The game is so bad at explaining its own systems in game, that most players choose to read outside source for better information. Yet some claims they are completely obvious in game. Ridiculous. 
You dont. You dont even need to care about %90 of the stuff contained in the game if youre not a mythic raider / high rated pvper or doing high m+ keys. its totally about the toxic min maxing culture thats going on in the community - game is the same
Exactly the point here.
What is the point of spending so much time and effort in making, changing and tweaking tons of borrowed power systems, if most players just ignore them by read outside guides , and top players complain the imbalance of those systems conflicting with each other?
It is neither needed for causal players, nor balanced for top players. It is an unnecessary mess that creates a lose lose situation.
They sought to make “systems” more simplistic by removing parts of systems (Gems slots, enchants), even entire systems (Glyphs) yet they somehow manage to make more complicated systems.
One might say “just read the guides” which I did. So as a fury warrior, if I’m venthyr, then I should be using sinful legendary with either reckless abandon or anger management. However, if I’m a non venthyr fury warrior then reckless abandon is no go. Even if it looks fun. And if I wanna play arms then I’ll have to craft a brand new legendary not to mention removing most of my conduits slots on Nadja so That I can add arms conduits.
Agreed. They should stop with the messy game design and do a pure clean gameplay in 10.0
And the 20 different types of currencies, anima and new resource tokens definitely don’t help.
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Well I’d like to know more about AP/SP ratios & ppm but beyond that the systems in SL seem pretty clear cut.
What you don’t have is what is best, because that’s as usual a math problem which depends on the context and all that jazz, but the relevant informations are usually there.
Wasn’t ask MR Robot a simplified sim ? Served the same purpose but with a far more rudimentary analysis.
The reason Blizz gave is that they are afraid of players back and forth between the raid and their covenant to pick the best conduits before any encounter & thus get an edge on those who don’t bother doing so.
The goal being that you should ideally pick between what’s optimal in one situation and what’s good all the time, this kind of strategy would remove that “choice” aspect & mess with the encounters as players would be marginally stronger than they were supposed to (especially as we get higher ilvl conduits & their impact gets more noticeable). And spending hours in loading screens to be optimal is arguably a very boring design.
Players may argue that non one would care about it and if they did that’s their right, but Blizz seems to prefer preventing players from doing it than dealing with the consequences later on, which is why they made conduit energy.
Imo this solution would be warranted in only 1 situation : Players widely adopt this behaviour & conduits have such an impact that Blizz is forced to instead buff the encounters, which would simply legitimise it & make it harder for anyone else to clear the content.
In that very specific situation ? Yeah sure. As it stands tho I don’t think it’s worth the frustration it generates.
If there are only 1-2 systems at a time, and they are well explained in game, it won’t be too bad. Players may do some test in game by themselves and make their choices.
But when there are multiple borrowed power systems (covenant, soulbinds, conduits, legendaries, shards, etc.) interacting with each other, it is almost impossible for players do any meaningful test in game by themselves. It is just so much easier just to read a guide written by top/pro players instead, and make “meaningful choice” with others’ advices and sims.
If so many systems are created just to be completely ignored by most players via reading 3rd party website stuff outside the game itself, then what is the point of those systems? Just making players spending more time on wowhead instead of in game?
That why I said WoW has become a game of reading 3rd party websites. Because the current system design encourages players to spend more time outside the game than inside the game.
Brit spotted… Big up the dwarf!
The problem is that each expansion and patch is designed around an entire new system and that system usually includes a massive grind of something and new curriences to also grind.
So what could be a fun expansion and/or patch turns into a massive grind fest because the system dictates it. Expansions and patches should be designed around the story and lore of the game, not some currency.
For example, it would have been great if all covenant campaign quests were open to all players regardless. If we had been able to try out each one, instead of it being time gated, this would have given players additional content to play. instead you are forced to grind an alt again to experience the covenant campaigns for each of the covenants. Not to mention a player cannot choose a main covenant without thinking about what it wil do to their class and spec.
Another complicated unecessary system is the system in Korthia where we have benthic like gear and a massive grind to get anywhere with the faction and research faction there. Korthia should not be set up this way. While having the option to upgrade gear is nice, we have so many currencies already in SL, we should not be forced to grind yet another currency system. It would have made sense if we simply just grinded anima or soul ash, 2 curriences that were introduced in SL, instead of having to grind 4 currencies in this expansion. I shudder to think what will come with upcoming patches.
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all the things you mentioned are explained by the game, but I guess some people need a little extra help
Honestly this is true because i spend more time looking at guides then actually playing and the game does a really bad job at explaining even the basic things lol.
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Well, last week i have wowheaded/youtubed almost more than played. I try to accept it was the first week, but the way things show ingame still raises a lot of questions or keep questions unanswered.
It’s harder to find what’s optimal, but it’s certainly easy enough to understand. You pick a covenant and get an ability, check. You pick one of 3 soulbinds, check. You fill the slots in your soulbinds with easy to understand conduits check. You look for one legendary & craft it, with usually understandable tooltip, check.
I don’t think the 9.0 systems are hard to understand or badly introduced, there’s so many options that the BIS is hard to identify but it’s definitely understandable
Shards will be a sh’tshow, no way around that. It would’ve been nice as a raid exclusive feature but they opened it for M+ and that’s a big mistake imo (& hopefully the various nerfs in PvP will spare PvPers from it)
And in vanilla we had no systems yet people still looked for guides as we didn’t even understand how stats worked. Gearing has always been a math problem and looking for guides or tool to save us time has been a thing since the very beginning.
The system encourages you to play non-optimally & simply take what you like. That’s the whole point of covenants after all. Players simply take the path of least resistance.
The path of least resistance is making your “meaningful choice” based on guides and sims, getting it done and forgetting it.
Statistics/pool shows most players prefer reading guides than playing non-optimally.
Icy Veins guides having 17-20 tabs for PvE alone for each spec, meaning Druids have like 80 pages of guides that, oh by the way, changes every patch. Alright let’s add the 5-6 pages of PvP guides, too.
ONE HUNDRED PAGES WHEEE!!
Noooo, that’s perfectly normal. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
WoW should be a science project.
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100% agree with this. I absolutely hate the player progression in SL, so much so I haven’t got a character past level 51 as I know what is to come. That on top of the fact the story is just so uninspiring has kept me well and truly away from WOW for some time now.
Why Blizz felt the need to go down this path is beyond me. Keep it simple…gear and a fun but complex talent tree system and then that’s it!!! Yes have small add on’s like gems and enchants but other than that keep it simple.
Instead you have all this other BS: talents, covenant, soul binds, conduits, legendary, shard, and other millions of systems. I copy and pasted that as you did a great job of flagging them all.
Time for WOW to return to its roots if you ask me. Keep the basics simple!
It is totally fine.
We just need to read several PhD thesis from outside source to understand the game’s basics every patch .
WoW is 12+ game. Blizzard just wants to improve teenager literacy rate and understanding statistics, graphics, tables and probabilities in those science projects on wowhead/icy-veins.
These guides are longer than my MSc. thesis, no joke:
Yeah I know I just revealed my name. I’m OK with that.
And where’s the harm in that ? Guides are a solution created by the playerbase to solve an issue they created in the first place.
I can understand not wanting to be a dead weight in your party or being afraid of being refused for a non optimal build, but afaik pugs don’t care about your covenant. They’ll most likely pick you based on your RIO or experience but they usually won’t check your covenant, build or soulbinds.
It’s always easier to look for a better build than to improve yourself. Give me a BIS, mythic quality character and a mythic raider a 200ilvl one and I’m 100% sure he’ll outperform me. I have no illusions regarding where I stand in the skill range and I honestly never cared, but that’s typically something a better build won’t change.