9.0 General Discussion

[Orwell7]

[QUOTE=DemonDays;52093668]

In WotLK when sub numbers were at their peak?

Just RNG gear drops and a badge currency you could farm to buy deterministic pieces of loot. Seemed to work fine hey?

- - - Updated - - -

Hell yeah!
But they wanted more, like if 12 million subs wasn't enough. Fck capitalism and those sociopaths who design game elements via excel.

BfA would've been really good if a multi-tiered badge system was implemented.
And maybe let's get rid of this "new patch = gear reset" shitshow where top raiders forced to do splits with 7alts, grinding AZERITE FROM PREVIOUS RAIDS TO SCRAP FOR RESIDUM??
GTFO

Back "in the day", top-end raiders DID play the game 24/7 just like now, but didn't NEED to do splits, farm residuum, and.. to be honest.. We were ALL tilted when Nefarian was defeated with a lots of druids, but now?
Cloth/leather splits? How is this even possible ESPECIALLY when the design direction is.. oh, let me remember: to make classes DIFFERENT because they were too much alike? How are they different now if you can make a 30-man raid with 25 mages?

Blizzard did take a massive shit on it's most successful revenue source, absolutely disgusting.
A massive (12-14 boss) raid every 5-6 months, and maybe 2-3 little 3-5 boss raids every year. 7-10 new 5-man every 2-3 years.

And they would have been golden.
Nope, they decided to reinvent the wheel and guess what, its a disaster.

[Sondrelk]

That isn't even remotely true.

Now there is checklist type content that you need to do if you want to contribute well in raids.

Before you just had to get gear and maybe some gold for consumables.

Now?

AP, Azerite with perfect traits, Multiple insane Essence grinds, RNG Corruption traits, Island cap weekly, Mythic+ chest weekly, Conquest weekly, Cloak upgrade in Vision, Dailies for new Essence in Uldum/Vale, Farm Coaslescing Visions.

This line here is so wrong it honestly borders on parody, this is what i would say if i was trying to make someone sound stupid for saying Vanilla didnt have grinds.

You need AP, but if you are raiding you get quite a lot of AP, not a massive amount, but enough to manage a sensible baseline in comparision to the rest of the raid.
You do not need perfect Azerite traits unless you are a bleeding-edge raider who needs to squeeze every 0.1% DPS wherever they can.
None of the Essence grinds are "insane". They used to be fairly annoying, but then they nerfed it. Getting 3 essences takes basically no time, and 1 of them will even become legendary quality just by passive AP grind.
Corruptions are RNG, sure. But everyone gets what is a fairly decent corruption from the bracers, doing M+ gets you a free corrupted item each week, and the raid drops weapons with guaranteed corruptions.
Capping islands is only necessary if you are, again, the kind of bleeding edge raider whose every free moment in a raid tier is spent getting ready for the race.
M+ chest is far from necessary, if you do not enjoy it you can just as easily ignore it and your DPS won't suffer a massive blow in the grand scheme of things.
Conquest weekly is just the same as M+, only needed if you only feel validated by your ilvl, and even then i have not gotten a useable item from conquest ever in WoW, and i still reliably place at the top of DPS meters.
The only part of the cloak that is mandatory is the cloak itself, and that is a one and done thing, you can even skip most of it on alts.
Coalescing visions is also only necessary for upgrading the cloak.
Finally you get teh initial essence from doing the cloak quest, getting better essences is a grind, sure. But it also isnt necessary unless you want it to be.

The game has always worked teh same way. If you want to do good DPS you do the nominal amount of grind each week. If you want to do great DPS you do more grind, and if you want to do the kind of DPS that gets you into bleeding edge raiding guilds then you grind all day and theorycraft.
The only difference between then and now is that there are several barriers of entry. If you just want ot raid then you barely need to do much more than log in. If you want to do raiding at the highest level then you need to work for it. In Vanilla you had one option if you wanted to raid, and that was to grind. Whether that meant farming consumables, resist gear or attunements. At least now the grind is optional.

[Depakote]

Why do you feel sorry for people who like current WoW? Different people, different tastes. I for example hate classic WoW with a passion and would stop playing if they changed the game back to a classic experience. Doesn't mean that I like every design decision made in the past few years. But now that we have classic both "camps" can play the game they like without interfering.

Curious, what do you not like about Classic WoW?

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't really think there is a way to make world quests "fun". What you can do is make the surrounding systems more fun, add interesting movement abilities, random NPCs, and events. As we stand we have to accept that world quests and dailies will at some level be tedious.

I'm saying the way they give them out to you is so limited and I'd rather be having more to do in that regard to endgame stuff then just filling those WQ's up and be done. I'm not a fan of that and this isn't BFA's only fault, Legion suffered from that to.


Also please don't try and say somehow Wrath's gear aquisition was better. The community LOVED to bitch and moan about welfare gear and such, good grief it was terrible. I don't personally care but that was a big criticism back then. I am not gonna mind the RNG titanforging stuff(Cause me personally). I just mind when the stats on it aren't what I want and I can't control it to give me the stats I want.


If I could do that I would not care so much (Example: Weapon A is a sword it has Haste and Crit, thats what I want and that may change in Shadowlands. Weapon B is an axe that has Crit and Mastery, while nice crit mastery is kinda pointless for me since its alrady super high).


So yeah...if it seems like I'm asking for reforging coming back, I am. Yes yes I know people will continue to go on Wowhead/AMR to figure out whats best but...at least when you get gear drops you are still in control and not feel too crappy what you got can't be shitty forever.

[Sondrelk]

Curious, what do you not like about Classic WoW?

Just ot butt in here, personally i find the gameplay of Classic WoW to be slower than molasses, the raids to be boring and the grind unbearable. The only good point is that the levelling is better, but since i prefer raiding anyways it isnt for me.

[FlubberPuddy]

Their "test" system is worse than the previous system in every conceivable way. They claimed they were listening to feedback and then implemented a far more RNG heavy system in it's place.

Not in every conceivable way. If you wanna get a higher item lvl piece you gotta do more difficult content. This is a good thing. That's a separate issue from the tuning of corruption effects and the rng in obtaining them.

They added multiple extra layers of RNG and stupidly powerful items that go directly against what their OWN philosophy is - "You shouldn't be confused about whether an iLevel upgrade is actually an upgrade".

I think everyone's pretty much agreed upon how much of a shit show 8.3 has been and that it's very clear they just wanted to wrap up BFA as a whole so they can work on Shadowlands. All the blunder related to corruption is a part of that.

Ion is either a pathological liar or an actual monkey.

You decide.

I've already seen that video, which was before the corruption nerfs.

Listen, you're still blindly raging and acting as if I'm saying corruption is amazing and everyone should like it.

I've already posted elsewhere how it shouldn't require simply rng to obtain corruption and that players should be able to spend corrupted mementos to make items corrupt and not only cleanse its corruption to taper some of the rng involved and give players more control.

I've also said I don't think many people want to see corruption continue with shadowlands, I certainly don't, but that's not saying I want wf/tf back either. Both of these systems are not what I would prefer (which would be something a lot more deterministic and less rng heavy sans 'does item drop'). While it's better that higher ilvl gear now can only come from higher level content, I'm still not food of the whole negative/positive items for the long haul of an expansion.

And the fact that certain lower level items can have corruption effects that vastly overpower higher lvl items is a huge case of not enough QA/tuning done. This again follows from the fact that the devs for the most part are probably like "let's close out bfa asap so we can work on shadowlands" as evidence by a blizzard employee on twitter tweeting about how they can now fully focus on SL development and some gif with elsa being free or something like that.

Again, just chill on the blind rage, no one's saying corrupt is amazing. Is it better than wf/tf? in some ways yes, in some ways no. But I think more people are happy to see wf/tf gone and look forward to a new system iterated off of the corruption system (possibly) for shadowlands content.

And still I have not seen anywhere that the corruption system as is right now is going to be the same in shadowlands.

[DemonDays]

[QUOTE=Orwell7;52093691]

In WotLK when sub numbers were at their peak?

Just RNG gear drops and a badge currency you could farm to buy deterministic pieces of loot. Seemed to work fine hey?

- - - Updated - - -

Hell yeah!
But they wanted more, like if 12 million subs wasn't enough. Fck capitalism and those sociopaths who design game elements via excel.

BfA would've been really good if a multi-tiered badge system was implemented.
And maybe let's get rid of this "new patch = gear reset" shitshow where top raiders forced to do splits with 7alts, grinding AZERITE FROM PREVIOUS RAIDS TO SCRAP FOR RESIDUM??
GTFO

Back "in the day", top-end raiders DID play the game 24/7 just like now, but didn't NEED to do splits, farm residuum, and.. to be honest.. We were ALL tilted when Nefarian was defeated with a lots of druids, but now?
Cloth/leather splits? How is this even possible ESPECIALLY when the design direction is.. oh, let me remember: to make classes DIFFERENT because they were too much alike? How are they different now if you can make a 30-man raid with 25 mages?

Blizzard did take a massive shit on it's most successful revenue source, absolutely disgusting.
A massive (12-14 boss) raid every 5-6 months, and maybe 2-3 little 3-5 boss raids every year. 7-10 new 5-man every 2-3 years.

And they would have been golden.
Nope, they decided to reinvent the wheel and guess what, its a disaster.

Remember when you could reasonably play an alt? I remember. It actually made me play the game more. Instead of logging onto an alt and looking at the multiple grinds I need to re-do. Doing shitty WQ rep farm content that I've already done to ad-nauseum on my main.


The hilarious thing is they had a working system in MoP. It worked flawlessly.

Warforge = 5 ilevel.
Titan = 10 ilevel.

Didn't get an RNG bonus? Well your normal item drop has a 0/2 upgrade path.

You can farm points to spend to upgrade your item to Titanforge status so you can match the guy that got lucky at the Casino.

You can also use those points on gear upgrades. Deterministic ones.

Oh and you can also reforge stats.


AMAZING.

Nah let's scrap it all in favour of a Casino. Game definitely hasn't changed hey?

[Depakote]

Just ot butt in here, personally i find the gameplay of Classic WoW to be slower than molasses, the raids to be boring and the grind unbearable. The only good point is that the levelling is better, but since i prefer raiding anyways it isnt for me.

That's a bit confusing. You say the leveling is better but it's slow. Can you elaborate on that? Also if the raids were boring it wouldn't have spawned the next expansion.

[Sondrelk]

I'm saying the way they give them out to you is so limited and I'd rather be having more to do in that regard to endgame stuff then just filling those WQ's up and be done. I'm not a fan of that and this isn't BFA's only fault, Legion suffered from that to.

Again, i think that is a problem more with the game, not the system. WoW is not the kind of game that can really support gameplay outside daily does of stuff. 8.3 has the pseudo-WQs that have shared progression, but even those are just a different spin on world quests, they are more interesting than World Quests, but in the end they would create teh same problems we encounter with World Quests if they become the new norm.

[Dracullus]

We will know when Shadowlands releases in April. Imo, the very end of April.

Oh God, no. They shoot themselves in the foot when they released BfA date so early. Date should be revealed at least midway through Beta, when game is more or less complete.

[DemonDays]

Not in every conceivable way. If you wanna get a higher item lvl piece you gotta do more difficult content. This is a good thing. That's a separate issue from the tuning of corruption effects and the rng in obtaining them.


I think everyone's pretty much agreed upon how much of a shit show 8.3 has been and that it's very clear they just wanted to wrap up BFA as a whole so they can work on Shadowlands. All the blunder related to corruption is a part of that.


I've already seen that video, which was before the corruption nerfs.

Listen, you're still blindly raging and acting as if I'm saying corruption is amazing and everyone should like it.

I've already posted elsewhere how it shouldn't require simply rng to obtain corruption and that players should be able to spend corrupted mementos to make items corrupt and not only cleanse its corruption to taper some of the rng involved and give players more control.

I've also said I don't think many people want to see corruption continue with shadowlands, I certainly don't, but that's not saying I want wf/tf back either. Both of these systems are not what I would prefer (which would be something a lot more deterministic and less rng heavy sans 'does item drop'). While it's better that higher ilvl gear now can only come from higher level content, I'm still not food of the whole negative/positive items for the long haul of an expansion.

And the fact that certain lower level items can have corruption effects that vastly overpower higher lvl items is a huge case of not enough QA/tuning done. This again follows from the fact that the devs for the most part are probably like "let's close out bfa asap so we can work on shadowlands" as evidence by a blizzard employee on twitter tweeting about how they can now fully focus on SL development and some gif with elsa being free or something like that.

Again, just chill on the blind rage, no one's saying corrupt is amazing. Is it better than wf/tf? in some ways yes, in some ways no. But I think more people are happy to see wf/tf gone and look forward to a new system iterated off of the corruption system (possibly) for shadowlands content.

And still I have not seen anywhere that the corruption system as is right now is going to be the same in shadowlands.

No. You don't get to make excuses and neither does Ion.

8.3 was on the PTR for 6 months. Six. Months.

It still released like this.

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Oh God, no. They shoot themselves in the foot when they released BfA date so early. Date should be revealed at least midway through Beta, when game is more or less complete.

Anyone advocating for a release before November is crazy.

BfA was a rushed mess of an expansion that they brought FORWARD a month.

We have multiple reports from Blizzcon that they are incredibly behind on Shadowlands.

8.3 is clearly a rushed content patch with not much in it because they've pulled everyone onto Shadowlands.



Anything before November will be a shit show.

[Sondrelk]

That's a bit confusing. You say the leveling is better but it's slow. Can you elaborate on that? Also if the raids were boring it wouldn't have spawned the next expansion.

The levelling is more integral to the experience. Endgame does not begin when you reach max level, instead it begins somewhere in teh 50s range. The talent system is also a part that helps it, since each level brings a more tangible sense of advancement it allows each level to feel meaningful in a way not possible with the current amount of levels in BfA.
The raids are boring compared to today, rather. I am sure they were the highlight of the MMO genre as a whole back when WoW first reared its head, but by todays standard they are barely different from an elite outdoor area that drops good loot. Raids today are more of a structured challenge where you start with easy bosses, then rise up in complexity until you hit the final boss. Each boss is also an opportunity for the instance devs to create an entirely new way to approach a boss beyond the usual "hit it till it dies" mentality, with recent ones like Xanesh requiring players to move that ball into the goal, or the team as a whole having to communicate to defeat Prophet Skitra.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Mindless raging isn't going to change anything

gain, i think that is a problem more with the game, not the system. WoW is not the kind of game that can really support gameplay outside daily does of stuff. 8.3 has the pseudo-WQs that have shared progression, but even those are just a different spin on world quests, they are more interesting than World Quests, but in the end they would create teh same problems we encounter with World Quests if they become the new norm.

Honestly I think they need to just put up more so you should still be able to do these types of quests and or activities out there and Wow is a game that can do that. Its just been a bit of a problem for a few years now and Blizzard hasn't exactly fixed that problem. I know it can be done.

[Depakote]

The levelling is more integral to the experience. Endgame does not begin when you reach max level, instead it begins somewhere in teh 50s range. The talent system is also a part that helps it, since each level brings a more tangible sense of advancement it allows each level to feel meaningful in a way not possible with the current amount of levels in BfA.
The raids are boring compared to today, rather. I am sure they were the highlight of the MMO genre as a whole back when WoW first reared its head, but by todays standard they are barely different from an elite outdoor area that drops good loot. Raids today are more of a structured challenge where you start with easy bosses, then rise up in complexity until you hit the final boss. Each boss is also an opportunity for the instance devs to create an entirely new way to approach a boss beyond the usual "hit it till it dies" mentality, with recent ones like Xanesh requiring players to move that ball into the goal, or the team as a whole having to communicate to defeat Prophet Skitra.

Ok, so about the part of about the raids.. What makes a good raid? Good loot or good story building up to the raid? I'd like to think the latter.

[Sondrelk]

Mindless raging isn't going to change anything




Honestly I think they need to just put up more so you should still be able to do these types of quests and or activities out there and Wow is a game that can do that. Its just been a bit of a problem for a few years now and Blizzard hasn't exactly fixed that problem. I know it can be done.

If we blindly add more stuff then we migth inadvertently fuel the people for whom restraint is not an applicable concept. It would have to be a kind of system where you can only do so many dailies/world quests a day, which again will make the drive to do the mevery day until you burn out all the worse for some people.
WoW is in many ways a case study in what happens when gamers are left to grind freely. Some will do the amount they are comfortable with, but some will crash and burn trying to do everything. I should know, since i was that kind of person until fairly recently.

As i mentioned before, the only real solution i can see is variance. Making teh surrounding systems more intriguing in such a way that the players hopefully never burns out on a specific type of content like "kill X amount of Y", or "Gather 20 bear asses".

[Aeluron Lightsong]

If we blindly add more stuff then we migth inadvertently fuel the people for whom restraint is not an applicable concept. It would have to be a kind of system where you can only do so many dailies/world quests a day, which again will make the drive to do the mevery day until you burn out all the worse for some people.
WoW is in many ways a case study in what happens when gamers are left to grind freely. Some will do the amount they are comfortable with, but some will crash and burn trying to do everything. I should know, since i was that kind of person until fairly recently.

As i mentioned before, the only real solution i can see is variance. Making teh surrounding systems more intriguing in such a way that the players hopefully never burns out on a specific type of content like "kill X amount of Y", or "Gather 20 bear asses".

I get that, but the current system as is, even the most casual player could just do them and be done for the day.. I'm not asking for anything super hardcore grinding no. Just a little bit more.

[Sondrelk]

Ok, so about the part of about the raids.. What makes a good raid? Good loot or good story building up to the raid? I'd like to think the latter.

What makes a raid great is a combination of everything. Length, variance (both visual and mechanical), story and difficulty.
G'huun was not as fun a boss as Argus the Unmaker because while it was more interesting mechanically, the difficulty was way off, and the investment and story was not there.
Siege of Orgrimmar is more interesting than Ny'alotha because while it has more filler bosses and is one of the most linear raids we have, the story and thematic variance is great.

Good loot is quite secondary. It is nice to have good loot, but very few people care about how much better an item is than another. More people care about how fun the items are to use, or how good the items look for transmog. Which to me falls under variance, being why raid loot was much more exciting after MoP.

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I get that, but the current system as is, even the most casual player could just do them and be done for the day.. I'm not asking for anything super hardcore grinding no. Just a little bit more.

Personally i feel the daily amount is quite spot on this patch. Mostly because the expansion is tructured in such a way that even technically old content like emissaries are worth going back to.

[DemonDays]

If we blindly add more stuff then we migth inadvertently fuel the people for whom restraint is not an applicable concept. It would have to be a kind of system where you can only do so many dailies/world quests a day, which again will make the drive to do the mevery day until you burn out all the worse for some people.
WoW is in many ways a case study in what happens when gamers are left to grind freely. Some will do the amount they are comfortable with, but some will crash and burn trying to do everything. I should know, since i was that kind of person until fairly recently.

As i mentioned before, the only real solution i can see is variance. Making teh surrounding systems more intriguing in such a way that the players hopefully never burns out on a specific type of content like "kill X amount of Y", or "Gather 20 bear asses".

Or you know. They could just put slightly more effort in?

WoWs world content boils down to World Quests. Which are just repeated quests you did during the levelling process. That's it.

Oh wait sorry that's not it. They also have "Invasions"...... Which are just more World Quests.

[Sondrelk]

Or you know. They could just put slightly more effort in?

WoWs world content boils down to World Quests. Which are just repeated quests you did during the levelling process. That's it.

Oh wait sorry that's not it. They also have "Invasions"...... Which are just more World Quests.

Usually with posts like these you are supposed to give an example of the kind of content that wouldnt be world quests.

Do you want dailies? Pseudo-world quests like in Uldum and Vale? An ocean of rares to kill each day? Mechagon style world quests where you get one a day? 8.3 Invasions where you fill up a bar then boss?

There are world quests that contain things you did not do during levelling, like the Pengling sleeding quests, Tortollan emissary quests and gathering azerite.

The problem is all of these are susceptible of the same problem that currently plagues the emissaries and such. Once you do the same quests over and over they start to become boring.

[Nathanyel]

I just love it when the fanboys go 15 years back to use as a comparison. As if the game shouldn't have improved since then.

I didn't just jump to Vanilla, I (obviously) meant that RNG has been a major part of WoW since Vanilla. I didn't list every specific expansion because honestly, not much changed in the high end of things. Loot still involves luck, and top dps etc. involves keeping an eye on trinket procs and the like. Yes, even in MoP (when, coincidentally, Elite/Thunderforging/Warforging was introduced)