Recognizing parasistic game design decision

[Shougun]

A lot of the WoW complaints about artifacts and the Heart are exaggerated. People talk about an 'infinite grind' but that's only sort of true. The power was designed to be collected almost passively over time rather than something you actively farmed. You COULD hardcore farm it but there was minimal benefit in doing so. Think of it like tomestones in XIV. You CAN spam dungeons to cap out within hours of the reset, but there's no huge benefit to doing so compared to capping slowly throughout the week.

As for the specific differences between artifacts and the heart, it's about the longevity. Legion artifacts were a single item that upgraded through the whole expansion. The Heart on the other hand was just part of bigger system that required frequent collection and then abandonment of other gear. Plus it also had several side systems like Benthic and Corrupted gear alongside it. Basically BfA was just a huge mess in terms of gearing. Artifacts weren't perfect but the system was MUCH more simple and easy to interact with.

Thank you for sharing!

I've read about some of these systems in the past, the big highlights, but obviously this misses some finer details and you don't get to develop too much emotional response (which should then be evaluated into a factual reason, but the emotion can be a good spark). So hearing about it is valuable, not that I'm wanting feedback for the WoW devs lol, just makes it easier to place in comparison next to what we discuss in context to FFXIV. Knowledge is power, and all that...

Like I just for the sake of it read about Garrisons again (had many general ideas on it, but now read many quests and rewards) - its pretty clear Garrisons can still have valuable features to players currently (toys, mounts, equipment, passives, etc), but also clear they totally left the content to sit in a corner and collect dust. With certain systems in that content being more problematic than others, like they had cool buffs and features to unlock but reading how much time and hand holding you had to do for certain progressions (reading about the war table), seems like they could have just made adjustments to time schedules and reward rates and people would have started to immediately become happier.

Did the power you earn get removed (gone forever), or just get locked off into that expansion? This one I was trying to find but without a simple yes or no, more like "watch an hour long video one why I hate this system" lol.

[Jin-]

BLU is great fun. Feels like playing an old FF game

[Brightamethyst]

Did the power you earn get removed (gone forever), or just get locked off into that expansion?

Legion artifacts are gone forever. The weapons themselves still exist but they were depowered at the end of the expansion and are basically just fancy looking cosmetic items now. The Heart and azerite armors still work though. They're disabled in the new Shadowlands zones (and PvP) but still work in the rest of the game (which makes them fantastic for Timewalking.)

ok then name a reason why Eureka stopped at Baldesian Arsenal and nothing new was added to Eureka in Shadowbringers or Endwalker? It is effectively a 60 level grind fest for a single mount that could be deleted from the MMO and noone would notice.

Nothing new is going to be added to Bozdja or Zadnor either. In a few expansions noone will be able to get groups to do Delubrum as unlock BA there is no unique mount that looks cool and the Savage one is meh at best.

It all falls under the definition given in the video of content created to expire.

So what? What's the problem with content having a shelf life? Why does every piece of content have to be equally useful forever?

[Shougun]

Legion artifacts are gone forever. The weapons themselves still exist but they were depowered at the end of the expansion and are basically just fancy looking cosmetic items now. The Heart and azerite armors still work though. They're disabled in the new Shadowlands zones (and PvP) but still work in the rest of the game (which makes them fantastic for Timewalking.)

The Legion variant might give me some loss aversion trauma lol, but the latter sounds fine in so much that I mean I wouldn't mind if the system existed so long as whatever that it needed was fun to interact with and to do and my bias that it doesn't expect I play the game as a full time job to be successful / make progress. I've heard a lot of negative things about the system so before saying 'yes please copy paste" I'd take more time to read all the criticism, but say for example Eureka you get buff and that buffness only lasts in that zone (in this way it is a sort of similar mechanic, and so long as it's not lost... well then it's not entirely wasted time, of course how you go about getting that stuff and the fun.. again would be the more serious matter).

I do wish relics, our system, had more ... something to them- cool looking weapons with sometimes nice backstories, epic names that you can pick from history, and the weapon does pretty much nothing relevant to it's vibe. They're fancy glamours, miss being excited to pick up an item to see how it might change things up, even if only slightly. That's more a comment in general for FFXIV stat allocations though, not really any interesting stats, except maybe for jobs that can pump a skill / spell speed for "1 extra spell in their buff window!!! woo!" lol. Of course the balance when you make actual changes to the mechanics, like some of the legendries or what have you in Blizzard games, is harder to "balance". A result of our team being so careful with stats is pretty much everything is perfectly well up to your choice (meanwhile in WoW there are specs each expansion that are like "you can choose that, but no one will appreciate you for it".