Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Lady Atia]

Seems to me the basic assumption here would be that they go with the new profession items.

Supposedly you auto-switch (visually) into the gear when you are doing the profession, so skinning would probably involve switching to a skinning knife and so need a new animation that isn't just the dumb *rub hands together over body* thing.

Wait, you guys aren't using the *rub hands together over body* thing to cook in real life?

[rhorle]

Okay, how does a new class help players have fun when there is zero max level progression?

It becomes alt friendly. The issue that arose with expansive end-game systems is that you had to do it on all alts as well. With out those things there then playing multiple alts increases in viability. So when you finish on your main you can have fun with a new class and play style. That always exist in any expansion new classes or races are added but obviously being more alt friendly changes things up.

Dragonflight has indicated that professions will offer some content in the form of quests, gear, and what not. Is it likely to be anything robust? Nope. But it is silly to say it isn't content.

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What Blizzard does affects the entire industry

It hasn't really so far or every other game would be crap, right? People are dunking on Blizzard because it has become the fashionable thing to do. More often then not the criticism exists just to be negative. It is also strange that you think Microsoft would be any different or drastically change things up. They haven't in the past with acquisitions nor has Microsoft ever been some benevolent company.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I suppose Drac'thyr could have a third spec but.... can we stop with this insistence that its the worst thing ever or a "Mini" class. Just made up jargon to hate on it. Personally I would add a new tank spec cause why not, but they didn't but thats not the end of the world.

[rhorle]

I gave you one quite simple idea last week how they easily could keep progression going: you can still earn talent points at max level.

So borrowed power. The thing that they removed at the behest of the community. Granted you may never have been in support of its removal.

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Not an opinion, a fact rather.

Does this just mean that all but one class is a "mini-class"? Because Druids have 4 specs which means Blizzard could have found 4 specs for every class as well. You are arbitrarily deciding what "full" means.

[Makabreska]

It hasn't really so far or every other game would be crap, right? People are dunking on Blizzard because it has become the fashionable thing to do. More often then not the criticism exists just to be negative. It is also strange that you think Microsoft would be any different or drastically change things up. They haven't in the past with acquisitions nor has Microsoft ever been some benevolent company.

Dunno, maybe MS would not give it's CEO 200 mil bonuses while firing 700 employees during a record profit year and abusing those who stayed. :v

Also, W3:Reforged, or something.

[rhorle]

Didn't we find datamining strings for a living world feature for retail? Maybe they are gonna add classic EK and Kalimdor to retail during Dragonflight if they follow the same design pillar? With WotlK classic serving as the initial testbed for it - maybe with a toggle for classic and wotlk Naxx?

Why would they add classic on retail realms? That wouldn't make anything living at all. That term is just marketing for making you feel like you are part of a world rather then just a person controlling a character in a video game. In this case it looks like it is just talking about repeatable content being different enough to make it feel like part of the world rather then doing the same thing for the 100th time.

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Also, W3:Reforged, or something.

Have you ever paid attention to the things Microsoft releases? They aren't perfect or paragon of gaming. Halo: Infinite changed its monetization model after out cry. Since the merger was announced people who hate Blizzard have seen Microsoft as some savior by simply because they aren't Activision or Blizzard.

[Xilurm]

Animation names are shared between all branches of WoW, Living World could just as well end up being a Classic thing (although I personally feel that's unlikely). On that note, there's also some new skinning specific animation names that showed up that haven't had a use either yet.

I thought the Living World thing they are talking about was more metaphorical than anything.

As in "a world where you will see other players and interact with them, instead of staying in a major city spamming dungeon finder all day".

[Marlamin]

I thought the Living World thing they are talking about was more metaphorical than anything.

As in "a world where you will see other players and interact with them, instead of staying in a major city spamming dungeon finder all day".

In the context of that blog post, yeah.

[Hitei]

While that is true (or would Druids be the only maxi (?) class), you can definitely see that there was put way less effort into DH and Evoker than in DK or Monk.

Monk was a very well designed, high effort launch class.

I think you could genuinely make the argument that launch DKs "three" specs aren't really any more than DH's two. By design (because of the poorly thought out 'any spec can tank or DPS' thing) DK's three specs at launch played extremely similar to each other. I say that as someone who mained DK in wrath and enjoyed the old version quite a lot.

It's a lot like the "BC had more effort in dungeons, look how many dungeons there were!" argument. I mean, yeah, sure. There are numerically more dungeons. But also a bunch of those dungeons are just multiple layouts of the same dungeon "tile set" and all of the dungeons are just reusing regular mobs made elites (murmur aside), and most of them are just a bunch of empty rooms and hallways that at best have some objects thrown near a wall.

[micwini]

Monk was a very well designed, high effort launch class.

I think you could genuinely make the argument that launch DKs "three" specs aren't really any more than DH's two. By design (because of the poorly thought out 'any spec can tank or DPS' thing) DK's three specs at launch played extremely similar to each other. I say that as someone who mained DK in wrath and enjoyed the old version quite a lot.

It's a lot like "BC had more effort in dungeons, look how many dungeons there were!" argument. I mean, yeah, sure. There are numerically more dungeons. But also a bunch of those dungeons are just multiple layouts of the same dungeon "tile set" and all of the dungeons are just reusing regular mobs made elites (murmur aside), and most of them are just a bunch of empty rooms and hallways that at best have some objects thrown near a wall.

I mean the BC arguments where multiple dungeons had the same theme/tileset doesnt really work anymore. In BFA and SL most dungeons were copy pastes of outdoor area's. Freehold, Atal, Most of Shrine, Upper Mechagon, Siege of Boralus, Mists, Halls, Plaguefall, , Necrotic Wake and most of Tazavesh Gambit.
Yes TBC dungeons shared some tilesets, but each of them were unique areas that werent available outside of that.

[Dracullus]

We keep them? They can give us as much talent points as we have talents to spend points on available. As they're going to keep the talent trees around, five points more or less do not matter when a new expansion hits.

By restricting "new" talents at the bottom you can even prevent players from filling out those bars instantly than slowly over time when you level up in the new expansion.

That's the entire point of the talent tree revamp, isn't it? Having one system they can build upon. And so we don't even lose progression we made, it transitions flawlessly into the next expansion. One of the main problems of borrowed power was that your character was reset to zero each time a new expansion hit while losing all the progress that was made and invalidating two years of "work" by just that. This shouldn't be the case in the future, should it?

I see many problems with this:

1) Your "work" will be invalidated as well, Johnny who play from 10.2, 10.3 or 11.0 (especially) must get all this points for free. People hated even that you have to get your essences in 8.3.

2) People won't view this as extra progression, they will see it as limiting your talents potential by grind or timegating.

3) And you seems to not understand second reason for borrowed power: power creep. Talents from DF are borrowed power as well, but it is borrowed for X expansions. Giving extra points (how many points per expansion to keep people satisfied? 10? 20? honestly even that sounds low, now multiple it by 4-5 expansions) would speed up this creep MASSIVELY.

4) Just few extra points after max level for talents you already have access to is boring as hell.

5) Shadowlands already are devoided of grind (and currently timegating as well). All expansions systems power is granted very fast. Was mandatory world quest grind in BfA/Legion better than this? Or grinding M+/raids not for gear, but for AP? Now world quests are in much better place - you can do them for simple gear, collectibles currency and most important for gold - they are not mandatory at all.

Dragonflight doesn't need some arbitraty points to encourage you or even force to do some content. Some dungeons could be gated behind X questline. Same with profession talent. For sure many places will be gated behind dragon riding.

And for sure many OPTIONAL stuff will be there. It's Blizzard job to show people that there is content in the world, now it's almost hidden.

[Hitei]

I mean the BC arguments where multiple dungeons had the same theme/tileset doesnt really work anymore. In BFA and SL most dungeons were copy pastes of outdoor area's. Freehold, Atal, Most of Shrine, Upper Mechagon, Siege of Boralus, Mists, Halls, Plaguefall, , Necrotic Wake and most of Tazavesh Gambit.
Yes TBC dungeons shared some tilesets, but each of them were unique areas that werent available outside of that.

This is backwards thinking. The dungeons are not copy pastes of outdoor areas, Siege and Freehold aside, they are dungeons who are designed as dungeons and then implemented into the outdoor world as an area for the sake of immersion since they're intended to be an actual space. If you're going to go that route, even ignoring the multi-wing part, the Auchendoun, SSC and TK dungeons are just copy pastes of their respective outdoor components/ associated raids.

You'd have a pretty hard time convincing me that more work went into throwing existing ethereal assets into mana tombs than went into Siege of Boralus. Even entirely utilizing an existing space, the parts that are modified for the dungeon specifically are higher effort and more unique than the entirety of those wing dungeon sets.

[The Stormbringer]

You mean the history where Legion came after WoD?

And yet Shadowlands came after BfA.

If you have no reason to want it bad you wouldn't be predicting it to be bad. There is a disconnect with what you keep saying. There is nothing that indicate Dragonflight will be bad yet you keep giving reasons for why you think it will be bad. On some level you want it to be bad because that is what you keep saying it will be based on little to no Dragonflight details.

Or I'm a cynical person who is expecting a trend of bad behavior to continue to be bad until proven otherwise. That doesn't mean I want it to be bad. This is like telling a weather forecaster that's seen a string of dangerous stormy weather in a specific season that they clearly WANT it to be dangerous, stormy weather when they predict more coming for that season again.

[rhorle]

Or I'm a cynical person who is expecting a trend of bad behavior to continue to be bad until proven otherwise.

So you want the game to be bad, because of your cynicism, but argue that you don't actually want it to be bad. You have no details or indication that Dragonflight will be bad. Past expansions are never an indicator for the next. You aren't a weatherman using science and data to forecast. You are a jaded Blizzard fan claiming there are a bunch of things that say Dragonflight will be bad when you've seen nothing of the expansion and there are no actual indicators since we don't know many details of how anything will work.

You are clearly biased no matter how much you deny that you don't want something to happen.

[The Stormbringer]

...and you have some arguments beside it's bad? List exactly what in your opinion made Shadowlands 'bad' and THEN we can discuss if Dragonflight has potential to be better.

I mean, I can at least work off of your examples and go with that, sure.

Example, here's mine list what I didn't liked in SL, judging from whole picture:

1) Story too disconnected from Azeroth and themes like alternate universes or afterlifes are mistakes in my opinion. That's why I loved BfA launch (with exception of making Horde clearly evil from day 1). Will DF correct this mistake? I think very likely. We still don't know much though.

I definitely agree the story seemed off, though if the leaks hold any weight, it was because they had a much grander idea in place and the budget was unexpectedly cut, forcing them to reshuffle things around and somehow make it work. Not a whole lot the devs can do about that, it's more of a "the higher-ups need to get their shit together and give their team the resources they need to make the game" situation. Doing better for story is a pretty low bar, so they'll probably manage that. Even so, what they managed to put together from these cast off pieces was... abysmal. Shadowlands had the worst story of any expansion in my mind.

2) 7-8 month long patches and only 3 big raids. We simply have no data here, for sure they can screw up this again, especially if DF will come too fast. Bonus season at the end of SL is great idea, but I'm afraid it will give them lazy path and 4th season will always be something like this, in my ideal we would have 5 seasons lasting 5 months each (and 5th one being "bonus" one).

The massive content droughts definitely seem like one of the worst things, as well as the lack of patches. One less raid and non-raid patch is BRUTAL for fans, especially when the expansion is running longer than it has any right to. If they don't get this right, then they will absolutely see numbers tank. That's why I'm concerned they appear to be rushing things with a launch less than six months from Alpha launch (it hasn't yet), as that indicates things could be pretty sloppy. Some people say it's because there's less systems to test though, so we'll see.

3) Systems become deadweight in SL. In Legion they introduced artifact so you have something to grind (because in WoD there was REALLY not much to do), but since Legion cosmetic part of game grew.. and grew.. and grew. We don't need grind for power to have always something to do in game. So in SL whole grind was removed, but systems stayed.

And worst thing about SL/BfA systems (Legion was less affected by this) - too much choices. You want raid. You must pick right talents, right covenant, right soulbind, right conduct, right legendary. It's far too complicated. But this is something that we KNOW will be fixed in DF. We just simply won't have it.

That also solve "alt problem" in my book. I had complains about alts in BfA, simply BfA design was too chaotic and all over the place. In SL you can jump straight to patch action with few clicks. Only tedious part was gathering all system related stuff (right lego, right conduit, etc.)

Beside that I always thought SL is good direction for game. If anything my main complain about DF is that it still focuses more on "fixing" game instead of taking any risks with new forms of gameplay.

I think for me, seeing how hard they kept trying to push systems when they were so clearly a problem in Beta was the most depressing thing. They so stubbornly refused to admit they had made a mistake until who knows how many people left. They DID admit to making mistakes however, and from all I've seen have tried to course-correct, so there is something to be said there. I just hope this isn't going to be another example of the Blizzard Pendulum, where they swing too far in the other direction (again) after doing something wrong.

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So you want the game to be bad, because of your cynicism, but argue that you don't actually want it to be bad. You have no details or indication that Dragonflight will be bad. Past expansions are never an indicator for the next. You aren't a weatherman using science and data to forecast. You are a jaded Blizzard fan claiming there are a bunch of things that say Dragonflight will be bad when you've seen nothing of the expansion and there are no actual indicators since we don't know many details of how anything will work.

You are clearly biased no matter how much you deny that you don't want something to happen.

You keep saying that, and yet it's not true. You can absolutely tell me I'm wrong in assuming Dragonflight will be bad, but saying I "want it to be bad" is absolutely, patently untrue. I am being 100% honest when I say this. If Dragonflight is good, I will be very pleased. If it sucks, I'm going to be just as upset as anyone else. If you think previous performance is not an indicator for future performance, then I'm not going to convince you of anything. Let's just drop this, shall we?

[rhorle]

If you think previous performance is not an indicator for future performance, then I'm not going to convince you of anything. Let's just drop this, shall we?

So Legion was bad because WoD was bad, right? Or BfA was good because Legion was also good, right? This stemmed from you saying there are a ton of indications that Dragonflight will be bad even though we all know little about Dragonflight and its systems. As much as you keep downplaying it you did show a bias towards Dragonflight being bad.

[The Stormbringer]

So Legion was bad because WoD was bad, right? Or BfA was good because Legion was also good, right? This stemmed from you saying there are a ton of indications that Dragonflight will be bad even though we all know little about Dragonflight and its systems. As much as you keep downplaying it you did show a bias towards Dragonflight being bad.

As I said before, one of the reasons I think SL suffered and Dragonflight will suffer (though perhaps I explained it poorly) was the brain drain. They've lost a lot of employees, either because they were scumbags, they were fed up with how things were running, or their own choices. A lot of old, talented people at the company are gone. Combine that with the higher-ups not giving a shit and axing their budget for Shadowlands, and showing little improvement from BfA until over half-way through SL, and you start seeing a picture painted.

And part of the REASON why I think it could be bad is BECAUSE of how little we know about it. If it's launching in under six months (closer to five), we should know a LOT more about it! Instead we know less than we knew about MoP, WoD, or BfA when they were announced. Of course I have a bias in a situation like this, how could you NOT?

[boyzma]

As I said before, one of the reasons I think SL suffered and Dragonflight will suffer (though perhaps I explained it poorly) was the brain drain. They've lost a lot of employees, either because they were scumbags, they were fed up with how things were running, or their own choices. A lot of old, talented people at the company are gone. Combine that with the higher-ups not giving a shit and axing their budget for Shadowlands, and showing little improvement from BfA until over half-way through SL, and you start seeing a picture painted.

And part of the REASON why I think it could be bad is BECAUSE of how little we know about it. If it's launching in under six months (closer to five), we should know a LOT more about it! Instead we know less than we knew about MoP, WoD, or BfA when they were announced. Of course I have a bias in a situation like this, how could you NOT?

So now besides seeing very little of DF but knowing very much...you are also into the heads of the actual people who work at Blizzard? Not to change the subject but a friend said they'd get me the basic expansion...just got a e-mail and the got me the epic version...sweet!

[13last]

As I said before, one of the reasons I think SL suffered and Dragonflight will suffer (though perhaps I explained it poorly) was the brain drain. They've lost a lot of employees, either because they were scumbags, they were fed up with how things were running, or their own choices. A lot of old, talented people at the company are gone. Combine that with the higher-ups not giving a shit and axing their budget for Shadowlands, and showing little improvement from BfA until over half-way through SL, and you start seeing a picture painted.

And part of the REASON why I think it could be bad is BECAUSE of how little we know about it. If it's launching in under six months (closer to five), we should know a LOT more about it! Instead we know less than we knew about MoP, WoD, or BfA when they were announced. Of course I have a bias in a situation like this, how could you NOT?

Man don't even argue with him, I gave up last night arguing with him, no point trying to convince someone why a lot of us are skeptical, of course we want the expansion to be amazing and I hope it is really, I love wow, always have, but I am cautious and worried until we have more info about it.

[rhorle]

And part of the REASON why I think it could be bad is BECAUSE of how little we know about it. If it's launching in under six months (closer to five), we should know a LOT more about it! Instead we know less than we knew about MoP, WoD, or BfA when they were announced. Of course I have a bias in a situation like this, how could you NOT?

Why would anyone have to be biased? This is what I was talking about. You want it to be bad. You think everyone needs to have the same bias as you and think that they game has to be bad because of the reasons you list. Yet you will argue that you don't actually want it to be bad despite already having your mind made up. You even say it is bad because we don't know details about it.

Usually people that don't want something to be bad wait until they can get informed before making a decision about what that something will be. Lol.