Shadowlands: Why won't blizzard bring back uniqueness?

[HitRefresh]

The fact that a couple of caster classes have bad differentiation in classic doesn’t change that classes on average are still way more diverse in classic than they are now.

Even to the extent that those caster classes are too similar, it’s really just in raids. The rest of the time they are quite different.

I think that you are conflating “varied rotations” with “varied classes”. Yes, rotations are more varied now... although there’s an argument to be made that they’ve turned way too many specs into builder/spenders. But rotation isn’t everything. There are buffs, crowd control, situational abilities, giant cooldowns, etc..

Yeah, classic isn't homogenized at all. There's even so much that there isn't an entire class for each faction, and those classes are equivalent but do not play alike.

[arkanon]

See you in shadowland S1 for a reality check

What kind of response is that? You suggest rogues are "mandatory", i refute that and even explained WHY that is not the case, and you just deflect and shift the goal posts? Seems to me you just have EXTREMELY limited experience in M+, or, just read something once and took it as gospel without looking into it yourself.

[Baconeggcheese]

The fact that a couple of caster classes have bad differentiation in classic doesn’t change that classes on average are still way more diverse in classic than they are now.

Even to the extent that those caster classes are too similar, it’s really just in raids. The rest of the time they are quite different.

I think that you are conflating “varied rotations” with “varied classes”. Yes, rotations are more varied now... although there’s an argument to be made that they’ve turned way too many specs into builder/spenders. But rotation isn’t everything. There are buffs, crowd control, situational abilities, giant cooldowns, etc..

We're just gonna have to disagree there, classic's diversity comes in being able to use things you shouldn't be using or the unique things classes still have till this day (like mages having water and portals). Gameplay is largely homogenized in classic... and that's before you get into how disgustingly dominant certain classes are (warriors).

I would never use classic as an argument for what good class design looks like, as its an absolute mess. Revisiting that has just further emphasized how much of a mess it was.

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Yeah, classic isn't homogenized at all. There's even so much that there isn't an entire class for each faction, and those classes are equivalent but do not play alike.

You're right, one presses chain heal while the other presses flash of light. Its really varied.

[NineSpine]

We're just gonna have to disagree there, classic's diversity comes in being able to use things you shouldn't be using or the unique things classes still have till this day (like mages having water and portals). Gameplay is largely homogenized in classic... and that's before you get into how disgustingly dominant certain classes are (warriors).

I would never use classic as an argument for what good class design looks like, as its an absolute mess. Revisiting that has just further emphasized how much of a mess it was.

The class design in Classic is pretty great. It’s certainly better than it is right now. There are balance and itemization issues at endgame, but that’s not class design. Every class in classic brings unique tools to the group, and those tools are not nerfed down to make them less valuable like any similar tools are in retail. For example, you say that mages still have water and portals. That’s true, but where are water and portals a valuable tool that substantial impacts your gameplay experience? That’s classic. In retail, the fact that travel and mana restoration are almost entirely mitigated as gameplay factor means that the utility abilities carry no value.

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Actually, this is a bad example.

Bloodlust being Shaman specific was a terrible idea. It basically mandated that shamans had a raid spot specifically for bloodlust. Because Shaman always had a spot, they couldn't be overpowered or you'd only bring Shaman, so Shaman were purposely always middle-to-low tier because they couldn't possibly compete with the REAL dps if they also brought an overpowered buff. Which also had the continued problem: Because every raid team wanted A, but not MORE THAN ONE Shaman, shaman were in high supply, but low demand.

If that's the kind of 'uniqueness' you want back, it can stay pruned. I don't mind each class having a small raid buff that is ultimately unnecessary to clear fights, but that's not how this game works anymore - If there's a small raid buff, it's needed for mythic content because mythic content is tuned for absolutely EVERY buff available. That wasn't the case way back in the day. (We know this because we're watching people on Classic play with today's mindset and absolutely stomping through all the content.) People actually played the game like a game back in the day.

And the solution definitely is not to give every class a Bloodlust-level buff. That'd be broken as hell.

Given that mythic is a fringe activity done by less people than pet battles, maybe we shouldn’t be balancing the game around those seven people.

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We're just gonna have to disagree there, classic's diversity comes in being able to use things you shouldn't be using or the unique things classes still have till this day (like mages having water and portals). Gameplay is largely homogenized in classic... and that's before you get into how disgustingly dominant certain classes are (warriors).

I would never use classic as an argument for what good class design looks like, as its an absolute mess. Revisiting that has just further emphasized how much of a mess it was.

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You're right, one presses chain heal while the other presses flash of light. Its really varied.

You really need to get your head around the idea that “varied rotations” and “varied classes” aren’t the same thing. Rotations are a factor, but your insistence that we all pretend that only rotations define a class is absurd.

[TheRevenantHero]

Yeah, classic isn't homogenized at all. There's even so much that there isn't an entire class for each faction, and those classes are equivalent but do not play alike.

I'd honestly say that classes were far more homogenized in Classic than they are in retail. Classic classes are just one or two button rotations with the occasional cooldowns. In retail, classes have far more variety with what they can do. Classes in Classic also all feel the same in their archetype. so all casters feel the same and all melee pretty much feels the same.

[Luxeley]

You very rarely NEEDED certain classes in order to succeed. You had a better chance of success with better raid compositions, but necessity was pretty rare, aside from generally wanting one of each class in a 40 or 25 man raid. When there was actually necessity, it was often Bloodlust which is the big outlier here, or it was a certain mechanic specifically built for a class to interact with, like mage tanking in Gruul's Lair.

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This is exactly why players usually make terrible designers.

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This is horseshit. Plenty of players have been driven away from the game by homogenization. Lots of players would like to have more interesting class design. They also don't want a situation where some classes are just bad at certain parts of the game, but theres a middle ground here and we are WAY to one end right now.

It's horseshit cause I am speaking from Blizzard's perspective and explaining their Philosophy over the years. Homogenization started in Cata and it's in perfect synch with the decline of subs in the game. I tend to want homogenization in the game. I prefer fairness over uniqueness cause I strongly prefer pvp over pve. But, you're right BFA swung things way too far to the point that now I hate the homogenization. And, the fact is, even with Homogenization in full swing, there is still ZERO balance in the game. Matter of fact, the balance is probably worse on the pvp side of the game now than it was 10 years ago. We should go back to the rock, paper, scissors model from Vanilla and BC and just accept some classes will be better than others in some situations. Full throttle Homogenization sucks and somewhere in the middle sucks too.

[NineSpine]

It's horseshit cause I am speaking from Blizzard's perspective and explaining their Philosophy over the years. Homogenization started in Cata and it's in perfect synch with the decline of subs in the game. I tend to want homogenization in the game. I prefer fairness over uniqueness cause I strongly prefer pvp over pve. But, you're right BFA swung things way too far to the point that now I hate the homogenization. And, the fact is, even with Homogenization in full swing, there is still ZERO balance in the game. Matter of fact, the balance is probably worse on the pvp side of the game now than it was 10 years ago. We should go back to the rock, paper, scissors model from Vanilla and BC and just accept some classes will be better than others in some situations. Full throttle Homogenization sucks and somewhere in the middle sucks too.

This is a general problem in game design, and what’s shocking is that it’s a fairly well know and blizzard still fell face first into it. The problem is that you can “balance” things and then respond to that by tuning the game to that balance, and now you are back where you started. For example, you bring everyone’s DPS really close. Awesome, but now you respond by making content that’s so difficult that what seemed like balance before now looks like gaping chasms between classes.

The solution is vastly varying situational utility, something wow used to have. But for years they stomped that situational utility out.

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I'd honestly say that classes were far more homogenized in Classic than they are in retail. Classic classes are just one or two button rotations with the occasional cooldowns. In retail, classes have far more variety with what they can do. Classes in Classic also all feel the same in their archetype. so all casters feel the same and all melee pretty much feels the same.

You proved yourself wrong. In retail classes have more variety... because they’ve been homogenized. Rotation may be the only valued aspect of class design in retail, but it’s not the only thing that makes up class design. This isn’t about rotations. This is about what classes bring to the table compared to other classes. Different rotations isn’t something you bring to the table.

[Baconeggcheese]

The class design in Classic is pretty great. It’s certainly better than it is right now.

I absolutely hate what they've done to class design over legion / bfa to the point where I quit the game early into BFA due to burnout because of how much I don't enjoy the current class design.

Even then, its not even comparable. Class design in vanilla was horrendous, and classic just showed us again just how bad it was.

There are balance and itemization issues at endgame, but that’s not class design. Every class in classic brings unique tools to the group, and those tools are not nerfed down to make them less valuable like any similar tools are in retail. For example, you say that mages still have water and portals. That’s true, but where are water and portals a valuable tool that substantial impacts your gameplay experience? That’s classic. In retail, the fact that travel and mana restoration are almost entirely mitigated as gameplay factor means that the utility abilities carry no value.

That's the point though, I a person who played mage back in classic don't see that as anything unique and varied or anything of the sort. It was mild convenience, its not good class design. Ohboy instead of having to take a flight path and wasting my time I can take this portal, or instead of buying water from a vendor I can get it for free! Woo!

You really need to get your head around the idea that “varied rotations” and “varied classes” aren’t the same thing. Rotations are a factor, but your insistence that we all pretend that only rotations define a class is absurd.

Yes, combat is what the entire game and class design are built on... of course I'm looking at the classes kit when talking about class design.

I don't care that I can not spend money on buying water from a vendor and that mattering because they designed it so you run out of mana all the time. That's not enjoyable to me, that isn't good design.

[TheRevenantHero]

This is a general problem in game design, and what’s shocking is that it’s a fairly well know and blizzard still fell face first into it. The problem is that you can “balance” things and then respond to that by tuning the game to that balance, and now you are back where you started. For example, you bring everyone’s DPS really close. Awesome, but now you respond by making content that’s so difficult that what seemed like balance before now looks like gaping chasms between classes.

The solution is vastly varying situational utility, something wow used to have. But for years they stomped that situational utility out.

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You proved yourself wrong. In retail classes have more variety... because they’ve been homogenized. Rotation may be the only valued aspect of class design in retail, but it’s not the only thing that makes up class design. This isn’t about rotations. This is about what classes bring to the table compared to other classes. Different rotations isn’t something you bring to the table.

All right well it's clear you don't know what homogenize means. All I will say is that in Classic, there's like....three classes that bring anything unique to the table. In retail, all the classes feel different and play different and bring something different.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Excuse me for typo in title: Breng = Bring obviously.

I would like to discuss the following evolution the game has been through: Classes do not have any unique flavour left in their toolkit, even items nowadays can do things that normally only some classes could. (a good example are the drums that give bloodlust, orginally only reserved for Shamans)

Wouldn't it be amazing to see some unique flavour back in the shadowlands. Why won't blizzard let one class excell in some shape or form and be less good in other aspects of the game. Is it because blizzard wants to appeal to a broader audience by homonisation of skills? Maybe.

If classes have something that distinguishes them and makes them valuable it truly feels more like an MMO to me. So Blizzard should further unprune stuff and make new unique abilities or skills for classes to make WoW feel like an true MMO again.

How cool is it that only mages could blink, you see a mage blink and it felt special and what about a priest that has one unique very powerfull prayer of healing effect but the other classes dont, these classes can have something else awesome. Why do classes need so much overlap between them nowadays.

My question for you guys: opinions on how to implement more uniqueness in Shadowlands for the classes?

Ghostcrawlers "bring the player not the class"(Translation: Bring what does the most DPS/HPS instead) philosophy still stuck at Blizzard HQ despite him ruining the game in CAT, ruining league of legends, and being an incompetent developer no matter the game he works on.

They just refuse to move on from Ghostcrawlers awful design ideas. He also said "Being kited as a melee isn't fun" - lol, because being PvEd on the entire time by melee is oh so fun for ranged, right?

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Because if you make a class unable to perform understand certain conditions, People just sit them out.

I much prefer classes now being balanced across a variety of aspects rather than pigeon holed into only 1 or 2.

If I wanted trash, unbalanced design like that, I'd go play Classic.

And if you make a class do 10% less dmg than another, it's also sat. However, if said class doing 10% less brings UNIQUE UTILITY or has something completely unique no other class has, it's still brought and the player playing it feels useful despite being 10%+ behind in DPS.

Unique utility/abilities per class makes the game more fun, more balanced, and better.

[Stormspellz]

Just look at what was happening with the covenants for a couple last months. Some people, especially the ones vocal in the community as content creators don't want uniqueness, they want to be able to do everything, whenever they want, without any "gating".

Blizzard is trying their best to implement just a little bit of uniqueness, but even that gets attacked so furiously and so harshly by a subset of the community that they have to constantly backpeddle on everything.

This thread reads like it was written by someone who hasn't followed any discussions about SL recently

Thats not even what people are complaining about on covenants.....FFS

its nothing to do with uniqueness, its with balancing concerns (corruption/azerite?!?) and being pigeon holed into one playstyle at the extreme detriment of others. There are plenty of ways to bring "uniqueness" to a character without effecting the combat power by such levels.

[ablock87]

Because if you make a class unable to perform understand certain conditions, People just sit them out.

I much prefer classes now being balanced across a variety of aspects rather than pigeon holed into only 1 or 2.

If I wanted trash, unbalanced design like that, I'd go play Classic.

And yet classic is a much more compelling experience because of how unique the classes feel, as opposed to retail having 1 class that is painted 12 different colors.

[Kithelle]

That just brings up another design problem: The insistence that all encounters must be played according to the designer's script, rather than allowing players to use the tools available to defeat encounters. The prescriptive nature of the design is ultimately the same problem the OP is talking about. WoW was not originally designed this way. It was originally designed such that you would be given a wide toolkit filled with situational, unique abilities, and the "rotation" you played would ultimately be a consequence of your spec, gear, etc. as well as the design of the encounter and even your personal playstyle.

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Instead we just get people bullying people into specs based on raw performance, rather than based on a desire to exploit mechanics in interesting ways that make the player feel like its their moment to shine and provide a special utility to the group.

No problem was actually solved here.

Like I said it's not perfect but it's what we got...do you prefer being forced to bring a class because of mechanics or free to take whatever? Not everyone is a DPS counter that requires everything for perfection. Like Mic said...they don't want you forced to bring a class or a spec only for a mechanic, if you don't have that class you can't pass it.

Neither are perfect, both filled with flaws...but the current version has a few less flaws.

[Azerate]

Thats not even what people are complaining about on covenants.....FFS

its nothing to do with uniqueness, its with balancing concerns (corruption/azerite?!?) and being pigeon holed into one playstyle at the extreme detriment of others. There are plenty of ways to bring "uniqueness" to a character without effecting the combat power by such levels.

Yes, that is exactly what people are arguing about.

Uniqueness is when different classes (or covenants in this case) have exclusive abilities and perks that are only available to them. Uniqueness is inherently unbalanced and causes some options to be objectively better and objectively worse.

People campaigning for making everything available to everyone are campaigning against that uniqueness.

It doesn't get much simpler.

[facefist]

Because "bring the player, not the class" has been their motto in class design for like 10 years. Meaningful uniqueness tends to force you into bringing a certain class, for example shaman would be mandatory to bring in raids if it was the only class with bloodlust.

[NineSpine]

I absolutely hate what they've done to class design over legion / bfa to the point where I quit the game early into BFA due to burnout because of how much I don't enjoy the current class design.

Even then, its not even comparable. Class design in vanilla was horrendous, and classic just showed us again just how bad it was.


That's the point though, I a person who played mage back in classic don't see that as anything unique and varied or anything of the sort. It was mild convenience, its not good class design. Ohboy instead of having to take a flight path and wasting my time I can take this portal, or instead of buying water from a vendor I can get it for free! Woo!



Yes, combat is what the entire game and class design are built on... of course I'm looking at the classes kit when talking about class design.

I don't care that I can not spend money on buying water from a vendor and that mattering because they designed it so you run out of mana all the time. That's not enjoyable to me, that isn't good design.

"I don't care about it" isn't an argument.
"I don't like it" isn't evidence of bad design.

Mages had an exceptional amount of control in classic. That was their main niche. Polymorph was one of the most powerful abilities in the game. Their ability to slow enemies was unmatched. Portals and conjuring physically changed how you interacted with the world.

By comparison, warlocks had completely different strengths. They had more survivability and they brought different utility to the group. They were also throttled to a certain extent by soulstones, which impacted how that utility functioned. Instead of control they had amazing debuffs, easily the best debuff kit in the game. Their main control ability, fear, has massive downsides in that it sends enemies running to where they could pull other enemies. They did have the ability to banish demons and elementals, which was great in some circumstances but in others was useless.

All of these differences are substantive in classic. They make a huge difference in those these classes play.

And how would you describe the differences now? Certainly not in such stark and functionality divergent terms. Instead, you'd just describe different rotations that ultimately do the same thing, or appeal to marginal differences in ramp up time or other minute output differences.

There is a reason that I am appealing to specifics and you are going "WELL I DONT LIKE IT!"

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All right well it's clear you don't know what homogenize means. All I will say is that in Classic, there's like....three classes that bring anything unique to the table. In retail, all the classes feel different and play different and bring something different.

You are factually incorrect. Every single class in classic brings unique utility to the group, without exception. Everyone has things other classes flatly DO NOT HAVE. There is no such thing in retail.

[Whiskeyjac]

"I don't care about it" isn't an argument.
"I don't like it" isn't evidence of bad design.

Mages had an exceptional amount of control in classic. That was their main niche. Polymorph was one of the most powerful abilities in the game. Their ability to slow enemies was unmatched. Portals and conjuring physically changed how you interacted with the world.

By comparison, warlocks had completely different strengths. They had more survivability and they brought different utility to the group. They were also throttled to a certain extent by soulstones, which impacted how that utility functioned. Instead of control they had amazing debuffs, easily the best debuff kit in the game. Their main control ability, fear, has massive downsides in that it sends enemies running to where they could pull other enemies. They did have the ability to banish demons and elementals, which was great in some circumstances but in others was useless.

All of these differences are substantive in classic. They make a huge difference in those these classes play.

And how would you describe the differences now? Certainly not in such stark and functionality divergent terms. Instead, you'd just describe different rotations that ultimately do the same thing, or appeal to marginal differences in ramp up time or other minute output differences.

There is a reason that I am appealing to specifics and you are going "WELL I DONT LIKE IT!"

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You are factually incorrect. Every single class in classic brings unique utility to the group, without exception. Everyone has things other classes flatly DO NOT HAVE. There is no such thing in retail.

I mean no?

Warlocks had a lot more CC then mages for one bringing fear, charm, slows, and horrify to the table versus a mages poly, root, and either slow or stun depending on spec.

Class are far different now with vastly different rotations. There is more variety between a frost and fire mage now then there ever was between a lock and mage in classic. The same holds true with dest,demo,and affliction locks.

I would argue if your only taking a class because of a token ability that there isn't a real niche for that class to exist in. I think it all comes down to players wanting to feel special and unique again but you can't have that with base level mechanics. You need to make some massive mythic raider, mythic +25, glad legendary weapon that really separates players into a have and have not system for that effect to take hold.

I honestly don't believe it should exist and even something as basic as covenants has far to many negative effects on the game to be seen as a positive. Telling people to have 2 of the same class and hell even spec in order to succeed in both pvp and pve was a line blizzard should never of flirted with crossing.

[unbound]

My question for you guys: opinions on how to implement more uniqueness in Shadowlands for the classes?

The property would either have be removed from Blizz, or Blizz would have to be in some crisis where making this change is required to survive.

With most every class / spec having the same functions / abilities, Blizz is simply having to manage a large game of tic-tac-toe. This translates into a substantially smaller cost of doing business.

To go back to where they were, where there were defining characteristics of different classes / specs would require Blizz to manage it like a chess game instead. This translates into higher costs, and, like all other major corporations, Blizz's primary concern above all others is maximize profits. It is more risky to try doing things that may or may not increase the size of the user base, while it is very low risk to cut costs because cutting costs has a unarguable benefit to the bottom line.

And this works well in the short term, but in the long term, you have what we see today; a fraction of the user base because the game just isn't that great anymore, and there are better options that people play instead. 10 years ago, WoW beat out the combination of every other MMO available. Now, WoW is just one of many.

[Ham on Rye]

And i disagree entirely with everything you said. I find that to be one of the most boring "goals" to have in any game. What you are talking about is giving everyone identical abilities, and just reskin them - i would be bored in a week with this.

No, that’s exactly the opposite of what I am saying. I’m not saying to just reskin anything, but to continue to let classes do things like single target, cleave and AoE in ways that are reflective of their class or spec theme. It’s not just a reskin, but mechanics and resource differences, just like now.

I’m saying tune the numbers so each class has a chance to compete fairly using the tools they have, instead of how it is currently where some classes have the tools but the tools are useless because the tuning is bad or the mechanics are clunky.

[Baconeggcheese]

"I don't care about it" isn't an argument.
"I don't like it" isn't evidence of bad design.

Nothing you've said is evidence of anything beyond your own opinions as well so I'm not sure where you're going with this.

Mages had an exceptional amount of control in classic. That was their main niche.

By comparison, warlocks had completely different strengths.

What? Locks have more control than mages in classic, and if you wanted to use any class as an example as having a control niche I would've gone rogue.

But even ignoring all that... are you implying that classes haven't had more diverse kits since classic in that regard? Or even now? Cause you'd be wrong.

There is a reason that I am appealing to specifics and you are going "WELL I DONT LIKE IT!"

The hand waiving combat and rotations, the core fundamental part of how you play your class / spec and really how you experience the entire game... as if that were some kind of side thing and not central to the character is just silly. I don't even know how to approach that.

I guess it would be ideal for you though if I had to argue only specifically the things you care about in the game and not the big picture or the core fundamental parts of it that matter most to what we're talking about.