To all the Bellulars, Asmogolds, Preaches, QoL'ers and Fans that want to Design WOW.

[Kralljin]

That's the problem, hard to find serious alternative to borrowed power.

I think you're not entirely wrong, but the big question is also: Why tie in additional character progression systems?

Imagine for a moment, you'd log into Shadowlands, choose your covenant, get your "borrowed abilities" and that's it, no need to grind Renown for Soulbinds, no need to upgrade conduits, no upgradeable legendaries, the sole character progression you have from that point is getting better gear.

Receiving an ability but knowing you'll quite likely lose them doesn't feel amazing, but what in my opinion absolutely spoils the deal is Blizzard attempting to tie in additional character progression into those systems.

Previously, your entire character progression past levelcap was gear based, when a new expansion came out, you received better gear, you replaced your previous expansion gear "organically" in some way, because the newer expansion gear was just plain better.
With those new systems however, Blizzard comes in and just disables them, you didn't replace your Legion Artifact in BfA because some green weapon was "better", but because Blizzard went in and disabled bonuses accumulated over an entire expansion.

With those abilities, you can at least integrate them into a talent or make them possibly baseline with some tweaks with the next expansion, but it's a certainty that all that "additional" progression accumulated over the course of an expansion will land in the trash.

Giving a set of expansion specific abilities is not necessarily bad i think, but those alternate power progression systems that will be irrelevant the second the next expansion hits, need to go.

[Relapses]

The thing is, I don't disagree with your premise. They obviously were struggling with a method to keep giving players new goodies to play with, without having classes become massive and bloated with abilities.

The issue lies with players rejecting the solution. Or at the very least saying "Guys, we need you to try something different here". Because at the end of the day, if the system you've built up is widely regarded to as 'not fun'. it really is a problem that needs looking into. And the fact that the tried to hammer the square peg into a round hole three times is what is really rubbing salt into the wound.

I'm cautious whenever people say that something in WoW "isn't fun." This is such a nebulous and impossible-to-define statement. "Fun" in WoW means a million different things to a million different people. When you try to generalize how players engage with systems in a game like WoW if your sample size of people discussing the system are the ones who post on forums like this then you're going to get an overwhelming negative impression of it. This isn't (nor has it ever been) a reflection of the playerbase as a whole, though.

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I think you're not entirely wrong, but the big question is also: Why tie in additional character progression systems?

Imagine for a moment, you'd log into Shadowlands, choose your covenant, get your "borrowed abilities" and that's it, no need to grind Renown for Soulbinds, no need to upgrade conduits, no upgradeable legendaries, the sole character progression you have from that point is getting better gear.

Receiving an ability but knowing you'll quite likely lose them doesn't feel amazing, but what in my opinion absolutely spoils the deal is Blizzard attempting to tie in additional character progression into those systems.

Previously, your entire character progression past levelcap was gear based, when a new expansion came out, you received better gear, you replaced your previous expansion gear "organically" in some way, because the newer expansion gear was just plain better.
With those new systems however, Blizzard comes in and just disables them, you didn't replace your Legion Artifact in BfA because some green weapon was "better", but because Blizzard went in and disabled bonuses accumulated over an entire expansion.

With those abilities, you can at least integrate them into a talent or make them possibly baseline with some tweaks with the next expansion, but it's a certainty that all that "additional" progression accumulated over the course of an expansion will land in the trash.

Giving a set of expansion specific abilities is not necessarily bad i think, but those alternate power progression systems that will be irrelevant the second the next expansion hits, need to go.

It's plainly obvious why those additional systems exist: It's something to keep people occupied in the game. You strip the additional systems from the game and you get WoD.

[Kralljin]

I
It's plainly obvious why those additional systems exist: It's something to keep people occupied in the game. You strip the additional systems from the game and you get WoD.

At this point we need a name for this WoD Fallacy.

Because frankly, by that logic, virtually any expansion previous to WoD, was like WoD.

[jellmoo]

I'm cautious whenever people say that something in WoW "isn't fun." This is such a nebulous and impossible-to-define statement. "Fun" in WoW means a million different things to a million different people. When you try to generalize how players engage with systems in a game like WoW if your sample size of people discussing the system are the ones who post on forums like this then you're going to get an overwhelming negative impression of it. This isn't (nor has it ever been) a reflection of the playerbase as a whole, though.

You're not wrong, but at the same time when you see something posted often on socia media, reinforced by these popular 'content creators', is mentioned in gaming news articles, there should be something to note there. The big qyestion ultimately is 'does this supposed feeling match our internal metrics;? Only Blizzard can answer that one.

While something not being fun is certainly nebulous to define and diagnose, it's also something of an absolute. If the feedback you are getting is consistent and your metrics back it up, then something in your formula isn't working.

[erifwodahs]

I mean if that is your approach when covenant restrictions, RNG corruptions, conduit energy is being discussed... we would have that shit. So I would rather take shittiest suggestion Preach can come up with and have that than the crap we got with SL.

[Osmeric]

And the fact that the tried to hammer the square peg into a round hole three times is what is really rubbing salt into the wound.

This is a wonderfully whacky mixed metaphor!

[bullseyed]

"you have to be a chef to critique food"

Putting the unemployed stoner in the kitchen to serve steaks topped with PB&J and orange slices on top over a bed of popcorn is certainly worse than chef-made food that is too fancy for said unemployed stoners.

[Empower]

Ehh, I think a better approach would be to observe what the players want.

There is often quite a bit of a difference between what people say they want, what they believe they want and what they really want.

Luckily there are a few popular MMOs right now from which Blizzzard could learn a thing or two...

This is true... covenants have taught us once and for all that players mewling about personal choice will surrender it for any dps upgrade.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

At this point we need a name for this WoD Fallacy.

Because frankly, by that logic, virtually any expansion previous to WoD, was like WoD.

It kinda is the Wod effect though.

In mop we had a ton stuff like good items locked behind reps or heroic scenarios or farming dungeons for valour for item upgrades or the legendary quest line gated by rep.

A very vocal part of the community whined day and night about it. So what was blizzards response? They removed all of that and made it Wod and made it so you could get pretty much every thing you needed in your garrison.

Another Vocal part of the community complained about the lack of out of raid progress or no reasons to long in and in response we got the awful ap grind in legion which they made a lesser issue in bfa and lesser still in SL.

Where we are now has a direct line back to Wod and there respone to mop.

[bullseyed]

I honestly haven't been paying any attention to what those folks have been saying, but...

We are literally at three expansions in a row where Blizzard introduced very specific game mechanics that players said are going to cause problems. Blizzard doesn't listen and marches forward anyway, and then reverses course within the expansion to make QOL changes.

Everyone's a Homer right now, and Blizzard might be the most Homerish of us all.

Anything you don't personally like is a problem.

Uh huh.


I don't like that I can take damage and die in a raid boss fight. When is blizzard going to fix this design problem?!?!?!

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I'm cautious whenever people say that something in WoW "isn't fun." This is such a nebulous and impossible-to-define statement. "Fun" in WoW means a million different things to a million different people. When you try to generalize how players engage with systems in a game like WoW if your sample size of people discussing the system are the ones who post on forums like this then you're going to get an overwhelming negative impression of it. This isn't (nor has it ever been) a reflection of the playerbase as a whole, though.

Chocolate is terrible and isn't a flavor. Anything chocolate needs to be fixed immediately by changing it to vanilla!

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Previously, your entire character progression past levelcap was gear based, when a new expansion came out, you received better gear, you replaced your previous expansion gear "organically" in some way, because the newer expansion gear was just plain better.

And anyone who understand even 101 or remedial level game design knows this is bad because it causes the need to stat squishes due to exponential stat inflation.

If SL 3 tiers went from 5% haste/crit to 10% haste/crit to 15% haste/crit, this would be somewhat workable. But when people have 20% or 30% haste in the first tier, the only way to make this work is the next expansion to have 60% haste.

If you don't offer 20% haste in blues tier one, the mouth breathing morons will whine about their spec being "lItTeRaLlY uNpLaYaBlE" because it "fEeLs BaD" or whatever nonsense.


Further, the new system works better for leveling than the old system. Before you'd start with 30% haste and decay 5% or so every time you leveled up until you had 5% when you hit the new max level. With the new system you keep your haste until 1 or 2 levels before the new cap when your "powers" get disabled and then you immediately equip your new stuff to go right back to 20% haste.

[Relapses]

You're not wrong, but at the same time when you see something posted often on socia media, reinforced by these popular 'content creators', is mentioned in gaming news articles, there should be something to note there. The big qyestion ultimately is 'does this supposed feeling match our internal metrics;? Only Blizzard can answer that one.

While something not being fun is certainly nebulous to define and diagnose, it's also something of an absolute. If the feedback you are getting is consistent and your metrics back it up, then something in your formula isn't working.

There's a lot of assumptions on players' part that Blizzard acts in bad faith or intentionally develops the game poorly so they can "fix it" later. This is such a ridiculous notion that I can't believe how frequently people seem to be convinced this is reality. But then you watch Bellular's latest YouTube video about why WoW sucks and you see the same three talking points being regurgitated ad infinitum on forums like this then you begin to understand what's actually happening here...

[Cosmic Janitor]

The thing is, I don't disagree with your premise. They obviously were struggling with a method to keep giving players new goodies to play with, without having classes become massive and bloated with abilities.

While we like to remember it that way, actually, they weren't. Classes underwent restructuring every couple of expansions already, just look at the way the talent trees changed after Cata. Legion did another full rework of the classes as such. While it may have been more convenient for Blizzard (in theory) to redesign shorter systems on top of it, I'm not entirely sold that this is actually the truth behind the matter. Instead of adding to the classses and giving them a bigger design pass every couple expansions to refractor and condense gameplay (along with squishes that happened anyway), classes have mostly stagnated while still needed constant rebalancing and reshuffling on top of the massive effort that goes into the new temporary system each expansion. While it looks like the underlying system was solid, alot of it still changes each expansion, so the goal was clearly not met. I think you could make a case that adding to the game each expansion with a some new goodies could easily work, since others would just be phase out anyway. Let's be real, we may have talents, but most of us don't even use 50% of them, since most are flat out always numericaly inferior to the the ones the guides tell us to use. Some builds/rows haven't changed in years.

Not to mention (well I'm about to go into a rather lengthy thing here.. so I guess I do mention it) that the bloating problem is only a part of the reason for borrowed power. Another one, probably way more important, is that Blizzard was desperate for years to find a new way to reintroduce rpg-lite character progression back into the game after they made levels superfluous and finite after Vanilla and they killed their original talent trees after Cata. It was a general desire to bring back some sort of fundamental character progression at max level, since their expansion model clearly undermined the original concept of MMORPGs of lengthy character progressions that happens and is relevant even if you raid. They tried this as far back as in Wrath with Path of the Titans.

This might go a bit far back, but bear with me. Since WoW allowed you to reach max level easily and abandoned one of the old staples of MMOs in the form of losing levels they essentially locked themselves out of long time, night permanent, character progression, that was fairly common back then. Endgame in ye olden times ment stuff you did at high level, not neccessarily at max level. Borrowed power in the form of tacked on temporary systems was the solution to this and the first time it actually worked on a large scale (for WoW) was in Legion with the artefact weapons. Suddenly people were back to leveling throughout the whole expansion, having a constant progression for their characters besides the occasional gear drop. This kind of permanent character progression is one of the things that drives engagement, which is why it's also utlized in almost all multiplayer games these days. Just look at shooters and such with their prestige and 'ranking'(level) grinds. BfA refined that progression by putting more limits on it than Legion and SL practically normalized it to 2-3 renown levels per week.

TL;DR: I think the real reason for borrowed power systems lies in this desire for endgame progression. The perceived stop to bloat is just a nice side-effect.

[bullseyed]

I always get a chuckle out of such attitudes.

It's like going to a restaurant where a chef makes truly atrocious meals. When the customers complain about how awful it is, the chef takes the same attitude. If you are such a great chef, why aren't you making the food? /eyeroll

People don't need to be game designers to know what they enjoy and what they don't. People don't need to be in the industry to provide critical feedback.

I don't need to be an auto mechanic to know that my car shouldn't be leaking oil all over the pavement.

It's more like people demanding fast food because it tastes good, while their doctors keep trying to get them on a healthy diet instead.

[Kralljin]

Putting the unemployed stoner in the kitchen to serve steaks topped with PB&J and orange slices on top over a bed of popcorn is certainly worse than chef-made food that is too fancy for said unemployed stoners.

Those people never claimed they are better designers, though, nor anyone reasonable advocating for them to take over.
Your argument doesn't even engage in the fallacy i am pointing out, you don't need to be an expert to point out obvious flaws.

In mop we had a ton stuff like good items locked behind reps or heroic scenarios or farming dungeons for valour for item upgrades or the legendary quest line gated by rep.

No, the response happened in 5.1 when they added additional ways to gather reputation and future reputations not having the same restrictions.

The issue you are talking about is primarily limited to 5.0, not MoP as a whole.

-snip-

No, it's not.

The cause of that issue is a combination of
(1) 4 Raid difficulties
(2) "Play the Patch" philosophy

Four raid difficulties naturally bloats the Ilvl span of a given Tier.
Now throw in the "Play the patch philosophy" which dictates that players shouldn't be able to go back to a previous tier for upgrades, you need massive Ilvl jumps between tiers.

For example, a heroic raider is not supposed to go back to the Mythic difficulty of the previous tier and get equivalent loot.
The solution?
Have a 30 Ilvl jump each tier.
That's why Ilvl is so inflated.

The first statsquish didn't happen until WoD (which was the 5th Expansion btw.), now since the introduction of those two things we've had 2 within three expansions, one with BfA and one with SL.

With the new system you keep your haste until 1 or 2 levels before the new cap

Those systems got disabled the minute you enter the next expansion content, with the sole exception being the Legiondaries
Artifacts? Disabled before BfA Launch.
Azerite? Disabled in SL.
Essences? Disabled in SL.
Corruption? Disabled before SL Launch.

I am rather certain the same thing will happen to all those covenant abilities, soulbinds and conduits, there is no overlap.

Matter of fact, gear can remain a pretty relevant factor, look towards the Classic / TBC launch, quite a few Classic pieces lasted you easily until levelcap and beyond the initial gearing process.
I didn't change basically any piece on my Naxx geared Resto Shaman until endgame dungeons.

[jellmoo]

This is a wonderfully whacky mixed metaphor!

I prefer to think of it as stacking metaphors.

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Anything you don't personally like is a problem.

Uh huh.


I don't like that I can take damage and die in a raid boss fight. When is blizzard going to fix this design problem?!?!?!

I mean, of course anything I don't like is a problem. For me anyway. But I divide those into things that I think could potentially be actionable and those that aren't. I don't like Raiding. I find it irksome how much dev time goes into it. Do I expect this to be actionable? Of course not.

But systems added to the game? That get a lot of negative feedback? Yeah, that can and should be actionable.

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There's a lot of assumptions on players' part that Blizzard acts in bad faith or intentionally develops the game poorly so they can "fix it" later. This is such a ridiculous notion that I can't believe how frequently people seem to be convinced this is reality. But then you watch Bellular's latest YouTube video about why WoW sucks and you see the same three talking points being regurgitated ad infinitum on forums like this then you begin to understand what's actually happening here...

I don't think that Blizzard is intentionally screwing the pooch with their game systems, but I do think that Blizzard has a tendency to double and triple down on things instead of backing up and looking for alternatives. Nobody, Blizzard absolutely included, wants the game to be bad. But at the same time, the game isn't going to get betterif they continue to try an iterate on the same design that hasn't worked yet.

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TL;DR: I think the real reason for borrowed power systems lies in this desire for endgame progression. The perceived stop to bloat is just a nice side-effect.

Eh, not sure I completely agree. I think a big chunk of what their borrowed power systems are meant to do is be time filler. Grind resource X, grind rep, unlock the grind for resource X, etc... The previous system was much simpler. Hit max level, gear up. I think they wanted to add a lot more work to that system and call it 'content'. The Borrowed power systems and their related subsystems let them do this since players no longer just hit max level and 'had' everything. It was one more thing to level/grind and it gave people the illusion of having something to do.

[MakeMeLaugh]

Damn imagine that, someone actually believe that people really invested and passionate on the game would actually make the shit we have right now worse LOL.

[Relapses]

I don't think that Blizzard is intentionally screwing the pooch with their game systems, but I do think that Blizzard has a tendency to double and triple down on things instead of backing up and looking for alternatives. Nobody, Blizzard absolutely included, wants the game to be bad. But at the same time, the game isn't going to get betterif they continue to try an iterate on the same design that hasn't worked yet.

"Hasn't worked yet," is such a weird way to describe something they've been iterating on since Legion. If it "isn't working," then why do they keep building on it? Yeah, people on forums love to bitch about systems and needless complexity but they've always done that (and they always will). Clearly there is some kind of driving force behind Blizzard's decisions to continue iterating on their systems-driven approach to the game. Cynics love to say its Activision or some dude in a dark room looking at an Excel spreadsheet and figuring out what works best (and back in Legion I thought this myself) but I don't know if it's that nefarious in reality. Blizzard is making the game they think will be liked by the most people. The game is a result of the development team's vision and while we, as players, often feel like we have very little agency over how Blizzard makes the game, we do have the ultimate power to simply stop consuming the product if it fails to deliver a meaningful experience for us.

It's that specific disconnect that really seems to be at odds with a lot of what I see on forums like this. To me, it seems like there's a lot of people still playing the game but clearly disliking it quite a bit. But rather than, you know, stepping away from it and admitting it's no longer for them, these people rage against the dying light of the sun that Blizzard has wronged them personally and they are owed the exact game they feel is owed to them. And now, with Blizzard actually making these changes to the game, these same people are smugly pretending like they were right all along and Blizzard just doesn't understand.

[mst3kfan]

Spot on like everyone is saying. Bunch of armchair developers that don't know the first thing about what it actually takes to do this. Meh about Preach, but Asmon would be worse then the current lawsuit Blizz is dealing with.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Eh, not sure I completely agree. I think a big chunk of what their borrowed power systems are meant to do is be time filler. Grind resource X, grind rep, unlock the grind for resource X, etc... The previous system was much simpler. Hit max level, gear up. I think they wanted to add a lot more work to that system and call it 'content'. The Borrowed power systems and their related subsystems let them do this since players no longer just hit max level and 'had' everything. It was one more thing to level/grind and it gave people the illusion of having something to do.

The thing is you can achieve the same by just gating it with a reputation. I mean Renown is essetially just condensed down to that. It's a glorified reputation system with smaller Integer numbers than the odd 42k reputation you usually need to reach maximum. Though I will not deny that it's another aspect, ableit a rather cynical one, of the current temporary endgame systems.

[Trbn]

Spot on like everyone is saying. Bunch of armchair developers that don't know the first thing about what it actually takes to do this. Meh about Preach, but Asmon would be worse then the current lawsuit Blizz is dealing with.

you probably should learn where they did get ion from

and how much expertise he had/has