Shadowlands delay -- Proof this direction isn't the best way forward?

[cparle87]

The actual conversation is a bit more nuanced than "everything sucks" or "everything is amazing." I don't think every alternative progression system is trash nor did I mean to imply that, I just think that modern WoW's obsession with layering progression systems on top of each other is causing more harm than good.

edit: Also, did you quote the wrong part of my post? That wasn't what you had originally responded to.

You had two parts iirc, I meant to quote the whole thing, but there was something else in between the parts and I missed it. M'bad for the confusion. You gotta admit the way you put it was very negative.

[Mafic]

The things that no expansion has ever not had?

No we need more to be backloaded! Systems overload is not content!

[Krakan]

They haven't really changed jack shit and is still going the exact same direction, so maybe, just maybe the delay is because of this thing thats happening around the world. You know, this global pandemic ?

Not really they are gutting systems each week in a desperate attempt to achieve vanilla levels of balance.

[Deferionus]

Exactly.

Even if they now realized that all of these shitty system are .. well shit, it's too late now anyway. But they didn't ... system are probably here to stay for a veeeeeeeery long time and they may never shift away.
Hell they're even trying to come up with more of them.

To be honest, I don't think anyone would complain if they just made the covenant abilities into a new talent row or two and called it a day. Would likely be easier to balance and make the player base happier than what they are trying to do.

[Tesshin83]

You do realize that's exactly why I'm asking for this to be discussed, right? I don't think that they're delaying it because they want to change design philosophies. I'm asking whether the design philosophies which presumably caused the delay are something which Blizzard may decide to curb in the future to prevent additional delays.

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At some point, however, you have to wonder whether the playerbase will simply stop supporting these design decisions. BfA's relationship with players seemed tenuous at best and SL is, in many ways, supposed to be a redemption arc for Blizzard. I get that there's only so many ways they can serve us the same bullshit on a different platter but I don't think it's nearly as bleak a picture as you're painting here. The delay is unquestionably a good thing but I'm hoping that it's also a teachable moment for Blizzard internally.

If design philosophies seem to take up more time than expected by Blizzard, the only solution is not to change philosophy, but to assign more time.

What makes you think that BFA had a bad relationship with the playerbase? According to Activision the number of subs increased during BFA.

I assume you reflect your own opinions and views on to the playerbase. If so I get tired of people doing that.

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To be honest, I don't think anyone would complain if they just made the covenant abilities into a new talent row or two and called it a day. Would likely be easier to balance and make the player base happier than what they are trying to do.

That removes the whole point of making it a meaningful choice though.

And also adding new rows is a bad idea as they cant design the abilities with the theme of the expansion. This was tried before and it didn't work.

[cozzri]

And also adding new rows is a bad idea as they cant design the abilities with the theme of the expansion. This was tried before and it didn't work.

It worked fine until they decided to delete everything; having some form of character power growth would be nice to have going in to the next expansion. Personally I miss the shadowy/void theme of subtlety rogue from legion, all of the cool abilities and triggers went away with Legion.

I started playing again late BFA and found that heart of azeroth was going away too, and was like, whats the point of even leveling up through the system? Even with catch-up mechanics its not worth it, I played through the story and did all the dungeons and raids in 1 month and was finished with it; the endless grind isn't worthwhile, especially when you know its all going away.

Carrot on a stick doesn't work when you watch it rot before your eyes and start looking for something fresh to eat. The systems are dragged out far too long to the point where you don't even want to play alts anymore.

[kaminaris]

I showed you 10-hour footage of doing nearly every single quest in SL bugfree, because you said it was unplayable. Then you backed off and said but here are 2 bugged abilities so they delayed SL because they need their time to fix those.

Then you follow it up by saying blizzard can tune the content in under a week. Yes. Like this:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st.../24#dataset=90

Or at any other time in this expansion or any other expansion before that. What a joke.

In what kind of dream do you live in?

Yeah cool 10h footage from one run, and I showed you literally random link on youtube that guy had the same problem as me as well as posts on official forum reporting broken spells plus tons of other bug reports.

And yes that is exactly the balance you WILL get.

Like this:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...gregate=amount
This:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...gregate=amount
This:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...gregate=amount
and this:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...gregate=amount

I live in reality, I have good memory, you don't. You are deluded that blizzard will somehow care for balance more than we have seen in past.
They don't

They care that average joe will be able to level up to max without issues, will be able to pick up quests, will be able to progress storyline, will be able to use his spells correctly and not leave expansion early because of bugs that will brick them.

They care about people not flooding their GMs because some quests won't work.

They care about expansions features working correctly.

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It worked fine until they decided to delete everything; having some form of character power growth would be nice to have going in to the next expansion. Personally I miss the shadowy/void theme of subtlety rogue from legion, all of the cool abilities and triggers went away with Legion.

I started playing again late BFA and found that heart of azeroth was going away too, and was like, whats the point of even leveling up through the system? Even with catch-up mechanics its not worth it, I played through the story and did all the dungeons and raids in 1 month and was finished with it; the endless grind isn't worthwhile, especially when you know its all going away.

Carrot on a stick doesn't work when you watch it rot before your eyes and start looking for something fresh to eat. The systems are dragged out far too long to the point where you don't even want to play alts anymore.

It didn't work. First problems became apparent in MoP that you had clustefuck ton of abilities and passives and average joe couldn't even figure out which spell does what.
That also leads to inevitable problem with servers but thats whole new story.

Once you realize gear was also becoming garbage each tier (well you did farm it so you "leveled up" your gear too), nothing has really changed. It was always endless treadmill as such is the point of MMO.

Newsflash, blizzard doesn't want you to have feeling alts are mandatory, thus they are giving people something to do.
"Just play alts" isn't an answer.

[Schattenlied]

I really hope so... these borrowed powers systems have been nothing but trouble since their inception.

[kranur]

To be honest, I don't think anyone would complain if they just made the covenant abilities into a new talent row or two and called it a day. Would likely be easier to balance and make the player base happier than what they are trying to do.

Probably. But that would mean they have to accept and come and say that they fucked up big time, which won't happen because it will look bad for investors ... instead they'll try to salvage it and we'll pay the price.

[VinceVega]

Probably. But that would mean they have to accept and come and say that they fucked up big time, which won't happen because it will look bad for investors ... instead they'll try to salvage it and we'll pay the price.

Why would they "have fucked up big time".

This solution is always a possibility and they even said so. The playerbase is split on the topic. There is no consense regarding this. So you can't say it is bad or good. And no idea what this has to do with investors. Even if they would make the talents into a new row. The problem right now is not only the talents for balance, but also the difference between the covenant soulbinds. Which they are allready making easier to navigate and more streamlined, which you can see by their removal of the 4th potency (or whatever it is called) conduit slot and the new respec system.

[Krakan]

Why would they "have fucked up big time".

This solution is always a possibility and they even said so. The playerbase is split on the topic. There is no consense regarding this. So you can't say it is bad or good. And no idea what this has to do with investors. Even if they would make the talents into a new row. The problem right now is not only the talents for balance, but also the difference between the covenant soulbinds. Which they are allready making easier to navigate and more streamlined, which you can see by their removal of the 4th potency (or whatever it is called) conduit slot and the new respec system.

I mean the question that comes up a lot is why?

I don't believe the player base is split on the topic if you offered players flushed out classes like we last saw in mop or wod and then asked them if they wanted 40 odd hours of time gated busy work that won't nearly be as well balanced in these new systems...

I think the player base will choose the pre AP model. Let's not split hairs that is what all these borrowed power system boil down to.

[Stardrift]

I showed you 10-hour footage of doing nearly every single quest in SL bugfree, because you said it was unplayable. Then you backed off and said but here are 2 bugged abilities so they delayed SL because they need their time to fix those.

Then you follow it up by saying blizzard can tune the content in under a week. Yes. Like this:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st.../24#dataset=90

Or at any other time in this expansion or any other expansion before that. What a joke.

In what kind of dream do you live in?

I've played betas and experienced little to no bugs at all, then launch came around and I experienced nothing but bugs. Namely MoP and WoD.

[Sekurm]

the whole Delay was planned... so the Q3 would look good.

[Tiradon]

I don't think anyone expected we being under this situation due to COVID a year ago.

Anyhow I do believe this sub systems inside systems is dragging Shadowlands for sure without benefit of a doubt

[Baneto]

MMm yeah blame the delay on the flu.

[Brostin]

Wasn't there a virus or something that made many people need to work from home now which caused shit all over the world to be delayed and/or cancelled?

Yeah imagine if companies had some sort of role that determines the scope of a project and how long it will take. They could even use some sort of chart to plot timelines for individual aspects and dynamically adjust these to reflect expected timeframes...

As apparently no one in this thread is familiar with the concept of a project manager so I have to ask, how exactly did they get a few weeks out from launch and go "yeah, we have may more work to do than time to do it in"?

In direction answer to the original question of the thread. No absolutely not, Blizzard for some really strange reason are incredibly resistant to admitting any faults with the systems they manage and create. To the point they've even pulled the secret documents shit that Gaijin has used(we have data that proves you wrong, but we won't let you see it for some reason) I think it's specifically in relation to classes massively underperforming that Blizzard have tried to lie and say they aren't.

They won't ever see "proof" that anything they do was a mistake until they are willing to be considerably more open to criticism. I'd be willing to bet for example in Legion that they focused on the few people who got early BIS Legendaries as proof of it being a good system(because it kinda was for the lucky people)

[Lurker1]

It's delayed because they want to align it with FFXIV major patch 5.4 release early in December.

There fear is zero here.

[qwerty123456]

Yeah imagine if companies had some sort of role that determines the scope of a project and how long it will take. They could even use some sort of chart to plot timelines for individual aspects and dynamically adjust these to reflect expected timeframes...

As apparently no one in this thread is familiar with the concept of a project manager so I have to ask, how exactly did they get a few weeks out from launch and go "yeah, we have may more work to do than time to do it in"?

In direction answer to the original question of the thread. No absolutely not, Blizzard for some really strange reason are incredibly resistant to admitting any faults with the systems they manage and create. To the point they've even pulled the secret documents shit that Gaijin has used(we have data that proves you wrong, but we won't let you see it for some reason) I think it's specifically in relation to classes massively underperforming that Blizzard have tried to lie and say they aren't.

They won't ever see "proof" that anything they do was a mistake until they are willing to be considerably more open to criticism. I'd be willing to bet for example in Legion that they focused on the few people who got early BIS Legendaries as proof of it being a good system(because it kinda was for the lucky people)

Then why have dozens of game companies had the same or similar problems? Like STO pushing content back and warframe releasing heart of demios buggy as fuck? Why would Blizzard be the special case when games and other companies have been announcing shit then repeatedly pushing it back during covid? You do realize certain parts of a project occur at different times in a products development cycle don't you? If Y isn't done till near release date and it's taking a thousand times longer than normal how are they going to figure that out until they start that part?

[Nurasu]

And also adding new rows is a bad idea as they cant design the abilities with the theme of the expansion. This was tried before and it didn't work.

They haven't tried it before. They skipped the most obvious solution to the problem they invented in WoD - a thematic talent row that cycles out with each new expansion. That's all they needed, but they jumped the shark instead, now with FOUR extra systems in SL.

[Deferionus]

If design philosophies seem to take up more time than expected by Blizzard, the only solution is not to change philosophy, but to assign more time.

What makes you think that BFA had a bad relationship with the playerbase? According to Activision the number of subs increased during BFA.

I assume you reflect your own opinions and views on to the playerbase. If so I get tired of people doing that.

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That removes the whole point of making it a meaningful choice though.

And also adding new rows is a bad idea as they cant design the abilities with the theme of the expansion. This was tried before and it didn't work.

Didn't work? The original talent system was best. The one we have now is watered down. The new approach is getting universal dislike from the player base. Yeah, tried before, liked, and abandoned to the mass criticism of their audience. To hell with going back to the old approaches though, lets continue trying new methods, spending a bunch of time patching them (or delaying an expansion), and then throw them out when they prove to not work. If they had not done the talents based on covenants and put a new class into SL it would be a much more anticipated expac.