I think abandoning borrowed power is a huge mistake

[stansted12]

Right now I'm having more fun in wow than I can remember. I can switch between multiple interesting creative and visually spectacular abilities in Oribos and try out new builds in every battleground or raid, and do crazy shit I've never done before.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but I don't think it is borrowed power that is the problem. That doesn't make any sense. Are you saying you want less abilities, less choice, from wow? No. Do you want every ability from every expansion to remain in your arsenal?-no, that would leave you with a thousand different buttons to press.

I think what happened here is a small number of streamers, who have very annoying fans who tend to repeat everything they say verbatim, a) have been playing wow far too long and just end up whining about everything because they are commercially obligated to play wow forever and b) confuse the excessively grindy and repetitive mechanics involved in obtaining the borrowed power with the fun of the borrowed power itself. In 9.2 that grind no longer exists.

So I suspect what will happen is this: Blizzard will put much less work into offering the players diversity of options in Dragonflight, because that's essentially what we asked for and its cheap. Then the players will whine about it like they didn't cause the situation in the first place. That happens a lot.

Does no one else see these train wrecks coming?

(Cue lots of guys talking about wow in a retrospective, creepy way as if it were an ex-girlfriend that dumped their ass years ago.)

[Venziir]

I kinda agree. Kinda.

I really liked artifacts, I thought the HoA/Azerite was "meh" and the Covenant abilities were a mixed bag. So borrowed powers done right is great, borrowed powers done wrong is not. Though in the long run I'll probably miss something like it in DF, though I'll probably enjoy messing about with my dragon and maybe they'll introduce some BP later on.

[stansted12]

I kinda agree. Kinda.

I really liked artifacts, I thought the HoA/Azerite was "meh" and the Covenant abilities were a mixed bag. So borrowed powers done right is great, borrowed powers done wrong is not. Though in the long run I'll probably miss something like it in DF, though I'll probably enjoy messing about with my dragon and maybe they'll introduce some BP later on.

That's a good point, Legion was probably the biggest xpac for borrowed power.

I agree BFA's implementation was very sloppy. The corruptions were kind of interesting but yeah the azerite powers sucked, no polish.

[Lady Atia]

No, abandoning borrowed power is the best change they ever did. It worked in Legion because we didn't know it was borrowed power. Back when they announced it we thought we would keep these awesome artifact weapons / get new ones each Expansion which felt great and like a real rpg. Than they abandoned them and gave us Azerite, which felt worse as you lost a huge junk of your power and never really got it back. On top of that, BfA didn't even gave us cosmetics with it's borrowed power system. Once they announced Covenants we already knew that they would abandon them with 10.0, so people never really got invested with them. Why should I care for something that's get thrown in the trash anyways? This game needs more evergreen content like transmog, not more borrowed power crap.

[Omians]

They are instead baking the borrowed power stuff into the talent trees to stay for long and not disapper after an expansion. They have stated at certain ability points there will be multiple choice options mechanic abilities.

And they will be looking to add sources of mechanics from borrowed power systems of the past. This includes Covenants, Azerite Gear , legion legendarys, ect ect.




Like in the example they posted for druid. The Night Fae ability Convoke is shown to be at the bottom.

[stansted12]

No, abandoning borrowed power is the best change they ever did. It worked in Legion because we didn't know it was borrowed power. Back when they announced it we thought we would keep these awesome artifact weapons / get new ones each Expansion which felt great and like a real rpg. Than they abandoned them and gave us Azerite, which felt worse as you lost a huge junk of your power and never really got it back. On top of that, BfA didn't even gave us cosmetics with it's borrowed power system. Once they announced Covenants we already knew that they would abandon them with 10.0, so people never really got invested with them. Why should I care for something that's get thrown in the trash anyways? This game needs more evergreen content like transmog, not more borrowed power crap.

Any one can whine about stuff, you have to offer a better alternative.

Look at what Omians wrote. He came up with something positive.

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They are instead baking the borrowed power stuff into the talent trees to stay for long and not disapper after an expansion. They have stated at certain ability points there will be multiple choice options mechanic abilities.

And they will be looking to add sources of mechanics from borrowed power systems of the past. This includes Covenants, Azerite Gear , legion legendarys, ect ect.




Like in the example they posted for druid. The Night Fae ability Convoke is shown to be at the bottom.

Which sounds great but I'm not sure about the vagueness of all this: how is it not going to be either a) less player options or b) borrowed power in all but name. It sounds very much like we are going to let you have your cake and eat it somehow.

[Lady Atia]

Any one can whine about stuff, you have to offer a better alternative.

Look at what Omians wrote. He came up with something positive.

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Which sounds great but I'm not sure about the vagueness of all this: how is it not going to be either a) less player options or b) borrowed power in all but name. It sounds very much like we are going to let you have your cake and eat it somehow.

The new talents system is not borrowed power because we will keep it for the next ~10 years or so before they have to prune them a bit. The big problem with borrowed power is that it's duh .... borrowed? You loose it after one Expansion which feels bad, so they try to not do that again. On a smaller scale, like with tier sets it's not a problem because you a) still keep the transmog and b) you don't invest huge time into maintaining and upgrading your tier set over the course of an expansion. That was another problem - all the "farming for your artifact/azerite/covenant" was basically made useless once the next pre-patch hit.

Also sorry, but I can't and won't be positive about borrowed power. It was cancer. It could have worked if they would have kept on introducing new artifact weapons, but than it wouldn't have been borrowed power, but an evergreen system.

[Smallfruitbat]

As others have said, when they do it right, it works well.

I loved the Legion artefact weapon, it had good story and felt satisfying to level. When it was taken away, there were some classes that had all the fun taken out of them until you managed to get the right combination of armour drops. The HoA was an absolute joke, it sounded like a good idea on paper but the execution was awful. Covenants would have been fine if you had easy access to all from the start, there was no story reason for choosing 'just one'.

I would be quite happy still running around with my Scythe of Elune picking up upgrades to it and new appearances to this day.

[Skayth]

Right now I'm having more fun in wow than I can remember. I can switch between multiple interesting creative and visually spectacular abilities in Oribos and try out new builds in every battleground or raid, and do crazy shit I've never done before.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but I don't think it is borrowed power that is the problem. That doesn't make any sense. Are you saying you want less abilities, less choice, from wow? No. Do you want every ability from every expansion to remain in your arsenal?-no, that would leave you with a thousand different buttons to press.

I think what happened here is a small number of streamers, who have very annoying fans who tend to repeat everything they say verbatim, a) have been playing wow far too long and just end up whining about everything because they are commercially obligated to play wow forever and b) confuse the excessively grindy and repetitive mechanics involved in obtaining the borrowed power with the fun of the borrowed power itself. In 9.2 that grind no longer exists.

So I suspect what will happen is this: Blizzard will put much less work into offering the players diversity of options in Dragonflight, because that's essentially what we asked for and its cheap. Then the players will whine about it like they didn't cause the situation in the first place. That happens a lot.

Does no one else see these train wrecks coming?

(Cue lots of guys talking about wow in a retrospective, creepy way as if it were an ex-girlfriend that dumped their ass years ago.)

Ima be real, for demon hunter, the borrowed power never really changed since legion. (Though they just back glaive tempest this expansion in a different way) it's been the same thing over and over.

I fully suspect that most of the borrowed power will finally be baked into talent points, instead of it being renewed with a fresh coat of paint.

[LordVargK]

Now instead of having borrowed power you just have all your powers all the time.
Borrowed powers give you no choice. At least not in SL, where there's usually one strictly superior Covenant, Legendary and Soulbind.
Infact you get less choice, since you have to choose one spec of your class at the start of the expansion and then stick with it for at least one, more often two patches. Or live with the fact, that you have one good performing spec and two suboptimal ones.

[Omians]

Any one can whine about stuff, you have to offer a better alternative.

Look at what Omians wrote. He came up with something positive.

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Which sounds great but I'm not sure about the vagueness of all this: how is it not going to be either a) less player options or b) borrowed power in all but name. It sounds very much like we are going to let you have your cake and eat it somehow.

Well for now it is very vague. They want to finish hashing out interactive talent trees to then publish out into the public for people to mess around with and get feedback.
But if you can have abilities that branch from multiple expansions that would mean even more choices then before.


If they do what they did last time in talent trees. Each Teir past level 60 was taents that were introduced at the new expansion. TBC, Lich king, CATA.
Though in CATA they locked you into putting points into your main spec and couldn't hybrid.

With how the new talent trees are. You should be able to customize your BASE class abilities. Then your spec abilities.
Having the multiple choice option they can slip in new powers at the lower levels. And then when we have expansions after Dragonflight they add more points.

The main issue i remember though which is why they swapped to the MOP talents. Is to cut down on number of abilities people needed to push. Which was good intent... but i think they went a bit to far with how much they did it.


Edit: we won't be getting back the same level of hybrid as we did in the past. But we will have to see and give feedback

[Lochton]

Right now I'm having more fun in wow than I can remember. I can switch between multiple interesting creative and visually spectacular abilities in Oribos and try out new builds in every battleground or raid, and do crazy shit I've never done before.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but I don't think it is borrowed power that is the problem. That doesn't make any sense. Are you saying you want less abilities, less choice, from wow? No. Do you want every ability from every expansion to remain in your arsenal?-no, that would leave you with a thousand different buttons to press.

I think what happened here is a small number of streamers, who have very annoying fans who tend to repeat everything they say verbatim, a) have been playing wow far too long and just end up whining about everything because they are commercially obligated to play wow forever and b) confuse the excessively grindy and repetitive mechanics involved in obtaining the borrowed power with the fun of the borrowed power itself. In 9.2 that grind no longer exists.

So I suspect what will happen is this: Blizzard will put much less work into offering the players diversity of options in Dragonflight, because that's essentially what we asked for and its cheap. Then the players will whine about it like they didn't cause the situation in the first place. That happens a lot.

Does no one else see these train wrecks coming?

(Cue lots of guys talking about wow in a retrospective, creepy way as if it were an ex-girlfriend that dumped their ass years ago.)

I do agree but the loud people believe adding or continuing a system/borrowed power is bad, and want less of it.

I'm controversial here, I liked the Azerite Gear abilities, not the gear itself because I never got the gear I want but the ability to infuse the gear, empower it with traits of its own.

[Pakheth]

As others have stated borrowed power is bad because they go away, meaning fun systems are left in the dust to be replaced by something else. Just listen to yourself, you said you are having fun now but will you have fun when those systems you are enjoying now are gone?
Evergreen systems is the way to go and is what they should have done with the Artifact system and instead added to it, either opening up restrictions on weapon types or allow more transmog only weapons to drop ala the flame sword from Antorus.
You also have to remember that until WoD all expansions had added something new to a class in the form of a new tier on the talent tree. Ofc some abilities got pruned or changed over the years but it was nothing like WoD's prune or Legion's huge reconfiguration, not to mention BfA's literal hamstring of several classes who ended up becoming extremely unfun to play. It's never fun to lose something going from one expansion to the other.

If they are going forward with a focus on making solid evergreen systems then I will embrace that wholeheartedly. This make and discard system they have now just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[Lady Atia]

I do agree but the loud people believe adding or continuing a system/borrowed power is bad, and want less of it.

I'm controversial here, I liked the Azerite Gear abilities, not the gear itself because I never got the gear I want but the ability to infuse the gear, empower it with traits of its own.

But the problem is that Blizzard never continued a system/borrowed power. If they would have introduced a new set of artifact weapons with new skins for each new Expansion, the Legion system would have worked much better. It would still felt weird to grind a new weapon each time though, so they would have to trim down on the artifact power part over time, switching it over to a campaign system similiar to what they did with Soulbinds in Shadowlands. Actually, Soulbinds could have been used as talent trees for Shadowlands Artifacts instead.

[WowIsDead64]

Right now I'm having more fun in wow than I can remember. I can switch between multiple interesting creative and visually spectacular abilities in Oribos and try out new builds in every battleground or raid, and do crazy shit I've never done before.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but I don't think it is borrowed power that is the problem. That doesn't make any sense. Are you saying you want less abilities, less choice, from wow? No. Do you want every ability from every expansion to remain in your arsenal?-no, that would leave you with a thousand different buttons to press.

I think what happened here is a small number of streamers, who have very annoying fans who tend to repeat everything they say verbatim, a) have been playing wow far too long and just end up whining about everything because they are commercially obligated to play wow forever and b) confuse the excessively grindy and repetitive mechanics involved in obtaining the borrowed power with the fun of the borrowed power itself. In 9.2 that grind no longer exists.

So I suspect what will happen is this: Blizzard will put much less work into offering the players diversity of options in Dragonflight, because that's essentially what we asked for and its cheap. Then the players will whine about it like they didn't cause the situation in the first place. That happens a lot.

Does no one else see these train wrecks coming?

(Cue lots of guys talking about wow in a retrospective, creepy way as if it were an ex-girlfriend that dumped their ass years ago.)

Borrowed powers simulate leveling process from past. It's well known fact, that character progression - is the most interesting aspect of RPG games. Plus they're used to extend gearing system, that is way too limited. We have around 13 gear pieces. Back in old times these 13 pieces should have been distributed to keep players busy within 24 weeks, so it was 1 piece once in 2 weeks. But today's players are so spoiled, that they cry, if they don't get any upgrades after every single M+ run.

But devs were way too greedy and "overused" them. Obvious problem - leveling process is limited, so player completes it within reasonable time frame, but borrowed powers are potentially endless. Yeah, potentially infinite content - is great thing for devs. But it causes too many problems with new/returning players and alts. Imagine leveling, that takes not days, but months. It would take too much time to catch-up and easier catch-up would make borrowed powers pointless, as it would be simple time-gated power.

Obvious solution of problem - to make borrowed powers account-wide. This way we would keep potentially infinite content, but this content would be player-bound, not character-bound. But due to some reasons devs hate account-wide things.

[Lolites]

personaly im indiferent, im just afraid it will end up with people whining about nothing to do agan and return to AP farm systems just WORSE...
we will see

[Lochton]

But the problem is that Blizzard never continued a system/borrowed power. If they would have introduced a new set of artifact weapons with new skins for each new Expansion, the Legion system would have worked much better. It would still felt weird to grind a new weapon each time though, so they would have to trim down on the artifact power part over time, switching it over to a campaign system similiar to what they did with Soulbinds in Shadowlands. Actually, Soulbinds could have been used as talent trees for Shadowlands Artifacts instead.

Problem with the Legion Artifact system, not only lore-wise being OP, but as well invites for lazy development as weapons can be ignored. And you are right, the problem is discontinuing, just like the problem is that it is most of the time attached to an item. Covenants worked great here, as it was attached to you, the player.

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personaly im indiferent, im just afraid it will end up with people whining about nothing to do agan and return to AP farm systems just worse...
we will see

Curse of WoW, honestly.

Add new things, REEE!
Remove said things, REEE!
Add limited things, REEE!
Remove limited things, REEE!

I agree that we shouldn't have gotten completely out of the borrowed power system but we shouldn't connect it to items/gear either. A separate system that is wiped and reset every expansion, and attached to the player like the covenants are, and yes, it should be in need of leveling up to achieve the full potential but not with multiple setups (like covenants offering 4 different selections of 2 abilities, and within, 3 different setups each)

[potis]

They go away cause the game gets bloated and causes problems, mostly for them to balance things in reality though.

Is it fun to have 5 abilities that do the same thing and the end result is 20% more damage with each cooldown? Then what, 1 macro that pops the 5 cooldowns at the same time, then all mobs will have triple health so they dont get 1 shotted, bla bla, back to 1mil DPS and silly Eastern MMO numbers in the millions.

[Omians]

Problem with the Legion Artifact system, not only lore-wise being OP, but as well invites for lazy development as weapons can be ignored. And you are right, the problem is discontinuing, just like the problem is that it is most of the time attached to an item. Covenants worked great here, as it was attached to you, the player.

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Curse of WoW, honestly.

Add new things, REEE!
Remove said things, REEE!
Add limited things, REEE!
Remove limited things, REEE!

I agree that we shouldn't have gotten completely out of the borrowed power system but we shouldn't connect it to items/gear either. A separate system that is wiped and reset every expansion, and attached to the player like the covenants are, and yes, it should be in need of leveling up to achieve the full potential but not with multiple setups (like covenants offering 4 different selections of 2 abilities, and within, 3 different setups each)

I liked the aspect of some mechanics changing depending on the gear worn.. but would of liked it not attached to gear. " this piece has the best stats, but the azerite traits are lackluster"

I have a feelin they will put 4 multiple choice point that has the cov. Abilities on it only letting you pick 1. Saw some warriors getting excited to have Krian spear and Ven Execute at the same time.

I wonder if they will fit the soulbinds main passives in there somehow.

[Karawaka]

Borrowed power is a horrible system. It fixes none of the root issues for any class/spec and any tuning done is only good for that xpac. Once the powers are gone all the issues pop right back up to the surface, and it feels like your character power has been cut in half. Tier sets changed each raid tier, and the bonuses were set to match. They were mostly good, and usually didn't have major impacts on a specs playstyle (keyword being usually). Things like artifacts, azerite powers, and covenant abilities, we have those for an entire expansion and all this balancing and tuning done around having those abilities. Then the expansion ends, you lose those powers, and there's a whole mess of issues popping up. Tanks start getting smashed cause their defensive powers got cut, healers lose output, dps lose cooldowns and power ramps. It's like a drug they're feeding us and then we get cut off cold turkey.