Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Makabreska]

Ppl focused on DF a lot, but how is season 4 gonna work for guilds on lower schedule like 4/3 days? Having a progression week once in 3 weeks? Or will all guilds just not bother with season 4?

This is purely a 4fun season. No CE, no pressure. Would not be surprised if they'd make raids much easier so peeps can have fun.

[Nyel]

How is what's announced with DF any lesser than lets say Classic, TBC or Wotlk?

It's not, but why would we compare a 2022 expansion to one from 2007 or 2008? Players have changed and so has the game. In that regard the design has changed as well. Back to the roots for basic systems makes a lot of sense, because it's less wasted work. Problematic is the lack of ambition Blizzard is showing in Dragonflight by pruning stuff and removing it completely instead of finding ways to implement it better. What they do in Dragonflight looks good, in parts great. But it won't be enough. That's the problem. Players have been spoilt in the last three expansions by rewards at max level that were not just gear or cosmetics. Dragonflight reduces the entire max level experience to a bare minimum while making better gear the only stuff that matters - I thought we moved past that point, but I might be wrong.

If they do not offer worthwile rewards next to gear, stuff players can farm or grind to change their gameplay, their experience or whatever, people will just stop playing. You cannot give us too much stuff (good or bad) to do and then reduce it to 0 and expect players to love it. This is like their approach of dailies from MoP to WoD. It backfired. And this will backfire as well. Instead of catering to the extremes (Shadowlands being the most overloaded expansion when it comes to system to Dragonflight shaping up the be the most basic expansion when it comes to systems) they should find a balance. But now, it's either do or die, nothing in between. This hurt them so many times already, I don't understand why they are making this mistake again.

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It's no about that. It needs testing, but it's also 'safe' and not controversial.

Pretty much this. Talent trees won't cause any controversy by their inherent design. There's nothing that could go wrong here and that's why the small amount of testing that's needed for this can be achieved fast and easily. And if not in alpha/beta, there's enough time to adjust talents when DF is live. It's such a basic concept, you don't break anything like Blizzard could with Covenants.

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I think it's insane that so many people truly believe that Dragonflight doesn't need to be tested much.

I mean, they're revamping the talent system into a tree, which is a lot more complex and can change the classes and the overall gameplay dramatically. The talent tree can end up being more challenging to balance than any borrowed power we had previously.

No it can't, just look at the trees. Most talents already exist. The few ones they brought back or the even fewer ones that are new - based on what we saw with Druid and DK - are so negligible that they cannot break anything. And even if, Blizzard still can make paths end or make them mutually exclusive or whatever.

It's so easy to fix a talent tree by just shifting talents around. You chose the path with two hefty cooldowns? That's too OP? Easy, give them the same treatment as usable trinkets or whatever. It's easy to prevent such situations and it's even easier to fix them alone by the fact that there are barely any dependencies.

If there are talents too strong to be combined, make them the bottom choices of each tree that restrict themselves by not being able to unlock both of them. Make them a choose A or B talent like they already did. So many ways of preventing problematic situations.

[Ferlion]

The thing is, new talents combine majority of those external systems into one and make them interact directly. So I don't think it is easier.

Even if we set aside most of these talents being pre-existing things...

The sheer fact that external systems are now internal removes a lot of that issues and fear. Because it's all one system.

You don't have to worry about some random missed bracket or decimal point that has a piece of equipment interacting with this completely different system that causes a reduction or amplification in effectiveness. You don't have to worry about a piece of gear increasing something by 10% because it's looking at the entire talent systems scaling that says it also increases an abilities effectiveness by 100% and turning it into a 1000% increase because someone missed an interaction somewhere.

The more systems and pieces of something you have, the more points of interaction you have, the more chances of a bad interaction you have.

[tumbleweed010]

I think it's insane that so many people truly believe that Dragonflight doesn't need to be tested much.

That's because it actually doesn't need much testing?

Talent trees have already been broken down why they essentially require the bare minimum of testing.

Crafting system needs testing.

Reputation moving towards reknown doesn't require testing since it's using the existing reknown infrastructure over the base reputation you'd normally see. Functionally the same but visually different is all.

The biggest changes are the talent trees and crafting system and only one of those requires actual testing. Assuming Blizzard didn't lie back in April that they're ahead of schedule/further along in development compared to past expansions, 5 months of testing is plenty.

[Revamp Man]

At the same time I hope there is something for my alts to do than repeat the same content.

Undoubtedly but the question is how much because I don't think there's been much variety recently

[Chickat]

I think there's a world of difference between expressing concern/curiosity at how much content it may have versus pretending like you definitively *know* and saying something like, "it doesn't have any content."

You're conflating your intentional pessimism with people wondering if it will be short on content at launch. Disingenuous at best.

Plus they said they began work on Dragflight earlier than past expansions.

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Just like every pre-borrowed power expansion had no content.

MoP didn't have borrowed power and had plenty of content. I think DF will be MoP tier levels of content tbh.

[cordrann]

I think it's insane that so many people truly believe that Dragonflight doesn't need to be tested much.

I mean, they're revamping the talent system into a tree, which is a lot more complex and can change the classes and the overall gameplay dramatically. The talent tree can end up being more challenging to balance than any borrowed power we had previously.

The new crafting system can also make or break the game if it's not tested and implemented correctly, there's a reason why crafting in WoW was irrelevant for so many years.

Also, let's not forget the new reputation system, which while they said is based on renown, players have no clue of how exactly it's gonna work with reputations.

And there are also the bugs, yeah, did you guys forget how bad the Battle for Azeroth launch was due to bugs not fixed in beta?
The "Beta for Azeroth" meme happened for a reason, and this was before all the RNG bloat, AP, Azerite Gear, Essences, Corruption, and the endless grind problems.

I mean, come on guys, this is not pessimism, it's just awareness of what happened in the last four years...

The talent trees will be significantly easier to balance than the current systems. It is a single self contained system instead of 3-4 stacked ones. The balance between talents within a given tree may be dog shit, which is to be expected if you've played wow for any length of time, but in terms of spec parity the classes should be the easiest to balance they have been since WoD. Besides, if the current (lingering) state of aoe dps balance is any indication, Blizzard doesn't give a flying fuck about class balance anymore.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The talent trees will be significantly easier to balance than the current systems. It is a single self contained system instead of 3-4 stacked ones. The balance between talents within a given tree may be dog shit, which is to be expected if you've played wow for any length of time, but in terms of spec parity the classes should be the easiest to balance they have been since WoD. Besides, if the current (lingering) state of aoe dps balance is any indication, Blizzard doesn't give a flying fuck about class balance anymore.

Obviously they care about class balance. But ok dude.

[Revamp Man]

Ppl focused on DF a lot, but how is season 4 gonna work for guilds on lower schedule like 4/3 days? Having a progression week once in 3 weeks? Or will all guilds just not bother with season 4?

Season 4 is essentially just gearing

[cordrann]

Obviously they care about class balance. But ok dude.

Then how do you explain a 50% delta that's existed for months at this point?

[ExiHext]

Can you answer why specific content needs 6+ months of testing in order to be good? And why that testing can't occur faster?

Because historically Blizz is really slow in fixing things. As a paladin main believe me, I know the pain of adressing the same problem week over week over week again.

[Ersula]

Talent trees have already been broken down why they essentially require the bare minimum of testing.

Balancing combat abilities, both passive & active require the MOST testing actually. Most of these abilities are coming back from previous iterations of the game so that takes a bit of the edge off but the actual values need extensive testing. I think they'll be able to handle it but the statement the new talent trees would require "the bare minimum" is just absurd. About 15% of those previewed Death Knight passives are completely new.

Then how do you explain a 50% delta that's existed for months at this point?

Considering the history of this game? There's been a lot of specs that have been completely irrelevant for entire expansions. You might be looking at DPS rankings for Sepulcher but you need to keep it in context; the difference in dps among classes are actually the lowest they've ever been. The ilevel squish in 9.0 makes 50% seem like a huge swing but it's really not.

[Sondrelk]

Season 4 is essentially just gearing

It does have its own set of rewards, so unless guilds are solely raid progression focused it's going to be hard to ignore the decently hefty rewards.

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Then how do you explain a 50% delta that's existed for months at this point?

It's down to looking at one specific type of damage, primarily stemming from a set bonus, which itself is from the last raid, end of expansions further having a reputation for throwing balance out the window in the name of fun.

Some classes will always dominate in certain patches depending on damage type and unique power gains. Expecting perfect parity in all forms of content at all times is not just unrealistic, it's downright antithetical to class diversity.

[klaps_05]

With the class talents being so incredibly late and practically just your current abilities you have to pick up, this leaves little to no hope for actual class revamps and fixes, despite a ton of complaints on a lot of specs.

[Skildar]

I'm wondering if not testing the last three bosses of the Sepulcher encouraged the team to limit a bit more from public testing the competitive content

[Nymrohd]

With the class talents being so incredibly late and practically just your current abilities you have to pick up, this leaves little to no hope for actual class revamps and fixes, despite a ton of complaints on a lot of specs.

What do you mean? Practically ever spec is getting an effective revamp. Tbh until numbers are down and simulations start running, we have no idea how far from current builds the trees might land. And they could land very far.

[Sondrelk]

With the class talents being so incredibly late and practically just your current abilities you have to pick up, this leaves little to no hope for actual class revamps and fixes, despite a ton of complaints on a lot of specs.

Basically all classes and specs that are dependent on talents for their core rotation is effectively getting a revamp.

[Lady Atia]

I'm wondering if not testing the last three bosses of the Sepulcher encouraged the team to limit a bit more from public testing the competitive content

I honestly hope they are using 9.2/9.2.5 ptr's as formula for future testing. 9.2 testing felt like it took ages to launch but we got 95% of it's content with the first build iirc. Maybe that's the reason alpha is so late because they don't want too much unfinished stuff that may or may not even make it into the final game?

Regarding testing of competitive content - Lihuvim, Halondrus and Anduin all had far more tuning issues than the last three bosses, meanwhile the last wing didn't had any glaring bugs besides maybe the last phase of Mythic Jailer but that wouldn't have been tested anyways. I really hope they continue this together with the encryption of any story. It felt so much better to discover both the last bosses aswell as the lordaeron questline together with anyone else instead of reading about it on wowhead or seeing it on a half-finished ptr.

[micwini]

News today? Otherwise ill be really worried and expecting it to release in..... in.... well.... december 2022! Fuck.

[Hyrja]

Maybe some news next week? its been weeks now since we've had any info (pre orders wasnt news)