BfA, Essences, Corruptions, etc. - The Pinnacle of Bad Game Design

Community General Discussion
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The current state of Game Development in WoW is the worst I’ve seen in years and here are the reasons:

  • Corruption System is in itself corrupted; it is not balanced at all and favors RNG over skill even more than it was before, even more than the system it was intended to replace (Titanforging). Just consider the huge nerfs to Infinite Stars and Gushing Wounds - and why is Avoidance and Leech even in the Pool?
  • To counter this RNG based system, the Developers now introduce a new system which in itself carries RNG in its rotation. How long does it take to cycle through the Tier 3 traits to purchase what you need?
  • The “Corruption Vendor” trades for the new currency. Now, Echoes of Nyalotha have not been granted for characters which carry all Tier 3 Essences. These characters (and their players) are effectively being punished for the main grind they underwent with these characters, fulfilling each of every “keep you entertained”-Grind content up-to-date.
  • Considering a more lackluster issue, namely Mythic+ Weekly Chests or even Weekly Chests in general, which should feel more of a reward, feel like a huge disappointment every time they are opened. Even the baseline loot pool is huge with stat distributions all over the place, but with the new corruption system it has effectively been “oh man, not trash item XY again”, with the underlining feeling that the base item itself was not good at all.

To me this Game Design makes BFA worse than WoD. At least the content that was designed at the time of WoD was good and great, considering Blackrock Foundry and Hellfire Citadel. The content droughts merely led to a loss of subscriptions. Now, the Developers have resorted to turning this game into a lottery which feeds into the cycle of “maybe next week” to keep players entertained and paying their subs . Everything is RNG.

The design and testing process also seems completely whack as it offers medicore insight into which things they should keep and which they should throw away (the latter part is crucial as too many features make the game feel out of place). At least the Developers didn’t decide to expand on the Warfront content.

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Still the best players are still best, and if you were bad in the game you won’t become r1 with good rng. Is corruption drop chance RNG heavy? Sure. Is it a big problem? Not really, if you could get CE or r1 before, you can still get it.

Can’t you just wait a week or two? I mean obviously you want everything right now, but let’s not pretend that waiting for two weeks for your bis corruption is that bad. Also you can get lower levels from your best, in that case you don’t have to wait nearly anything.

Thing is, you can get a ton of echoes, the main limiting factor is corruption resistance. Who cares if you got 100k echoes, when you can only equip like 120 corruptions worth of items? Also you probably have some great corruption effects already on your gear, so it’s not like you need to replace everything.

It’s bad, and will be fixed in Shadowlands. With the new corruption vendor however can be a really good source of upgrades tho.

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BfA is a test gorund or Shadowlands.

if half of year before launch they are putting in system based solely on 100% rng - aka vendors - you can be sure the same systems will be there for shadowlands

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Why should the main part of the community (btw not the top-k-players) should be concerned about the best players? They pay subscriptions as we all do, but the main player base, by definition, does not reside in the top x%. When I join a Heroic or early Mythic (first few bosses) raiding group or guild, it seems like the top-k-damage-abilities are all the Corruption effects. Doesn’t this remove the aspect of your class as well as the identity of your playstyle to a certain degree, when your throughput is mainly bound to the Corruption effects? I know, I lost my identification with my class as soon as the most valuable effects were distributed.

Now, following the assumed intention of your post, I believe that you see Corruption as a way of “perfecting” your character, but simply considering the effectiveness of traits over others (i. e. Twilight Devestation on Tanks), isn’t it completely out of place to have a high Avoidance proc on your gear? Why is that even in the same pool?

I’ve been waiting for a change of Game Design philosophy for a long time in BfA, but the Corruption System is the Pinnacle of stupidity for a manifold of issues: The traits aren’t balanced at all, the high numbers percentual nerfs that hit Infinite Stars and now Gushing Wounds reveals this; and that is for PvE only. When taking PvP into account, the issue reveals itself even more.

Adding on top of this pile of rubbish, players who have played the game to get their BiS essences on Tier 3 are now getting punished as they lack the Echoes income. This is an issue that was not been given any plausible thought by the Developers, otherwise they would have adressed it.

Game Design is about invoking feelings and bad Game Design evokes the feeling of disappointment rather than joy. This is the case with this kind of indirect punishment as is with the case of the weekly chests.

True, you can get tons of Echoes if you just wait, but the main issue that I have is that they were running into the problem mentioned above and they didn’t even adress it. Why was there no form of compensation for this? Why didn’t they reset the existing currency or added a new one?

The same issue just holds with the randomized vendor. Give me one good reason why not all corruptions should be available from the get-go and stay that way? I mean, after all you’ve worked for your Echoes and now you’re timegated? Really?

The only reason I see this being implemented that way is to keep subscriptions, as is with timegated content. “Just don’t make people feel like there is a content drought, give them the illusion that they are doing something valuable ingame”, to summarize the impression of the mindset behind this.

That being said, I hope that they remove the Corruption System in Shadowlands.

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In BFA, your skills, rotations, even your spec or classes don’t matter.

The only thing matters is the blessing of RNG lord.

RNG for you to get a gear with good trait or corruption and RNG for them to proc.

BFA gear system is a true disaster with multiple layers of RNG. And the concept of balance doesn’t exist in BFA

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