Development Update: The Road to Shadowlands

[Ariamis]

They don't get it. I agree with everything until here:


This is at odds with the game they have. No, there won't be a Venthyr paladin and a Kyrian paladin. There will be a good paladin for the content being run and a bad paladin for the content being run. You are not adding choices, you are adding wrong choices aka traps.
For this to work devs, you have to break all addons and all first and third party sites that allow you to track performance and maximize it. It is impossible to make both of these things work. You can't have both, it's impossible. Choose one.
Make up your mind on what kind of game you want to make.

How good is good? Proportionately, how bad is bad? How many abilities right now would you consider a trap?

(For the record, Slaughter qualifies as a trap and needs a redesign)

How many of these abilities are so catastrophically bad that they hold zero value in every perceivable scenario? Even slaughter, while having negligible PVE value, has some PVP applications and creates an interesting poison-spread gameplay to counter opposing healers and improve self sustainability.

I laughed at the covenant spreadsheet circulating because it’s all anecdotal, pre-tuning, and felt agnostic of any actual application. The DK one, as an example, is completely ignorant of uptime and encounter design, placing abilities in a ‘trash’ tier without any acknowledgement as to why.

We were all terrified of the Venthyr teleport being used to cheese M+, but I haven’t really seen much of that during my time in beta, nor on vids.

The game always evolves so greatly over the course of an expansion (see: shadowmeld), that we aren’t really in a position to evaluate what is / isn’t useful with the level of info we have at this moment.

[qwerty123456]

They don't get it. I agree with everything until here:


This is at odds with the game they have. No, there won't be a Venthyr paladin and a Kyrian paladin. There will be a good paladin for the content being run and a bad paladin for the content being run. You are not adding choices, you are adding wrong choices aka traps.
For this to work devs, you have to break all addons and all first and third party sites that allow you to track performance and maximize it. It is impossible to make both of these things work. You can't have both, it's impossible. Choose one.
Make up your mind on what kind of game you want to make.

If you need a covenant ability to make you good then you already were a bad paladin just boosting your skill level with poor balancing and using what was op.

[Pinkteacup]

Thoughts on each item posted here:

9.0.2 - Makes sense, it seems like a good idea to give the team as much time as possible to finish up the 51-60 experience while letting the other items come into the game with the pre-patch. I do feel they should move the SL build up to 9.0.3 at least though. System-wise, I could see confusion coming in from trying to go from 9.0.2.x to 9.0.1.x. Better to give the later version the higher number.

How would someone go from 9.0.2 to 9.0.1? 9.0.1 is released in pre-patch, and 9.0.2 slightly before Shadowlands. So the later version is the higher number.

[exochaft]

It's really not their fault people can only see "good" and "bad" paladin based on their choice and strictly on performance alone.

The problem is that a non insignificant portion of the player base, you included apparently, subscribe to this notion that ONLY the top performing build is viable at all, and anything other than that build is complete trash.

This notion, in and of itself, is trash and needs to die a horrible death. Because it's completely false.

That's a harsher version of what I put on the official forums, and boy am I making people angry with that point of view. Although, when you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one you hit.

What you're trying to combat, as well as I, is pretty pervasive in the WoW community, and Blizz's design philosophy in recent years hasn't really helped that much. However, the ones I see rebuff this point of view the most are the vast majority of players who tend to think they're more skilled than they likely are, or will blindly follow the meta instead of making things work with what they have. Basically, most of the mythic raiders and M+ crowd. The people at the top who have the skill to make anything work but min/max to make life easier tackling content while severely undergeared craft a meta... but that meta is tailor to their person wants/needs and the skills/preferences of their group. These people make the meta... but it's optimize for their individual players. What most players below these individuals fail to realize is that they'd be much better off customizing the group/comp/strat/etc. for their individual needs and preferences instead of blindly following a meta. Instead, they get this lofty idea in their head that if X guild did it this way, it's the only way to do it, anything outside of this is non-viable... which is silly.

Now, there are outliers when it comes to Covenant abilities still, and the blue post even admitted as much and wants player feedback concerning these outlying abilities. As if on cue, instead of suggestions on which abilities need looked at or suggestions on changes to outlying aspects, it's rampant "burn the system down! #pulltheripcord!"... aka, not constructive criticism. Half the complains I've seen players bring up to counter the Covenant system as is actually wouldn't go away if the restrictions we removed (some would actually get worse).

Maybe it's just a societal issue right now, where people think raw emotion is a replacement for logic, reasoning, and discourse? It's fine to have emotional attachments to things, but said attachments shouldn't cloud one's judgement when it comes to the overall discussion.

[Azerate]

You didn't read anything, did you? They are trying to directly address covenant feedback with new changes.

The only thing toxic manbabies care about is that there is that one thing that Blizzard didn't cater to them with.

A regular person will see an extensive post with explanation of systems and lots of information. Entitled morons will just see "we aren't allowing you to change covenants 20 times a day"

Very happy Blizz isn't caving in. Excited to play the covenant system where the choice matters.

[exochaft]

If you need a covenant ability to make you good then you already were a bad paladin just boosting your skill level with poor balancing and using what was op.

A nicer way to say this is that truly skilled people can make anything work and succeed, even with the Covenant system as is. These sorts of people on the cutting edge of progression would level and gear out multiple alts anyways, and those advocating for removing Covenant restrictions at this level of play are doing it to cut down on the work they're still willing to do to be the best.

[irdsyd]

The beta levelling servers just went down now - I assume for a patch.

I wonder if the some of the 'next week's in this blue post refers to this patch or in another week (sometimes a distinction is made)

[sephrinx]

our goal was for the answer to “what do you play?” in Shadowlands to be “Kyrian paladin” or “Venthyr paladin” rather than just “paladin.”

Wow, yikes. That's the opposite of what they should be doing, I don't see how they could have possibly thought this was a good idea. I'm honestly at a loss for words.

but to allow players to add sockets to their items via a consumable sold by Ve’nari in the Maw (similar to Gouged Eyes in the recent Visions of N’Zoth update).

Or, how about you let that be done via professions?

[Delekii]

A nicer way to say this is that truly skilled people can make anything work and succeed, even with the Covenant system as is. These sorts of people on the cutting edge of progression would level and gear out multiple alts anyways, and those advocating for removing Covenant restrictions at this level of play are doing it to cut down on the work they're still willing to do to be the best.

Absolute poppycock. It is impossible to be the best you can be while picking a suboptimal choice. You can't just try really hard and magically make them equal. One choice will simply be numerically better most of the time.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

From the earliest sketched designs of the covenant system, our goal was for the answer to “what do you play?” in Shadowlands to be “Kyrian paladin” or “Venthyr paladin” rather than just “paladin.” And given the central role of combat and power progression to World of Warcraft as a whole, achieving that goal for most players requires that there be player power implications to covenant choice.

Oh good, they're explicitly stating their goal was to have people tie their Covenant to their class identity. The LFG tool is going to be filled with shit like "LF Ven X class" or "No Necrolords", depending on the content.

At least when it inevitably turns into a toxic barrier the community uses to exclude people playing the wrong spec+covenant from specific types of content, we can rest assured that it at least went as planned. Blizzard is sticking to the plan once again, no matter how terrible the plan is.

[4justice]

they are falling the hole themselves which they planned to make players fall... talents,abilities, spells shouldnt be bind to farmable items like convenants, artifacts or essences etc.... A mmorpg means you and your character must be one just like lich king and arthas or laurel and hardy... A mmorpg player must taste its character fully in terms of spells, abilities or talents once he hits maximum level. I dont want to farm for a class ability or spell for weeks cus its the character itself that means you play the game truly... i want to play my character full potentially after i dinged the last level... Make items or everythging else farmable but not fcknig spells or abilities, people doesnt fcking enjoy the lol of warcraft already... While i level, i basicly press 2-3 buttons... the game was never like that and thats why the game is dying seriously just because of the money greed of blizzard/activision or what the fck is the company atm

[Katchii]

That's a harsher version of what I put on the official forums, and boy am I making people angry with that point of view. Although, when you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one you hit.

What you're trying to combat, as well as I, is pretty pervasive in the WoW community, and Blizz's design philosophy in recent years hasn't really helped that much. However, the ones I see rebuff this point of view the most are the vast majority of players who tend to think they're more skilled than they likely are, or will blindly follow the meta instead of making things work with what they have. Basically, most of the mythic raiders and M+ crowd. The people at the top who have the skill to make anything work but min/max to make life easier tackling content while severely undergeared craft a meta... but that meta is tailor to their person wants/needs and the skills/preferences of their group. These people make the meta... but it's optimize for their individual players. What most players below these individuals fail to realize is that they'd be much better off customizing the group/comp/strat/etc. for their individual needs and preferences instead of blindly following a meta. Instead, they get this lofty idea in their head that if X guild did it this way, it's the only way to do it, anything outside of this is non-viable... which is silly.

Now, there are outliers when it comes to Covenant abilities still, and the blue post even admitted as much and wants player feedback concerning these outlying abilities. As if on cue, instead of suggestions on which abilities need looked at or suggestions on changes to outlying aspects, it's rampant "burn the system down! #pulltheripcord!"... aka, not constructive criticism. Half the complains I've seen players bring up to counter the Covenant system as is actually wouldn't go away if the restrictions we removed (some would actually get worse).

Maybe it's just a societal issue right now, where people think raw emotion is a replacement for logic, reasoning, and discourse? It's fine to have emotional attachments to things, but said attachments shouldn't cloud one's judgement when it comes to the overall discussion.

I'm honestly not trying to combat anything, I'm just trying to share my perspective, one that Blizzard apparently shares given this Covenant discussion. Which is basically that the whole idea that something that's 1-5% better than the alternatives is now the ONLY choice is ridiculous... Or that anything other than the top performing choice is no longer viable.

I'm going to pick the Covenant I want to pick because I like it, because it looks cool, because it fits what I want my character to be, because it has the ability I like and want to use, etc... absolutely nothing to do with actual numbers performance.

[Nnyco]

7 weeks left, no prepatch date... Wtf?

Legion pre-patch got announced three/four days before it came live. Its gonna be obviously on 23rd on 30th though.

[Brash]

From the earliest sketched designs of the covenant system, our goal was for the answer to “what do you play?” in Shadowlands to be “Kyrian paladin” or “Venthyr paladin” rather than just “paladin.” And given the central role of combat and power progression to World of Warcraft as a whole, achieving that goal for most players requires that there be player power implications to covenant choice.

Oh good, they're explicitly stating their goal was to have people tie their Covenant to their class identity. The LFG tool is going to be filled with shit like "LF Ven X class" or "No Necrolords", depending on the content.

At least when it inevitably turns into a toxic barrier the community uses to exclude people playing the wrong spec+covenant from specific types of content, we can rest assured that it at least went as planned. Blizzard is sticking to the plan once again, no matter how terrible the plan is.

Why is everyone so worried about toxic group finder groups where the creator of the group wants to get carried through the content by only inviting people who over gear it?

I know its been beaten to death but make your own group if these limitations bother you, or better yet find a guild and make some buddies. MMO's should never rely on groups of random people to complete the most challenging content.

[tomten]

Blizzard doesnt read these forums mate. Best bet would be twitter, reddit or perhaps once in a blue moon the eu forums

They do, they even have several blue members here on mmo champ and has had for many many years.

[Railander]

While WoW is an interconnected ecosystem of different content and systems and we feel that the very strongest characters should be the ones who participate and excel in a wide range of activities, each individual progression path should offer the majority of the tools required for success in that path. The current PvP vendors fall short of that goal.

We are considering a few different solutions, such as reworking the stat coverage of the vendor gear and/or providing PvP-specific bonuses through those items. As soon as we’ve settled on a direction, we’ll share our plan for feedback, and get the changes up on Beta for testing.

translation: it's ok for PvE gear to be BiS in PvP, but it's absolutely unacceptable that PvP gear is anywhere near competitive for PvE.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Why is everyone so worried about toxic group finder groups where the creator of the group wants to get carried through the content by only inviting people who over gear it?

I know its been beaten to death but make your own group if these limitations bother you, or better yet find a guild and make some buddies. MMO's should never rely on groups of random people to complete the most challenging content.

I'm just pointing out another major flaw of the system, that is hardly my only or even my most personally relevant criticism of the current design of Covenants. Feel free to poke through my post history to find those, because I really don't feel like rewriting every single criticism I've made of the system over the past couple of months(frankly I haven't made that many, I just get tired of repeating myself).

[WalterMcD]

Why is everyone so worried about toxic group finder groups where the creator of the group wants to get carried through the content by only inviting people who over gear it?

I know its been beaten to death but make your own group if these limitations bother you, or better yet find a guild and make some buddies. MMO's should never rely on groups of random people to complete the most challenging content.

This is exactly my thoughts as well. I personally enjoy the idea of picking a covenant and sticking with it. It feeling meaningful. I don't care that I will be picking the #2(currently) covenant for my spec. Makes me no difference. I like the armor better

[Talon8669]

That's a harsher version of what I put on the official forums, and boy am I making people angry with that point of view. Although, when you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one you hit.

What you're trying to combat, as well as I, is pretty pervasive in the WoW community, and Blizz's design philosophy in recent years hasn't really helped that much. However, the ones I see rebuff this point of view the most are the vast majority of players who tend to think they're more skilled than they likely are, or will blindly follow the meta instead of making things work with what they have. Basically, most of the mythic raiders and M+ crowd. The people at the top who have the skill to make anything work but min/max to make life easier tackling content while severely undergeared craft a meta... but that meta is tailor to their person wants/needs and the skills/preferences of their group. These people make the meta... but it's optimize for their individual players. What most players below these individuals fail to realize is that they'd be much better off customizing the group/comp/strat/etc. for their individual needs and preferences instead of blindly following a meta. Instead, they get this lofty idea in their head that if X guild did it this way, it's the only way to do it, anything outside of this is non-viable... which is silly.

Now, there are outliers when it comes to Covenant abilities still, and the blue post even admitted as much and wants player feedback concerning these outlying abilities. As if on cue, instead of suggestions on which abilities need looked at or suggestions on changes to outlying aspects, it's rampant "burn the system down! #pulltheripcord!"... aka, not constructive criticism. Half the complains I've seen players bring up to counter the Covenant system as is actually wouldn't go away if the restrictions we removed (some would actually get worse).

Maybe it's just a societal issue right now, where people think raw emotion is a replacement for logic, reasoning, and discourse? It's fine to have emotional attachments to things, but said attachments shouldn't cloud one's judgement when it comes to the overall discussion.

I think your referencing a societal issue more so than just a game issue but that aside. I believe to make covenants work blizzard needs to a very very good job at balancing them. We were told that the covenant pick should be a meaningful one but, and perhaps this is my own pitfall, was under the impression would be more cosmetic than anything. Now that simply is not the case, prime example is necrolords for warlock. Currently if you're going to do PVE especially as an Afflock and to a large degree as a Destro lock you have to be necrolord. Decimating bolt and the buff along with conduits simply buff drain soul to the point where it is a gross amount of Afflocks total damage done and really there isn't much more you want to do than maintain your buffs on drain soul during execute phase. This is a huge issue as i would prefer to be venthyr for PvP and for the cosmetic RP side of things. Now this can be fixed via tuning but i think it's a pretty clear example of what is and could be wrong with the covenants. If Blizzard can address this prior to launch then great. The other issue and again specifically with my example is how much that 1 ability changes and locks in my whole game play. It really takes away my ability to pick anything else on the first row of talents and then furthermore sets the game play up to be a longer channel style of play rather than a dot and cast play. May seem to some like a very slight difference but at least to me those game play styles are light years apart.

[Katchii]

Absolute poppycock. It is impossible to be the best you can be while picking a suboptimal choice. You can't just try really hard and magically make them equal. One choice will simply be numerically better most of the time.

In a perfect world, where everyone played everything perfectly and effectively, this would be 100% true 100% of the time.

The problem is, different players can perform differently, and at different times. So while one choice might be numerically superior when performed 100% optimally, a player may not be able play that spec optimally and can only manage to do it at ~90% efficiency or whatever for a variety of reasons. Whereas they might be able to take another build choice and perform closer to 100% effectiveness, which would increase their personal DPS above what they could do with the optimal spec.

Trying to pretend that any given choice or build is going to be the absolute best performance anyone can get, in all situations, is also absolute poppycock.