Shadowlands Delayed -- What should be changed?

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Seems like those two niches are already covered, no?
Both in terms of themes as well as in potential gameplay.

Summoning dead things & plagues: DK
Debilitating soul/life draining magic magic: warlock
Attacking with a neverending host of disposable minions: also warlocks.

And if i recall correctly hunters even had a "Black Arrow" spell at some point, so pretty sure Dark Ranger would just be a forsaken hunter with funky eyes.



Now in regards to stuff not yet covered by existent classes Maiev comes to mind (mostly due to her curious kit in HotS and WC3, excacerbated by her odd armor), but a warden seems too limited in options to get enough speccs out of it, to say nothing of the overlap with rogues.
Others that i could see working would be mixing martial and magic in a nonaligned way, as in the spellblade boss of the Nighthold.
And finally there's tech based stuff like tinkers and alchemists which would certainly qualify but which have been discussed to death and beyond already, so i'mma avoid that one.

Unholy DK and an Unholy Necromancer spec could easily work out. Unholy Necro could be a mix of Demo, Unholy, and Affliction. As well as Necromancer having a vanilla shadow-priest healing spec

[loras]

On topic: i'd prefer it if they respect pvp a bit better and make it an equal source of gear to pve at least.

And if they want more competition and/or participation then perhaps they should also properly take into account that unlike the basically unlose-able and train-able pve pvp requires a loser for every winner, as the past two expansions seemed to have a surreal chasm in the gear rewards for pvp and pve. At least in legion it was tolerable due to those templates, meaning that the most absurd situations were at least prevented.

[Hinastorm]

In systems? Nothing, there is still little time. They should take all this time to get rid as many bugs as possible and balance game as close as they can.

They could pretty easily just migrate covenant abilities to, like, a second mini talent tree, and just have covenants be a rpg/cosmetic choice.

The soulbinds complicate that though.

[Nyel]

Make Covenants less convoluted. They’re ALL the endgame, every system crammed together. This can only backfire and will never work out. It’s just too much stuff intertwined based on one decision.

Make the Covenant class skills a new talent row that can easily be changed. This would already take away a lot of pressure from them. Balancing Conduits and Soulbinds is easier than balancing all of that plus the Covenant skill.

Then do something with The Maw. I want a proper endgame zone and not this empty mess of boredom that seems to be it.

What else? I don’t know but these are my major points right now.

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Anyone else think Shadowlands was supposed to have a class? [Necromancer/Dark Ranger]?

I don’t think so.

[loras]

Unholy DK and an Unholy Necromancer spec could easily work out. Unholy Necro could be a mix of Demo, Unholy, and Affliction. As well as Necromancer having a vanilla shadow-priest healing spec

Why though? I mean they already exist.
A necromancer as you describe it would just be an unholy dk in a robe, hell they even already have the dots.
And i don't recall vanilla shadow healing much, but most of vanilla's classes would fall short of today's standards by quite a lot, so i'm not sure.

I mean it's fiction so of course anything could be made to happen, but from a marketing as well as game design point of view i just don't see how it could create a recognisably different identity that'd be worthwhile - given what is already in the game.

[Newname1234567890]

Hopefully Shadowlands will lead blizzard to stop overinvesting time into systems for a single expansions which later have been stripped out (artifact weapons) or just become redundant as you power level through them.

[LostSinclair]

I got Beta and I've done the leveling experience. It's a hot mess at the moment, until they either nerf the XP back to pre 'fix' or fix the scaling issues it's just not ready.

[Onikaroshi]

I got Beta and I've done the leveling experience. It's a hot mess at the moment, until they either nerf the XP back to pre 'fix' or fix the scaling issues it's just not ready.

I mean, that's a quick fix, just change XP back to what it was.

[Phaelia]

This is a good opportunity for them to assess the horrible nerfs they’ve given to some of the covenant abilities, COUGH VENTHYR WARLOCK ABILITY COUGH

[Sargerus]

At worst this is a 6-week delay. It's still going to launch this year and there 0% chance they will release it during the Holidays. Nothing major will change, this is a delay to further polish things.

[Watchers]

thank god, they are adding necro.

[xenogear3]

there 0% chance they will release it during the Holidays.

Yes, 0% chance.
That is why it will be released early 2021 (next year).

As for the COVID-19 excuse, the original release date is in July or August.
It is already pushed back 2 to 3 months.

[Xires]

It should be changed that i now have weak of useless vacation. Grand... fuck that. I see that i probably was needed but now i will not really have time to play it. It's fucked but that means probably goodbye shadowlands for me... sadly.. too many projects after that to really play.

So...you had one week of game time play for the xpac...and then you could never have time for it after that? Sounds like you couldn't play the game anyway being as how it's going to last a lot longer then a week.

[Onikaroshi]

Yes, 0% chance.
That is why it will be released early 2021 (next year).

As for the COVID-19 excuse, the original release date is in July or August.
It is already pushed back 2 to 3 months.

They were always shooting for q4, right from when they said "on or before dec 31" instead of "on or before september 21"

[HumbleDuck]

I won't get my hopes up for any major system overhaul, it's probably gonna be bug fixes and more balancing.

[Spiffums]

People are just speculating as to why the delay, but none really no for sure..

Pretty sure "Yo! Stuffs all broken and shit" is the reason for the delay. The only think I've really followed is the DK stuff but they went all beta with Night Fae being Brokenly OP and head and shoulders over everything else. Then they finally do a tuning pass on Covs and nerf Death's Due. Instantly NF and Venthy is closer to even at least for M+. Then the next pass Bastion is the "best" all around Cov. This coupled with random posts and comments that lead me to belive the other classes are fluctuating wildly as well add strength to the "Yo Stuff is all broke and shit" reason.

[Onikaroshi]

I won't get my hopes up for any major system overhaul, it's probably gonna be bug fixes and more balancing.

considering that's what they said the delay was over, i'd say you're rather spot on.

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Pretty sure "Yo! Stuffs all broken and shit" is the reason for the delay. The only think I've really followed is the DK stuff but they went all beta with Night Fae being Brokenly OP and head and shoulders over everything else. Then they finally do a tuning pass on Covs and nerf Death's Due. Instantly NF and Venthy is closer to even at least for M+. Then the next pass Bastion is the "best" all around Cov. This coupled with random posts and comments that lead me to belive the other classes are fluctuating wildly as well add strength to the "Yo Stuff is all broke and shit" reason.

I mean.. they did say what the delay was about " it’s become clear we need a little more time for additional polish, and to balance and iterate on some interlocking pieces—particularly those related to the endgame."

[Elestia]

It should be changed that i now have weak of useless vacation. Grand... fuck that. I see that i probably was needed but now i will not really have time to play it. It's fucked but that means probably goodbye shadowlands for me... sadly.. too many projects after that to really play.

Wow, didn't take long to get to the 'complaining about my vacation' post.

Seriously people, don't take vacation for a video game. You're not a child, and this isn't what you should be using your vacation hours on. If you are, you are objectively a child.

Instead, maybe take the time to properly respond to the content of the OP.


Edit: If you are legally of childhood age in your country, then I'm sorry. You should take this opportunity as a lesson to make better life choices.

[Tesshin83]

Considering everything that’s gone on this year, yes.

Like Epstein thingy?

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Whats need changing?

They basically said everything end game, which is everything excluding the leveling process.

There are some scaling issues with food and professions on the PTR. Hopefully they fix that.

Other than that, they will probably test and tune everything as possible. Complete balance is not obtainable but they can cut back on the extremes.

Maybe add some more flavour to the Maw.

Anyone expecting something drastic are being quite unrealistic.

It would be horrible if they changed the essensials of the covenants. They made too may concessions allready.

[Tojara]

I'm curious why anybody would actually take time off for expansion releases, given that they've been giving us 2-3 weeks in the last several expansions before any of the major systems are even released. Raids aren't available, M+ isn't available and competitive PvP isn't available at all until the first "season" officially launches. If you're a casual player that's more than enough time to get even a character to max level and jump into some of the systems they put in place. If you're a hardcore character that's still more than enough time to level multiple characters in the same week, and then slam base mythic dungeons for the next 2-3 weeks.

To each their own, but to me, whether you're extremely hardcore or incredibly casual, the amount of time given to reach whatever end goal you have during the 2-3 week grace period is more than enough time. In the past you might feel the crunch with the possibility of missing a raid lockout, but that hasn't been the case for years now. I just don't see how people won't have time to even casually play the game during it's launch without extended time off and at least reach max level. This isn't like classic where you need 3-5+ days of actual playing to hit max level, it's a 10-16 hour investment at best. "Casual" to me in the lightest sense is having maybe several hours strung out through an entire week to dedicate to a game, which is enough time to hit max level anyways. If you're playing at that kind of pace, do you really need to take time off to slam a dozen of hours into a couple day play session just do do the 8 dungeons available on a weekly lockout, then slam Torghast for the rest of your time?

As to the topic at hand? From what I've heard it's almost exclusively balance related at this point, with the addition of the Maw area. From what I've heard, the Maw area seems almost pointless and not finished at all, so giving an extra month of development time is probably a wise decision.

People honestly need to just give up wishing that they're going to change covenants completely and make them talent trees. It's not going to happen anytime soon and the best you can hope for is that the balance is close enough to where it doesn't matter a whole lot. If you aren't disingenuous about what's been happening in the past month, it's painfully obvious that nearly every week they've made fairly significant strides in attempting to balance the covenants and soul binds across the board. Blood DK for instance went from one very clear winner a month ago, to three covenants (from my perspective at current balancing) that are pretty close in the majority of content available. Is that perfect? No. But it's a pretty large jump from the balance problems we had over a month ago.

I might get hate for this but WoD had a fairly major "systems" balance patch a few months before BRF came out, and it largely fixed most of the issues with the WoD launch which included more things to do, QoL and balance updates. Had they just delayed WoD a bit longer and launched with that patch, it probably would've been far better received (still would've needed something between BRF/HFC, but that's another story). Launching Shadowlands in it's current state would likely feel much like the WoD launch at this time.

TLDR; Balance and the maw. If they continue the trend of major balance changes bi-weekly we might arrive at a point where the majority of players can actually have some semblance of choice between covenants, without being scolded by the community for picking wrong. To me, if your class reaches at a point where 3 out of 4 of the covenants are fairly close, I'd call that a balance success all things considered. Two is poor balance, and a single run away covenant choice (remember, to consider your binds too) is just absolute failure from the balance department.