Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
- Start date
a c i d.f l y
ಠ_ಠ
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You are clearly out of touch. Let's see your beautiful mug. No, wait, no thanks.
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Penance
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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TLDW; Rewards and Progression are shit. Blizzard doesn't listen to the community at all. Why have a public forum if you don't interact with your player base on a regular basis. WF/TF was the beginning of the end. Even if you hit the perfect TF with tertiary you don't even feel amazing you just feel lucky and kind of forget about it next day. Way worse expansion then Warlords.
I feel his pain man. I want WOW so much to be a good game. It's really the ONLY MMO out there that I can stomach. Everything else is complete garbage. The MMO genre is absolute fucking trash and WOW is the only point of light in the current cespool of MMOs filled with P2W Korean bullshit and unfinished western garbage.
I feel his pain man. I want WOW so much to be a good game. It's really the ONLY MMO out there that I can stomach. Everything else is complete garbage. The MMO genre is absolute fucking trash and WOW is the only point of light in the current cespool of MMOs filled with P2W Korean bullshit and unfinished western garbage.
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Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
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The current running meme in r/wow on every bug is Beta For Azeroth and it's very true. This expansion feels like it is still in full on beta.
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I can picture you in a closed room with trash thrown about sipping on Dr. Pepper eating Twinkies.
Or they could just spread the content out more, or and even crazier idea would be add enough raids that there wouldn't be a year+ long tier ever.
Brikker
Trump's Staff
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Khane
Got something right about marriage
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I've been thinking a lot about the Azerite gearing debacle and how it sucks and the more I consider how terrible they've made loot acquisition in PvE since the beginning of Legion the more I think about the new PvP loot acquisition model in BfA and how it's actually incredibly reasonable. They could easily shift that into the PvE model and make it work in a way that both rewards time spent playing and doesn't punish people who do not play as often.
You can never take RNG out of a loot system in an RPG, % chance to drop is just something that makes the game work because there needs to be some form of pursuit to character advancement. The conquest system alleviates bad RNG by having a bar you can fill by merely participating in PvP with a guaranteed reward at the end. Furthermore you have a chance in PvP to acquire items that can upgrade existing pieces of loot to higher ilvl based on your current standing in the PvP rating system. That by itself is such a huge QOL change that it's almost shameful that PvE doesn't have a similar system.
Blizzard could very easily carry a conquest style system into PvE by having each M+ Dungeon/Raid award a certain amount of points, depending on difficulty. There can also be a small chance in M+ end of run chests to grant the items that can upgrade gear, higher as the key level gets higher, as well as the current gear drop rates, and a higher chance at those items in raids depending on difficulty. This would satisfy their need to keep Azerite gear "rare" while allowing players to upgrade pieces they may have gotten from WQs or Lower difficulty raids with the right traits to higher ilvl, more readily usable Azerite gear over time.
The items that can upgrade gear would only upgrade to the same ilvl as the dungeon/raid you got the upgrade item in, but it would give you some "bad luck protection" by allowing you to upgrade otherwise useful gear that was just not desirable because of its lower ilvl. This would also keep World Quests relevant and would let people utilize the mostly OP trinkets that are only available from WQs that you have to pray to the RNG gods for a ridiculous titanforge of. The items would be rare, let's say a 3% drop rate, going up to maybe 6 or 7% at higher difficulties, but would reward time spent playing and give us a reason to continue running content we may have otherwise ignored because the rewards were not worth it. It also opens up the same avenue for gold making that Legion had with M+ carries, because now people have a reason to pay for a carry in a higher M+ key or Raid other than just the one for the weekly cache or raid achievements.
You can never take RNG out of a loot system in an RPG, % chance to drop is just something that makes the game work because there needs to be some form of pursuit to character advancement. The conquest system alleviates bad RNG by having a bar you can fill by merely participating in PvP with a guaranteed reward at the end. Furthermore you have a chance in PvP to acquire items that can upgrade existing pieces of loot to higher ilvl based on your current standing in the PvP rating system. That by itself is such a huge QOL change that it's almost shameful that PvE doesn't have a similar system.
Blizzard could very easily carry a conquest style system into PvE by having each M+ Dungeon/Raid award a certain amount of points, depending on difficulty. There can also be a small chance in M+ end of run chests to grant the items that can upgrade gear, higher as the key level gets higher, as well as the current gear drop rates, and a higher chance at those items in raids depending on difficulty. This would satisfy their need to keep Azerite gear "rare" while allowing players to upgrade pieces they may have gotten from WQs or Lower difficulty raids with the right traits to higher ilvl, more readily usable Azerite gear over time.
The items that can upgrade gear would only upgrade to the same ilvl as the dungeon/raid you got the upgrade item in, but it would give you some "bad luck protection" by allowing you to upgrade otherwise useful gear that was just not desirable because of its lower ilvl. This would also keep World Quests relevant and would let people utilize the mostly OP trinkets that are only available from WQs that you have to pray to the RNG gods for a ridiculous titanforge of. The items would be rare, let's say a 3% drop rate, going up to maybe 6 or 7% at higher difficulties, but would reward time spent playing and give us a reason to continue running content we may have otherwise ignored because the rewards were not worth it. It also opens up the same avenue for gold making that Legion had with M+ carries, because now people have a reason to pay for a carry in a higher M+ key or Raid other than just the one for the weekly cache or raid achievements.
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Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
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It's my running theory, as a software developer myself, that Activision set aggressive goals starting with legion. It makes sense that they hit legion out of the park in terms of content but they probably used more resources than they wanted and were delayed on bfa from the get go. Activision didn't want blizzard to slip and rorced them to ship unfinished work. I see it at work all the time - customer wants 100 features in 3 months , well ok what are the highest priority? We can't meet that.
I do wonder if they never made Argus if bfa would be better.
I'm a very clean and minimal person but I do like calling people retards. Also I have some staying power because I've heard myself referenced on the foh streams a few times haha
I do wonder if they never made Argus if bfa would be better.
I'm a very clean and minimal person but I do like calling people retards. Also I have some staying power because I've heard myself referenced on the foh streams a few times haha
Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
- 27,036
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I like the basic framework of the Azerite Armor system. Being given a big pile of options and tinkering with them to see the different ways they can be utilized is a big part of what I like about gaming. How do these traits interact with each other, different classes, the traits of those classes? Are there interactions between other players even? There's all this room for exploration, experimentation, and optimization between raids, dungeons, PvP, and even derp PvE stuff.
But the system is fundamentally broken. There is no reasonable way of obtaining the armor that I wanted to obtain at the proper item level for where my character is at. Maybe I'll get a random piece from a weekly chest and maybe I'll get what I want out of an Emissary quest. Given the amount of possible rewards and the infrequency in when I am allowed to pull the lever on the slot machine the optimal strategy is not to care at all.
The real joke of the system for me though is when I try and compare two different pieces of armor to try and figure out which one is better. Alright, so Collective Will + Blessed Portents + Resounding Protection + bonus 5 item level VERSUS Gift of Forgiveness, Overwhelming Power, Impassive Visage with no bonus 5 item level. Well how in the fuck am I supposed to figure this out exactly? "Chance to do a thing" is the WoW equivalent of "smurf" in the Smurf language. Is there an internal cooldown? What about procs per minute? Which of these traits stack, partially stack, or don't stack at all? All I can do is go by what the internet says I'm supposed to use. It's ass. Getting new armor and having to unlock abilities I already unlocked is also ass.
Everyone likes doing Armchair Dev stuff so I'll do some as well. How about as you level up your necklace you unlock traits that you can empower three pieces of your armor with? You start out with your fresh necklace and a couple basic traits and as you adventure throughout the expansion you acquire new traits through a wide variety of tasks. Killing Zul is how you obtain Laser Matrix (Head). You stand over his corpse, activate your necklace, there's a fancy particle effect, maybe a little message from one of the key figures and now you have access to it for the rest of the expansion. It requires a certain neck level to come online and its strength is determined by the item level of the armor you imbued with it.
But the system is fundamentally broken. There is no reasonable way of obtaining the armor that I wanted to obtain at the proper item level for where my character is at. Maybe I'll get a random piece from a weekly chest and maybe I'll get what I want out of an Emissary quest. Given the amount of possible rewards and the infrequency in when I am allowed to pull the lever on the slot machine the optimal strategy is not to care at all.
The real joke of the system for me though is when I try and compare two different pieces of armor to try and figure out which one is better. Alright, so Collective Will + Blessed Portents + Resounding Protection + bonus 5 item level VERSUS Gift of Forgiveness, Overwhelming Power, Impassive Visage with no bonus 5 item level. Well how in the fuck am I supposed to figure this out exactly? "Chance to do a thing" is the WoW equivalent of "smurf" in the Smurf language. Is there an internal cooldown? What about procs per minute? Which of these traits stack, partially stack, or don't stack at all? All I can do is go by what the internet says I'm supposed to use. It's ass. Getting new armor and having to unlock abilities I already unlocked is also ass.
Everyone likes doing Armchair Dev stuff so I'll do some as well. How about as you level up your necklace you unlock traits that you can empower three pieces of your armor with? You start out with your fresh necklace and a couple basic traits and as you adventure throughout the expansion you acquire new traits through a wide variety of tasks. Killing Zul is how you obtain Laser Matrix (Head). You stand over his corpse, activate your necklace, there's a fancy particle effect, maybe a little message from one of the key figures and now you have access to it for the rest of the expansion. It requires a certain neck level to come online and its strength is determined by the item level of the armor you imbued with it.
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More transmog to chase maybe? Most MMO's these days tend to devolve into the endgame really being about fashion, and WoW is no different for the majority of the playerbase now. Playing just for mogs and mounts.
I have never watched Asmongold before, I really don't watch any yt/twitch personalities at all for any game at all. I hate that entire "thing".
His video linked above is very good though about BFA.
His video linked above is very good though about BFA.
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a c i d.f l y
ಠ_ಠ
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One thing that's been glossed over is that class spells and rotations play fundamentally worse and less fun than they have in a really long time. Frost and fire mage feel fairly solid, admittedly, but priest, shaman, warlock, warrior, druid (save resto) from my experience all feel clunky. Dunno if it's the lack of artifact spell, or all the changes made to GCD, something just feels "off". Generally they've improved how classes play expac over expac, even if their dps rankings haven't exactly been normalized.
I particularly don't like forced GCD on buffs, and having to put an extra button or three on my bar or update a macro to castsequence arbitrarily because of that change. I see what they were trying to do, but 10s buffs suck if I actually have to pay attention to them, or stack them with others to be optimized, and with 3 of them, you're losing about 30% of the buff time on the first buff. That's not fun. Could fix it by locking out buffs so they don't stack with each other, but that doesn't sound fun, either.
I particularly don't like forced GCD on buffs, and having to put an extra button or three on my bar or update a macro to castsequence arbitrarily because of that change. I see what they were trying to do, but 10s buffs suck if I actually have to pay attention to them, or stack them with others to be optimized, and with 3 of them, you're losing about 30% of the buff time on the first buff. That's not fun. Could fix it by locking out buffs so they don't stack with each other, but that doesn't sound fun, either.
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Lambourne
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Pretty good video and I agree with him. For me the main reason has to be the scaling; there is litte to no feeling of your power actually increasing with new items. I got to the point where I was wondering whether the stats on my gear did anything at all. The game gives me a feeling where I'm just being drip-fed loot at a precisely calibrated rate, and the loot is mostly there to make numbers on my character sheet go up and not to make my character actually measurably improve. The various PVP tests where people hit someone for 3000 but their screen shows them only getting hit for 2800 really makes the game feel entirely artificial and the RPG roots of the game are well and truly lost.
Unsubbed for now, hoping they can turn this shit around because there's very little else to play in MMO land.
Unsubbed for now, hoping they can turn this shit around because there's very little else to play in MMO land.
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