Shadowlands has major problems up ahead

[Super Kami Dende]

Lol, so the majority of MMO-C users and official forums are 0.1%.

No they are the latter that I mentioned.

[Lolites]

The "major" problems seem to affect mostly the top 0.1% of raiders and the pseudo-elitist idiots that think they are like the 0.1% of raiders.

Thus.. not really Major problems at all, as the game would likely be far better off without them.

pretty much only problem is mentality of "ill do 1% less dps in raids i CANT RAID like this, gmae is ruined for EVERYONE"

[Burning4]

Nice analysis. Nobody cares about your opinion.

I do. I like their opinion. Stop being a butt.

[Elias01]

I disagree because if they listened to beta testers of BFA it would have turned out a better expansion. Ignoring BFA beta testes proved to be a massive mistake and we all don't want a repeat of BFA.

Thjey didnt ignore it and they did listen they just had no time anymore to redesing anything.

[Mafic]

You must have been absent from forums at that time. Guess you missed multiple capped threads about camera changes until ION canon himself had to respond and yield... And trillion complaints bout arcanocrystal, rng, AP. Speculations about legiondary softcap (someone even made simulator lol), uncapped titanforging, having 3 gear slots etc...

Legion had a rocky start like BFA but did recover for players that did like legion. BFA did not recover because they were caught off guard by players being upset about azerite armor.

With the new expansion they should not be caught off guard because they clearly have a rip cord they can pull regarding covenants as Watcher has said.

Anyways, there are more issues beyond covenants but I will keep it short. Rogues isn't the only class with covenants that need major work as it is across the board a major issue. Even as a super casual player I can't use Kyrian or Night Fae abilities even in solo activities because they flat out don't work the majority of time. Venthyr does work but again replaces poisons and every 2 minutes has to be reapplied which is very cumbersome compared to how poisons function.

Anyways, the upcoming expansion has too much uncertainty for a release date of late Oct at this point. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending upon your view point. That means there is a chance for positive changes still (eg GCD changes) but also the possibility something else slips through the cracks.

The build that was pushed through yesterday on beta and PTR for example did help with scaling in legion raids a little bit but did not go far enough. If they move on and don't revisit the scaling in legion raids that would be a shame. But we have to keep bringing attention to this issue and many other issues so they can be addressed.

The AoE cap I strongly feel is going to be noticed by all players fairly quickly and its impacts will be felt regardless of the content you do when facing multiple NPCs. Just like the pointless GCD changes they have had to slowly admit were mistakes this is going to be another of those mistakes.

Why does BlizZard keep making the same mistake over and over again when they already progressed past these designed mistakes a few expansions ago? Yes, there has been turnover on the dev team over a ten year period. However, some of the old guard remains and for them to not understand how the older parts of WoW slowly moved away from any AoE cap and GCD of CDs, mobility and survivability is frustrating. It is frustrating because players should have to point out why these issues were resolved and have to be resolved again. Afterall WoW is the devs game that they design and they can easily look back to how the game used to be designed. I mean it is clear that with several of shadowlands follow and escort quests in the maw that they were clearly inspired by the quests in vanilla WoW. So, I think they can be inspired and learn lessons from the past expansion on how to make WoW a better game.

[Hyrja]

I'm really worried for Shadowlands.
The zones etc look beautiful but i think its gonna suck again like BFA

[Justbas]

The "major" problems seem to affect mostly the top 0.1% of raiders and the pseudo-elitist idiots that think they are like the 0.1% of raiders.

Thus.. not really Major problems at all, as the game would likely be far better off without them.

They are literally the reason WoW is still attracting media attention.
You and your casual play don't bring in the big dosh.

0.1% players that stream, organize events and overal draw attention to the game do.

So no the game won't be better off without them in fact it will be way worse.

[Mafic]

I'm really worried for Shadowlands.
The zones etc look beautiful but i think its gonna suck again like BFA

The art team always delivers and have been doing a phenomenal job. The problem has been the systems team and all the layers of systems they are building. Unlike BFA, the new expansion will feature all these systems all together at launch. We shall see how the main player base handles it when they are able to see and play the systems on live retail.

[Arthilian]

One thing that kinda bugs me about the whole Covenant, #PullTheRipcord (do it) discussion is that Blizzard seems to be 100% completly silent on the matter. I thought they were doing a pretty good job communicating and responding to feedback in this beta up until now, but despite this probably being the most controversial (and important, I'd say) discussion so far and all the non-stop threads and tweets, I've not seen a single response.

I mean wether you're for or against #PullTheRipcord, surely we can all agree it'd be nice if Blizzard started joining the discussion again...

[Soluna]

Except Covenants are not a fixed choice.

- - - Updated - - -

Except I hope you know what I meant dude, because I cba writing a post on why it's so annoying for there to be a grinding mechanic locking you behind your class' potential, and then getting a similarly silly comment such as yours.

If nothing else, it should be gameplay over lore or immersion for this one, and yes, sure, restrict the class ability, but don't punish me with a grind if I want to change, punish me with a simple timegate of 'You cannot swap covenants more often that once every 14 days' or something.

And yes, I know that the objectives to change covenant were datamined, but I bet it's placeholder, looks too easy to be what blizzard made it out to be.

[dcc626]

Howdy, My name is Mafic and I am a super casual player of WoW. I like to craft hexweave bags, do some BGs or do some normal questing content. Spare time I do transmog farming or whatever I think this is fun.

But what prompted me to post this thread is that with the upcoming expansion near I have seen that it is problematic in many facets. The expansion is problematic because of the various issues I have discovered on the PTR with prepatch and also from what beta testers have told me as well as I what have read from the beta. So, here goes to what are the main major problems of Shadowlands.

Prepatch

There are three main problems I have found with prepatch of shadowlands. The first problem is the level squish is not doing as promised as the legacy content has become significantly harder because of two factors. Primarily because of the removal of corruptions/downscaline of essences. And, second because of the botched scaling. Now, in fairness BlizZArd has said they are looking at the scaling issues in legacy raids and dungeons. But! As we have seen many of the scaling issues from the last squish were not address properly and the current scaling in BFA PVP has been a trainwreck of confusion and abuse. And, this time we are going to see a level and item squish all at once to further complicate matters. So far what is happening is that because of the level squish it feels like most recent expansions are not treated as legacy content. For example if you are level 40 after the squish you are going to feel the pain just doing basic legacy raids.

Second problem which is related to the first problem is the legacy loot has been changed and there is no communication from BlizZard on this issue. Is it intended to receive only one gear drop from legacy raid bosses now? I don't know and BlizZard has been radio silent thus far. The impact this had is not only related to raw gold per hour. But also impacts those that like to transmog hunt for gear and also impacts the replay value of older content. It is nice to have something else to look forward to beyond current endgame content. Why take away that player fun?

And the third problem is related to the first two problems which is the hard cap of AoE which impacts legacy farming but also end game. It is very noticeable with BFA content in prepatch that you take longer to take down mobs and it feels all very clunky.

There are other problems with the prepatch regarding the zombie event, mount equipment being unlocked at a higher level than flying, being kicked out of chromie time once you reach level 50, etc.

I could make and entire post talking about the devaluation of gear and the raw gold heading into prepatch but I will save that for another day.

Moving on these are the main issues with shadowlands itself:

1. Covenant structure is too rigid and not congruent to the MMORPG experience. IF WoW was a single player action RPG it wouldn't matter how balanced the respective covenants are. But since WoW is a MMORPG and we do interact with players at some point it is necessary to point out that covenant locking is the not the answer. I feel that punishing those that want to play other specs or alts is not the answer because there is already a shortage of tanks and healers in WoW. There are also various issues with covenants and quests not supported by the story quest chains. So, such a rigid choice does not work or feel like a meaningful choice.

2. Borrowed power that is layered upon each other has stifled the growth of classes at their core base and many classes are incomplete. No new talent tier since WoD and no new baseline abilities since MoP. The legendaries are mostly legendaries from legion itself aka legiondaries and thus does not feel new. The argument for borrowed power was so BlizZard can do something new and experiment with each expansion. Corruption was an experiment but BlizZard did not put much effort or thinking to put into place to make it work. Betraying that principle reveals that borrowed power shenanigans is coming to a close and players are starting to figure it all out. Classes need to be whole again and I don't think the great unpruner has done enough to unprune classes. The lack of communication from the unpruner reveals a deep problem with BlizZard in that they have decided to make a game targeted at an audience that doesn't exist while ignoring their core PC MMORPG audience.

3. Game play loop of systemlands is too linear, narrow and repetitive. The world quests at level cap for the expansion are just very tedious, long and not rewarding. No flight whistles, and the zones are poorly designed with vertical lift that would make WoD zones blush. The lack of flight paths reinforces that the expansion is not that friendly to those that want to be in and out with world quests. True, a weekly cap and less world quests is a plus, but the downside is that BlizZard has designed a game where you spend more time traveling to a few tedious world quests. Also, the lack of no info for part 1 of flying is a big red flag. However, with how disconnected the zones are it is clear that there isn't a solid plan of how flying will be allowed in the upcoming expansion. The worst has to be the MAW though as not even ground mounts are allowed in there and it is required to be in there for progression which feels bad IMVHO.

4. Lack of player agency in general is something that has plagued WoW the last few expansions but is very noticeable with the upcoming expansion. At Blizzcon BlizZard said they wanted to return player agency but I don't see it that way with covenant locking, no info on part 1 of flying, torghast not being the roguelike experience as sold at blizzcon, etc.

Classes still feel bad with the GCD and it will be more noticeable with the active covenant abilities. In short there are many problems with shadowlands and time is running out.

Can they fix these issues? Sure.

But they have to start to listen to feedback from players on the PTR and beta forums. That is how BFA went down the tubes because they ignored the feedback from players and rushed BFA out.

Lets hope that does not happen with the upcoming expansion.

you dont mean that they need to listen to feedback, because they have listened to feedback and have changed things because of it.

what you mean is that they need to listen to and change everything that players have asked for, which they havent done and will never do.

at least be honest about what you are saying.

- - - Updated - - -

Except I hope you know what I meant dude, because I cba writing a post on why it's so annoying for there to be a grinding mechanic locking you behind your class' potential, and then getting a similarly silly comment such as yours.

If nothing else, it should be gameplay over lore or immersion for this one, and yes, sure, restrict the class ability, but don't punish me with a grind if I want to change, punish me with a simple timegate of 'You cannot swap covenants more often that once every 14 days' or something.

And yes, I know that the objectives to change covenant were datamined, but I bet it's placeholder, looks too easy to be what blizzard made it out to be.

it may indeed be that easy to swap covenants. what wont be simple is grinding reknown on several covenants. reknown is tied to the covenants, not the player. so expect to be doing catchup (ie chores) on every additional covenant you want to use.

[SirBeef]

Except I hope you know what I meant dude, because I cba writing a post on why it's so annoying for there to be a grinding mechanic locking you behind your class' potential, and then getting a similarly silly comment such as yours.

If nothing else, it should be gameplay over lore or immersion for this one, and yes, sure, restrict the class ability, but don't punish me with a grind if I want to change, punish me with a simple timegate of 'You cannot swap covenants more often that once every 14 days' or something.

And yes, I know that the objectives to change covenant were datamined, but I bet it's placeholder, looks too easy to be what blizzard made it out to be.

Then stop using incorrect terms. Just say you find it inconvenient. You don't need tonwritena dissertation about it.

[goldlock]

Except I hope you know what I meant dude, because I cba writing a post on why it's so annoying for there to be a grinding mechanic locking you behind your class' potential, and then getting a similarly silly comment such as yours.

If nothing else, it should be gameplay over lore or immersion for this one, and yes, sure, restrict the class ability, but don't punish me with a grind if I want to change, punish me with a simple timegate of 'You cannot swap covenants more often that once every 14 days' or something.

And yes, I know that the objectives to change covenant were datamined, but I bet it's placeholder, looks too easy to be what blizzard made it out to be.

Just roll a second toon if you want to do more then one game mode. At worst its just a newbie trap right now.

[jellmoo]

That makes 3 of us... Why Op? Seems like a lot of intentional extra work to type "BlizZard."

Fourth. It's literally distracting me from the points the OP is trying to make.

@Mafic

Why on earth do you write Blizzard as "BlizZard"?

[frozenwingchimera]

I find this to be pretty amusing to read. He notes that if you're lvl 40 it makes it hard to do legacy.. LEVEL TO 60 THEN! lol The leveling experience isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. Being in the beta for a while, I can tell you its definitely a HUGE improvement over the past 15 years.

I will give him one agreement 100% here. The loot system in old raids is absolutely abysmal. Going back to farm transmog etc and only getting one item to drop out of the boxes is definitely a garbage system. Then again the whole personal loot system to begin with is absolute trash. However, doesn't seem like thats going anywhere anytime soon.

Shadowlands overall is a GREATLY improved version of the game and I am excited to see what the next two years bring.

Howdy, My name is Mafic and I am a super casual player of WoW. I like to craft hexweave bags, do some BGs or do some normal questing content. Spare time I do transmog farming or whatever I think this is fun.

But what prompted me to post this thread is that with the upcoming expansion near I have seen that it is problematic in many facets. The expansion is problematic because of the various issues I have discovered on the PTR with prepatch and also from what beta testers have told me as well as I what have read from the beta. So, here goes to what are the main major problems of Shadowlands.

Prepatch

There are three main problems I have found with prepatch of shadowlands. The first problem is the level squish is not doing as promised as the legacy content has become significantly harder because of two factors. Primarily because of the removal of corruptions/downscaline of essences. And, second because of the botched scaling. Now, in fairness BlizZArd has said they are looking at the scaling issues in legacy raids and dungeons. But! As we have seen many of the scaling issues from the last squish were not address properly and the current scaling in BFA PVP has been a trainwreck of confusion and abuse. And, this time we are going to see a level and item squish all at once to further complicate matters. So far what is happening is that because of the level squish it feels like most recent expansions are not treated as legacy content. For example if you are level 40 after the squish you are going to feel the pain just doing basic legacy raids.

Second problem which is related to the first problem is the legacy loot has been changed and there is no communication from BlizZard on this issue. Is it intended to receive only one gear drop from legacy raid bosses now? I don't know and BlizZard has been radio silent thus far. The impact this had is not only related to raw gold per hour. But also impacts those that like to transmog hunt for gear and also impacts the replay value of older content. It is nice to have something else to look forward to beyond current endgame content. Why take away that player fun?

And the third problem is related to the first two problems which is the hard cap of AoE which impacts legacy farming but also end game. It is very noticeable with BFA content in prepatch that you take longer to take down mobs and it feels all very clunky.

There are other problems with the prepatch regarding the zombie event, mount equipment being unlocked at a higher level than flying, being kicked out of chromie time once you reach level 50, etc.

I could make and entire post talking about the devaluation of gear and the raw gold heading into prepatch but I will save that for another day.

Moving on these are the main issues with shadowlands itself:

1. Covenant structure is too rigid and not congruent to the MMORPG experience. IF WoW was a single player action RPG it wouldn't matter how balanced the respective covenants are. But since WoW is a MMORPG and we do interact with players at some point it is necessary to point out that covenant locking is the not the answer. I feel that punishing those that want to play other specs or alts is not the answer because there is already a shortage of tanks and healers in WoW. There are also various issues with covenants and quests not supported by the story quest chains. So, such a rigid choice does not work or feel like a meaningful choice.

2. Borrowed power that is layered upon each other has stifled the growth of classes at their core base and many classes are incomplete. No new talent tier since WoD and no new baseline abilities since MoP. The legendaries are mostly legendaries from legion itself aka legiondaries and thus does not feel new. The argument for borrowed power was so BlizZard can do something new and experiment with each expansion. Corruption was an experiment but BlizZard did not put much effort or thinking to put into place to make it work. Betraying that principle reveals that borrowed power shenanigans is coming to a close and players are starting to figure it all out. Classes need to be whole again and I don't think the great unpruner has done enough to unprune classes. The lack of communication from the unpruner reveals a deep problem with BlizZard in that they have decided to make a game targeted at an audience that doesn't exist while ignoring their core PC MMORPG audience.

3. Game play loop of systemlands is too linear, narrow and repetitive. The world quests at level cap for the expansion are just very tedious, long and not rewarding. No flight whistles, and the zones are poorly designed with vertical lift that would make WoD zones blush. The lack of flight paths reinforces that the expansion is not that friendly to those that want to be in and out with world quests. True, a weekly cap and less world quests is a plus, but the downside is that BlizZard has designed a game where you spend more time traveling to a few tedious world quests. Also, the lack of no info for part 1 of flying is a big red flag. However, with how disconnected the zones are it is clear that there isn't a solid plan of how flying will be allowed in the upcoming expansion. The worst has to be the MAW though as not even ground mounts are allowed in there and it is required to be in there for progression which feels bad IMVHO.

4. Lack of player agency in general is something that has plagued WoW the last few expansions but is very noticeable with the upcoming expansion. At Blizzcon BlizZard said they wanted to return player agency but I don't see it that way with covenant locking, no info on part 1 of flying, torghast not being the roguelike experience as sold at blizzcon, etc.

Classes still feel bad with the GCD and it will be more noticeable with the active covenant abilities. In short there are many problems with shadowlands and time is running out.

Can they fix these issues? Sure.

But they have to start to listen to feedback from players on the PTR and beta forums. That is how BFA went down the tubes because they ignored the feedback from players and rushed BFA out.

Lets hope that does not happen with the upcoming expansion.

[goldlock]

Fourth. It's literally distracting me from the points the OP is trying to make.

@Mafic

Why on earth do you write Blizzard as "BlizZard"?

I am guessing its just a typo shift is next to Z.

[jellmoo]

I am guessing its just a typo shift is next to Z.

For it to happen every single time it has to be intentional.

[Fatbeaverlol]

It is never too late to pull the ripcord and save covenants. Even bellular even agrees with this now and did a lengthy and well made video on this very topic. If they listen to players they can avoid another BFA. Beta testers are voicing that covenants as they are presented right now does not provide the meaningful choices as sold at blizzcon.

Feedback does matter which is why essences became account bound.

hmm should watch the video then. Havent seen it yet. Hopefully they bring some change asap but I think they wont.

[Surfd]

I am guessing its just a typo shift is next to Z.

And CaspLock is next to A, but you don't see him randomly capsing partial words after every a. 100% has to be intentional.

[kaminaris]

Legion had a rocky start like BFA but did recover for players that did like legion. BFA did not recover because they were caught off guard by players being upset about azerite armor.

Dude, rocky start? Leggos was fixed in LAST patch of expansion vs FIRST patch with azerite gear. There is no point in even discussing this. Majority of legion was ruined until it didn't matter anymore.