Dragonflight rant - Where did the production value go ?

[JustaRandomReindeer]

No, I'm not asking you to prove a negative, I'm asking you to prove your assumptions. Let's take this one at a time

People loved legion - People also hated it, that's an irrelevant assertion. I assume you mean the majority of players loved legion, show me your data.
It was the best and most successful modern expansion. - This is a subjective standard, not an objective one. What does the best mean? How do you quantify that? What does most successful mean?
If legendaries and AP were such a big problem for players then the expansion would have gone down in flames just like Shadowlands and BfA did. - This is a counterfactual, it is impossible to prove that something other than what happened would have happened. You basically get to say "if they changed this...this would have happened" without running any sort of objective tests. It could be that the story was going to be compelling enough that no matter WHAT gameplay there was, people would have stayed. Maybe if the story sucked and the Legendary/AP issues were still there, Legion would have crashed...It's impossible to say.
They "fixed" the mission table and nobody used that anymore. - Prove this.
They fixed world quest rewards and suddenly they became a chore. - This is a post hoc ergo poster hoc fallacy. They changed world quests, yes, and they became less popular, yes, but you have not made an argument that the REASON they became less popular was due to the changes. Hell, you haven't shown that they ARE less popular. You're just making claims without evidence again. It could be that people hated running them in Legion but still did it because they needed their legendary.

You are basically, over and over again, taking your opinion and, I assume, the opinion of those close to you, and saying that the majority of players think the way you think. When someone offers a counter-take, you say we have to provide data to back up our interpretations while saying yours are immune to that standard.

But fine, this is my last reply to you on this thread. I think I was right in my original judgment that you aren't really interested in anything other than spouting your views until people agree or give up, in which case I imagine you'll declare victory anyways.

I am not sure what you are asking me to prove here. You are asking me to prove that people liked the systems in an expansion that Blizzard themself consider a huge success. The story alone cannot carry an expansion. I am not sure why you assume that. We have proof of that. WoD had a decent story and that was not enough to keep people playing. If you are gonna say "everyone hated this" then you have to prove your statement. I never claimed everyone loved Legion's features. They were just not impeding the majority of players' ability to play the game and have fun. And that's a fact because those features only really were a problem for the top 1%.

You want me to prove that people don't go back to their Legion mission tables to run missions for 30g anymore after blizzard nerfed the rewards to the ground.. I mean it's logic. I never said WQs are not popular. I said they became a chore. There was a time when I used to complete all my WQs because I had a reason to. Nowadays the rewards are hardly worth the effort. But these are just examples of how Blizzard "fixing" things does not always mean things needed "fixing".

If you are not interested in arguing then move on. You share your views, I share mine. I never once attacked you for having different views than mine, nor made any qualifications.

Blizzard has moved away from it. They are the ones with the metrics showing player behavior. Do you think they would have made this decision if their metrics backed up that almost every player in the game loved grinding daily quests for AP?

Also, as a broader point, asking for evidence that cannot possibly exist isn't a "gotcha." It's sophistry. No one can prove any of this because we don't have access to the data. All we can do is infer things from what Blizzard does with that data.

As I have said in my previous replies not everything Blizzard does is logical. I mentioned dungeon design, WQ nerfs, replacing artifacts with a necklace, and so on. Ever since Legion they have managed to suck the fun out of every feature that made Legion fun until finally they decided to just get rid of all of it after nearly killing the game. It's hard to believe that most of these decisions were made based on data and not just to keep players subbed by giving them more shit to grind.

[Tyris Flare]

As I have said in my previous replies not everything Blizzard does is logical. I mentioned dungeon design, WQ nerfs, replacing artifacts with a necklace, and so on. Ever since Legion they have managed to suck the fun out of every feature that made Legion fun until finally they decided to just get rid of all of it after nearly killing the game. It's hard to believe that most of these decisions were made based on data and not just to keep players subbed by giving them more shit to grind.

But can you prove it?

[Thirtyrock]

But can you prove it?

It’s self evident and if you disagree you need to show me a dissertation with 150 sources and a piece of the holy cross to prove otherwise.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

But can you prove it?

Prove what?

It’s self evident and if you disagree you need to show me a dissertation with 150 sources and a piece of the holy cross to prove otherwise.

You didn't just disagree, you stated that players did not like those features. I imagined you'd have some data to back those claims. Just like you asked of me to show you sub data in this very thread because you didn't believe my claims that sub numbers were going down before Legion. You can't make such generalizations based on a few forum posts and your own personal experience.

[Kallor]

What exactly would make you happy? What exactly would suffice as content in your eyes ?

The quality of the version we have, whether good or bad, is all subjective, right ?


Content is also subjective. Preparing your roster for mythic raiding and mythic plus is content to me. Leveling those classes and clearing your mythic zeros until Mythic Plus comes out. Get your item level and stats as high as they can and wait.

What's the point of posts like this? Of course his opinions are his own, and "subjective". Are you saying we shouldn't ever have discussions about anything because everything is subjective?

[Thirtyrock]

Prove what?



You didn't just disagree, you stated that players did not like those features. I imagined you'd have some data to back those claims. Just like you asked of me to show you sub data in this very thread because you didn't believe my claims that sub numbers were going down before Legion. You can't make such generalizations based on a few forum posts and your own personal experience.

You stated players did like those features. Other than the sub numbers, you have provided zero actual data claiming it is self evident from your personal experience. Yes, I'm arguing from my personal experience plus what Blizzard has done with the game, so neither of us are using data. The difference is you're demanding that others provide what you cannot yourself provide.

If you want to argue that we should bring back those features, and/or that the removal of those features is the reason Wow is in decline (which was a common thread here back during Wrath when I first joined, despite all evidence to the contrary), then the burden of proof is on you to provide the data that 1) those features were popular and 2) that the removal CAUSED a downturn in Wow.

In fact, you have to prove that there has been a significant downturn in WoW SINCE Legion; from what I can find there have been pretty stead numbers since 2015, although we know they are guestimates rather than official numbers. https://headphonesaddict.com/world-o...-player-count/
Is there a decline, sure, but it's very slight compared to what happened in WoDf

I did state that players disliked those features. You can look through forum history here to see that they were disliked at the time, at least by some of the louder posters during the expansion. Any claim about how many liked or dislike them is subject to debate because it's purely speculative. What we KNOW is that blizzard removed those systems with a given reason of "players don't like borrowed power" that's what we know. That's all we know. If you want to argue otherwise, you're the one who has to prove it, at least if you want this to be more than my opinion vs your opinion. I'm going with the company line "we removed it because players don't like it" plus the evidence of my eyes here on this forum for 10 years

[JustaRandomReindeer]

You stated players did like those features. Other than the sub numbers, you have provided zero actual data claiming it is self evident from your personal experience. Yes, I'm arguing from my personal experience plus what Blizzard has done with the game, so neither of us are using data. The difference is you're demanding that others provide what you cannot yourself provide.

If you want to argue that we should bring back those features, and/or that the removal of those features is the reason Wow is in decline (which was a common thread here back during Wrath when I first joined, despite all evidence to the contrary), then the burden of proof is on you to provide the data that 1) those features were popular and 2) that the removal CAUSED a downturn in Wow.

In fact, you have to prove that there has been a significant downturn in WoW SINCE Legion; from what I can find there have been pretty stead numbers since 2015, although we know they are guestimates rather than official numbers. https://headphonesaddict.com/world-o...-player-count/
Is there a decline, sure, but it's very slight compared to what happened in WoDf

I did state that players disliked those features. You can look through forum history here to see that they were disliked at the time, at least by some of the louder posters during the expansion. Any claim about how many liked or dislike them is subject to debate because it's purely speculative. What we KNOW is that blizzard removed those systems with a given reason of "players don't like borrowed power" that's what we know. That's all we know. If you want to argue otherwise, you're the one who has to prove it, at least if you want this to be more than my opinion vs your opinion. I'm going with the company line "we removed it because players don't like it" plus the evidence of my eyes here on this forum for 10 years

No, I never stated players liked them. I know a lot of people did not like rng and how unbalanced they were but to say the majority hated them is a bit of a stretch. A vocal minority did hate them for sure. I stated that legendries did not stop people from playing Legion, clearing content, and having fun. Especially after wakening essence was introduced. My whole point was that they didn't really need to remove legendaries from the game after they introduced wakening essence.

Artifacts were very popular for sure. It's a feature praised by a lot of people to this day. And it's safe to say that the Heart of Azeroth and Soulbinds were way less popular in comparison. I mean it's pretty evident when you consider how inferior of a replacement those systems were. The same amount of grind for shittier rewards and no sense of progression.

"Players don't like borrowed power" is another issue Blizzard invented. They created new systems only to take them away at the end of the expansion and replace them with something inferior that they can call "new". They are just fixing problems they themself cause. The fact that they released an expansion that's basically a WoD 2.0 is proof that they are not very good at interpreting their own data.

[Alcsaar]

I don't want max level questlines - they're boring as fuck and I especially hate them when they're required to access certain areas of the game. I wanted to quit mid Suramar it was so bad and boring.

[FelPlague]

This alone shows how little critical analysis you're capable of if you truly think Legion was "an expansion with almost no issues" and, quite frankly, removes much of your credibility to evaluate Dragonflight as it is when you're comparing it to an end product. Legion was a great expansion, but to say it had "almost no issues" is just factually incorrect when core fundamental systems had to have major reworks throughout the lifespan of the expansion. You claim to want to argue in good faith while doing exactly the opposite. A “Good Faith” argument is one in which both parties agree on the terms on which they engage. The topic at hand in this thread is an expansion at launch, and you are using an expansion at it's conclusion for comparison. You are the one not arguing in good faith and the fact that you don't see the hypocrisy of what you're saying speaks volumes.

Holy fuck they are still on this? I blocked them the second I realized they were a trollz cause god "legion was flawless"
Presteiging in PvP was horrible cause you lost all your PvP talents
Early artifact weapons forced you to stick to one spec and one spec alone
Maw of souls farm.
Legendaries random as shit, leading some to not get their leggo till the third god danmed raid.
Horrible flight unlock timing.
Unbalanced class mount acquirement, some got it for free. Warlock and pally had to drop obscene levels of gold cause fuck scalpers.
Early artifacts you made the wrong choice you were fucked until eventually we got enough points to unlock them all.
Legion gutted and ruined demonology, and completely altered survival. For the better or worse is subjective but the fact such a massive change happened at all is obscene. Making an all ranged class, suddenly a hybrid? Wtf? Would be like if suddenly fury became a ranged spec or arcane became melee.
PvP fucking stat templates...
World scaling way overboard.
The start of the whole "oh yeah you are all gods."
And I am sure many more I cannot remember.

Legion was far from great. And while some if not many of the things above were later fixed in legion, it did not launch flawless, or even close, it was a trainwreck, a fun one though, so was wod though, but that trainwreck went overboard way too fast. Dragonflight so far seems more like a car crash, still bad, but far less severe, with no seeming long term overall damage. Everything is good. The bad stuff is small things, bugs, weird small nerfing/buffing decisions, etc. But it is still a blast.

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The nine max level questlines include the five you get from renown. There is currently less max level story content in Dragonflight than in a single covenant campaign in Shadowlands.

(Which was was one of the points of this thead)

There is also MUCH more side quests in dragonflight then in shadowlands.
What does it matter if the quest is done at level 69 or 70?

- - - Updated - - -

If I can try to get this thread back on track, the point I was trying to make was that whether or not the content was gated, in Legion, BfA or Shadowlands, it at least existed. You could check out Nighthold in the adventure journal of Legion in day one. The point is not that Suramar was unlocked week after week, it's that Suramar, or the war campaign (and there are two of them), or the covenant campaigns (and covenant features you could unlock afterwards) existed.

The point is that gated or not, those expansions had A LOT more content in their release patch that DF does.

If you could have grinded to get all of your covenant related stuff from day one in Shadowlands, the campaign, the special feature, it was still more stuff, more assets, more features, more questlines, more voicelines, than in Dragonflight. And that's for a single covenant, which we had four of.

You do know night hold didn't release for a couple months after legion launched right?
Also as said above, and nevermind the fact you have to be kidding right? You do know anymore the covenant quests were repeats right? The ending one for the necrolords and the venthyr are the same for example. Pretty sure there was only 1-2 unique per covenant, the rest were shared with atleast 1 other covenant.

And the rest fo what you said here. "More this more that" is both very likely untrue. And also you are making that shit up, if not show your evidence. Cause there is a lot of voice acting in dragonflight where there was none in shadowlands.. and wtf does "more assets" even fucking mean, more models? Boi did you count? The fucknyou on about?

[Kalisandra]

They stopped making those after MoP.

Suramar was max level. All of it.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

Holy fuck they are still on this? I blocked them the second I realized they were a trollz cause god "legion was flawless"
Presteiging in PvP was horrible cause you lost all your PvP talents
Early artifact weapons forced you to stick to one spec and one spec alone
Maw of souls farm.
Legendaries random as shit, leading some to not get their leggo till the third god danmed raid.
Horrible flight unlock timing.
Unbalanced class mount acquirement, some got it for free. Warlock and pally had to drop obscene levels of gold cause fuck scalpers.
Early artifacts you made the wrong choice you were fucked until eventually we got enough points to unlock them all.
Legion gutted and ruined demonology, and completely altered survival. For the better or worse is subjective but the fact such a massive change happened at all is obscene. Making an all ranged class, suddenly a hybrid? Wtf? Would be like if suddenly fury became a ranged spec or arcane became melee.
PvP fucking stat templates...
World scaling way overboard.
The start of the whole "oh yeah you are all gods."
And I am sure many more I cannot remember.

Legion was far from great. And while some if not many of the things above were later fixed in legion, it did not launch flawless, or even close, it was a trainwreck, a fun one though, so was wod though, but that trainwreck went overboard way too fast. Dragonflight so far seems more like a car crash, still bad, but far less severe, with no seeming long term overall damage. Everything is good. The bad stuff is small things, bugs, weird small nerfing/buffing decisions, etc. But it is still a blast.

- - - Updated - - -



There is also MUCH more side quests in dragonflight then in shadowlands.
What does it matter if the quest is done at level 69 or 70?

- - - Updated - - -



You do know night hold didn't release for a couple months after legion launched right?
Also as said above, and nevermind the fact you have to be kidding right? You do know anymore the covenant quests were repeats right? The ending one for the necrolords and the venthyr are the same for example. Pretty sure there was only 1-2 unique per covenant, the rest were shared with atleast 1 other covenant.

And the rest fo what you said here. "More this more that" is both very likely untrue. And also you are making that shit up, if not show your evidence. Cause there is a lot of voice acting in dragonflight where there was none in shadowlands..

Almost like all of these problems had simple solutions but for some reason we decided to remove everything and replace it with inferior versions and deal with the same issues(and worse) again. Maybe you will eventually figure out that Legion's features were not the problem, it's Blizzard's incompetence and corporate greed.

[FelPlague]

You will play 4 of them one more week then you will stop. Go figure why, genius.

Nah I won't, cause weekly quests will still send me to them.
And in a couple months they will be added to the rotation.
So no, I won't be stopping doing them.

- - - Updated - - -

But that's just, like, your opinion, man.

In all seriousness, yes, it's a design decision for lifetime and fresh gameplay. It makes M+ players learn new dungeons every season, which means more meaningful content rather than recycling the same stuff over and over.

And it also gets rid of the "alright day 1 of new season I'm gunna m+" and then suddenly you get yelled at cause you don't without communication know all the year long developed strategies in the place.

Oh also the loot, I mean all of shadowlands I knew exactly what items I needed to farm, especially my two trinkets, ooze vial and ruby. But with season 4 suddenly boom, brand new gear to get.

- - - Updated - - -

Almost like all of these problems had simple solutions but for some reason we decided to remove everything and replace it with inferior versions and deal with the same issues(and worse) again. Maybe you will eventually figure out that Legion's features were not the problem, it's Blizzard's incompetence and corporate greed.

Lol holy shit. This has to be an AI.

[Thirtyrock]

Lol holy shit. This has to be an AI.

It's almost as bad as all the people crying about Wrath babies back in the day. The rose colored glasses can be hard to take off.

[Razorice]

I like it this way.

I can log in, or not and don't have to worry about falling behind my raid team.
I'm not sure how you can run out of content in a fresh expansion, where at the moment, everything you do scales with your ilvl.

[Khain]

I also thought it was pretty light in content this time around, I always related MMORPGS with sweaty content, although wow moved up from that a long time ago, this expansion has absolutely nothing to do, it's just more of the same with less content. All in all just another chapter in the death of wow saga, in a month or so none will be talking about DF anymore.

[Relapses]

Almost like all of these problems had simple solutions but for some reason we decided to remove everything and replace it with inferior versions and deal with the same issues(and worse) again. Maybe you will eventually figure out that Legion's features were not the problem, it's Blizzard's incompetence and corporate greed.

lmfao, so let me get this straight: Blizzard makes the perfect product that, according to you, everybody loves, then, because of "incompetence and corporate greed," decide to make 3 entire fucking expansions that are nothing like Legion because, apparently, corporate greed also extends to intentionally making a shittier product?

You can't make this shit up.

[Kalisandra]

I'm trying not to judge the content for its quality or for whether or not it fits as many playstyles as possible. I am certain the current state of DF is very good for a lot of people. It's a design choice to not repeat things like AP, or semi-mandatory grinds, it is however not a design choice to have back to back expansions with such a steep difference in raw content in their opening patch.

I'm trying to be as impartial as I can, as I mentioned I tend to do all types of content, so when I say I feel like DF is lacking content, it really could have taken any form, more dungeons, more mini-games, more story content, alternative types of activities like the soup or the siege, a bigger raid. And hell, even just a more polished launch would have made me less likely to be here posting this. If it set itself apart in at least one department I probably wouldn't feel the way I do.
But here we are, it simply doesn't have a particularly high amount of pretty much anything. As a matter of fact it has less of most things.

There are four major reps, plus more minor ones, and the major ones go to level 25. You say you ran out of things to do, but you don't mention maxing them out. Thus I can only assume that what you actually mean is "There nothing to do that I want to do", especially as you concede that if you raid or do m+ there is/will be content.

So, the same complaint that's made about every single expansion. The only expansion that it really applied to was WoD, where once you'd maxed out your Garrison it was 'raid or die' (or level alts - at least that was decent).

[Ticj]

You should talk to some SWTOR players about being light on intro content. Their latest expansion is almost at the .2 patch and they have yet to recieve more than what WoW brings in a x.x.5 content patch

People still play that game??

[Kalisandra]

There isn't as much to do at max level because the playerbase has been more or less whining for half a decade about so many chores to do at max level. Too many WQs a day, AP grinds, renown campaigns for power, farming conduits, Torghast, Maw, War Campaign, Mission tables, islands, warfronts, and so on. Basically every max level feature since Legion that provided some element of player power has been raked over the coals by the playerbase at large. To be clear not everyone complained about that. I personally did not, I enjoyed having a massive amount of stuff to do whenever I played, but the feel on wowhead/mmoc/official forums was pretty clear.

This is, largely, a return to the 'roots' of WoW, which was the whole premise of the expansion when launched. If you've played WotLK or TBC classic, the loop is largely familiar. Do your daily/weekly chores (which are not permanent chores like Torghast, you do them for a month or two and they're completed) and raidlog. Level alts if you want to play the game more than that. Everything else is cosmetic/optional.

I mean, this is pretty much what people asked for. If you don't like alts and you play a lot, you're going to quickly run out of things to do.

There's also crafting and if you hate that, gathering and selling your product on the AH to make money from those who do like crafting. You want an endless grind like forever AP and WQs? Go and gather stuff.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

lmfao, so let me get this straight: Blizzard makes the perfect product that, according to you, everybody loves, then, because of "incompetence and corporate greed," then decide to make 3 entire fucking expansions that are nothing like Legion because, apparently, corporate greed also extends to intentionally making a shittier product?

You can't make this shit up.

What's so hard for you to understand? When people complained that it has become impossible to play alts what did Blizzard do? Did they make AP and reputations account-wide like people asked? No, they just removed artifacts and gave you the Heart of Azeroth which is, no matter how you look at it, an inferior version of Artifacts but it came with the promise that it will be new and exciting and not that big of a time investment. And ever since then we've been bumping into the same "borrowed power" issues because they kept introducing these expansion features only to remove them at the end of the expansion and replace them with much-of-the-same-but-not-really that's inferior by all standards and that they would have to work towards fixing all over again. When people asked them to make leveling alts easier what did they do? They gave us world scaling but they nerfed heirlooms to the ground and somehow managed to make leveling alts an even bigger pain in the ass than it was before and ever since BfA they've been "fixing" this issue without making any real progress because they don't want it to be easy for you to level alts. They want you to stay subbed and buy level boosts.

What was the philosophy behind not allowing players to swap covenants freely at the start of Shadowlands even tho a lot of people were complaining about it even before the expansion released? What was the philosophy behind nerfing world quest rewards? What was the philosophy behind not allowing you to fly at the start of an expansion and locking flying behind an achievement? What was the philosophy behind locking allied races behind rep grinds?

You do realize you are arguing that some data somewhere showed them that people did not like Artifacts, but somehow they loved not being able to fly and play alts? Damn, that's crazy! It's funny how this expansion's honeymoon period is having some people defend dogshit decisions they spent the last few years complaining about.