Shadowlands Delayed -- What should be changed?

[Toybox]

imagine thinkin the game will magically get better after this delay lol

I mean, it will. Even if people still have issues with the gameplay systems (& rightly so in some cases), at least a lot of the bugs that have plagued Shadowlands since alpha will be addressed.

[Thage]

One particular thing bugging the shit out of me is that when you hit 50, you're kicked out of Chromie Time after a short timer. What I would LIKE to see changed is that exp gains in Chromie Time are disabled from 50 onwards, and exp gain is reenabled when you leave it. It's jarring when you're in the middle of a big quest line, especially since 'quest through the expansion as intended, without leapfrogging halfway through each zone' was one of the main reasons Chromie Time was implemented to begin with.

[tyrlaan]

What should be changed and what should be added to make the game better?

The community/players.

[lordjust]

To late to change stuff - they need to focus on just fixing what's there. I'd guess 2 months should be long enough to do that.

Nah - that would be a huge mistake.

Can't believe after BfA where people complained about a lack of choice because of RNG that people are now whinging about getting nothing but choice in Shadowlands.

The problem isn't that there is a choice but that it isn't really a choice at all. At the moment the combination of covenant ability+soulbind+conduits creates a huge difference in player power that scales with gear. While it's fine right after you hit level 60 with like ilvl120-130 it gets gets out of hand quickly. Right after hitting lvl60 it's maybe 3-5% difference between covenants+soulbinds+conduits but conduits are similar to essences and corruptions. Some conduits increase your stat x from all sources by x%. So after doing some dungeons, some PVP or mythic+ you get some gear, maybe a higher level conduit which increases stat x by a higher % and very quickly you end up with insane amounts of stat x and the 3-5% difference you started with becomes 15-25% difference in DPS and at that point it's no longer a choice of which covenant do you like the most and instead there's the one covenant+soulbind+conduits that's the right choice because you do 15-20% more DPS and everything else is the wrong choice.

Also as said in the OP most systems are finished and working. Zones, campaing, leveling, questing, covenants and Torghast are finished. What they're working on is endgame related balancing of interlocking systems. So covenant abilities+soulbinds+conduits. That's the biggest problem at the moment and was the biggest problem for the last few weeks and can't really be balanced. The only way they can balance it would be to nerf everything into the ground (which is what they're doing at the moment) so that these systems are so weak that you don't even bother using them.

[Krakan]

I feel like conduits should be reworked into a one and done thing rather then a grind myself. They act like glyphs they should be acquired that way.

[Roxxy]

What happened? Any link to read?

When Blizzard attempted to merge Khadgar lots of people's accounts reverted to how they were in Mists of Pandaria:

"Many players on the server have logged in as they always do only to find a reverted state of their character screens, with deleted characters being back, their mains and other level 120 characters being back in some point of either the Mist of Pandaria expansion (with levels varying from 80 to 90 and more, probably to the state they were in at that time), race changes reverted, new characters disappearing, basically everything went back to a specific time point. That's not all however, as some players are even getting these old copies just added to their accounts, so they have their mains at the normal BfA level as they left them, but then ALSO have that same character at level 85 on the character list (and playable)."

The problem is Blizzard couldn't do a timely restore, people were speculating that perhaps some of the recent backups had been corrupted, and I'm still not sure if it has been fixed.

[tomten]

When Blizzard attempted to merge Khadgar lots of people's accounts reverted to how they were in Mists of Pandaria:

"Many players on the server have logged in as they always do only to find a reverted state of their character screens, with deleted characters being back, their mains and other level 120 characters being back in some point of either the Mist of Pandaria expansion (with levels varying from 80 to 90 and more, probably to the state they were in at that time), race changes reverted, new characters disappearing, basically everything went back to a specific time point. That's not all however, as some players are even getting these old copies just added to their accounts, so they have their mains at the normal BfA level as they left them, but then ALSO have that same character at level 85 on the character list (and playable)."

The problem is Blizzard couldn't do a timely restore, people were speculating that perhaps some of the recent backups had been corrupted, and I'm still not sure if it has been fixed.

From a technological perspective, the fact that they can even restore a whole account to a specific point in any expansion is pretty damn impressive to be honest.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

This may be a bit minor and kinda personal/selfish pick but I would like if they changed the voice actor and added more sound affects for the Jailor's voice.

[AngerFork]

Honestly, it depends on how long they take with the delay.

If the delay is only a few weeks, it just needs to be balance changes. Rebalance covenant abilities, maybe redesign a few of those abilities, rebalance leveling speed, stuff like that. A few weeks is not enough time to make massive changes, but tweaking and fixing the balance of the game will only serve to help the final product.

If the delay goes well into December, I feel they should really look closer at the Maw and how it feels as an endgame zone. It right now is pretty barren and unrewarding as an endgame zone. A bit more time looking into that will bring a much better endgame experience.

If we go all the way into January (which I feel they should), I'd keep in the rebalancing and Maw issues, but perhaps add in another look at the whole connection between Covenants, their abilities, and Soulbinds. While I'm not of the opinion that they should "pull the ripcord" or anything like, it is worth asking if all of this complexity is still going to be a detriment once the game launches. As long as you have the time to fix things, why not consider going a bit further and ensuring the systems you are setting up have a long term plan for them as well as a short term setup?

[Coldkil]

That is the one thing that (sadly) isn't going to happen. At least not until it explodes in Ion's face, like 8.0 Azerite.

If soulbinds and skills were made so they didn't require a specific covenant to be used (maybe just to unlock them, but like, the first 2 or 3 tasks) then it would just have been fine. All the rest about covenants is fine.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Honestly, it depends on how long they take with the delay.

If the delay is only a few weeks, it just needs to be balance changes. Rebalance covenant abilities, maybe redesign a few of those abilities, rebalance leveling speed, stuff like that. A few weeks is not enough time to make massive changes, but tweaking and fixing the balance of the game will only serve to help the final product.

If the delay goes well into December, I feel they should really look closer at the Maw and how it feels as an endgame zone. It right now is pretty barren and unrewarding as an endgame zone. A bit more time looking into that will bring a much better endgame experience.

If we go all the way into January (which I feel they should), I'd keep in the rebalancing and Maw issues, but perhaps add in another look at the whole connection between Covenants, their abilities, and Soulbinds. While I'm not of the opinion that they should "pull the ripcord" or anything like, it is worth asking if all of this complexity is still going to be a detriment once the game launches. As long as you have the time to fix things, why not consider going a bit further and ensuring the systems you are setting up have a long term plan for them as well as a short term setup?

I think it's delayed for about a month

[Cthulhu fhtagn]

Changing dead talents, balancing classes, covenants and legendaries. There's so many dead talents and legendaries across all the specs, it really does not feel like specs are getting equal attention in polish. Nothing else feels that bad in beta right now.

[Krakan]

Changing dead talents, balancing classes, covenants and legendaries. There's so many dead talents and legendaries across all the specs, it really does not feel like specs are getting equal attention in polish. Nothing else feels that bad in beta right now.

I think there are just to many uninteresting passives. I would prune any static stat gain myself including procs but that would wipe out the covenant and legendary systems.

[rrayy]

Should and will are different things. The covenant system is a failure and should be condensed into a talent row. What I imagine will happen is the numbers will be brought closer in line.

Something that hasn't gone live cannot be considered a failure. That is a massive projection of opinion.

[Echo of Soul]

Tuning of some specs, everything else looks great

[Krakan]

Something that hasn't gone live cannot be considered a failure. That is a massive projection of opinion.

I mean.. no?

It is easy to see that it wont work. Being able to understand how the games systems work isn't the same as blind speculation.

[TigTone]

A change I really want to see is more the fun gear from old expac professions upgradable to level 50 for my alts.

[Soon-TM]

Tuning of some specs, everything else looks great

The problem is that just "tuning a spec" isn't as easy as it sounds, because of the interaction between the spec itself and the plethora of borrowed power (covenant+soulbinds+conduits). You don't want to end in a situation like, e.g. Fire mage, who are gods with the Blaster Master passive but utter crap without it, do you? Well, imagine now that Blaster Master is shared across all DPS specs, and you can start realising what predicament are the devs in.

[Nyel]

The Maw. It’s awful. Change it, improve it, scrap it, no idea. It’s just bad.

Why aren’t they able to give us Suramar 2.0 as an endgame zone? They don’t even try anymore in that regard.

[McNeil]

I very much doubt that we will see any big changes. The delay was needed to polish what they had, which is like every system, feature and class. Bigger changes to these systems would need at least a few months of delay. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't even see anything improved and if its just a publicity stunt to silence all those ''influencers'' who say that the expansion looked like it was going to be rushed and giving it a bad rep in advange.