Summary of SL so far - not great

Mellinora-argent-dawn · December 23, 2020, 11:16am

It’s been four weeks. Some of SL has been good, some has been bad. In sum, SL doesn’t really feel all that great.

The good sides:

(1) Leveling was good, zones amazing, etc. This is the traditional item, they always do this well.

(2) Covenants are enjoyable and varied. I don’t mind the timegating for renown, in fact it’s welcome there.

(3) Lots of collectibles. Pets, mounts, toys, transmog, all good. Another traditional item.

Almost everything else is either meh or poisoned:

(4) Instances are great, but drop next to no loot. That’s terrible. Same for raids.

(5) PVP is eh. Non-epic BGs suffer from the vast imbalances between specs. Epic BGs play like trash (Ashran feels best out of 4, this tells you all you need to know).

(6) Torghast was terrible after their buffs. Thankfully, they promptly fixed it. But it isn’t very exciting. They definitely oversold it as a feature.

(7) The Maw can go die in a fire. It’s uninteresting. Only doing it once a week.

It isn’t great.

Item (1) = zones and leveling already kind of lost its steam, item (2) = covenants will lose it in a month. Items (4) = PVE and (5) = PVP should have carried it, but they don’t. I get that some arena guys might feel better about PVP, but… Items (6) = Torghast and (7) = Maw mostly just flopped. Again, thanks for fixes to Torghast, it would have been unbelievably bad without them. But it just isn’t very appealing, the feature didn’t live up to its praise.

I don’t know. Let’s see what 9.1 will bring, I guess. They should absolutely fix scarce loot that plagues PVE and they should absolutely continue to work on improving PVP, it remains a s**show, the fixes are sound but there are just too few of them.

Flashpóint-draenor · December 23, 2020, 1:08pm

Agree on everything here pretty much, made a long-ish comment on the linked thread too about a few more things.

It’s pretty insane seeing everyone salivate over SL like it revolutionized the game or something. The second you start looking deeper there are cracks at every level.

Tpaartas-aegwynn · December 23, 2020, 1:19pm

Liked leveling and the zones.
Covenants are fine for me since I’m not min - maxing them.
Don’t care about collectibles much personally.
I prefer the new loot system over the old one. We used to get “more” loot, but it was mostly useless. Now we get less items, but there is a higher chance of them actually being an upgrate.
Not very active in PvP right now.
They should make Torghast shorter, but harder imo. The speccs that are in a disadvantage should just get better or more powers while in Torghast. Thorgast was great when we actually had to prepare, to CC, to kite in order to survive instead of just AOEing though it.
It’s not bad. If they allow mounting up or make the maw mounts more frequent it will be fine.

Cxsimir-ghostlands · December 23, 2020, 1:20pm

I agree and disagree.
I don’t do much PvP so I don’t know about (5).
Personally I really like Torghast, since it’s something you’re only needed to do once a week for around 2 hours or so, which in my opinion isn’t much of an investment. It’s something where you can just blast with extra strength on your character.
Also I don’t mind the maw that much. At first it was a little annoying when I saw how much effort some people went through for the degenerate strats to min max maw every day, but if you only do dailies and maybe kill a couple rares on the way, it’s not all that bad and probably only takes you around 30mins or so.

Jakafo-sylvanas · December 23, 2020, 1:25pm

I’m having more fun leveling an Alt from level 10-50 rather than playing my main. I think that says something.

Torghast is boring, but I find it more fun when playing with a friend. It makes the time shorter if that makes sense. And I especially like it after the nerf.

Maw is ok, would be great if we can mount. But it makes me happy to be a Druid.

Cxsimir-ghostlands · December 23, 2020, 1:25pm

Also to add to this, a lot of people already forgot that we don’t have the endless artifact or azerite power grind that we had in previous expansions, which made the game a grindfest to anyone who seriously wanted to progress their character. If you wanted to do everything related to player power outside of raiding and m+, it’s a minimal time investment in comparison to BfA and Legion.

Cxsimir-ghostlands · December 23, 2020, 1:27pm

Why is that? I’m genuinely curious because I feel like there’s always something interesting to do on my main, and I can’t seem to have enough time to progress on my alts, if I don’t decide to take a break from main.

Lightsweep-burning-legion · December 23, 2020, 1:29pm

Currently people who don’t do any PvE content are losing less to people that do PvE on daily basis, like: “oh, damn i missed a raid, i will be behind” but hey, 80% of raidteam didn’t get any loot so we are at the same gear level as we were before they even raided, seems fun. /sarcasm overrr

Magiola-darksorrow · December 23, 2020, 1:30pm

Impossible without increasing the PvP rate as well (unless they seperate PvP and PvE gear again.

Flashpóint-draenor · December 23, 2020, 1:39pm

This is only true for people that literally do everything WoW has to offer, whereas I think that the majority of the playerbase only ever engages in certain aspects of WoW so if those are lacking, there isn’t much to do for them.

If you do M+, Raiding, PvP, mount collecting, transmog hunting, treasure/puzzle hunting, professions, pet battles, Torghast, Maw grinding, then yeah, there is always something to do, but very few people enjoy doing all or even half of those.

This is only natural because WoW is varied and personally while I like some aspects like dungeons and raids, I despise PvP, pet battles, etc, so if the things I like are lacking, then there isn’t much to do in-game.

Mellinora-argent-dawn · December 23, 2020, 1:39pm

You said it, yes, they should separate PVP gear from PVE gear.

Flashpóint-draenor · December 23, 2020, 1:41pm

Amen to that. Their agenda of pushing people into content they don’t want has been ongoing for years now likely to pad out the metrics. It was terrible with essences in BfA, it’s a detriment to gearing now for everyone who likes one but not the other.

Cxsimir-ghostlands · December 23, 2020, 1:45pm

Yeah makes sense. And if you didn’t guess already, I’m exactly one of those who enjoy almost all aspects of the game, so I suppose it’s hard for me to relate.

Mellinora-argent-dawn · December 23, 2020, 1:46pm

I am not yet at that point, but I will likely be after the covenant campaign ends.

I mean, they really poisoned so much content, it’s hard to do anything. M+? One instance per week for the great vault, because all further runs are like 10x less rewarding. That’s by design, but it’s the whole point that the design is bad. Torghast? Will probably run it once a week for now, will probably start skipping weeks later. The Maw? Same as Torghast, am already doing it once a week only, will probably start skipping weeks later. What else is there? Not much.

Well, it’s alts then.

I guess PVP will get better. Well, eventually. Maybe.

Hydrogenis-magtheridon · December 23, 2020, 1:50pm

So, 20% of raid team did get loot and next week you might be in that 20%.
Wasnt it always like that?
Do we really need new metric like Loot/time spent? At our job, we have same metric, do we need the same in a game?

Lightsweep-burning-legion · December 23, 2020, 1:54pm

I just meant it is repeatable content, nothing new or exciting will ever happen in the same raid, and even tho you are not assured you will get something. Boredom with big steps may come sooner than later, and boredom in game = less frequent sessions to none.

Flashpóint-draenor · December 23, 2020, 1:57pm

There was a simple, perfect solution to that problem one decade ago that worked up until Wod or Legion (skipped WoD so not sure when), Justice and Valor system. It’s the one and only way to protect people from wasting time and suffering to horrible RNG week after week, but it is fundamentally oposed to the current dev team’s attitude.

I literally enjoyed running dungeons more in TBC/Wrath/Cata for tokens that I knew were guaranteed gear of MY choosing, than the current chest/vault gambling BS. Also made raiding have a purpose as you were always getting something as long as you’re killing bosses.

You were able to buy tier set pieces, and nearly all item slots except for weapons if I recall. Ion though sh**s on that system in every interview he’s asked about it since it’s “boring” and lets you map out progress.

Rihet-burning-legion · December 23, 2020, 2:01pm

It’s not loot scarcity that plagues PVE. It’s bad RNG causing feeling of unrewarded efforts. Pace of gearing is fine, they should not make it quicker - we just need some bad luck protection so nobody feels unrewarded for effort, and that’s it.

Barzda-silvermoon · December 23, 2020, 2:03pm

Tbh I completely agree with you - while we have some bad things in SL - so far it is still one of the best x-pacs to play, and when these few glitches will be fixed - we are for a good ride.

Vanarhost-gorgonnash · December 23, 2020, 2:16pm

Atm for me its just better than BFA… after the first patch or maybe some serious balance patches I will be able to tell more.

I dislike and like different things about SL. But need to test more… especially pvp (not gonna q until they fix the 1 sec oneshots from multiple classes)