Anyone else feels like Blizzard never goes 'All the Way' on new systems?

[Goatfish]

Very successful games always become more conservative about their designs. The most obvious reason is that "wild" design is a risk and very often can kill a game outright. Blizzard's development team is full of theory crafters, engineers and the like that are by their nature not likely to be on the bleeding edge of creativity. Risk-averse is the watchword and it's very easy to see.

The one thing that rings true about the topic is that Blizzard used to project and protect a reputation for continuous improvement and iteration. Once the switch was made to expansion-specific systems that only exist in the game for a relatively short while—a single expansion usually—the days of improvement through sustained iteration ended. They release a lot of half-baked systems based on interesting ideas, perhaps improve them once for the last patch of an expansion and move on to the next temporary system.

So of course the quality and overall polish is reduced.

I really disagree with this sentiment actually being true. I can only think of a couple times in my own nearly 30 years of gaming history that a company taking time to implement a new feature properly "kills a game outright". As for those couple examples, you're looking at something like Rift going free to play and spamming the player with pop-ups pushing them to spend money.

I personally see a lot more games die due to lack up change than I do from games willing to put in the work. Not everyone likes every new League of Legends character or map that comes out, quite a few of them are flops for most the player base. But the consistent innovation of new characters and maps helps keep the game interesting for more people far longer than it otherwise would have. The issue in WoW is that the devs don't actually "release it when it's done", they release it when their marketing team or the suits tell them they have to.

[facefist]

It's the usual "if anyone at any point can get the same power level as those who do premade content then we won't do it"

Ironically titanforging was the only system since Ion took over that allowed for that so obviously it had to be removed. Imagine after you walking around in your heroic raid gear for months a casual got a single heroic piece from doing queued or solo content, the game would break.

Ahh the good old blaming "HC" players.

WoW is more casual-friendly than it ever was, I can literally play for two hours per week and end up in same gear as mythic raider (given its slower). This wasn't the case until legion, every expac before that you either had to raid or have bad gear.

Btw. Casual doesn't equal bad. The gear is still slightly skill-gated, I would say that bottom 20 % of players cant get the power level because they lack the skill.

[richardhuntr]

The game seems to be very afraid of being bold. It's a side affect of the weird audience that it has, where some people want to push hardcore, and some want to just mess around, others want to collect mounts. Many are scared of the key and raid scene.

Blizzard has to consider all of these different groups, and much like real life stuff, it ends up being quite bland as a result of making sure no-one in un-happy.

The problem with making sure no-one is unhappy, is that it's very rare that anyone is happy either, unless the audience is largely in tune with each other, and wow's isn't

[sponge5307]

Very successful games always become more conservative about their designs. The most obvious reason is that "wild" design is a risk and very often can kill a game outright. Blizzard's development team is full of theory crafters, engineers and the like that are by their nature not likely to be on the bleeding edge of creativity. Risk-averse is the watchword and it's very easy to see.

The one thing that rings true about the topic is that Blizzard used to project and protect a reputation for continuous improvement and iteration. Once the switch was made to expansion-specific systems that only exist in the game for a relatively short while—a single expansion usually—the days of improvement through sustained iteration ended. They release a lot of half-baked systems based on interesting ideas, perhaps improve them once for the last patch of an expansion and move on to the next temporary system.

So of course the quality and overall polish is reduced.

The game is around for a long time (12 to 13 years). Things do get old. Look like Morden Warfare or Fifa, NBA, NHL games, or even SimCity or Sim Life. There are only so many things that can be added to the next expansion (games with the same title just change a little). Eventually, there is nothing they can really add whether is a tire sets bonus, a borrow power system. I think WoW is getting there. You can only do so much to alter your core gameplay in a class. Adding temp system helps refresh the play style a bit.

I think blizzard really shot themselves in the foot when they went away with good storytelling in their game to a more grind grind grind and everything is about gear mode. I took a long break from WoW years ago and also quit before 9.1 to try other MMO and most of the MMO that actually are still doing well usually have a good story and each expansion builds on it. There aren't many gimmicks like WoW did, there is no new talent system or borrowed powers but a good story with solid gameplay. Most importantly there isn't so much grind. I am not sure when this changes but playing WoW seems more like a 2nd job than actually playing for fun. There are so many dailies, and weekly you have to complete them. Then you have to do at least 10 highest m+ each week and then 10 raid bosses in the current raid with the highest raiding tier. If not you are going to fall behind and no way to catch up. It is such a punishing system.