How can we help DEVS? (and all of us)

[bakibuki]

Instead of saying how bad and only complain about the fact wow isn't your game anymore, id like people to share their real and honest opinion on what they might have liked about BFA, and even better, what they didn't LIKE BUT proposing as well what they would like to see instead of it, and how they would solve it. This could be interesting and constructive for helping the wow designers to chose the right directions the majority of the people is seeking for.

EDIT: Lets say "game designers" instead of "devs", I made this post because im LEGIT CURIOUS about seeing the possible solutions the veterans of this forum have to provide for a potentially better WOW Today. The old expansions are coming back, so no reason to say "should be the same how it was back in XXX, YYY." Id like to see what you guys DONT like and HOW you would fix it. Obviously this won't change much, but I think it could be a positive discussion on trying to say what we really would LIKE.


Overall:
What shocked me this expansion, was the fact I was forced to stop playing certain content because my class, wasn't anymore available for it (Hunter in RBG, compared to Legion). I was really shocked initially because I never experienced something so sad, aka passing from a GOOD class for a certain content to a total 0 useless one on it. This pushed me to focus and play M+. I had A LOT of fun doing M+, improving at it and so on until I realised that once again, since my class was "good" but not "AMAZING" like some others, my progress simply stopped and couldn't go further. So thats when I said to myself, ok lets focus on PVP, and on pvp my class was performing decently, did my glad and so on for 2 seasons so I was like "ok thats funny but, thats not really what I want to do because I feel no real reward for DOING high pvp and use it for excel on PVE content since there are no vendors and its all about RNG". I won't even comment on aspects I don't care about the game, we all know islands were funny but got boring very quickly, and that warfronts were a total disaster. About all the other things we could have done, we all enjoyed something more or less, but those are NOT the reason why most of a normal player base stick to a game in my opinion. What WOW Shadowlands in MY opinion should really FOCUS ON it's making sure that those MAJOR parts of the end game (PVE - Raid, M+, PVP - Arena, RBG - are well combined together in terms of progress, classes balance aka no OP class, Classes design, rewards).

Fixing the everyday stuffs a player have to do to play the game properly, should be part of the devs, they surely know better than me what the average player they target is willing to put in order to compete a certain end game content.

Obviously this write won't solve anything because the issues to solve are WAY more than just those ones I mention, but talking about those in my vision its already something.

Arena / RBG:
Arena rewards right now are close to totally useless. The mount its just another mount with a look that says "hey I got glad" its cool ok, but the real reason why it used to be very cool, was when world pvp was a real thing, and the GLAD mount was going faster than any other mount in game. So it was cool that from doing a certain high end content in arena, you could have had a special reward that was meaningful. Nowadays even making glad mount faster, it won't change anything. Now there is the key part, since most you guys probably already know that most of the people that used to do only pvp, started to focus on other content as well, and thats where the pvp rewards should focus on right now. Doing pvp at a low / medium / high / top lvl, SHOULD give you extra rewards guaranteed so that you can get ADVANTAGES on other content compared to someone who does ONLY M+ for example. Not saying arena should be the ONLY way, but I do think that something that would push ME to again enjoy arenas for real would be:
- Vendors
- Unlock items at 1.8k / 2k / 2.2k / 2.4k + rating, some rewards that are BIS items that ARE AS GOOD s Mythic Raids items for doing M+ / Raids / Arenas without having to chose between those. Spamming arenas and doing pvp should be something that simply gets you rewarded for doing it, so you are simply motivated to do it for real, because right now its clearly not working very well.
- Guaranteed good progress of items while doing arenas - I LOVED how spamming arenas was gearing me at the same time, like spamming M+. I think it got changed after the first part of the pvp season, and doing arenas wasn't really giving me meaningful guaranteed items, so I had no reason to focus on that content anymore and seems a lot of people had a similar feeling. So yes, this is something I found VERY cool.
- Put ALL of your effort to work on the classes, trying to balance it as much as possible, making sure each class (according to the comp) can reach top rewards and eventually compete, WITHOUT forcing them to play something they HATE. Might sound funny for some people, but I chose to play HUNTER in legion, because I wanted to play a RANGED. Survival became the only good version of hunter for a while in pvp specially. I said enough.

M+:
I find M+ to be AMAZING. To compete on them, im willing to do Arenas at high ratings, HC raids every week and what not. (I guess all except Mythic raids, because they are not right for me, thats why I mentioned before, that 2400+ arena and Raids Mythic, should reward items who are VERY EQUAL not in terms of ilvl, but this exp it was the essences and so on... so I mean equal in this way. Don't force someone to HAVE to do ALL, let him pick one to do one or the other better.

Before continuing what id like to make clear, I do really think that the game philosophy should be to let a player to be able to see they can excel in the game being GOOD at 1 thing. Being good in that content they CAN have can advantage to use on other contents and try them out without being blocked by their class.

Issues I had on M+ and possible solutions:
- Classes not balanced. Way too much OP classes for M+, that basically ruined the game for ALL others, making 80% of the players, sit and wait AGES for a grp that will never invite you or being forced to create groups and by default underperform compared to others JUST because of your class, and not because of your skill. Just look at the classes at the top... you will see as DPS 80% are DH & Rogs. And when I say at the top, I don't mean MDI... im talking about WAY WAY below that lvl too... It should raise enough concerns and realise people can't be motivated at doing / enjoying M+ if their class by default will be too crap to compete at the top. None LIKES to play a class that is considered and IS bad IF you are trying to compete at high lvl... if you don't agree, im happy for you, ask the other 99% of the players. This is the only reason why me myself, I won't be playing the 8.3 and ill be waiting for the next expansion. I'm not going to play a class I don't enjoy and more importantly spend time making an alt just to be OP. Why not making everyone close to the same?? So yes, WAY more focus on the balance of the classes.
- I enjoyed the affix but I found a bit sad the fact there were weeks when it was litterally 10 times easier. This should be solved. A possible solution would be to give to the. HARD weeks more attempts to complete a key before it simply goes down if you fail it. This would allow players to create groups more easily and try out new players with a lower score and what not, without being soo scared about being pushed back. Id say 1 Extra attempt would make it. I'm quickly proposing that, im mentioning this problem just because I find sad to see DEAD weeks compared to others just because that week its super hard. Surely there are other valid options.
- iO score, it's useful? Yes. It's a BIG issue for many people? Yes. The main problem about iO its the same one why it's so useful on the same time. It might sound retarded to you, but at the end of the day being good on M+ it's a perfect and balanced mix (without counting gear and class imbalances) of Knowledge + execution. Now my proposal could sound crazy, IMO would be cool to have players competing for example on challenge modes, where they are basically forced to learn a certain content / mob / mob ability / boss / mechanic and so on in order to prove they know hot to face a certain thing, and proving they a re capable of doing such content. For example somethingg VERY relevant to mention about this, its that the gear competing on it should be standard for everyone. In this way, you will know that the guy did compete on that content aka he was able to pass the test with the SAME difficulty of everyone else. I just imagine people linking instead of only iO, iO by itself showing for example you are a 1800 score player, but you managed to make a difficulty on the "DPS tower" that even people that consider themselves pros, struggle at doing.

I know I said a lot of stuffs and I could go on, but I would like to see some ideas that YOU guys consider COOL for all of us and comment on them, taking the best from all of what we can think of could make wow a better game! (soz for bad eng)

[snackfeat]

We can't. They don't listen to feedback.

[Jowany]

I think devs aren't the bad here.. they only do their job. Problem is somewhere else, management or activision.. they are pushing new shitty content in short time and devs are trying to do their best. Same as everywhere.. they just do what their boss wants, they probably know this will be hated by players and it's not good thing, but I don't think they can change anything. It's corporate.. money money money

[muto]

They read the official forums, but that doesn’t mean they listen on every issue.

[ErrandRunner]

A good workman (Blizzard) never blames his tools (devs).

[Amarys]

We can't. They don't listen to feedback.

We can, by not preordering, by not buying cash shop things, by not subscribing and just paying for 1 months at a time.

If their projected and "lazy" income sources dry up, they're gonna be forced to invest more into improving the game to keep the $$$ flowing.

[Phantombeard]

I got a coffee can. I'll write DEV team on it with a marker. Now were all set. Send me all your monies , I put monies in pock..cough..Can!! I mean can, in can (wink, wink).

[Kumorii]

We can, by not preordering, by not buying cash shop things, by not subscribing and just paying for 1 months at a time.

If their projected and "lazy" income sources dry up, they're gonna be forced to invest more into improving the game to keep the $$$ flowing.

I mean, sure... but all that says is "this is wrong". It doesn't say what you want. So next thing they try could also be wrong.
Feedback is the best way... problem is players are in general pretty bad at giving feedback because they tend to know what they like, but not why they like it.

[msdos]

They need to take a page out of Bethesda's book and just fly out a certain number of people, like 10-30, all walks of players, Method raiders, joe blow shmoe altaholic, completionists who have at least 30k cheev points, LFR raiders, people who have subbed every expansion, MDI heroes, Brutal grievous insane uber mongo Gladiators, etc, etc and get them all in one room together.

This might be the only way forward for them, otherwise they're seriously shooting blanks in the dark. Some things in this game are only possible by people who either have no obligations or playing WoW is their career. I find it hard to believe that a single dev at Blizzard could hold a candle to a WoW poop-sock try hard elite. They have a job, therefore they just don't have the time commitment.

Blizzard should also develop a game they themselves would want to play. I also find it hard to believe any of those Blizzard employees actually set aside free time to play WoW for fun outside of the instances.
If you were a Blizz employee, could you picture yourself flying around doing world quests when you could just develop a new dungeon? Develop a new invasion? Hell, develop a new battleground.

[Arikara]

The devs aren't the problem, the corporates are

[Amarys]

I mean, sure... but all that says is "this is wrong". It doesn't say what you want. So next thing they try could also be wrong.
Feedback is the best way... problem is players are in general pretty bad at giving feedback because they tend to know what they like, but not why they like it.

It is not... devs should never ever listen to feedback. EVER.

The reason for that is that most players don't care, only the vocal does and they're the ones that give the most feedback. We don't all want the same things after all.
What I meant by my comment was, we should reward them for good work and not fall into cheap milking traps that take almost zero effort for them to produce.

Hell even BfA could have been saved if they had just started correcting their mistakes in patches. The story and everything wasn't that bad. Instead, we showed the big cheeses that make the decision that they did the right thing since they earned "Record profits". I guess by buying cash shop items, falling into cheap traps like allied races and paying for race changes, staying subbed even if not playing. Why would they spend money to fix anything if they can just cut costs and not lose any profits?

[justandulas]

The devs are tone deaf, and the story team downright incompetent

That said, it’s very well documented that activision-blizzard (the parent company of blizzard, don’t be confused by the names) has cut blizzards funding across the board and they are stressed, underfunded, and can’t deliver

[George Costanza]

We can't. They don't listen to feedback.

FPBP /10chars.

[enigma77]

You can't. They will milk this cow until the udders fall off.

The days when they really cared about the game are years behind us.

[Kumorii]

It is not... devs should never ever listen to feedback. EVER.

The reason for that is that most players don't care, only the vocal does and they're the ones that give the most feedback. We don't all want the same things after all.
What I meant by my comment was, we should reward them for good work and not fall into cheap milking traps that take almost zero effort for them to produce.

Hell even BfA could have been saved if they had just started correcting their mistakes in patches. The story and everything wasn't that bad. Instead, we showed the big cheeses that make the decision that they did the right thing since they earned "Record profits". I guess by buying cash shop items, falling into cheap traps like allied races and paying for race changes, staying subbed even if not playing. Why would they spend money to fix anything if they can just cut costs and not lose any profits?

Devs should listen to feedback...they shouldn't listen to majority of the feedback. Vastly different. Someone who elaborately explains a situation or argument which developers can understand often leads to something better. Doesn't mean they do exactly what the one giving feedback wanted.

You keep saying that we should just not give them money, but once again, that doesn't explain what is wrong and what you want, only that something is wrong. That doesn't help you or the developers. Vote with your money absolutely, but also voice why in a coherent manner and not just "reeee" about how something sucks without explaining why.

[kranur]

Won't matter because Blizzard is no longer a group of devs trying to do something cool but a pure business trying to milk money.
The devs and designers can have the best ideas ever to make the game awesome, but that can't happen when they're ordered to put in gimmicks to increase profits. Things like extreme rng, never-ending farming, pre-order perks, allied races etc.

[dope_danny]

So people entered the anger and bargaining stage faster than with warlords this time huh?

I give it a week before "but i can still go back to old content to farm pets and transmog" guys are suddenly a lot more common and vocal again.

[Blodia]

You can take the devs out back, look at the sunset together and...

[Zephire]

We can't. They don't listen to feedback.

Maybe it's mostly badly formated feedback? "This suck!", "That isn't fun!" etc or maybe the vocal minority is not the majority and thus most other people enjoy that part of the content.

There has been a lot of feedback that they take to heart and use for future change. Sometimes it just takes time for it to happen.

OT:
I'll give a brief list of things I'd think would be cool:
Change reward structure:
- LFR: white gear (no stats)
- Normal: common gear
- Heroic: uncommon gear
- Mythic: epic gear

Change stat-value of rarity:
- Common: baseline
- Uncommon: 1.2xbaseline
- Epic: 1.4xbaseline
- Mythic: 1.6xbaseline

I know that the above is basically what we have with iLvL and epics everywhere. However, I think it would be more visually interesting when it is more distinct. The current Raid finder/Mythic taggs and iLvL doesn't really show that well visually what type of gear it is. This would also greatly change the enchantement market and add more value to things.

Remove specs in today sense:
- Let classes pick and choose between all of their specs abilities
- Add complementary passive talents that enhance different aspects of your abilities with tradeoff (more theat but less damage dealt, more fire damage but less frost damage etc)
- Have mobility in a tradeoff talent system as well

Welcome to cookie cutter 2.0! Yey, but what differents would it make to what we have today where some specs is just superior to any other spec, or where hybrids basically become several different classes? Why can I not tank as a Paladin whielding a mighty twohander? Why can't I use the Light to damage my foes, why must I focus on Shadow powers as a Priest? Would it not be more fun to experiment to find a good playstyle that fits you or whatever you want to do, or add some personal twist to a simulated cookie build?

Add soft upgrades to gear, talents, abilities etc:
Titanforge-ing, Corruption, you name it, things that can only be aquired through luck is all cool but can be very devestating when you do not get what you want. There should be a upgrade system in place to compensate and give you some feel of progress. Example:
Titanforge: consume 3 versions of the same item, to upgrade a 4th item of the same type 5 iLvL.
Corruption: consume 3 versions of the same item, to upgrade the corruption of a 4th item of the same typ by X.
You get the idea. Even if your unlucky with TF procs etc, you can still save the item to later upgrade another version with a little sprinkle of power.

- Add enchantments to gear slots that can't be enchanted by proffesions which drops from different sources (a rare weapon enchant from some place, an enchant that adds a proc of sorts to bracers)
- Let everyone use engineering and let gadgets be used everywhere again (honestly sick and tired of engineering being nerfed by instances etc due to only engineerers being able to use it)

- Rework flying, a bar that drains while you fly maybe?
- Build new zones around flying (add terrain that can only be reached with flying, add things that is dangerous for flyers, things that could potentially shoot you down etc)

Just some thoughts I've had. I think it would be nice.

Keyword: "I".

[Itori]

*Bring back tier sets - the feeling of getting a bis item for the entire content patch brings a feeling of achievement and that there is a finish line.

*Remove mythic+ and bring back the standard hard mode, throw in far more advanced mechanics to learn instead of the same stuff but just hits harder and faster.

The difficulties should just be
LFR
Normal
Hard mode/or call it mythic to retain the name

Bring back a classes uniqueness, give shaman totems back, give the totem bar back, make druids the kings/queens of hots, warriors the impenetrable fortress and bringer of bleeds and stuns, paladis the support with buffs, shields and damage reduction, priests being the standard straight heals, and shielders, and do on and so forth, make the people who main a class feel like they're worth more for what they bring instead of just how high their numbers are.