Systems in WoW

[Doombringer]

The problem is how Blizz perceived how Artifact Weapons were so well received by the players. They were well received because they were cool weapons with story behind them. Unfortunately, Blizzard took this as "players love these secondary progression systems so we have to have one in every expansion!" And they went wild with it since.

Hence, we got the Heart of Azeroth/Azerite Gear and now we have Conduits and Soulbinds.

Add this in with the Mission table that's been a constant since Warlords ... and the game has become clogged with busy work to make it seem more depthy.

It's like they're designing every aspect of the game like they'd design a raid encounter. You know, how raid bosses have their mechanics you have to manage for each fight, and they tend to be different fight to fight... the devs apparently feel that "spiciness" riding on top of regular gameplay is what every zone, every area, of the game needs.

And everything is so interconnected and interdependent, they feel they've made something pretty impressive when really it's just a drag to play. It's a bit like bringing 6 forms of ID to the DMV. Sure, that's pretty cool how they can verify you are you based on all that correlating information... but you're still at the DMV, and none of this is fun.

[bloodykiller86]

The game has been more and more complicated and confusing over the years.

Back in Vanilla/TBC/Wrath, players used outside source/3rd party websites for talents, rotations, stats priority. And that’s it.

Even Elitist Jerks most crazy theory crafting days were not as ridiculous as today’s wowhead, icy-veins guides.

What players really hate about today’s systems is that they are unnecessarily over-complicated. Some says “you don’t need to do it if you just play it casually”. It may be the case back in pre-Legion days, but not anymore.

Today’s systems are so confusing and not self-explanatory, that most players can’t find any meaningful information in game. Even for the most casual players, it is just easier to check 3rd party guides for best pve/pvp talents, covenant, soulbinds, conduits, legendary, shard, and other millions of systems.

Systems were meant to be refreshing, meaningful and fun. But when they are so complicated and confusing, players will stop to care about them instead.

WoW has become a game of checking 3rd party website guides and sims.

......you find systems difficult? and news flash, we've been checking 3rd party websites and running sims since BC pretty much, some in Vanilla

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The fact that we have an actual business building around these systems speaks volume how convoluted and overblown WoW has become. Yes, that's right. People pay money to have 3rd party tools min/max their character because doing it alone takes way too much time or is simply impossible for the average player, especially if you are not a hardcore player. No wonder more simpler systems in Classic/TBC or even FF14 are on the rise, players are sick of dozens of systems interacting with each-other. Gear and meaningful stats should be enough for depth. Personally I felt that reforging was the sweet spot together with gear, talents and glyphs. That should have been the end and just polish and flesh out the system to perfection. Now we have talents, covenants, legendaries, gear, domination sockets, soulbinds AND conduits. That are 7 systems to keep track of, you can not do any meaningful decision anymore with so much math and systems all pulling at each-other. Back to basics, more depth to the basics.

doing it alone has always been to hard if you wanted to perfectly min max lol you couldn't do those calculations yourself. people that care about this will min max everything and im one who loves to sim and improve

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I am old, I miss the days of getting my BiS list, finishing the last boss and being done. Follow that with a break for a few weeks maybe a month before next tier. With everything now, it makes that impossible which seems to have more of a burn out on me than ever.

how is that impossible? BiS is back this expansion so thats not impossible at all you probably just cant complete the mythic raid though

[NiftySwifty]

This is exactly why I left. The game just got too confusing. I don't want to keep up with it all. Every patch includes new systems, new currencies and it all just became too much.

[Cæli]

I really don't like how each expansion they have new systems
gear is fine it's the only system I need personally...gear upgrades are excellent, enchant, gems, all that is nice and fun
but the countless systems..I don't understand them, I have to check guides on wowhead where you need 1 hour to read, needs concentration
covenants, why not...we had aldor and scryers in tbc... it was just a reputation... why not have ONE npc to talk to and then you instantly get ALL the perks of the convenants
the progression system is not fun and I feel like I'm trying to be put on a hamster wheel
it doesn't make me play more, it makes me play less...

and it's the same with seasons...at least they fit raids now, which is much better than during legion for instance

so many currencies, so many interfaces, so many systems, it really kills what made the game enjoyable...

I sincerely feel bad for collectors trying to stay up to date and understand in detail all that garbage each time
they're addicted to wow because it used to be a legendary game, and the game is still addicting, it's just so bloated in everything (systems, collectibles, grinding, texts, "story", etc) it's surreal

I invested time and money in wow and I love wow, I just don't like how it is now, and I want to pay to play proper wow, classic really helps but it's just a sad situation for retail

[MrLachyG]

You can’t, not with some BIS gear coming from the vault. There are dungeons pieces that are better than raids. For example, all of S1 of SL I was waiting on the phial trinket, and never got it from the vault. Some weeks I did over 10 dungeons for max vault loot but every week was at least 4. It’s loot table is too large to even consider a BiS list.

yeah you can still get a bis list though. your initial comment was that you liked to get a bis list and be done. That is still the case, just you might have to do dungeons as well. or you could always just solely pick stuff from raids and completely ignore dungeons - that's what I do.

[callipygoustp]

Every time I look at my currency tab I just shake my head.

[Lane]

I hate conduits and soulbinds. It's never been this bad before, even the guides for this nonsense are confusing let alone the systems themselves. I skipped BfA, so I didn't get into everything that was involved with azerite armor, just straight from relatively straightforward artifact weapon progression to this. There is no aspect of this that is even moderately interesting let alone fun.

I haven't gotten into any of the other systems either, I took one look at everything and just noped out of doing much of anything at max level. Were it not for needing renown for flying I wouldn't even have bothered with the covenant stuff.

[Osmeric]

They could actually save a lot of money not putting in these systems, so I wonder why they keep doing it.

[Paperfox]

Some great points have been brought up here.

I think that people are forgetting one of the modern games' core design elements: Create a problem that you sell the solution to. In Free-to-play games this is obviously tied to sale of XP potions and store gear, in WoW this is tied to MAUs so the all important time played metric.

[Schizoide]

I don't believe each individual system is too complicated so much as there are just too damn many of them. Each expansion doesn't need a dozen separate currencies and 4 separate alternative advancement mechanisms. It's ridiculous and I do agree it turns off casual players who simply can't be bothered.

Most blatant recent example is the Archivists faction. What is gained by not simply making it a reputation? Why another currency, and dozens of little items to clutter up your inventory and turn-in? It's complexity for complexity's sake.

[muto]

Yeah too many systems and currencies.

Renown System
Conduit System
Anima Power (Buildings) System
Soul Ash/Cinder System
Weekly Vault System
Mission Table System


Remove all of that crap going forward. No more systems. Go back to just being able to log in on Tuesday’s and only having to worry about your raid for the week, and maybe some daily/weekly quests. The legendary should go back to being a quest like it was in MoP. I’d also remove LFR or normal too. Too many raid difficulties.

[ablib]

It's precisely for this reason why Classic is a godsend. The game is overly convoluted now. Classic is simple. The game didn't start to get nuts until MoP.

I can see why the devs went in this direction. If they did the same thing over and over, every expansion, the game probably would have died out by now. However, they went nuts in the other direction in the name of keeping things fresh and new.

I think they've admitted to this though, and are taking hints from past game design to re-implement.

The amount of shit in my bags in this last patch was incredible. Tons of anima things filled my bag...I talk to some NPC, and they all disappear with a rudimentary number assigned to it.

Tons of research things in my bag too. Some look EPIC and interesting! Wow! What is this stuff? What does it do? Same thing as anima. Talk to an NPC, and they all disappear with a rudimentary number given to me. Such bland and boring design.

[Schizoide]

A lot of the problem is moving backwards, too. World Quests are better than dailies. You can see them clearly on the map, there's UI to track them, and they auto hand-in. Why do we have dailies now? It isn't a big deal but they built a good system then abandoned it.

They wanted to delay flying, but it was a pain to run around the world to do your daily tasks, so they added the flight whistle. Why was it removed? Nobody knows. Everybody loved it, and it made people that are still pissed off about not flying (like me) calm down about it, at least to an extent.

Bodyguards were amazing for squishy classes soloing in the world. Now gone.

I could think of a bunch of these.

[Mojo03]

As much as I don’t like WoW currently, I don’t think character systems are really the problem.

I actually enjoy it and think it’s one the things they’re doing well. The idea is to have options to experiment and have many ways to play how you want.

It’s only annoying if you’re min/maxing and if you’re min/maxing you’re likely following a guide online that’s telling you what to do anyway or you enjoy theory craft.

You only really need to min/max on the highest level content anyway, which only 3% of the population or whatever does.

Otherwise just play how you like and you’ll be fine enough to do the vast, vast majority of things.

It’s really more of a perception issue with the community and people being petty/toxic if you’re not specced how they think you should be.

[Schizoide]

I completely disagree. Casuals come in and try to play the game and have no clue what the heck is going on. That's a problem. Most casuals aren't theorycrafters and by definition none of them are powergamers.

[muto]

As much as I don’t like WoW currently, I don’t think character systems are really the problem.

I actually enjoy it and think it’s one the things they’re doing well. The idea is to have options to experiment and have many ways to play how you want.

It’s only annoying if you’re min/maxing and if you’re min/maxing you’re likely following a guide online that’s telling you what to do anyway or you enjoy theory craft.

You only really need to min/max on the highest level content anyway, which only 3% of the population or whatever does.

Otherwise just play how you like and you’ll be fine enough to do the vast, vast majority of things.

It’s really more of a perception issue with the community and people being petty/toxic if you’re not specced how they think you should be.

I was able to min/max in MoP, and the only thing I had to worry about was being caught up on my cloak quest, and getting my 3 re-roll tokens for the week.

[LordVargK]

Min-Maxing should be complicated. Else it would be boring. Everyone that has a problem right now is a pseudo minmaxer.
You absolutely don't need to minmax to be successful. And even if, what really are those "complicated" systems you're talking about?
We have:
- soulbinds
- conduits
- legendaries
- gear
- covenant abilities

Gear is always the same. Sim bots existed for it for 10 years now.
Conduits are just pieces of gear not on your character. That's why they have ilvls. Complaining about conduits is complaining about having 3 extra slots to fit gear in.
Soulbinds. Their boni are largely the same, while some are slightly better than others. They are not complicated. Pick the one you find most useful and stick to it till the next patch drops.
Covenant abilities. Blizzard fucked up a bit here. While the idea was that you should play what you like, in reality some classes have some abilities that are strictly better than others. Nothing a little bit of balancing could not adress, but Blizzard is very hesitant balancing stuff mid-patch (or at all).
Legendaries. This is the most complicated part, because simply picking what you like the most isn't always a good choice. That's also a problem with balancing.

In general WoW relies more on preparation now than before. But playing your class is not nearly as complicated.

In the "good old days" of WoW, you had only gear and consumables, but you also had:
- threat
- mana management
- snapshotting
- haste breakpoints
- hit/expertise/every other stat now replaced with versatility

That resulted in some classes and players doing much more damage than others. Not the 15% difference bottom to top we see right now in the logs, but more like 200% and more.

Gear is simpler than ever. Being a decent player is simpler than ever. The systems that replaced this lost complexity are not more complex than those we had before. And apart from legendaries non of them take more time to farm.

tl:dr
There's nothing complicated about the systems in SL and you don't need to minmax so hard to be a decent player as you had to in the past.

[muto]

Min-Maxing should be complicated. Else it would be boring. Everyone that has a problem right now is a pseudo minmaxer.
You absolutely don't need to minmax to be successful. And even if, what really are those "complicated" systems you're talking about?
We have:
- soulbinds
- conduits
- legendaries
- gear
- covenant abilities

Gear is always the same. Sim bots existed for it for 10 years now.
Conduits are just pieces of gear not on your character. That's why they have ilvls. Complaining about conduits is complaining about having 3 extra slots to fit gear in.
Soulbinds. Their boni are largely the same, while some are slightly better than others. They are not complicated. Pick the one you find most useful and stick to it till the next patch drops.
Covenant abilities. Blizzard fucked up a bit here. While the idea was that you should play what you like, in reality some classes have some abilities that are strictly better than others. Nothing a little bit of balancing could not adress, but Blizzard is very hesitant balancing stuff mid-patch (or at all).
Legendaries. This is the most complicated part, because simply picking what you like the most isn't always a good choice. That's also a problem with balancing.

In general WoW relies more on preparation now than before. But playing your class is not nearly as complicated.

In the "good old days" of WoW, you had only gear and consumables, but you also had:
- threat
- mana management
- snapshotting
- haste breakpoints
- hit/expertise/every other stat now replaced with versatility

That resulted in some classes and players doing much more damage than others. Not the 15% difference bottom to top we see right now in the logs, but more like 200% and more.

Gear is simpler than ever. Being a decent player is simpler than ever. The systems that replaced this lost complexity are not more complex than those we had before. And apart from legendaries non of them take more time to farm.

tl:dr
There's nothing complicated about the systems in SL and you don't need to minmax so hard to be a decent player as you had to in the past.

Threat is still an issue ask Boomkins and Fire Mages.
Mana is still an issue. Ask Disc Priests.
I think Snapshotting still exists for Feral.

However I think all of that is fine. Dps shouldn’t be able to just be spergs. The tank should have to establish threat.

Mana management is fine too. It’s a resource.

Snapshotting. Probably go half and half here. Some liked it some didn’t. I think delegating it to one caster spec and one melee spec would be a good compromise.

Hit Cap/Expertise Cap was fine because you had BiS lists. You didn’t have to sim yourself every time you opened the vault. Haste Breakpoints were fine for the same reason.

[NordWitcher]

The game has been more and more complicated and confusing over the years.

Back in Vanilla/TBC/Wrath, players used outside source/3rd party websites for talents, rotations, stats priority. And that’s it.

Even Elitist Jerks most crazy theory crafting days were not as ridiculous as today’s wowhead, icy-veins guides.

What players really hate about today’s systems is that they are unnecessarily over-complicated. Some says “you don’t need to do it if you just play it casually”. It may be the case back in pre-Legion days, but not anymore.

Today’s systems are so confusing and not self-explanatory, that most players can’t find any meaningful information in game. Even for the most casual players, it is just easier to check 3rd party guides for best pve/pvp talents, covenant, soulbinds, conduits, legendary, shard, and other millions of systems.

Systems were meant to be refreshing, meaningful and fun. But when they are so complicated and confusing, players will stop to care about them instead.

WoW has become a game of checking 3rd party website guides and sims.

This was me with 9.1 For the first time I was so completely lost with the launch of a patch in the game. Even at the launch of Shadowlands, I was pretty confused but 9.1 was it for me. There are just too many things to keep track off and I have no idea how each one works with the others. Now we have Soul Cinders? What happened to Soul Ash? And Kothria Crystals or whatever? Its just way too complicated. I've never seen a game with so many systems in place and they all working against each other.

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The systems in wow are garbage. They were really well implemented and actually fucking amazing in Legion because you had an entire expansion built on them and when they were removed it was devastating and made no sense.

In bfa the "new system" was terrible and they should had just scratched it but no... they actually went all in on this new expansion and it just sucks ass.

Why don't they just remove all this crap and turn the game simple as it was (sortoff anyway) is beyond me. No one is pleased with this.




I tottaly disagree with you. The amount of ridiculous systems on top of systems is a development problem. Conduits that drop and RNG conduit upgrade if u use a currency but at the same time that currency can be used on creating sockets but now the sockets are new sockets thats called domination socket that can be placed in some places but legendarys ... its ridiculous. Why even implement something like this?

Well it basically works as a carrot on the stick for the players. I mean after the gear drops, it forces players to stay active, continue grinding and maxing out the new power systems. When games do that, you know they are running out of ideas and simply trying to milk the cow for what its worth.

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Retail and Classic are more or less different games, it should be apparent to most by now
that the design direction behind each is vastly different.

Should an MMO like WoW have all these systems?
Should it have seasons?
Should there be such a focus on esports?

Daily quests have been in the game for a long time now, but they used to serve a function
beyond simply offering rewards.
The molten front comes to mind, your base of operations actually expanded,
the enviroment changed, you got access to different and new quests as you helped out
the faction associated with the quests.

The Argent tournament had it`s own story, incorporated different gameplay elements like jousting
and offered racially themed rewards for improving your standing with different horde/alliance
groups.

Daily quests now offer better rewards in terms of improving player power sure, but they are disconnected and mostly just reward you with gear,gold,anima and conduits, good things to have
but does a world quest really matter if you just go where the best rewards are offered instead of
acting on a feeling of being invested in what`s happening?

Often when you read interviews done with Ion it reads like a dissertation rather than
a conversation.

I feel the systems are more a symptoms of the games age than anything else, judging by the feedback many people strongly dislike them, yet they are added with every single expansion now in greater numbers.

Most of what WoW offers is offered in greater quality elsewhere honestly
RPG elements? ESO
Professions, sideactivities and narrative? FFXIV
Amount of content vs time/money invested? GW2

Granted it`subjective in some regard but WoW benefits from it`s longstanding legacy now, not
necessarily the quality of the game.

I think it has to do with how much hand holding Blizzard has in the game currently. Its pretty much a corridor shooter covered in an open world. They want you to take this specific route and only this route while giving you a false sense of open world. Kinda reminds me of Destiny at launch where one developer said you could go anywhere and everywhere. Destiny survived cause of its superb game play. Its pretty much how Blizzard wants to have control over how their player base plays and experiences the game. Control is good but too much control and it feels horrible which is where WoW is right now. They pretty much control how quickly you can gear up , how quickly you can experience the story, how quickly you can experience what the world has to offer and even while levelling up.

[shadowmatrix]

I completely disagree. Casuals come in and try to play the game and have no clue what the heck is going on. That's a problem. Most casuals aren't theorycrafters and by definition none of them are powergamers.

Casuals don't notice/care about most of the systems since they run passively in the background, the only ones confused by them are the ones focusing on them too much.