Is WoW Light on RPG Elements?

[pfbe]

How exactly could wow have more "RPG elements"?

[Cosmic Janitor]

Well there is barely any actual character progression in WoW for one thing. The game also very rarely allows you to exploit builds in a way that makes it worth going for niche stuff. You can't influence the story in any way, your achievments are rarely acknowledged, you have practically no agency who you interact with in which manner (from a world/story perspective),etc.

The only RPG thing left is pretty much the existence of stats, gear, that your abilities depend on classes/races and that you go on "quests".

MMORPGs were always thinnly veiled skinner boxes that behave closer to action adventures with piss poor controlls, added lag and meaningless social interaction. They should probably be called MMOULRPGs, mmo ultra-light-RPGs. And for many the mmo part is up to debate as well.

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you know what a rpg element would be? if you had several groups (lets call them covenants) that you had to make a choice to join. and it would be hard to rejoin them if you decided to leave and join another one.

yeah. thats why there arent many rpg elements. because people want to have their cake and eat it too.

An RPG element would be if you could reason with the factions and point out how ridiculously dumb it is that you have to choose one - instead if helping them each in turn since you have nothing better to do anyway and all of these twats oppose the Maw forces anyway. Especially once you wiped their asses clean, rebuild their shit and what have you, at that point it's just greed to funnel only anima to them, instead of fixing the rest of the shadowlands.

Another RPG element is that if you find a thing that works the devs or the DM doesn't constantly change the rules to fuck with you, which is something that happens in WoW all the time and makes this oh so meaninfull choice of yours utterly inane and degrades it into a pure gamble.

[MoanaLisa]

I've never really believed that MMO's are really anything like a good RPG, table-top or otherwise. The need to play with total strangers is a fundamental way to undermine RPG aspects and Blizzard continues to double- and triple-down on it.

The constant repetition of content is another.

A third and important one with WoW (and many other MMO's that purport to be RPG's) is that to play well, other players now more or less demand you do research outside of the game.

This is a longer way of saying that World of Warcraft has never really been much of an RPG. It's even less of one now.

[Daedius]

An RPG where you can't distribute stats? Yes... but that's because WoW followed how Heroes were handled in WC3...

[Holdodlig]

There are choices. But there's also the min/maxing mentality.

[Pandragon]

Obviously the defining characteristic of the RPG genre is choice, and meaningful choice at that (hopefully). They've made an effort in that department with the covenants, and it remains to be seen what happens with that system.

Unless they make things do the exact same damage and the only change is cosmetic, there will never be choice. Builds will always be decided by a sim program.

[Lefrog]

1) you can pick your race/look
2) you can pick your rpg trinity role (tank, healer, DD)
3) you can pick your class/job
4) you can often pick your playstyle (BoS Frost vs Unholy Frenzy vs icecap Frost)
5) you can pick your stats (a DK who is a master of frost vs a DK who crits all the time)

I think that covers most RPGs I've ever played.

I think there are two main types of RPGs I've ever really heard of. The kind that tells a story and you can chose how you experience it through character customization (you create your role in the story) and those that let you chose how the story unfolds (you create the story). I think wow is obviously the former, even with options like scryers or covenants.

As far as creating your roles within the story, WoW hits all the basic checkboxes for me. It simply doesn't allow as much "freedom" as some games do simply because it's an MMO. The freedoms that it does allow are unfortunately sidelined by the community when it's not on par with other choices. That's 100% a community thing. There has never been an RPG I've played that didn't have an optimal build for every activity. The difference is that I was allowed the play the non-optimal way and not be shunned.

[Echocho]

Yes it needs more meaningful choices. Maybe not all of them needs to be permanent but it should be way more difficult to change them than between trash packs at the click of a button.
Azerite traits had it right with a growing gold cost for changing them and you had to go to a major city to do so.

And we definitely need more stats and that's not even from a RPG perspective, gear is so damn boring when you always have 2 out of the same 4 stats. We should also get colored gems and diverse enchants back. Tinkering with your gear was way more interesting in the path.

[Mysterymask]

oh is it time for the "Is wow actually an RPG" convorsation...

ya'll DND books still exist....if you want the true RPG experience you CAN still play those

[Dug]

This topic always boils down to WoW not having dialogue trees like TES/Fallout or permanent choices

[Nzx]

It would be a good idea to have things like some monster having stronger armour, so bleeds and poisons would fit best to deal damage; then, another boss who's got higher armour but is less susceptible to bleeds and poisons, so armour penetration would be better; another kind that had no armour, so big hits would be more damaging the bypassing armour or applying DoTs... in the same vein, there could be some monster which took a bit more damage from some elements, making an Arcane Mage deal, say 5% more damage in that particular encounter. This way characters could be optimised to deal with different types of enemies. The same thing applies to tanking, with some tanking being preferable in certain fights... Right now, when that happens, it's mostly due to imbalances than Blizzard actually making this decision.

What the fuck? This would be objectively awful. Sure, make random leveling mobs or world mobs or whatever have this lame early 2000's JRPG "resistance" system. The moment you put this into M+ or Raid content is the day I, and pretty much anyone else who cares about playing this game beyond world quests and LFR, quit. Remember when Fire Mages just literally could not play their spec in Molten Core? I remember, that was such incredible game design, so much customization!

edit to add:

I don't understand this new forum obsession with the letters "RPG", as if Blizzard's decision to market in that genre 16 years ago means the game cannot possibly be anything different now. The whole "debate" is as fucking droll as people debating about whether their favourite dance music is techno or trance or housecore or nu-house or acid trance or techstep or dubstep or dub or trap or trapstep or acid dub or jungle house - it's this strange obsession with fitting things into boxes that entertains tiny minds instead of just taking things for what they are.

[callipygoustp]

Is WoW Light on RPG Elements?

Most definitely.

[Niter]

What the fuck? This would be objectively awful. Sure, make random leveling mobs or world mobs or whatever have this lame early 2000's JRPG "resistance" system. The moment you put this into M+ or Raid content is the day I, and pretty much anyone else who cares about playing this game beyond world quests and LFR, quit. Remember when Fire Mages just literally could not play their spec in Molten Core? I remember, that was such incredible game design, so much customization!

It's not an issue. What I mean is... what if some specs had an advantage depending on the enemy they're fightning? It's not that fire-based monsters would take less damage or no damage from Fire Mages, but that Frost Mages could deal more damage to some of these enemies, to some of the bosses, and Fire would do more damage to other bosses. That way you've got different specs being a tiny bit better (5-10% difference). It is not a resistance system, it's a... susceptibility one? It doesn't change much, it adds flavour. It would even out in the end since 3-4 bosses would be weaker to different specs, so performance would be good all the time regardless of the people you bring with you.

If you min/max, there's room for that. If you don't care about it, there's room for that. It's just about flavour.

[Nzx]

It's not an issue. What I mean is... what if some specs had an advantage depending on the enemy they're fightning? It's not that fire-based monsters would take less damage or no damage from Fire Mages, but that Frost Mages could deal more damage to some of these enemies, to some of the bosses, and Fire would do more damage to other bosses. That way you've got different specs being a tiny bit better (5-10% difference). It is not a resistance system, it's a... susceptibility one? It doesn't change much, it adds flavour. It would even out in the end since 3-4 bosses would be weaker to different specs, so performance would be good all the time regardless of the people you bring with you.

If you min/max, there's room for that. If you don't care about it, there's room for that. It's just about flavour.

It's not flavour at all. Have you not actually played this game before? What if the most complex dungeon boss takes 5% less damage from Frost for the entire expansion? Too bad Frost DKs and Frost Mages, good luck ever pugging that dungeon. Sure, the first boss takes 5% more damage, but that boss is easy so who cares? End-tier Mythic boss takes 5% less damage from physical? Oof sorry melee but you're all benched, maybe you can come for reclears.

The way you call 5-10% a "tiny bit" makes me inclined to think you're not really the kind of person who should care about balance in this game. If you want "flavour" like that go and play a single player RPG where your choices don't impact on 19 other people who are relying on you to pull your weight.

[Chaotic1962]

And yet, a lot of RPG's have you play as a set hero with a set race, gender and story.

Exactly this. And people keep saying player choice, like that was ever a thing that defined an RPG. Some of the greatest RPG's did not have any player choice that impacted the story. FF7 for example.

[Nobleshield]

It's not flavour at all. Have you not actually played this game before? What if the most complex dungeon boss takes 5% less damage from Frost for the entire expansion? Too bad Frost DKs and Frost Mages, good luck ever pugging that dungeon. Sure, the first boss takes 5% more damage, but that boss is easy so who cares? End-tier Mythic boss takes 5% less damage from physical? Oof sorry melee but you're all benched, maybe you can come for reclears.

The way you call 5-10% a "tiny bit" makes me inclined to think you're not really the kind of person who should care about balance in this game. If you want "flavour" like that go and play a single player RPG where your choices don't impact on 19 other people who are relying on you to pull your weight.

This speaks a lot more to the mindset of people that it has to be 100% or nothing. If someone isn't "pulling their weight" because its 5% less than Player B, that doesn't sound like a design issue but a competitive player problem.

[Soon-TM]

There will always be a talent, covenant or corruption that scrapes that 1% more of damage or healing. And people will swear by it and you'll be playing "wrong" if you want to play something your way

If only the difference was just 1%

[Venziir]

Exactly this. And people keep saying player choice, like that was ever a thing that defined an RPG. Some of the greatest RPG's did not have any player choice that impacted the story. FF7 for example.

Yeah. The whole idea of "choice" is a very young one when it comes to games - and let's be fair - more often than not, it's the illusion of choice.

[Kalontas]

Depends on how you define RPG elements. It's come to often mean "leveling and classes". In that regard, the RPG is at its core. But if you mean the roleplaying - then yeah, it pretty much gave up on it and just wants to throw a lot of cool shit at us.

[Echocho]

Exactly this. And people keep saying player choice, like that was ever a thing that defined an RPG. Some of the greatest RPG's did not have any player choice that impacted the story. FF7 for example.

Story choice and character choice are two completely different things. When people say they want meaningful or impactful choice in a RPG on this forum they're talking about how you build your character and the permanence or semi permanence of those choices. Nobody gives a rats ass about narrative choices or cosmetic choices, those aren't impactful when it comes to playing your character.