The interesting thing, is as much as 10.1 “wasnt played very much” i accomplished everything i wanted to do. Ive been very satisfied with my game experience. WoW has respected my time and i have used that extra time to… play classic and diablo 4 😂
I agree, the busywork you need to do in world content is relatively minimum and I'm just left to enjoy M+ and raiding when I want. It's not an all-consuming slog, it's good for me 🙂
I think the loop would be better if we could pass crests to alts. If I could get other toons geared up and bring them into raid/m+ I would have much more reason to play. One of the best parts of forbidden reach was gearing up forgotten toons and getting them to a point where they can go into relevant content.
I would limit it to wyrm crests and below. Because you will get enough aspect crests from getting your hero gear on your alt but the lower ones are the bottle neck. And if you can send aspects over you can get 5 easy 447 items which would be a bit too fast on a fresh 70.
@@TheKabukimann if you are running content where you get aspect crests I think you should be able to get as many toons to that level as you want. The flexibility to play multiple classes/specs is something the game needs. Plus it will keep players farming the crests and having something to do.
Man I got a full stack of wyrmling crests and nothing to do with but maybe vendor. There should be an item to purchase that is BoA at a loss. I look at quest rewards that are wyrmling and think it’s a waste of time.
I'll disagree. Maybe scale back the required crests by 50% along with the flightstone discounts, but there still needs to be some incentive to play the character you're gearing.
I’ve been loving it so far. Then again, I’ve been playing casually - I don’t think it means it’s a flop though. It just feels like the game respects my time more so if I need to step away for a couple of days due to real life I’m not penalized
That’s exactly how I feel. It’s spring, I’ve got stuff happening in the real world, I’m actually loving that I can spend 2 weeks hardly playing WoW then come back, grind some M+, upgrade some gear, join a raid and then use my Sparks to craft some serious 447 upgrades for a slot that I’m lacking behind in. This is the most geared I’ve been since I was properly heroic raiding back in MoP, but without all the grinding and feeling like I have to be online constantly. I sign in, I group up with guildies, we push M+ keys while having a good time and get actual good rewards for it. Great patch and expansion imo.
Exactly! And that's the problem with mandatory content. Im Penalized for not giving my time for a mandatory amount. Feels great to just be able to hop back in and out
I love Zereleck cavern so much. I just don't have a ton of time. So after playing the MSQ 7 times in a row. I settled happily into M+ pushing on all 7 of those alts. I only hate the new affixes when I play my Warrior or DK. So that's 5/7.
Having content be optional, (which is one of the first times in this games history) is the best evolution of the game. It puts the responsibility back on the developers to make the game fun and interesting. Make it fun, and people will want to play more. It also gives people time back to do other things and not feel like they are behind or "forced" to play
Yea but I do think there could be something else. It's just missing something for me personally and I'm sure there are other players like that. I like the optional stuff, but I just don't feel motivated like I did in 10.0 and .05
@@mitebg9665 Yeeeeees, guilt him for logging on to do things he wants to do in the game instead of being forced to log on to do mindless grinds. Go on, GUILT HIM.
Instead of fizzle power I'd prefer an updated adventure guide that shows a clear list of all the current things available this patch with a preview of the rewards and what to do next. I liked the sniffing game but I ran out of maps for it and now I have no clue where to get more unless I look at Wowhead. It could also include a que for races so you don't have to physically stand next to the npc to wait for nobody to show up.
My main problem with 10.1: I want to log in and do all the cool events in Zaralek. It's designed with a lot of multiplayer events in mind and I love that, however... There's just no players in the zone... I'll log in and be like "I wanna do some cool events in Zaralek". I'll go to the events, and they will be deserted. The community feast was awsome because all the people gather up together. In Zaralek I will fly to the events, and see that there are no players and I'll be sad and leave it again. Some of them I never got to do. It was the same with dragon races against other players. I NEVER TRIED IT, because every time I'd go there'd be no players and I'd wait 5 minutes and leave again. Why not make them a world quest so more players would do it? I honestly feel like the rares spawn too often, and the events happen too often as well. Make them more rare and people would gather up for it. What I love: I love questlines. I think good questlines are the bread and butter of an RPG. I looove all the story questlines. Ion once said in an interview: "If we don't add some kind of reward to questlines, noone would do it". I don't think he's right about this. I'd do all the story questlines and the blue dragonflight questline even if there was no power. I'd do the suramar campaign too. I like reknown. The niffen offer nothing I'm personally interested in and I think this is fine. Some people really want the rewards and they will do it. I'm fine with this reknown not offering something I want. Then I have time to do dungeons and level alts and do other reknowns. I still love that I don't have to do the content, and I can descide what I want to do, because there's still tons I want to do.
Yes the events being designed for multiple players, but no one doing them anymore is a big problem imo and this isn't something that all patches struggle with. The design this time is just bad. They should scale with the amount of people there or something
Agreed. I was just talking to a buddy of mine about this, last night. I want to go to the caverns and kill bosses and beat events, but nobody is there. And even getting people to simply say in chat "Hey, I'm over here at 'blah blah blah.' Come join me" has been like pulling teeth.
I use the group finder, usually there is always somebody waiting for my group. If i open a group "Zaralek Researcher" 5 - 10 Minutes before the event starts, I will get a full raid easy. If there are all rares up, I open a group "Zaralek all rares up", and get more than enough people. If I just wait, it wouldn't work, no chance to kill something there.
Yeah this is what irks me too. First two weeks I was like “Zaralek is the coolest zone ever.” Then everyone stopped coming and I was alone. Super weird reception.
I agree for the most part. I would like to see rare spawns actually be rare spawns akin to the Zenet Avis rare in Ohn'Aran plains. 8hr respawn roughly with a 100% drop chance. Then it is actually a rare "spawn" not a rare "drop." But I don't think that simply decreasing the spawn timer is enough. They practically did that with the semi recent changes to make the rares on a biweekly lockout, effectively making them "spawn" once every 5 days with the ability to catch them after that point if you missed it. But still the caverns are a dead zone. The real problem is that there are zero rewards for killing rares in the eyes of most people. Most people aren't worried about getting a drake skin fragment, or a green item transmog thats just a recolor of a set which already has 5 colorations. IDK what they should be dropping, but maybe there should just be less rares, on a longer timer, with more interesting rewards, and better drop chances/ a guaranteed progression path toward rewards like a currency to grind that you can use to buy rewards if you are unlucky.
I think THIS is one of the major issues WoW has right now, not a mandatory incentive to log you in a la Artifact Power. WoW largely relies on its Player Base to reference sources like T&E, like WoWhead, etc to tell them what to do. WoW's in-game Adventurer Journal is kinda laughable in its ability to point you to fun things to do.
@@alexanderaugunas9795 yep! I had forgotten about the frostpelt rep/quest chain up until yesterday when someone in azure span was asking where it was. It was super easy to knock out but not flagged anywhere.
Interesting to hear this perspective from you guys. I've actually found that I look forward to logging on in 10.1 even more than 10.0.5 and 10.0. The fact that I don't have mandatory fizzlewizzle to maintain has made me so much more likely to engage in all of the content. Previously, I'd just do the mandatory stuff and then I'd log off, until I got fed up with mandatory stuff then I'd just stop logging in altogether. Now I engage in all the optional content as well as the 'valuable' content because I am starting to view wow as a game again which is incredibly refreshing. At the risk of being too cheeky, it seems like you may have a little bit of stockholm syndrome from several expansions of abusive content design, now you're lost without having the threat of anxiety and fomo in the game. 😂
I think this is probably closest to my feelings on the matter. I felt/feel (cuz I still haven't finished) like the rep grinds were more or less mandatory to get the cool stuff, and I have this instinctive "I don't want to be told what to do" attitude that I still haven't grown out of. I finally decided a while ago to just log in and play, and if I don't get all the different dragon colors and what-all, so be it. I'm playing it because it is a game and I want to have fun, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm a casual player under the best of circumstances, so I've never really felt pressured to gear up much beyond what just drops from questing and WQs. That also means I feel very little pressure to do dungeons and raids - at least not those in the current expansions. I love going back and soloing old content, but that is part of the whole "casual" thing. One of the things I love about WoW in general and this expansion in particular, is how easily it accommodates both casual players like me and the people who want to do mythic raiding and world firsts. I'm in my 60s now, and hope to keep playing for many years to come.
This is exactly my position. I have always gotten burnt out of WoW (even when it was "good") because as soon as you put something in front of me that is "mandatory," I just... don't want to do it anymore. Like, I understand that the game still requires effort from me to achieve my goals, but that's exactly it, they're MY goals, not the developers'. And without that itch in the back of my mind reminding me that I wouldn't actually be grinding Artifact Power if it wasn't required, I wouldn't have gotten burnt out and quit the past few expansions.
Totally agree on all counts Corbin - great comment. Including the last part, not cheeky at all - it's ok to just be happy Tali and Evi! - although ofc the UA-cam algorithm would probably punish you for such optimism with terrible exposure if the title was entirely positive!
I think it's rather a difference in perspective. Some players (myself included) view these power grind systems as clear goals toward power progression. Others view them as hostile design resulting in anxiety and FOMO. I completely agree with just about everything Tali and Evi say here. That doesn't mean I have Stockholm Syndrome of some abusive design system. I like having clear paths to power progression in solo content. I really enjoyed Horrific Visions and Torghast in their final forms. Upgrading havens such as the Covnenant Stronghold, the Class Hall, Suramar, even the Garrison felt fun and impactful. I never felt the FOMO or anxiety. I just enjoyed having clear, meaningful goals presented to me.
The Blue Dragonflight quest line being optional means the people doing it aren’t pressured to skip through the quest instead of taking their time and enjoying it because they want to be there.
We all enjoy different stuff. I really love the enclosed nature of ZC as a patch zone. Flying into it through the tunnels is awesome (even if it takes slightly too long after the first couple of times) and for me keeps it connected enough to the world above, and it's really cool that such a significant story patch for black dragons happens literally within the earth. (I also really, really love Vashj'ir though so maybe I'm just weird.) I like the niffen stuff a lot and getting it done is definitely part of what I log in for. Maybe I'm way off the mark, but do you think covering beta and the ptr in the depth you typically have to for your literal job might at times slightly take the shine off some things when they finally go live?
Vashj'ir is my favorite zone in the entire game. I love everything about it, especially the music. I still go there occasionally just to admire it. If it had modern graphics, it would be even better.
Dragonflight has been fun. Definite improvement over Shadowlands. We usually just shoot for AotC, get that and call it a day until the next patch. Nothing wrong with that! It's nice to have the raid prog, take a break and come back to it fresh again. I usually just log in to complete a challenge with my friends and don't have much interest in other content beyond that. When I had more time as a kid during Vanilla-WotlK, I would log in just to chat with guildies...but we have Discord and other methods for comms these days outside of the game so it's not necessary.
I'm gonna have to disagree super hard with this take. It's so nice to not have to log in. I don't want to be forced to do chores. This is the first expansion I can push harder content like ksm and aotc because I can keep my character up to speed even with my limited play time. I do the side content when I have time or am waiting around for groups and such. It's a nice feeling knowing I have good fun stuff do to whenever I want but don't have to be rushed to do it. (Also that ad spot got me hard. I main enhancement lol)
10.1 has been mostly great for me. The story is really good for change, and getting tier sets is easier than ever. I just finished my evoker set today on LFR, and used drake shadowflame crests to upgrade into the normal version. A treat for us transmoggers!
Well. They probably assume alts for those who want to play more. That's what I do. But it's possible they made this raid tier easier so people had time to play Diablo 4
These days, yes. I look at it like one perspective is they want to "respect your time" which is good! But also means hardocre players can clear everything much quicker. Then there's also modern game development. Engines are being pushed to the max, devs are working with new infrastructures but just aren't able to cram in as much with the whole complexity and range of issues today so, it's a bit of both
Pretty sure the only people who play only ONE game for over a decade, and literally nothing else, are definitional sociopaths. It's insane to me to think that there are people there that'll do that. I play a game, beat it, move on. There are hundreds of games in my backlog I'll likely never get to. "Beating WoW" is consuming the patch/expansion content. Finishing the quests, your rep/renown, getting your PVP rating, and/or finishing whichever raid tier you want to. I'm here for the lore, so I play the story content finish raid on normal and heroic (occasionally mythic if it's a dope e ough raid), and then move on. Take a month at most, and that's still with sprinkling other games in to take a break.
@monkeysk8er33 play how you want. But people playing one game doesn't make them psycho. Tons of people Play only one game. Fallout 4 mods. Xcom. Xcom 2. Ect.. ect.. wow is a decent one because there is a lot of variety within it.
@@camerancole8433 Please do not take 'definitional sociopaths' and then dumb it down to 'psychos'. Personally counter with OCD or explain why it does not match the definition of sociopath.
10.1 is great, but 10.1.5 is fundamentally changing my main class and spec, and also giving my alt class an entirely new spec. This news got me really excited to play, but sort of put a damper on 10.1 for me. Ive done some M+, done heroic raiding, but knowing that my class is a time-bomb about to change almost entirely makes playing it feel like I'm wasting time practicing a dead rotation.
This is going to be a hated take; I miss having mandatory stuff to do every day that gets me stronger, I miss having a real reason to log in. When I play WoW in Dragon Flight I always have fun, but there's nothing to actually get me to log in.
I think Abberus is intentionally tuned lower because its going to be the raid we test the new Evoker Spec with. Its a great raid to test things out, especially after its been cleared.
I just realized, what I'm missing from the caverns. More verticality! I really thought they were going to have a lot more vertical design to the area underground, like in GW2 when the first expansion came along that had verticality, you really had a bunch of layers up and down to navigate and explore
@@northik5045 EXACTLY I was imagining that on steroids when we first started speculating about underground! I thought layers would have different themes, like the bottom would be lava, then you'd get crystals or something going up, and then like, rocks and mushrooms and stuff at upper layers, but what it really is, is a big open area, with a ceiling, and some associated hidey holes attached here and there it feels like. Don't get me wrong, it's cool and I love it, I love the entry-exit and airlock loading tech, it's all great. But yeah, it's hard to imagine when they'll have another opportunity to truly take advantage of the verticality element
Burned out after 10.0.7, which was fun and extremely rewarding, and that's why I played the heck out of it for those weeks. By the time 10.1 appeared, I was on my usual mind-clearer break from pushing WoW. Have been logging on to complete trading post, and even that I'd say is plenty enough grind and incentive to log in.
The fact that I’m able to push top 50 players in solo shuffle for my spec without having to do any chores or PvE whatsoever is just an enormous win for me. I can focus 100% of my time playing rated battlegrounds with my guild, pushing solo rating and dueling / socializing with other players in Orgrimmar and Valdrakken. Throw in some nostalgic transmog runs and the PHENOMENAL world PvP and I’ve got plenty to sink my teeth into. It’s nice to be able to log in and jump straight into the action rather than doing my checklist before I can have any fun.
For me 10.1 was finished week 3. I came into this patch overgeared and the new gearing system on top on that being so easy made it so I was able to get ksm 3 times and KSH by week 4
"If you really want to punish sisyphus, take away his boulder" But really - great video and good points, appreciate the discussion!! Curious - do you think that extending the Heoric and Mythic gear grind would work to give you that fizzlewizzle power grind feeling?
I am so grateful to see this video this morning. I was feeling kind of down last night because I felt this way. But, but it feels good that I'm not alone. I think I've been so used to NEEDING to play that not needing to do a full chore list every day felt like a let down. I feel like I need to enjoy the fact that I've achieved what I want to achieve and just relax. :)
By biggest problem with 10.1 was there is nothing making me want to log on. People like to hate on torghast, but I loved it and it was something to do for fun. For no other reason than because I wanted to. I haven't seen any gameplay loop/system in DF yet that has made me feel like that. There have been reputation grinds but they are over in a little under 3-4 weeks if you pay attention to them and are trying to get through them. The rares in zaralek are only soloable by tanks and even then it takes upwards of 6 minutes to kill them with 443 ilvl gear on my VDH. There is no-one online in the caverns to enlist for help and I'm missing many drake skins that I want (not to mention the abysmally low drop chance mount). I'm not advocating for encouraging players to do stuff with player power. But if its going to be optional, then you need to make it playable. And as it currently is, it isnt playable because you need a group of 3-5 players to do anything in the zone and there is no-one to group up with. Edit: The game needs more "on their own" progression paths. Something like the box of many things for torghast. It needs a fun and challenging bit of optional content that is initially not possible to do because you aren't strong enough. Gearing should be part of getting strong enough, but also add a secondary thing specific to that bit of content to level up in it. Then you don't have the "losing player power between expansions problem" because it was always tied to that bit of content. And with it being optional it can be made difficult. Look at the mage tower both legion and shadowlands versions are widely regarded as phenomenal challenges that people could do to test themselves. There was no external player power tied to them, simply good content with good rewards. The time rifts also fall into the category of fun the first couple times, but not really repayable because its just press button simulator to kill irrelevant enemies and then jump through the portal to kill a world boss level difficulty boss. I think the problem boils down to open world optional content doesn't work because it necessitates that it be easy so anyone can do it yet no-one does it beyond a short time after release because its optional and the pool of people doing the content is too small to reliably complete it. Optional instanced content that can be solo or multiplayer is IMO the best way to incorporate optional content, thats not to say that open world content is not important, but often open world content dies very quickly relative to the instanced content from my experience, certainly with DF. DF doesnt have any (afaik) really good challenging content to do for solo play, something for players to throw themselves at for fun. I've had people say the cobalt assembly is that, but it isn't. Its ridiculously easy and nowhere near as interesting as torghast and the associated powers you get. Imagine a hypothetical: There was a super boss that was nearly always up because it was just too strong to kill even with a 40 man group. The powers you get are NOT on a 5 minute race to refresh (which seems to stop appearing as a choice sometime around 20-40 minutes of being there, like the game telling you to just stop playing). Instead have an upper limit to what you can scale to. Keep it absurd, let the damage get insane and the bonuses scale but add a limit because otherwise you would actually break the game. And make it so that you and a couple other people need to scale yourselves up with buffs for a while to have a chance to kill the boss. (maybe make it soloable if you get max buffs idk) and then have the boss actually have mechanics. Not just some world boss that you could never die on. Provide some super cool rewards like mounts/armor sets/Entire drake skins (not just "antlers lol" or 2mm spikes on your legs). And to top it all off, make it so that in order to reach a point of killing the boss you have a semi long term progression path where you can get stronger via a mechanic like the box of many things. Upgrades like: increase the maximum number of active buffs, Add new buffs to the options that are generally stronger than the original "starting" buffs. And to top the system off, make it so killing the boss provides your alts with a bonus to their progression speed through the system or something like that. Maybe add multiple bosses on an hourly/daily/weekly rotation to keep it fresh and enable multiple rewards and achievements to be tied to it. Something like this could be that solo player(when out of raid/dungeon) experience that if done right could be repeatedly played for fun like torghast or the mage tower.
This is how WoW should be. Play what you want. Over the preceding several years, WoW was: play everything OR ELSE! Where it was mandatory to do homework or you fall behind in your ability to raid and do m+ or be competitive in PvP.
The fact I got KSM in week 2 and only have been farming heroic for vaults allows me to enjoy my free time and alts I never had the time to level. Its been great!
The “confusion” to me really seems like our collective realization that this is what a healthy relationship with a video game should be. We play what we want and when we want. There’s nothing mandatory that makes you feel like you have to play each week. There’s catchup mechanics for missing a week or two without getting fomo. There’s enough content to fill an entire day if you want it. The raid wasn’t too easy. The raid was just good as a whole.
I accomplished all the tasks i wanted to. Keystone master, ahead of the curve, leveled several characters during the exp boost. It has felt great and with 10.1.5 just next week i have felt that this week is the best week to play other things. so good
The solution for not wanting to log on is not to attach a mandatory currency to it (AP), but to further iterate on their content to make it worth logging in for. I like being able to step away from WoW without feeling like I'm missing out or falling behind. I like being able to log in and just do what I want and ignore what I don't want to. I feel like if you think the game needs to force you to log in with an AP grind then maybe you just don't want to play the game anymore and you should just move on to something else.
I have been enjoying Embers of Neltharion. I get your thoughts on wanting something single players to go for, I know it can be hard to pin point those feelings. I totally play the game differently then I did before, and still enjoy it. I would LOVE to have a set up like this where you just chat, and talk about things. Would love to see some special guests, your Father or just some other Wow content creators. While It might be difficult it would be REALLY funny if you got Bellular and Matt to randomly join some time! haha.
No thanks on the artifact power. That can stay in the dark part of Wow's history. They can find other ways to incentivize players to login....but like honestly...I am glad there is not a lot of mandatory shit to do. I barely have time or energy to play games these days. It's nice to not feel so behind with the new xpac.
I feel the same way. I played every day during 10.0. but in 10.1 i just didnt want to log in anymore. I cant really put my finger on why, but i just rather play classic at the moment
I think the thing is that with classic (up until MoP) you had long questlines running building up to weapons that were amazing. Not just in stats but also in look. Like I still haven’t seen a weapon cooler if not as cool looking as Quel’Serrar or Thunderfury. Like with the raid class tier set of vanilla. Nothing comes close to those looks.
I understand the feeling you both are having, but I think there are better solutions than a mandatory grind again. One thing is that gearing could be a bit slower. I played loads in the first 2 weeks of 10.1 because I knew I was going to lose time to D4, but also because the possibility of being fully geared in 3 weeks was available, therefore I had to do it. Genuinely, if we had been capped to getting 5 crests per week so it took 6 weeks to get fully geared, I think the pacing would have been much better. (However, I suspect this faster gearing was intentional knowing that D4 release was imminent) Secondly, my friends who care about having the highest M+ score on our server are still logging in and doing M+ regularly. Instead of adding a power grind, maybe they could enable more prestigious/competitive grinds. Dragonriding pvp races completely failed because it requires everyone queuing at the same time, but if there were a leaderboard for fastest times on a race, I would absolutely be logging in for that. Similarly, Torghast as a server or regionwide competition to get the highest score or the fastest time would have certainly engaged me and load of other players. Thirdly, is this actually a problem? From my own experience and observing others around me, I do not think the lack of me logging in is an issue. I'm not logging in because I would rather play Tears of the Kingdom or D4 and its fantastic that I can do that without feeling like I am letting my (raid) team down. And in the last few weeks, I have logged in wanting to do some M+, but no one else in my guild is online because they are all playing D4 or FF16. And that's good; I just went to play some steam games I wouldnt have otherwise played. I feel like WoW has given me a couple hours a week of my life back, and I'm actually really enjoying the freedom to play WoW when I want to instead of feeling like I have to.
Wasn't a fan of Zaralek tbh, compare it to mechagon which was full of high quality toys and items, there's no comparison, even Zereth Mortis (i feel) was a better 'after x-pac' zone. Lately i find myself doing old content for completion, as opposed to 'having to go to the cavern'
I think because we've been trained for so long to do the "mandatory" power gains stuff, we didn't have time or will to do the "optional" stuff and now everything is optional we've been trained out of doing it.
10.1 is definitely a success. Yeah I didn't care for niffen games, or drogbar stuff but I really enjoyed the story and lore. The raid is fun and a good time with my guild, the tokens are super helpful, and researcher events are cool. I'm excited though to be not be underground though lol. I like the skies!!! Bring me that horizon!
I've achieved what I wanted for the most part, it doesn't force me to stay in-game every day to grind out a currency or player power, and in general it feels nice to be able to take a break and come back once new content unlocks rather than feeling like "I have to login everyday to stay relevant and justify my purchase"
POSITIVES: Love the new zone and much of the added content. The Loamm Niffen faction is surprisingly nuanced. They really could have been cringe but are instead more real than many of the other factions. Voice acting is top notch, as always. MEH: One of the less compelling things about 10.1 are all the bag-clogging currencies. Another was all the new daily / weekly objectives and not having a way to figure them all out. Wowhead helps a ton, but for whatever reason I missed much of what was added. I always meant to come back and research, but haven 't yet. SUBSCRIPTION: I just re-activated my sub yesterday because of needing to finish the Trading Post. If it wasn't for the Trading Post, I would probably have waited for 10.1.5 to drop or 10.2.
Just finished all 10.1 content today and I'm very satisfied. I was working a lot of OT and spending time in the garage woodworking as we moved through April - now. My time was respected, I'm happy with the story, and I'm ready for 10.1.5.
I do agree that they've gone too far particularly on gear.. I would like to see crest/upgrade rates decreased, but base item drops increased instead. I was done gearing by like week 3 of the patch, Like mid 440's, fishing for chase pieces from the raid. Now my alts are getting there too. I'm motivated to be able to bring my whole alt army thru the megadungeon when it comes out, so that's keeping me going. AP Grinds though? Nahhhhhhhh. If we need a power carrot to make power gamers play with casual gamers then let it just be gear itself. What's wrong with open world players getting high level stuff anyways?
I feel like the incentive to do those new things is there with the niffen rep quest that gives half a spark. But they gave people rep tokens that have lasted the whole patch for some people. Plus the high spark drop rate if you miss a week is super high so I guess people feel like they don't have to do the quest either
I absolutely love the raid and my guild has been super active! I absolutely love this patch, the new lore, but I just like the black dragonflight's story in general
I still see Legion as the best expansion. Artifacts, raids, story and everything else was just interesting and getting better and better. (Besides the 'dull' Broken Isles fel patch, but it introduced Mage Tower!) And Argus was just awesome in every way. The best raid I played, and really well balanced, at least in the first week, before they made last boss much harder. I really enjoyed doing up to full Heroic the first week, while now I dread doing even normal for 10.1. Last boss always has to be overly hard now and a pain to do, forcing me to grind gear in M+ to be even invited to groups, which I just refuse to do. No raiding I guess!
Legion was peak wow, but Dragonflight is quite good. The problem I think is that the Burning Legion is probably the best enemy that WoW will ever have - and legion is the expansion that did it properly.
It's been a struggle this patch. I mainly play with my gf and we are super casual. She has alot of hand pain/issues so she's having a very hard time with the amount of damage all the mobs do now and upgrading gear.
I quite liked 10.1 and perhaps preferred it to the initial content of the expansion. It’s been nice to have a main who is very well geared, but then also being able to gear my alts to a near similar level with relative ease. I can’t actually remember the last time I was so engaged with the game.
10.1 was awesome, I just came back to wow after being too busy to play for awhile and I'm loving it. Now I might like it because I didn't get to play at launch very much at all. However, because dragonflights base expansion is just really fun in general, the patches feel pretty good too. A good foundation is what BFA and Shadowlands lacked, no matter how good patches could've been they still didn't hit as well. I'm having so much fun in wow
How many minutes??!! Dafaq! Putting you on x1.75 :) And yeah agree with you. I cleared heroic and if you don't play alts, there is no reason to do anything in Zalarek other than weekly chore of farming points for spark. Aberrus is waaaay too easy and I don't even have a reason to do dungeons. If I was progressing hc Aberrus then yeah, you want better gear for this progression, but hc is cleared... Mythic requires fixed groups so not everyone can do it, so something feels wrong with the design of this patch.
I would LOVE a weekly stream like this! But please add music! I will hear every episode. And I'm glad they decided to not make mandatory grinds linked to the blue dragonflight questline. People would just rush like they rush the quest lvling experience and also I wouldn't have been able to do it when I think is the right time, like you Tali waiting so much to do it. That's important to me. It means the game is THAT good. You want to experience it as it should. They should work on player retention features, sure... And I would like a unique art loading screen for every time you log in at the Zaralek Cavern. Loved the video, hope to see more like this, and please music! (from ff14 or wow or games in general
I think the better way to look at it is that Dragonflight is such a good gameplay experience, that you no longer feel obligated to play it every day. It's almost like Stockholm Syndrome. I think we all just need to be ok with not playing WoW as much and be just as excited to renew our sub or log back in for the next content release.
Well, the thing for the Blue Dragonflight quest chain is that if your character got the Cata legendary staff you'll get that mount as a reward so you don't need to keep the staff around. And it's only for that character.
1. Like the set up would totally listen to podcast in this kinda setup. 2. Just resubbed for the netherwing mount because I love that dragon from outlands. And I feel similarly so far but all this talk has me back in the mood to get the story progressed to current updates.
I like it. What has kept me coming back, in addition to my raid team, is actually the profession system, which is an optional grind in itself to get all the knowledge I can each week. Now I'm taking it slow since I have KSM and AOTC and just waiting on the mage rework of 10.1.5.
I strongly disagree with the notion that being psychologically forced by mandatory grinds/loops to start up the game was a good thing and is missing now. It's perfectly fine to be able to finish a game (or content patch in this case). It's okay to play other games once you've had your fill of WoW. Many of the current side-activities do not reward high level gear/currencies etc. They are for more casual players that are trying to gear up and for people that enjoy the content or want the cosmetic rewards. If you play WoW for the high-end PvE/PvP content, it's great that you're able to focus on that. Not every activity has to be for every player. Especially with the current cadence of content, being able to play WoW in bursts of 1-2 months at a time feels great. Sure, if you want WoW to be your "only-game", it might not be the same as before, but that is only because you're no longer being made to play unenjoyable content solely for the rewards. With the current state of the game, Blizzard has to deliver quality content at a decent pace to have people come back regularly, instead of going the lazy route by putting players on a boring treadmill that is easy to scale up or putting artificial walls in their way that slow progression down to a crawl.
The good thing about dragonflight is you only have to play as much as you want and no more. a big issue with past 3 expacs was if you did not log in you FELL BEHIND FOREVER. And while it made us feel bad, it did keep us logging in and playing every single day. Overall the experience is better, but we don't feel the REQUIREMENT to play, and instead of having those pain moments, we now just have "eh" moments, which are still not amazing, but better, meaning there is only amazing, great, good, and eh moments. no more "Fucking bullshit" moments like having to farm azerite or soul ash or anima.
The raid being a bit harder and taking 2 more weeks would mean my guild progression is the motivation to up my power and log in for sparks and vault. But we got AOTC, a few people dipped and after a couple weeks we just took a break until next patch. So I think rather than make it mandatory or smth, just extend guild content longer. But also I did the same amount of M+ I did in 10.0 in 1 month of 10.1 cuz I loved the reward loop and it was unlimited basically. So I played way more but then finished. I think that’s fine.
I'm absolutely loving not feeling the need to log in outside of doing prog with my guild and whatnot. Another shout is that the dragonriding races are the best so far, in my opinion. I think wow players aren't really used to the idea that you can log in and do what you want, set your own goals. For me, dragonflight is pretty near perfect right now.
Gearing was a bit too easy this patch. At the same time, something about M+ is just so punishing. I think it is more punishing for healers. Last week broke me with the Afflicted affix. Groups took forever to fill and typically fell apart after a couple of bosses. I would like to not pug, but all of my M+ squad stopped playing
I feel that a lot of the fizzlewizzle grind that would be helpful would be to just make something such as the travelers log take more "work" so its still not attached to power.
2 things the mandatory power currency needs to be is 1. Account wide, and 2. Earnable from literally all dragonflight content, so it’s functionally like an endgame xp replacement
I understand where they are coming from despite never getting into WoW. I've been feeling like this in FFXIV where I really wish the game would tell me to do something but instead it goes "oh yeah you can log out, talk to you later" and it's so deflating
I'm actually very happy the blue questline doesn't have anything necessarily attached to it. I love this game for competitive pve and pvp and the lore and I'm perfectly fine with those things being separate. I still haven't done it either because I'm waiting until I have time to give it the attention it deserves, if I had to do it to be my best in raid I would have zoomed through it early on without really taking it in.
I've been having a blast in 10.1. I got lucky with the tier being as quick as it was, as I managed to farm all my dungeon teleports and get the Curve before my wedding in June; the rest of the season I can just relax without feeling pressured to do anything. I can't say I've experienced a lack of things to do, though, since I fill my time with grinding old content or levelling and gearing up alts when I feel I'm done on my main for any given season.
First, I completely agree with Evite, patch is great, really like everything about it, except one tiny point... I'm a solo player, not a casual, because I'll play for hours daily, but this whole patch has put us solo players at a disadvantage with these new elites in the caverns. I don't want to HAVE to group up to kill stuff. I can't gear up further without grouping up and so I'm just not logging on. (I can with my tanks, but not my dps specs or classes)...
I really enjoy 10.1--As a GM, all my raid teams met their goals and now we're spending out time doing the things we feel compelled to do. I feel like, in modern WoW and maybe the past, gearing has been such an immense focus of the player experience, that it can trivialize all the many other features the game offers. I really like being able to get past that gearing barrier and actually do other things, I've forgotten what that feels like until usually the end of an expansion. Seeing the Devs add evergreen content/catchups for legacy systems is a great addition, too.
It feels like a possible solution is weekly sources of better crests in the open world. Blizzard really shied away from like, Legion, where world quests frequently had gear that was decent, especially when they titan forged up. That had its problems but I was definitely excited to see a new batch of world quests. I think people want to gatekeep getting better gear or whatever, but gear is so easy to get if you do raid and M+ anyway I just don't care. Let researchers under fire reward hero gear, and let Fyyrak assaults give you a few Aspects crest fragments. And to be clear, I think all of the high end rewards should be limited weekly drops, not infinitely farmable, but if you could say get an entire Aspect Crest each week by doing researchers under fire, a sniffen niffen game, and fyyrak assault, I don't see the harm in that. That definitely could introduce more incentive for people to do these things, it doesn't really affect the top end. It might get more people into raid by slowly giving them better and better gear.
But then what would you need that gear for since hc raid is so easy? The carrot was that we needed better gear for progression but there is nothing to progress. Higher keys? I have no reason to do them, all I wanted is mythic animation effect for 2500 rating. There is few ppl who want just achievements for 20+.
simple really... just like with Emerald Nightmare and M+, Blizz didn't realise the implications of the new gear system so Aberrus was functionally hugely undertuned. At the same time, having upgradable gear dropping from the raid meant people were no longer forced to log in and do M+ for gear - and so a whole lot of people stopped doing so, because they never liked the toxic M+ puggosphere.
I agree in wanting a reason to log in everyday, but one thing I’m enjoying at the moment is the amount of option I have in what I can do. I used to have to wait for the downtime between expansions to go a work on grinding old content, but I can do that now too if I don’t want to snail race or whatever. Like right now I’m working on getting Tarecgosa which I’ve told myself to do before I do the last blue dragon quest. Another point is that all content gives you flight stones for the most part, but having it capped out because I have fully upgraded gear I practically get no bonus reward other than the pleasure of doing that content. Maybe if flight stones had multiple uses or could be converted into crests or something, I would have more incentive to grind current content.
I think in order to give intersting and compelling content Blizz should look at the difference between the Mage Tower and Torghast. Both were super fun in terms of gameplay, but the latter felt mandatory and unfun because of the currency tied to it and the poor rewards, while the Mage Tower was just a content one could choose to do or not, it also gave unique rewards which players could aim to. As Tali said, when they "removed" the currency from Torghast it suddendly became much more enjoyable, but in order to make it memorable like the MT it should've had unique and interesting rewards like cosmetic sets and weapon trasmogs, while it only had some toys, a pet and some mounts with models you could get from doing other content.
I think a return to borrowed power and artefact-style progression would do massive damage to the increased freedom and quality of Dragonflight, it means you never choose to log in and do your weekly tasks because the game is fun, you HAVE to log in and do your weekly tasks or you fall behind. I think 10.1 having a definitive “okay I’m done now” feeling is fine and part of that is that I don’t have to log in every week for a 1% increase to my healing capacity. Needing to do snail racing for currency or needing to do dragonriding races for currency would turn them from fun side things to mandatory chores
I feel the need to voice my opinion that this opinion is shit in case blizz sees this. To hell with mandatory grinds. I'm loving dragonflight and 10.1 and looking forward to more. I log on and think what do I want to do and do it. Not what do I need to do.
There's nothing to do in 10.1, lol. The Caverns were okay for the first week or two, but that was it. They actively made rare farming harder and killed the patch for those people, and there was nothing exciting for me personally. I used to do Cutting Edge raiding in Legion/BFA, but when I had my kids I went super casual. There's just... nothing there for me in 10.1.
I think if theyre ever gonna make something like torghast/expeditions/or any other kind of content like that again, while also having some kind of power progression in the game at the same time, they should do this: - the first 1 or 2 runs of that content gives you rewards for the main power progression, in a way that isnt mandatory on alts (other sources, etc.) - after those runs there is something like the renown board that gives you an idea of what other cool optional rewards you can get from it. I think that would be nice. „Forces“ you to peek into content you havent done yet, and then leaves the choice of whether you want to continue doing it afterwards.
How do you guys think the Bain quest line stacks up in comparison to the Blue Dragon quest line? Personally I think they are about level. I 100% do not want it to go back to ‘feeling like a job’. I’m so glad to have options. No pressure, no fomo.
I'm glad I watched this. I thought it was just me. I played the crap out of 10.0 and 10.0.5, but only have done the MQ up to the raid in 10.1. I like the activities but I am not motivated to get on to do them. So haven't played the new patch much. I do think there could be a good way of doing some mandatory content and still have all the optional stuff.
love to see you both rocking this video! That said…Tali’s sound is a bit echoie (is that even a word?) anyway…another solid video! Really liked seeing you guys together having a nice chat 😎👍
I think it's easy for Tali to say that he wants a mandatory power grind since logging on is literally part of his job lol. I'm enjoying the game so much more since I don't feel like I'm behind if I don't log in for a week.
I agree with a lot of what was said here. I'd also add an overabundance of unstructured group content as a potential contributing factor. By this I mean content that's intended to be tackled in a group, but lack any sort of built-in group-finding system. Part of this problem is that you'll get people who don't realize they need to find a custom group for the content, which the game in no way tells you to do, and get frustrated when they fail. But also because you can very easily end up in a situation where the map gets cluttered with content that it's clear no one is doing (at least on your shard), and that's just kind of depressing to look at.
I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about how empty ZC is nowadays and how frustrating it is to get anything done . It’s not a perfect solution obviously, since not everyone has a schedule that makes it work, but just like with the feast, Tuesday is your best friend. Playing at peak time on Tuesday evenings is the only time I can consistently get anything group-related done. On a side note, I think part of the problem is with the player base too. Now before you all grab your pitchforks and torches, just hear me out. Did Nazjatar or Mechagon, or even Zereth Mortis feel empty at any point? To me it seems like there were always people zooming around and killing rares, but there were also a lot of people calling out when rares spawned in general chat. Sent out coordinates, and there were always a TON of people hanging out in the “hub” for the zone. There was motivation to actively seek out help to take down whichever creature has that sparkly thing you want that particular day. But now? At least as far as I can tell, there is no general chat in ZC. No one really hangs out in the hub, and I haven’t seen anyone call out a rare spawn yet the entire patch. As much as I hated Shadowlands as a whole, I think they did fantastic with Zereth Mortis. They encouraged cooperation, and gave desireable rewards for doing so. I mean even after I “completed” all there was to do there, I still spent a lot of time there. Heck, a couple weeks in I got my Aurelid lure and I would stop by every week on Monday night and call out for anyone who hadnt had a chance to down him yet that week that I was spawning him in like 3 minutes. Every time there was always a huge crowd. I was far from the only person doing this, too. I dunno, maybe there’s just a lot of burnout, maybe they should have added in some Dragonflight equivalent of the aurelid lure to encourage active participation. Maybe RareScanner is partly to blame too, I’ve fallen into that trap myself of forgetting it isn’t baseline and most people probably have no idea that some Pirate Monkey just spawned at the extreme north of the island. It’s like Blizzard did such a good job on removing the pain points and increasing the enjoyability of the gameplay loop this time around that it actively discourages the banding together of players to get something annoying/tedious/painful done to end it sooner. … oh crap. Did I seriously just have a tiny little flash of nostalgia for BfA and Shadowlands? I feel tainted. 🫣
Blue dragon quest line was amazing! Did it on an Arcane mage that has the teragosa staff and got the mount appearance at the end. Honestly the most Emersive and 'RPG like' the game has felt to me in years! That alone can carry a meh patch to me.. Plus it's super alt friendly.
man reading the comments here makes you think that pretty much everyone was a hardcore top player before DF. just saying that you did not need to grind ap all day every day if you weren't one of those 1-2%. so could we please stop it with the lies already.
Nice to see a couple that plays together! To me the best expansion was Legion followed by TBC. And I play since Vanilla beta (warlocks could open trade Soulstones to anyone!)
I was able to bring my alts up to date on the campaign which I appreciate being able to do. I did not feel panic to get stuff done which is great for a change. I have enjoyed the caverns but I don't spend a ton of time down there on one character. All things considered 10.1 is a win for me.
If any sort of borrowed power grind comes back...i blame you ;). I for one have enjoyed playing at my own pace and not feeling bad while playing other games because my character isn't falling behind, I've even done the blue dragon story, I did have to do it in two sittings though. The raid and m+ where too easy this season, that's my only complaint.
I'm mostly a high level M+ player, doing > +20 keys is probably 60-70% of my playtime, so I'm not playing much 10.1 because the dungeons suck. Blizzard forgot about M+ tuning after week 1, most of these dungeons have 2-3 abilities that are egregiously overtuned, or that flat out suck. 23 HOI Tyrannical last boss literally takes 7-8 minutes because of all the intermissions you get. It's not fun, so I don't do it. Once Blizz actually tunes the dungeons, I'll play again.
Listening to you talk about the game in this video to me it sounds like you are slowly having your priorities change. As some one who stopped playing not so long ago after kids came into the story you have pretty much said all the same things i was saying to my friends and guild. What are you doing instead of playing?
Been saying this ever since we started talking about AP being a souless grind for player power. I think they need to bring back heart of Azeroth. But instead of having it be a player power thing, they should make it an infinite progression thing. And they can put things in there that add player customization. Like class mogs, spell skins etc. Progress would be slow and this would need to be maintained ofc. But you'd always have something to work toward. And it wouldn't clash with any other system since it would be additive.
I been loving Dragonflight myself 10.1 is still very cool. My raid team now starting their mythic prog only really hampered because there was a few players on our team that got poached by another guild. I think a lot of the feeling of not needing to play the game constantly is all about the upgrade system. I really haven't felt the need to grind M+ for the first time in a long time. For me that is great. I have more time to play other games, get my quest cape in OSRS, finish the story quests in GW2, play Diablo 4. I felt like for the first time in a long time WoW is allowing me to be a proper gamer and play other games and still be good on progression. So in a way being able to not have to play WoW full-time to be a 'good player' feels really good. Best expansion.
I don't like the restrictions on the catalyst being only Suffusion camp gear but in general this new upgrade system is a bit overwhelming. My preference would be to have gear that can be upgraded all the highest upgrade and instead of locking out via Explorer/Adventurer/Veteran/Champion/etc whatever else there is. Just have a special currency to upgrade it to the next tier, like we already have with drake crests. Sure, this means someone with a green item or an item from a heroic dungeon could obtain some currency from mythic+ and upgrade it all the way to the highest mythic + level but I'm failing to see where this would be an issue for the player.
The interesting thing, is as much as 10.1 “wasnt played very much” i accomplished everything i wanted to do. Ive been very satisfied with my game experience. WoW has respected my time and i have used that extra time to… play classic and diablo 4 😂
I agree, the busywork you need to do in world content is relatively minimum and I'm just left to enjoy M+ and raiding when I want. It's not an all-consuming slog, it's good for me 🙂
Lol I’ve also been using my extra time to play some Diablo
Between Zelda and Diablo there's really no time for wow
I've done much of what I want as well. There's still room for awesome, but I'm very happy with what I've accomplished.
Yeah, it feels like they int'd this patch on purpose to release the power gamers to go play D4.
I think the loop would be better if we could pass crests to alts. If I could get other toons geared up and bring them into raid/m+ I would have much more reason to play.
One of the best parts of forbidden reach was gearing up forgotten toons and getting them to a point where they can go into relevant content.
Why can I only give this one thumbs up?!
I would limit it to wyrm crests and below. Because you will get enough aspect crests from getting your hero gear on your alt but the lower ones are the bottle neck. And if you can send aspects over you can get 5 easy 447 items which would be a bit too fast on a fresh 70.
@@TheKabukimann if you are running content where you get aspect crests I think you should be able to get as many toons to that level as you want. The flexibility to play multiple classes/specs is something the game needs. Plus it will keep players farming the crests and having something to do.
Man I got a full stack of wyrmling crests and nothing to do with but maybe vendor. There should be an item to purchase that is BoA at a loss. I look at quest rewards that are wyrmling and think it’s a waste of time.
I'll disagree. Maybe scale back the required crests by 50% along with the flightstone discounts, but there still needs to be some incentive to play the character you're gearing.
I’ve been loving it so far. Then again, I’ve been playing casually - I don’t think it means it’s a flop though. It just feels like the game respects my time more so if I need to step away for a couple of days due to real life I’m not penalized
That’s exactly how I feel. It’s spring, I’ve got stuff happening in the real world, I’m actually loving that I can spend 2 weeks hardly playing WoW then come back, grind some M+, upgrade some gear, join a raid and then use my Sparks to craft some serious 447 upgrades for a slot that I’m lacking behind in.
This is the most geared I’ve been since I was properly heroic raiding back in MoP, but without all the grinding and feeling like I have to be online constantly. I sign in, I group up with guildies, we push M+ keys while having a good time and get actual good rewards for it. Great patch and expansion imo.
Exactly! And that's the problem with mandatory content. Im Penalized for not giving my time for a mandatory amount. Feels great to just be able to hop back in and out
I love Zereleck cavern so much. I just don't have a ton of time. So after playing the MSQ 7 times in a row. I settled happily into M+ pushing on all 7 of those alts. I only hate the new affixes when I play my Warrior or DK. So that's 5/7.
@@ThatGenericCanadian Summer was like 6 days ago.
It's lovely. I don't have to play every day and that's fine.
Having content be optional, (which is one of the first times in this games history) is the best evolution of the game. It puts the responsibility back on the developers to make the game fun and interesting. Make it fun, and people will want to play more. It also gives people time back to do other things and not feel like they are behind or "forced" to play
This! This! This perfectly describes me.
Yea but I do think there could be something else. It's just missing something for me personally and I'm sure there are other players like that. I like the optional stuff, but I just don't feel motivated like I did in 10.0 and .05
@@d4mephisto what do you login for?
@@mitebg9665 Yeeeeees, guilt him for logging on to do things he wants to do in the game instead of being forced to log on to do mindless grinds. Go on, GUILT HIM.
Instead of fizzle power I'd prefer an updated adventure guide that shows a clear list of all the current things available this patch with a preview of the rewards and what to do next. I liked the sniffing game but I ran out of maps for it and now I have no clue where to get more unless I look at Wowhead. It could also include a que for races so you don't have to physically stand next to the npc to wait for nobody to show up.
My main problem with 10.1:
I want to log in and do all the cool events in Zaralek. It's designed with a lot of multiplayer events in mind and I love that, however...
There's just no players in the zone... I'll log in and be like "I wanna do some cool events in Zaralek". I'll go to the events, and they will be deserted.
The community feast was awsome because all the people gather up together. In Zaralek I will fly to the events, and see that there are no players and I'll be sad and leave it again. Some of them I never got to do.
It was the same with dragon races against other players. I NEVER TRIED IT, because every time I'd go there'd be no players and I'd wait 5 minutes and leave again. Why not make them a world quest so more players would do it?
I honestly feel like the rares spawn too often, and the events happen too often as well. Make them more rare and people would gather up for it.
What I love:
I love questlines. I think good questlines are the bread and butter of an RPG. I looove all the story questlines.
Ion once said in an interview: "If we don't add some kind of reward to questlines, noone would do it". I don't think he's right about this. I'd do all the story questlines and the blue dragonflight questline even if there was no power. I'd do the suramar campaign too.
I like reknown. The niffen offer nothing I'm personally interested in and I think this is fine. Some people really want the rewards and they will do it. I'm fine with this reknown not offering something I want. Then I have time to do dungeons and level alts and do other reknowns.
I still love that I don't have to do the content, and I can descide what I want to do, because there's still tons I want to do.
Yes the events being designed for multiple players, but no one doing them anymore is a big problem imo and this isn't something that all patches struggle with. The design this time is just bad. They should scale with the amount of people there or something
Agreed. I was just talking to a buddy of mine about this, last night. I want to go to the caverns and kill bosses and beat events, but nobody is there.
And even getting people to simply say in chat "Hey, I'm over here at 'blah blah blah.' Come join me" has been like pulling teeth.
I use the group finder, usually there is always somebody waiting for my group. If i open a group "Zaralek Researcher" 5 - 10 Minutes before the event starts, I will get a full raid easy. If there are all rares up, I open a group "Zaralek all rares up", and get more than enough people. If I just wait, it wouldn't work, no chance to kill something there.
Yeah this is what irks me too. First two weeks I was like “Zaralek is the coolest zone ever.” Then everyone stopped coming and I was alone. Super weird reception.
I agree for the most part. I would like to see rare spawns actually be rare spawns akin to the Zenet Avis rare in Ohn'Aran plains. 8hr respawn roughly with a 100% drop chance. Then it is actually a rare "spawn" not a rare "drop." But I don't think that simply decreasing the spawn timer is enough. They practically did that with the semi recent changes to make the rares on a biweekly lockout, effectively making them "spawn" once every 5 days with the ability to catch them after that point if you missed it. But still the caverns are a dead zone. The real problem is that there are zero rewards for killing rares in the eyes of most people. Most people aren't worried about getting a drake skin fragment, or a green item transmog thats just a recolor of a set which already has 5 colorations. IDK what they should be dropping, but maybe there should just be less rares, on a longer timer, with more interesting rewards, and better drop chances/ a guaranteed progression path toward rewards like a currency to grind that you can use to buy rewards if you are unlucky.
If the snail race quests actually showed up on the world map, I would be way more likely to do them. I've totally forgotten that they exist.
Agree, I did it once. The only reason I have not done them more is I don't they exist.
I think THIS is one of the major issues WoW has right now, not a mandatory incentive to log you in a la Artifact Power. WoW largely relies on its Player Base to reference sources like T&E, like WoWhead, etc to tell them what to do. WoW's in-game Adventurer Journal is kinda laughable in its ability to point you to fun things to do.
@@alexanderaugunas9795 yep! I had forgotten about the frostpelt rep/quest chain up until yesterday when someone in azure span was asking where it was. It was super easy to knock out but not flagged anywhere.
facts, i keep forgetting about it.
@@alexanderaugunas9795 Journal nowadays only has the purpose of reminding me how much more i need to do to earn my tendies.
Interesting to hear this perspective from you guys. I've actually found that I look forward to logging on in 10.1 even more than 10.0.5 and 10.0. The fact that I don't have mandatory fizzlewizzle to maintain has made me so much more likely to engage in all of the content. Previously, I'd just do the mandatory stuff and then I'd log off, until I got fed up with mandatory stuff then I'd just stop logging in altogether. Now I engage in all the optional content as well as the 'valuable' content because I am starting to view wow as a game again which is incredibly refreshing. At the risk of being too cheeky, it seems like you may have a little bit of stockholm syndrome from several expansions of abusive content design, now you're lost without having the threat of anxiety and fomo in the game. 😂
I think this is probably closest to my feelings on the matter. I felt/feel (cuz I still haven't finished) like the rep grinds were more or less mandatory to get the cool stuff, and I have this instinctive "I don't want to be told what to do" attitude that I still haven't grown out of. I finally decided a while ago to just log in and play, and if I don't get all the different dragon colors and what-all, so be it. I'm playing it because it is a game and I want to have fun, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm a casual player under the best of circumstances, so I've never really felt pressured to gear up much beyond what just drops from questing and WQs. That also means I feel very little pressure to do dungeons and raids - at least not those in the current expansions. I love going back and soloing old content, but that is part of the whole "casual" thing. One of the things I love about WoW in general and this expansion in particular, is how easily it accommodates both casual players like me and the people who want to do mythic raiding and world firsts. I'm in my 60s now, and hope to keep playing for many years to come.
This is exactly my position. I have always gotten burnt out of WoW (even when it was "good") because as soon as you put something in front of me that is "mandatory," I just... don't want to do it anymore. Like, I understand that the game still requires effort from me to achieve my goals, but that's exactly it, they're MY goals, not the developers'. And without that itch in the back of my mind reminding me that I wouldn't actually be grinding Artifact Power if it wasn't required, I wouldn't have gotten burnt out and quit the past few expansions.
Totally agree on all counts Corbin - great comment. Including the last part, not cheeky at all - it's ok to just be happy Tali and Evi! - although ofc the UA-cam algorithm would probably punish you for such optimism with terrible exposure if the title was entirely positive!
I think it's rather a difference in perspective. Some players (myself included) view these power grind systems as clear goals toward power progression. Others view them as hostile design resulting in anxiety and FOMO. I completely agree with just about everything Tali and Evi say here. That doesn't mean I have Stockholm Syndrome of some abusive design system. I like having clear paths to power progression in solo content. I really enjoyed Horrific Visions and Torghast in their final forms. Upgrading havens such as the Covnenant Stronghold, the Class Hall, Suramar, even the Garrison felt fun and impactful. I never felt the FOMO or anxiety. I just enjoyed having clear, meaningful goals presented to me.
The Blue Dragonflight quest line being optional means the people doing it aren’t pressured to skip through the quest instead of taking their time and enjoying it because they want to be there.
We all enjoy different stuff. I really love the enclosed nature of ZC as a patch zone. Flying into it through the tunnels is awesome (even if it takes slightly too long after the first couple of times) and for me keeps it connected enough to the world above, and it's really cool that such a significant story patch for black dragons happens literally within the earth. (I also really, really love Vashj'ir though so maybe I'm just weird.) I like the niffen stuff a lot and getting it done is definitely part of what I log in for. Maybe I'm way off the mark, but do you think covering beta and the ptr in the depth you typically have to for your literal job might at times slightly take the shine off some things when they finally go live?
They are missing an additional teleport down. Like in the above.
Vashj'ir is my favorite zone in the entire game. I love everything about it, especially the music. I still go there occasionally just to admire it. If it had modern graphics, it would be even better.
@@thecretchman Couldn't agree more. I'd even be fine with it being rep gated or something.
Dragonflight has been fun. Definite improvement over Shadowlands. We usually just shoot for AotC, get that and call it a day until the next patch. Nothing wrong with that! It's nice to have the raid prog, take a break and come back to it fresh again. I usually just log in to complete a challenge with my friends and don't have much interest in other content beyond that. When I had more time as a kid during Vanilla-WotlK, I would log in just to chat with guildies...but we have Discord and other methods for comms these days outside of the game so it's not necessary.
I'm gonna have to disagree super hard with this take. It's so nice to not have to log in. I don't want to be forced to do chores. This is the first expansion I can push harder content like ksm and aotc because I can keep my character up to speed even with my limited play time. I do the side content when I have time or am waiting around for groups and such. It's a nice feeling knowing I have good fun stuff do to whenever I want but don't have to be rushed to do it.
(Also that ad spot got me hard. I main enhancement lol)
10.1 has been mostly great for me. The story is really good for change, and getting tier sets is easier than ever. I just finished my evoker set today on LFR, and used drake shadowflame crests to upgrade into the normal version. A treat for us transmoggers!
Is it like normal that there is no forever game and people need to play a range of games?
Well. They probably assume alts for those who want to play more. That's what I do. But it's possible they made this raid tier easier so people had time to play Diablo 4
These days, yes. I look at it like one perspective is they want to "respect your time" which is good! But also means hardocre players can clear everything much quicker.
Then there's also modern game development. Engines are being pushed to the max, devs are working with new infrastructures but just aren't able to cram in as much with the whole complexity and range of issues today so, it's a bit of both
Pretty sure the only people who play only ONE game for over a decade, and literally nothing else, are definitional sociopaths. It's insane to me to think that there are people there that'll do that. I play a game, beat it, move on. There are hundreds of games in my backlog I'll likely never get to.
"Beating WoW" is consuming the patch/expansion content. Finishing the quests, your rep/renown, getting your PVP rating, and/or finishing whichever raid tier you want to.
I'm here for the lore, so I play the story content finish raid on normal and heroic (occasionally mythic if it's a dope e ough raid), and then move on. Take a month at most, and that's still with sprinkling other games in to take a break.
@monkeysk8er33 play how you want. But people playing one game doesn't make them psycho. Tons of people Play only one game. Fallout 4 mods. Xcom. Xcom 2. Ect.. ect.. wow is a decent one because there is a lot of variety within it.
@@camerancole8433 Please do not take 'definitional sociopaths' and then dumb it down to 'psychos'. Personally counter with OCD or explain why it does not match the definition of sociopath.
10.1 is great, but 10.1.5 is fundamentally changing my main class and spec, and also giving my alt class an entirely new spec. This news got me really excited to play, but sort of put a damper on 10.1 for me. Ive done some M+, done heroic raiding, but knowing that my class is a time-bomb about to change almost entirely makes playing it feel like I'm wasting time practicing a dead rotation.
This is going to be a hated take; I miss having mandatory stuff to do every day that gets me stronger, I miss having a real reason to log in.
When I play WoW in Dragon Flight I always have fun, but there's nothing to actually get me to log in.
🐹 🛞 🌬
Agreed
I think Abberus is intentionally tuned lower because its going to be the raid we test the new Evoker Spec with. Its a great raid to test things out, especially after its been cleared.
Not only the new specc. U also had the new gear upgrade system Which made the outgearing of the bosses much easier and faster
Kudos to Evi for mentioning the sound design, the unsung heroes of gaming
I just realized, what I'm missing from the caverns.
More verticality! I really thought they were going to have a lot more vertical design to the area underground, like in GW2 when the first expansion came along that had verticality, you really had a bunch of layers up and down to navigate and explore
Or even within Wow, deephom was a cavern with more vertically.
@@northik5045 EXACTLY I was imagining that on steroids when we first started speculating about underground! I thought layers would have different themes, like the bottom would be lava, then you'd get crystals or something going up, and then like, rocks and mushrooms and stuff at upper layers, but what it really is, is a big open area, with a ceiling, and some associated hidey holes attached here and there it feels like.
Don't get me wrong, it's cool and I love it, I love the entry-exit and airlock loading tech, it's all great. But yeah, it's hard to imagine when they'll have another opportunity to truly take advantage of the verticality element
Imagine trying to figure out where the minimap treasures are. It is annoying enough with little verticality and layers.
God I hated Heart of Thorns...
Burned out after 10.0.7, which was fun and extremely rewarding, and that's why I played the heck out of it for those weeks. By the time 10.1 appeared, I was on my usual mind-clearer break from pushing WoW.
Have been logging on to complete trading post, and even that I'd say is plenty enough grind and incentive to log in.
The fact that I’m able to push top 50 players in solo shuffle for my spec without having to do any chores or PvE whatsoever is just an enormous win for me. I can focus 100% of my time playing rated battlegrounds with my guild, pushing solo rating and dueling / socializing with other players in Orgrimmar and Valdrakken. Throw in some nostalgic transmog runs and the PHENOMENAL world PvP and I’ve got plenty to sink my teeth into. It’s nice to be able to log in and jump straight into the action rather than doing my checklist before I can have any fun.
For me 10.1 was finished week 3. I came into this patch overgeared and the new gearing system on top on that being so easy made it so I was able to get ksm 3 times and KSH by week 4
"If you really want to punish sisyphus, take away his boulder"
But really - great video and good points, appreciate the discussion!! Curious - do you think that extending the Heoric and Mythic gear grind would work to give you that fizzlewizzle power grind feeling?
Warlock quest is great. But the rogue legendary still blows my mind. The quests to get those daggers was wonderful
I am so grateful to see this video this morning. I was feeling kind of down last night because I felt this way. But, but it feels good that I'm not alone. I think I've been so used to NEEDING to play that not needing to do a full chore list every day felt like a let down.
I feel like I need to enjoy the fact that I've achieved what I want to achieve and just relax. :)
By biggest problem with 10.1 was there is nothing making me want to log on. People like to hate on torghast, but I loved it and it was something to do for fun. For no other reason than because I wanted to. I haven't seen any gameplay loop/system in DF yet that has made me feel like that. There have been reputation grinds but they are over in a little under 3-4 weeks if you pay attention to them and are trying to get through them. The rares in zaralek are only soloable by tanks and even then it takes upwards of 6 minutes to kill them with 443 ilvl gear on my VDH. There is no-one online in the caverns to enlist for help and I'm missing many drake skins that I want (not to mention the abysmally low drop chance mount). I'm not advocating for encouraging players to do stuff with player power. But if its going to be optional, then you need to make it playable. And as it currently is, it isnt playable because you need a group of 3-5 players to do anything in the zone and there is no-one to group up with.
Edit: The game needs more "on their own" progression paths. Something like the box of many things for torghast. It needs a fun and challenging bit of optional content that is initially not possible to do because you aren't strong enough. Gearing should be part of getting strong enough, but also add a secondary thing specific to that bit of content to level up in it. Then you don't have the "losing player power between expansions problem" because it was always tied to that bit of content. And with it being optional it can be made difficult. Look at the mage tower both legion and shadowlands versions are widely regarded as phenomenal challenges that people could do to test themselves. There was no external player power tied to them, simply good content with good rewards.
The time rifts also fall into the category of fun the first couple times, but not really repayable because its just press button simulator to kill irrelevant enemies and then jump through the portal to kill a world boss level difficulty boss. I think the problem boils down to open world optional content doesn't work because it necessitates that it be easy so anyone can do it yet no-one does it beyond a short time after release because its optional and the pool of people doing the content is too small to reliably complete it. Optional instanced content that can be solo or multiplayer is IMO the best way to incorporate optional content, thats not to say that open world content is not important, but often open world content dies very quickly relative to the instanced content from my experience, certainly with DF.
DF doesnt have any (afaik) really good challenging content to do for solo play, something for players to throw themselves at for fun. I've had people say the cobalt assembly is that, but it isn't. Its ridiculously easy and nowhere near as interesting as torghast and the associated powers you get. Imagine a hypothetical: There was a super boss that was nearly always up because it was just too strong to kill even with a 40 man group. The powers you get are NOT on a 5 minute race to refresh (which seems to stop appearing as a choice sometime around 20-40 minutes of being there, like the game telling you to just stop playing). Instead have an upper limit to what you can scale to. Keep it absurd, let the damage get insane and the bonuses scale but add a limit because otherwise you would actually break the game. And make it so that you and a couple other people need to scale yourselves up with buffs for a while to have a chance to kill the boss. (maybe make it soloable if you get max buffs idk) and then have the boss actually have mechanics. Not just some world boss that you could never die on. Provide some super cool rewards like mounts/armor sets/Entire drake skins (not just "antlers lol" or 2mm spikes on your legs). And to top it all off, make it so that in order to reach a point of killing the boss you have a semi long term progression path where you can get stronger via a mechanic like the box of many things. Upgrades like: increase the maximum number of active buffs, Add new buffs to the options that are generally stronger than the original "starting" buffs. And to top the system off, make it so killing the boss provides your alts with a bonus to their progression speed through the system or something like that. Maybe add multiple bosses on an hourly/daily/weekly rotation to keep it fresh and enable multiple rewards and achievements to be tied to it. Something like this could be that solo player(when out of raid/dungeon) experience that if done right could be repeatedly played for fun like torghast or the mage tower.
This is how WoW should be. Play what you want.
Over the preceding several years, WoW was: play everything OR ELSE! Where it was mandatory to do homework or you fall behind in your ability to raid and do m+ or be competitive in PvP.
For my guild, Diablo 4 killed 10.1 patch.
For god's sake, we don't need fizzle wizzle power.
Aspect Power on the other hand though... 🥵🥵🥵
The fact I got KSM in week 2 and only have been farming heroic for vaults allows me to enjoy my free time and alts I never had the time to level. Its been great!
The “confusion” to me really seems like our collective realization that this is what a healthy relationship with a video game should be. We play what we want and when we want. There’s nothing mandatory that makes you feel like you have to play each week. There’s catchup mechanics for missing a week or two without getting fomo. There’s enough content to fill an entire day if you want it.
The raid wasn’t too easy. The raid was just good as a whole.
I accomplished all the tasks i wanted to. Keystone master, ahead of the curve, leveled several characters during the exp boost. It has felt great and with 10.1.5 just next week i have felt that this week is the best week to play other things. so good
The solution for not wanting to log on is not to attach a mandatory currency to it (AP), but to further iterate on their content to make it worth logging in for. I like being able to step away from WoW without feeling like I'm missing out or falling behind. I like being able to log in and just do what I want and ignore what I don't want to. I feel like if you think the game needs to force you to log in with an AP grind then maybe you just don't want to play the game anymore and you should just move on to something else.
I have been enjoying Embers of Neltharion. I get your thoughts on wanting something single players to go for, I know it can be hard to pin point those feelings. I totally play the game differently then I did before, and still enjoy it. I would LOVE to have a set up like this where you just chat, and talk about things. Would love to see some special guests, your Father or just some other Wow content creators. While It might be difficult it would be REALLY funny if you got Bellular and Matt to randomly join some time! haha.
No thanks on the artifact power. That can stay in the dark part of Wow's history. They can find other ways to incentivize players to login....but like honestly...I am glad there is not a lot of mandatory shit to do. I barely have time or energy to play games these days. It's nice to not feel so behind with the new xpac.
I feel the same way. I played every day during 10.0. but in 10.1 i just didnt want to log in anymore. I cant really put my finger on why, but i just rather play classic at the moment
bc all the bad things in 10.0 are enhanced now in .1
I think the thing is that with classic (up until MoP) you had long questlines running building up to weapons that were amazing.
Not just in stats but also in look. Like I still haven’t seen a weapon cooler if not as cool looking as Quel’Serrar or Thunderfury.
Like with the raid class tier set of vanilla.
Nothing comes close to those looks.
I understand the feeling you both are having, but I think there are better solutions than a mandatory grind again.
One thing is that gearing could be a bit slower. I played loads in the first 2 weeks of 10.1 because I knew I was going to lose time to D4, but also because the possibility of being fully geared in 3 weeks was available, therefore I had to do it. Genuinely, if we had been capped to getting 5 crests per week so it took 6 weeks to get fully geared, I think the pacing would have been much better. (However, I suspect this faster gearing was intentional knowing that D4 release was imminent)
Secondly, my friends who care about having the highest M+ score on our server are still logging in and doing M+ regularly. Instead of adding a power grind, maybe they could enable more prestigious/competitive grinds. Dragonriding pvp races completely failed because it requires everyone queuing at the same time, but if there were a leaderboard for fastest times on a race, I would absolutely be logging in for that. Similarly, Torghast as a server or regionwide competition to get the highest score or the fastest time would have certainly engaged me and load of other players.
Thirdly, is this actually a problem? From my own experience and observing others around me, I do not think the lack of me logging in is an issue. I'm not logging in because I would rather play Tears of the Kingdom or D4 and its fantastic that I can do that without feeling like I am letting my (raid) team down. And in the last few weeks, I have logged in wanting to do some M+, but no one else in my guild is online because they are all playing D4 or FF16. And that's good; I just went to play some steam games I wouldnt have otherwise played. I feel like WoW has given me a couple hours a week of my life back, and I'm actually really enjoying the freedom to play WoW when I want to instead of feeling like I have to.
Wasn't a fan of Zaralek tbh, compare it to mechagon which was full of high quality toys and items, there's no comparison, even Zereth Mortis (i feel) was a better 'after x-pac' zone. Lately i find myself doing old content for completion, as opposed to 'having to go to the cavern'
I think because we've been trained for so long to do the "mandatory" power gains stuff, we didn't have time or will to do the "optional" stuff and now everything is optional we've been trained out of doing it.
I really love this format! I've been missing the T&E Talks videos and this feels a lot like it
10.1 is definitely a success. Yeah I didn't care for niffen games, or drogbar stuff but I really enjoyed the story and lore. The raid is fun and a good time with my guild, the tokens are super helpful, and researcher events are cool. I'm excited though to be not be underground though lol. I like the skies!!! Bring me that horizon!
I've achieved what I wanted for the most part, it doesn't force me to stay in-game every day to grind out a currency or player power, and in general it feels nice to be able to take a break and come back once new content unlocks rather than feeling like "I have to login everyday to stay relevant and justify my purchase"
POSITIVES: Love the new zone and much of the added content. The Loamm Niffen faction is surprisingly nuanced. They really could have been cringe but are instead more real than many of the other factions. Voice acting is top notch, as always.
MEH: One of the less compelling things about 10.1 are all the bag-clogging currencies. Another was all the new daily / weekly objectives and not having a way to figure them all out. Wowhead helps a ton, but for whatever reason I missed much of what was added. I always meant to come back and research, but haven 't yet.
SUBSCRIPTION: I just re-activated my sub yesterday because of needing to finish the Trading Post. If it wasn't for the Trading Post, I would probably have waited for 10.1.5 to drop or 10.2.
This podcast-like discussion is the perfect format for stuff you put in the background while working. Please make more of it!
Just finished all 10.1 content today and I'm very satisfied. I was working a lot of OT and spending time in the garage woodworking as we moved through April - now. My time was respected, I'm happy with the story, and I'm ready for 10.1.5.
I do agree that they've gone too far particularly on gear.. I would like to see crest/upgrade rates decreased, but base item drops increased instead. I was done gearing by like week 3 of the patch, Like mid 440's, fishing for chase pieces from the raid. Now my alts are getting there too. I'm motivated to be able to bring my whole alt army thru the megadungeon when it comes out, so that's keeping me going. AP Grinds though? Nahhhhhhhh. If we need a power carrot to make power gamers play with casual gamers then let it just be gear itself. What's wrong with open world players getting high level stuff anyways?
I feel like the incentive to do those new things is there with the niffen rep quest that gives half a spark. But they gave people rep tokens that have lasted the whole patch for some people. Plus the high spark drop rate if you miss a week is super high so I guess people feel like they don't have to do the quest either
I absolutely love the raid and my guild has been super active! I absolutely love this patch, the new lore, but I just like the black dragonflight's story in general
I still see Legion as the best expansion. Artifacts, raids, story and everything else was just interesting and getting better and better. (Besides the 'dull' Broken Isles fel patch, but it introduced Mage Tower!) And Argus was just awesome in every way. The best raid I played, and really well balanced, at least in the first week, before they made last boss much harder. I really enjoyed doing up to full Heroic the first week, while now I dread doing even normal for 10.1.
Last boss always has to be overly hard now and a pain to do, forcing me to grind gear in M+ to be even invited to groups, which I just refuse to do. No raiding I guess!
Legion was peak wow, but Dragonflight is quite good. The problem I think is that the Burning Legion is probably the best enemy that WoW will ever have - and legion is the expansion that did it properly.
It's been a struggle this patch. I mainly play with my gf and we are super casual. She has alot of hand pain/issues so she's having a very hard time with the amount of damage all the mobs do now and upgrading gear.
I quite liked 10.1 and perhaps preferred it to the initial content of the expansion. It’s been nice to have a main who is very well geared, but then also being able to gear my alts to a near similar level with relative ease. I can’t actually remember the last time I was so engaged with the game.
10.1 was awesome, I just came back to wow after being too busy to play for awhile and I'm loving it. Now I might like it because I didn't get to play at launch very much at all. However, because dragonflights base expansion is just really fun in general, the patches feel pretty good too. A good foundation is what BFA and Shadowlands lacked, no matter how good patches could've been they still didn't hit as well. I'm having so much fun in wow
How many minutes??!! Dafaq! Putting you on x1.75 :) And yeah agree with you. I cleared heroic and if you don't play alts, there is no reason to do anything in Zalarek other than weekly chore of farming points for spark. Aberrus is waaaay too easy and I don't even have a reason to do dungeons. If I was progressing hc Aberrus then yeah, you want better gear for this progression, but hc is cleared... Mythic requires fixed groups so not everyone can do it, so something feels wrong with the design of this patch.
I would LOVE a weekly stream like this! But please add music! I will hear every episode. And I'm glad they decided to not make mandatory grinds linked to the blue dragonflight questline. People would just rush like they rush the quest lvling experience and also I wouldn't have been able to do it when I think is the right time, like you Tali waiting so much to do it. That's important to me. It means the game is THAT good. You want to experience it as it should. They should work on player retention features, sure... And I would like a unique art loading screen for every time you log in at the Zaralek Cavern. Loved the video, hope to see more like this, and please music! (from ff14 or wow or games in general
the raid was made short and easy for D4, change my mind
Would love a weekly chat format from you both it'd be fab, I still watch the old Hot Fixs
I think the better way to look at it is that Dragonflight is such a good gameplay experience, that you no longer feel obligated to play it every day. It's almost like Stockholm Syndrome. I think we all just need to be ok with not playing WoW as much and be just as excited to renew our sub or log back in for the next content release.
Well, the thing for the Blue Dragonflight quest chain is that if your character got the Cata legendary staff you'll get that mount as a reward so you don't need to keep the staff around.
And it's only for that character.
1. Like the set up would totally listen to podcast in this kinda setup.
2. Just resubbed for the netherwing mount because I love that dragon from outlands. And I feel similarly so far but all this talk has me back in the mood to get the story progressed to current updates.
I like it. What has kept me coming back, in addition to my raid team, is actually the profession system, which is an optional grind in itself to get all the knowledge I can each week. Now I'm taking it slow since I have KSM and AOTC and just waiting on the mage rework of 10.1.5.
I strongly disagree with the notion that being psychologically forced by mandatory grinds/loops to start up the game was a good thing and is missing now.
It's perfectly fine to be able to finish a game (or content patch in this case). It's okay to play other games once you've had your fill of WoW.
Many of the current side-activities do not reward high level gear/currencies etc. They are for more casual players that are trying to gear up and for people that enjoy the content or want the cosmetic rewards.
If you play WoW for the high-end PvE/PvP content, it's great that you're able to focus on that. Not every activity has to be for every player.
Especially with the current cadence of content, being able to play WoW in bursts of 1-2 months at a time feels great.
Sure, if you want WoW to be your "only-game", it might not be the same as before, but that is only because you're no longer being made to play unenjoyable content solely for the rewards.
With the current state of the game, Blizzard has to deliver quality content at a decent pace to have people come back regularly, instead of going the lazy route by putting players on a boring treadmill that is easy to scale up or putting artificial walls in their way that slow progression down to a crawl.
The good thing about dragonflight is you only have to play as much as you want and no more.
a big issue with past 3 expacs was if you did not log in you FELL BEHIND FOREVER.
And while it made us feel bad, it did keep us logging in and playing every single day.
Overall the experience is better, but we don't feel the REQUIREMENT to play, and instead of having those pain moments, we now just have "eh" moments, which are still not amazing, but better, meaning there is only amazing, great, good, and eh moments. no more "Fucking bullshit" moments like having to farm azerite or soul ash or anima.
For me, there has been nothing bad in this expansion to make me want log out. But, there is also nothing great to make me want to log in.
The raid being a bit harder and taking 2 more weeks would mean my guild progression is the motivation to up my power and log in for sparks and vault. But we got AOTC, a few people dipped and after a couple weeks we just took a break until next patch.
So I think rather than make it mandatory or smth, just extend guild content longer.
But also I did the same amount of M+ I did in 10.0 in 1 month of 10.1 cuz I loved the reward loop and it was unlimited basically. So I played way more but then finished. I think that’s fine.
I'm absolutely loving not feeling the need to log in outside of doing prog with my guild and whatnot. Another shout is that the dragonriding races are the best so far, in my opinion. I think wow players aren't really used to the idea that you can log in and do what you want, set your own goals. For me, dragonflight is pretty near perfect right now.
Gearing was a bit too easy this patch. At the same time, something about M+ is just so punishing. I think it is more punishing for healers. Last week broke me with the Afflicted affix. Groups took forever to fill and typically fell apart after a couple of bosses. I would like to not pug, but all of my M+ squad stopped playing
I took a break last week as a healer main, afflicted is just a little too much to deal with sometimes and I dislike it.
Love the podcast idea. You guys are great when you're natural, less scripted
I feel that a lot of the fizzlewizzle grind that would be helpful would be to just make something such as the travelers log take more "work" so its still not attached to power.
2 things the mandatory power currency needs to be is 1. Account wide, and 2. Earnable from literally all dragonflight content, so it’s functionally like an endgame xp replacement
I understand where they are coming from despite never getting into WoW.
I've been feeling like this in FFXIV where I really wish the game would tell me to do something but instead it goes "oh yeah you can log out, talk to you later" and it's so deflating
I'm actually very happy the blue questline doesn't have anything necessarily attached to it. I love this game for competitive pve and pvp and the lore and I'm perfectly fine with those things being separate. I still haven't done it either because I'm waiting until I have time to give it the attention it deserves, if I had to do it to be my best in raid I would have zoomed through it early on without really taking it in.
This is the patch ive played the most. Not the caverns though. TBH the caverns are kinda meh.
I've been having a blast in 10.1. I got lucky with the tier being as quick as it was, as I managed to farm all my dungeon teleports and get the Curve before my wedding in June; the rest of the season I can just relax without feeling pressured to do anything. I can't say I've experienced a lack of things to do, though, since I fill my time with grinding old content or levelling and gearing up alts when I feel I'm done on my main for any given season.
First, I completely agree with Evite, patch is great, really like everything about it, except one tiny point...
I'm a solo player, not a casual, because I'll play for hours daily, but this whole patch has put us solo players at a disadvantage with these new elites in the caverns. I don't want to HAVE to group up to kill stuff. I can't gear up further without grouping up and so I'm just not logging on. (I can with my tanks, but not my dps specs or classes)...
I really enjoy 10.1--As a GM, all my raid teams met their goals and now we're spending out time doing the things we feel compelled to do. I feel like, in modern WoW and maybe the past, gearing has been such an immense focus of the player experience, that it can trivialize all the many other features the game offers. I really like being able to get past that gearing barrier and actually do other things, I've forgotten what that feels like until usually the end of an expansion. Seeing the Devs add evergreen content/catchups for legacy systems is a great addition, too.
It feels like a possible solution is weekly sources of better crests in the open world. Blizzard really shied away from like, Legion, where world quests frequently had gear that was decent, especially when they titan forged up. That had its problems but I was definitely excited to see a new batch of world quests. I think people want to gatekeep getting better gear or whatever, but gear is so easy to get if you do raid and M+ anyway I just don't care. Let researchers under fire reward hero gear, and let Fyyrak assaults give you a few Aspects crest fragments. And to be clear, I think all of the high end rewards should be limited weekly drops, not infinitely farmable, but if you could say get an entire Aspect Crest each week by doing researchers under fire, a sniffen niffen game, and fyyrak assault, I don't see the harm in that.
That definitely could introduce more incentive for people to do these things, it doesn't really affect the top end. It might get more people into raid by slowly giving them better and better gear.
But then what would you need that gear for since hc raid is so easy? The carrot was that we needed better gear for progression but there is nothing to progress. Higher keys? I have no reason to do them, all I wanted is mythic animation effect for 2500 rating. There is few ppl who want just achievements for 20+.
simple really... just like with Emerald Nightmare and M+, Blizz didn't realise the implications of the new gear system so Aberrus was functionally hugely undertuned. At the same time, having upgradable gear dropping from the raid meant people were no longer forced to log in and do M+ for gear - and so a whole lot of people stopped doing so, because they never liked the toxic M+ puggosphere.
Love the format and the casual-style banter. I can listen while getting stuff done. Hugs and love to both of you.
I agree in wanting a reason to log in everyday, but one thing I’m enjoying at the moment is the amount of option I have in what I can do. I used to have to wait for the downtime between expansions to go a work on grinding old content, but I can do that now too if I don’t want to snail race or whatever. Like right now I’m working on getting Tarecgosa which I’ve told myself to do before I do the last blue dragon quest. Another point is that all content gives you flight stones for the most part, but having it capped out because I have fully upgraded gear I practically get no bonus reward other than the pleasure of doing that content. Maybe if flight stones had multiple uses or could be converted into crests or something, I would have more incentive to grind current content.
I think in order to give intersting and compelling content Blizz should look at the difference between the Mage Tower and Torghast. Both were super fun in terms of gameplay, but the latter felt mandatory and unfun because of the currency tied to it and the poor rewards, while the Mage Tower was just a content one could choose to do or not, it also gave unique rewards which players could aim to. As Tali said, when they "removed" the currency from Torghast it suddendly became much more enjoyable, but in order to make it memorable like the MT it should've had unique and interesting rewards like cosmetic sets and weapon trasmogs, while it only had some toys, a pet and some mounts with models you could get from doing other content.
I think a return to borrowed power and artefact-style progression would do massive damage to the increased freedom and quality of Dragonflight, it means you never choose to log in and do your weekly tasks because the game is fun, you HAVE to log in and do your weekly tasks or you fall behind. I think 10.1 having a definitive “okay I’m done now” feeling is fine and part of that is that I don’t have to log in every week for a 1% increase to my healing capacity. Needing to do snail racing for currency or needing to do dragonriding races for currency would turn them from fun side things to mandatory chores
I feel the need to voice my opinion that this opinion is shit in case blizz sees this. To hell with mandatory grinds. I'm loving dragonflight and 10.1 and looking forward to more.
I log on and think what do I want to do and do it. Not what do I need to do.
There's nothing to do in 10.1, lol.
The Caverns were okay for the first week or two, but that was it. They actively made rare farming harder and killed the patch for those people, and there was nothing exciting for me personally.
I used to do Cutting Edge raiding in Legion/BFA, but when I had my kids I went super casual. There's just... nothing there for me in 10.1.
I think if theyre ever gonna make something like torghast/expeditions/or any other kind of content like that again, while also having some kind of power progression in the game at the same time, they should do this:
- the first 1 or 2 runs of that content gives you rewards for the main power progression, in a way that isnt mandatory on alts (other sources, etc.)
- after those runs there is something like the renown board that gives you an idea of what other cool optional rewards you can get from it.
I think that would be nice. „Forces“ you to peek into content you havent done yet, and then leaves the choice of whether you want to continue doing it afterwards.
How do you guys think the Bain quest line stacks up in comparison to the Blue Dragon quest line? Personally I think they are about level.
I 100% do not want it to go back to ‘feeling like a job’. I’m so glad to have options. No pressure, no fomo.
I'm glad I watched this. I thought it was just me. I played the crap out of 10.0 and 10.0.5, but only have done the MQ up to the raid in 10.1. I like the activities but I am not motivated to get on to do them. So haven't played the new patch much. I do think there could be a good way of doing some mandatory content and still have all the optional stuff.
love to see you both rocking this video! That said…Tali’s sound is a bit echoie (is that even a word?) anyway…another solid video! Really liked seeing you guys together having a nice chat 😎👍
I think it's easy for Tali to say that he wants a mandatory power grind since logging on is literally part of his job lol. I'm enjoying the game so much more since I don't feel like I'm behind if I don't log in for a week.
I agree with a lot of what was said here. I'd also add an overabundance of unstructured group content as a potential contributing factor. By this I mean content that's intended to be tackled in a group, but lack any sort of built-in group-finding system.
Part of this problem is that you'll get people who don't realize they need to find a custom group for the content, which the game in no way tells you to do, and get frustrated when they fail. But also because you can very easily end up in a situation where the map gets cluttered with content that it's clear no one is doing (at least on your shard), and that's just kind of depressing to look at.
I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about how empty ZC is nowadays and how frustrating it is to get anything done . It’s not a perfect solution obviously, since not everyone has a schedule that makes it work, but just like with the feast, Tuesday is your best friend. Playing at peak time on Tuesday evenings is the only time I can consistently get anything group-related done.
On a side note, I think part of the problem is with the player base too. Now before you all grab your pitchforks and torches, just hear me out. Did Nazjatar or Mechagon, or even Zereth Mortis feel empty at any point? To me it seems like there were always people zooming around and killing rares, but there were also a lot of people calling out when rares spawned in general chat. Sent out coordinates, and there were always a TON of people hanging out in the “hub” for the zone. There was motivation to actively seek out help to take down whichever creature has that sparkly thing you want that particular day. But now? At least as far as I can tell, there is no general chat in ZC. No one really hangs out in the hub, and I haven’t seen anyone call out a rare spawn yet the entire patch.
As much as I hated Shadowlands as a whole, I think they did fantastic with Zereth Mortis. They encouraged cooperation, and gave desireable rewards for doing so. I mean even after I “completed” all there was to do there, I still spent a lot of time there. Heck, a couple weeks in I got my Aurelid lure and I would stop by every week on Monday night and call out for anyone who hadnt had a chance to down him yet that week that I was spawning him in like 3 minutes. Every time there was always a huge crowd. I was far from the only person doing this, too.
I dunno, maybe there’s just a lot of burnout, maybe they should have added in some Dragonflight equivalent of the aurelid lure to encourage active participation.
Maybe RareScanner is partly to blame too, I’ve fallen into that trap myself of forgetting it isn’t baseline and most people probably have no idea that some Pirate Monkey just spawned at the extreme north of the island.
It’s like Blizzard did such a good job on removing the pain points and increasing the enjoyability of the gameplay loop this time around that it actively discourages the banding together of players to get something annoying/tedious/painful done to end it sooner.
… oh crap. Did I seriously just have a tiny little flash of nostalgia for BfA and Shadowlands? I feel tainted. 🫣
Blue dragon quest line was amazing! Did it on an Arcane mage that has the teragosa staff and got the mount appearance at the end. Honestly the most Emersive and 'RPG like' the game has felt to me in years! That alone can carry a meh patch to me.. Plus it's super alt friendly.
man reading the comments here makes you think that pretty much everyone was a hardcore top player before DF. just saying that you did not need to grind ap all day every day if you weren't one of those 1-2%. so could we please stop it with the lies already.
Nice to see a couple that plays together! To me the best expansion was Legion followed by TBC. And I play since Vanilla beta (warlocks could open trade Soulstones to anyone!)
I was able to bring my alts up to date on the campaign which I appreciate being able to do. I did not feel panic to get stuff done which is great for a change. I have enjoyed the caverns but I don't spend a ton of time down there on one character. All things considered 10.1 is a win for me.
If any sort of borrowed power grind comes back...i blame you ;). I for one have enjoyed playing at my own pace and not feeling bad while playing other games because my character isn't falling behind, I've even done the blue dragon story, I did have to do it in two sittings though. The raid and m+ where too easy this season, that's my only complaint.
I'm mostly a high level M+ player, doing > +20 keys is probably 60-70% of my playtime, so I'm not playing much 10.1 because the dungeons suck. Blizzard forgot about M+ tuning after week 1, most of these dungeons have 2-3 abilities that are egregiously overtuned, or that flat out suck. 23 HOI Tyrannical last boss literally takes 7-8 minutes because of all the intermissions you get. It's not fun, so I don't do it. Once Blizz actually tunes the dungeons, I'll play again.
Listening to you talk about the game in this video to me it sounds like you are slowly having your priorities change. As some one who stopped playing not so long ago after kids came into the story you have pretty much said all the same things i was saying to my friends and guild. What are you doing instead of playing?
Been saying this ever since we started talking about AP being a souless grind for player power. I think they need to bring back heart of Azeroth. But instead of having it be a player power thing, they should make it an infinite progression thing. And they can put things in there that add player customization. Like class mogs, spell skins etc. Progress would be slow and this would need to be maintained ofc. But you'd always have something to work toward. And it wouldn't clash with any other system since it would be additive.
I been loving Dragonflight myself 10.1 is still very cool. My raid team now starting their mythic prog only really hampered because there was a few players on our team that got poached by another guild. I think a lot of the feeling of not needing to play the game constantly is all about the upgrade system. I really haven't felt the need to grind M+ for the first time in a long time. For me that is great. I have more time to play other games, get my quest cape in OSRS, finish the story quests in GW2, play Diablo 4. I felt like for the first time in a long time WoW is allowing me to be a proper gamer and play other games and still be good on progression. So in a way being able to not have to play WoW full-time to be a 'good player' feels really good. Best expansion.
I don't like the restrictions on the catalyst being only Suffusion camp gear but in general this new upgrade system is a bit overwhelming. My preference would be to have gear that can be upgraded all the highest upgrade and instead of locking out via Explorer/Adventurer/Veteran/Champion/etc whatever else there is.
Just have a special currency to upgrade it to the next tier, like we already have with drake crests.
Sure, this means someone with a green item or an item from a heroic dungeon could obtain some currency from mythic+ and upgrade it all the way to the highest mythic + level but I'm failing to see where this would be an issue for the player.