Explain the Argument; New Systems vs More of the Same

[This One Time At Bandcamp]

I agree with you OP!
And I too would love to see the examples you are promoting.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I think the reason they feel compelled to "invent the wheel" every expansion is two-fold.

1. Players are only interested in flashy new features. If you get up on stage and say "New continent, new level cap, new dungeons, everything else stays the same" in 2020 players would riot and declare the game "a 0 effort maintenance mode flop." So Blizz feels compelled to constantly come up with something new they can spend two panels talking about then do monthly iteration updates on during Beta. How do you do that without adding massive bloat to the game, see the next point.

2. Blizzard designs content specifically so it has to be replaced every 2 years. And that timeline is getting smaller. The fact is what we're getting in Shadowlands is the exact same stuff we got in BFA, and Legion, and WoD, just with a deathy coat of paint and a few word changes here and there. It's borrowed powers (Artifact, Azerite Traits, Soulbinds), it's a mission system (Mission Table, Mission Table, Mission Table, Mission Table (lol)), it's a secondary base of operations besides the capital (Garrison, Order Halls, Heart Chamber, Covenant Sanctums). Blizz just designs these so the end of the expansion has an excuse to take it away from you then give it back to you with a new coat of paint about 5 minutes later. It lets them stand up there at Blizzcon and say "new content" without actually giving you anything new.

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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.

Well "prune" might be a loaded term there. Their jobs still use like 6-8 core buttons in most cases. Compared to WoW where some classes have 3.

[MoanaLisa]

If you don't change you die. It's a business rule and applies here. That said I think they do lean toward too much change.

There's very little about the game that is universally disliked. Beware reading this site and believing that it's representative of player feelings overall. The game has severe development issues with respect to being over-engineered. Most "new" systems are just re-arranging existing furniture in different ways. While I find WoW enjoyable enough to stick around the creativity level is lacking. Where the game needs to be creative--story--is given short shrift by engineer developers.

Most people do not play video games to examine the math behind systems in minute detail. They play for good stories.

The game should be easy to play and should not cater to elitist players as much as it does. But this is what happens when you have a bunch of elitist player/engineers at the top of the development team: endless tinkering around with systems at the expense of telling good stories and telling them well.

[msdos]

So did people hate the glyph system?? I'm confused. Did people also hate reforging? Did people hate the Crucible? Everyone hated the Artifact weapon?

I'm just so confused. Every day it's a new thing and people hate this now for these reasons all of a sudden. None of this makes any sense.

But I'm happy OP is drawing a hard dichotomy, because I'm starting to think the people who don't like the "new systems" just don't like new things period. The #NoChanges and people not wanting Classic to ever end is kinda pointing towards people who just don't like new things whatsoever, no matter what they are. These people need to admit that if that's the case. You see very disingenuous behavior from players and tons of fickle flip flopping, it's not trolling and it's not insanity, it's some form of "i don't know wtf i want and i don't know how to articulate that".

[Eurhetemec]

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.

Yeah pruning is the other solution, sorry I should have mentioned that. But if you keep adding, you have to keep pruning.

You see very disingenuous behavior from players and tons of fickle flip flopping, it's not trolling and it's not insanity, it's some form of "i don't know wtf i want and i don't know how to articulate that".

Well said - there's a lot of this on the internet. It's not malicious or insane, but it is confused or vague. Often they know what they don't like, but not what they do. Or know what they do like, but not why, or how to get there.

And yeah it results in a lot of people making very disingenous arguments and so on.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

So did people hate the glyph system?? I'm confused. Did people also hate reforging? Did people hate the Crucible? Everyone hated the Artifact weapon?

I'm just so confused. Every day it's a new thing and people hate this now for these reasons all of a sudden. None of this makes any sense.

But I'm happy OP is drawing a hard dichotomy, because I'm starting to think the people who don't like the "new systems" just don't like new things period. The #NoChanges and people not wanting Classic to ever end is kinda pointing towards people who just don't like new things whatsoever, no matter what they are. These people need to admit that if that's the case. You see very disingenuous behavior from players and tons of fickle flip flopping, it's not trolling and it's not insanity, it's some form of "i don't know wtf i want and i don't know how to articulate that".

I think about Glyphs a lot honestly. IIRC Blizz's justification for removing them was that they "never found a niche" because when they gave player power people just went to a guide to find the best ones, and when they were cosmetic players felt no need to use the system.

Reforging, ironically, was cut because Blizz wanted to streamline the item acquisition process. "Get an item, equip an item. No more needing to calculate your reforging, or get an addon to do it for you."

A lot of what's old is new again, as those same problems have come back with new names and systems.

[VinceVega]

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.

Who decides what we like? The do long story quests. You just don't like them aparantly and ignore the covenant quests too we will get.

WQ have been praised as players have been fed up with normal dailys. They expanded on it. Players did not like it anymore. No we get "weekly" WQ. So they expanded the system.

Tabards for grinding just make the complete factions useless IMHO. I played it and did it back then. But people don't like useless grinding. I rather have a timegated story quest that gives me the rep instead of running the same dungeon for 100times. I will do it if neccesarry but i will be pissed all the way.

And i strongly disagree with your statement, that we get "less to physically play". Unless your more to play is running the same dungeon on the same difficulty for hours on end to get rep.

IMHO: They normally keep systems that worked and were liked just moidfy it because Gamers tend to get bored really fast of the same stuff

[Cosmic Janitor]

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.

Given how FFXIV's encounter design is a mixture of ballet, formation dance and twister (and intermissions) this was a rather welcome change, as it makes you lose your buffs less often and avoids constantly having to ramp up again. The bard changes were a bit of a crime though.. while some of the gameplay loop was retarded before, losing the whole buff routine has been a bit sad last time I played. It's way too interwoven with the class' fantasy and lore, even if the usual arguments for/against support specs do apply in FFXIV as well.

[GreenJesus]

Given how FFXIV's encounter design is a mixture of ballet, formation dance and twister (and intermissions) this was a rather welcome change, as it makes you lose your buffs less often and avoids constantly having to ramp up again. The bard changes were a bit of a crime though.. while some of the gameplay loop was retarded before, losing the whole buff routine has been a bit sad last time I played. It's way too interwoven with the class' fantasy and lore, even if the usual arguments for/against support specs do apply in FFXIV as well.

Yeh. I was just leveling up bard (only at 48 right now), but it's sad how the class feels like more of a magic archer than a bard now. Barely any bard support spells left.

And I agree on dragoon. Welcome change to me. Was just giving an example.

[ihate2beapessimist]

The systems just exist to keep players interested in logging in every day.
Cheap Korean MMOs achieve this with a daily login bonus, WoW tries to be more creative.

[Neuroticaine]

Honestly? I miss when expansions were simply higher level cap, new zones, new dungeons, new raids and the occasional new class/race.

[ro9ue]

Here's the thing about WQ and M+ as "new systems"... they aren't really. What both WQ and M+ do is take foundational systems of Warcraft.... quests, specifically end game daily quests and dungeon content... and greatly improve their longevity.

Warfronts could've been a new update for epic battlegrounds that made them play more like a game of WC3 in 3rd person like a moba. Island Expeditions could've just enhanced the experience of dungeons by populating them with relatively random AI and different doorways (stages).

Artifacts were 'attached' to your character for the duration of the expansion, but still were essentially borrowed. Azerite armor was really flimsy and you never felt like you 'acquired' new power. What these systems are trying to do should just be baseline expansion of what talent choices and character building are. We need to take everything they learned about why the old talent trees sucked, but implement new talent trees with that knowledge that are more like soul conduits... but attached to your character.

The glyph system needs to come back as a cosmetic progression system. Unlocking different visual enhancements to abilities and spells.

When they add stuff to the game, the "borrowed power" should be icing on the cake. Right now it feels like the underlying cake isnt that great so they jsut pile on sweet tasting icing to mask the foundational problems.

a) have a solid cake foundation - more robust talent trees, glyph system, ways to build your character like a true RPG
b) every expansion adds a bit of icing - maybe a few additional options to the talent tree (talent columns with the current system) and more glyph options, and a few borrowed powers. But most of it you should be able to keep forever.

[Kralljin]

The issue is quite frankly that Blizzards execution of those systems leaves a lot to be desired.

Especially because the Team seems to be on this fool's errand to "bring back the RPG" into WoW.
While in itself a noble goal, the reality is simply that a huge chunk of the game isn't designed in a very old school RPG fashion anymore, that's just how it is.

Now they try to reinject some elements of the old school RPG (such as "meaningful choice") back into the game with some convoluted system that tries to artificially recreate barriers that in the older game simply existed organically.

It's this unholy union of trying to bring back an older philosophies into a game where it no longer fits into while also those systems not being that amazing on their own.

A lot of those issues would have been diminished if Blizzard had built those systems to be more friendly towards the player, then the execution might have been still off, but at least the biggest pain points of those systems were gone.


WoW has in my opinion a serious identity crisis, a big portion of the game is nowadays solely focused on convenience and gameplay but then the developers realize "Oh fuck, we're developing that's supposed to be an RPG as well!" and then throw some elements into that aren't compabitable with this gameplay focused approach.

[Tsamane]

Unpopular opinion: I wouldnt have mind keeping artifact weapons. Just add more skins each tier/expan.
They could have stopped the power progression. And made it easy to cap once a new expan hit, but the ilvl couls have been still upped with the runes or what ever they were called.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Unpopular opinion: I wouldnt have mind keeping artifact weapons. Just add more skins each tier/expan.
They could have stopped the power progression. And made it easy to cap once a new expan hit, but the ilvl couls have been still upped with the runes or what ever they were called.

I honestly thought coming out of Legion that 8.0's signature system would be what eventually became Runecarving. "Build Your Own Artifact." Same basic idea as Artifacts, but you could pick your ability and traits and such.

[Lightforged]

I do not have an issue with the idea of borrowed power. The problem I have with it is when that borrowed power is inherently uninteresting or really lame. The borrowed power needs to feel cool, interesting and fun, preferably have some kind of cool visual element as well.

Artifacts were good, Azerite Armor was lame.

[Xalea]

Because then whoever designed/programmed the system wouldn't have something to add to their CV. There's high turnover rate at Blizz and people use it now as a resume builder. Well, they need something distinctive to put on the resume, and now we have Systemlands.

Also, Ion is a micromanaging bean-counting freak who thinks these systems equate to fun. The buck stops with him, and he's obviously in favor of it.

Nothing will change until he's gone. I'm sad to say that I'm actually glad Activision is taking more control of WoW. At this point I think anything is better than Ion-and-the-gang.

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Unpopular opinion: I wouldnt have mind keeping artifact weapons. Just add more skins each tier/expan.
They could have stopped the power progression. And made it easy to cap once a new expan hit, but the ilvl couls have been still upped with the runes or what ever they were called.

Agree. You know what they've done? They've made everyone apathetic and resentful of these temporary systems, because players now realize it's pointless to care as they will get tossed in the garbage in 18-ish months down the road. As people get older, their perception of time also moves more quickly, so 18-24 months is nothing to a 30+ year old person. Adults simply aren't willing to invest heavily in something so temporary. So we have all these threads instead.

[Sithalos]

The systems would be fine if Blizzard wasn't dogshit at designing them.

The soulbind system alone is a development blackhole that will never be perfect.

"Keep it Simple Stupid" is a mantra they've all but forgotten.

[sunnycutie]

Largely I see the various "systems" as the developers' attempt to control inexorable power creep

And who is responsible for that power creep?

[dcc626]

And who is responsible for that power creep?

counterarguement: who gets angry when something doesnt offer power/upgrades? how many people do things "because its fun" even if it offeres no tangible power gain.