Originally Posted by
Tojara
I mean if you browsed the forums at any regularity, it was just filled with people complaining about RNG loot in the form of WF/TF and random sockets appearing on gear. That feedback was everywhere, and I'm sure they cross referenced it even with the Classic version of the game where people were "happy" that when loot dropped, you could essentially be done for that tier.
This is literally why they experimented with corruption in 8.3, and the inherent corruption problems aside (prior to deterministic ways of getting it a few months in) it wasn't a bad system. Was it perfect? No, but I'd assure you if it launched with the design that was iterated on months later, people probably would've looked back on it far more positively.
The feedback was certainly there. Let loot be loot was fairly popular statement amongst the community and forum goers, so it's obvious where they got the feedback from. Getting something to drop, and not having to worry about sockets or the iLvL getting boosted randomly was superior to a lot of people. With that approach, it's natural that they dial back loot acquisition some, but one could argue (and it's certainly being argued everywhere a few weeks after Shadowlands release), that they might have went a bit too far dialing it back on the PvE side of things.
It's funny because there was loads of bitching and moaning about the 550 conquest cap in PvP prior to release, saying that it's not enough and that you should be able to raise the cap. Post launch, how much bitching and moaning do you see about acquiring gear from PvP? Zero. Why? Because it just works, and is arguably the best gearing system in PvP (and maybe all of WoW) has ever been. You basically get the stats you want (for the most part), you don't really have to raid and there's built in catch up mechanics if you decide to start playing a new character or take a break down the road for a few weeks.
For a first look the valor point changes look wonderful, and they even hinted at giving raiders some love as well. Given that Blizzcon event is less than 10 days away and the 0.5 patch just launched, I'm going to assume that more details are going to arise very soon about what to look for coming in about a month for the 0.5 patch, and a few months for the .1 patch.
I normally wouldn't give credit, but compared to Legion and BFA (especially BFA) they aren't just sitting on their hands waiting to completely overhaul core aspects of the game until the final fucking patch. It took about a year in BFA for them to actually fix a lot of the dungeons for M+, and they've iterated on the ones in Shadowlands several times in the first couple months of the game. Instead of just a wet fart of class changes after the first week of heroic, we've gotten several tuning passes in both PvP/PvE in the first couple months, which is sort of uncommon in the grand scheme of things. The 0.5 patch actually looks promising from a preliminary glance because that's normally the type of systems change we get to experience either half way through an expansion, or at the very last patch (look how long it took them to fix legendary items in Legion?).