Shadowlands the expansion of confusion

[huth]

There really aren't a whole lot of obstacles in Maldraxxus. The middle around the arena has mostly Neutral mobs with a couple bigger ones that will aggro, but the bigger mobs are very easy to avoid. Outside of that taking a path to pretty much anywhere in Mal will get you there without too many mobs attacking you. The only places super densely packed are the areas around the houses which you really don't have to go through very often except for a World quest.

And for those, you usually have to kill them anyway.

[Swnem]

Yeah, but the vast majority of players just do the bare minimum to get them most Power they can eek out of their characters so the list is about perfect, and after a Month you should know what you are doing at this point.

I don't agree. I think the vast majority of players play to be entertained and not for a power grind list of chores.
Progression is just confusing right now (not just power grind) and the design is unclear.

I naturally know what needs to be done by now, but for example, guildies were asking me how to get that second currency besides anima for their sanctum upgrades, just today, one month after launch.
This stuff is simply not clear. You can see that by how the purpose of the maw is so unclear and quests send you there with then bonus objectives, weeklies, dailies and what for? The calling too. The UI call your atention to it, but they don't seem to have mandatory rewards. So, why is the game so adamant about it? It wasn't with emissaries.
These design choices are confusing and are dead ends in many cases. All the different currencies, how to aquire them and their use is unclear. I can add chests that show up in your map but require guides too.

Of course, you can make a list of essentials for power grind, but that doesn't change the fact that it's confusing design.

[rhorle]

This stuff is simply not clear.

It is very clear. You have a quest in your sanctum that tells you to go do it. The tooltip has a description of what it is for. There is even a special animation that plays when you turn in the quest. Your guildies not knowing about one of the first quests you get after going to your covenant when you hit 60 is not a fault of the game being confusing. It is a fault of your guildies lacking basic reasoning skills. That may sound harsh but it really is not.

The maw has rewards and you are introduced to those with the quests when you first enter. Ve'nari is shown to players and you can see what the rewards are by reading the tool tips. Again. Basic reasoning skills. The game is no more adamant with callings then it was with Emissaries. One is just displayed on the Covenant UI instead of the map and also requires you to pick up a quest. That quest has a big blue ! each day.

The only curriencies that are unclear would be the grateful offerings. But just looking at the vendors can figure that one out since you can easily see it is a currency for a reward you unlock eventually. Everything else you get introduced to. Stygia? Introduced when you first enter the maw at end game. Soul Ash? You get introduced to it with the Rune carver? Anima? Introduced.

None of the chests that show up require guides. They are all simple puzzles that have clues around them in order to solve them. But even then it is a simple search on WoWhead. Everything in Shadowlands is of a simple design except for the adventure missions. Those require a more complex understanding of positioning and abilities to maximize success.

But everything else is basic systems. There are just a lot more of it. But at the core they are all very basic in nature.

[Nadiru]

It's great that Shadowlands is the expansion of confusion, knowing exactly what to do at all times in all circumstances is boring, stressful, and induces bad group behavior.

[TheFirstOnes]

How are you confused?

[kamuimac]

I thtink you're just getting old or worse at the game. This is what you need to do per week

PvE:
Do a few m+, clear castle nathria on highest difficulty you can

PvP:
Cap Conquest

Both:
Clear all of torghast to highest level possible for the week

Nothing else matters. There is so much catchup for renown, you dont actually need anima or stygia, you dont actually need anything besides soul ash and your weekly caps.

SL is expansion catered to raiders.

if you are not a raider you are not allowed to have fun in game

its their last desperate attempt to force people into raiding - and it will fail like every time before

[rrayy]

flying wont be here for some time, and the catch for renown is in the questline, callings and even some WQs. Exceptionally easy to catch up

But it is going to get very anoying if you do nothing and that try to catch up all at once when flying unlocks. You are oging to have to do it on somewhat of a regular basis to avoid that. Completely ignoring it until flying unlocks is not a good idea.

[rhorle]

SL is expansion catered to raiders. if you are not a raider you are not allowed to have fun in game its their last desperate attempt to force people into raiding - and it will fail like every time before

Lol. Have you actually played the expansion? No one is forced into raiding.

[Farora]

Wow used to be about leveling, dungeons, raids, pvp and professions. It was great. But ever since Ion took over it became World of Systems. Its not even an MMORPG anymore.

[tacoloco]

All I'm reading in this thread are people who want to be right.

[MikeBogina]

Shadowlands has so much to do, so many things to uncover. Almost as if you have a bunch of stuff to keep you occupied during patches.

I remember when an expansion launched and all there really was to do was dailies. Login, go do the dailies for the reps and that was really it. We have Torghast, Mythic+, Conquest to cap, tons of rare spawns and mounts to go after, covenants with weekly updates.

As someone who's played since Vanilla, I feel like there's too much to do for once and that's ok

[kaminaris]

Lol. Have you actually played the expansion? No one is forced into raiding.

Bah, no one is forced into playing but if you don't raid, game doesn't have much content to do. And raiders definitely are in winning position since they are the only group of people that have somewhat guaranteed loot, even if drip fed. M+ on the other hand are effectively 25 ilvls (translated from old scale) lower than normal drops from M raids, while you on the other hand, have to wait for your weekly bingo lottery to get something relatively close.

battle pets received zero content updates
outdoor content is just WQs
torghast isn't as exciting as people thought it would be
and what is left is M+ but then again, you will be very limited because of how slow gearing is, compared to raiders.

story and shit is heavily timegated.

[kamuimac]

It is very clear. You have a quest in your sanctum that tells you to go do it. The tooltip has a description of what it is for. There is even a special animation that plays when you turn in the quest. Your guildies not knowing about one of the first quests you get after going to your covenant when you hit 60 is not a fault of the game being confusing. It is a fault of your guildies lacking basic reasoning skills. That may sound harsh but it really is not.

The maw has rewards and you are introduced to those with the quests when you first enter. Ve'nari is shown to players and you can see what the rewards are by reading the tool tips. Again. Basic reasoning skills. The game is no more adamant with callings then it was with Emissaries. One is just displayed on the Covenant UI instead of the map and also requires you to pick up a quest. That quest has a big blue ! each day.

The only curriencies that are unclear would be the grateful offerings. But just looking at the vendors can figure that one out since you can easily see it is a currency for a reward you unlock eventually. Everything else you get introduced to. Stygia? Introduced when you first enter the maw at end game. Soul Ash? You get introduced to it with the Rune carver? Anima? Introduced.

None of the chests that show up require guides. They are all simple puzzles that have clues around them in order to solve them. But even then it is a simple search on WoWhead. Everything in Shadowlands is of a simple design except for the adventure missions. Those require a more complex understanding of positioning and abilities to maximize success.

But everything else is basic systems. There are just a lot more of it. But at the core they are all very basic in nature.

well truth be told game doesnt tell you well about importance of Venari as vendor for example

i for example had no clue that there are thrgast upgrades there untill this reset - and i had no problem to clear L8 without them - had i known that my life in there would be milion times easier - now im 3 weeks behind on rep grind there to get them all for my alts in future.

i just thought its another generic vendor with usless stuff + sockets for raids.

same way i have seen people shocked when learning that there even is anima gear upgrader in covenant -_- (this i discovered myself luckily )

[erifwodahs]

SL is expansion catered to raiders.

if you are not a raider you are not allowed to have fun in game

its their last desperate attempt to force people into raiding - and it will fail like every time before

You have no clue what you are even talking about...
If there was an expansion for raiders, SL is the furthest point you can go from there.
Dungeons and m+ allow you to get geared to mythic level without even going into the raid ,4 covenants, treasures/secrets, Torghast, Maw if you feel masochistic, PvP, covenants have their minigames too, WQs and megaton of achievs to get/tmogs to collect. If anything that is bad for raiders, as you have to put lot of hours if you want to do the casual stuff and do raids too.

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Bah, no one is forced into playing but if you don't raid, game doesn't have much content to do. And raiders definitely are in winning position since they are the only group of people that have somewhat guaranteed loot, even if drip fed. M+ on the other hand are effectively 25 ilvls (translated from old scale) lower than normal drops from M raids, while you on the other hand, have to wait for your weekly bingo lottery to get something relatively close.

battle pets received zero content updates
outdoor content is just WQs
torghast isn't as exciting as people thought it would be
and what is left is M+ but then again, you will be very limited because of how slow gearing is, compared to raiders.

story and shit is heavily timegated.

16ilvl = 25ilvl, noice. I would love to see logic behind your math or even need to do the conversion.. what?
So yeah, let's ignore everything.
Let me guess, secrets and collecting is for nerds
PvP is trash
TG is trash
Maw is hideous
WQs are wqs
Covenant minigames are trash
M+ is only for gear but then again, raiding is also just for gear, so game is only for mythic raiders then?
Old content =/= content.
Alts?

Battle pet dungeons you mean? lol I guess there was a reason for that... maybe it was not popular? Just maybe...
I think you have been playing WoW and if you think that SL is for raiders... When did you even start playing WoW? There was no point in time where wow had more stuff for casuals to sink their teeth into.

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well truth be told game doesnt tell you well about importance of Venari as vendor for example

First RPG game of yours I guess?

[leggomydairy]

Confusing? I disagree. I think we have a very healthy level of choice in leveling alts and end game. It’s taken me this long to get to the point where I’m waiting for dailies to reset, and even then I have WQs I could do or dungeons or BGs to run. So far I’m a surprised fan.

[PolarityER]

I think it's made in such a way that they don't specifically point out what you are supposed to do or with what timing.. the idea being that you naturally learn by doing and decide on your own priorities. Imo I don't like when the game just tells you what to do every week.. not that you have to do it but when the game says it's time to do a BG and you want to run mythics, you might feel like there is a disconnect between the game design and your play style. In Shadowlands they don't tell you to do anything but make everything available for a week. It feels like I have more agency to do progression in the way I feel like doing progression at the time. It doesn't feel confusing to me, it actually feels pretty good.

[Freeghost]

Shadowlands is more or less a remake of legion, they have been following the same pattern with bfa and shadowlands so we shouldn't expect anything new in the future. Blizzard used to change a lot of their models with each expansion but now everything is the same. Shadowlands is much closer to legion than bfa but still, all of them are pretty much the same. That means, theme based areas, some transmog grinding, some rp/story, some power up grind mode and some important lore characters to make it interesting. The answer of blizzard to the failure that was bfa is more legion.

However, shadowlands is messed up so bad. The zones are so bad that they should give flying right from start. This new blizzard has a tendency to create terrible zones that are VERY hard to cross. They kinda improved a bit with bfa but shadowlands is now back to how the zones were on legion. Actually, they are worse than legion. Besides zones, it's very hard to keep up with so much information, this includes: callings, campaign, stygia, renown, anima, soul ash, maw dailies, weeklies, world quests, random quests left and right. It's very hard to create a schedule about what you have to grind.

I played both legion and bfa and grinded a lot, I never felt so paralyzed by information. It was crystal clear what you were meant to do in the previous expansions. Now there are so many systems which also seem more important. If you exclude the typical raids/m+/pvp and perhaps torghast, everything is messed up so badly but it's also important so you can't avoid it easily.

How ? It took me a day or 2 to just find everything by myself. I agree that at first glance it seemed like many different currencies where i didnt know what they are for but eventually the campaign quests showed you everything.

If you exclude the typical raids/m+/pvp and perhaps thorghast, everything is messed up so badly but it's also important so you can't avoid it easily.

You can actually avoid everything apart from your first three points( even then you can only do M+ and be fine). You never need to do world quests or farm anima or stygia (granted you get sockets if you reach "exalted" but u dont seem like the player who will get that in less than 5 months).

This is the first addon where i am finally free from constantly doing world quests or farm some currency for an basically infinite upgrade (hello heart of azeroth).
Imo its one of the best expansion of all time, sure it has its flaws but most of then got corrected already.

[JadedTauren]

I, on the other hand, am having more fun playing now than I've had since WOTLK.

This x1000 best expac since WOTLK. If they can keep this formula WoW might be coming back hot.

[kamuimac]

This x1000 best expac since WOTLK. If they can keep this formula WoW might be coming back hot.

exept its dying faster then WoD because causals have nothing to do in game

gg for supporting this failed model .

[Malania]

exept its dying faster then WoD because causals have nothing to do in game

gg for supporting this failed model .

I'm casual af and I have enough to do to keep me playing all week. Do you have some sort of evidence to support this or we just on feelings?