Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Khaza-R]

I mean it's still 12 original stories vs. just 2 or 4. Even if they might have had less of a quality / amount of things to do, it was different. I enjoyed the Covenant storylines itself, but the faction war questline in BfA in my opinion was terrible.

Order Hall quests just added a ton of flavor to the overall approach of "class/spec matters" in Legion and it was just a huge success. Covenants itself were a really good idea and quite complex, but they made the same mistake that they make everytime by ignoring player feedback until the first or second content patch hits.

I think Legion put the effort in the right places. Everything it added felt very integral and like it was always supposed to be there even after the borrowed power was removed. Even expansions later I still look forward to going through Legion content on a class I might have missed.

I really can't say the same for BfA or Shadowlands.

With BfA, I think they hoped it would give players an incentive to play both factions. Ironically it would of been the perfect time to introduce cross-faction to double-down on that. But in reality, it seems most players don't want to divide their efforts between the factions and so a massive chunk of content and story was missed for a lot players.

Covenants were forever ruined by bad design decisions. At no point has a covenant felt integral to my character's identity. Its more like a group of misfits I've forced to help and who bribe me with nice rewards. I think ultimately shifting the focus to Covenant identity was a bad decision since the PC has no real stake in these organizations. I don't think anyone feels like a Venthyr or a Kyrian, because well, you aren't one at the end of the day. You're just a temporary helper.

[Nymrohd]

But what Order Hall/Artifact specific content did Legion truly offer beyond endgame questing? BfA had the same amount, if not more content than Legion at max level in that regard with the Faction War questline.

Seems to me like a false comparision, because while yes the game would have been lesser if we took out that content and didnt replace it with anything the game has clearly shown itself to have that content as a baseline, just with a different coat of paint each expansion. In Legion it was the Order Halls, in BfA it was the Faction War, and in SL it was the Covenant campaigns.

Yes but alts.

[Nyel]

And again, what kind of content attached to borrowed power are we missing out on when it's removed? Is gathering anima suddenly not content solely because it doesnt have an attached infinite power grind, as indeed is the case in 9.2 and arguably even the entirety of SL?

We miss everything that was about character / class progression that was tied to borrowed power. That ain't coming back. Stuff like anima etc. isn't necessarily part of borrowed power, but they have neither announced nor talked about "side activities" like this yet so I don't know why you assume that there will be stuff like this not being part of a separate progression system but the open world. Can it be? Sure. But at the end of the day it's still less activities and less diverse content in Dragonflight by not having these systems. And I think that was the point of the discussion?

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I think Legion put the effort in the right places. Everything it added felt very integral and like it was always supposed to be there even after the borrowed power was removed. Even expansions later I still look forward to going through Legion content on a class I might have missed.

I really can't say the same for BfA or Shadowlands.

With BfA, I think they hoped it would give players an incentive to play both factions. Ironically it would of been the perfect time to introduce cross-faction to double-down on that. But in reality, it seems most players don't want to divide their efforts between the factions and so a massive chunk of content and story was missed for a lot players.

Covenants were forever ruined by bad design decisions. At no point has a covenant felt integral to my character's identity. Its more like a group of misfits I've forced to help and who bribe me with nice rewards. I think ultimately shifting the focus to Covenant identity was a bad decision since the PC has no real stake in these organizations. I don't think anyone feels like a Venthyr or a Kyrian, because well, you aren't one at the end of the day. You're just a temporary helper.

Yeah, the entire Order Hall + Artifacts + Class revamps was designed in a way they never achieved to replicate later on, which is sad. But that's how good these systems relying on each other were, not necessarily from a technical pov but for immersion and player interaction.

Covenants are not too far off from that if we're honest, but everything in BfA in that regard was terrible. Covenants just needed more adjustments, maybe less focus on class specific skills, but overall more restrictions, aka you cannot switch Covenants at all or not as easy as they made it. But this only would have worked without Covenant-specific abilities which would have been fine. They really should just have made the four Covenant class skills the bottom talent row and called it a day and nobody would have complained.

[Lady Atia]

We miss everything that was about character / class progression that was tied to borrowed power. That ain't coming back. Stuff like anima etc. isn't necessarily part of borrowed power, but they have neither announced nor talked about "side activities" like this yet so I don't know why you assume that there will be stuff like this not being part of a separate progression system but the open world. Can it be? Sure. But at the end of the day it's still less activities and less diverse content in Dragonflight by not having these systems. And I think that was the point of the discussion?

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Yeah, the entire Order Hall + Artifacts + Class revamps was designed in a way they never achieved to replicate later on, which is sad. But that's how good these systems relying on each other were, not necessarily from a technical pov but for immersion and player interaction.

Covenants are not too far off from that if we're honest, but everything in BfA in that regard was terrible. Covenants just needed more adjustments, maybe less focus on class specific skills, but overall more restrictions, aka you cannot switch Covenants at all or not as easy as they made it. But this only would have worked without Covenant-specific abilities which would have been fine. They really should just have made the four Covenant class skills the bottom talent row and called it a day and nobody would have complained.

Dragonriding will be the "side activity" of Dragonflight, alongside a better focus on open world similiar to Zereth Mortis.

Covenants post-ripcord are the best out of the "class hall/garrison/whatever BFA was supposed to have" systems. But honestly, why, WHY would anyone like to restrict them even more than they already are? The original restrictions were awful enough, and I hope they learned that and will never restrict any cosmetics to "illusion of choice" going forward. We need more customization, not less. And if I want to run around with a Nightfae transmog, a Venthyr mount, a Kyrian title and a Necrolord Pepe than I should be able to.

[Nymrohd]

I actually believe world content can replace borrowed power and instanced content just fine. MoP had neither but it had a system of dailies and reputations that was perhaps TOO robust that it ended up being overwhelming. While Legion did have borrowed power, it also had Suramar.

Dragonflight is promising the largest continent since Northrend. And keep in mind that Northrend as a continent had a lot of dead space and was released back at a time when the world was not really utilized. Dragon riding and Renown mechanisms will likely gate content; I expect we will start with about half the world available, with parts slowly unlocking as dragonriding opens up areas and renown populates them with quests. By the first patch I'd expect fully double the world quests and/or dailies to be on the map than there were during Shadowlands.

Meanwhile there are other things you can do in the world. With crafting being important you can have open world "dungeon" areas, which existed in the early years of the game (Vanilla and TBC but also MoP) that are meant primarily for grinding either solo or in a group. They can invest in vignettes (rares) to transform them into actual multi-phase encounters and better integrate them into the reward structure (again mostly through the crafting system). They could try to copy things like ESO's public dungeons, large dungeons with multiple fast respawning bosses and events that are part of the world (in ESO they are instances but like with the smaller delves, there is a single instance per server for everyone).

[huth]

I actually believe world content can replace borrowed power and instanced content just fine. MoP had neither but it had a system of dailies and reputations that was perhaps TOO robust that it ended up being overwhelming.

I think the big mistake was vastly expanding dailies while at the same time removing the daily cap. People ran themself ragged because they became convinced they had to do all dailies every day.

[Nymrohd]

Dragonriding will be the "side activity" of Dragonflight, alongside a better focus on open world similiar to Zereth Mortis.

There is nothing innovative or interesting about Zereth Mortis open world content. It's the same mixture of World Quests, Dailies and Rares we've had forever together with the Mechagon system refitted for purely cosmetics. It was marginally interesting for the first few weeks when there was no flight. Many other MMOs provide far more variety when it comes to world content. It also had a moronic reward structure since you can reach a cap for rewards far too easy and any rewards gained on the way to the cap feel useless; effectively every item you gain early is useless and once you cap, which you do fast compared to how long the content should last, you get all the rewards fairly fast leaving you with no progression. It doesn't even have adequate variety or progression; the pool of world quests is shallow, there is little value in doing the dailies since they give no rep but only rewards you are overflowing with and progresing through story content barely unlocks additional material.
WoW still has nothing like Rifts invasions which allowed people to join a group automatically; when players tried to create similar functionality through addons Blizzard deemed it intrusive and removed it creating multiphase events randomly in the world. It has nothing like ESO's delves and public dungeons. It rarely makes use of larger events like we had with Quel'Danas and Isle of Thunder.

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I think the big mistake was vastly expanding dailies while at the same time removing the daily cap. People ran themself ragged because they became convinced they had to do all dailies every day.

Very much so. We got too much of a good thing. DOesn't change it was a good thing though. Especially given the significant variety (Halfhill alone had probably close to a hundred dailies given each of the friends and cooking masters had their own) and the progression (Klaxxi in particular with rescuing new Paragons at different levels and opening new dailies). MoP had something like Suramar only instead of having it in one zone, it had it in FOUR. Yes, each of the factions had less content than the Nightfallen individually but they all had content, all had progression and gave you even more visual variety.

[Cheezits]

It sounds like we are getting a return to gated reputation storylines, which is nice. I think they have confirmed that's how it will work for the Tuskarr, the Centaurs, the Explorers and the dragon city.

[Nymrohd]

It sounds like we are getting a return to gated reputation storylines, which is nice. I think they have confirmed that's how it will work for the Tuskarr, the Centaurs, the Explorers and the dragon city.

It's what I expect and what would work best considering the zones will probably be the largest zones ever and only parts of them (probably less than half) will even be used for leveling

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't think removing the daily cap was a problem. Reputations locked behind dailies(And then other dailies locked behind reputation was annoying).

[Valysar]

Dragonriding will be the "side activity" of Dragonflight, alongside a better focus on open world similiar to Zereth Mortis.

Hum ? There is absolutely NOTHING new in terms of activities in Zereth Mortis, except mounts crafting, but this is a mindless and stupid grind, so not interesting at all.

They really need to change this. New zones > dailies > WQ > rares/treasures. It's cool the first week, but gets boring as hell right after.

[micwini]

Didnt they say they would have some form of renown in? What if those renown factions fill in the gap that covenants leave considering the cosmetics and activities? I think that the new Renown stuff will just be covenants without the "only pick one" limit and the power gains. I am a bit sad about there not being a new 1-5 players feature like Visions and Torghast again tho. Both are fun as long as they are engaging and aren't needed to be done weekly, but just once for some cosmetics or prestige.

[Fentawow]

It replaces rep I thought. So you go grind rep through a renown system rather than through exalted.

[Cheezits]

Didnt they say they would have some form of renown in? What if those renown factions fill in the gap that covenants leave considering the cosmetics and activities? I think that the new Renown stuff will just be covenants without the "only pick one" limit and the power gains. I am a bit sad about there not being a new 1-5 players feature like Visions and Torghast again tho. Both are fun as long as they are engaging and aren't needed to be done weekly, but just once for some cosmetics or prestige.

No real gameplay content additions is odd, but I feel like people have been begging for non-instanced stuff? It would explain the focus on zones this time as well as the new "overworld content team".

It's no Legion 2 but I have definitely warmed on the expansion since the reveal. Getting to keep (some) Shadowlands abilities is great, zone reputation stories sounds great. Yes, it may be raidlog at endgame, but the story content through the renown system will be ncie up until that point.

I think if there's any new gameplay type thing it will be in 11.0 back on the continents (procedural dungeons has been a big discussion point) but maybe we are seeing a shift away from combat focus beyond raids and dungeons?

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Hum ? There is absolutely NOTHING new in terms of activities in Zereth Mortis, except mounts crafting, but this is a mindless and stupid grind, so not interesting at all.

They really need to change this. New zones > dailies > WQ > rares/treasures. It's cool the first week, but gets boring as hell right after.

What else could you add? More and more stories? I think it's fine to be able to "finish" a zone by completing achievements and the baseline story.

Until we get housing or some kind of infinite furniture crafting/archaeology (see: ESO) there really shouldn't be some way to "live" in zones.

[8bithamster]

WoD was nostalgia-baiting for what?

Warcraft 2? A game that like 1% of the actual playerbase played? What an absolutely idiotic take.

Don't worry. This is from the same person that claims that "GW2 Perfected flight" when he got proven wrong time and again. Don't take it to seriously.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

What else could you add? More and more stories? I think it's fine to be able to "finish" a zone by completing achievements and the baseline story.

Until we get housing or some kind of infinite furniture crafting/archaeology (see: ESO) there really shouldn't be some way to "live" in zones.

I can't say I know what to do for World content but it needs more. Not necessarily sure housing would solve it either.

[rhorle]

Didnt they say they would have some form of renown in?

Looking back at a interview/quote they did say that the four main factions will have renown instead of reputation. So they can constantly reward us with cosmetics, new quests, etc. So it does sound like there may be some extra stuff but it doesn't feel like they mean on the same level as covenants or order halls. It feels more like Renown would be the time gate for unlocking more areas rather then being as robust as order halls or covenants. Though maybe they didn't talk about them because they just want to keep details hidden until later in development.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/renown-...neously-326768

[Makabreska]

Don't worry. This is from the same person that claims that "GW2 Perfected flight" when he got proven wrong time and again. Don't take it to seriously.

There WAS plenty of nostalgia in WoD. Look how much BC and Warcraft characters they brought back. Plus the entire setting showing pre-Horde orcs and Draenei.

[8bithamster]

There WAS plenty of nostalgia in WoD. Look how much BC and Warcraft characters they brought back. Plus the entire setting showing pre-Horde orcs and Draenei.

Aah shit, might as well cancel any sequel ever than.. they're just pandering to nostalgia. Seriously, how can people not understand what a sequel/continuation of a story is..

[Cheezits]

Maybe they will be getting rid of reputations for this expansion? It doesn't seem like there are any factions that aren't represented by the new renown factions, besides maybe the Bronze (unless the Dragon City is including them) or the Gnolls.