Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Wildmoon]

Then you are better off doing something like Legion where everyone got a unique ability. Preferably even one for each spec.
No need to worry about individual covenant balancing. You get the guaranteed new fun ability. And you don't need to tie anything to a covenant-like system.

No its not better because in legion you did not get to experience between various abilities to provide variety in gameplay. There was no tinkering with your artifacts since you max them anyway.

[Valysar]

As a vehicle purely for cosmetics it worked just fine.

Yeah, if you like brainless grind. Cosmetics/collections in SL are 100% incredible, but the grind was just horrendous (before 9.2), anima + grateful offerings = nightmare

I disagree. They worked just fine. They just didn't work the way you wanted them too.

They worked just fined because YOU like them.

Too many players don't want them anymore.

If we had the choice to change covenants freely from the start, it should have been more fine, and it would have been even better if spells were not "absolute BiS" for severals classes. Why bother creating 48 extra spells, if only a few of them are BiS?

[Wangming]

https://wowanalytica.com/statistics

Blood Elf 20.23%
Night Elf 9.50%
Orc 9.46%
Human 9.01%
Troll 6.65%
Tauren 5.47%
Undead 4.87%
Zandalari Troll 4.36%
Void Elf 3.62%
Vulpera 3.27%
Pandaren 2.94%
Draenei 2.64%
Mag'har Orc 2.33%
Nightborne 2.19%
Goblin 2.06%
Worgen 1.95%
Dwarf 1.78%
Highmountain Tauren 1.77%
Dark Iron Dwarf 1.60%
Gnome 1.51%
Lightforged Draenei 1.19%
Kul Tiran 0.97%
Mechagnome 0.63%

Allied races make up 16.47% of all counted characters, with some of them having significantly higher representation than some non-allied races. With gnomes at 1.51% and dwarves at 1.78%, you'd be hard-pressed to consider any of the current allied races an abject failure, even with mechagnomes at 0.63%.

Let's put it this way; of the 10 allied races so far, 3 are more popular than Pandaren and Draenei, 5 are more popular than Goblems, Worgens and Dwarves, and 7 are more popular than Gnomes.

If I were pressed to guess, I'd imagine that Blizzard considers allied races as a concept astoundingly successful, because they have been. After accounting for the elf factor, as well as ~10 years of character creation prior to them existing, the representation of most allied races vs. the effort to create them is astoundingly good in most cases. It's certainly better than many of the stand-alone races that have been released after the burning crusade.



What in either of the posts you have quoted indicates to you that the person replying to you is mad? Just curious. Discussing opinions (including when they are stupid) is literally the point of a discussion forum.

Wait what? Pandaren are more popular than Draenei? Finally!

Although I don't understand why Worgen are so low. Granted The last two classes added to the game were not available to them. Hopefully they can become Evokers.

[Sondrelk]

No its not better because in legion you did not get to experience between various abilities to provide variety in gameplay. There was no tinkering with your artifacts since you max them anyway.

Talents then.

Point is that if you tie and ability t a covenant, and then make changing the covenant trivial then all you have done is make a needlessly convoluted talent system.

Variety is important, but not really to the level where you need to be so obtuse about it.

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Yeah, if you like brainless grind. Cosmetics/collections in SL are 100% incredible, but the grind was just horrendous (before 9.2), anima + grateful offerings = nightmare

It was not all brainless grinding. The Renown armor was the closest, but you had unique armor aquisitions through the Ember court, Sitching Yard, Queen's Garden, and Path fo Ascension.

Make one cosmetic set for each covenant similar to the covenant armor in 9.1, then tie it to a unique method of gathering like the aforementioned covenant minigames, make all covenants (or dragonflights I guess) available without the need to swap, and then have the remaining zone buffs and a few unique mounts scattered around the zone, and you have what I think is the ideal version of covenants.

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You also had the hidden 4th armor tint that was somewhat fun for each covenant (mostly Ember Court).

[Syegfryed]

Wait what? Pandaren are more popular than Draenei? Finally!

Although I don't understand why Worgen are so low. Granted The last two classes added to the game were not available to them. Hopefully they can become Evokers.

Worgens are low because they are on the wrong faction, Alliance players only care about elves and humans.

Even if blood elves are majority in the horde, fair amount of players play other things

[Wangming]

Simple reason for the similarities is because Yoshi-P has time and time again said that WoW has served as a huge inspiration for his rework of XIV, he was a big WoW nerd himself.

Way too late to quote this, but I feel like I still need to highlight this to show how some fans are waaay too high on copium.

Like seriously. Yoshi-P is not a time traveler. If he releases something years before Blizzard, he ain't the one who copies.
Yes, he admitted to using WoW as a template when the game was relaunched. But anyone who says this isn't going both ways is not paying attention.

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Worgens are low because they are on the wrong faction, Alliance players only care about elves and humans.

Even if blood elves are majority in the horde, fair amount of players play other things

I guess if their non-worgen forms were a night elf, they would be more popular. OG Worgen.

I mean if I were designing WoW I would take out worgen, void elves, mechagnomes and lightforged draenei as races and remove death knight and demon hunter from classes.

Instead they would be an ingame progression system to enhance your power. You pick between the void, the light,. demons, the scourge, the worgen curse or mechanical implants to power yourself up.

[Vakir]

I disagree. They worked just fine. They just didn't work the way you wanted them too.

The way I wanted them to work is the way that made the most sense for the broadest amount of players which is why they were changed in the first place in response to poor engagement.

People shouldn't be punished for engaging in diverse types of content but wanting to not feel gimped in each of them. People shouldn't be punished for preferring a certain aesthetic that meshes with their class they picked almost 2 decades ago but has absolutely terrible abilities that are still iterated on multiple months from launch.

People with your philosophy are why bad ideas get shipped as they are despite the feedback to the contrary. Still defending it after seeing how poorly it went with the data to support it (hint: the majority followed optimization and not meaningful choice) just reinforces that you're selfish by supporting something simply because it doesn't impact you.

Lo and behold, nothing bad happened to the state of the game by decoupling, the ripcord existed after all when they lied it didn't, and players had actively more content to engage with, not less. At least they didn't wait til 9.2.5 for "we hear you!"

We'll always eventually win, but it's this bullshit being spewed that means we need to wait at least 6-8 months for it to happen sometimes. You should feel bad.

If you can choose freely then the choice is kinda pointless, so you might as well not have it.

Tell that to modern Western RPGs with story choices that don't give player power - which are the ones that are well designed. (And even then, player power via story choice is fair if it's a single player game designed around multiple playthroughs and easy saving, not a semi-permanent MMO with social structures)

The argument that people shouldn't think in terms of power disparities when playing crumbles in response to arguments like this which posit that story-based choices must have power components to matter. It tickles me. Both sides indirectly refute each other.

[manypillars]

IMO the problem is that they ended up to similar to one another, where Mechagnomes really should just have unlocked additional customisation options for Gnomes like the Night Elf questline in Darkshore.

I agree, but this isn't unique to mechagnomes. It's also way above and beyond eye color for night elves, and still more than the horns and skin colors that differentiate other allied races. It kind of hits that point of if mechagnomes, which have a lot of major model edits, should just be customizations then where's the line? Because nightborn were pretty much just night elves that were slimmed down with different colors on release. Void elves just palette swaps with tentacles. Dark Iron and Mag'har just skin and hair options.

[SunspotAnims]

Apparently it's a hot take but I think pretty much the only covenant-based feature that's going to carry over into the next expansion will be renown. Reputation as a reward structure is incredibly dated yet the devs still often depend on it to give rewards through world content. I'd much prefer to see future rep factions use renown because it gives rewards far more frequently than the ungodly neutral to exalted grind.

Other than that, even in an expansion with five distinctly-flavored Dragonflights, I don't think we'll see covenants be rehashed in any identical capacity to Shadowlands.

[Sondrelk]

Tell that to modern Western RPGs with story choices that don't give player power - which are the ones that are well designed. (And even then, player power via story choice is fair if it's a single player game designed around multiple playthroughs and easy saving, not a semi-permanent MMO with social structures)

The argument that people shouldn't think in terms of power disparities when playing crumbles in response to arguments like this which posit that story-based choices must have power components to matter. It tickles me.

I am pretty sure you cannot change your choice on a whim in those Western RPGs. You pick a story path and stick to it. If you want to change it then it's either gruelingly difficult, or requires a reset of some kind to before the choice was even made.

A choice requires consequences if it is to be meaningful, otherwise the entire point is lost. Whether covenants should have had abilities that impact instanced content is a different question, but it was clear that once 9.1.5 removed the barriers to swapping covenants completely the entire point of even picking a covenant at all was lost. You migth as well have made all covenant sanctums and upgrades available at once, and relegated the actual ability choice to an extra tacked on talent row.

[Leowyld]

Worgens are low because they are on the wrong faction, Alliance players only care about elves and humans.

Even if blood elves are majority in the horde, fair amount of players play other things

I'm definitely not typical, in that regard. I played Horde in Vanilla because Alliance had no races I thought were interesting until Draenei were added. And I also mained Worgen from Cata's release until Vulpera brought me back to Horde. Maybe there aren't many Worgen but I will say this, those who are really fans of Worgen have fun with it. There used to be a Worgen-themed podcast and there is this group of artists on WrA who all play Worgen and run around doing crazy stuff together and sharing screenshots. The same is kinda true for gnomes. Those who like gnomes are very enthusiastic about it. And, even though I've never been interested to play one myself, I appreciate that passion. I guess being an underdog can be a fuel of sorts.

[ZyntosAran]

Apparently it's a hot take but I think the main covenant-based feature that's going to carry over into the next expansion will be renown. Reputation as a reward structure is incredibly dated yet the devs still depend on it to give rewards through world content. I'd much prefer to see future rep factions use renown because it gives rewards far more frequently than the ungodly neutral to exalted grind.

Other than that, even in an expansion with five distinctly-flavored Dragonflights, I don't think we'll see covenants be rehashed in any identical capacity to Shadowlands.

I also think the renown system is perfect for Reputation / reward structure systems going forward. Either as reputation alternative to the grind, or as something along the lines of a seasonal battlepass.

[Teriz]

World of Warcraft: Something Else

I personally feel that WoW: Undermine would be a superior expansion.

[wombinator04]

The only announcement that would surprise me would be player housing. We'd lose many raid tiers.

[Sondrelk]

Apparently it's a hot take but I think pretty much the only covenant-based feature that's going to carry over into the next expansion will be renown. Reputation as a reward structure is incredibly dated yet the devs still depend on it to give rewards through world content. I'd much prefer to see future rep factions use renown because it gives rewards far more frequently than the ungodly neutral to exalted grind.

Other than that, even in an expansion with five distinctly-flavored Dragonflights, I don't think we'll see covenants be rehashed in any identical capacity to Shadowlands.

Renown is probably the single greates idea in the expansion. It finally bridges the problems that used to exist between reputation-gating, and pure time gating, having the benefits offered by both.

My ideal version going forward really is for covenants to be baked into reputations, with similar rewards, storylines, and zone upgrades, all locked behind Renown so that early players can have a large amount of content, and then later for that content to be made more readily avilable without having to tie everything to reputation all the time.

[Wildmoon]

The only announcement that would surprise me would be player housing. We'd lose many raid tiers.

Pls no housing.

[Sondrelk]

Pls no housing.

Have to agree here.

Housing could be good. It could be great even. But it could also be absolutely horrendously shit. And WoW is not exactly at a point where it can afford to risk an expansion on a feature that might not work.

Had SL been a slam-dunk and all the systems flowed smoothly, then I could see Blizzard going for housing as a side-project they could take a risk on.

[Syegfryed]

I'm definitely not typical, in that regard. I played Horde in Vanilla because Alliance had no races I thought were interesting until Draenei were added. And I also mained Worgen from Cata's release until Vulpera brought me back to Horde. Maybe there aren't many Worgen but I will say this, those who are really fans of Worgen have fun with it. There used to be a Worgen-themed podcast and there is this group of artists on WrA who all play Worgen and run around doing crazy stuff together and sharing screenshots. The same is kinda true for gnomes. Those who like gnomes are very enthusiastic about it. And, even though I've never been interested to play one myself, I appreciate that passion. I guess being an underdog can be a fuel of sorts.

i played alliance back in wtlk as dwarf but what won me over was worgen, as an werewolf fan, of course i main horde, but always keep my worgen up to date, he was my main in BfA, cause fuck horde there

[Wildmoon]

Have to agree here.

Housing could be good. It could be great even. But it could also be absolutely horrendously shit. And WoW is not exactly at a point where it can afford to risk an expansion on a feature that might not work.

Had SL been a slam-dunk and all the systems flowed smoothly, then I could see Blizzard going for housing as a side-project they could take a risk on.

The best housing is still bad.

[Sondrelk]

The best housing is still bad.

Best housing would be something akin to Battle Pets. Specifically Battle Pet dungeons.
It would be quite niche. But a nice background element that is constantly added to in every patch.