Explain the Argument; New Systems vs More of the Same

[Lei]

I wasn't intereseted in Artifact Weapons the slightest, but I think the base thought of it was cool. "Look, you can have Ashbringer!" For me the execution (unlimited AP farm) totally ruined it. The execution (effort/gain) really has been shitty for all these systems tbf.
Azerite is lame. Did anyone actually like it? But like.. "OMG I WANT AZERITE FOREWAAAH IT'S SO COOL!" type of liking?
Soulbinds and conduits are even lamer imo. I just don't see the majority of the playerbase being hyped about it.
Why do these systems always feel "cockblocky"? They are all nuisances that are in the way of you doing the thing you actually enjoy in the game. These things themselves should be enjoyable. But then who the hell enjoys working on something this hard for 2 years only to lose it? Every.single.time? And not only lose it but then start again with a renamed version of it? Even real old legendaries were less of a work.

[kaminaris]

I wasn't intereseted in Artifact Weapons the slightest, but I think the base thought of it was cool. "Look, you can have Ashbringer!" For me the execution (unlimited AP farm) totally ruined it. The execution (effort/gain) really has been shitty for all these systems tbf.
Azerite is lame. Did anyone actually like it? But like.. "OMG I WANT AZERITE FOREWAAAH IT'S SO COOL!" type of liking?
Soulbinds and conduits are even lamer imo. I just don't see the majority of the playerbase being hyped about it.
Why do these systems always feel "cockblocky"? They are all nuisances that are in the way of you doing the thing you actually enjoy in the game. These things themselves should be enjoyable. But then who the hell enjoys working on something this hard for 2 years only to lose it? Every.single.time? And not only lose it but then start again with a renamed version of it? Even real old legendaries were less of a work.

One word: Goals. Like every RPG games fun is setting yourself a goal and working towards it.
Your issue is your mindset that you always want to get something shiny and powerful.

For me it doesn't matter what it is and quite honestly weapons were giga pain as I do not want to become "another guy with the same Legendary weapon", I would rather have pigstick and kill bosses with it than Legendary™ Ashbringer. Also another issue with legion AP was that there was no real goal as they kept adding stuff before you could reach the current one.

Azerite neck had goals up until 8.3 and you could reach it with reasonable amount of time.
Essences were a goal that could be done fairly quickly.

Also you have been losing all the powers on regular basis like op trinkets that became shit next tier, set bonuses that felt great only to become garbage next tier so I don't know what you are talking about. It's a gameplay stuff that would ultimately lead to pruning if they kept stacking things.

I also don't see how those things are "in a way" of enjoying game. Literally cannot comprehend it.

[Nerovar]

Is it tough? FFXIV does more of the same and is more popular than ever.

New xpac, new story, zones and new classes, new class abilities with a cool cinematic. Same raid structure, same gearing.

Shadowbringers didnt offer anything different from ARR, Heavensward and Stormblood. Yet, it sells better.

I don't think more of the same is hard to sell, if it's what players want.


Agree with the rest. They fail at new content cause they are arrogant and think they are gonna come up with the next big thing when they haven't even bothered to implement housing. Oh and add ignoring player feedback to that. They are always at odds with us. They always think they know better than the people that play the game everyday.

I mean, I don't necessarily disagree with you there. Do keep in mind though that WoW is a much older game than FFXIV though. I mean, if it was up to me, I would have kept playing WoW for at least another 20 years if they just had kept on adding stuff with the same old formular without changing the philosophy behind the game. But I don't really think they design the game solely for me.

Some people get bored after having the same systems, classes etc. to play around with for several years and they seem genuinely happy if they get to play around with Azerite, Covenants etc.
Personally, I think it's really boring and it takes away from the content I enjoy.

[Makorus]

People have been asking for a talent tree since Cata, and now that we have one (Soulbinds are literally a talent tree with Glyphs) people act like its too convoluted.

I feel like people bitch about Shadowlands just for the sake of bitching at this point

[Lei]

One word: Goals. Like every RPG games fun is setting yourself a goal and working towards it.
Your issue is your mindset that you always want to get something shiny and powerful.

For me it doesn't matter what it is and quite honestly weapons were giga pain as I do not want to become "another guy with the same Legendary weapon", I would rather have pigstick and kill bosses with it than Legendary™ Ashbringer. Also another issue with legion AP was that there was no real goal as they kept adding stuff before you could reach the current one.

Azerite neck had goals up until 8.3 and you could reach it with reasonable amount of time.
Essences were a goal that could be done fairly quickly.

Also you have been losing all the powers on regular basis like op trinkets that became shit next tier, set bonuses that felt great only to become garbage next tier so I don't know what you are talking about. It's a gameplay stuff that would ultimately lead to pruning if they kept stacking things.

I also don't see how those things are "in a way" of enjoying game. Literally cannot comprehend it.

You can't really understand my problem. How much time you had to work for a trinket that expired within a tier or an expansion? And how much you worked for any of these systems since legion? A goal is only a goal if the effort worth the reward. To me, none of these were worthy.

I also fail to see why you bring up Legion Artifacts where I clearly stated I wasn't excited for them (only found the premise of the artifacts cool) and the execution was bad imo.
You will never understand how these systems are in the way until you understand what effort/reward means and what "necessary grind" means with these systems.

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People have been asking for a talent tree since Cata, and now that we have one (Soulbinds are literally a talent tree with Glyphs) people act like its too convoluted.

I feel like people bitch about Shadowlands just for the sake of bitching at this point

How much time it took you to unlock your whole talent tree and to get your glyphs? Compare that with soulbinds and conduits. What we had before as a given, for free, has become a grind that you slowly unlock. What we had before as a simple tool to optimize your char before you run out enjoying the game be it raiding, outdoor derping or something else, has become THE GAME.

[Super Kami Dende]

People complain about everything. That's literally all there is to it.

People will complain if systems stay the same because "OMFG GAME IS BORING AND NO CHANGE!"
People will complain if new systems are put in because of "OMFG THEY RUINED THE GAME STOP CHANGES!"

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FF14 has actually been pruning abilities, removing spells, and making classes easier to play. For example, bards can't restore mana anymore. Cross-class abilities you unlocked from having multiple classes were consolidated into just role-based spells everyone got. For example, every melee DPS gets interrupt, push-back protection, heal on hit spell etc. They also made dragoon rotation easier by making Blood of the dragon duration 30 seconds instead of 20 seconds so that it is nearly impossible for the buff to fall off unless you are retarded which makes doing combos more forgiving.

Though everytime they prune a couple of abilities, they add in new ones for new expansions in FFXIV and the Abilities they mostly pruned recently were abilities that served no real purpose or could just be rolled together.

My DPS class still has nearly 3 bars full of abilities to use in combat.

[InfiniteCharger]

They were not WoD proved that. As long as people were done with LFR and LFG players start quiting game.

They had nothing to do because content was cut, there were only 8 dungeons and 3 raids, plus only one endgame zone.
In Pandaria you had 9 dungeons, 5 raids and two endgame zones: Timeless Isle and Throne of Thunder.
(2.5 if you count Isle of Giants). But overall the expansion had a singular narrative focus and many of the dungeons and raids were very well done. There just wasn't enough of them.

Alternate progression systems had nothing to do with it.

Legion proved that because in Legion you had 13 Dungeons, 5 Raids and 3 end game zones

If they only had the same number of dungeons, raids and engame zones as Draenor it would have flopped just the same even with artifact weapons.

Not to mention there was a central theme to everything in Legion and that was focused on getting more powerful to beat the legion. All of the content revolved around that. Plus the "packaging" around the artifact weapons themselves with the class order halls and various lore and story elements was a very compelling narrative.

BFA didn't have a narrative focus. It was all over the place. The narrative around the fighting between factions was flimsy and illogical. The actual fights were scripted cut scenes and the story immediately jumped from that into traveling into the high seas to explore new island zones separate from the faction conflict. Then in the middle of doing that some sinister workings of the Naga are discovered and we explore a new undersea zone. And then after that there is a whole shift to fighting an old god. In between all of that the so called faction war is sprinkled for flavor with warfronts and war mode.... Not that compelling of a narrative to tie the grind to. And on that frond there were multiple alternate progression systems introduced, instead of the one that was in legion..... And none of them were as compelling or interesting with no real lore or narrative to prop them up.

BFA also had 11 dungeons, 5 raids and 3 end game zones, but even with that, many people were tired of it by the end.

So why is that if these alternate progression systems were so great?

[Makorus]

You can't really understand my problem. How much time you had to work for a trinket that expired within a tier or an expansion? And how much you worked for any of these systems since legion? A goal is only a goal if the effort worth the reward. To me, none of these were worthy.

I also fail to see why you bring up Legion Artifacts where I clearly stated I wasn't excited for them (only found the premise of the artifacts cool) and the execution was bad imo.
You will never understand how these systems are in the way until you understand what effort/reward means and what "necessary grind" means with these systems.

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How much time it took you to unlock your whole talent tree and to get your glyphs? Compare that with soulbinds and conduits. What we had before as a given, for free, has become a grind that you slowly unlock. What we had before as a simple tool to optimize your char before you run out enjoying the game be it raiding, outdoor derping or something else, has become THE GAME.

It took me like 1-2 months to unlock my full talent tree.

Glyphs also werent available instantly in any expansion.

Acting like you need to have all the soulbinds or conduits to play the game is disingenuous as fuck lol

[Lei]

It took me like 1-2 months to unlock my full talent tree.

Glyphs also werent available instantly in any expansion.

Acting like you need to have all the soulbinds or conduits to play the game is disingenuous as fuck lol

How do you mean it took you 1-2 months to unlock your full talent tree? You mean in vanilla? That game was vastly different than anything since. Please don't say it took you 1-2 months to level up to max level in bc-wrath-cata-mop-wod.
Were you on a shitty realm where glyphs weren't available basically from the get go? I feel like that's a you problem.

[Venziir]

Title.

It seems like since Warlords of Draenor the team has moved away from the systems that defined WoW as a product for a literal decade and switched it up. Its all fine that they did that, things like World Quests (Especially the Nazjatar Iteration of the system) work really well. However I have wondered often, why, instead, don't we just get more of the content we for sure enjoy?

I could do without the Conduit system. I could go without the stupid Mission table (Although tbf, some people do like it, and it is something you do in the background, like Pet Battles.)

My point is. Why not, instead of reinventing the wheel every 6 months/2 years, depending on how shitty the system, stick with tried and true? I would KILL for Order Hall length Questlines for every faction introduced as a Rep. Bring back MoP Storyline Styles. Bring back the tabards for grinding.

I just feel like overall, we are getting less content to actually physically play and more systems that keep us focused on a gamified feature.

What as special about the Naz' WQ's again? Other than the fact that they started going back to dailies?

Oh and to quickly answer; because "more of the same" would result in stagnation and people being bored thus leaving and taking their money with them. You have to shake things up now and again to keep things fresh and relevant.

[Donald Hellscream]

Personally think it is a lose/lose situation, Either they attempt to reinvent the wheel every expansion or they don't do anything new beyond more zones and dungeons/raids.
People will complain either way, if they reinvent the wheel people will complain about them adding new systems for that expansion, if they just release new zones, dungeons and raids, people will claim it is more of a major content patch than an expansion.

Its easy to say " just release more of the same " but there is no guarantee that it would satisfy customers anyway, is the way they are going about it in Shadowlands perfect? Not by a longshot but I think it is still more ideal than just stagnating and have nothing beyond new areas be the distinction between expansions.

[RobertMugabe]

Title.

It seems like since Warlords of Draenor the team has moved away from the systems that defined WoW as a product for a literal decade and switched it up. Its all fine that they did that, things like World Quests (Especially the Nazjatar Iteration of the system) work really well. However I have wondered often, why, instead, don't we just get more of the content we for sure enjoy?

I could do without the Conduit system. I could go without the stupid Mission table (Although tbf, some people do like it, and it is something you do in the background, like Pet Battles.)

My point is. Why not, instead of reinventing the wheel every 6 months/2 years, depending on how shitty the system, stick with tried and true? I would KILL for Order Hall length Questlines for every faction introduced as a Rep. Bring back MoP Storyline Styles. Bring back the tabards for grinding.

I just feel like overall, we are getting less content to actually physically play and more systems that keep us focused on a gamified feature.

I think it's pretty simple: More of the same stuff, but with a different colour will get very boring very quickly. It just wouldn't work WoW.
Also tbh, every expansion brought massive changes and mixed things up a lot. Ironically, the most successful and most loved expansion Wotlk, did it more than any other expansion. And next up are MoP and Legion in terms of changes and new things.

Believe it or not, but Cataclysm was actually an expansion that barely changed the actual gameplay and thus so many people hated it. It basically felt like a smaller Wotlk with a different theme and shittier story, but the gameplay was almost identical (the only "radical" change being the smaller and restricted talent trees). Nowadays it's regarded as one of the worst expansions ever, simply because it was so boring.

[Zarithras]

Title.

It seems like since Warlords of Draenor the team has moved away from the systems that defined WoW as a product for a literal decade and switched it up. Its all fine that they did that, things like World Quests (Especially the Nazjatar Iteration of the system) work really well. However I have wondered often, why, instead, don't we just get more of the content we for sure enjoy?

I could do without the Conduit system. I could go without the stupid Mission table (Although tbf, some people do like it, and it is something you do in the background, like Pet Battles.)

My point is. Why not, instead of reinventing the wheel every 6 months/2 years, depending on how shitty the system, stick with tried and true? I would KILL for Order Hall length Questlines for every faction introduced as a Rep. Bring back MoP Storyline Styles. Bring back the tabards for grinding.

I just feel like overall, we are getting less content to actually physically play and more systems that keep us focused on a gamified feature.

You use World Quests, Order Halls, and rep tabards as an example of new systems that have worked really well. So you do concede that new systems can be good. It would be wonderful if Blizzard only developed these kinds of great new systems, but unfortunately, that's the case. Point being, it requires innovation, iteration, and risk taking to develop something great. We wouldn't have M+ if we didn't first have challenge modes (which I sorely miss)!

I do agree that certain features should just be cut. The mission table, for example, has been getting more and more lame since release in WoD. That said, they have been iterating on it since it's release. Blizzard isn't cutting that feature because it was boring in the past expansion. I don't like the iteration, but this is an example of them NOT reinventing the wheel and instead sticking with and iterating on existing features. Maybe the SL iteration will be really fun - we'll see. If so, all of these boring iterations would have been worth it. Personally, I'd like to see mission tables cut, and similarly for other boring systems, but I recognize their efforts to iterate.

Lastly, Blizzard devs have acknowledged many times how difficult it is to keep itemization interesting in WoW. The tried and true formula of end-game progression exist solely through item drops is not enough to engage players for 16+ years. They first tried by improving customization with systems like reforging, gems, and glyphs. They then tried introducing expansion-long quests, like the legendary cloak in MoP or ring in WoD. They then tried an infinite grind in Legion and BfA with artifact and azerite power. Now, in SL, they're trying something new again with a "meaningful" choice in covenants, craftable legendaries, and a finite weekly grind. You can agree or disagree with how each of these systems has landed, especially relative to the old tried and true end-game, but you can't fault Blizzard for trying to keep a 16+ year old game alive, new, and fun.

[GreenJesus]

People complain about everything. That's literally all there is to it.

People will complain if systems stay the same because "OMFG GAME IS BORING AND NO CHANGE!"
People will complain if new systems are put in because of "OMFG THEY RUINED THE GAME STOP CHANGES!"

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Though everytime they prune a couple of abilities, they add in new ones for new expansions in FFXIV and the Abilities they mostly pruned recently were abilities that served no real purpose or could just be rolled together.

My DPS class still has nearly 3 bars full of abilities to use in combat.

True. I think FF14 has done a good job of that overall. I just think Bard specifically has lost so much utility its barely even a bard anymore. Its just an archer now.

[Elias01]

Instead of them wasting so much time on these pointless systems that LITERALY not one sane person even enjoys,they should scrap it all....scrap conduits,scrap soulbinds,scrap legenderies,scrap every single borrowed power system and just focus on fun content and making the classes fun

this is why people enjoyed wrath and mop,even wod would have been rememberd as a perfectly fine expansion if instead of the pointless garrison prison and shipyard we got more of what has been shown that players actualy enjoy

give the covenants cool cosmetics and story quests,and slap on a mop/wod style legendery and thats it,invest the rest of the dev time in good and conistant patch content and raids,and make classes more like in mop

Why you think people dont enyoj them? Becouse these systems are actualy reason why casuals have content to do. Without them you would get another WoD with nothing to do and massive amounth of players quiting game.

[deenman]

Why you think people dont enyoj them? Becouse these systems are actualy reason why casuals have content to do. Without them you would get another WoD with nothing to do and massive amounth of players quiting game.

this bogles my mind...there are plenty of things for casuals to do,in fact these systems are EXTREMLY anti casual,also wod wasnt bad because it didnt have systems,it was bad because it didnt have content,tbc wrath and mop had no systems and were awsome,back when you know...the game had its peak playerbase

[kaminaris]

You can't really understand my problem. How much time you had to work for a trinket that expired within a tier or an expansion? And how much you worked for any of these systems since legion? A goal is only a goal if the effort worth the reward. To me, none of these were worthy.

How much? Entire tier sometimes, farming all difficulties each week and hoping for drop.
Imagine that before Cata/MoP, you weren't showered in loot. So it wasn't uncommon for some people to never get stuff they wanted.
Hell, these things are happening even now like one guildmate didn't get his weapon for entire tier.

I also fail to see why you bring up Legion Artifacts where I clearly stated I wasn't excited for them (only found the premise of the artifacts cool) and the execution was bad imo.
You will never understand how these systems are in the way until you understand what effort/reward means and what "necessary grind" means with these systems.

Oh but I do, I've been there done that. There is no such thing as necessary grind, it's all in your head. I haven't done like a single WQ since 8.1. It all came from stuff i enjoyed. Legion was worse in that regard but still.

[Elias01]

this bogles my mind...there are plenty of things for casuals to do,in fact these systems are EXTREMLY anti casual,also wod wasnt bad because it didnt have systems,it was bad because it didnt have content,tbc wrath and mop had no systems and were awsome,back when you know...the game had its peak playerbase

Like what? Are you kiding me right? TBC? WOTLK? Do you know what els thoes expansion did had? Yeah LFR, Mythic+, LFG, faceroll leveling, and all other covinience what has been added over the curse of epansion what casued players burn trough content in matter of days instead of months. You can just look at TBC and say oh TBC did not had those systems so game doesnt really need them and completly ignore way that expasnion was designed. TBC was nowhere near acessbile and easy to finish as current moder version of the game thats why that expansion did just fine without any of it.

[Mafic]

this bogles my mind...there are plenty of things for casuals to do,in fact these systems are EXTREMLY anti casual,also wod wasnt bad because it didnt have systems,it was bad because it didnt have content,tbc wrath and mop had no systems and were awsome,back when you know...the game had its peak playerbase

Yeppers.

Rental systems is something you see in eastern MMORPGs. Doesn't belong in western MMORPGs because it is anti casual.

[Krakan]

Like what? Are you kiding me right? TBC? WOTLK? Do you know what els thoes expansion did had? Yeah LFR, Mythic+, LFG, faceroll leveling, and all other covinience what has been added over the curse of epansion what casued players burn trough content in matter of days instead of months. You can just look at TBC and say oh TBC did not had those systems so game doesnt really need them and completly ignore way that expasnion was designed. TBC was nowhere near acessbile and easy to finish as current moder version of the game thats why that expansion did just fine without any of it.

The goal isn't to finish. No one is arguing bfa has more meaningful content then tbc as that's a fools argument. No matter your skill level save for full clearing raider there was something to do. That was the beauty of a tiered content system.

If you joined in the last patch you had more content available then you would know what to do with and you simply progressed as you got better.

Current wow has busy work. Its fight a battle you can't lose or grind something trivial or time gate this.

The games devolved from what it was in a lot of aspects.