This patch cadence isn't good enough for people without many alts

Community General Discussion
41

It wasn’t that those things were in the game that made them unpopular. Its the fact that they were compulsory content that made them unpopular.

They actually added a good deal of Quality to the game in the form of having mini-games to work towards.

But Blizzard forced it upon us, rather than made them optional and rewarding. So many many people didn’t like them.

DF actually lacks a small system to enjoy, other than the Professions system. But then professions aren’t for everyone.

I actually hope we see another Zereth Mortis style zone (in puzzles not theme).

42

Perhaps it was’t clear on my post but I thrive on compulsory content and I get super disappointed when Blizzard isn’t forcing us to do things. It ruins my day.

43

For me this expansion is great. It removed the boring chores and I can log in and play to have fun.

Before Legion none of that endless expected grind existed and the game was successful so I don’t believe it is necessary. However there does seem to an adjustment period for those who don’t seem to be able to find things to do unless Blizzard is expressly telling them to do a set of tasks.

Make you play metrics were the worst thing to be introduced to the game. That’s not to say they can’t add other fun content to the game that isn’t required to gain power on your character.

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44

Each to their own I guess.

I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be forced to do anything. If it were optional and you wanted to do it, then you would do it anyway.

But if you just wanted to enjoy area’s of the game you enjoyed, but you had to spend 2 hours per week per character running something boring like Torghast, then you’d be alot less likely to play the game at all.

Optional is best for everyone. However, I don’t see why there can’t be some cross over.

45

No you just think that subjectivity is the be-all end-all invisible shield from the playground. There are aesthetics and armor sets/weapons that are popular and cool, and those that aren’t.

Mage Tower weapons look infinitely better than anything in Dragonflight. That is technically a subjective statement, but not really if 95/100 people agree with it. Everything is subjective if you want to avoid taking into consideration how people engage with content, and the fact is that some cosmetics are far more popular than others, therefore, they have more value and are better.

I don’t want to dispute your tastes but I highly doubt that most people prefer any DF cosmetics to what we had in Shadowlands and Legion. BFA wasn’t that good imo either because, but every other expansion usually has a lot of highly sought-after sets and weapons.

We get that every time, I already broke down how bad those are and why. No one’s going out in Tuskarr shoulder pads, no one.

Old and outdated stuff that hasn’t been available so far, with very few exceptions so far. I will agree that it has potential tho.

Human ones look good on 2 classes and completely out of place for everyone else. Orc looks better but that’s still not enough considering how basic and unappealing the rest of the cosmetics are.

Very disingenuous and pointless statement.

What content, what options?

46

I wouldn’t say that. I mean, you’re sporting 37170 achievement points. And the achievement system in WoW – like in other games – is very much a system meant to entice players to do the tasks that the achievements entail. That’s no different from past systems where Blizzard have listed a set of tasks for players to do. The Achievement system lists tasks as well.

I certainly remember when the Achievement system was introduced in patch 3.0 at the end of TBC and how that suddenly flipped the game on itself and it stopped being about doing whatever you felt like, and instead being about completing those achievements.
There was a magical crab to be fished in Outland. I would never have bothered with that before, but now it was an achievement, so obviously I had to get it!

And you could extrapolate it to mounts and pets and toys and other collections as well. In Vanilla you couldn’t collect things. Your mounts and pets took up a bag slot, so you really only had the ones that you used.
After they became collections the game instantly compelled you to collect them all like some Pokémon trainer.

Blizzard may have cut out the Artifact Power grinds, but the big systems still rule WoW like they have for many years.

Achievements.
Collections.

Those two systems are the focal point of all content in WoW. And Blizzard very much compels you to care about them.

47

a mmo rpg needs worldbuilding and i feel like the dragonisles have a good feel to them with what you can do.

But end gamecontent needs some stuff yeah. Especially pvp finally needs some new bgs after all these years. Atleast raiders and m+ people can expect raids and new dungeons along the line for sure. A mega dungeon is pretty sure and alot of expansions some extra dungeons are added

48

Achievements haven’t stopped though, that activity well and truly still exists. It’s fun and gives very little rewards. It’s mostly score. I’ve also been playing for for a long time so collecting isn’t something I have to do daily.

Mount, transmog and toy farming also still exist. Those are activities many still do every week.

However neither of none of those affect your player power and aren’t a compulsory grind of chores. I can do them as and when I feel like it and nothing is lost.

49

Yes. Because most aspects of a game are subjective.
So why are you hammering on me sharing MY opinions? That’s not the point I’m making.

Sure, but that’s all beside the point that I was making (and that wasn’t even to you in the first place).

Yeah, so? Doesn’t change the fact that that popularity is still based on subjective taste and opinion.

Overal? Sure.
But that’s not really a strong point to make since the artifact weapons were THE build-around feature of an entire expansion. DF, because of its very nature, is lacking that (which just enforces my initial post - that DF doesn’t have borrowed power to grind so the content is consumed quicker and becomes obsolete quicker; in terms of power).

‘every time’? Renown has been in the game since Shadowlands. Come on.

Literally not true.

Also literally not true; it has loads of new stuff.

Again; subjective.
I LIKE basic. I don’t like that over the top nonsense. I don’t like looking like a monster. I don’t like looking like a walking neon billboard sign. I don’t like looking like an edgy emo wannabe.

How so? They offer transmog. In a minor patch.
So not pointless and definitely not disingenuous.

The transmog you could loot from the tower in the Waking Shores that was non-armor type specific. And the Zul’Gurub stuff. For instance.

50

My point is that it’s all systems design.

In Vanilla WoW and TBC there was only power grinds. Gear.
Simple game with simple design.

Then Blizzard added two extra core pillars to the game:

Achievements & Collections.

So Retail WoW ended up consisting of systems design that revolved around the following 3:

Player power.
Vanity achievements.
Cosmetic collections.

Those are the systems designs that everything in the game traces back to. Doesn’t matter what you do in the game, it’s anchored to one or more of those.

And essentially they’re the same. They’re carrots. :carrot: :carrot: :carrot:

Some players are very compelled by player power and the desire to do lots of damage or whatever, and will chase those carrots. :carrot:

Other players are very compelled by achievements and the desire to feel accomplished through completionism, and they will chase those carrots. :carrot:

And yet other players are very compelled by cosmetics and the desire to build their collections and revel in their appearances, and they will chase those carrots. :carrot:

And then there are the nutcases who revel in all of them and who wants all the carrots. :carrot: :carrot: :carrot::rabbit2:

If you look at other MMORPG, RPGs, ARPGs, or similar, then they’re exactly the same. They’re a mix of player power, vanity achievements, and cosmetic collections.
All of them.

What has happened in WoW is sort of the following:

Player A: “I love achievements and collections, but I don’t have enough time to do them because I have to grind player power all the time. Can you remove power grinds Blizzard, please?”

Blizzard: “Sure, we’ll do that!”

Player B: “I really liked pursuing player power and now I can’t! I don’t care about achievements and collections, so what am I supposed to do now?!”

Player A: “Why don’t you just play the game less or level some alts??”

Player B: :angry:

3 Likes
51

I agree with you on this.
I myself am ‘suffering’ because a group of vocal players didn’t want borrowed power or endless grinds in the game. I enjoyed both those things (with the caveat that it has to be a FUN system in the first place; case in point: Artifact weapon AP grind was fun. Azerite Armor AP grind wasn’t fun. Imo of course).

2 Likes
52

Yeah, and it’s probably yet another case of Blizzard’s design swinging like a pendant from one extreme to the other.

If you look at Battle for Azeroth or even Shadowlands, then you might say that those expansions had a lot of player power and very were driven by that design.

And the feedback from people who didn’t like that was very straight-forward: Get rid of it!

So Blizzard’s pendant swung to the complete opposite side, which is what the design in Dragonflight exemplifies.

There’s close to zero player power to be had beyond the gear upgrades you get. Instead Blizzard have tuned up the volume of achievements & cosmetics – the expansion is practically drowning in it.

That obviously satisfies the crowd who were unhappy with all the player power in past expansions, but it doesn’t do anything for the people who liked having that player power to pursue.

And it doesn’t seem as if everyone is willing or able to convert to being achievement hunters or completionists or mount collectors or whatever.
Some people really just want to chase their:

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53

I don’t think collecting things during downtime compares to a compulsory grind or fall behind on your player power.

1 Like
54

What’s downtime?

Isn’t the whole point here that Blizzard stuffs their game with :carrot: :carrot: :carrot: to make it compelling for people to play WoW? Different people like different :carrot: :carrot: :carrot: but it’s not part of the design to have downtime for anyone.

Downtime is what happens when a player has run out of desirable :carrot: :carrot: :carrot: to chase.

When that can happen differs from player to player, depending on what type of :carrot: we like. Some like player power, others like achievements, and others still like cosmetics. And some like the whole lot.
And unfortunately the game has a habit of running out of some of these at some points in time, which of course sucks for some players.

Blizzard’s job is to recognize that different :rabbit2: :rabbit2: :rabbit2: like different :carrot: :carrot: :carrot: and keep the game constantly supplied with each so everyone is happy.
I believe Ion has described that has catering to different audiences.

No one player’s fun counts for more than another’s. And to Blizzard your money is as good as mine.

There is of course a fundamental design conflict because some :carrot: :carrot: are requirements for obtaining other :carrot: :carrot:
So players end up feeling forced to do one thing in order to pursue another.
If I want a certain raid achievement, then I need to get player power so I can deal with the difficulty of the raid itself.
If I want to grow my collection, then I have to do a particular achievement, because it rewards a mount.
And if I want player power, then I have to do an achievement, otherwise people won’t play with me.

For players this can suck, because it forces them to do things they might not necessarily want to do, just to further a goal that they are interested in.

For Blizzard it’s peak game design, because overlapping the systems design means that players get involved in more parts of the game and are compelled to play it more. And ultimately, if some player ends up going from being interested in a single :carrot: to being interested in multiple :carrot: :carrot:, then they get more attached to the game and are likely to play it for longer, which is good for Blizzard’s business.

You may not like player power and I may not like collections, but Blizzard desperately wants us to care about both. And achievements. The more :carrot: :carrot: :carrot: the better.

2 Likes
55

Yep, this expansion feels like there is not enough content for those of us who played most of the past expansions and could care less about M+. For some weird reason, what content there is I find difficult to enjoy. And the raid just fails to capture my interest for some reason. I think if they are going for one raid per major patch, the raids should be vast areas where artists can expose their utmost best. Unfortunately for me, this one I find among the blandest of entry raids yet.

However, I am still subscribed though, because I want to finish the Nazjatar and Mechagon achievements and 8.3 content (N´Zoth Assaults etc).

So sometimes I find myself being grateful for Dragonflight being how it is.

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56

I don’t agree. They aren’t comparable.

One is an eternal system that is available for players to take part in or ignore whenever they feel like it. The other is directly linked to your character’s power.

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57

Nonsense.

Again, you have 37170 achievement points.

Some of those achievements are time-limited, promotional, Season-specific, expansion-specific, or otherwise.
I know, because I have chased that :carrot: too.

That system is designed to compel you to throw yourself at it to your heart’s contents. It is a grind like any other.

You like your :carrot: but it’s a :carrot: like any other.

1 Like
58

I guess we simply wont agree. I can’t see any similarity between the two.

I can do any achievement from any expansion any time I feel like it. The artifact was a constant grind combined with getting the legendaries to drop. It was a make you play metric. Achievements are not make you play. They are something you can do when you feel like it. They can be totally ignored and it has no impact on your character.

If I needed achievement points to gain player power then yes I’d agree they were the same but they are mostly just meaningless.

59

Indeed there seems to be a lot of icing and no cake.

I maxed out shadowlands renown because it was meaningful for gameplay eg stamina buff and because the rewards were cool eg covenant sets that actually looked good.

I have no motivation to grind DF rep. I have no emotional investment in the factions either.

Went to Forbidden Reach- got the ring etc but again don’t care about chasing rares to arrive when they’re dead just to grind keys. Zeroth Mortis rare chasing again provided something interesting and helped alts better.

3 Likes
60

I want player power, but not at the expense of my fun; so when the content I like to do runs out of upgrades; I get bored.

I like collecting transmog, but I’m far from a completionist; I mainly just want transmog that I think looks cool or is usable in some form or another for me. So when I have what I wanted; I get bored.

Blizzard has basically ruined the alure of mounts for me with this dragonriding nonsense. They should work on adding the older mounts to this system; not later. Now.
Start with the iconic stuff; a gryphon for the alliance, a wyvern for the horde. Then maybe an iconic mount per race. Etc etc.

Because the way it is now mounts are useless and even though I don’t consider myself a collector (because I just want the mounts I like the look of), my desire to get mounts right now is close to zero.

1 Like