Shadowlands delay -- Proof this direction isn't the best way forward?

[Kaver]

I've been thinking a lot about the delay and how meaningful this choice has been for Blizzard. This is a company that had zero qualms releasing BfA in an unfinished state. Yet, for whatever reason, they're delaying SL for a lot of the same reasons early BfA was criticized: A systems-on-systems approach to game design which is inherently difficult to balance. Whether it's Azerite, Essences, Covenants or Legendaries, Blizzard loves to create problems for themselves which they then have to solve -- and seemingly never really do. It's made me wonder whether the SL delay (which seemed inevitable to anybody who played the beta) will finally begin a push for Blizzard to finally move away from these kinds of systems because of the litany of issues which come along with them. The delay must not have been an easy choice for Blizzard to make and I'm sure there are heated internal discussions to figure out how to prevent such a situation from happening again in the future.

We likely won't see any major shifts in design philosophy until midway through SL but I'm hopeful that Blizzard is finally realizing that there is beauty in simplicity and that multiple systems riding on other systems creates far more problems than it solves. What do you guys think?

I agree. Blizzard have been asked a lot Lately: “Are these systems really worth the thousands of dev time hours that goes into them?” And I think Blizzard have started to realize that they are not worth it.

[Relapses]

Yeah, they should totally have no progression systems at all just to be safe so they can't be lambasted on how "horrible" they are. /s

Come on man, that's not at all what I'm saying. Progression systems are fine. They've existed in WoW since the beginning. But progression systems built into progression systems on top of progression systems may be where we should draw the line. Modern Blizzard's insistence on designing the game around spreadsheet demographics which seem to maximize engagement while minimizing hands-on development time is one of its most controversial aspects. Is it really that hard of an ask to simply wonder whether they've pushed the game too far in this direction?

[Hellobolis]

for now im treating the delay as the penny pincher accountants trying to push the boundaries of cost savings, and now they have found the limit.

i'm sure in 2-4 years we'll get some hindsight perspective of what the true reason was though.

[sensei-]

Just so we're both on the same page, this is essentially how we've gotten to this point:
Your assertion is, essentially, that the number of contrived systems are causing development issues.
The person you initially responded to, deenman, makes a counter-claim stating that the issues plaguing Shadowlands are more diverse in nature (i.e.: fundamental aspects of the expansion, like levelling from 50-60, are still not complete).
You respond with specific issues related to BfA, which seemed to be a whataboutism for BfA (i.e.: Shadowlands may have these problems, but what about these problems with BfA).
I respond with a slightly more comprehensive list of problems specific to Shadowlands for why it needed delayed, some of which were related to new systems and others were not.

The relevance is that Shadowlands is very obviously not being delayed solely due to the extra systems. Fundamental parts of the expansion are not complete, this includes levelling, class spells not working, specialization rotations being incomplete and still up for major changes, some talents still don't work, many encounters in raid testing are incomplete, etc. Blizzard's problem seems to be a more fundamental scoping issue, or possibly even a resource issue, rather than being due to contrived/complex systems or layering systems on top of each other, as most of the major issues plaguing Shadowlands aren't actually related to covenants. The development team isn't a singular pool which can have all its resources allocated to a specific system, they're broken down into teams which deal with specific aspects of the game, and each of these smaller teams seem to be having issues delivering.

- - - Updated - - -



I think it needs pointed out, the idea that it's 1% min/max that are having issues is untrue. Covenants testing throughout beta, even in most recent raid/mythic+ testing has some classes being up to 100% more powerful than others, some covenant abilities have been doing upwards of 40% of some spec's damage, etc. At the moment, Blizzard is starting to nerf many of these abilities to the ground in order to force them to be relatively balance, so it'll likely be OK balance wise, but it's essentially turning interesting choices that cannot be balanced in time into uninteresting but balanced choices.

So when I replace the word covenant in this trash post with the word corruption I have live WoW for all of 2020, and somehow I should be outraged this is also the case on a beta.

Nobody cares about tuning. Never has. People will play what is best regardless of what it is, and for the last 16 years it’s been like that.

[Luxeley]

Don't get hopeful, spare yourself the inevitable disappointment. Blizzard stacks game systems because it supports a long outdated time synch business model. Like a bird flying head first into a window, they believe they can balance it out deliver something fair, but they never do, they always fail.

[cparle87]

Come on man, that's not at all what I'm saying. Progression systems are fine. They've existed in WoW since the beginning. But progression systems built into progression systems on top of progression systems may be where we should draw the line. Modern Blizzard's insistence on designing the game around spreadsheet demographics which seem to maximize engagement while minimizing hands-on development time is one of its most controversial aspects. Is it really that hard of an ask to simply wonder whether they've pushed the game too far in this direction?

Read what you wrote.

"At some point, however, you have to wonder whether the playerbase will simply stop supporting these design decisions. BfA's relationship with players seemed tenuous at best and SL is, in many ways, supposed to be a redemption arc for Blizzard. I get that there's only so many ways they can serve us the same bullshit on a different platter but I don't think it's nearly as bleak a picture as you're painting here."

How am I supposed to read that as anything but "every alternative progression system Blizzard has added are all the same bullshit on a different platter and I wonder when the playerbase will wise up and stop supporting them"?

[Relapses]

Read what you wrote.

"At some point, however, you have to wonder whether the playerbase will simply stop supporting these design decisions. BfA's relationship with players seemed tenuous at best and SL is, in many ways, supposed to be a redemption arc for Blizzard. I get that there's only so many ways they can serve us the same bullshit on a different platter but I don't think it's nearly as bleak a picture as you're painting here."

How am I supposed to read that as anything but "every alternative progression system Blizzard has added are all the same bullshit on a different platter and I wonder when the playerbase will wise up and stop supporting them"?

The actual conversation is a bit more nuanced than "everything sucks" or "everything is amazing." I don't think every alternative progression system is trash nor did I mean to imply that, I just think that modern WoW's obsession with layering progression systems on top of each other is causing more harm than good.

edit: Also, did you quote the wrong part of my post? That wasn't what you had originally responded to.

[Thestrawman]

Not really. Clearly they originally thought they could handle more then they actually could when they announced it.

Yes really. They've been in quarantine for five months from March to August. If after five months they couldn't account for the loss of productivity due to quarantine then management is far worse then I thought.

[kaminaris]

like OP said; they had no problems releasing BFA in an unfinished state. so i find it hard to believe they delayed it to 'finish' it. dont get me wrong though, i dont mind the delay, but saying its to finish the expansion? i dont buy it.

You probably have no idea what are you talking about. BfA has been polished diamond compared to current state of SL. And I am not even talking about any of the system but core gameplay.

- - - Updated - - -

What part is difficult for you to understand?
Blizz has released buggy unfinished products for over 5 years now, its to be expected.
If they now do a 180 and decide they need more time to polish the game and give us a better experience and they fail to do that.

If the product is not gonna improve, there would be no inherent reason to even delay it. Dont you see the flaws in your own logic?

Actually 15 years (or maybe even more if we consider other games made by blizz) not 5 if you consider recent 5 expansions as "buggy" and "unfinished".

[Clozer]

You probably have no idea what are you talking about. BfA has been polished diamond compared to current state of SL. And I am not even talking about any of the system but core gameplay.

- - - Updated - - -



Actually 15 years (or maybe even more if we consider other games made by blizz) not 5 if you consider recent 5 expansions as "buggy" and "unfinished".

What are you talking about? Bfa was a complete mess. I encountered 20 bugs while leveling alone, forcing to abandon and reaccept quests all the damn time. Dungeons extremely bugged. I mean 2 years later and you can still pull mobs through walls in TD. A ton of movement abilities didn't work right. Azerite being the only endgame system with nothing but 3 passives to choose from combined with awful island grinds.

Compare this to SL. I leveled 3 chars from 50 to 60 and I encountered 2 bugged quests. A handful of abilities are still not working as intended, nothing that can not be fixed within a single week. Dungeons are in a way better state than BFA dungeons were.

They delay it to fix their stupid tuning and imbalanced covenant abilities. Yet in the last 8 years, they couldn't even balance a single talent row for a single spec in the game. Ridiculous.

[sensei-]

What are you talking about? Bfa was a complete mess. I encountered 20 bugs while leveling alone, forcing to abandon and reaccept quests all the damn time. Dungeons extremely bugged. I mean 2 years later and you can still pull mobs through walls in TD. A ton of movement abilities didn't work right. Azerite being the only endgame system with nothing but 3 passives to choose from combined with awful island grinds.

Compare this to SL. I leveled 3 chars from 50 to 60 and I encountered 2 bugged quests. A handful of abilities are still not working as intended, nothing that can not be fixed within a single week. Dungeons are in a way better state than BFA dungeons were.

They delay it to fix their stupid tuning and imbalanced covenant abilities. Yet in the last 8 years, they couldn't even balance a single talent row for a single spec in the game. Ridiculous.

Good post. You actually play the game, both beta and live, so you know these things. Most people who trash post about SL don’t actually play. This revisionist history as to how supposedly the precious balance of WoW has been destroyed by a beta expansion is laughable. There hasn’t been a single period of time in the game that forums wouldn’t have been absolutely filled with balance complaints and game is dying sh1tposts. From vanilla on to present day. Noone cares about balance. Designers don’t care. Casuals don’t care and Method/Echo/Limit certainly don’t care as they’ll class stack whatever is best regardless. Streamers who make a living selling malcontent and essentially sh1tposting every day care.

[kaminaris]

What are you talking about? Bfa was a complete mess. I encountered 20 bugs while leveling alone, forcing to abandon and reaccept quests all the damn time. Dungeons extremely bugged. I mean 2 years later and you can still pull mobs through walls in TD. A ton of movement abilities didn't work right. Azerite being the only endgame system with nothing but 3 passives to choose from combined with awful island grinds.

Compare this to SL. I leveled 3 chars from 50 to 60 and I encountered 2 bugged quests. A handful of abilities are still not working as intended, nothing that can not be fixed within a single week. Dungeons are in a way better state than BFA dungeons were.

They delay it to fix their stupid tuning and imbalanced covenant abilities. Yet in the last 8 years, they couldn't even balance a single talent row for a single spec in the game. Ridiculous.

Then you haven't played SL if you think that measly bugs that you only had to "reaccept" quests are "complete mess", sorry but this is a delusion. I leveled to max first day of BfA, haven't encountered a single bug. Last time I tried to level in beta I got stuck and nothing helped, not even reaccepting quests. Not to mention some of the abilities didn't even work properly.

No they do not delay to balance covenant abilities, that is irrelevant and you are delusional if you think so.
No you didn't play beta.

For example this one (dont care about his opinions tho): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PqYaoZhuP0

I couldn't even help my buddy because I couldn't even get my covenant quests, it was bugged and that bug has been in game for months.

So yes, BfA was polished diamond compared to SL. Balance is irrelevant.

- - - Updated - - -

Good post. You actually play the game, both beta and live, so you know these things. Most people who trash post about SL don’t actually play. This revisionist history as to how supposedly the precious balance of WoW has been destroyed by a beta expansion is laughable. There hasn’t been a single period of time in the game that forums wouldn’t have been absolutely filled with balance complaints and game is dying sh1tposts. From vanilla on to present day. Noone cares about balance. Designers don’t care. Casuals don’t care and Method/Echo/Limit certainly don’t care as they’ll class stack whatever is best regardless. Streamers who make a living selling malcontent and essentially sh1tposting every day care.

I think you misunderstood what he wrote. He thinks that blizzard is taking a delay only to balance stuff, which then you ridiculed.

[Razion]

Conduits = Legion Relics
Soulbinds Trees = Specialization Artifact Weapon Trees
Covenant Abilities = Artifact Abilities

The expansion is more or less Legion 2.0, only instead of Demon Hunters we're basically getting Torghast.

At this point the systems may seem convoluted. It can certainly be easier to explain these systems as they were perhaps envisioned.
Soulbinds: You bind yourself to a powerful being, granting you boons and traits.
Covenant Abilities: By binding to them, you also get class-specific and a general power from the land the being came from.
Conduits: By defeating powerful enemies, you get vestiges of power you can bind to yourself - empowering your abilities.

The time taken to balance all of these may tell us that all of these things may have too many moving parts. That perhaps simpler bonuses and traits may have made for a more easily manageable set of systems. But we've all seen and heard the feedback that the old talent tree bonuses of "just 5% crit" were boring and not very exciting -- even though they were perfectly suitable in the past and even now Classic has some amount of people playing perhaps in no small part to those old talent trees being so simple and intuitive.

So while I do agree that these systems are perhaps too complicated, I do think the time they're taking to either evaluate whether they need to make these bonuses simpler or if they need to just try and find the balance to see if maybe the hope of finding powers that are more interesting can perhaps pay off in terms of engagement with these new trees is yet to be seen. That's really only something the people balancing the game can say for sure, but for us as players it certainly would be useful feedback if you had played with the systems to let them know if the trees are fulfilling the purpose of being sufficiently intricate versus the old talent trees of yore, or if it would be better to have better balance at the cost of less intricate trees.

Keep in mind, WoW is/was meant to be a casual game - and the trees being complicated was an effort to appeal to more depth, mastery, and thus a hard-core audience (I think this is a fair assessment). While casual players can also perhaps appreciate some more depth and intricate systems, I don't think it's entirely worthless to say one way or the other if it's doing its job or not. The feedback of people who have played with the systems is important. It may be a little late for them to adjust things now, regrettably - even though they said from the outset they were making all of this with the intention of being able to easily turn it all off or change it all later.

If just changing it to simpler boons/traits is what we can best hope for - this is probably more the feedback that would be useful for them to hear in terms of what players want for things like conduits and soulbinds. They may end up kind of boring this way, is my only concern. I think the dream of having these be interesting and fun is more important than the balance because the game is meant to be casual first, so I don't agree with an assessment they should give up before the expansion comes up. But I think if the expansion releases and the feedback they get that the traits and bonuses are better balanced than intricate because they may have failed to be compelling then that can be the case when it happens.

Ultimately I'd like to see them try to balance these to get them to a spot where they are compelling, though, because I have seen examples of really fun bonuses like Tar Trap getting set on fire with Flare (although I guess that's a legendary so maybe not the best example) -- these kinds of bonuses are fun and a lot cooler than 5% crit on Fireball or something.

[sensei-]

Then you haven't played SL if you think that measly bugs that you only had to "reaccept" quests are "complete mess", sorry but this is a delusion. I leveled to max first day of BfA, haven't encountered a single bug. Last time I tried to level in beta I got stuck and nothing helped, not even reaccepting quests. Not to mention some of the abilities didn't even work properly.

No they do not delay to balance covenant abilities, that is irrelevant and you are delusional if you think so.
No you didn't play beta.

- - - Updated - - -



I think you misunderstood what he wrote. He thinks that blizzard is taking a delay only to balance stuff, which then you ridiculed.

He didn’t imply the delay is because of balance issues. Balancing is one of the least important things in MMOs, some would argue not important at all, so it’s left for last. The delay is because of covid. What they are doing now is fixing bugs (all minor) and doing some balancing. Sky isn’t falling. Everything was delayed this year.

I still don’t know what these supposed critical bugs in SL questing and zones are. I just finished leveling a warlock on beta yesterday, and I reported some minor bugs a handful of times, but everything was completable. All my spells worked. All covenant abilities worked.

Endgame systems still require work on Torghast realm, but that’s just polish.

[Clozer]

Then you haven't played SL if you think that measly bugs that you only had to "reaccept" quests are "complete mess", sorry but this is a delusion. I leveled to max first day of BfA, haven't encountered a single bug. Last time I tried to level in beta I got stuck and nothing helped, not even reaccepting quests. Not to mention some of the abilities didn't even work properly.

No they do not delay to balance covenant abilities, that is irrelevant and you are delusional if you think so.
No you didn't play beta.

For example this one (dont care about his opinions tho): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PqYaoZhuP0

I couldn't even help my buddy because I couldn't even get my covenant quests, it was bugged and that bug has been in game for months.

So yes, BfA was polished diamond compared to SL. Balance is irrelevant.

- - - Updated - - -



I think you misunderstood what he wrote. He thinks that blizzard is taking a delay only to balance stuff, which then you ridiculed.

Here leveling from 2 months ago 9 1/2 hours footage. Not a single bug questing from 50 to 60. Delusional yeah right. I see who is delusional here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhEUZeRHRjg


Quote from blizzard themselves: "it’s become clear we need a little more time for additional polish, and to balance and iterate on some interlocking pieces"

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ne...on-shadowlands

Again, I can see who is delusional here.

[Claymore]

I do think Covenants having gameplay attached to them is a terrible idea, but I don’t hate the idea of them having different cosmetics. It spices up the replay value of new characters a bit, even if it’s still less exciting than Legion’s class halls imo.

I mostly want to see them stop dicking around with temporary “borrowed power(s)”, and get away from these systems of not being able to just equip your best gear.

Also, personally? I’m sick of their approach to “Legendary” items. Go back to Legendary WEAPONS, or actually MEANINGFUL Legendary items.

Welfare Legendaries (like the cloaks and rings) just shouldn’t exist, and the Legion-style items with “Legendary effects” should just be branded a different kind of item.

If something is going to be called fucking LEGENDARY, it damn well should be.

[Magical Mudcrab]

So when I replace the word covenant in this trash post with the word corruption I have live WoW for all of 2020, and somehow I should be outraged this is also the case on a beta.

Nobody cares about tuning. Never has. People will play what is best regardless of what it is, and for the last 16 years it’s been like that.

I'm glad that such well informed, intelligent people such as yourself can give such thoughtful commentary on the game. It's genuinely inspiring that you can almost string together the semi-cogent drivel you reply to people with. Your feedback on my post has been taken into account and will most certainly be considered in the future.

[sensei-]

I'm glad that such well informed, intelligent people such as yourself can give such thoughtful commentary on the game. It's genuinely inspiring that you can almost string together the semi-cogent drivel you reply to people with. Your feedback on my post has been taken into account and will most certainly be considered in the future.

It's about time you wake up and smell the coffee. The whole conversation about Shadowlands is farcical. There's people on this very page complaining about bugs that existed 3 months ago and haven't for a long time anymore. Someone needs to step in say you guys have no clue what stage Shadowlands beta is at now, what stage it's in for Blizzard who are a couple patches ahead, but most importantly you have no clue about how the game is right now on live or how it's been in previous expansions all the way to the game's birth. You're complaining about things that don't exist and have never existed in the first place.

[Eapoe]

Wasn't it Blizzard who used to say "we never release anything until it's ready"? And people used to respect them for that. We've just become such an instant gratification society now that most people can't fathom why taking a little more time on something to get it right. That may not be what you want to hear, but it's the truth.

I can’t imagine any company giving this statement to except when talking about a stand alone, single player/multiplayer game such as CoD or Devil May Cry.
Given the history that every iteration of WoW has been released with bugs and requiring updates and hot fixes, they have shown they always release games that aren’t finished.

[Mafic]

What is this mythical "real content"?

New quests, new dungeons, etc.

Doing the same world quests from beta till the end of the expansion hasn't worked!