Systems in WoW

[ashblond]

The game has been more and more complicated and confusing over the years.

Back in Vanilla/TBC/Wrath, players used outside source/3rd party websites for talents, rotations, stats priority. And that’s it.

Even Elitist Jerks most crazy theory crafting days were not as ridiculous as today’s wowhead, icy-veins guides.

What players really hate about today’s systems is that they are unnecessarily over-complicated. Some says “you don’t need to do it if you just play it casually”. It may be the case back in pre-Legion days, but not anymore.

Today’s systems are so confusing and not self-explanatory, that most players can’t find any meaningful information in game. Even for the most casual players, it is just easier to check 3rd party guides for best pve/pvp talents, covenant, soulbinds, conduits, legendary, shard, and other millions of systems.

Systems were meant to be refreshing, meaningful and fun. But when they are so complicated and confusing, players will stop to care about them instead.

WoW has become a game of checking 3rd party website guides and sims.

[Qnubi]

The fact that we have an actual business building around these systems speaks volume how convoluted and overblown WoW has become. Yes, that's right. People pay money to have 3rd party tools min/max their character because doing it alone takes way too much time or is simply impossible for the average player, especially if you are not a hardcore player. No wonder more simpler systems in Classic/TBC or even FF14 are on the rise, players are sick of dozens of systems interacting with each-other. Gear and meaningful stats should be enough for depth. Personally I felt that reforging was the sweet spot together with gear, talents and glyphs. That should have been the end and just polish and flesh out the system to perfection. Now we have talents, covenants, legendaries, gear, domination sockets, soulbinds AND conduits. That are 7 systems to keep track of, you can not do any meaningful decision anymore with so much math and systems all pulling at each-other. Back to basics, more depth to the basics.

[Soikona]

I am old, I miss the days of getting my BiS list, finishing the last boss and being done. Follow that with a break for a few weeks maybe a month before next tier. With everything now, it makes that impossible which seems to have more of a burn out on me than ever.

[justandulas]

In their quest to gain MAU engagement to cover falling subs, what they’ve really done is engineer fun out of the game

Nobody in their right mind wants WoW to become seasonal like d3 or destiny 2… except the WoW devs themselves

Why even have expansions (besides the obvious box sale) if the game is to forever live in the “play the patch” mindset?

[Smallfruitbat]

I enjoyed the artefact weapons, a talent tree that I knew I would eventually max out. There was an optimal path, but it had an end point. I didn't care about maxing out the last trait, I was just happy to unlock it. Beyond that, the Netherlight crucible and everything beyond added unnecessary complication for me.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Min maxing is Sololy a player made issue none of the systems blizzard has added to the game are above a grade school level of complication but instead of players thinking for them selfs or picking what’s fun they want what’s optimal which in lies the need to use 3rd party sites.

[Smallfruitbat]

Min maxing is Sololy a player made issue none of the systems blizzard has added to the game are above a grade school level of complication but instead of players thinking for them selfs or picking what’s fun they want what’s optimal which in lies the need to use 3rd party sites.

I'm sure players would love to play around with the systems and 'think for themselves' swapping things in and out if Blizzard didn't put limits on such things. Conduit energy is marginally better than the ridiculous gating on talent resets on Azerite armour but its still restrictive.

[MrLachyG]

I am old, I miss the days of getting my BiS list, finishing the last boss and being done. Follow that with a break for a few weeks maybe a month before next tier. With everything now, it makes that impossible which seems to have more of a burn out on me than ever.

I mean to be fair you can still do exactly that this expac. Legion and BfA you couldn't because it was an endless power grind but the grind here is not the same at all because it's all cosmetic

[Menog]

The systems in wow are garbage. They were really well implemented and actually fucking amazing in Legion because you had an entire expansion built on them and when they were removed it was devastating and made no sense.

In bfa the "new system" was terrible and they should had just scratched it but no... they actually went all in on this new expansion and it just sucks ass.

Why don't they just remove all this crap and turn the game simple as it was (sortoff anyway) is beyond me. No one is pleased with this.

Min maxing is Sololy a player made issue none of the systems blizzard has added to the game are above a grade school level of complication but instead of players thinking for them selfs or picking what’s fun they want what’s optimal which in lies the need to use 3rd party sites.

I tottaly disagree with you. The amount of ridiculous systems on top of systems is a development problem. Conduits that drop and RNG conduit upgrade if u use a currency but at the same time that currency can be used on creating sockets but now the sockets are new sockets thats called domination socket that can be placed in some places but legendarys ... its ridiculous. Why even implement something like this?

[Dejiko]

Retail and Classic are more or less different games, it should be apparent to most by now
that the design direction behind each is vastly different.

Should an MMO like WoW have all these systems?
Should it have seasons?
Should there be such a focus on esports?

Daily quests have been in the game for a long time now, but they used to serve a function
beyond simply offering rewards.
The molten front comes to mind, your base of operations actually expanded,
the enviroment changed, you got access to different and new quests as you helped out
the faction associated with the quests.

The Argent tournament had it`s own story, incorporated different gameplay elements like jousting
and offered racially themed rewards for improving your standing with different horde/alliance
groups.

Daily quests now offer better rewards in terms of improving player power sure, but they are disconnected and mostly just reward you with gear,gold,anima and conduits, good things to have
but does a world quest really matter if you just go where the best rewards are offered instead of
acting on a feeling of being invested in what`s happening?

Often when you read interviews done with Ion it reads like a dissertation rather than
a conversation.

I feel the systems are more a symptoms of the games age than anything else, judging by the feedback many people strongly dislike them, yet they are added with every single expansion now in greater numbers.

Most of what WoW offers is offered in greater quality elsewhere honestly
RPG elements? ESO
Professions, sideactivities and narrative? FFXIV
Amount of content vs time/money invested? GW2

Granted it`subjective in some regard but WoW benefits from it`s longstanding legacy now, not
necessarily the quality of the game.

[ZazuuPriest]

so the tldr of your rambling nonsense is basically

Back in the day there weren't as many system but people needed to use 3rd party sources, the game was good

Today there are some systems but people need to use 3rd party sources, the game is bad

[TheLucky1]

It's not the depth or amount but the unnecessary complexity that's mindboggling to me.

Just look at crafting rank 5 and 6 legendarys right now, reading the wowhead guide cleared things up fast, but why even do it like that??

[Soikona]

I mean to be fair you can still do exactly that this expac. Legion and BfA you couldn't because it was an endless power grind but the grind here is not the same at all because it's all cosmetic

You can’t, not with some BIS gear coming from the vault. There are dungeons pieces that are better than raids. For example, all of S1 of SL I was waiting on the phial trinket, and never got it from the vault. Some weeks I did over 10 dungeons for max vault loot but every week was at least 4. It’s loot table is too large to even consider a BiS list.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I'm sure players would love to play around with the systems and 'think for themselves' swapping things in and out if Blizzard didn't put limits on such things. Conduit energy is marginally better than the ridiculous gating on talent resets on Azerite armour but its still restrictive.

Conduit energy sucks sure but the problem obviously isn’t limited to just conduits people don’t want to think about any thing no matter how swappable it is, even the op complains about talents and pvp talents which you can mess around with all you want.

- - - Updated - - -

I tottaly disagree with you. The amount of ridiculous systems on top of systems is a development problem. Conduits that drop and RNG conduit upgrade if u use a currency but at the same time that currency can be used on creating sockets but now the sockets are new sockets thats called domination socket that can be placed in some places but legendarys ... its ridiculous. Why even implement something like this?

The difference between upgrading conduits isn’t huge overly worrying about it is of course a min max issue thus a player created one.

As to why implement something like that, choice. If you want to try and gamble for an update to be closer to optimal you can it’s your choice, if you want sockets to try and push from stat break point go for it. It’s not at all a development issue having choice is never a bad thing unless you cant choose for your self.

[ashblond]

The fact that we have an actual business building around these systems speaks volume how convoluted and overblown WoW has become. Yes, that's right. People pay money to have 3rd party tools min/max their character because doing it alone takes way too much time or is simply impossible for the average player, especially if you are not a hardcore player. No wonder more simpler systems in Classic/TBC or even FF14 are on the rise, players are sick of dozens of systems interacting with each-other. Gear and meaningful stats should be enough for depth. Personally I felt that reforging was the sweet spot together with gear, talents and glyphs. That should have been the end and just polish and flesh out the system to perfection. Now we have talents, covenants, legendaries, gear, domination sockets, soulbinds AND conduits. That are 7 systems to keep track of, you can not do any meaningful decision anymore with so much math and systems all pulling at each-other. Back to basics, more depth to the basics.

100% agree.

Today's Blizzard spends so much time in balancing and changing the systems, but rarely tweaking the basics anymore.

Nowadays, we rarely see class talents or abilities balancing in patch notes, but tons of changes in systems (covenants, soulbinds, legendaries, conduits, etc.)

A big problem is that, when things are made and balanced around a temporary borrowed power system, they have to be redesigned every expansion or patch.

Instead of removing borrowed power and balancing the game at its basics, Blizzard adds more systems to balance out existing systems.

A never ending vicious circle.

[Azerate]

I don't have a problem with complicated systems in a game, if I don't care to study them myself, there's plenty of guides on the internet written by people who figured it out. It's been like that since Wrath and I never had any issues with it.

[Lolites]

I don't have a problem with complicated systems in a game, if I don't care to study them myself, there's plenty of guides on the internet written by people who figured it out. It's been like that since Wrath and I never had any issues with it.

if you consider cookie cutter talent builds its been like that since vanila

[Chickenfing]

You can’t, not with some BIS gear coming from the vault. There are dungeons pieces that are better than raids. For example, all of S1 of SL I was waiting on the phial trinket, and never got it from the vault. Some weeks I did over 10 dungeons for max vault loot but every week was at least 4. It’s loot table is too large to even consider a BiS list.

That is cherry picking the only piece of your BIS that is difficult to get though. This is a specific example because it is a trinket from a dungeon that has no other equivalent options. Even still, just spam plaguefall, get a phial and upgrade it to 220 via valor. Believe me, there is literally 0 difference between a 220 phial and a 226 phial that is going to affect you.

[Garretdejiko]

Legendaries are cool, but you have to run Boreghast, which now has its own talent tree lmao. Renown is fine, but it's heavily timegated. Domination armor and sockets are a cool concept, but they conflict with a previous system and doesn't feel finished at all. The amount of system is not overwhelming on itself for me. It's the way they are implemented, overcomplicated and attached to unfun gameplay what makes them a spit in the face to the players. Od course a sizeable part of the playerbase recieves said spit with eyes closed and open mouth.
The KSM change, Torghast rank system which dictates if you are able to access the next layer (not sure how does that work honestly), Korthia lol. It's fucking raining saliva lately. At least they acknowledged how boring Torghast was and cut down an entire floor

[Soikona]

That is cherry picking the only piece of your BIS that is difficult to get though. This is a specific example because it is a trinket from a dungeon that has no other equivalent options. Even still, just spam plaguefall, get a phial and upgrade it to 220 via valor. Believe me, there is literally 0 difference between a 220 phial and a 226 phial that is going to affect you.

It’s not cherry picking though, it’s just one example. Its the same thing for a piece of armour with stats that are more suited. BiS is impossible now, and always will be due to low ilvl drops outside of the vault. Well, maybe not impossible but more unlikely compared to WoD and before.