Explain the Argument; New Systems vs More of the Same

[Dhrizzle]

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

Possibly now they're under pressure to get games released instead of reinventing the wheel every expansion but when WoD was released and the system was put in it was still the case.

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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.

Do you really think the marketing department sit around talking about alternate advancement systems in RPGs?

[thilicen]

What really sucks is knowing all that time and resources they put into the trainwreck that is covenants and conduits could have been spent fleshing out classes, quests, raids, what have you. It's a shitshow in terms of priority.

[Eurhetemec]

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.

I'm not falling into that fallacy at all. That's a ridiculous thing to say.

SWTOR took the mechanics of TBC-era WoW, polished them, added a lot of fancy story stuff, and so on. It played very much like a better take on TBC-era WoW.

Cataclysm, however, played faster and smoother, whether you like it or not, than SWTOR, and whilst I hated Cataclysm, and liked SWTOR (this is important to note), Cataclysm felt like it was much more modern and playable game. Not better because it's "newer" i.e. merely date-wise, but because it actually played better.

Claiming WoW hasn't improved is a ridiculous position, honestly. There's no game in the world that's survived for even 5 or 10 years where someone won't claim it was way better at the start or whatever, but the fact is, a lot of stuff changes, and whilst you may loathe changes to the metagame or the focus of the game or whatever, the moment-to-moment gameplay of a game typically improves, if it survives, unless something grotesque happens with microtransactions or something.

I was talking to someone recently who was going on about how good a lot of stuff was in Vanilla, but even he noted that whilst things in the open world were now "too easy", that somehow that "too easy" was significantly less BORING than Vanilla. And that's kind of how stuff felt with SWTOR vs Cataclysm. SWTOR was prettier, it had better story by infinite parsecs, it was "newer" in a lot of ways. But gameplay-wise, it felt older, despite stuff like a class which was basically a "healing rogue" in one spec (Imperial Agent, IIRC). Cataclysm was ugly, it was dumb, and I hated it, even at the time, but gameplay-wise, it felt a lot better.

[Grimbold21]

Not only do they feel the need to reinvent the wheel as a way to sell new expansions, but the fact that these reinventions are bound to their respective expansion makes them - at least for me - meaningless, in the sense that you know ahead of time these things aren't here to permanently stay so your investment - in whatever shape it takes - in them is greatly diminished.

You know what has obviously stayed? The gear chase. We used to be content with the simple pursuits we had.

There's just no going back, cause if you do, you get the "the game is boring! there's nothing to do" crowd. But if you stay the course, you get the same crowd spouting "these systems are stupid!".

I don't honestly know what's wrong with just farming your gear, your mats, your achievements, pets, reps or whatever, and when you're done for the day, then you're done. But no, people will find room to complain about something.

[InfiniteCharger]

The reason the game gets boring is because they keep releasing fewer and fewer dungeons and raids per expansion.
And they create these new daily zones that are not even fully implemented in 3d for ground travel only.
They have simply cut back on the actual content in the game in order to streamline everything about repeated 30 minute to an hour "tasks".
IE. Do a few world quests to increase some borrowed power metric. Do a few pugs for the same and some easy purple gear.
Throw in LFR and then call it a day. That 'content' isn't really meaningful or challenging in its own right and is only propped up by these systems.

Doing dungeons that took hours back in the day felt epic and was fun because of the inherent replay value of the gameplay.
Trying different stategies and having different group compositions are the core of the D&D game play philosophy.
"Daily quests" are not an D&D concept. Those are things created for MMO game play and WOW leans too heavily on them for content.
Dungeons and raids should always be the bulk of the content in an expansion with dailies simply adding to that.

Replay value in any kind of 3d game whether it be an FPS or MMO always comes down to the inherent replay value of the content in some fashion.
For an FPS it is all about monster/enemy counts and damage done plus difficulty levels or how long it took to clear a level.
And MMOs such as first person shooter arenas have always have the most replay value because playing against other people is always unique every time. Daily quests being short and easy to do are inherently forgettable and not really any sort of compelling content.
And timed dungeons while they can be competitive, are also streamlined in terms of length and mechanics in order to fit the mold of a timed run.
All of this affects the way expansions are built and leads to this deterioration of replay value and satisfaction in the content.
Then on top of all that, if the system itself that binds it all together as an incentive to boost replay value falls flat, then the game is in a bad place.

[Akka]

SWTOR took the mechanics of TBC-era WoW, polished them, added a lot of fancy story stuff, and so on. It played very much like a better take on TBC-era WoW.

No.
Just, no.

Cataclysm, however, played faster and smoother, whether you like it or not, than SWTOR, and whilst I hated Cataclysm, and liked SWTOR (this is important to note), Cataclysm felt like it was much more modern and playable game. Not better because it's "newer" i.e. merely date-wise, but because it actually played better.

Cataclysm played no better than TBC. It was noticeably worse in many ways in fact, like class homogeneization or AoE spam. Not to add many flaws not directly related to gameplay but making it less interesting (like wild gear inflation making content quickly irrelevant).

whilst you may loathe changes to the metagame or the focus of the game or whatever, the moment-to-moment gameplay of a game typically improves

No, moment-to-moment gameplay typically becomes "faster", not "better".

I was talking to someone recently who was going on about how good a lot of stuff was in Vanilla, but even he noted that whilst things in the open world were now "too easy", that somehow that "too easy" was significantly less BORING than Vanilla.

That's his opinion, and certainly not one I share.

And that's kind of how stuff felt with SWTOR vs Cataclysm. SWTOR was prettier, it had better story by infinite parsecs, it was "newer" in a lot of ways. But gameplay-wise, it felt older, despite stuff like a class which was basically a "healing rogue" in one spec (Imperial Agent, IIRC). Cataclysm was ugly, it was dumb, and I hated it, even at the time, but gameplay-wise, it felt a lot better.

SWTOR definitely had better story (arguably, the story is the main, if not only, reason to play it).
It didn't felt "older" to play, though. It felt "inferior". You said you didn't fall into the "newer is better" fallacy, but your entire post is just repeating that "typically, games become better", which is nearly word for word that exact fallacy.

[Capultro]

yes,it is another bfa without hero class.and they need more time?i dont believe this.i think that they have lot expansion sets ready for us...is all marketing...shadowlands will be shit,look at bfa....the biggest shit in the wow time....

[CheckThyself]

yes,it is another bfa without hero class.and they need more time?i dont believe this.i think that they have lot expansion sets ready for us...is all marketing...shadowlands will be shit,look at bfa....the biggest shit in the wow time....

Not really, i mean yeah BFA has been regarded as pretty bad due to systems but SLands won't be shit

[Wuusah]

In a way we always had "systems" in all expansions except for WoD and that's what made WoD so boring so fast. Yes, it didn't have much content, but so did WotLK or Cata at release, but those expansions weren't catastrophic for player retention. Ulduar came out 5-6 months after release. 5-6 months of Naxx. But I don't remember people going crazy over it and quitting the game.

Now what are the systems we had back in the days? Hit and Expertise (and all the other stats with soft/hard caps). We had to tinker around a lot with our gear. We had to grind specific places, socket specific amounts of specific stats into them. All this time that we put into looking at our items and stats was time playing the game. It wasn't us playing the content of the game but spending time with "systems" in the game. That's what systems do. They make you spend time with the game without actually doing something in the game. They get you invested into your char. In WoD this was significantly reduced. You just looked up what your best stats are and rolled on items that have that stat. WoD was the first expansion where both content and systems were lacking and that's why it's the catastrophe that it was.

And that's why we get now system on top of system on top of system in new expansions. It masks the fact that there isn't really that much content in the game. Without interesting systems, doing the same content over and over again gets boring real quick.

[Elias01]

What really sucks is knowing all that time and resources they put into the trainwreck that is covenants and conduits could have been spent fleshing out classes, quests, raids, what have you. It's a shitshow in terms of priority.

Fleshing out stuff wont make people keep playing game. What will make them play is more content and these systems provide it.

[Baneto]

Fleshing out stuff wont make people keep playing game. What will make them play is more content and these systems provide it.

These systems that people that have played alpha and beta agree on is terrible, if you listen to content creators they agree on that.

People dont want to play the game if the systems are garbage and suck.

[InfiniteCharger]

In a way we always had "systems" in all expansions except for WoD and that's what made WoD so boring so fast. Yes, it didn't have much content, but so did WotLK or Cata at release, but those expansions weren't catastrophic for player retention. Ulduar came out 5-6 months after release. 5-6 months of Naxx. But I don't remember people going crazy over it and quitting the game.

Now what are the systems we had back in the days? Hit and Expertise (and all the other stats with soft/hard caps). We had to tinker around a lot with our gear. We had to grind specific places, socket specific amounts of specific stats into them. All this time that we put into looking at our items and stats was time playing the game. It wasn't us playing the content of the game but spending time with "systems" in the game. That's what systems do. They make you spend time with the game without actually doing something in the game. They get you invested into your char. In WoD this was significantly reduced. You just looked up what your best stats are and rolled on items that have that stat. WoD was the first expansion where both content and systems were lacking and that's why it's the catastrophe that it was.

And that's why we get now system on top of system on top of system in new expansions. It masks the fact that there isn't really that much content in the game. Without interesting systems, doing the same content over and over again gets boring real quick.

There was progression of course but no system for gaining talents and abilities outside of the talent tree or class trainers prior to legion. That is blatantly false. You don't need a system of new temporary talent trees to get people to run dungeons or even do dailies. I don't think that even is a logical statement. People have been doing both of those since long before these temporary talent trees and abilities were added to the game.

[Lucetia]

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.

Even with the mount quest it is no more than 2 hours max and that's because of traveling really. You spend a good hour or so flying back and forth. The only thing that stretches it out is when you need to wait hours for the "Collect 5 items" quest, the Broken Shore mission (unless you queue prior), Legion Assault if none are up. The World Quests can take a bit if you did some prior to quest. Collecting treasures takes a bit due to it bugs on pickup and you have to fly to fatigue waters to have them start to show up and on my last two toons I had it bug on the rare kills and had to do some server flipping to finally find one where they were up as the skulls would despawn and make it so you couldn't see the rare anymore.

[Elias01]

These systems that people that have played alpha and beta agree on is terrible, if you listen to content creators they agree on that.

People dont want to play the game if the systems are garbage and suck.

Those people are not majority of this game.

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There was progression of course but no system for gaining talents and abilities outside of the talent tree or class trainers prior to legion. That is blatantly false. You don't need a system of new temporary talent trees to get people to run dungeons or even do dailies. I don't think that even is a logical statement. People have been doing both of those since long before these temporary talent trees and abilities were added to the game.

They were not WoD proved that. As long as people were done with LFR and LFG players start quiting game.

[Baneto]

Those people are not majority of this game.

And unlike the majority they have actually played Shadowlands and dont want the expansion to suck so whats your point?

[kaintk]

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.

its because blizzard want you to stay and grind like a chinese farmer the same stuff over and over, each day

they dont want anymore peoples going in game for 20 minute, doing the gold mission like in WoD or unsubbing after 2-3 week of new content and leaving the game for months

[Wuusah]

There was progression of course but no system for gaining talents and abilities outside of the talent tree or class trainers prior to legion. That is blatantly false. You don't need a system of new temporary talent trees to get people to run dungeons or even do dailies. I don't think that even is a logical statement. People have been doing both of those since long before these temporary talent trees and abilities were added to the game.

Does it really matter that much what you get? Back in the days it was items where we tried to reach specific values of specific stats. Nowadays items are more boring and we do content to tinker around with other stuff that gives you something special.

Is it such a difference if it's "talents" that you grind for and play around with instead of items? In the end it's the same thing done in a new and hopefully interesting way to keep players interested. Because items don't do that anymore these days

[deenman]

Instead of them wasting so much time on these pointless systems that LITERALY not one sane person even enjoys,they should scrap it all....scrap conduits,scrap soulbinds,scrap legenderies,scrap every single borrowed power system and just focus on fun content and making the classes fun

this is why people enjoyed wrath and mop,even wod would have been rememberd as a perfectly fine expansion if instead of the pointless garrison prison and shipyard we got more of what has been shown that players actualy enjoy

give the covenants cool cosmetics and story quests,and slap on a mop/wod style legendery and thats it,invest the rest of the dev time in good and conistant patch content and raids,and make classes more like in mop

[Swnem]

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.

Is it tough? FFXIV does more of the same and is more popular than ever.

New xpac, new story, zones and new classes, new class abilities with a cool cinematic. Same raid structure, same gearing.

Shadowbringers didnt offer anything different from ARR, Heavensward and Stormblood. Yet, it sells better.

I don't think more of the same is hard to sell, if it's what players want.


Agree with the rest. They fail at new content cause they are arrogant and think they are gonna come up with the next big thing when they haven't even bothered to implement housing. Oh and add ignoring player feedback to that. They are always at odds with us. They always think they know better than the people that play the game everyday.

[aceperson]

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.

i agree with you to an extent. when you change up the formula so much that it is basically a brand new game, that's also a hard sell. there needs to be innovation but also the content people like. if blizz wanted to try azerite armor for an expac, they probably should've scrapped islands and warfronts. their design team was too scattered to properly manage everything.