I would go full rework on modern take questing, which means remove leveling and make story progressive like GW2, without stagnant moments of killing x number of mobs or looting stuff or whatever is similar to old formula.
I would make squish for gearing, both pve and pvp. No more conquest cap, just honor and crafting and I would decrease honor gain so it takes weeks to get full gear (main fun starts with full gear, so conquest cap is useless, for pvp only), for pve I would only make normal dungeons that have same ilvl as basic crafting gear (except few recipe items that are tradable on AH and drops from various content, also it shouldn’t be easy to obtain and this gear should be BIS - better than mythic raid, also this gear shouldn’t replace every slot, just few for each class/spec/gear type), I would also make squish in raids, which means no more LFR and no more heroic. Only normal which has better ilvl than normal dungeons and basic crafting, and I would also have new name for other type of harder raid content.
Next thing is open world content: I would remove events and replace those with something new and unique, that’s also tied to economy pillar. I would remove shared loot and shared skinning/gathering, and I would make skinning work differently than how it is now (something similar to bastion in S1, with many routes to farm and if someone took spot for aoe skinning farm, you just went other way and followed specific route to keep farming solo). I would also remove AOE skinning routine, and replaced it with lower density mobs that scale on your ilvl, those should have bleeds and such and they should kill you easily if many were gathered. This should make open world bigger, because open world as it is now is very shallow, in sense that there are only 1 skinning spot and only 1 cloth farming spot in whole TWW, it just doesn’t make sense compared to vanilla or any other expansion prior to shadowlands korthia patch.
Sometimes it’s best to reduce bloat, both in terms of gameplay as well as UI and UX.
Earlier in this thread, for example, I suggested to entirely rename the M+ as H+, with the current M0 difficulty becoming H+1, M+2 becoming H+2, etc. No content is deleted or removed, but the User Interface becomes slightly more concise.
Or 10…
It’s one thing to suggest improvements to the existing formula and another to outright replace the formula. You are asking to almost change the genre of the game.
Ok let’s step away from wow into video games in general for a second. How often do you see games explaining nothing and requiring the player to actually use 3rd party tools, go online, read guides etc?
Even Dark Souls that is famous for its difficulty, gives you a full tutorial at the beginning of the game.
Why is it that wow gets away with it?
If you’re basically a solo player, then I refer you to my post above, in which the community seems to agree that there needs to be more effort done on the NPC version of the raid, just like they did with follower dungeons.
LFR is mostly a toxic cesspool full of people that are desperate for a piece of loot, and mind you I’m not blaming players here, it’s fundamentally the system.
There needs to be natural progression within any game, regardless if some players don’t care about it. There are many players that do care about it. I’ve been playing wow since vanilla, but only started paying attention to raids around WoD. I remember doing LFR thinking “this could be fun” that then made me look into joining a guild and do organised raiding. But again there I was relying on people explaining everything to me.
Many players who’d normally enjoy raiding, get put off by the idea that they don’t really know what’s going on, and that there, is a big fault in the system.
Games need to be self sufficient to begin with. Now I get watching some mythic raider PoV of your class to see how they optimised their play on highest end, but on entry? No.
On the other hand it was never meant as a means to entice people into raiding. It was meant to be the means to be able to access the content and no longer be gated from it.
WoW does offer a tutorial at the beginning of the game. This character went through the starting area in Eversong Woods, your’s (presumably) in Eastern Plaguelands, being taught about quests, gear, spells, and stuff. Blizzard even streamlined the thing with Exile’s Reach, making the whole “tutorial” part of it unskippable for new players.
And that’s what a tutorial is supposed to do: Teach you the basics and make it possible to play the game. It’s not the tutorial’s job to make you “good” that’s your own - for starters people could read their spells’ description, if that’s not something they want then they can watch a video where others tell them what spell to learn and which button to press when.
And to get back to my original point: LFR is not the gateway to Normal raid. LFR is, first and foremost, for those who (for whatever reason) don’t do Normal (or higher) raid. LFR also used to be the source of the highest gear that player could get - it might still be if that player don’t want to do delves, but that’s besides the point, since the point is that LFR isn’t really a part of the raid structure, and therefore there’s no reason for LFR to teach HC/mythic mechanics.
Now I, personally, had plenty of fun doing N’zoth and Razageth on LFR, but you might remember a lot of people most certainly didn’t - and you want to make more of that? In LFR? Which is still not really a part of “real” raiding… Well, make the rewards significantly better, and sure. But that’s not going to happen, now is it?
I’ve said already that they need to develop the NPC version of raids further.
Ok then… How about every other game that has the equivalent of advanced tutorials? We had them all the way back to games like Metal Gear solid on PS1. It’s not a new thing. They still exist. You unlock a new technique or something, and here’s the special tutorial challenge that will teach you how to master said technique. Mind you they’re optional but they’re there.
Game never teaches you anything like “stack here” or “run out danger zone”, often these two fundamentally opposed mechanics having the same design (S2 is rectifying this so let’s see). Plenty of repeat mechanics, like “match the buff with the zone” or “linked with other player”.
They could even decouple that from LFR entirely, and literally have a training raid that has all of the most common mechanics, in some sort of glorified dummy raid mode that’s evergreen.
We’re talking fundamental game design values, that would make the playing experience better for everyone, I don’t understand why you’re so adversarial about this? Do you not want players to have a way to be better whilst only using the game itself? All I’m getting from your comments is “things are great the way they are, whoever cares about progressing, go on youtube or wowhead and figure it out”.
We had this in MoP it was called the proving grounds, people complained about it, so it seems to have been forgotten about. You can still enter it by speaking to a class trainer.
People complained because it was a mandatory requirement in order to do other content, which can be an issue. The feature by itself isn’t bad, though it is very outdated compared to what I’m thinking.
Honestly only the very basic levels (Silver I think?) were required to do anything, and even then it wasn’t a requirement outside of raid/dungeon finder if I remember correctly. I passed it before attempting any of the raids that came after it was introduced, so perhaps it stopped you entering the instances entirely, I simply don’t recall.
I’m not a particularly competent player but I passed silver DPS pretty easily and it helped me get better at the game. So I don’t really think it being mandatory was a bad thing.
Perhaps it should be part of the mandatory dungeon at the end of Exile’s reach in some way. That way you learn from it, pass it automatically, and it doesn’t feel forced.
It wouldn’t be hard to change that dungeon to include a boss that uses the various mechanics and swirlies, but have the NPCs help people who get them wrong until the boss dies. The boss should be immune during it’s various “tutorial” mechanic phases so it can’t be cheesed.
As an example, during the fight an NPC could say “stand near us!” as the stacking mechanic is telegraphed.
Pretty much so, all fundamental mechanics that can be found in a boss fight (raid or m+) should be taught somewhere in the game.
Whether it’s a tutorial dungeon created for new players, or an elaborate practice mode that could even be relevant to a mythic raider wanting to improve their flow, something has to be added eventually.
For me, I’d even be happy to have a simulation mode of the current raid. You go in by yourself +npcs or with friends, you get all the current raid bosses at your chosen difficulty and you have a go at practising. Obviously with health and damage adapted and no loot.
The problem with that is all the “raid to world first” fans are going to complain, and how it might homogenise tactics… By the end of the season there’s going to be only one set viable tactics, so I wouldn’t mind if it gets released after R2W first has ended or hall of fame has closed or whatnot.
I can see space for both, modify the dungeon in Exile’s reach as I’ve suggested, and leave the endless proving grounds available for higher levels. Proving grounds should also be put back in the LFD dialog.
The thing is, it whas mandatory in WoD for Heroic Dungeon Finder and back then this whas the entry for higher level content. So unless you managed it or found a group that either took you despite way to low GS or made Heroic Groups yourself (which nobody outside of guilds did) you where locked out of 90% of the endgame which whas in WoD already spare enough.
There are too many mechanics that have to be taught to put such a feature so early in the game. At the same time, the majority of classes do not unlock their stuns / interrupts and dispels until a lot after level 10.
I would put such a feature at the level cap, right before accessing Raid Finder.
Talking Heads .
Have to use addon to disable the constant noise when I’m just flying over a zone with a world quest in it .
On top of that it pops in the middle of my screen and prevents me from seeing herbs , or an incoming branch when dragonriding .
Problem with the addon is i get 0 notifications on war-chests . So Yea remove talking heads and dialogs .
-10 annoyance
-5 to game size , so less on the hard disk and less to downloads
overall +15 experience .
-The item levelling system. If you look behind the cameras, it doesn’t have much purpose, beside giving you the illusion of a deep and meaningful content.
-Current profession system, especially the quality level nonsense.
-World quests. Although I understand reason of their origin, I would bring back daily quests, instead. Or at least the WQ should have a DQ variant, and the player could choose between.
-99% of all the useless crap that we have to use to buy/upgrade gear i mean do we really always need a new token instead of just paying different price for new gear/upgrade.
-Transmog cost
-Prune some of the difficulty modes out of dungeons/raids we have way too many levels on them.