So is Shadowlands good?

[kaminaris]

I agree, that there is also 2nd part of this problem. It's random personal drops. Remember, that in old xpacks 2-3 items in loot drop were guaranteed? Yeah, they could be duplicates, no one needed, but at least they were guaranteed and they were hard to control by Blizzard (but they still tried to do it - via making certain pieces more rare, than they should have been).

You should clearly understand, that we and Blizzard have opposite goals in loot system. We want to have control over our loot and Blizzard don't want to give it to us. Because they want to fully control gearing pace. At least on average. That's, why RNG is so bad. No one knows, if it's "fair" or not. More RNG gives more control over your loot to Blizzards' hands. That's why several layers of RNG in your loot are so bad. Some people just don't understand, that ability to get certain piece of loot drops exponentially with every extra layer of RNG.

And remember, that back in old times pieces of loot were "physical", i.e. just pieces of loot. Weapon from last boss was certain item with certain properties. And you wanted it and chased this specific item. It was goal, you wanted to reach. Not just "tool to kill more stuff". Remember, that we play RPG, not arcade? And it's ton of RNG, that has made them faceless. Ehhh. I don't even remember last time, when I looked into drop lists to see, what boss I need to kill to get certain piece of loot. As it's all RNG now. Who cares about certain pieces? You just do random content and something random drops to you.

There is no rule stating that RPGs have to have static gear. And it's a boring design anyways.

I like the idea of having RNG + a way to control it. So the best possible gear system that I have ever encountered in any game I have ever played is...
PoE with harvest crafting.


The way it worked was:
You get completely random bases, chance of getting something decent was low, chance of getting perfect one was close to winning a milion dollar lottery.
BUT
Thru normal gameplay you get currency that is able to do all sorts of wonders with these bases. Remove stats, reroll stats, add new stats, reforge sockets and so on.
Basically with some commitment you could get some decent base to work with, and with currency you could turn it into a masterpiece that is absolutely perfect.

[Ragnarohk]

I just want to point out that Sire Denathrius is one of the best fights i've done in a while. That's a point in favor of Shadowlands.

[kaminaris]

Pure RNG...
Items from the content you did
Does not give same items in the same week
Way better item selection for optimal gear which will speed up optimizing your character by months.
Increases chances to get item from specific dungeon if you spam it.

You don't know what pure RNG means. It's rather heavy limited rng bound by rules.

There is plenty of content for casuals to do, but you have to come here and cry that the game who has been all about raiding is still all about it, besides having massive improvements for casual player base/non raid players... I mean why do you even play WoW? So you could whine about it? Because WoW has never ever been anything different.

Please, do the math first. Having it capped to 100 M+ items and no duplicates means exactly 2/100.
Next week has the same chance. Meaning you can not get upgrade for entire tier if you are unlucky.
Also you can get always just belts. No duplicates doesn't mean not the same slot.

- - - Updated - - -

I just want to point out that Sire Denathrius is one of the best fights i've done in a while. That's a point in favor of Shadowlands.

Yes raids are always good. That is also probably why all other content is lacking.

[Eggroll]

For me, there's some good and some bad.

The bad:
1. terrain is just malevolently designed to waste as much of your time as it possibly can to get from point A to point B
2. no mount use in the MaW - see 1.
3. time gating is really really getting on my nerves and it is all over the place
4. I really don't like the music this xpac - this is a first for me
5. hardly any original art assets, everything seems copy-pasted from somewhere
6. travel time between "continents" is ridiculously long, like... what the actual fuck...
7. Thorgast is just Horrific Visions 2.0. I find it boooring, more so because it's mandatory content

On the good side:
1. I did not yet find any glaring bugs or things that gamebreakingly didn't work the way they should
2. PVP gear vendors back! I like it
3. Dungeons are petty good, bosses have interesting mechanics and aren't just tank'n'spank

[KSM899]

I am enjoying it far more than I enjoyed bfa ..

I like the Maw which apparently many people don't, and I like that there are different things to do: wq, torghast, maw and the weekly story quests.

[erifwodahs]

Loot is so common...it needs to be rare!
Loot is rare...it needs to be common!

Flying mounts make things fast and trivial!
Travel is slow and wastes time

Like I've said before...the Devs are damned if they do and damned if they don't...no matter what they do people complain

Agreed. They can't trust the player base on the feedback - only the metrics to see what content we need and how to shift it.

[KSM899]

For me, there's some good and some bad.

The bad:
1. terrain is just malevolently designed to waste as much of your time as it possibly can to get from point A to point B
2. no mount use in the MaW - see 1.
3. time gating is really really getting on my nerves and it is all over the place
4. I really don't like the music this xpac - this is a first for me
5. hardly any original art assets, everything seems copy-pasted from somewhere
6. travel time between "continents" is ridiculously long, like... what the actual fuck...

On the good side:
1. I did not yet find any glaring bugs or things that gamebreakingly didn't work the way they should
2. PVP gear vendors back! I like it

Zones design has been like this Legion, which is annoying.

I do agree with travel time, it was annoying in bfa traveling between two continents, now we travel between 5!

[WowIsDead64]

There is no rule stating that RPGs have to have static gear. And it's a boring design anyways.

I like the idea of having RNG + a way to control it. So the best possible gear system that I have ever encountered in any game I have ever played is...
PoE with harvest crafting.


The way it worked was:
You get completely random bases, chance of getting something decent was low, chance of getting perfect one was close to winning a milion dollar lottery.
BUT
Thru normal gameplay you get currency that is able to do all sorts of wonders with these bases. Remove stats, reroll stats, add new stats, reforge sockets and so on.
Basically with some commitment you could get some decent base to work with, and with currency you could turn it into a masterpiece that is absolutely perfect.

Overall I personally like WOD system, where base items were random, so I had different experience on different characters. Random upgrades weren't gating rewards from you - they were bonuses instead. But upgrades were guaranteed, so at some point you could get BIS gear.

But overall what I talk about - is that players want to have full control over their gear and game devs want completely opposite, i.e. take all control away from players. RNG - is just one of ways to achieve this goal. May be some compromise is the best. Some reasonable RNG is good, because it makes gaming experience different for different players. It allows you to actually "play" with gear - i.e. to try to optimize gear, you have, not just follow some obvious route, that is set in stone. But don't you think, that they went way too far with RNG, i.e. with taking control over your loot away from you, in Legion and BFA? Overall BFA - is xpack, where they crossed some red lines of unreasonable changes. Was it intentional change, just an experiment or mistake - I don't know. But they did it.

So, reasonable RNG is good. I.e. RNG, that makes character experience different. That determines, WHAT items you get, but not WHEN you get them. But so called RNG-gating is bad. I.e. when devs try to fully control your average gearing pace, to actificially stretch it to make it fit into their desired patch schedule. It just doesn't feel like real reward. It's so called "participation reward". You get it sooner or later just for paying sub fee for X months.

[Eggroll]

Zones design has been like this Legion, which is annoying.

I do agree with travel time, it was annoying in bfa traveling between two continents, now we travel between 5!

Yeah, the part where you can't travel between continents directly, but have to go via Oribos every single time...

[kaminaris]

Overall I personally likes WOD system, where base items were random, so I have different experience on different characters. Random upgrades weren't gating rewards from you - they were bonuses instead. But upgrades were guaranteed, so at some point you could get BIS gear.

But overall what I talk about - is that players want to have full control over their gear and game devs want completely opposite, i.e. take all control away from players. RNG - is just one of ways to achieve this goal. May be some compromise is the best. Some reasonable RNG is good, because it makes gaming experience different for different players. It allows you to actually "play" with gear - i.e. to try to optimize gear, you have, not just follow some obvious route, that is set in stone. But don't you think, that they went way too far with RNG, i.e. with taking control over your loot away from you, in Legion and BFA? Overall BFA - is xpack, where they crossed some red lines of unreasonable changes. Was it intentional change, just an experiment or mistake - I don't know. But they did it.

BfA had toned down rng from legion and didn't have uber retarded trinkets like arcanocrystal nor heartcrushing legiondaries farm. Corruption was kinda fun but it was just gear enchants. Nothing more.

And harvest crafting was exactly that, rng + full control.
The way I see it working in WoW

instead of anima you get epeen points, from all content, depending on time it takes. REGARDLESS of other loot, not instead of it.
For epeen points you can summon some boss that can whack your ass but is easy if you do mechanics.
that boss drop crafty orbs. Each orb got of random property changing like:
- add socket
- add red socket
- add haste
- add mastery
- remove haste/add mastery
- remove stamina
- add stamina hybrid avoidance
- add leech
- reroll value of haste
- reroll value of random stat

and so on.

Item Bases from various content with 6 tiers, higher tier = more powerful item but also require more epeen points to recraft. Similar to TF, mythic drops base tier 6, M+ and heroic T5 but can forge to T6.

Crafting perfect T1 would be essentially free, crafting perfect T6 would require effort of ~3-6 hour gameplay but you could make it decent in 30 minutes (90% of power).
Bases would have some random properties slapped in so crafting would vary from base to base.

But ultimately you could turn any trash into treasure.

[quite an expert in wow]

Here's my Christmas gift to you - you are fucking moron.

We have a clear path of gearing and instead of getting only one choice, you can work your way up to 9 options for max ilvl gear. Anyone who is serious about gearing and M+, runs at least 3-5 dungeons a week. And killing the few easiest HC bosses will give you another option to choose from. We have far less RNG to deal with now than in BfA.



- - - Updated - - -



Ran through S1 logs just now and either you have memory loss problems or you didn't play then.

just checked: he has memory loss problems

[Biomega]

The bad:
1. terrain is just malevolently designed to waste as much of your time as it possibly can to get from point A to point B
2. no mount use in the MaW - see 1.

100% agree, and this is probably the low-key most annoying thing for me in the entire expansion. Terrain feels OFFENSIVELY obnoxious, not just tricky to navigate but actively out to get you. It's like some F2P time-waster nonsense design, with no rhyme or reason.

7. Thorgast is just Horrific Visions 2.0. I find it boooring, more so because it's mandatory content

It's not quite at HV levels for me, but all things considered Torghast ended up a lot less interesting than I thought it would. Maybe it's my classes, but every run just feels the same. The level design changes but that's trivial, you don't actually DO different things. There's still all the same must-pick powers, and the same garbage-tier powers, and it doesn't really matter whether I'm in a hallway or on a walkway or whatever because the experience is fundamentally identical. There's more variation than HV and that makes it less of a mind-numbing chore, but I expected a lot more from it. Maybe I expected too much?

[Eggroll]

100% agree, and this is probably the low-key most annoying thing for me in the entire expansion. Terrain feels OFFENSIVELY obnoxious, not just tricky to navigate but actively out to get you. It's like some F2P time-waster nonsense design, with no rhyme or reason.

You know the worst part is that it makes me NOT want to get out in the world and explore. I really avoid doing open world stuff at the moment because of this obnoxious terrain design. I really DREAD going anywhere at all. It's just not fun.

And I don't think I'm alone with this... I hardly encounter players out in the world outside of quest spots.

So basically I just grind through the mandatory open world stuff and only do instanced content otherwise. Biding my time until flying is released....

[erifwodahs]

Please, do the math first. Having it capped to 100 M+ items and no duplicates means exactly 2/100.
Next week has the same chance. Meaning you can not get upgrade for entire tier if you are unlucky.
Also you can get always just belts. No duplicates doesn't mean not the same slot.

I was saying it was not pure RNG...
Let's say you put some limits on what you can get which already makes it non pure RNG (SL items - dungeon, raid and ranked pvp, you only get your class items)
Then you get only your selected spec. items - Non pure rng
You get specific ilvl items regarding to difficulty you participated in - non pure rng
You get items from the content you did
You don't get the same item
You can focus m+ for increased chance of an item dropping from specific dungeon.

Vault is heavily bound by rules and is the best thing we could have asked for.
It's like randomizing your playlist but before filter out the music style, then sub style then time period from which you want the songs and last thing you throw some songs in several times. How is that random? Do you meet your neighbor in the local grocery stop and wonder how random is to meet him there?

[oldgeezer]

The zones are tiny, claustrophobic and awful to navigate. Remember the Antoran Wastes? It's like that. This expansion irritates me more than anything else in WoW so far. Oh, and there's no flight whistle, because reasons.

The Covenant-associated borrowed powers and conduits are also extremely clunky. Anima needs to go. The 'tactical' mission table, especially, needs to go. Blizzard are throwing stuff at the wall at this stage. The Maw is just plain bad. It's a mess.

[Beefkow]

Let me counter your feelings with facts:
With TF you could get base item fast, and +15 was ~1% upgrade.

With current system you might be stuck with shit gear for over a month and next upgrade can randomly be 5%+ better

With current system all I have to do is get gladiator (which is near impossible atm) and upgrade your gear guaranteed to the max. I guess in pve you don't have a chance to get the max ilvl, unless you do mythic raids.

[heheszek]

As a pvper its Still too early to tell. Legion and bfa looked promising but it ended sad and boring. Mop started poorly but ended up being okish.
Its first time since cata and wotlk that i know exacly that i lost arena because i could play so much different. In previous expansions with 15 mins damp games it wasnt that clear. Even if i played alt at low mmr i felt there is no diff. Hits for 2% HP waiting for damp outplaying enemy wasnt rewarding enough - its more about 2s. In 3s its similar but not that hyperboled ... But its first time i can carry teammates if i do good plays and its so refreshing.
Wod legion and bfa felt like a golem fights u thought the fight is even but at some point it was for example assa rogue winning because of better toolkit(gushing xd). There is still a lot to improve like boomkin killing whole team with instant full moons convoke flying around.
Still players with better luck get gear and u are afraid of spending Ur cp cap because its so low every week. In wotlk for example high rating gave u tons of cp. and u needed it only for 5/5 set and weapons.. rest was available for honor

[WowIsDead64]

BfA had toned down rng from legion and didn't have uber retarded trinkets like arcanocrystal nor heartcrushing legiondaries farm. Corruption was kinda fun but it was just gear enchants. Nothing more.

And harvest crafting was exactly that, rng + full control.
The way I see it working in WoW

instead of anima you get epeen points, from all content, depending on time it takes. REGARDLESS of other loot, not instead of it.
For epeen points you can summon some boss that can whack your ass but is easy if you do mechanics.
that boss drop crafty orbs. Each orb got of random property changing like:
- add socket
- add red socket
- add haste
- add mastery
- remove haste/add mastery
- remove stamina
- add stamina hybrid avoidance
- add leech
- reroll value of haste
- reroll value of random stat

and so on.

Item Bases from various content with 6 tiers, higher tier = more powerful item but also require more epeen points to recraft. Similar to TF, mythic drops base tier 6, M+ and heroic T5 but can forge to T6.

Crafting perfect T1 would be essentially free, crafting perfect T6 would require effort of ~3-6 hour gameplay but you could make it decent in 30 minutes (90% of power).
Bases would have some random properties slapped in so crafting would vary from base to base.

But ultimately you could turn any trash into treasure.

For Blizzard critical moment, they constantly try to beat - is moment, when you actually reach your goal. It's good, when you can reach it within life time of content patch, so you can actually enjoy it for some time. But at the same time many players decide to take some rest from game at this point, because, while they're satisfied, they have nothing else to do. And while players themselves don't see any bad in this situation, Blizzard see it as bad, because it means losing subs for them. What they tried to do in Legion/BFA - is to make grind endless and therefore to make goal potentially unreachable. And while it's obvious solution, at the end it's bad one. Because players lose motivation to play game in this case. There is better solution, but they don't trust them. This includes leveling alts and some long term grinds, that aren't tied to player powers, such as mount grinds. But not all players like this kinds of content. And this is big problem for Blizzard.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

The only way I can see it totally flopping at this point is if they pull a WoD and just don't release much content for it over the course of 2 years and I just don't see that happening. SL seems to have the right stuff to be lumped on to the good expansion list when it comes to the more modern era of WoW.

[Castia]

I have no doubt the expansion is fun but for me personally I’ve quit for now. I’m just completely burned out of WoW and logging on to do daily chores is so unappealing.