Should Shadowlands follow Cyberpunk 2077's footsteps?

[oplawlz]

Azerite Armor had less than 3 weeks. Hilarious really.

They also didn't touch Class Design until those last 3 weeks when they realized Azerite Armor was trash and wouldn't fill the gaping holes left in classes by Legendaries/Artifacts.

Yup, and then we got the infamous "8.1 will fix it" bs.

[Flarelaine]

Really sick of the “just wait for beta” crowd.

Really sick of the "trash it already" crowd.

[Mightytasty]

Really sick of the "trash it already" crowd.

Yes we should all just shut up and pre order

[huth]

Torghast is a scaling dungeon for 4 people. It's a Mythic+ dungeon.

It's a rogue-like dungeon for 1-5 players. It's not like M+ at all.

[Khrux]

Cyberpunk and Square Enix's Marvel Avengers both recently announced delays to September, both games have been in development for years with the only gameplay offered so far being heavily scripted gameplay demo's shown at gaming conventions.

The writing was on the wall for both of these games and the rumours of games holding out for next gen releases is starting to look more and more likely, on top of just being overly ambitious from the get go.

WoW has no relationship with the above mentioned games and nothing in comparison to their design/development roadmaps.

A game like WoW, or any live service game for that matter, develops content in tandem with supporting live content. Shadowlands will have been in early development since before BFA released. The band aid fixes instead of overhauls, the layering of systems on top of systems instead of new systems and the piss poor quality of 8.3 are all indications that Shadowlands development is in full swing for months and months already with a smaller team running BFA live support.

Until we see Alpha of Shadowlands, there is no basis for wanting Blizz to push the release back. We'll see how far along the system design for Torghast and Covenants (the 2 primary systems) are once Alpha drops and if they are far off release or not.

[Kumorii]

Yes we should all just shut up and pre order

it's not black and white, you could also wait and see.

[bloodwulf]

Cyberpunk and Square Enix's Marvel Avengers both recently announced delays to September, both games have been in development for years with the only gameplay offered so far being heavily scripted gameplay demo's shown at gaming conventions.

The writing was on the wall for both of these games and the rumours of games holding out for next gen releases is starting to look more and more likely, on top of just being overly ambitious from the get go.

WoW has no relationship with the above mentioned games and nothing in comparison to their design/development roadmaps.

A game like WoW, or any live service game for that matter, develops content in tandem with supporting live content. Shadowlands will have been in early development since before BFA released. The band aid fixes instead of overhauls, the layering of systems on top of systems instead of new systems and the piss poor quality of 8.3 are all indications that Shadowlands development is in full swing for months and months already with a smaller team running BFA live support.

Until we see Alpha of Shadowlands, there is no basis for wanting Blizz to push the release back. We'll see how far along the system design for Torghast and Covenants (the 2 primary systems) are once Alpha drops and if they are far off release or not.

This largely sums up my sentiments. We have no right to call for a delay as we have not had testing time with the expansion. I personally think the Covenants and Torghas sound fun as hell, and i also feel like a new class is just a bad choice for a game that has some severe outliers with balance.

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Yes we should all just shut up and pre order

Shut up and wait is also an option.

[huth]

I'll believe it when Blizzard can design any dungeon that doesn't play exactly like every other dungeon.

So about 15 years ago?

Which, they haven't, so I have no reason to believe they can. Remember when The Motherlode was supposed to be 'different?' And Karazhan was supposed to be 'different?'

Calling it roguelike doesn't make it so. Calling it a 'mega-dungeon' doesn't make it so. It's just another dungeon, and until we have more info on what makes it NOT a mythic+ dungeon, all we have to compare it to is - You guessed it - Mythic+.

A mega-dungeon is pretty much literally just a big dungeon, which Mechagon very much is. And the "rogue-like" is the information you're asking for. It's a progressively more difficult experience that resets when you leave or fail. You not understanding the term doesn't mean the information wasn't given to us.

Which covers half of the described features pretty well, what with difficulty scaling.

I.e. it fails to cover half of it. Which is a pretty large chunk.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I'll believe it when Blizzard can design any dungeon that doesn't play exactly like every other dungeon.

Which, they haven't, so I have no reason to believe they can. Remember when The Motherlode was supposed to be 'different?' And Karazhan was supposed to be 'different?'

Calling it roguelike doesn't make it so. Calling it a 'mega-dungeon' doesn't make it so. It's just another dungeon, and until we have more info on what makes it NOT a mythic+ dungeon, all we have to compare it to is - You guessed it - Mythic+.

Which covers half of the described features pretty well, what with difficulty scaling.

We already have some info on what makes it not a mythic+

-no time limit.
-modifiers and buffs you can pick up and combine
-Modifiers then mobs can get that vary from run to run
-1 to 4 player scaling.
-focus on exploration instead of rushing.
-changing layouts and mobs.

All of that is from just the blizzcon coverage.

[SoulSoBreezy]

We already have some info on what makes it not a mythic+

-no time limit.
-modifiers and buffs you can pick up and combine
-Modifiers then mobs can get that vary from run to run
-1 to 4 player scaling.
-focus on exploration instead of rushing.
-changing layouts and mobs.

All of that is from just the blizzcon coverage.

I'm working on a big Torghast article, but to clarify it's 1-5 players.

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None of this explains why this isn't just a mythic+ change instead of 'new content.'

Have you played rogue-likes or rogue-lites?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

None of this explains why this isn't just a mythic+ change instead of 'new content.'

You asked what made it not just a mythic+, you didn’t ask why aren’t They applying these things to mythic+.

your moving the goal post.

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I'm working on a big Torghast article, but to clarify it's 1-5 players.

Ah I must have miss remembered proabbly mixed it up with the visions in my head.

[SoulSoBreezy]

I have.

But they're not going to make you redo Torghast from level 1 every week, nor every patch. That would not be progression, which is necessary in an MMO.

Progression, however, cannot exist in a Rogue-like. Rogue-likes, as mentioned, are meant to start over when you finish/fail. There's no progression possible because you HAVE to start over. If all Torghast is, is a resetting dungeon with no progression - It will just be ignored. Or it will be done like Island Expeditions - JUST to upgrade your expansion-specific level up thing, and then ignored.

So again: How is a rogue-like going to fit in the context of an MMO? It's not going to have gear rewards forever. It's not going to have upgrade rewards forever. It's infinite scaling won't have rewards beyond a point - And people will stop doing it, because there's no longer a point. Calling it 'rogue-like' ignores the systems in place which prevent it from being a rogue-like.

I think you're confusing rogue-like (permadeath, start over) with rogue-lite (death is part of the gameplay loop), the modern version of the genre.
The primary reward we know of are runes that you use to build fully customizable legendaries. It was asked how this will stay relevant throughout the expansion and while nothing concrete was said, it seems we'll be able to upgrade said legendaries or craft new ones at a higher item level.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I'm not moving the goal posts.

If the applied changes are JUST to differentiate Torghast from Mythic+ - You can't say it's not a modified Mythic+ dungeon. They had to MAKE features to differentiate it from Mythic+ because they were so similar..

This is like a picture perfect example of moving a goal post. You could twist and mould mythic+ into any form of new content you want to they could have made mythic+ into islands or warfronts that doesn’t mean they were no different then mythic+’s.

You wanted to know what made it not a mythic+ I told you, stop moving goal post.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Right. So an expansion-specific level-up system that we then ignore when we finish it, so they can retire the content next expansion.

That's exactly what I said.

Well your opinions came from incorrect information, I was just trying to help you out =(

[Magicpot]

With how 8.3 turned out, I'm pretty sure shadowlands will be another empty cash grab like BFA. Torghast will be this year's island expeditions, not a bad idea in principle but executed badly and made irrelevant quickly. I'm not sure how they'll handle covenants, but you can count on it being garbage.

[SoulSoBreezy]

But I wasn't incorrect in any way.

You're the one who mistook rogue-like for rogue-lite, and from other posts also ignoring the characteristics of Torghast and equating it to M+?
lol I'm out, this thread is yours. I thought I could throw in some useful facts and information, and think I've done all I could.

[huth]

HA.

Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh harder.

When old content is larger than your 'mega-dungeon', you can't call it a 'big dungeon.' It was a return to relatively-NORMAL sized dungeons instead of the micro-dungeons we've been getting since BC. This is far from a mega-dungeon.

Dunno, but i find your stubborn claim that something that hasn't been around for 13 years out of 15 the game existed is "normal" funnier.

And for the record: "progressively more difficult experience that resets when you leave or fail" was the point of Mythic+, designed for an MMO. Then people complained that they had to redo their key when it depleted and the "resets when you fail or leave" was reduced to "key gets lowered one level". How long until you think the same happens to Torghast?

Except that isn't quite the same thing. M+, even in the original design, didn't force you to go all the way back to +2 every time you stopped playing or failed to clear an instance in time. It also didn't progressively get more difficult during a run, that always required multiple seperate runs. So most likely never, because M+ is still a different design. There's also the part where M+ is, from the start, designed as a group only experience, while Torghast is explicitly soloable.

Someone doesn't understand fractions.

And it's not me.

If the applied changes are JUST to differentiate Torghast from Mythic+ - You can't say it's not a modified Mythic+ dungeon. They had to MAKE features to differentiate it from Mythic+ because they were so similar.

Modify something enough and it no longer is the original thing. You know, that thing people keep complaining happened to WoW.

So yes, you can say it's not a modified M+ dungeon. Though the internal workings beyond the basic instance system used for everything are probably way different, so it never was to begin with.

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I'm drawing direct comparisons to other content we've seen and know the outcome of..

No, you're equating them on flimsy premises and assuming the same outcomes. Not the same thing.

[Shefu]

Legion was polished with Patch 7.3 (or maybe 7.2.5). But at the start of the expansion? Absolutely not.
No loot for m+ not in time, on failure your key got instantly depleted (meaning you lost your key if you pugged and someone left the group), artifact knowledge required research in the order hall (ridiculous if you realize that this ultimately is a catch-up mechanism). Also, until you completed your artifact, your class most likely felt extremely bland. So at the start of Legion you had to play a boring class to unlock all the artifact traits that make your class just functional and then, a few months in, fun. Let's see, what else? Sharding was certainly not polished at the start (some would argue even now). Entire specs were "unpolished" (Demo WL for example) and they had to be reworked with BfA.
And then the usual scaling issues in old raids, dungeons, etc that happen every expansion.

Oh and the acquisition of Legiondaries, the absence of a bad luck protection and the bug, that gave people multiple legendaries in a short time, if they got their first early enough.

So yeah, Legion got pretty good at the end, but at the start there were tons of problems that later got "polished".

Those are personal issues, not complaints from the majority of players.

[LordVargK]

Those are personal issues, not complaints from the majority of players.

I object. I would argue that especially the key depletion was a problem for many players. In particular the silent majority, because this problem was way more potent in the lower "casual" ranks of m+. Also which players are we talking about? The ones that came back for Legion and left after one month? The ones that were subbed all expansion? The ones that only played 7.3? But regardless: find me one player that doesn't think that Legion got more polished with each patch. I'm not saying, that the majority had a problem with ALL the points I made. But the majority had at least one of those concerns. Don't get me wrong, 7.0.1 was still much better than 8.0.1 . But you can't really deny that there were problems in Legion that were only resolved later in the game. Legendaries were a problem for all players and they only got reworked with 7.2 I think. And the aquisition was only changed in 8.3. Not getting a legendary/the right legendary was a problem for MANY players.

[bloodykiller86]

So 1 in the last 6 years, wow yup, that blizzard polish!

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Yeah but no, i don't care how good the content is if the spec you enjoy playing gets fucked in the ass at the start feeling weak and unwanted, the whole games sucks balls.

To be "polished" all specs should be enjoyable and sorry but release elemental was fucking garbage just like WoD, so BfA & WoD both started out unfinished and broken, only difference is WoD finished SUPER broken where as BfA has fixed things.

Most specs in a few levels in a new expansion feel like absolute ass. Fury without haste at the beginning of BFA feels slow and clunky......so what? when i get my gear it feels great

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I object. I would argue that especially the key depletion was a problem for many players. In particular the silent majority, because this problem was way more potent in the lower "casual" ranks of m+. Also which players are we talking about? The ones that came back for Legion and left after one month? The ones that were subbed all expansion? The ones that only played 7.3? But regardless: find me one player that doesn't think that Legion got more polished with each patch. I'm not saying, that the majority had a problem with ALL the points I made. But the majority had at least one of those concerns. Don't get me wrong, 7.0.1 was still much better than 8.0.1 . But you can't really deny that there were problems in Legion that were only resolved later in the game. Legendaries were a problem for all players and they only got reworked with 7.2 I think. And the aquisition was only changed in 8.3. Not getting a legendary/the right legendary was a problem for MANY players.

that wasnt due to polish though. Mostly, any issues in legion were design choices. Legendary acquisition was annoying but ehh not a massive deal. Real issues would be like falling through the world or new expansion zones being laggy and shit. That hasn't really happened since sharding was introduced