Removing borrowed power was a mistake

[Rageonit]

I'd put money on me having had more slots with more corruptions to choose from than you

And...? Dude, there's no reason to feel insecure - you don't have to prove in any way that you're better than me. You just said that corruptions didn't provide any customization and I've refuted; from your point of view, there's ZERO customization in the game anyway, because for every spec, there's a perfect build & gear set. Your game is: either it sims better and I use it, or it doesn't and I don't. That's fine, if you find that kind of gameplay exciting, the tools exist - but outside of your bubble, people play differently. Just thought you need reminding, because you seemed oblivious.

[Dalinos]

It was fucking atrocious. What makes the game boring in PvE is the entire concept of PvE.

What makes the game boring in PvP is the superfluous "progression" that just means that people are forced to do BGs where they can't possibly make a difference until they have the gear.

A stupid proc making a tank randomly damage people for more HP than anyone can possibly have? Lol. only PvEers would think that it's fun. (given they they like PvE in the first place of course it means they have horrible taste)

"The entire concept of PVE" has existed since video games were first invented. Space invaders? Your spaceship VS the environment. Super Mario? Your Italian plumber VS goombas, man-eating plants and fireballs. Final Fantasy 7? Your team of Eco-Terrorists VS the world which is ruled by Shinra.

PVE is the name of the game in every single video-game my dude. This has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with video-gaming as a whole.

[Nzx]

And...? Dude, there's no reason to feel insecure - you don't have to prove in any way that you're better than me. You just said that corruptions didn't provide any customization and I've refuted; from your point of view, there's ZERO customization in the game anyway, because for every spec, there's a perfect build & gear set. Your game is: either it sims better and I use it, or it doesn't and I don't. That's fine, if you find that kind of gameplay exciting, the tools exist - but outside of your bubble, people play differently. Just thought you need reminding, because you seemed oblivious.

If you think my game has no customization, then yours is functionally infinite. If you don't care at all about performance, then you can spec completely useless talents, play whatever class you want, wear gear with whatever stat you want/no stats at all, play an unarmed warrior if you like - so who cares if corruption exists or not, it's one more layer of entropy in your already infinite existing layers

[Dalinos]

If you think my game has no customization, then yours is functionally infinite. If you don't care at all about performance, then you can spec completely useless talents, play whatever class you want, wear gear with whatever stat you want/no stats at all, play an unarmed warrior if you like - so who cares if corruption exists or not, it's one more layer of entropy in your already infinite existing layers

And this is (unfortunately) the main issue of WoW - do you care about performance? If the answer is yes, then you are governed by the world of statistics & mathematics. WoW is a numbers game after all - you have X time to do Y DPS while avoiding/executing Z mechanics. When you are governed by statistics & maths, you have no options. An optimisation problem has been run, it has been solved, by people much smarter than you and I, using software that we can vaguely understand. There is a clear-cut, best answer, regardless if we're talking about gear, rotations or talents. As a Bear Tank I will use the Pillar of Flame from Elder boss because it is the best weapon.

What if I don't like what the weapon looks like? What if Im opposed to using Polearms as a druid and am a strict Staff user? What if I don't enjoy adding an extra button to my bar (the Use effect of the polearm) which means adding an extra hotkey to my rotation? All these questions are moot when you're a performance-driven player. These questions don't even exist in your mind, because that polearm deals more damage, end of story.

On the flipside, you have people who don't care about performance. They will NOT use Pillar of Flame, because their druid doesn't use Polearms. Because the weapon doesn't match their gear/mount transmog. Because they don't want to think about where to put that extra activated ability the weapon provides.

The main problem? There's no inbetween. As you said - you either have infinite options because you don't care about performance, or you have 1 option (i.e, no option), because you care about performance and since performance is a mathematical and statistical problem with many variables, it has been solved by people much much smarter and much better at the game than us.

[Rageonit]

If you think my game has no customization, then yours is functionally infinite. If you don't care at all about performance, then you can spec completely useless talents, play whatever class you want, wear gear with whatever stat you want/no stats at all, play an unarmed warrior if you like - so who cares if corruption exists or not, it's one more layer of entropy in your already infinite existing layers

There is no need for this hyperbole - contrary to what you might think, it doesn't make your arguments stronger. Once again, chill, dude. We're just having a talk, you're not getting any points for this.

There is a huuuuuge space of possibilites between being super optimal and "not caring at all about performance" and "running in gray gear". If you don't participate in cutting edge content (which is majority of players), you get enough leeway to use things that aren't super optimal (but aren't useless grays either) and still beat the content with ease.

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And this is (unfortunately) the main issue of WoW - do you care about performance? If the answer is yes, then you are governed by the world of statistics & mathematics. WoW is a numbers game after all - you have X time to do Y DPS while avoiding/executing Z mechanics. When you are governed by statistics & maths, you have no options. An optimisation problem has been run, it has been solved, by people much smarter than you and I, using software that we can vaguely understand. There is a clear-cut, best answer, regardless if we're talking about gear, rotations or talents. As a Bear Tank I will use the Pillar of Flame from Elder boss because it is the best weapon.

Caring about performance doesn't have to be binary.
If "the best" is the only thing you accept, than yes, you just sim and do what the sims tell you.
If "good" is still acceptable, you have plenty of room for customization. This problem is a question of sacrifices: how much can I sacrifice and still have fun? For some, the answer is: "everything", and those people are sim junkies. For most, it's not.

[Nzx]

And this is (unfortunately) the main issue of WoW

I don't understand why it's an "issue" though really. Ultimately, both decisions are "customization". You have full agency as a player to make the decision either way, it's just that, as ever, people don't want to deal with the consequences of their decisions. The people who want to RP a naked monk want to be carried through content by 4 people who want to optimise their characters, and when the 4 optimal characters don't want to bring the naked monk the monk jumps on forums and complains about Blizzard

[Rageonit]

I don't understand why it's an "issue" though really. Ultimately, both decisions are "customization". You have full agency as a player to make the decision either way, it's just that, as ever, people don't want to deal with the consequences of their decisions. The people who want to RP a naked monk want to be carried through content by 4 people who want to optimise their characters, and when the 4 optimal characters don't want to bring the naked monk the monk jumps on forums and complains about Blizzard

Here's a question for you: if I'm happy to parse 80 (meaning, I will strive to parse at least 80, but I won't go out of my way to parse more) - does it mean that I don't care about my performance? Am I being carried in a raid?

[MrLachyG]

One of the most disappointing moments in my WoW career was losing my artifact weapons from Legion. They were so damned cool. Lore, abilities, cool acquisition quests. Loved them.

And then they were gone. The chattering skull from my Demo 'lock hit the hardest. It was like losing a little evil friend.

So on one hand I agree. Losing that borrowed power sucks. But I felt no such attachment to the heart of Azeroth or whatever the hell Shadowlands had I stopped paying attention. So, if they can't give me cool stuff then the borrowed power systems can stay dead.

yeah the loss of Legion weapons, Legendaries and tier sets really, really hurt in the transition from Legion to BfA. The azerite armor just didn't hit the mark... the essences were quite cool though. should've been introduced at the same time.

[Mysterymask]

"The entire concept of PVE" has existed since video games were first invented. Space invaders? Your spaceship VS the environment. Super Mario? Your Italian plumber VS goombas, man-eating plants and fireballs. Final Fantasy 7? Your team of Eco-Terrorists VS the world which is ruled by Shinra.

PVE is the name of the game in every single video-game my dude. This has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with video-gaming as a whole.

I mean true but the fact is there is a dedicated fanbase for PVP games since Street Fighter 2....doesn't invalidate either though

[Meowtwo]

"The entire concept of PVE" has existed since video games were first invented. Space invaders? Your spaceship VS the environment. Super Mario? Your Italian plumber VS goombas, man-eating plants and fireballs. Final Fantasy 7? Your team of Eco-Terrorists VS the world which is ruled by Shinra.

PVE is the name of the game in every single video-game my dude. This has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with video-gaming as a whole.

First ever video game was a pvp one. Not to mention that most popular non-video games are also "pvp" games (i.e you play vs each other, and not together vs some system).

(not agreeing with the guy you quoted btw, just being pedantic :P)

[Dalinos]

I don't understand why it's an "issue" though really. Ultimately, both decisions are "customization". You have full agency as a player to make the decision either way, it's just that, as ever, people don't want to deal with the consequences of their decisions. The people who want to RP a naked monk want to be carried through content by 4 people who want to optimise their characters, and when the 4 optimal characters don't want to bring the naked monk the monk jumps on forums and complains about Blizzard

The unfortunate part is that there is no middle ground. You either give a shit about your performance, so you know your stat-weights, your optimal Talent setup depending on fight, your optimal pieces of gear from which dungeon/raid and why etc. Or you don't care about performance, and you're a druid tank that maxes out on Crit because you enjoy seeing big numbers on your screen (newsflash, Crit is our worst stat behind Versa/Mastery/Haste). That's the shitty part. That there's no middle ground. Cause if you care about performance, you will never max out Crit on your bear tank. But that goes against your personal wishes as a gamer to see big numbers on screen - a sacrifice you are willing to make because a bear maxing Crit wont be able to tank +20's and above.

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I mean true but the fact is there is a dedicated fanbase for PVP games since Street Fighter 2....doesn't invalidate either though

I mean yes, PVP games have existed since the beginning as well....yet, allow me to teleport you 25 years in the past. I don't know how old you are, but I'm old enough to have experienced Arcades. Putting in my 50 drachma coin as a 4 year old to play Mortal Kombat on an Arcade machine on the ferry-boat. When I put in my 50 drachma coin and picked Sub-Zero, who was I playing against? Who was I beating the shit out of? Oh that's right. The PC. The machine. The environment. It is only with the advent of home consoles and computers being wide-spread everywhere that ACTUAL PVP happened in video gaming. Before that? If you wanted to PVP in a game you had to go down in the pool-hall or bowling alley, or get your mates to go to the park and put up a game of Chess or Backgammon.

[Geckoo]

I'm currently having a lot of fun with WoW. I log in 5 minutes before raid, i log off as soon as we are finished.

It's a weird concept, i know, but if a game tries to capitalize my free time i'm very likely to ignore that game and just have fun with all the other options the market has to offer. That was one of the issues with borrowed power and i'm glad that they left that behind.

An MMORPG can't provide content at the same pace that players consume it, so it's all about what happens in the gaps between content. They have accepted that players will simply stop playing at some point, go have fun somewhere else and then come back when they have new content. That's fine! What borrowed power did was force players to stay longer than they really wanted, burning them out and eventually making them leave for good.

[Kilpi]

One of the most disappointing moments in my WoW career was losing my artifact weapons from Legion. They were so damned cool. Lore, abilities, cool acquisition quests. Loved them.

And then they were gone. The chattering skull from my Demo 'lock hit the hardest. It was like losing a little evil friend.

So on one hand I agree. Losing that borrowed power sucks. But I felt no such attachment to the heart of Azeroth or whatever the hell Shadowlands had I stopped paying attention. So, if they can't give me cool stuff then the borrowed power systems can stay dead.

Eh, not sure I'd agree. At least when playing a paladin we had "random mace I couldn't care less", "the coolest sword in the game until they made it an Artifact weapon" and "random sword and shield I couldn't care less". Order Halls were great and sure some of the acquisition quests for the artifacts were cool, but that's about it.

[Encaitar29]

I'm really happy there's no borrowed power this time. If they were minor bits, like "cosmetic" powers from the covenants (think Night Fae shapeshiting or summoning a Steward from Kyrians) - fine. But proper borrowed powers, like Covenant Abilites and Soulbinds or all of the Azerite gear shenanigans - no thank you. It was making alts nearly impossible if you wanted them to have any meaningful power level and were a person with standard everyday obligations. Now we've got renown which can be boosted on alts once you've grinded it on main and that's tbh the only grind we should have.

[Kalisandra]

Corruptions allowed for massive customizations, Essence abilities felt powerful and satisfactory to press. Current specs all play the same and even with some minor variety of a rotation or a passive, there is nothing EXCITING in them, IMO.

Unless the powers were all custom-made for each spec, which would be terrible to try and balance when they're being changed up every few months, they'll be boring pretty fast - all ranged will want power W, melee power X, tanks Y, healers Z, and some precious snowflake will want power A instead. You want boring? That's it to me, where class means nothing, and only role matters so you may as well only have four classes in the game.

If class+spec+tier is boring, that's a matter of poor class (and fight) design, not the lack of borrowed power.

One problem is that m+ forces a certain pattern onto all DPS - they must have burst, it must be every 1-2 minutes, it can't have too much setup, etc. On top of that, ever since Legion (and thus the birth of 'borrowed power') almost every DPS spec (and too many healers as well) have been 'build and spend'.

Borrowed power in the form of tier set, some interesting trinkets, and the occasional weapon with a cool proc should be the extent of it, IMO.

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The whole point of MMOs are grinds. Removing borrwed power removed all form of player power grind outside of mind numbing m+ spam and raid logging. Theres literally nothing to do in this expansion thats worthwhile, that increases your character, outside of those 2 game modes. If you dont want to grind then go play a single player game. Theres so many options for people who dont like grinds. But this genre IS the grind genre. If you dont like that then move on

That said, itd be possible to create a system that advances player power WITHOUT feeling mandatory to m+ spammers and raid loggers. But that would require an innovative, knowledgeable team of devs to think up and design instead of just throwing useless mounts and cosmetics at every form of open world content

I'm guessing you didn't play the game for most of its history.

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Sadly, this is Ion's primary market, so I guess everyone else (myself included) is pretty much SoL on this particular regard.

As for borrowed power itself, I find it quite ironic that the best iteration was the first one, and it only got progressively more convoluted and obtuse as time went on, to the point that they had to remove it eventually - much to Ion's chagrin, I guess.

The first version (Legion's weapons) worked because every spec had their own, different, path and it was effectively an extension of the talent tree (heck, for many specs the stuff the weapons brought was mostly off old talent builds), and they tied it in with lore, giving it a rich background and making it feel like it was part of the world. The problem was that then they added an extra system in the last patch, and then they burned it all to the ground, aside from giving some specs one of their weapon powers (usually considerably watered down).

[BarosanuNr1]

The Legion version was interesting to me until the first catch-up patch (I think it was 7.2) made me realize that I was an idiot for grinding the artifact power without the catch-up. Felt like those scenes in Tom & Jerry when Tom looks in the mirror and sees himself with donkey ears. The artifacts' removal at the end of Legion was the turd fly on the expired cake. I will never let myself get invested in such a system again.

[Kalisandra]

My point on talents was that they are bland as 95% of your talents are just passives which you essentially always had in some form in the past and when a new season starts, while the dungeon set is new, you are doing dmg the exact same way. Isnt it a lot more interesting to use a Spec as base, but then add some fun button to it in each season?

So every patch I have to relearn my rotation, for every spec I play. Either that or I just bind the new ability into the spot on my bars where the old equivalent was, go "Oh, that looks cool" when I see the new graphic for a week or so until it becomes normal, and then it's just the same old same old.

The thing is, when I play my Elemental Shaman, I want to be Lava Bursting, and hitting that Chain Lightning and watching it overload and spray everywhere like Sith force lightning. I don't want to be hitting some ability that I got from finding some dumb necklace power-up or whatever that's got no thematic or lore connection to my Shaman at all and which I'll throw away in a month or three.

When I log onto my Paladin I want to be smacking my enemies around with holy light, which massive two-handed weapon swings. Anything that replaces that will either ruin my fun, or just be a reskin of that same thing.

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Dunno about the Warlock Artifact, but my Mage Staff still talks with me when I have it Transmogged.

The arcane staff's whispers are pretty cool, like when it suggests you tear Dalaran from the sky, just because you can.

[rrayy]

Ion's literally on-record saying that he'd like to see player housing in WoW, it's just a tremendous undertaking.

OF course he would say that. Good PR is good PR.

[Kalisandra]

What a shit take lmao. If the game is good, people will play it. We have the evidence for this with how BC and Wrath had the largest growth the game ever had. There were no "power gains" that you had to grind for.

Yeah, there were. PvP had a gear grind, PvE had some serious rep grinds that originally you had to do to even get into some dungeons and raids, and the best gear was from raids and patterns that dropped in those raids (and used mats from those raids), so you either raided, or you ground vast amounts of gold to buy the patterns and mats. Even at the lower level of non-raiding, good gear often took a lot of grinding for rare pattern drops and rare mat drops, or the gold to buy them. At least this meant a likely economy and alt play if your main wasn't a gatherer.