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  1. #1

    Explain the Argument; New Systems vs More of the Same

    Title.

    It seems like since Warlords of Draenor the team has moved away from the systems that defined WoW as a product for a literal decade and switched it up. Its all fine that they did that, things like World Quests (Especially the Nazjatar Iteration of the system) work really well. However I have wondered often, why, instead, don't we just get more of the content we for sure enjoy?

    I could do without the Conduit system. I could go without the stupid Mission table (Although tbf, some people do like it, and it is something you do in the background, like Pet Battles.)

    My point is. Why not, instead of reinventing the wheel every 6 months/2 years, depending on how shitty the system, stick with tried and true? I would KILL for Order Hall length Questlines for every faction introduced as a Rep. Bring back MoP Storyline Styles. Bring back the tabards for grinding.

    I just feel like overall, we are getting less content to actually physically play and more systems that keep us focused on a gamified feature.

  2. #2
    More of the same is a harder sell. That's pretty much the main point.

    My main problem with all of their newer systems is that most of it gets scrapped after two years and is therefor "wasted" content. They also said that they won't do stuff like the Order Hall quest lines again because they were class specific which means that only a small portion of the playerbase gets to experience all or even most of them (you know, discounting the whole replayability angle this kind of content provides).

    Also most of their attempts at making actually new content have failed. Ashran, Garrisons, Warfronts, Island Expiditions were all big failures.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paula Deen View Post
    Title.

    It seems like since Warlords of Draenor the team has moved away from the systems that defined WoW as a product for a literal decade and switched it up. Its all fine that they did that, things like World Quests (Especially the Nazjatar Iteration of the system) work really well. However I have wondered often, why, instead, don't we just get more of the content we for sure enjoy?

    I could do without the Conduit system. I could go without the stupid Mission table (Although tbf, some people do like it, and it is something you do in the background, like Pet Battles.)

    My point is. Why not, instead of reinventing the wheel every 6 months/2 years, depending on how shitty the system, stick with tried and true? I would KILL for Order Hall length Questlines for every faction introduced as a Rep. Bring back MoP Storyline Styles. Bring back the tabards for grinding.

    I just feel like overall, we are getting less content to actually physically play and more systems that keep us focused on a gamified feature.
    This is a reasonable question Paula, and I don't think it's one that's particularly easy to answer.

    It's worthy of a long article with interviews from game devs on Gamasutra or a similar serious game dev site, actually.

    I'm not a dev, obviously, but to me it looks like a few things:

    1) WoW has always needed to be a "moving target".

    You say this stuff started with WoD, but I don't think that's true. Every expansion added to and changed-up systems and approaches. WoD just made it a bit more obvious. WoW has always had to do this for a couple of reasons - for the first 5-10 years of its existence, it faced stiff competition from other games. Every game was gunning for WoW. Whilst they all failed, they didn't fail by simply bouncing off WoW, they failed because WoW was constantly iterating and improving, and was doing so faster than they could.

    A prime example of this is SWTOR. SWTOR was basically a very clear actual WoW-clone, design-wise. Specifically, it was a clone of Burning Crusade-era WoW (I could have explained this a lot better in 2011 but I'm going to trust my memory on this), which is about when it started development. They added a ton of stuff, which, compared to BC-era WoW, would have made SWTOR an all-round superior package.

    But it wasn't up against BC-era WoW. It was up against Cataclysm-era WoW, and for all Cataclysm's flaws, WoW was a significantly more modern game by 2010, with a lot of different systems and approaches (including the modern talent system, which I note has now existed for far longer than the older talent system).

    So providing a moving target for other games is important, or has been important.

    2) People get bored.

    If you stick with the same systems, you do develop a loyal audience, but the larger audience often gets bored. Yes, they can also be confused and upset by stuff changing too fast or too much, but I think it's clear across a lot of games, that you need to keep iterating, need to keep adding stuff to keep people interested and returning. Blizzard have specifically discussed this a few times.

    Old systems often start to feel clunky and ancient, and sometimes one system can feel so bad it can actually cause people to start almost dreading the game, too. I think Daily Quests had pretty much managed to become this, before Garrisons and then WQs, for example. Sure, some people loved them, but for a lot of others, what started as a fun feature had become a dreaded one.

    So you've got to be prepared to come up with new systems and so on.

    3) Expanding the treadmill

    Not all MMORPGs have the treadmill in terms of progression (GW2 doesn't really, ESO I don't THINK does, but I could be wrong - FFXIV does however), but WoW is and always has been a treadmill game like EverQuest (rather than more like DAoC as GW2/ESO are). As such, you need to keep the treadmill going.

    Now, if you give people permanent new stuff, or let old stuff stay relevant, that makes the treadmill much harder to deal with, because you're making it so people have to go back and do old content to stay relevant, and that's a massive design challenge. So one way to deal with this is to introduce new systems with planned obsolescence. Yeah, nobody likes that idea, but it works pretty well, and in a treadmill game all your gear has planned obsolescence, so it's not introducing some new, horrible thing, just expressing it in a new way.


    However, none of this means you can't bring stuff back. If an old system was better, it should be possible to reintroduce it. Rep Tabards do seem kind of like this, so now we're talking about something specific to Blizzard themselves, which is that they, culturally, hate to backtrack. This isn't new. This was true in 2000, it's true in 2020. They're fine with bringing back content, but not systems which have been rejected/removed so much.

    Some other suggestions, like Class Order Halls, I think the main issue is more that they represent a huge investment of resources. I doubt anyone at Blizzard saw them as a failure, or something people didn't like. But there's no question it was a huge thing to create them, set up the class quests associated with them, and so on. I think Blizzard are/were afraid they might become seen as "mandatory" if they repeated them, and every expansion would have to have them.

    Personally? I'd be fine with that But it would restrict them pretty steeply creatively, if players rejected any expansion which didn't have Class Order Halls, and it would limit the resources that could be spent on the rest of that expansion. The Dalaran-associated nature of them was problematic too. I think from one perspective, maybe they should always have been a feature of WoW, but if so, they should have been done differently, and made more into places in the world, not places in/accessed from Dalaran.

    Anyway, I've made my three points re: new systems, but as I said, I think this is actually quite a complex discussion that a lot of games have answered in different ways.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nerovar View Post
    Also most of their attempts at making actually new content have failed. Ashran, Garrisons, Warfronts, Island Expiditions were all big failures.
    Yup. I don't think they were pointless to try, and I think they learned a lot from doing them, but they didn't take off. Sometimes things are successful, but they manage to kill them in the next iteration, like Lake Wintergrasp being pretty successful but Tol Barad being a totally un-fun version of it, and Ashran trying to work from the same idea and somehow being even less fun (which was an achievement).
    Last edited by Eurhetemec; 2020-10-06 at 12:42 PM.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Eurhetemec View Post
    Yup. I don't think they were pointless to try, and I think they learned a lot from doing them, but they didn't take off. Sometimes things are successful, but they manage to kill them in the next iteration, like Lake Wintergrasp being pretty successful but Tol Barad being a totally un-fun version of it, and Ashran trying to work from the same idea and somehow being even less fun (which was an achievement).
    Ashran wasn't actually a total failure for me back when WoD came out. It was a decent place to explore, catch up with honor gear on alts and there were some neat little things you could do in Ashran PvP encounters that weren't possible anywhere else. In short, it was an interesting piece of PvP content that was notably different from instanced and regular world PvP. The problems started to arise when they turned it into an instance which immediately caused it to have incredibly high queue times and then they started forcing PvP players into Ashran for a weekly random conquest level PvP item at a time when PvP gear progression was largely linear (also some items with versa were only obtainable through these random Ashran boxes). This turned a decent place to fool around and catch up with PvP progression into an annoying, time consuming RNG grind which pretty much sucked all fun out of the feature.

  5. #5
    I feel like it is a weird attempt to draw in phone and facebook gamers whose only understanding of video games is micro purchases and filling bars.

    I really can't understand the draw of them myself but I don't mindlessly grind things till I sell carry runs and I'm told that makes me a minority in mmos.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Nerovar View Post
    Ashran wasn't actually a total failure for me back when WoD came out. It was a decent place to explore, catch up with honor gear on alts and there were some neat little things you could do in Ashran PvP encounters that weren't possible anywhere else. In short, it was an interesting piece of PvP content that was notably different from instanced and regular world PvP. The problems started to arise when they turned it into an instance which immediately caused it to have incredibly high queue times and then they started forcing PvP players into Ashran for a weekly random conquest level PvP item at a time when PvP gear progression was largely linear (also some items with versa were only obtainable through these random Ashran boxes). This turned a decent place to fool around and catch up with PvP progression into an annoying, time consuming RNG grind which pretty much sucked all fun out of the feature.
    Ashran fails because:

    1.) You didnt realy know what to do/how the mechanics exact worked (some of them)
    2.) 9/10 Games were dominated by one faction, so you got in and got stomped or stomp the enemys, both isnt fun at all
    3.) Its lagging as sh1t. In a full match with most of the people battleing around its lagged always.
    4.) As a Melee there was nothing to do for you, because as soon as you run in u get cleaved by dots/other melees and died in less then 2 seconds - like Alterac Zergs
    5.) The mechanics were all pretty boring to play... except the race event.

    And just a personal thing: It was super ugly designed, i didnt feel "home" there and it looks like a grey in grey zone with no memoryable things. Just bad.

    Sorry for my bad english.

  7. #7
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    more of the same would work if they had the previous team (music, graphic designs, story). it wouldn't work with the current one, unless they get better.
    currently, I'm finding that repeatable content like world quests, m+, etc work exceedingly well when added on top of regular raid/pvp.
    they're adding too many collectibles however, it kind of makes it uninteresting, they probably lost track of a fair amount of players who stopped caring near mop/wod.

    when I get a new pet/mount/achi most of the time I just don't even realize it, I got it randomly without even trying to get it, I just can't care less about what I've obtained.
    and I can see that as a major game design issue. this started to happen roughly when they went overboard on time-limited content and achi.
    probably they're having some kind of management issue lowering the game quality hence their revenue.
    quality > quantity
    Last edited by Cæli; 2020-10-06 at 01:24 PM.

  8. #8
    Game systems are personalities, and if those personalities align with the personality of the expansion then there's thematic synergy. This thematic synergy appeals to players, thus leading to greater enjoyment and more money spent on the game.

    I don't think much of the WoW playerbase actually wants an end to expansions having their own personalities with their aligned systems. If Blizzard goes in this direction it will probably be a big mistake.

    If there's an actual desire to end personality-based expansions then the entire design of the game needs to be reconsidered, given how fundamental that is to the identity of WoW.

  9. #9
    if you are willing to do a questline
    for a tabard
    why do players who want to grind to get better gear and abilities negatively effect you? your point is irrelevent to the conversation
    if you dont care about player power then you simply dont care, but alot of people only do things with tangible benefits

  10. #10
    I don't know in which expansion you started, but WoW never had all it's features stay the same from expansion to expansion. In classic there where no rep buffs on tabards and barely any daily quest at all. Raids required lengthy questlines to get 'attuned'. In TBC they added the ability to do a certain amount of daily quests which where always the same. They also introduced gem sockets which changed the gearing system next to adding a new profession. The quest chains to get into raid where a lot shorter and I think heroic dungeon mode was added. Then comes WotLK with inscription profession, rep tabards to run dungeons with and phasing of zones after certain quests where completed.

    You get where I'm going. There was not one expansion where all the features where just reimplemented with new content. Some features where added or expanded on and some disappeared. The gem system was simplified, Mythic+ became a thing, flexible raid system became default for normal and achievements where added along the way. As for the 'lost content'... how often do you still go to Timeless Isle or that island above Ghostlands? You could consider large areas of terrain as lost content. It would be nice if they could grow lateral so new content appeared beside existing content. But I think people would still be bored with the same area at some point and only hang around in the new content. And that's why they always change stuff. They want to keep content feeling fresh and make it more accessible for everybody.

  11. #11
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    Largely I see the various "systems" as the developers' attempt to control inexorable power creep and make the process of resetting power more transparent and fundamental each expansion. Before WoD, we slowly but surely gained more permanent power, which required a steady but sure power loss as classes were reconfigured or "streamlined" to bring them back into relative parity. Borrowed power systems short-circuit the need to do this as the power can be clawed back as part and parcel of the story, giving you a soft reset to player power and allowing you to do repeat the same general arc every expansion (thus keeping parity in check and allowing much easier scaling to be done in the general sense).

    Whether or not this actually works for a variety of reasons is a more open question. I often find that the lack of even a minor increase in personal power often makes progress feel less substantial or meaningful, and overall there has been a trend where the borrowed power systems often feel intrinsic to full class functionality - leaving classes that feel less than complete when bereft of the alternative or "borrowed" power.
    "We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

  12. #12
    This is the same type of gripe that Classic freaks are making for Classic+.

    Just rebalance classes, make quests, new dungeons and raids. Toss out the borrowed power system except for when it makes sense like artifact weapon.

  13. #13
    The issue here is there's a balance in game in design.

    You either keep doing what you always done or you try to innovate drastically, incrementally, cyclically or a combination of some or all of these.

    And sometimes you get it wrong, other times you do. Then you factor in the player base. I for one enjoyed WoD, I liked the garrison system, was it perfect? no but i enjoyed it for what it was. When they kept a shadow of it with class halls and faction halls, i wasn't too keen on it. But again sometimes its a hit or miss. I do personally feel in terms of the borrowed power mechanics, for me i get why they do it but it's getting a little old. Imo with the leveling being reduced to 60, i think it would have been a perfect opportunity to give us actual talents and upgraded spells etc.

    Anyway in general I like that they are trying new things, i don't want the game to turn stagnant. However, i do think they should reconsider the borrowed power and think of it in a new light. They probably need new talent to bring ideas they currently can't think of in their current environment.

  14. #14
    the other very good nd very popular MMo is FF 14

    in it, every expac repeats the exatc same pattern as the prvious

    8 dugeons
    3 trials ( = big boss)
    1 raid with 4 bosses

    then a patch every 3 month, with in alternation
    - 1 dungeon and 1 trial
    -1 dungeon and 1 raid for 8 people
    -1 dungeon and 1 raid for 24 people


    it's always the same pattern, always the same systems, there is not new system each time, no new talent tree, just 5 new passive or active spells while leveling to enhance the rotations of the classes, rotations and depth which is way way more complicated than on wow

    and players are happy like that


    in return of the absence of new systems, we have dungeons, raids, lore, sotries, MUSIC ( oh my god if only wow had the same musics as ff ) very very good, and we never wait 1 year to have new content



    Wow is and should be different, BUT could copy what FF does the better

  15. #15
    Part of the appeal of expansions is features. New things are interesting and a worry may be that features like new classes and new races may be unsustainable once there are too many of them (however many that may be) whether in terms of keeping them all updated visually or even just balancing.

    New systems also need balancing, so to some I can understand why it can seem confusing that they don't just keep doing only new classes and races all the time. It certainly is appealing on a surface level, but as well there may be a worry that if the formula becomes too predictable and we always get fed the same features of new races and classes it may stop being exciting and people may stop appreciating them when they are added, effectively resulting in a lot of wasted effort and manpower that could be used on more core things like questing and raids and world events and pvp and so on.

    Another worry may be that while adding new classes and races historically has been a gigantic pull for the series, it may not always be the setting that pulls people into the game. Some people only play for pet battles or transmog collecting, for example, so when features like these really do hit it can be a big boon to the game and hook people who otherwise may not have remained interested for very long so the incentive to find new systems that can stay and attract new players and keep players who may otherwise become disinterested may be present as well - though there may be a risk eventually of there being too many systems to keep around and maintain as well.

  16. #16
    There is no way to make doing world quests as repeated content appealing is one part of the problem.
    Players asked for more things to do but I don't believe this was one of them. Having them for reps and collectibles is one thing.
    But tying systemic power progression systems to them will eventually get old no matter how you dress it up.
    The only other content that is repeatable and folks have shown interest in doing consistently is dungeon and raid content.
    However, they have put less and less of those in each expansion and they are shorter and have less wings than the older game.
    Content like that with world quests deep inside the dungeon based on weeklies or dailies could be a solution to this.
    But that would mean designing dungeons to be more interesting in terms of mechanics than now and without the need for m+ affixes.

    At the end of the day the primary content in a game like WOW is going to be narrative questing (limited replay value), dungeons and raids.
    That should always be the core of any content in an expansion with the challenge being making that content last.
    In the past, that meant making gear tiers that were tied to specific dungeons and raids and not having catch up gear or tokens.
    Then have less of an item level gap between tiers of raids in patches along with creating tiers of m+ content.
    Right now you can run m+ up to any key you want on any dungeon in an expansion with no logical tiers.
    There should be tiers of m+ dungeons like tiers of raids. Or tiers of difficulty for those dungeons released over time.

    Another big part of the problem is that too much information about the expansion is available even before launch online.
    There is no mystery or sense of discovery and adventure anymore. People know all the fights and zones on launch day.
    Keep the beta under an NDA so as to not spoil everybody before hand, because otherwise, it makes any content much more trivial.

    Right now too many parts of the game are just too sped up and consumed too quickly with too many rewards for every bit of content.
    Any kind of progression system whether permanent or borrowed should be a slow grind not weekly or daily.
    Then you would only need one system and that system would last the entire expansion and not need patch updates or replacements.
    And those systems should not be tied to gear unless it is something like a weapon.

    Heck for that matter bring back class order halls. I see no reason why class order halls couldn't have updated content per expansion.

    Also, bring back a narrative focus to each expansion where everything you do is leading up to some ultimate goal.
    If there is some power macguffin system, it should be clear and obvious why we are grinding it and why it is useful.
    Last edited by InfiniteCharger; 2020-10-06 at 07:03 PM.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by tommyhil622 View Post
    The issue here is there's a balance in game in design.

    You either keep doing what you always done or you try to innovate drastically, incrementally, cyclically or a combination of some or all of these.

    And sometimes you get it wrong, other times you do. Then you factor in the player base. I for one enjoyed WoD, I liked the garrison system, was it perfect? no but i enjoyed it for what it was. When they kept a shadow of it with class halls and faction halls, i wasn't too keen on it. But again sometimes its a hit or miss. I do personally feel in terms of the borrowed power mechanics, for me i get why they do it but it's getting a little old. Imo with the leveling being reduced to 60, i think it would have been a perfect opportunity to give us actual talents and upgraded spells etc.

    Anyway in general I like that they are trying new things, i don't want the game to turn stagnant. However, i do think they should reconsider the borrowed power and think of it in a new light. They probably need new talent to bring ideas they currently can't think of in their current environment.
    I agree with all of this.

    The trouble with borrowed power is like, I'd also like to see it reconsidered, but what's the alternative?

    All the alternatives I can think of, including approaches other games have taken, fall into one of two categories:

    A) Additional spells, talents, subclasses, etc. - these all have the problem that they need balancing for indefinitely, and every time you do it, the game becomes more complex. WoW already did this repeatedly up into what, WoD? Games can only get away with doing it so many times before it gets too complicated and is providing a poor experience.

    B) Alternative Advancement-type systems - these have the problem that they also have to be balanced for indefinitely (but are usually simpler at least), and also create a situation where new players or returning players likely face massive grinds to catch up on power, which is extremely off-putting.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by superbipbip6 View Post
    no new talent tree, just 5 new passive or active spells while leveling to enhance the rotations of the classes, rotations and depth which is way way more complicated than on wow
    FFXIV can't keep doing this forever.

    It's probably 1-2 expansions away from having to do something different (likely 1). At some point, you have so many new passive/active abilities that the class becomes a damn mess, if you keep adding them, and impossible to make work well.

  18. #18
    You're all implying that WoW is somehow some kind of normal game. It's not, it's a casino, carefully and explicitly designed to exploit your mesolimbic pathway. Our very measure of 'fun' revolves around the frequency of dopamine released in the brain. Raiding and PvP isn't enough to keep the subscription gravy train flowing, so they stack different layers of addiction feeding systems on top of each other.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Eurhetemec View Post
    I agree with all of this.

    The trouble with borrowed power is like, I'd also like to see it reconsidered, but what's the alternative?

    All the alternatives I can think of, including approaches other games have taken, fall into one of two categories:

    A) Additional spells, talents, subclasses, etc. - these all have the problem that they need balancing for indefinitely, and every time you do it, the game becomes more complex. WoW already did this repeatedly up into what, WoD? Games can only get away with doing it so many times before it gets too complicated and is providing a poor experience.

    B) Alternative Advancement-type systems - these have the problem that they also have to be balanced for indefinitely (but are usually simpler at least), and also create a situation where new players or returning players likely face massive grinds to catch up on power, which is extremely off-putting.

    - - - Updated - - -



    FFXIV can't keep doing this forever.

    It's probably 1-2 expansions away from having to do something different (likely 1). At some point, you have so many new passive/active abilities that the class becomes a damn mess, if you keep adding them, and impossible to make work well.
    FF14 has actually been pruning abilities, removing spells, and making classes easier to play. For example, bards can't restore mana anymore. Cross-class abilities you unlocked from having multiple classes were consolidated into just role-based spells everyone got. For example, every melee DPS gets interrupt, push-back protection, heal on hit spell etc. They also made dragoon rotation easier by making Blood of the dragon duration 30 seconds instead of 20 seconds so that it is nearly impossible for the buff to fall off unless you are retarded which makes doing combos more forgiving.
    Last edited by GreenJesus; 2020-10-06 at 05:58 PM.

  20. #20
    Well, agree in theory if not in scope.

    "We are putting long quest lines in for each of the new reps" is not a good selling point. I'm like, reps, yay........ /cries inside

    "We are bringing back Arthas" yes, YES!!!! My only question is how much to pay?

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