Shadowlands, Systems and the Simplerdays

Watching the live stream has turned me from looking forward to Shadowlands and now considering not playing it at all. I left BFA because of the amount of systems pilled on top of each other and after yesterday, i realize Blizzard are continuing the endless system mechanics into the next expansion meaning Alt friendly and casual gaming is not going to get better.

I am massively missing the simpler days when the game was pick a race and class, level that to max level. upon getting to max level you go find loot to bolster yourself and allow you yourself to take on the next challenge.

It’s my opinion and i’m not sure how many share it, but i don’t like the idea of leveling up, then having to level up 5 more additional systems and play 2 mini games AND gear my character before i can take on the next challenge.

Also i’d like to add that the unpruning for this expansion seems to be false advertisement because looking at shadowlands now i see that upon hitting max level, i’m still tied to borrow power from legendary crafting, Soul Binds and Covenants which are going to convolute the class design and will result in X spec feeling completely unfun/broken without Y build. Also the combination of Legendary Crafting, Soul Binds, Covenants, Gear and PVP talents are going to wreck PVP beyond belief due to the convoluted amplifiers. Imagine being a new player coming mid patch when everybody running around with Legendarys, Mx Soul binds, Max power Covenants and BIS Gear. It’ll be worse then now which is pretty bad.

Anyway, i’m hoping i’ve taken the live stream wrong and the reality is that it isn’t Artifact power 3.0, That these mini games are optional systems and that the Soul Bind / Covenant / Legendary system is unfathomably easy to attain so that you can play alts / be a casual, because if it isn’t. Shadowlands is seemed to be BFA 2.0 and that is NOT GOOD FOR THE GAME

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they clearly dont want to change anyways

i mean if it was just for pvp they could just deactivate the systems but then you realize the classes dont work anymore.
anyways i wish they would just delete covenant abilities and soulbinds and let legendaries only work in pve but guess this will never happen so SL will be pretty garbage because we all know they are unable to balance anything or maybe not unable but unwilling

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You realise you dont have to do any of these systems right. What stopped you in bfa from leveling to max then playing dungeons for raid gear, gettimg all your gear there then doing the next raid?

I very rarely played warfronts, islands, pvp, did minimal world quests and right now have only rank 11 cloak. I just passivly leveled my neck and artifact doing the content I like. I plan to do the same for shadowlands

The only madnatory thing ive seen so far is tourgast

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Actually from the stream looks the opposite.
The wast majority of the “system” are either optional, or self developing while playing normally.

Plus of all the system in bfa, if you play 1 char, your weekly allowance of stuff to do is done in 2hrs at max, and 30 min of daily with the assault.

Everything else is optional and doable by choice, nothing mandatory.

It feels like now we are complaining for the sake of the complaining.

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They covenant, soulbinds and conduits aren’t really optional. They give a significant power so without that you can’t do that competitive content. And yes, you can just pick and get all of that by simply playing the game without any RNG - but the catch is you have to pick the one optimal path, not what you would like (covenants looks/story/lore tied to power progression).

Sorry how can you “play the game on live” without Essences, max level cape and corruption. Yes i could play sub level 10 Mythic Plus and do normal raids, but good luck doing the more challenging content without the mandatory systems.

I love to PVP, and without Essences, Max level cloak, Corruption and good gear your beyond gimped, but again your disagreeing because you see it as alright because you’re happy to settle for less within the game. for me, I don’t want that. i want to push Keys, I want to see +2k in arena, i want to beable duel and do world pvp. I want to beable go to Heroic/Mythic raids. However i don’t want to have to level 4 additional systems which are gated before i’m allowed to compete at that level.

Shadowlands is looking exactly the same. I may not have essences, corruption and cloak level. but i do have Legendarys, Covenants and Soul Binds.

Torgast = Visions
Legendarys = Corruption
Soul Binds = Azerite Traits
Covenants = Essences.

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Changing should be for the sake of improvment and not for the sake of guinea pig experimenting.

It is clear Blizzard are just randomly throwing their ideas on the white board to see how to keep players active and subscribed. They don’t understand what is working and what is not!

They still do not know their audience!!!

If they did from start we would not have Pandas

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this is depressing me,
im sick of levelling temporary items or the flavour of the expansions being basically a fancy sticker that is mandatory to pour time into

the story better be immersive and long

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i agree with you. I don’t think i’ll play shadowlands now knowing the systems they’re implementing.

the original release of Shadowlands sold me the idea that they was going to unprune and redesign classes to feel more like Pre Legion while reducing the external borrow systems that became slowly crept into the game since legion. I was sold on Covenants being a completely ROLE PLAYING EXPERIENCE, meaning it didn’t effect my Dungeons and PVP but just the open world and appearence.

but instead it’s been convoluted once again where i’m leveling up expansion features and borrow power, while taking to upmost little attention to designing classes. Regardless of the content they implement boring or exciting, it will always be watered down by the fact classes are but a shell of what they once was and to become a complete class you must borrow power.

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Then you are gonna be dissapointed. WoW Present lore is garbage, if you expect SL’s stuff to redeem that, besides these marathon of systems. To make up for those marathon of systems.

You are already setting yourself up for massive dissapointment.

sigh well, like BfA it looks like my involvement in this expansion will be solely to experience the story then leave

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I’ll just read the forums and watch youtube to keep up with the story. Saves me £10 a month.

Honestly i forgot about essences. I spent just passivly gathered them by playing other contented I wanted to play tbh. Them spent a day or 2 getting rank 3 and then never thought of them again. Was pretty easy. And im ignoring corruptions for the most part (i dont pvp) and have 5/12 heroic, my main issue there is actually finding groups not just doing the same 5 bosses and +12 m+ but havnt pushed higher as I want all +10 first.

I will agree pvp is in a much worse state, as yiu basically have no choice but to do all this stuff. For me anyway only the cloak felt madnatory but i havnt felt a need to go above 11 yet, my alts are only about 3.

Maybe mythic is another ball park. But I certainly havnt felt the need yet. Torgast from the sounds of it is not even close to visions. Visioms means 2-3 hours, of flying, assalts, dailys, then the vision itself of the same content. From what I understand torgast is short, once a week semi random content.

Legendaries are not comparable to corruptions as corruptions were random while legendaries are fixed and chooseable. Its also tied to torgast do its the same point.

Soul binds. Dunno about this one, I dont know anything about the system other than how it looks. So im holding judgement.

Covenats. Even you have to admit this isnt even close. Essences were multiple different powers you had to unlocl and upgrade by doing various content. The covenant ability is 2 abilities you get for free at 120

Edit: plus corruption and cloak was only an 8.3 issue. Essences 8.2. I dunno how bad they were in 8.2 tho. 8.0 and 8.1 were great for progression. And so was legion

i mean, i wouldn’t mind all these systems if classes were fun and felt good to play without borrowed power.

with what we’ve seen and the feedback given, a lot of specs are still left in the dust and i think they’re counting on these systems to fix them.

the core of the class should be still fun and engaging and soulbinds/covenant abilities/legendaries should just be the cherry on top, not the glue that holds the class/spec together.

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most of these systems are mini games and there just for fun and lols
there are not mandatory

These system way more less grindy than bfa and legion, there are also weekly caps on it.

As well as others said before me, noone force you to do any of this.

Still much lower grind fest compared to Classic.

get on a fresh 120 character, and tell me if thats gonna take you 2 hours to get your essences + cloak + corruption resistance upgrades and not forgetting your BiS Azerite traits, not counting the usual raiding ,mythic+ and neck AP

Good thing we have classic to flush crybabies in it.

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The focus on binding talents to weird systems like azerite / renown / covenants is just extremely unnecessary and overcomplicates things. It’s ironic, because they tried to dumb down so many things for supposedly “new players” (including PvP vendors). They need to go back to building a solid foundation for player choice and power that they can elaborate on.

  1. Focus on a talent system that already includes all talents and gives actual player choice. There shouldn’t be an obvious BiS pick. If one has the better DPS, for example, another that provides less DPS in the same row should provide noticeable utility.

  2. Gear and stats (and not azerite, corruptions, HoA or otherwise) rewarded through different activities should be the determining factor of your character’s power. It’s simple and effective.

  3. Rework crafting and make it an integral part of the gearing progress which leads you out into the open world, so even non-raiders can feel like they can earn something worthwhile. Right now, if you want to craft an item that isn’t below world quest tier, you have to do raids and dungeons. So what’s the point?

There’s just so many flaws in current game design, I don’t even know where to continue.

Welcome to the wow forums, where people are battling for first place in the Whiner of the Year award.

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