Explain the Argument; New Systems vs More of the Same

[fatgunn]

A lot of what Blizz does is iterative, but for they are limited in iteration by expansion/patch schedules. Take dailies for example:

A LOT of people were annoyed with MoP's daily quest system, so Blizz changed it to the apexis dailies in WoD.
That wasn't well received so they changed it to a mixed daily/bar system in Tanaan. This went over better.
Legion they leaned hard into world quests and emissaries but we also had the Suramar storyline.
When Broken Shore came out they amended those with more classic style dailies. Argus went even harder in this direction.
One of the biggest problems with BfA is that it didn't change much at first. The initial patch felt just like legion. WQ and Emissaries.
Nazjatar and Mechagon then changed it up. Naz had the character based daily quest from your companion. Mechagon went back to a more old school approach.


Daily world content has changed a decent amount over the last few expansions but it has been done in small steps. If you compare Nazjatar to apexis dailies from WoD it feels way better, but that isn't the comparison a human brain makes. You compare this patch to last patch and see only slight changes. And honestly one of the biggest issues with that is the fact that you are still having to deal with last patch as well. Nazjatar and Mechagon may have been great, but we a lot of us were still doing wq in Voldun.

[Aucald]

And who is responsible for that power creep?

The nature of the game itself, generally. Every RPG-based game is predicated on an arc of ever increasing power - how much and how fast being a delicate equation between boring people by being parsimonious with power or breaking the game by granting too much power too quickly.

[Ald]

If you're going to give me something new to play with, you can't take it away after the expansion is concluded. That's just lazy and poor design.

I want something new, added on to what i've already been given the last 16 years.

[sunnycutie]

counterarguement: who gets angry when something doesnt offer power/upgrades?

I've never seen anyone get angry because of that. And just because players want power upgrades doesn't mean things have to go up exponentially.

Classic has power upgrades for players. Players can progress. And a lot of people like it. Some claim it was the best time of WoW.

So please don't just come up with this stuff. Nobody ever demanded to end up 100x as powerfui at the end of the expansion compared to the beginning.

how many people do things "because its fun" even if it offeres no tangible power gain.

People do things because they're fun, even if there is no power gain. Tons of people invest tons of time into getting cosmetics. Transmog. Mounts. Do you not see how much players farm old raids for mounts and transmog gear? Mage tower? Island expeditions and paragon reputations to get rare mounts? I spent more time on that than I do on current content. Specifically because I don't care about gear, because it will get replaced with the next patch and stats get squished with the next expansion anyway.

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The nature of the game itself, generally.

Nope. This didn't start to happen until a decade into the game. It took several expansions to get to that point. It started when we had 4 difficulties of raiding. Then all of a sudden we needed a stat squish almost every expansion. We had one in WoD, then at the end of Legion stats were already so high again we needed another one in BFA, and then, even though we get a level squish, we still also need a stat squish, again, after only one expansion.

This is not the nature of the game, if that was so, this would not have started 10 years into the game.

[Lucetia]

(you know, discounting the whole replayability angle this kind of content provides).

You mean the extra hour of playability? The class hall campaigns literally take only a hour from start to finish. The only part that takes length is why you have to go solo a dungeon or wait 5 hours for 5 missions to finish. Other than that you can blast through the whole thing rather quickly. I even did my last class yesterday just because I realized I never finished it and they only had 1 or 2 quests done. Took literally no time.

That much time isn't re-playability that is just a small filler you do while waiting in a queue. Re-playability would be something like a several hours (ie re-leveling again).

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?.

The main complaint is no new talents and "borrowed" powers, yet people don't realize we get a ton of new "talents" each expansion. Each expansion's items Artifacts, Azerite Armor, etc are essentially new talents. The difference between those and talents is that there are more choices than talent row, you can't press "N" and change them, you have to go to a specific person to change, and that you have to put in some effort to unlock the "row" instead of just dinging a level.

As for more vs new. New is always good for the game in general and it helps them sell it as well. People are more inclined to try new things than presented with old things. Some old things are nice that they return like World Quests each expansion for example as it is a lot nicer to go to a spot and do the quest and it turns in without running to a hub, pick up the quest, do the quest, return the quest. Then there are some systems that it is nice to test and see how they work and if they can be revamped for something better or just scrapped altogether, some feel this way about certain systems while I personally haven't had an issue with anything.

[Aucald]

Nope. This didn't start to happen until a decade into the game. It took several expansions to get to that point. It started when we had 4 difficulties of raiding. Then all of a sudden we needed a stat squish almost every expansion. We had one in WoD, then at the end of Legion stats were already so high again we needed another one in BFA, and then, even though we get a level squish, we still also need a stat squish, again, after only one expansion.

This is not the nature of the game, if that was so, this would not have started 10 years into the game.

The stat and upcoming level squish don't actually address the forms of power creep we're discussing here, though; as stat squish effect everything across the board equally - meaning the player power remains where it currently is relative to the current and previous tiers. The WoD stat squish was actually to handle a software issue with signed integers that was causing issues with raid encounters (which is the reason why the Garrosh fight in SoO resets itself 3-4 times). The Legion to BfA squish was much the same, albeit exacerbated by the effect of Titanforging gear causing each tier of gear to have an inflated ceiling, making the issue reoccur faster. But regardless, neither of these squishes actually effected player power relative to the content, since the content also got squished.

[Soon-TM]

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.

The best part is that they removed a lot of things from the game in order to "streamline" it (read: less balancing work for devs), only to end in the convoluted mess of covenants+soulbinds+conduits, which seems to be taking a lot of dev time.

[Mysterymask]

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?

...Glyphs, reforging, and the cruicible were things that seemed like a great idea at the time..and in practice just kinda sucked

Glyphs problem was a class might have 2-3 good glyphs and the rest are either cosmetic..or garbage and there was no winning that..I mean hell even with the split to minor glyphs Pallys actually HAD a minor glyph that was a dps increase!

Reforging..yeah for the top level player you can sit there and play with your stats..to everyone else "addon, click" and that got annoying FAST especially in Mists when "Oh cool got an upgrade..now i gotta do all these damned things to my gear in order for it to not suck" also reforging kinda made gear that didn't initially do something just an ilvl increase and gear kind of lost its meaning.

Crucible..was just "hey here do something else whenever you got some gear" kinda ok with it gone

[Palapop]

If it's good- don't change it.
No need to invent "hot water" if something is working flawlessly.

My biggest complain is CLASS DESIGN!

All the way since beginning of the Legion, they (Blizzard) are trying to implement some complex/highly customizable class setups/designs/"borrowed power" systems which, after all the struggle (to fix/balance), fail miserably.

Just... WHY?!

[Lucetia]

...Glyphs, reforging, and the cruicible were things that seemed like a great idea at the time..and in practice just kinda sucked

The problem with glyphs was they were trying to cover too many areas and didn't cover any as well as they should. Glyphs should've been just cosmetic from the start and left at that. The problem though then becomes that part of Inscription becomes worthless over time and less of a reason to have it (As if it isn't already almost useless).

[Krakan]

The problem with glyphs was they were trying to cover too many areas and didn't cover any as well as they should. Glyphs should've been just cosmetic from the start and left at that. The problem though then becomes that part of Inscription becomes worthless over time and less of a reason to have it (As if it isn't already almost useless).

I didn't mind the concept of glyphs and neither did blizzard given essences are just the glyph book with a reskinned background (so are conduits).

I just don't get why we went from spending 50-200g for a glyph to grinding for weeks with real time time gates for in essence the same system.

These busy work system are destructive to the game in my opinion as they get in the way of allowing player to play the content that actually holds their interest. The one good thing I can say about sl is that blizzard rotten systems have finally buckled under their own weight and are now crushing the game to death. With any luck this will finally convince them to scrap the grind for power that systems that have been slipped into the game since legion.

[ShiyoKozuki]

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.

FFXIV has no issue selling the same boring, stale, rehashed gameplay every expac.

[Akka]

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).

That entire reasoning is based on the idea that WoW constantly improved, which is a pretty long stretch that simply flies in the face of facts.
Cataclysm is among the most hated WoW expansion even now (though the latest WoD/BfA debacle certainly have lessened it), while TBC is among the most beloved. Claiming that SWTOR was "superior to TBC" but "inferior to Cataclysm" really doesn't sound anything close to real.

You're simply falling into the fallacy that "newer = better", which is, plainly said, wrong.

[garudabhatnagar]

Yeah I agree with the theory

[Nerovar]

You mean the extra hour of playability? The class hall campaigns literally take only a hour from start to finish. The only part that takes length is why you have to go solo a dungeon or wait 5 hours for 5 missions to finish. Other than that you can blast through the whole thing rather quickly. I even did my last class yesterday just because I realized I never finished it and they only had 1 or 2 quests done. Took literally no time.

That much time isn't re-playability that is just a small filler you do while waiting in a queue. Re-playability would be something like a several hours (ie re-leveling again).

I'm pretty sure there was more to it with the mount quest and all. Then again, it was all terribly stretched out with timegating through the mission table stuff they did. Maybe I'm misremembering.

The main complaint is no new talents and "borrowed" powers, yet people don't realize we get a ton of new "talents" each expansion. Each expansion's items Artifacts, Azerite Armor, etc are essentially new talents. The difference between those and talents is that there are more choices than talent row, you can't press "N" and change them, you have to go to a specific person to change, and that you have to put in some effort to unlock the "row" instead of just dinging a level.

Then again, they don't really work like talents. I agree that they're supposed to functionally fill the role of talents but I don't think they succeed in doing so on several levels. The biggest problem with these systems was, is and will always be that they feel less connected to your class and therefor your player character both thematically and in terms of gameplay. I don't need or want a random nature damage proc on my Death Knight that is completely disconnected from my gameplay and the theme of my character.
Talents are designed with the rest of the toolkit of a class/spec in mind and usually (if they're well-designed) provide some form of utility you can't get anywhere else. Obviously, this will always feel better than damage procs or generic effects that are shared between all classes. Borrowed power systems only really work if they're the "cherry on top" or if they're 100% class specific like in Legion. But apparently that's too much work for Blizzard in 2020.

[Dhrizzle]

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.

A lot of people, especially guys the age of the Blizzard devs, play mobile games during the day when they may only have a few minutes spare at a time as well as AAA PC or console games in the evenings or other times when they have a larger block of time. Remember Blizz tends to make games that they want to play in the hope enough other people agree with them.

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

Plus a bunch of tweaks to how dungeon/raid difficulties are, currency changes, reps of varied usefulness and variations on how solo/open-world/easy chores work.

[sunnycutie]

The stat and upcoming level squish don't actually address the forms of power creep we're discussing here, though; as stat squish effect everything across the board equally - meaning the player power remains where it currently is relative to the current and previous tiers. The WoD stat squish was actually to handle a software issue with signed integers that was causing issues with raid encounters (which is the reason why the Garrosh fight in SoO resets itself 3-4 times). The Legion to BfA squish was much the same, albeit exacerbated by the effect of Titanforging gear causing each tier of gear to have an inflated ceiling, making the issue reoccur faster. But regardless, neither of these squishes actually effected player power relative to the content, since the content also got squished.

The problem with power creep isn't that older content gets too easy. Once you one-shot everything, it doesn't matter how much more powerful you get.

Power creep is a problem in terms of numbers. The numbers get too big for us to have a good feel for them. It bothers players to do 1 million dps. It bothers players to go from 1k dps to 100k dps in a single expansion, only to have the numbers squished at the end of the expansion again. It's a problem within an expansion. Because the power creep only makes the difference in performance between well-geared players, and slightly worse-geared players bigger and bigger. Gear shouldn't make such a hige difference, that I'm completely impotent unless I have some of the best gear. Better gear should make you better. But the difference here is between that of ants and gods. It doesn't feel good to go into a dungeon and do 10% of the dps compared to the one that's topping the meters.

[Aucald]

The problem with power creep isn't that older content gets too easy. Once you one-shot everything, it doesn't matter how much more powerful you get.

Power creep is a problem in terms of numbers. The numbers get too big for us to have a good feel for them. It bothers players to do 1 million dps. It bothers players to go from 1k dps to 100k dps in a single expansion, only to have the numbers squished at the end of the expansion again. It's a problem within an expansion. Because the power creep only makes the difference in performance between well-geared players, and slightly worse-geared players bigger and bigger. Gear shouldn't make such a hige difference, that I'm completely impotent unless I have some of the best gear. Better gear should make you better. But the difference here is between that of ants and gods. It doesn't feel good to go into a dungeon and do 10% of the dps compared to the one that's topping the meters.

The problem with power creep takes its form in trivialization of current content, difficulty in balancing the classes, and issues with number optics as you put it. WoW has always had gear disparity, but I don't think its ever been on the level you're describing, which sounds hyperbolic. It was never "lower iLvl players do less damage" that caused the squishes to happen to begin with, it was the aforementioned software issue with signed integers. Dungeon DPS is also never a very good representation of overall DPS because it's entirely possible for well-geared players to kill off mobs before a lower-iLvl player can do much damage, further skewing the DPS charts in their favor despite not actually representing true damage output. Against a mob with a high health total over 6 minutes you'll see a much more representative reflection of true output/performance.

[Krakan]

A lot of people, especially guys the age of the Blizzard devs, play mobile games during the day when they may only have a few minutes spare at a time as well as AAA PC or console games in the evenings or other times when they have a larger block of time. Remember Blizz tends to make games that they want to play in the hope enough other people agree with them.

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Plus a bunch of tweaks to how dungeon/raid difficulties are, currency changes, reps of varied usefulness and variations on how solo/open-world/easy chores work.

I think your mixing up BLIZZARD with blizzard so to speak. Bfa, warcraft reforged... your recalling what is now a ghost sadly

[Dundebuns]

I feel like some market exec comes up with this grand design and idea and then it becomes his sword to die on, and his career lives or dies by it being forced onto the playerbase regardless of how people like it. I expect Blizz has quite a high turn over for junior software engineers who don't know any better and just do whatever their team leads say for fear of rocking the boat and losing their jobs. You can tell that WoW was developer led during the start, and now it's become designed by a board of money men.