I would hope the server code is much better since it's been rewritten about 5 times. Most recently moving to their cloud infrastructure for battlenet.
I don't think code changes like that are client side or ever have really been client side except for a hot week during the alpha test. I just think they batch big changes like that into a patch instead of doing frequent hotfixes because that's their old shitty development style and it helps them keep track of it better than if Ion tells a jr dev to give the rogues a 2% dps increase on their agility modifiers in their slack group.
Edit: Though, these are just my assumptions having worked with other programmers and seeing similar-ish projects (though admittedly none of them are video games).
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
[*] There has been a lot of anger against raiders for "wanting to take away their RPG choices" by making covenants swappable. And...it seems like those players hate the other people also playing. On an MMO. They want the experience of a Bethseda game, and other people are on the way of it, so they get angry that other people dare to judge their performance (because when you play with others, how you play affects other people) and they have to do things like change their spec. (My personal opinion is that there's a lot of open world single player RPGs on the market, so why are you trying to take the game away from players that like MMOs?).
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It's funny.
On the one hand, I love my current guild, and the people are what have kept me engaged with this game as long as I have been. In fact, I have been more engaged with BfA than literally any other expansion, despite the fact that it is utter trash. And that's because of the people.
But at the same time, I 100% identify with the sentiment that all I want is a Warcraft singleplayer RPG. The problem isn't that this is an MMO. The problem is that an MMO is the only option for brand new Warcraft content. There is not another option. So Warcraft fans of all types are stuck with each other, whether they like it or not. A Bethesda style Warcraft game sounds super appealing to me.
I hate showing up to an area and having the mobs that *I* need being killed by other players. Especially players of the other faction, which means I can't even get a shared tap on them. I hate /general, /trade, and every other public channel, and the very first thing I do on any new character is leave every channel I can.
So yeah. It's a complicated topic. On the one hand, it's my friends and guild that are keeping me engaged, but on the other hand, if I could remove 100% of the randos and have an entirely curated experience that is for me only, that is what I would want. Other players optional.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
All of these balance issues would be solved by Blizzard making more frequent smaller scale balance changes.
if a new balance patch came out at the end of every single month, and the type of changes it contained were just single-digit tweaks to various abilities and classes, I think that would be a much healthier place for the game to be.
I envision a world where every month contains things like; Reduced Fire Mage Mastery coefficient by 4%, Increased damage of Rising Sun Kick by 13%, Increased damage of Starsurge by 18%, decreased damage of Thunderclap by 7%
in a world where that type of balance patch happens on a monthly or even fortnightly basis, two things happen. firstly, naturally the game will tend to be more balanced because things are actually being changed more often than simply when a new raid comes out.
Secondly, it will have a powerful psychological effect on people who play less flavour of the month classes.
Right now, if you go into the first or second week of a new raid underpowered, and you don't get any significant balance changes after that first couple of weeks, chances are you can take it to the bank that you will not see any changes until the following raid release. This means that unless you are willing to be weak for many months, you may as well re-roll then and there because the likelihood of a mid tier balance patch is near zero.
If, on the other hand, you know that the next balance patch is never more than 2 to 4 weeks away, you'll find that people will be a lot less down if their class happens to be bad at any given time, because instead of staring down the barrel of 4-6 months of being weak, you're looking at 2-4 weeks of being weak, or maybe 8 weeks if it takes two passes to buff.
I'm surprised, in the year 2020, that they need to make large sweeping changes to balance and can't tweak a number in their configs/database to fix it in 10 seconds.
They uhh, do have exactly that though? Ever seen those fixes where they say all class abilities adjusted by a %? Currently all classes actually have a hard modifier on top of their base coefficients. Some are positive and some are negative.
The only issue is that, even if you do flat number changes, all classes scale differently. If you nerf x class by y% because they are doing y% more damage than the average in the first patch, then suddenly a combo of higher ilvl, new trinkets, maybe a new system cause them to increase by way more/less than the other classes and you just need to do it again. So, sometimes they try to adjust things that are breaking that scaling. Even if you just do blanket adjustments every tier, they could scale unfairly during just that tiers gearing process.
The flat tweaks allow them to resolve huge disparities quickly though, which is why we almost never get specs that are completely out of the meta for performance reasons. Pretty much we have been at the point for 2 expansions or more where it is utility or fitting into a tiers boss mechanics theme better that makes classes rise and fall. Like when ranged cleave became a bigger thing than usual and those classes just took off, or when ranged in general was just too good on every fight, or when you needed as many immunities as possible.
All of these balance issues would be solved by Blizzard making more frequent smaller scale balance changes.
if a new balance patch came out at the end of every single month, and the type of changes it contained were just single-digit tweaks to various abilities and classes, I think that would be a much healthier place for the game to be.
I envision a world where every month contains things like; Reduced Fire Mage Mastery coefficient by 4%, Increased damage of Rising Sun Kick by 13%, Increased damage of Starsurge by 18%, decreased damage of Thunderclap by 7%
in a world where that type of balance patch happens on a monthly or even fortnightly basis, two things happen. firstly, naturally the game will tend to be more balanced because things are actually being changed more often than simply when a new raid comes out.
Secondly, it will have a powerful psychological effect on people who play less flavour of the month classes.
Right now, if you go into the first or second week of a new raid underpowered, and you don't get any significant balance changes after that first couple of weeks, chances are you can take it to the bank that you will not see any changes until the following raid release. This means that unless you are willing to be weak for many months, you may as well re-roll then and there because the likelihood of a mid tier balance patch is near zero.
If, on the other hand, you know that the next balance patch is never more than 2 to 4 weeks away, you'll find that people will be a lot less down if their class happens to be bad at any given time, because instead of staring down the barrel of 4-6 months of being weak, you're looking at 2-4 weeks of being weak, or maybe 8 weeks if it takes two passes to buff.
I'm surprised, in the year 2020, that they need to make large sweeping changes to balance and can't tweak a number in their configs/database to fix it in 10 seconds.
They uhh, do have exactly that though? Ever seen those fixes where they say all class abilities adjusted by a %? Currently all classes actually have a hard modifier on top of their base coefficients. Some are positive and some are negative.
The only issue is that, even if you do flat number changes, all classes scale differently. If you nerf x class by y% because they are doing y% more damage than the average in the first patch, then suddenly a combo of higher ilvl, new trinkets, maybe a new system cause them to increase by way more/less than the other classes and you just need to do it again. So, sometimes they try to adjust things that are breaking that scaling. Even if you just do blanket adjustments every tier, they could scale unfairly during just that tiers gearing process.
The flat tweaks allow them to resolve huge disparities quickly though, which is why we almost never get specs that are completely out of the meta for performance reasons. Pretty much we have been at the point for 2 expansions or more where it is utility or fitting into a tiers boss mechanics theme better that makes classes rise and fall. Like when ranged cleave became a bigger thing than usual and those classes just took off, or when ranged in general was just too good on every fight, or when you needed as many immunities as possible.
I wasn't questioning the ability, rather the lack of desire to tinker with it every week rather than once a quarter.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Their willingness to tinker is highly selective too, and doesn't make a lot of sense. For example, they decided to put a hard cap of 8 targets on Paladin's Glimmer of Light azerite trait. And yet they have done nothing at all to curtail the absolute bonkers burst damage of fire mages, or the fact that fire is so vastly superior to the other two mage specs that one has to question why anyone would play anything but fire in this current environment.
All of these balance issues would be solved by Blizzard making more frequent smaller scale balance changes.
if a new balance patch came out at the end of every single month, and the type of changes it contained were just single-digit tweaks to various abilities and classes, I think that would be a much healthier place for the game to be.
I envision a world where every month contains things like; Reduced Fire Mage Mastery coefficient by 4%, Increased damage of Rising Sun Kick by 13%, Increased damage of Starsurge by 18%, decreased damage of Thunderclap by 7%
in a world where that type of balance patch happens on a monthly or even fortnightly basis, two things happen. firstly, naturally the game will tend to be more balanced because things are actually being changed more often than simply when a new raid comes out.
Secondly, it will have a powerful psychological effect on people who play less flavour of the month classes.
Right now, if you go into the first or second week of a new raid underpowered, and you don't get any significant balance changes after that first couple of weeks, chances are you can take it to the bank that you will not see any changes until the following raid release. This means that unless you are willing to be weak for many months, you may as well re-roll then and there because the likelihood of a mid tier balance patch is near zero.
If, on the other hand, you know that the next balance patch is never more than 2 to 4 weeks away, you'll find that people will be a lot less down if their class happens to be bad at any given time, because instead of staring down the barrel of 4-6 months of being weak, you're looking at 2-4 weeks of being weak, or maybe 8 weeks if it takes two passes to buff.
I'm surprised, in the year 2020, that they need to make large sweeping changes to balance and can't tweak a number in their configs/database to fix it in 10 seconds.
They uhh, do have exactly that though? Ever seen those fixes where they say all class abilities adjusted by a %? Currently all classes actually have a hard modifier on top of their base coefficients. Some are positive and some are negative.
The only issue is that, even if you do flat number changes, all classes scale differently. If you nerf x class by y% because they are doing y% more damage than the average in the first patch, then suddenly a combo of higher ilvl, new trinkets, maybe a new system cause them to increase by way more/less than the other classes and you just need to do it again. So, sometimes they try to adjust things that are breaking that scaling. Even if you just do blanket adjustments every tier, they could scale unfairly during just that tiers gearing process.
The flat tweaks allow them to resolve huge disparities quickly though, which is why we almost never get specs that are completely out of the meta for performance reasons. Pretty much we have been at the point for 2 expansions or more where it is utility or fitting into a tiers boss mechanics theme better that makes classes rise and fall. Like when ranged cleave became a bigger thing than usual and those classes just took off, or when ranged in general was just too good on every fight, or when you needed as many immunities as possible.
It's not ability to make such changes but a willingness to make changes more frequently and regularly.
If you adjust classes every month then you'll be adjusting classes multiple times per-patch. Scaling problems aren't really a problem when you take stock regularly... if a new system comes out and fire mages are OP in a month's time then you adjust them then. Flavor of the month is literally "flavor of the month" instead of "flavor of 8.2 and 8.3 because it ain't changin' pal".
I played an Arcane mage during Battle for Dazar'alor (8.1) and it was a pretty weak spec. Some fights, where extreme burst had value such as Mechatorque, were pretty decent for you. For the most part the specialization has been in the bottom five DPS specs... often significantly... for the majority of the expansion.
By the time of Nazjartar (8.2) I was still playing Arcane and even dabbling in Mythic raiding but my interest was waning. Essences hadn't done much for the spec... by contrast Fire was starting to take off with Memory of Lucid Dreams creating new and powerful synergies with Azerite Traits.
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Well tomorrow we get what should be a huge set of announcements for shadowlands. I think at a bare min we get beta happening within days, all the major systems being outlined in detail and possibly going live with beta. Likely a release date as well.
It's not ability to make such changes but a willingness to make changes more frequently and regularly.
If you adjust classes every month then you'll be adjusting classes multiple times per-patch. Scaling problems aren't really a problem when you take stock regularly... if a new system comes out and fire mages are OP in a month's time then you adjust them then. Flavor of the month is literally "flavor of the month" instead of "flavor of 8.2 and 8.3 because it ain't changin' pal".
This exactly. The other big issue with infrequent balance passes that I forgot to mention originally is that the more infrequent the balance passes, the more important it becomes to get each one 100% right, because it's effects will be relevant for a long time.
If on the other hand they do a monthly or fortnightly numbers pass, it becomes less significant if they get it slightly wrong or overdo it, because it's only a few weeks until the next one and they can correct it.
Well tomorrow we get what should be a huge set of announcements for shadowlands. I think at a bare min we get beta happening within days, all the major systems being outlined in detail and possibly going live with beta. Likely a release date as well.
Yeah I think we'll see beta this week. Shadowlands lives or dies on the high wire balancing act between class, spec, covenants, soulbinds and conduits, so they need as much time as possible to figure out the numbers. Elune help them all because it looks like a mess right now.
I'm hearing some "I'm not under NDA but if I was I couldn't discuss it, check back on Thursday at exactly 4pm UK time" stuff from content creators, so it should be an interesting few days coming up.
dylman on
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Yeah a few people I follow very obviously but indirectly said beta. But I mean, I don’t think you need a crystal ball to predict that one. If this was one month ago like planned maybe, but at this point I expect them to say it will be beta the day after the stream, or even the day of. New builds usually happen on wednesdays.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I've had alpha since mid April and have barely logged on to it. I don't get a lot of satisfaction out of template characters & disjointed testing areas, I much prefer to get a rhythm rolling and do a full character copy -> introductory experience -> start to finish levelling experience.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
I am the opposite. I love templates and just playing with every class spec.
I once had my server list set to the tournament realms somehow and had a blast making and outfitting characters. I also went nuts on the bfa beta making new chars, using the vendors and testing all kinds of setups in duels. I could likely do that for months without playing the real game.
Preach thinks we're gonna get a release date and a beta announcement.
A handful of YouTubers also seem to think Blizzard has one more "big thing" that they will announce today, whether that is a new feature, or some major plot reveal, or something pretty huge about the game itself.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
If beta doesn’t start now it would be insane. They kind of have to.
Release date also makes sense. If it really is coming this year, it would still be a somewhat later release date reveal.
Not sure what else big could be. Unless something is that would normally be prepatch is getting pushed live early. We did get those initial leveling changes in late legion. They also seemed forced and unfinished (and were heavily changed later after much dislike of the difficulty and speed ) but who knows. There is like no way they could fit in the leveling changes early right?
Preach thinks we're gonna get a release date and a beta announcement.
A handful of YouTubers also seem to think Blizzard has one more "big thing" that they will announce today, whether that is a new feature, or some major plot reveal, or something pretty huge about the game itself.
Not enough RNG in Shadowlands, introducing a new system where any piece of armor can proc a "infinite bars" or "twisted dingleberry" or other abilities that randomly do random accounts of damage. What RNG fun!
Also, you @Lucascraft will always get it on a belt. Every. Damn. Time.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I'm hoping for a 2021 launch. I don't want to see Shadowlands before it's ready.
I know we're all keen for new expansions but I'd happily have played three or four more months of Legion 7.3.5 if it meant avoiding the disaster of 8.0 and 8.1.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
8.0 and 8.1 still would've happened because Blizzard doesn't listen to feedback until it's too late (i.e. after release).
Blizzard's insistence that they can still hit a 2020 release date is honestly a bit worrisome. It's July now. The game is still in alpha. The game still does not even have all of it's core pillars of progression available for playtesting. Soulbinds are in the build, but not actually implemented. They just exist as data bits for dataminers to look at. And from the data mining that has been done, the first pass is not ready for public consumption. Soulbinds are incomplete, and some of them are so bad they're embarrassing. On top of that, the Legendary system has barely begun to make its way into the game. Some of the lesser components are craftable now, but the actual legendary drops that come from Torghast are still not in the game.
In fact, we still don't even know what the drop cadence is going to look like yet in Torghast.
And then on top of that they're still tinkering with core class designs.
As a shaman healer, I'm still desperately praying that they change our mastery next expansion, because Deep Healing is garbage. It's one of the worst masteries in the entire game. They recently fixed/changed the Arms warrior mastery to be less passive (deep wounds) and more about getting those hits in. Which is a good thing. Hopefully they take another pass at Resto Shamans as well.
And anyway, I say all of that to say this: They aren't even remotely done with the alpha stage. There's no way we see Beta till at least August, and that's if they rush the alpha. Given the current timeline, and the rate at which things are being adjusted and need to be adjusted on the alpha, there's just no way they can hit 2020 unless they cut some major corners and rush things.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
If they don’t announce all those unreleased systems as available for testing with beta, then there is no way it should release in 2020.
But I also thought they were locked into 2020 as a release. I agree with how far we are at this point it shouldn’t be 2020, but just assumed it was inevitable and was hoping it would all work out. Really depends on how far forward we are shooting from this stream.
They have historically always targeted the fall release window (only exception is BC which was delayed) so it would be pretty surprising if they didn’t release in 2020 (lord I hope they do, fuck nyalotha already)
Their beta cycle has gotten tighter the last couple expansions so maybe they don’t feel like they need the traditional ~4 months, but they’re still pretty up against it by the time you include the standard 1 month of prepatch.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
No release date yet but they did just say "we are shipping this fall" with a heavily subtexted "come hell or high water."
edit: Beta coming next week, along with The Maw opening up for testing.
Shadowlands dev update stream this morning they just announced they are planning on releasing this fall no matter what, and beta is next week. Which is not inspiring much confidence that they learned anything from BfA's launch.
But hey, the physical CE has Very Pretty Colors!
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Eeeehhh I think what we've seen in Alpha has already shown that they really did learn from BfA. They've been more responsive to feedback than literally ever before.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
The Maw seems like it could be either really interesting or really frustrating depending on just how hard it is to get away once you piss off The Jailer.
Also this is definitely a million percent Darksiders: The Expansion.
edit: on balance, Ion says they haven't done any polishing or tuning yet and have been focusing on fixing bad ideas rather than tuning numbers, and that will happen later in beta.
I'm not a fan of the concept of "Discoverable Content" like in Mechagon and Timeless Isle. What this means is tons of time spent flying around just looking for something to do/kill rather than having an actual objective. Mechagon can be extremely frustrating because the entire zone is "discoverable content" and there's not actually any real content there to do.
The Black Empire Assaults are kind of the same way. Flying around looking for events, rares, chests, that is not fun gameplay. It feels like a waste of time.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Okay I'm going to triple post here, Ion making a pretty strong statement about Black Lives Matter to end the stream and I actually think that's really important.
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Well they said soulbinds would start testing with just Venthyr. Might explain why their trees felt a little more potent and finished from data mining.
Was hoping we would get more of an outline on these things but maybe that will be in coming text posts. Still there was new stuff coming so that’s exciting. Definitely sounds like the expansion will have tons more to do in general than bfa ever did.
I choose to just... trust them with regards to the balancing of all this shit. Ion was right in saying that there has to be a process and that process has tuning last. Trying to do otherwise just to appease fans who can’t trust them due to screwing up bfa would likely mess up more than it fixes, and cause delays AND and unfinished release. In other words, they shouldn’t just kneejerk balance a bunch of shit because people datamined numbers and immediately go “here we go agaaaaaain” if they aren’t fixed within 24 hours.
So basically have to hope they get it right, but still provide meaningful feedback about how it isn’t right yet. Then just be patient. Cause weather they do well or screw up, they have to go about the process the right way.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Well they said soulbinds would start testing with just Venthyr. Might explain why their trees felt a little more potent and finished from data mining.
Was hoping we would get more of an outline on these things but maybe that will be in coming text posts. Still there was new stuff coming so that’s exciting. Definitely sounds like the expansion will have tons more to do in general than bfa ever did.
I choose to just... trust them with regards to the balancing of all this shit. Ion was right in saying that there has to be a process and that process has tuning last. Trying to do otherwise just to appease fans who can’t trust them due to screwing up bfa would likely mess up more than it fixes, and cause delays AND and unfinished release. In other words, they shouldn’t just kneejerk balance a bunch of shit because people datamined numbers and immediately go “here we go agaaaaaain” if they aren’t fixed within 24 hours.
So basically have to hope they get it right, but still provide meaningful feedback about how it isn’t right yet. Then just be patient. Cause weather they do well or screw up, they have to go about the process the right way.
I think the Paladin Night Fae ability was a good example of how trying to tune the numbers would have been much worse before they took the time to make sure the idea was actually sound.
I was hoping Ion would announce that they're replacing the Kyrian Steward signature ability with something entirely new that isn't complete garbage. Getting a once-per-battle Stoneskin potion is not good at all. Not compared to being able to teleport or transform into a ghost wolf (fox) with blink. Like. Kyrian is getting utterly screwwwwwwwed on their signature ability.
And what's even worse is that at Blizzcon the signature ability turned them into a zippy ball of light, kinda like what you become in Halls of Valor. They had a mobility move, which felt a whole lot better than getting a stoneskin potion. Ugh.
Okay I'm going to triple post here, Ion making a pretty strong statement about Black Lives Matter to end the stream and I actually think that's really important.
Well yeah, now he’s going to be banned from Blizzard for six months.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I was hoping Ion would announce that they're replacing the Kyrian Steward signature ability with something entirely new that isn't complete garbage. Getting a once-per-battle Stoneskin potion is not good at all. Not compared to being able to teleport or transform into a ghost wolf (fox) with blink. Like. Kyrian is getting utterly screwwwwwwwed on their signature ability.
And what's even worse is that at Blizzcon the signature ability turned them into a zippy ball of light, kinda like what you become in Halls of Valor. They had a mobility move, which felt a whole lot better than getting a stoneskin potion. Ugh.
Signature abilities should probably just be open-world only.
I am psyched about the legendary crafter, but I am a bit worried about professions in shadowland. While Ion was talking, I was thinking legendary item crafting was only going to be accessed by those with some profession skills like in vanilla, but they went with a free for all.
I am a bit worried that crafting will be mediocre in this expansion.
I am psyched about the legendary crafter, but I am a bit worried about professions in shadowland. While Ion was talking, I was thinking legendary item crafting was only going to be accessed by those with some profession skills like in vanilla, but they went with a free for all.
I am a bit worried that crafting will be mediocre in this expansion.
With all the stuff people have found with optional slots to upgrade crafted items, give them unique effects, choose secondaries, etc, I think this is looking to be one of the best expansions for crafting ever.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Also I know a lot of people are annoyed about stones/oils coming back, and that's fair, but speaking just for myself that's the kind of crunchy bullshit I really enjoy.
I was hoping Ion would announce that they're replacing the Kyrian Steward signature ability with something entirely new that isn't complete garbage. Getting a once-per-battle Stoneskin potion is not good at all. Not compared to being able to teleport or transform into a ghost wolf (fox) with blink. Like. Kyrian is getting utterly screwwwwwwwed on their signature ability.
And what's even worse is that at Blizzcon the signature ability turned them into a zippy ball of light, kinda like what you become in Halls of Valor. They had a mobility move, which felt a whole lot better than getting a stoneskin potion. Ugh.
Signature abilities should probably just be open-world only.
That would make the steward even worse than it already is.
Preach has made this point before, regarding signature abilities for covenants -- Blizzard cannot ever design around them. They can't design boss encounters, dungeons, quests, or anything, assuming players have the signature abilities, because for any given signature ability, only a quarter of the playerbase (best case scenario) will have access to that ability.
That means that any content in the game cannot assume players will be able to use the Kyrian Steward potion to cleanse themselves. It might be *nice* to have for one or two specific bosses, but it will never be essential. And if they restrict that to open-world only, that even further reduces the times when the potion will be useful. When was the last time you ever needed to cleanse a Disease/Curse/Poison/Magic effect while world questing? The answer is never. You have never once needed to do that.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Cleanse Disease/Poison was suuuuuper relevant in several M+ dungeons.
My point was more that if they're not going to all have broadly the same effect and therefore can't be balanced/designed around, they probably shouldn't be usable for end game PvE/PvP content.
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I would hope the server code is much better since it's been rewritten about 5 times. Most recently moving to their cloud infrastructure for battlenet.
I don't think code changes like that are client side or ever have really been client side except for a hot week during the alpha test. I just think they batch big changes like that into a patch instead of doing frequent hotfixes because that's their old shitty development style and it helps them keep track of it better than if Ion tells a jr dev to give the rogues a 2% dps increase on their agility modifiers in their slack group.
Edit: Though, these are just my assumptions having worked with other programmers and seeing similar-ish projects (though admittedly none of them are video games).
It's funny.
On the one hand, I love my current guild, and the people are what have kept me engaged with this game as long as I have been. In fact, I have been more engaged with BfA than literally any other expansion, despite the fact that it is utter trash. And that's because of the people.
But at the same time, I 100% identify with the sentiment that all I want is a Warcraft singleplayer RPG. The problem isn't that this is an MMO. The problem is that an MMO is the only option for brand new Warcraft content. There is not another option. So Warcraft fans of all types are stuck with each other, whether they like it or not. A Bethesda style Warcraft game sounds super appealing to me.
I hate showing up to an area and having the mobs that *I* need being killed by other players. Especially players of the other faction, which means I can't even get a shared tap on them. I hate /general, /trade, and every other public channel, and the very first thing I do on any new character is leave every channel I can.
So yeah. It's a complicated topic. On the one hand, it's my friends and guild that are keeping me engaged, but on the other hand, if I could remove 100% of the randos and have an entirely curated experience that is for me only, that is what I would want. Other players optional.
They uhh, do have exactly that though? Ever seen those fixes where they say all class abilities adjusted by a %? Currently all classes actually have a hard modifier on top of their base coefficients. Some are positive and some are negative.
The only issue is that, even if you do flat number changes, all classes scale differently. If you nerf x class by y% because they are doing y% more damage than the average in the first patch, then suddenly a combo of higher ilvl, new trinkets, maybe a new system cause them to increase by way more/less than the other classes and you just need to do it again. So, sometimes they try to adjust things that are breaking that scaling. Even if you just do blanket adjustments every tier, they could scale unfairly during just that tiers gearing process.
The flat tweaks allow them to resolve huge disparities quickly though, which is why we almost never get specs that are completely out of the meta for performance reasons. Pretty much we have been at the point for 2 expansions or more where it is utility or fitting into a tiers boss mechanics theme better that makes classes rise and fall. Like when ranged cleave became a bigger thing than usual and those classes just took off, or when ranged in general was just too good on every fight, or when you needed as many immunities as possible.
I wasn't questioning the ability, rather the lack of desire to tinker with it every week rather than once a quarter.
Why nerf one, but not the other?
Just as an example.
It's not ability to make such changes but a willingness to make changes more frequently and regularly.
If you adjust classes every month then you'll be adjusting classes multiple times per-patch. Scaling problems aren't really a problem when you take stock regularly... if a new system comes out and fire mages are OP in a month's time then you adjust them then. Flavor of the month is literally "flavor of the month" instead of "flavor of 8.2 and 8.3 because it ain't changin' pal".
I played an Arcane mage during Battle for Dazar'alor (8.1) and it was a pretty weak spec. Some fights, where extreme burst had value such as Mechatorque, were pretty decent for you. For the most part the specialization has been in the bottom five DPS specs... often significantly... for the majority of the expansion.
By the time of Nazjartar (8.2) I was still playing Arcane and even dabbling in Mythic raiding but my interest was waning. Essences hadn't done much for the spec... by contrast Fire was starting to take off with Memory of Lucid Dreams creating new and powerful synergies with Azerite Traits.
Then in a 8.2.5 hotfix, over 4 months after the release of 8.2, they had finally tweaked up the damage for Arcane a little. I had long moved on from the character and, by that point, raiding at all. They are just too slow and selective about balancing these things out. It's tiring.
This exactly. The other big issue with infrequent balance passes that I forgot to mention originally is that the more infrequent the balance passes, the more important it becomes to get each one 100% right, because it's effects will be relevant for a long time.
If on the other hand they do a monthly or fortnightly numbers pass, it becomes less significant if they get it slightly wrong or overdo it, because it's only a few weeks until the next one and they can correct it.
Yeah I think we'll see beta this week. Shadowlands lives or dies on the high wire balancing act between class, spec, covenants, soulbinds and conduits, so they need as much time as possible to figure out the numbers. Elune help them all because it looks like a mess right now.
I'm hearing some "I'm not under NDA but if I was I couldn't discuss it, check back on Thursday at exactly 4pm UK time" stuff from content creators, so it should be an interesting few days coming up.
I once had my server list set to the tournament realms somehow and had a blast making and outfitting characters. I also went nuts on the bfa beta making new chars, using the vendors and testing all kinds of setups in duels. I could likely do that for months without playing the real game.
A handful of YouTubers also seem to think Blizzard has one more "big thing" that they will announce today, whether that is a new feature, or some major plot reveal, or something pretty huge about the game itself.
Release date also makes sense. If it really is coming this year, it would still be a somewhat later release date reveal.
Not sure what else big could be. Unless something is that would normally be prepatch is getting pushed live early. We did get those initial leveling changes in late legion. They also seemed forced and unfinished (and were heavily changed later after much dislike of the difficulty and speed ) but who knows. There is like no way they could fit in the leveling changes early right?
Not enough RNG in Shadowlands, introducing a new system where any piece of armor can proc a "infinite bars" or "twisted dingleberry" or other abilities that randomly do random accounts of damage. What RNG fun!
Also, you @Lucascraft will always get it on a belt. Every. Damn. Time.
I know we're all keen for new expansions but I'd happily have played three or four more months of Legion 7.3.5 if it meant avoiding the disaster of 8.0 and 8.1.
In fact, we still don't even know what the drop cadence is going to look like yet in Torghast.
And then on top of that they're still tinkering with core class designs.
As a shaman healer, I'm still desperately praying that they change our mastery next expansion, because Deep Healing is garbage. It's one of the worst masteries in the entire game. They recently fixed/changed the Arms warrior mastery to be less passive (deep wounds) and more about getting those hits in. Which is a good thing. Hopefully they take another pass at Resto Shamans as well.
And anyway, I say all of that to say this: They aren't even remotely done with the alpha stage. There's no way we see Beta till at least August, and that's if they rush the alpha. Given the current timeline, and the rate at which things are being adjusted and need to be adjusted on the alpha, there's just no way they can hit 2020 unless they cut some major corners and rush things.
But I also thought they were locked into 2020 as a release. I agree with how far we are at this point it shouldn’t be 2020, but just assumed it was inevitable and was hoping it would all work out. Really depends on how far forward we are shooting from this stream.
Their beta cycle has gotten tighter the last couple expansions so maybe they don’t feel like they need the traditional ~4 months, but they’re still pretty up against it by the time you include the standard 1 month of prepatch.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
edit: Beta coming next week, along with The Maw opening up for testing.
But hey, the physical CE has Very Pretty Colors!
Also this is definitely a million percent Darksiders: The Expansion.
edit: on balance, Ion says they haven't done any polishing or tuning yet and have been focusing on fixing bad ideas rather than tuning numbers, and that will happen later in beta.
The Black Empire Assaults are kind of the same way. Flying around looking for events, rares, chests, that is not fun gameplay. It feels like a waste of time.
Was hoping we would get more of an outline on these things but maybe that will be in coming text posts. Still there was new stuff coming so that’s exciting. Definitely sounds like the expansion will have tons more to do in general than bfa ever did.
I choose to just... trust them with regards to the balancing of all this shit. Ion was right in saying that there has to be a process and that process has tuning last. Trying to do otherwise just to appease fans who can’t trust them due to screwing up bfa would likely mess up more than it fixes, and cause delays AND and unfinished release. In other words, they shouldn’t just kneejerk balance a bunch of shit because people datamined numbers and immediately go “here we go agaaaaaain” if they aren’t fixed within 24 hours.
So basically have to hope they get it right, but still provide meaningful feedback about how it isn’t right yet. Then just be patient. Cause weather they do well or screw up, they have to go about the process the right way.
I think the Paladin Night Fae ability was a good example of how trying to tune the numbers would have been much worse before they took the time to make sure the idea was actually sound.
And what's even worse is that at Blizzcon the signature ability turned them into a zippy ball of light, kinda like what you become in Halls of Valor. They had a mobility move, which felt a whole lot better than getting a stoneskin potion. Ugh.
Signature abilities should probably just be open-world only.
I am a bit worried that crafting will be mediocre in this expansion.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
With all the stuff people have found with optional slots to upgrade crafted items, give them unique effects, choose secondaries, etc, I think this is looking to be one of the best expansions for crafting ever.
That would make the steward even worse than it already is.
Preach has made this point before, regarding signature abilities for covenants -- Blizzard cannot ever design around them. They can't design boss encounters, dungeons, quests, or anything, assuming players have the signature abilities, because for any given signature ability, only a quarter of the playerbase (best case scenario) will have access to that ability.
That means that any content in the game cannot assume players will be able to use the Kyrian Steward potion to cleanse themselves. It might be *nice* to have for one or two specific bosses, but it will never be essential. And if they restrict that to open-world only, that even further reduces the times when the potion will be useful. When was the last time you ever needed to cleanse a Disease/Curse/Poison/Magic effect while world questing? The answer is never. You have never once needed to do that.
My point was more that if they're not going to all have broadly the same effect and therefore can't be balanced/designed around, they probably shouldn't be usable for end game PvE/PvP content.