you can finish it? Not healthy, not even decently, especially when you realize all that time waiting amounts to less than 2-3 hours of story you could have finished reletivley quickly.

Some of the time gates are bad (Broken Shore questing style), some are done for other reasons to allow people plenty of time to work on things. While some may not liked it, Argus was done decently. It gave you some things to do so you could finish them and allowed you time to relax, play alts, etc. It also helped serve their purpose of extending the content for three weeks so you had something to look forward to each week.


It's not like "Week 1: Fly to Argus and destroy cannon. Week 2: Arrive at Mac'Aree run up to a statue, grab a crystal. Week 3: Arrive at Antorus and say hi. Week 4: Run dungeon"

In short...

In short the issue is you have problem with the game that most people don't. You have issues with things because you don't see it being the way YOU want. You want things done this way when the very things you want are in the game, except done a different way.

[CaptainV]

Don't want grind, don't want RNG.. so I guess perfect model for you would be Warlords of Draenor (with more raids and dungeons of course)? Got it.

Who am I kidding. With that model you would just complete content on easier difficulties and whine about "nothing to do" again.

Fantastic argument of absoleutley nothing productive said right there mate, also WoD was one of the core problems with RNG being HEAVY AS HELL in that expansion to the point of it being obnoxious.

No, Id much rather blizzard went back to the Wrath Model if anything, where loot felt actually rewarding, accessability to content felt decent, rep grinding didnt feel gated behind world quests (then fuck all) and had tabard farming to allow you to keep rep grinding when dailies were done.

Time gating was also NIGH NON EXISTANT back then as you had 4 raids from LAUNCH to play.

And the result of all that?

It is, still, to this day with only TBC being equal to it, the most popular expansion of all time in wow itself.

I played in vanillia too keep that in mind, back then we did have rep farms you could kill hundreds of mobs for for a grind any time you felt like doing, not gated behinda pointless wall of 24 hour WQ's.

I played in vanillia, where gear was attainable FROM rep grinds, that gave you DECENT if not MANDATORY gear you NEEDED to be able to even TOUCH a raid sometimes.

I played in Vanillia, when time gates did NOT, exist, for content with the exception of the Ahn'quiraj opening event and to a lesser extent the naxx invasions, but all that was fresh, and new, not dated, and over-done.

Yeah, I played Vanillia, before we had painfully boring WoD style raids of 4 difficulties of the SAME content and instead had 4 RAIDS of variant difficulties.

I played Vanillia where accessability was a mess of fun chaotic groups of people joining with little clue as to how to do x or y, and people were fresh.

However, putting ALL that aside.

VANILLIA isnt todays wow.

Todays wow, is a different barrel of fish, with different needs.

But there are undeniably things about todays wow that have to change, the rep grind, is old, archaic, and many people already agree on this post, its a done and dead thing, or it needs FAR more ways to attain it, like tabard farming again.

The time gate, isnt healthy, most feel unsatisfied because content is simply, well, unplayable. Whats wrong with having a 3 month raid cycle instead of a 6 month one? Even TBC never had a 6 month raid cycle, only 6 months of actually completing one of its raids.

Whats *wrong* with having *more* to do? More to do isnt unhealthy, and im not talking about more ways to get RNG, because thats a fast way to burn out, thats why mythic+ isnt a decent medium for so many, and why many are put off doing any difficulty above normal raids.

Because its EASY, to burn out before you even BOTHER doing the other tiers.

Over-all, WoW is in need of a facelift, one that allows better rewards for effort, less RNG, and better rep grinds that aernt as tedious or slow. Maybe one day slow progress was fun for some but SO many people are tired of this shit, especially people who farmed from neutral to revered to get pathfinder in previous expansions and this one.

Rep grinds, are *Not* fun.

[ComputerNerd]

"need to change", "must change", etc.
Never a good way to present an argument.

On rep grinds, I would not say yes with such a simplistic argument.
Reputation is also part of gating, the issue is less doing it with one character but the repetition of it with multiple.
Yes, there are good arguments for less of the gating, but it need not be account-wide as a solution to that.
I think that once you have you have experienced a storyline once, there should be less gating behind it the second and subsequent times.
The account-wide unlock of Pathfinder, Flightmaster's Whistle etc are a good example of how to do it right.
I think that a reputation grind to earn something new on another character can be justified.
But I will say that once earned, a reward that is account-wide in a collection should have its reputation requirement removed.
You earned it once, that is enough.
7.3 did do that with the toys collection, toys no longer have a reputation requirement once learned.
Though other requirements (fishing skill for the raft for instance) do still apply.
Transmog of most gear from reputation vendors should also have that change in my opinion, though if you have a new armor type - a new recipe, etc - then I think that should be earned, not just granted because you did it once.

The RNG problem is player-created.
It is diminished only as much as they want it to be.
The obsession with BiS or GTFO is the problem.
Not every loot will be BiS.
If you see what other people get as a problem, then that is entirely you.

Is waiting for a story any more "unhealthy" than burning through it as quickly as possible, and then whining there is nothing left.
No.
That gating is there because of player behaviour.
If you don't like it, blame the cause instead of the response.
If you can do the content at whatever speed you want, many will end up with the exact same thing you describe.
"nothing to do"

[Nyel]

1. Content quality - the quality of the Legion patches has been very low. There are some highlights (Karazhan) but most of the content they gave us in 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 was copy & paste content.

2. Better class design - class design of many specs in Legion is god awful (Shadow Priest, Windwalker Monk, Restoration Shaman, Arcane Mage, Demonology Warlock just to list some).

3. RNG - get rid of it or implement counter mechanics.

[akredon]

My biggest issue with legion is probably reputations. I would like the option of say if you unlocked a reputation on your main. you can get a tabard or something that has increase rep grain, like say 100% more rep gain so that way you are still putting in the work.

[Fabinas]

Ion is fine in that he seems to understand there's a vast audience out there that needs something to do that isn't raiding. A step up from Chilton in my book.

Celestalon is a classic case of yelling at the wrong guy; the guy who communicates instead of yelling at the lead for class design who is really in charge. You want Adam Kugler, not Chad Nervig.

Business metrics are what they are and no one here is going to tell Blizzard/Activision what they should be. Subscription numbers are pointless and I suppose it's sad they took away that club from those who used it to beat Blizzard's brains out. Monthly Active Users is a standard metric for games, web sites and various other internet-based activities. It's not even curious that this is what Activision/Blizzard wants to use as a metric. No one--no one--in the field of MMO gaming is using paid subscribers as a metric. But if you want to compare how you're doing versus your F2P competition among other things MAU is a better way to go.

Ion: The person who thinks that grounding the players, taking away water walking mounts and designing jump puzzles and mob-infested mazes means "immersive and engaging gameplay"
Celestalon: The guy destroyed almost all classes, plays WoW on a tablet and when he communicates/replies on feedback (usually on expansion BETAS, rarely at current content) baffles the community even more than explaining.
MAU Metrics: The subscriber model gives an estimate of revenue and the economic wealth produced by a single game. The MAU metrics are just huge numbers who can be worked statisticly to produce an image of product success, even when it doesn't exist.

[bigamie]

My biggest issue with legion is probably reputations. I would like the option of say if you unlocked a reputation on your main. you can get a tabard or something that has increase rep grain, like say 100% more rep gain so that way you are still putting in the work.

They actually already had tokens that you could buy when exalted to increase reputation gains for your account. Dunno, why they stopped using them in the last expansions. Also, reputation amounts for quests and world quests are low, even if that is off-set by the 1500 reputation bonus on emissary quests.
And for the love of god, please give tokens with personal loot or the ability to trade set items with other classes on your token. It just sucks when you are the only DH and noone shares your set loot.

[mingarrubia]

Casuals's tears will flood the Azeroth...

Not the casuals', but the mythic raid-loggers' tears.

Raid-loggers have been overprotected by Blizzard ever since WoD's launch. I suspect the real reason behind this overprotection is that most of the few devs who still play the game are raid-loggers themselves. As a result, there currently seems to be an unwritten rule in WoW that no activity whatsoever other than raiding/m+ may provide meaningful rewards in terms of character progression. That's why things like the Chromie scenario, micro-holidays or both Argus' factions are totally irrelevant gearwise. They just want this type of players to commit to farming a bit of AP and that's it.

[Deleted]

However, what I don't want to see next expansion is quite so much class-exclusive, potentially expansion-locked collectables.

Source for you claim that class specific stuff is gone after legion? right, you got none meaning you still can get them in the next xpac....

The other thing I would like them to fix is the Prestige system. Again, related to artifact appearances, the Prestige system as it currently is is rather broken for alts.

Its not. You want pvp stuff for your rogue and your mage then go play both toons like you had to do since always.

That way you don't "double up" on rewards you have no use for,

But thats how it is or do you cry too when you get a fireland mount 3 times?

[killwithpwr]

RNG is way too big on gear. Yup.
I dont really think anything else should go....
I would really like for solo scenarios such as Proving grounda and brawlers guild and the Mage tower Challanges to be much more prominent, inviting people to step up their skill for cool cosmetic rewards.