Too much friction to enjoy the game

[burnout180]

Is it just me who feels restricted in my ability to play Shadowlands the way I want and therefore unable to fully enjoy the game? Areas of friction limiting my freedom and enjoyment include:

1) Legendaries:
Blizzard appears to have put a significant amount of effort into creating all the different legendary memories (approximately 20 per class) and each can be crafted into 11 different slots and each slot can be upgraded by 6 item level tiers. To craft the legendaries requires a significant amount of gold or materials for the base item, x40 Korthite crystals which I receive around 2 per day (20days to farm), 1550 Soul ash, and 1650 Soul Cinders (4 weeks of torghast). What is the purpose of this design? How does Blizzard intend for the player to interact with this complex and restrictive process? I would enjoy trying them all myself but it appears that the only option is to carefully pick 1 or 2 to invest in and hope it remains a competitive choice. Why did they make so many options then restrict the player's ability to try them out?

2) Covenants:
I've spent around 4 months collecting and leveling max command table companions, 2 months collecting conduits, 3 months on the sanctum upgrades. Why do players need to forfeit this and start over in a new covenant to try another class-covenant combination and experience the rest of the shadowlands story? What is the intent of this restriction?

3) Conduit Energy: Why does this exist?

I understand some amount of friction to make game decisions seem meaningful but the amount of friction is too high that I feel controlled by the game. I make a decision then I'm stuck unless I'm willing to invest a tremendous amount of time grinding to catch up. It's opressive.

[Zantera]

1. Yeah there's basically no point to make all legendaries and you just stick with your bis one(s) but I don't think it's necessarily that different to Legion for example where you also had a ton of different legendaries but only a few of them were actually useful and/or relevant. The downside in SL is having to pay to upgrade your legendary, the downside in Legion imo was the RNG aspect of getting them, where in SL you can at least make the one you want and focus on it.

2. I agree it's pretty silly you lose ALL progress if you reroll, I don't see myself changing covenant on my main through SL honestly.

3. Conduit Energy is kinda pointless but I guess it's their current version of having a punishment for swapping too often (going back to paying gold for respeccing in the past). I'm kinda curious how many people who complain about it are actually affected by it? Don't get me wrong, I know there's a small percentage of people who play various different content as all roles and they probably hit the conduit energy wall. But there seems to be a lot of players complaining about it on forums and in game I haven't experienced or heard much about it. And I'm in a mythic raiding guild with people who also push high keys, so it's weird to me to see so much hate on the forums but then in game nobody seems affected by it. But yeah ofc they could scrap it. I was always baffled by all the roadblocks they seem to put up to punish the players who want to play multiple specs or different type of content. IMO it should be rewarding to try and dip into multiple parts of the game and not punishing.

[cparle87]

Before SL launched I really liked the idea of being hard-locked into some choice in the game, that there would be some form of consequences for a decision we made. But given that they made it possible to switch Covenants, albeit awkwardly and with, of course, grinding, it really began to feel like there was no point to making Covenants any kind of choice at all other than to punish players for wanting to play a certain way.

Considering you lose practically everything when you change a covenant, thus niffing the idea of playing one, getting everything, and switching, eventually getting it all I don't really see your point.

[aceperson]

there was always some kind of soft lock on what you had to take if you wanted to be competitive. i don't want to make it seem like there was never this sort of thing before but it was never to this extent. even back when specs were gated by gold to be changed, it was more of just a way to dump gold out of the economy and not meant to keep players from ever changing specs (looking at you azerite reforger...). the game also had excess talent points so you got to decide to spash into another spec or fill out your main spec. there were the ideal setups for optimum dps but outside of very specific ones, it wasn't usually that big of a difference.

for covenants, the closest i think a relevant comparison can get is the netherdrake mount farm from tbc. the netherdrake mounts had the dailies so there was a limit to how much easy rep you could get. but you could also grind out the nether eggs that had horrible spawn rates to make the grind go faster.

with covenants, there is no set amount of stuff and then some extra grind if you want. that extra grind was made into the main grind. i wouldn't even think it was bad if they didn't tie covenant spells, conduits, soulbinds, etc. behind it. i think permanent covenant choices would've been cool if the power was just taken out. the meaningful choice for me was in choosing which of the covenants to support. but that was destroyed because of the power system. i chose the covenant i wanted but always felt like i made the wrong choice since i wanted to raid to beat the heroic end boss. eventually, the poor class design, the constant grinding, and the constant guilt just made me end up hating to play wow.

this actually showed itself in mop when epic gear that was raid viable was put on rep vendors at launch. everyone felt like they had to grind the reps for that power. if a system is going to be grindy, it can't have something like a power boost behind it. it will only breed hate and resentment.

[windoth]

3) Conduit Energy: Why does this exist?

This is some of the most real shit I've read on these forums.

Edit: To clarify, I don't mean what you're saying is LITERALLY "real shit" xD I meant you're absolutely right. I also have always wondered from the start why conduit energy is even a thing.

[HansOlo]

Is it just me who feels restricted in my ability to play Shadowlands the way I want and therefore unable to fully enjoy the game? Areas of friction limiting my freedom and enjoyment include:

1) Legendaries:
Blizzard appears to have put a significant amount of effort into creating all the different legendary memories (approximately 20 per class) and each can be crafted into 11 different slots and each slot can be upgraded by 6 item level tiers. To craft the legendaries requires a significant amount of gold or materials for the base item, x40 Korthite crystals which I receive around 2 per day (20days to farm), 1550 Soul ash, and 1650 Soul Cinders (4 weeks of torghast). What is the purpose of this design? How does Blizzard intend for the player to interact with this complex and restrictive process? I would enjoy trying them all myself but it appears that the only option is to carefully pick 1 or 2 to invest in and hope it remains a competitive choice. Why did they make so many options then restrict the player's ability to try them out?

2) Covenants:
I've spent around 4 months collecting and leveling max command table companions, 2 months collecting conduits, 3 months on the sanctum upgrades. Why do players need to forfeit this and start over in a new covenant to try another class-covenant combination and experience the rest of the shadowlands story? What is the intent of this restriction?

3) Conduit Energy: Why does this exist?

I understand some amount of friction to make game decisions seem meaningful but the amount of friction is too high that I feel controlled by the game. I make a decision then I'm stuck unless I'm willing to invest a tremendous amount of time grinding to catch up. It's opressive.

It depends on how you like to play the game.

None of this makes sense, because you can look up which conduit is the best, which covenant is the best and which legendary is the best. There is no need to swap and experiment - this is not the game for it(and will never be).

[muto]

Yes, it’s all trash. Welcome to Systemlands!

Never before has there been so many Systems in the game, and so many different currencies.

And the Systems honestly wouldn’t be that terrible if they didn’t fuck you with them. Losing Renown, and Follower levels when you switch Covenants is really stupid as is Conduit Energy as is having to re-craft Legendary’s.

Oh forgot to mention that Anima Tokens accumulate in your bags, which is really dumb as well. Don’t worry though I’m sure they’ll make it go into the Reservoir in a patch though, and brand it as “content”.

[cparle87]

Switching a covenant basically just requires you to grind up the renown and/or Anima (if you care about the Anima aspects), and blow through the questline, but mostly just the renown. And that can be done in very little time. Switching back to a previously held Covenant just requires grinding some WQs and such for a week (a day, if you time it all right). Coming back to a previously held covenant puts you right back where you were at with them, you lose nothing.

Essentially, switching covenants is just an annoying, temporary timegated grind. So what's the point of even having that annoying, temporary timegated grind? To punish players? That's all I can guess since it doesn't really discourage switching when the meta demands it for those who want to play that way.

If covenant choice had been a hard, unchangeable, choice I would have been in favor of that. I like choices that have consequences in my RPG. But since the ability to switch exists there seems to be no reason to not allow it to be a flip of the switch when a player wants to change, unless your goal is to punish and impede those players.

You also lose the transmogs, mounts, covenant locked pets, and toys until/unless you switch back. You could hop from one to another to another until you had everything, but then every time you wanted to change you'd be hit by the do stuff, wait weekly reset, do more stuff cause you'd ditched every covenant at least once and nobody trusts you anymore.

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Yes, it’s all trash. Welcome to Systemlands!

Never before has there been so many Systems in the game, and so many different currencies.

And the Systems honestly wouldn’t be that terrible if they didn’t fuck you with them. Losing Renown, and Follower levels when you switch Covenants is really stupid as is Conduit Energy as is having to re-craft Legendary’s.

Oh forgot to mention that Anima Tokens accumulate in your bags, which is really dumb as well. Don’t worry though I’m sure they’ll make it go into the Reservoir in a patch though, and brand it as “content”.

Why is it dumb for anima to be in your bags? It has a hard cap. I'd love to see your response at the end of the day when you went out and grinded 10k anima, only to have lost 9.5k of it cause you were close to cap and didn't notice.

[Ryzeth]

With experimenting, comes consequence. If you don't want to grind over and over again, go look up a guide from the very start about what's best.

These legendaries are arguably easier than any other ones to get. Cloak and Ring both took a significant amount of time to reach max on. Legion legendaries were RNG as all hell (not to mention the ilvl issues). Tarecgosa, Daggers, Shadowmourne all took months of raiding to get (AKA you couldn't even get them without raiding unlike every one post cata).

Conduit energy has already been explained to death; feel free to read one of the other thousand threads complaining about it.

Low effort madpost by a burner account. Wow, so cool.

[muto]

You also lose the transmogs, mounts, covenant locked pets, and toys until/unless you switch back. You could hop from one to another to another until you had everything, but then every time you wanted to change you'd be hit by the do stuff, wait weekly reset, do more stuff cause you'd ditched every covenant at least once and nobody trusts you anymore.

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Why is it dumb for anima to be in your bags? It has a hard cap. I'd love to see your response at the end of the day when you went out and grinded 10k anima, only to have lost 9.5k of it cause you were close to cap and didn't notice.

Lol what. It caps at 35k. There are building upgrades that cost 15k, and transmog that costs 30k.

https://www.wowhead.com/currency=181...#items;0-18+19

[Erous]

Before SL launched I really liked the idea of being hard-locked into some choice in the game, that there would be some form of consequences for a decision we made. But given that they made it possible to switch Covenants, albeit awkwardly and with, of course, grinding, it really began to feel like there was no point to making Covenants any kind of choice at all other than to punish players for wanting to play a certain way.

They also promised that the choice of covenant wouldn't make or break how your character would perform when compared to other characters of the same class and spec with a different covenant. Boy was that debunked rather quickly.

[deenman]

my best tip is to try and break the mental conditioning the game has given you,if you dont enjoy it....STOP

give some other game a try,if you really want it to be an mmo try guild wars 2,that game is nothing like wow,you wont ever be behind,you can play it like an rpg,just taking your time and exploring the map,and its free until you decide you wanna deal with expansion stuff

[muto]

They also promised that the choice of covenant wouldn't make or break how your character would perform when compared to other characters of the same class and spec with a different covenant. Boy was that debunked rather quickly.

Covenants should have been cosmetic, and Soulbinds should have been defensive only. No Covenant abilities.

[Erous]

Covenants should have been cosmetic, and Soulbinds should have been defensive only. No Covenant abilities.

I agree, or some type of general ability that functioned the same way just visually different contingent upon the convenant. I think they could've done a lot with tying that to Torghast and you having to run Torghast for faction-specific transmogs and mounts and all of that could've produced a lot of additional hours of optional gameplay.

[MrLachyG]

Lol what. It caps at 35k. There are building upgrades that cost 15k, and transmog that costs 30k.

https://www.wowhead.com/currency=181...#items;0-18+19

his point still stands. what if you didn't realise you were at cap, or pretty close, and farmed a shitload of anima only for it to be wasted. People would complain to the fucking heavens

[Tyris Flare]

https://subcreation.net/top-covenants.html

The speed with which people have changed is also incredible. Discipline priest used to be like 95% venthyr and is now almost the same Kyrian.

The number of players who just "stick it out and play what they want" is incredibly small.

Basically everything we all said was bad about covenants from the start of the expansion has been proven true. Massive waste of developer resources for stuff that benefited no one with the way it was implemented.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Oh forgot to mention that Anima Tokens accumulate in your bags, which is really dumb as well. Don’t worry though I’m sure they’ll make it go into the Reservoir in a patch though, and brand it as “content”.

My biggest mistake was picking up the 25 bonus anima for tier 5 korthia research. Of course this isn't one fucking bonus anima currency, it's 2-3 bonus anima versions that come in 5 tokens each per zone, shitting your bags up in new unprecedented ways..

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his point still stands. what if you didn't realise you were at cap, or pretty close, and farmed a shitload of anima only for it to be wasted. People would complain to the fucking heavens

Just make it a currency we carry with us without limit? The "resavoir is full" feeling could simply come from having spend most of it on anima buildings or just the conductor. There is absolutely no need to store anima with the covenant, other than misguided flavor that Blizzard ignores at every other corner 10 times over.

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I agree, or some type of general ability that functioned the same way just visually different contingent upon the convenant. I think they could've done a lot with tying that to Torghast and you having to run Torghast for faction-specific transmogs and mounts and all of that could've produced a lot of additional hours of optional gameplay.

I've been saying this since they announced this rubbish on stage, before even alpha, they could have just made 3 abilities in a temporary talent row and color it depending on your covenant. Most of the effects are so utterly generic, you could flavor them according to the covenant without losing anything. And almost every class has one covenant ability that is so bad, they might as well not have added it. Having 3 well thought out abiltities that you can pick depending on your gameplay situation would have been sio much better than being locked into one.

[muto]

his point still stands. what if you didn't realise you were at cap, or pretty close, and farmed a shitload of anima only for it to be wasted. People would complain to the fucking heavens

And I’d laugh at them and tell them to stop being hoarders when there’s a plethora of things to spend it on.

[Oneirophobia]

2) Covenants:
I've spent around 4 months collecting and leveling max command table companions, 2 months collecting conduits, 3 months on the sanctum upgrades. Why do players need to forfeit this and start over in a new covenant to try another class-covenant combination and experience the rest of the shadowlands story? What is the intent of this restriction?

Incidentally, when you switch you keep neutral companions and your "non-named" NPC troops stay leveled up, you keep all your non-covenant specific conduits (which is the grand majority of them) and you keep the anima buff achievement for completing a sanctum.

If you switch back to your original covenant, all your progress is saved as if you never left.

Source: I've been covenant hopping and completing them all. There is a lot of anima to be had in Korthia now so it's pretty easy. My troops carry my new shitty lvl 1 followers through mission table garbage (the table itself is pretty irrelevant anyway).

[Devilyaki]

I really hope that the way the story is going we will just have all the covenant unlocked to us. We are now working side by side with them all anyways, why is it the other three are just telling us to F off when we go to them..