Why are classes being ignored in Shadowlands in favor of new systems?

[OokOok]

Half of the kids who post on MMoC must not have much experience outside of their bubble. I'll help you

WoW is a game, it is a game created by Blizzard who is now Activision Blizzard. It is a Company, Company's have share holders, what do company's and share holders care about? MONEY! that's right, money.
If WoW has 5,000,000 active subs playing the game and 4,000,000 of those subs don't care about the class system or they mainly care about other features of the game, they are the majority. What does that mean? well it means if blizzard decides to read MMoC and listen to the tears of the minority, they risk pissing off the majority.... less money, which means they piss off the share holders now.

Bottom line... if over the next 5 years blizzard notices that 4,000,000/5,000,000 active subs only log on to do pet battles.... they'll focus on pet battles.

I'm not being unrealistic or dramatic, it's called being logical. Blizzard's main focus is making money, naturally they're going to put the majority of their time and effort into whatever the majority of the playerbase is focusing on, and crying about class balance is the minority in 2020.

[Unholyground]

Honestly the only 2 specs left after Shadow with the most glaring issues are Feral and Survival at this point, there are others that need a looking at more don't get me wrong but they don't feel anywhere as bad as those 2 seem to be currently.

[docterfreeze]

and getting it back would do nothing for shaman utility. but hey, fun is whats important, right?

Wat. Assuming you're not being sarcastic, yes absolutely fun is the most important thing in a video game. If you are, then you're wrong. If GoW did nothing for shaman's utility then disengage does nothing for hunter's utility. Skilled players know that's ridiculous.

[docterfreeze]

Most specs in BFA are absolutely fine to play. Shadowlands seems to be improving things across the board, and in some cases (shadow priests so far) massively improving things.

Why settle for fine when they were great in the past?

[Krakan]

Because it's completely subjective

I do feel classes borrow to much power from the new systems but I get there are trade offs. If you don't tie the power to the new system you either remake a talent row or constantly add ever more complexity to the class and bloat it.

[docterfreeze]

Because it's completely subjective

People who prefer classes with less depth and simplified mechanics already have classic.

[Jastall]

Never, since there are 36 specs there are bound to be people who don't like half of them.

Like there are people who honestly think old demo was good. While for me it was absolute garbage, worst spec ever created. While current demo is the best spec ever created (At least counting from wotlk)

I think Wrath may be the expansion that gets the least complaint on that front, and I really believe it's at least partly because it was the xpack where classes were actually designed for the first time in the game's history and half of them didn't have 1-2 button rotations at last. It still had more than its fair share of broken ass stuff like Pallys being hilariously OP in 3.0, Warriors scaling meaning they were shit at first and gods in 3.3, or DKs being an unmanageable design mess due to all 3 specs being dual role ones.

Next up is Mists, often talked about being peak class design, but if you ask me that mostly applies if you were a Shaman, Arms Warrior or Warlock. And the xpack still had a shit ton of complaints regarding rampant homogenization, PvP being crowd control central because everyone had them, Monks being somewhat busted in said PvP, and of course the new talent trees causing much rage to this day.

My favorite has got to be people saying WoD was the best. That was the expansion that saw the most pruning of them all, where they nerfed the shit out of Demo because they didn't want people playing it, and specs like Arms, Destro or Enhancement still IMO haven't quite recovered from the carnage, the first one especially.

BFA's been very hit and miss for me. Fury is amazingly fun, Arms is... decent I guess, best iteration since Mists and fun with busted corruptions. Prot is only good thanks to a talent setup that thankfully is the only viable one, which is no high praise I suppose but still. For DKs, Unholy is great, Blood is good, Frost is very meh. For Locks, both Destro and Demo are really good, while I loathe Affliction and thus have no opinion anyway. Finally for Paladins, Ret is fairly boring outside of your burst but Prot and Holy are both great to play. These are the 4 classes I've played at least.

[Djaye]

they havent cared about proper class tuning in over a decade, if not longer.
as long as one spec per class isnt hated among the community and does okay in raids, its 'working as intended' and they wont touch it.

the dev's build and play FOTM classes and specs, its pretty obvious.

[Vorkreist]

but...what feels like shit to one person might be amazing to another....I mean its not rocket science to realize Devs, players, etc are you know..HUMAN

also kinda seems like most of yall think if you don't like the class its just a simple <Fun=Yes> command in the coding or something

Kinda seems like you try to defend the nr worst critique of Bfa which has such a massive consensus that it makes you look silly. What's your next breakthrough observation? Garrison was a pearl of game design that was just misunderstood by those evil haters ?

[Djaye]

I do feel classes borrow to much power from the new systems but I get there are trade offs. If you don't tie the power to the new system you either remake a talent row or constantly add ever more complexity to the class and bloat it.

but, why does there need to be this 'power' you speak of? why cant we just get gear upgrades that scale properly with our set stats and abilites?
uncontrolled rng procs are the LAMEST addition to GCD based 'action' system imaginable.

power that requires zero skill is not fun or compelling unless you just like going 'weeeeee! look at my dps numners!'

[docterfreeze]

More mechanically complex isn't necessarily better, look at void form - probably the most mechanically complex dps spec to play correctly (not that it's a hard spec) and it's widely hated. Complex often also means clunky

I mained SP in BoD, but I don't know what you mean when you say void form is complex. What I was thinking when I wrote "simplified mechanics" is stuff like combo points being on the player instead of the target (making them identical to chi), DK's only having one rune type, and the removal of abilities such as empowered seals, MoP alter time, and soulburn. Other things that come to mind is execution sentence being only usable as a damage ability instead of an option of either damage or healing, DPS classes being able to spend their resources on non-damaging abilities like recuperate and ember tap. These things weren't clunky, they just required more thought and skill to perform at the highest level.

[MrLachyG]

Consider I mentioned that in the same breath as Blessing of Seasons, and I'm sure you can figure which class I was talking about.

Literally every blue post in the Paladin feedback thread has been about Blessing of Seasons with one mention of another covenant ability and a slight change to Prot holy power generation.

They aknowledged that Seraphim and Inquisition both being talents is a problem IN MAY and have yet to do anything about it, and that's it... No work on all of our dead talents (and there are many, Ret alone has no less than 6 dead talents (not counting PvP talents) that no one will ever take), no work on Ret's clunky rotation, or our horrid mobility that we've been complaining about for 5 years, no mention of fixing Ret's WoG healing for only 5% HP in PvP, no mention of Retribution Aura which literally no one has responded to in a positive manner...

Need I fucking go on? 95% of the work they've shown so far for Paladins has been on our covenant abilities, 4% has been on other borrowed powers like legendary effects, and maybe 1% was on our actual class.

I mean just because they haven't responded or done anything doesn't mean they have stopped thinking about it. hell look at Shadow Priests and the recent changes there; they are significant and according to some actually make SPriest good again. I know this is kind of a meme now but beta hasn't finished yet and changes could well (hopefully) still come into play

[Arainie]

I think that the fact that so many of you consider classes and specs more important than content and systems shows how far from the traditional MMORPG genre the WoW crowd has moved.

Not saying your opinion is wrong at all, it's just not what I associate with "the most important aspect" of an MMORPG. Quite a few of us were happy just auto attacking mobs (and each other) to death before WoW was out as long as the content and the "systems" as you call them were good.

[Schattenlied]

I know this is kind of a meme now but beta hasn't finished yet and changes could well (hopefully) still come into play

It's become a meme for a reason, that reason being because it usually doesn't turn out favorably for the players.


And would you look at that, another beta build come and gone with no noteworthy changes for Paladins, again, but wait,another change to blessing of seasons that no one asked for!

- - - Updated - - -

I think that the fact that so many of you consider classes and specs more important than content and systems shows how far from the traditional MMORPG genre the WoW crowd has moved.

Not saying your opinion is wrong at all, it's just not what I associate with "the most important aspect" of an MMORPG. Quite a few of us were happy just auto attacking mobs (and each other) to death before WoW was out as long as the content and the "systems" as you call them were good.

Like the second post in the thread said: it doesnt matter how flash the racetrack is, how many straights, turns, banks, grandstands, food stands, sound systems - non of that matters if you are driving it in ya mums clapped out 1995 automatic honda civic with 2 flat tyres.

And WoW has literally never been "just auto attacking", so, the WoW crowd has not "moved away" from whatever you consider the traditional MMORPG genere, it started out away from it, which, news flash, is a big part of why it was so fucking successful.

No amount of content, no amount of good content, will keep my playing if the vessel through which I experience that content is not itself fun to play... Having a boring class strips content of replay value, because content is not the gameplay, we interafce with it through gameplay, and 99% of gameplay is our class.

[Kralljin]

Not saying your opinion is wrong at all, it's just not what I associate with "the most important aspect" of an MMORPG. Quite a few of us were happy just auto attacking mobs (and each other) to death before WoW was out as long as the content and the "systems" as you call them were good.

Because Classic is a different game than modern WoW.
Yeah, the concept of a "rotation" doesn't really exist in Classic, yet the Classes still followed some design and had clear established strengths and weaknesses.

It was simplistic, but it was there.

And for me personally, this is an underlying issue of an lot classes and specs in WoW, they "just work", in the most neutral sense possible.
They're not dysfunctional or completely horrible to play but also lack any outstanding or interesting mechanics that really sets them apart from others which makes others say "I really want to play X!".

Heck, i think most of the people that want a greater emphasis on Class design aren't even that interested in those "new shiny systems", they just want new raids, new dungeons or whatnot, a playground to have fun with their chosen spec.

[Valdhammer]

Because as far as Blizz are concerned what they are doing is equivalent to class design with the added benefit of keeping people subbed for longer. If subs were plummeting they’d change it by now.

[october breeze]

I took back what I said before. They actually did a good job with Spriest.

[Sunslayer]

Because as far as Blizz are concerned what they are doing is equivalent to class design with the added benefit of keeping people subbed for longer. If subs were plummeting they’d change it by now.

That's absurd. Every indication is BfA was a disaster and Blizzard knows it.

[badzerath]

They develop the game as a theme park game for solo players who don't want to invest time because they have fallen for the trap and lie that gamers don't have time to do things in an MMORPG.

Players in WoW are literally the stupid oxes that they used to dangle carrots in front of to get them to move. You never get the carrot obviously.

They have to keep designing long term, expansion long systems to keep players "engaged" because these players are the ones described above. They have no meaningful aspirations for achievement and want to play by themselves.

[kaminaris]

I think Wrath may be the expansion that gets the least complaint on that front, and I really believe it's at least partly because it was the xpack where classes were actually designed for the first time in the game's history and half of them didn't have 1-2 button rotations at last. It still had more than its fair share of broken ass stuff like Pallys being hilariously OP in 3.0, Warriors scaling meaning they were shit at first and gods in 3.3, or DKs being an unmanageable design mess due to all 3 specs being dual role ones.

Next up is Mists, often talked about being peak class design, but if you ask me that mostly applies if you were a Shaman, Arms Warrior or Warlock. And the xpack still had a shit ton of complaints regarding rampant homogenization, PvP being crowd control central because everyone had them, Monks being somewhat busted in said PvP, and of course the new talent trees causing much rage to this day.

My favorite has got to be people saying WoD was the best. That was the expansion that saw the most pruning of them all, where they nerfed the shit out of Demo because they didn't want people playing it, and specs like Arms, Destro or Enhancement still IMO haven't quite recovered from the carnage, the first one especially.

BFA's been very hit and miss for me. Fury is amazingly fun, Arms is... decent I guess, best iteration since Mists and fun with busted corruptions. Prot is only good thanks to a talent setup that thankfully is the only viable one, which is no high praise I suppose but still. For DKs, Unholy is great, Blood is good, Frost is very meh. For Locks, both Destro and Demo are really good, while I loathe Affliction and thus have no opinion anyway. Finally for Paladins, Ret is fairly boring outside of your burst but Prot and Holy are both great to play. These are the 4 classes I've played at least.

Pretty much this but i absolutely hate destro. Havoc and building everything around just putting a shit debuff on another target is aids.