Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nymrohd]

Why? Renown is a vastly superior system than Reputation, and the way it's being in Dragonflight is literally to supplant the old Reputation system.

Valor absolutely needs to come back.

I think that crafting as they described it can take over for Valor. What I would like is for the Vault to get even more options. Originally at Blizzcon they said that Torghast would also let you unlock Vault Gear. Imo they should find a way to get Vault gear from doing things in the world. This would add a Valor-like weekly activity for all characters without forcing instanced content. If LFR can grant options from the Vault, so should emissaries or non-rated pvp.

[Nymrohd]

Well, if you got valor points from world quests and matchmade dungeons, you would not need buyable gear from renown. Well, that is except you want to time gate it.

And my impression was, time gating should not be used anymore. Probably except for story progress. Renowns big disadvantage was you literally had to wait a week before you could progress, while people who returned a year later could do that all at once. From that point of view, renown simply was a bad system. I guess the old reputation system we had in cataclysm, where effort decided over how fast you progressed was way better, except those tabards probably.

And as someone who enjoys the story in RPGs (who knew!) I'd say I'm ok with timegating rewards, but stop timegating the story. If you do Zereth Mortis today, it's like doing a normal questing zone; you get to travel around the zone and see most of its story with side quests for extra. Timegate it and that enjoyment is largely lost; you only get snippets. It can work if you lock it behind something you can grind; it means I can work towards the next part of the story which is something I would do with Nightfallen, hunting for every treasure and every bit of mana to open things faster.

[Sondrelk]

Well, if you got valor points from world quests and matchmade dungeons, you would not need buyable gear from renown. Well, that is except you want to time gate it.

And my impression was, time gating should not be used anymore. Probably except for story progress. Renowns big disadvantage was you literally had to wait a week before you could progress, while people who returned a year later could do that all at once. From that point of view, renown simply was a bad system. I guess the old reputation system we had in cataclysm, where effort decided over how fast you progressed was way better, except those tabards probably.

Players should be able to pace their progress. Means, you could play full days, and would take a break for days then, as example. That is way more natural for casual gamers than playing every day for 10 minutes.

The timegating aspect of renown is the entire point though, especially with the seeming changes coming to it in Dragonflight.

Unless you have a literal infinite grind like the old TBC reps and such the only way to grind rep is to wait for timegates quests and such. And in this regard Renown is infinitely better as it is far more deterministic, and additionally doesn't have as many hurdles to jump through for players that join later.

Your mistake here is assuming that making the content slightly easier as the expansion goes is a fault, and not the intended effect.

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And as someone who enjoys the story in RPGs (who knew!) I'd say I'm ok with timegating rewards, but stop timegating the story. If you do Zereth Mortis today, it's like doing a normal questing zone; you get to travel around the zone and see most of its story with side quests for extra. Timegate it and that enjoyment is largely lost; you only get snippets. It can work if you lock it behind something you can grind; it means I can work towards the next part of the story which is something I would do with Nightfallen, hunting for every treasure and every bit of mana to open things faster.

I have to disagree. So long as the questing is actually substantial on a weekly basis i quite enjoy having something to look forward to each weekly reset, rather than being done in a week or two, and then not really having much at all to do later.

Just ensure that the gating is applied across the board like it is currently with the ZM questlines so I don't have to wait as long on alts and I am good.

[Nymrohd]

I have to disagree. So long as the questing is actually substantial on a weekly basis i quite enjoy having something to look forward to each weekly reset, rather than being done in a week or two, and then not really having much at all to do later.

Just ensure that the gating is applied across the board like it is currently with the ZM questlines so I don't have to wait as long on alts and I am good.

See I don't get that. I HAVE things to do later. Other games. I'll never understand this need to pace. As a millenial, nothing has been better in entertainment for me than the fact that nowadays I never have to wait for next week to see a TV series; it's out and I can binge it when I have time. Let me do things at my own pace.
If you need to pace the rewards for gameplay reasons, do that. Don't tangle up the story.

[Sondrelk]

But why should players play from start then, if they simply could wait until the final patch to play all formerly time gated content on a weekend?

The system is broken, and heavily. If you based it on effort, and would add higher rewards to new zones, you still could have a catchup mechanism without removing all effort needed from older content.

Also, the pace of renown, a small daily effort, is simply bad design considering many players play very differently. Means, some play two days at weekend, and no days in between, some play a few hours all 3-4 days-. Some play in two weeks. A diverse playerbase like that can only be based on effort rather than minimum effort as it is the case now.

They play from the start because they enjoy it.
If all you want is to make it easy and painless then why not wait until the content is an expansion old or more? You can get people to boost your through content getting mythic tier gear effortlessly, and you don't even have to pay for the expansion to boot.

[Nymrohd]

They play from the start because they enjoy it.
If all you want is to make it easy and painless then why not wait until the content is an expansion old or more? You can get people to boost your through content getting mythic tier gear effortlessly, and you don't even have to pay for the expansion to boot.

I mean, that's effectively what many do with Alts. They wait for the inevitable QoL changes and for the timegating to be down and then do the alts.

[Nymrohd]

Well, so why not have it effort based rather than time gates? If you play all of the region in a few days, you should get the storys end. And probably not in a raid only.

Yeah, most other MMORPGs do not lock the finale of each story in a raid. And yeah there is LFR but if we want to talk pointless timegating then yeah, LFR is the probably the most timegated content in game.

[Sondrelk]

See I don't get that. I HAVE things to do later. Other games. I'll never understand this need to pace. As a millenial, nothing has been better in entertainment for me than the fact that nowadays I never have to wait for next week to see a TV series; it's out and I can binge it when I have time. Let me do things at my own pace.
If you need to pace the rewards for gameplay reasons, do that. Don't tangle up the story.

This just sounds like you want it both ways though. You want everything, and you want it now.
And yes, Netflix did some great things with releasing an entire season all at once. But videogames are an interactive medium.

Som ong as the content becomes faster available over time i don't see how this is an issue unless you have a specific schedule of only having extra time off the first week or two of a new patch, otherwise why not just play it all later when it's fully released.

And while it's definitely true that this could just be me not having the self control to pace myself with WoW, I do very much appreciate how it parses out its content over time so as to make the parch less of a drag layer on.

[Raetary]

Renown won't have any ties to player power, if there will be a catch up mechanism put in place it'd be 'get 1-2 extra renown lvl per source' instead of instant catch up.

[Sondrelk]

They enjoy to have to wait for the next story snippet or to get a new valor cap in a week? They enjoy playing 15 minutes on a sunday while they could invest way more playtime? While they can't within the week?

I doubt that. No, that system has nothing to do with player agency, rather than making players sub for longer, which does simply not work, as they could unsub and do all gameplay at the end of an expac.

There is no working system that stretches content beyond its really play value. The only thing that fixes that is permanent content updates. Best every month.



Which is another bad development. Boosting simply is epidemic and should be against the TOS. But lets continue to talk about progression pace rather than that again.

Why does it matter if you play the content when it's new and shiny, or if you play it three months later when everything has been made easier for alts?

Again, just don't sub until the last patch of the expansion, then play through it at your own pace, making transmog rubs of the deprecated raids to get help doing the raids in the correct order.

I honestly don't really see the issue with content being made to stretch longer when it's just come out. Everyone knows we will be waiting several months for new content after it, so why not just take it slow? If you don't like timegating just wait until they are gone before buying a sub.

[micwini]

Well, the aspects are already here ... Why would the sky be red/blue/green ?



And why does the see suddenly turn to blue ?

My speculation is that the rebirth of the new night elf tree triggers this. Same type of blue from Ardenweald and you see some flowers on the ground glowing in the next scene when the stone man starts walking.

[Chickat]

Considering Azerite is mostly golden, its far more likely this is just a bioluminescent beach ala Maldives.

I hope that is surrounding the waters in game. Would make the beaches of the Dragon Isles much more beautiful.

[Lady Atia]

It still could be slow if the players decided their pace. Imagine a gearing system, where subsequent updates get more and more expensive. Over-exponentially. Really, that would be enough to make players play longer rather than a renown system which artificially limits every effort. The renown systems biggest flaw is the fact that the only effort it really implements is idle time for weeks..

And really, i cannot believe it is in blizzards interest to lose players until expacs end so they could get all the content intended for them on a few days playtime. The solution for this problem are no artificial delays, but effort and the freedom for players to chose their own pace. That are the systems that work, and even if players run out of content in a new expac, they still could play alts, while an effort based system also would be way more alt friendly.

In the old days, players simply played the world content as much they could just to level another alt then. That should return. And those renown systems are a way too large brickwall for players to ever play another character again, as seen in Shadowlands.

And people who play raids and mytic+ will simply continue to raidlog and to dungeonlog. Same goes for Arena and RBG players. So they would not even be affected.

Horrible idea - I rather get upgrades at the same intervall while having to wait a week instead of spending more and more gold/anima/valor just to increase their values. And Renown in 9.2 is fine already. Dragonflight renowns won't have any player power either besides world quest gear so it's the perfect evolution of the covenant system.

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And yes, I would rather / also like a seasonal battlepass using the renown system on top, but I guess you can't have anything, right?

[Makabreska]

It still could be slow if the players decided their pace. Imagine a gearing system, where subsequent updates get more and more expensive. Over-exponentially. Really, that would be enough to make players play longer rather than a renown system which artificially limits every effort. The renown systems biggest flaw is the fact that the only effort it really implements is idle time for weeks.

Subsequent gear upgrades are less and less useful. You get the biggest power boost in first weeks of patch when you acquire tier sets, trinkets and high ilvl gear. After that ilvl increase quickly slows down. So you want players to "pay" more and more for gear that gives them less and less power. How this will make players play longer?

[Varodoc]

Alleria and Turalyon are not beloved characters. The vast majority of WoW players never played WC2. The only people who would actually be familiar with their characters would be those who bought the earliest Warcraft novels. The only reason why their names kept being brought up was because "Alleria and Turalyon are missing" was a loading screen blurb for years. If it wasn't for that blurb, no one would care. And if you polled people about how their favorite Alliance characters are, you would see Varian, Anduin, Jaina, Genn rank at the top, followed by Velen, Malfurion, Tyrande, and Muradin. And then maybe Alleria and Turalyon in the third wave, nowhere near the top.

You're wrong, the statistics prove you wrong.

Alleria is in the Top characters in WOW Fanfiction, despite being the most "recent" character in that poll, since she was reintroduced in Legion and has had very little screentime since then. But she still appears in the same poll as Varian, Anduin, Jaina, Garrosh, and Sylvanas, who are absolute main characters of WoW.






If a given character is popular in fanfictions of a given fandom, then that means that the fandom likes the character and the character is popular, otherwise they wouldn't make so many fanfics about them.

Now if Alleria, with the total of 10 minutes of screentime across 3 expansions that she has, was able to appear in this list of the absolute most popular WOW characters in Fanfics, the characters who have the most fanfics, what does this tell you about Alleria's popularity?

To put this in perspective, the likes of Tyrande, Malfurion, Baine, and Velen, who have regularly been featured for many years, and have so much more screentime than Alleria, didn't make it to the list.

The numbers have spoken and the numbers never lie.

[Das Thora]

You're wrong, the statistics prove you wrong.

Alleria is in the Top characters in WOW Fanfiction, despite being the most "recent" character in that poll, since she was reintroduced in Legion and has had very little screentime since then. But she still appears in the same poll as Varian, Anduin, Jaina, Garrosh, and Sylvanas, who are absolute main characters of WoW.






If a given character is popular in fanfictions of a given fandom, then that means that the fandom likes the character and the character is popular, otherwise they wouldn't make so many fanfics about them.

Now if Alleria, with the total of 10 minutes of screentime across 3 expansions that she has, was able to appear in this list of the absolute most popular WOW characters in Fanfics, the characters who have the most fanfics, what does this tell you about Alleria's popularity?

The numbers have spoken and the numbers never lie.

Damn I had no idea Alleria was so unpopular.

[ArenaDk]

You're wrong, the statistics prove you wrong.

Alleria is in the Top characters in WOW Fanfiction, despite being the most "recent" character in that poll, since she was reintroduced in Legion and has had very little screentime since then. But she still appears in the same poll as Varian, Anduin, Jaina, Garrosh, and Sylvanas, who are absolute main characters of WoW.






If a given character is popular in fanfictions of a given fandom, then that means that the fandom likes the character and the character is popular, otherwise they wouldn't make so many fanfics about them.

Now if Alleria, with the total of 10 minutes of screentime across 3 expansions that she has, was able to appear in this list of the absolute most popular WOW characters in Fanfics, the characters who have the most fanfics, what does this tell you about Alleria's popularity?

The numbers have spoken and the numbers never lie.

For a character who appeared as main character in a lot of books and that in the early days of wow, its actually quite low

[Das Thora]

For a character who appeared as main character in a lot of books and that in the early days of wow, its actually quite low

Somehow Flynn, a random quest giver from 2018, has more fanfiction about him. Looking at this, Blizzard will probably never use Alleria again since she's so unpopular.

[Makabreska]

Welp, he presents a chart where Val is second lowest after saying this:

Blizzard will not kill Alleria and Turalyon, they are too popular, iconic, and beloved amongst the Alliance playerbase.

Actually they can kill Turalyon, I don't really care about the Lightforged.

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Somehow Flynn, a random quest giver from 2018, has more fanfiction about him. Looking at this, Blizzard will probably never use Alleria again since she's so unpopular.

Hardly a random quest giver. He simply had more character and was more likeable than Valeria will ever be.

[Teriz]

With Wrathion being that high, I'm not surprised they made a class based on him.