Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Wangming]

I don't think it's ridiculous at all. Combat, adventure and overcoming enemies is the core of the game, always has been. I don't think we should dilute the game too much with weird side tasks, otherwise as I said earlier we gonna have racing or snooker as a expansion features.

And would that be such a bad thing? Side content is what you entertain yourself with, between patches. Otherwise, you unsub. Just look at what WoW streamers do when they aren't streaming WoW. Asmon spent hours doing dungeons and lottery in the Gold Saucer. And there was a pretty long period of time when all he did was breed racing chocobos.

Shit, it isn't exclusive to multiplayer games either. Gwent in Witcher 3 got so popular it got its own game.
Just because the core gameplay is griefing low-level players, and grinding mythic+, it does not mean that's all it can or should be.

[draugril]

Or it could reward customization options (Red eyes and undead skin) to finally be able to look like one.

Seems quite plausible. These sorts of additions used to be pipe dreams, but the Night Warrior questline opened up a world of possibilities. This would be a very logical place to begin to expand on that type of reward.

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I honestly feel that if they where to ever do a revamp, a great way to do zone content that lasts months instead of days is a server or region wide events about building new towns or rebuilding any number of places destroyed over the Cataclysm, factions wars etc. Now that would not be housing; it would be something in between Garrisons, Broken Isles contributions and Isle of Quel'Danas/Isle of Thunder. A zone wide event with dailies/world quests where players get to choose individually to contribute to different buildings and each unlock adds more dailies with possible events happening at different stages of completion. Once done, you can keep contributing for gold or even a local paragon-style rep or Renown system that grants collectibles. And you could have a local chronicler (the innkeeper, a librarian, the town mayor) who lets you relive the scenarios from the different progression events for people who join in late. This would let people contribute to building back the world, even if the choice would be entirely illusory.

I would love to see a smaller-scale AQ40/Firmament/Garrisons hybrid system, allowing the players to rebuild certain areas, and allowing their collective choices to ultimately decide what buildings are chosen and where they're placed. Alas, server identity has more-or-less been hardcoded out of the game, so this sort of system wouldn't work anymore.

[Nymrohd]

Seems quite plausible. These sorts of additions used to be pipe dreams, but the Night Warrior questline opened up a world of possibilities. This would be a very logical place to begin to expand on that type of reward.

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I would love to see a smaller-scale AQ40/Firmament/Garrisons hybrid system, allowing the players to rebuild certain areas, and allowing their collective choices to ultimately decide what buildings are chosen and where they're placed. Alas, server identity has more-or-less been hardcoded out of the game, so this sort of system wouldn't work anymore.

I mean the only choice could be what gets built first. And as we saw during Legion if you give people the choice to contribute to one of several buildings, there is no way to control what gets built first; people will do whatever they want. Which would not make the locations unique but it would make the progression different in each region (and even create a bit of competition between regions on who finishes first).

[Wangming]

I would love to see a smaller-scale AQ40/Firmament/Garrisons hybrid system, allowing the players to rebuild certain areas, and allowing their collective choices to ultimately decide what buildings are chosen and where they're placed. Alas, server identity has more-or-less been hardcoded out of the game, so this sort of system wouldn't work anymore.

Well assuming they don't want to hardcode server identity back in, they can always track popular choices across ALL servers. We figure out the layout for them and they can pretend they listen to players. It's a win-win situation

[Shadochi]

Well assuming they don't want to hardcode server identity back in, they can always track popular choices across ALL servers. We figure out the layout for them and they can pretend they listen to players. It's a win-win situation

Tbh it should just be region based. There is less and less reason for stuff to be realm gated instead of region gated (and obviously having regions instead of one global connected server is needed due to latency and other technical limitations). Things like Hall of Fame imo for now are okay to stay realm gated but I would like to see them too not be. Guilds are a bit of an issue since then if you don't realm gate guilds you would need to add the realm name to each guild

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

This right here would be the main problem for WOW Housing. We just dont have the interactivity of this form to move and rotate. At most we would get rotating around the Y axis. And moving and rotating would be done with the vehicle UI

Hence why I said that the camp would be a better fit.

[Nymrohd]

Tbh it should just be region based. There is less and less reason for stuff to be realm gated instead of region gated (and obviously having regions instead of one global connected server is needed due to latency and other technical limitations). Things like Hall of Fame imo for now are okay to stay realm gated but I would like to see them too not be. Guilds are a bit of an issue since then if you don't realm gate guilds you would need to add the realm name to each guild

I think it would be interesting if instead of Regions they formalized the server groups they already have in some way. The way I understand this, when we shard there is a preference in joining groups in our server group. Probably has to do with actual physical server architecture. So many things are already server group-wide (guilds and trading for instance). So if we'd want things to be a bit more granular and for there to be more competition instead of just having regions we could have a much larger number of server groups. You could have Hall of Fame be gated in that way (but with far fewer than 100 kills and not faction split) and also have server-level events occur at that level (which became region wide well in the past probably because dead servers would almost never complete them).

[Lahis]

This right here would be the main problem for WOW Housing. We just dont have the interactivity of this form to move and rotate. At most we would get rotating around the Y axis. And moving and rotating would be done with the vehicle UI

Trying to build customizeable housing in WoW's engine is like fitting penteract into a round hole.

[Wangming]

Trying to build customizeable housing in WoW's engine is like fitting penteract into a round hole.

Well at the very least everquest did an engine update in one of its expansions AFAIK.

[Marlamin]

Trying to build customizeable housing in WoW's engine is like fitting penteract into a round hole.

It's not actually as bad as people think it is these days, nor is that really an engine issue.

[GabrielKnight]

If you want housing in WoW, you can apply the LotrO system just fine. It was separated by instanced neighborhood with many houses in there, and the decoration was mostly "place this item there to show it off". Kinda like Archaeology worked in WoD, Legion, and BfA. So yes, it can be done, even with this limited engine.

[Zulggun]

And would that be such a bad thing? Side content is what you entertain yourself with, between patches. Otherwise, you unsub. Just look at what WoW streamers do when they aren't streaming WoW. Asmon spent hours doing dungeons and lottery in the Gold Saucer. And there was a pretty long period of time when all he did was breed racing chocobos.

Shit, it isn't exclusive to multiplayer games either. Gwent in Witcher 3 got so popular it got its own game.
Just because the core gameplay is griefing low-level players, and grinding mythic+, it does not mean that's all it can or should be.

I dont know why so many people want every mmo to be the same, have same features, be homogenized like this. You have things in other game? Enjoy them there, why you have to have them in every other game you play?
Besides, housing is not "make or break" for a game. We have FF which is very popular now (tho arguably not BECAUSE of housing) and you have Wildstar where housing was well recived but game itself failed horribly. For me it's too much of undertaking to risk. Fix the core game first, and THEN try gimmicks.

Also I cannot fathom Blizzard not abandoning housing after one expansion as they always do. Again, makes it even more of unnecessary risk.

[Wangming]

I dont know why so many people want every mmo to be the same, have same features, be homogenized like this. You have things in other game? Enjoy them there, why you have to have them in every other game you play?
Besides, housing is not "make or break" for a game. We have FF which is very popular now (tho arguably not BECAUSE of housing) and you have Wildstar where housing was well recived but game itself failed horribly. For me it's too much of undertaking to risk. Fix the core game first, and THEN try gimmicks.

Also I cannot fathom Blizzard not abandoning housing after one expansion as they always do. Again, makes it even more of unnecessary risk.

You are correct, homogenization is a problem. But there are trends and if you want to stay on top or at least near the top, you have to either set the trend or follow them. WoW does neither and this age the only unique thing they offer is a lawsuit by the government.

The uniqueness comes in how they implement it not in what.

[Zulggun]

You are correct, homogenization is a problem. But there are trends and if you want to stay on top or at least near the top, you have to either set the trend or follow them. WoW does neither and this age the only unique thing they offer is a lawsuit by the government.

The uniqueness comes in how they implement it not in what.

I'll give you that, if you look at it like this there is a lot of truth in that, I agree.
Still I think the chances for housing is slim at best. I'd be less surprised if we'd see old world revamp.

[Lady Atia]

Happy Tuesday everyone - let's hope we get a new juicy ptr build tonight, yes?

I was thinking about the upcoming season 4 raiding affix and was wondering how exactly that one would work. Will it be basically an extra difficulty level above Mythic, or a buff that you can (de)activate at the start similiar to season of mastery AQ40? Will they bother to boost lfr ilvl's up for catch-up gear, making all lfr wings viable for gearing up alts? I imagine you will be able to craft tier pieces from Castle Nathria and Sanctum loot too? What's with the Domination Shard system? Will they add new achievements or transmogs? Maybe a mount for Sire Denathrius, or for clearing all three raids with the affix? So many questions ...

Also I hope we will see some new mounts this build aswell as the confirmation that the season 4 M+ mount will be the blue deathwalker as that was the prettiest re-colour of the original three imo.

[Izalla]

I'd probably still be more interested in locking my character in a swimming pool by removing the ladder than decorating a house.

You can't even do this anymore, the sims are too smart to just let themselves die and will climb in and out of pools regardless of ladders. Now you gave to put walls or a fence around it so they can't climb out.

[draugril]

Trying to build customizeable housing in WoW's engine is like fitting penteract into a round hole.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind modular node-based housing, much like garrisons but on a more granular scale.

[Wangming]

I'll give you that, if you look at it like this there is a lot of truth in that, I agree.
Still I think the chances for housing is slim at best. I'd be less surprised if we'd see old world revamp.

Now THAT we definitely agree on. I think the most likely is a partial revamp. A bit more likely is a full revamp. A less likely but very awesome would be a profession revamp with a bonus housing feature.

But we will definitely get something very fanservice. My money is on a new class. But I'm hoping for playable naga and a full old world revamp.

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You can't even do this anymore, the sims are too smart to just let themselves die and will climb in and out of pools regardless of ladders. Now you gave to put walls or a fence around it so they can't climb out.

Boooo. The fun police struck again.

(And I still love your profile pick)

[Alanar]

You could say that for a lot of things in WoW. Without knowing how it would be implemented in the game, it is hard to claim it'd be out of place. Things like pet battles, Torghast, etc sound like pretty foreign concepts if you look at their feature sets, but if integrated into the game properly fit perfectly fine (and to an extent are actually fun).

Its more that we know a feature like that is HUGE and to make it fun and broad it just needs alot of optiions. Garrisons had the setup but ended up being extremely limited in so many ways. They told us we were free to place it for example.. it was probably cut in many corners, anyway.. it would cost so much time and the outcome would probably still feel dissappointed. I dont see it succeed if I have to be honest.

In so many ways.. this feature feels like: you think you want it, but not really.

[Zulggun]

I stopped betting on anything after bfa reveal. Save myself the disappointment.