Do You Want An Essence System In Shadowlands If....

[OokOok]

See, here's the issue with MMOs, this question exactly.

I'm open for anything, if it's done right..... the problem is...what I consider done right, someone else might consider done wrong. This guy wants an essence system, that guy doesn't.
Blizzard tries to please both sides and what we get... is an expansion the majority don't like instead one side or the other. Blizzard should just make their game, if you don't like don't play it, but trying to make both side happy has given us terrible expansions like Cata/WoD/BFA

[Apology]

No, definitely don't want it back again.

It's a horrible system full of generic classless abilities that feel terrible to use, and don't mesh well with any class/spec. Additionally it's another convoluted over the top annoying farm for any newcomer / returning player to have to farm through in order to even be able to play your class/spec.

Abilities should never be tied behind weeks/months of farm and they should never be generic.

No Titanforging.
No Warforging.
No Essences.
No Azerite Traits.
No Azerite Power, Artifact Power (or Anima Power).
No Netherlight Crucible.
No Soulbind Talents.
No Covenant Abilities.
No Corruption.

Just make GEAR the primary and essentially only mandatory grind (other than gold), as it always was before these last 3 trash expansions.

Separate PvP and PvE gear (with pvp resilience and pvp power, or pvp only ilvls).
Reduce the gear acquistion rate so people don't get full gear and complain of nothing to do.
For PvP, make gear only available from vendors and bring back tokens and the high cost of Honor gear from TBC.

And while we're at it, for the love of god stop making talents so overly spec and rotation defining. I don't want to change the entire way my spec is played on a fight to fight basis depending on which talents are good for that specific fight. I want to play a Feral Druid, a Sub Rogue or a Frost Mage - not a 1/1/2/3/2/3 Feral, a 2/3/1/2/3/2 Feral or a 2/3/3/3/3/3 Feral. There's FAR too little consistency in the specs between fights right now. Stop people from respeccing every single fight (including PvP/Arena), or rebuild the talents from the ground up - they shouldn't re-define the core of the spec rotation etc, it should just be some CC/utility/mobility stuff, just like how the system was originally designed in MoP.

For the love of God, please, this. Gear has got so random and convoluted that I just do not care in the slightest about it anymore. They had the perfect system in MoP and we abandoned it for seemingly no reason whatsoever.

[Swnem]

You can say that since we have no idea how many players bfa have. And sure its better than having majority of players quit becouse of lack of content. No matter what. This ap, essences and artifact stuff is exactly what keeps casual playerbase playing game.

And you completly ignore fact WoD didnt had Mythic+ which made huge amounth of players get their gear way waaaay faster than in any previous expansions. I am casual and without rental powers i would have nothing to do after barely 1 week after patch release becouse thats exactly how much time it taakes for me to complete my gear progression.

I mean, if you don't see the much lower population is in how many people are in the group finder and how many parses there are in wowprogress, you are lying to yourself.

Also, no casuals don't stay for the infinite grind. They don't care about power. They are not clearing anything above lfr.
It is ludicrous that you think the thing that so many players loathe and stopped playing the game for is what is keeping people subbed.
Also, is that really "content"? It's just repetition. WoD didnt have world quests and mythic + but it still managed to keep more players. There is a lesson to be learned there.

[Elias01]

I mean, if you don't see the much lower population is in how many people are in the group finder and how many parses there are in wowprogress, you are lying to yourself.

Also, no casuals don't stay for the infinite grind. They don't care about power. They are not clearing anything above lfr.
It is ludicrous that you think the thing that so many players loathe and stopped playing the game for is what is keeping people subbed.
Also, is that really "content"? It's just repetition. WoD didnt have world quests and mythic + but it still managed to keep more players. There is a lesson to be learned there.

It doesnt matter. Its something to do for casual players everytime they log into the game. Which is exctly what casuals wanted. Something to do outside of raids and dungeons. And this will never change becouse casuals are majority and Blizz definitly do not want another WoD 5m+ drop in sub numbers. And i dont know where you play becouse EU is full of players. Im casual player and i am sure not interested in game where entire end game content consider spaming mythic+ and raids over and over. That would make me instanly quit.

[Playintrafic]

Nope you should just get spells for leveling up. That's it. The only grind to be raid ready should be hitting a decent enough gear level to be effective in your role.

[Big Thanks]

Nope you should just get spells for leveling up. That's it. The only grind to be raid ready should be hitting a decent enough gear level to be effective in your role.

Spells are not customization Its baseline abilities you will have 100% of the time and they are balanced accordingly by Blizzard.

At least with ACTUAL customization some interesting things can be done.

[Playintrafic]

Spells are not customization Its baseline abilities you will have 100% of the time and they are balanced accordingly by Blizzard.

At least with ACTUAL customization some interesting things can be done.

Yeah it's called talents. They worked fine for 12 years. Nothing about neck talents was interesting. It was just annoying and makes my alts useless in raids

[Big Thanks]

Yeah it's called talents. They worked fine for 12 years. Nothing about neck talents was interesting. It was just annoying and makes my alts useless in raids

The reason why i like Essences (azerites and Corruption) is because for the first time in the entire expansion...underperforming specs suddenly have the ability to be someone in life (on DPS meters)

Sure, the good specs will become even more insane...the good will become even better.

But it also means the shit specs will become "someone"

I, for the first time, am doing damage with Brewmaster monk...THIS is the power of "customization".
Is a wonderful feeling.

[trapmaster]

No, not at all... just no...

[PaladinBash]

Nope because it's either something good my spec gets for that expansion and never again, something good my spec gets gets fucked over in order to be balanced around or it's shit/irrelevant and my spec is both ruined for it's sake AND then doesn't get anything the expansion afterwards. So yeah nah, no thanks.

[VinceVega]

It doesnt matter. Its something to do for casual players everytime they log into the game. Which is exctly what casuals wanted. Something to do outside of raids and dungeons. And this will never change becouse casuals are majority and Blizz definitly do not want another WoD 5m+ drop in sub numbers. And i dont know where you play becouse EU is full of players. Im casual player and i am sure not interested in game where entire end game content consider spaming mythic+ and raids over and over. That would make me instanly quit.

I am not a casual but i agree so much. If the game would be only raids and you sit there week after week an get not one bis... it was always annoying. Right know i can do so much more than just log in twice a week and thats it. Also the mandatory infinite grind is mostly done two weeks into every patch. After that comes a slow nerf for people who activly play the game

[LordVargK]

The reason why i like Essences (azerites and Corruption) is because for the first time in the entire expansion...underperforming specs suddenly have the ability to be someone in life (on DPS meters)

Sure, the good specs will become even more insane...the good will become even better.

But it also means the shit specs will become "someone"

I, for the first time, am doing damage with Brewmaster monk...THIS is the power of "customization".
Is a wonderful feeling.

Precise reason why I hate the new system: Most essences and all of the corruption is not class exclusive. You could be a target dummy with azerite gear, literally just auto attacking an entire raid and still do 30% of the damage a normal raider does.
I don't want my warlock to use arcane magic. I don't want to proc shadow damage on my mage. No Azerite firebolts for my boomkin. And get away with all this filthy magic crap from my warrior.

What I'm trying to say here (with some exaggeration of course) is, that Essences and Azerite should complement a spec, NOT just add random damage or stat procs. We got trinkets for that, I don't need that on every piece of my armor. Give Azerite the effect Gold traits in Legion had. Give them the effects tier sets hat. Don't give me random procs that just passively boost my damage without me interacting with it.

[Swnem]

See, here's the issue with MMOs, this question exactly.

I'm open for anything, if it's done right..... the problem is...what I consider done right, someone else might consider done wrong. This guy wants an essence system, that guy doesn't.
Blizzard tries to please both sides and what we get... is an expansion the majority don't like instead one side or the other. Blizzard should just make their game, if you don't like don't play it, but trying to make both side happy has given us terrible expansions like Cata/WoD/BFA

Reductive black and white thinking.

The question is more complex than an opinion poll.
People who like it, what do you like about it? People that don't like, why dont they like?

In this case from reading this thread i could say, people that like, like it cause it incentivizes them to do other pieces of content. Those that don't, don't like being forced to do said content or think it's a pain for alts.
Solution: Have these essences be cosmetic only.
Honestly, it's what Legion did with artifact skins. Essences were a step back.

Everyone is now happy. Life is not only black and white. There are shades of gray.

Btw devs that only do whatever they want is what we got now. The only thing they compromised on was flying and even so they cheated by locking it for a year.
It's exactly why the devs are just making whatever they want that they fail. They need to work with the community.

- - - Updated - - -

It doesnt matter. Its something to do for casual players everytime they log into the game. Which is exctly what casuals wanted. Something to do outside of raids and dungeons. And this will never change becouse casuals are majority and Blizz definitly do not want another WoD 5m+ drop in sub numbers. And i dont know where you play becouse EU is full of players. Im casual player and i am sure not interested in game where entire end game content consider spaming mythic+ and raids over and over. That would make me instanly quit.

Something to do outside of raids and dungeons does not need to be tied to character power.

I play EU too. But regardless of your personal experience wich seems completely different from mine, the numbers don't lie.
Also, is this full of players cause they get phased from other servers with you? That's an illusion. Server population is seen by how many mythic guilds it has. It gives you the estimate of how recruitment is on the server. I doubt there is a single server with more mythic guilds than at the end of WoD.
You can also see by how many pages of groups there are looking for a mythic + group compared to the first patch of bfa to see the game's general population is massively down.
Of course, if you are someone who doesnt raid or do do mythic+, you cannot know these things.

But, you know, i havent raided mythic in years. I only did casual stuff in BfA and those systems made me quit, so i think this is very much your personal opinion and not that of all casual players.

[Elias01]

Reductive black and white thinking.

The question is more complex than an opinion poll.
People who like it, what do you like about it? People that don't like, why dont they like?

In this case from reading this thread i could say, people that like, like it cause it incentivizes them to do other pieces of content. Those that don't, don't like being forced to do said content or think it's a pain for alts.
Solution: Have these essences be cosmetic only.
Honestly, it's what Legion did with artifact skins. Essences were a step back.

Everyone is now happy. Life is not only black and white. There are shades of gray.

Btw devs that only do whatever they want is what we got now. The only thing they compromised on was flying and even so they cheated by locking it for a year.
It's exactly why the devs are just making whatever they want that they fail. They need to work with the community.

- - - Updated - - -



Something to do outside of raids and dungeons does not need to be tied to character power.

I play EU too. But regardless of your personal experience wich seems completely different from mine, the numbers don't lie.
Also, is this full of players cause they get phased from other servers with you? That's an illusion. Server population is seen by how many mythic guilds it has. It gives you the estimate of how recruitment is on the server. I doubt there is a single server with more mythic guilds than at the end of WoD.
You can also see by how many pages of groups there are looking for a mythic + group compared to the first patch of bfa to see the game's general population is massively down.
Of course, if you are someone who doesnt raid or do do mythic+, you cannot know these things.

But, you know, i havent raided mythic in years. I only did casual stuff in BfA and those systems made me quit, so i think this is very much your personal opinion and not that of all casual players.

Yes those systems has to be tided to power otherwise nobady would do them. Cosmetics wont get you far. I doubth people would stick around when only way to progress their charcater would be to farm cosmetic items which si something what have been in wow for more than 5y alredy. You just have to deal with fact that mythic+ and mythic raiders are not target audience anymore.

[Erous]

The addition of the essence grind would've been fine if it was available day 1. A year+ later(I dont remember when essences and BfA were released) and the last leg of the expansion is the absolute worst possible time to do something like this.

[Swnem]

Yes those systems has to be tided to power otherwise nobady would do them. Cosmetics wont get you far. I doubth people would stick around when only way to progress their charcater would be to farm cosmetic items which si something what have been in wow for more than 5y alredy. You just have to deal with fact that mythic+ and mythic raiders are not target audience anymore.

Did people not do their artifact skins? I think not.

I think you are desperate for validation on what really is a personal opinion. I don't think you know who the target audience is. It isn't only one, i'm afraid to inform.