Lundi 05 octobre 2020, les développeurs de World of Warcraft : Shadowlands ont publié un communiqué détaillant les points sur lesquels ils s'attèlent actuellement et qui devraient être disponibles dans les prochains Builds de la Bêta.
Ce qu'il faut retenir
- L'Antre est supposé être un lieu désolé, dérangeant et où le danger rôde partout. C'est le cas sur la Bêta, mais il ne s'agit pas d'une zone "amusante" d'un point de vue vidéoludique et les développeurs comprennent que même si l'environnement et l'histoire de la zone sont importants, les joueurs doivent pouvoir s'amuser malgré tout.
- De nouveaux types de visuels et de combats seront disponibles dans les multiples sous-zones de l'Antre, ainsi que de nouveaux événements temporaires et diverses interactions avec les éléments présents dans cette zone sans pour autant supprimer la dangerosité de ces lieux.
- La limitation d'une réinitialisation des Conduits par semaine sera supprimée et remplacée par un système plus flexible : en débloquant la Forge des Liens, celle-ci se verra chargée de 10 points d'énergie de Conduit. Placer un Conduit dans l'un des emplacements prévus à cet effet, dépensera un point d'énergie de Conduit. Ces derniers se rechargent à raison de 1 par jour, ou bien lorsque vous ajoutez un nouveau Conduit à votre collection.
- L'objectif de l'énergie de Conduit est de permettre aux joueurs d'ajuster leurs Liens d'âme en fonction de la spécialisation qu'ils souhaitent jouer à un instant T. Les développeurs estiment que les 7 points d'énergie chargés hebdomadairement devraient permettre aux joueurs de jouer comme ils le veulent sans pour autant les rendre exempts de tout choix.
- De nombreux équilibrages sont toujours en cours sur les classes et Congrégations. L'objectif des développeurs est désormais de permettre à chaque technique de Congrégation d'avoir ses forces et faiblesses plutôt qu'une utilité identique sur toutes.
- L'équilibrage du contenu de haut niveau est également toujours en cours, notamment par le biais des nombreux signalements de bugs (des milliers !).
Annonce officielle de Blizzard
As we continue to work towards making Shadowlands worth the wait, we have an update on several changes and improvements players can expect to see coming to the Beta over the next few weeks.
The Maw
The Maw is intended to be the desolate and brutal domain of the Jailer, and not a place any soul in the Warcraft cosmos ever hopes to visit. But this is, after all, a video game, and telling that story can’t come at the expense of creating a fun environment for adventurers. We’ve heard feedback that this content is currently falling short of that mark, and we agree.
We’re working to increase visual distinction and combat gameplay variety across the different areas of the Maw, as well as exploring adding new localized events and world interactions. We also want give players who journey to the Maw a bit more direction, while still preserving the “sandbox” roots of Maw gameplay. Players will venture into the Maw weekly to rescue souls to aid in restoring their Covenants, and the mysterious broker Ve’nari offers a range of cosmetic, convenience, and power rewards in exchange for Stygia. Those goals need to be more immediately apparent early on. We’ll share more info about specific updates when these changes are ready for Beta testing and feedback.
Conduits
We’ve also received a lot of feedback about the Conduit system. Many of you have expressed concerns that the current system will unreasonably limit experimentation and multi-spec play early in the expansion. While the existing weekly cooldown may provide sufficient flexibility once players have all three soulbinds fully unlocked, we agree that it is initially too limiting. A single weekly reset also fails to draw any distinction between someone who only wants to adjust a single conduit, and someone who wants to clear and rebuild their entire soulbind tree.
In an upcoming build, we will be replacing the weekly cooldown on changing conduits with a more flexible system: When first unlocked, the Forge of Bonds will be charged with 10 Conduit Energy, and placing a conduit into a socket will consume a single charge. Conduit Energy recharges at the rate of one per day, up to a cap of 10, and adding a new conduit to your collection immediately restores one Conduit Energy as well.
Our goal with this change is to ensure that, especially when players are acquiring new conduits and only have access to a small number of soulbinds and conduit slots, all players feel free to try out new upgrades and to adjust their soulbinds to support multiple specializations or activities. After the initial collection period for a given character, 7+ swaps per week should allow for more adaptation to suit specific roles or activities, while still requiring thoughtful decisions about how to customize each Soulbind for your playstyle preferences.
Class and Covenant Balance
Tuning has been underway over the past couple of weeks, but much work remains. Our initial tuning efforts have focused on Covenant class abilities that were outliers on either end of the spectrum, including some substantial redesigns where necessary. The coming weeks will see continued iteration on these abilities, as well as the soulbinds that complement them. Balance in this area means pursuing a mix of offsetting strengths and weaknesses rather than identical capabilities, and our goal in this process is that every class/covenant combination should have something to commend it.
Alongside these specific areas of focus, we are all using this time to tune various endgame rewards, fix bugs (thousands of which continue to come from the in-game Bug Report tool - thank you!), and add the finishing touches that will hopefully make your journey into Shadowlands a magical one when the time comes.
Thank you very much for all of your testing and feedback!
The Maw
The Maw is intended to be the desolate and brutal domain of the Jailer, and not a place any soul in the Warcraft cosmos ever hopes to visit. But this is, after all, a video game, and telling that story can’t come at the expense of creating a fun environment for adventurers. We’ve heard feedback that this content is currently falling short of that mark, and we agree.
We’re working to increase visual distinction and combat gameplay variety across the different areas of the Maw, as well as exploring adding new localized events and world interactions. We also want give players who journey to the Maw a bit more direction, while still preserving the “sandbox” roots of Maw gameplay. Players will venture into the Maw weekly to rescue souls to aid in restoring their Covenants, and the mysterious broker Ve’nari offers a range of cosmetic, convenience, and power rewards in exchange for Stygia. Those goals need to be more immediately apparent early on. We’ll share more info about specific updates when these changes are ready for Beta testing and feedback.
Conduits
We’ve also received a lot of feedback about the Conduit system. Many of you have expressed concerns that the current system will unreasonably limit experimentation and multi-spec play early in the expansion. While the existing weekly cooldown may provide sufficient flexibility once players have all three soulbinds fully unlocked, we agree that it is initially too limiting. A single weekly reset also fails to draw any distinction between someone who only wants to adjust a single conduit, and someone who wants to clear and rebuild their entire soulbind tree.
In an upcoming build, we will be replacing the weekly cooldown on changing conduits with a more flexible system: When first unlocked, the Forge of Bonds will be charged with 10 Conduit Energy, and placing a conduit into a socket will consume a single charge. Conduit Energy recharges at the rate of one per day, up to a cap of 10, and adding a new conduit to your collection immediately restores one Conduit Energy as well.
Our goal with this change is to ensure that, especially when players are acquiring new conduits and only have access to a small number of soulbinds and conduit slots, all players feel free to try out new upgrades and to adjust their soulbinds to support multiple specializations or activities. After the initial collection period for a given character, 7+ swaps per week should allow for more adaptation to suit specific roles or activities, while still requiring thoughtful decisions about how to customize each Soulbind for your playstyle preferences.
Class and Covenant Balance
Tuning has been underway over the past couple of weeks, but much work remains. Our initial tuning efforts have focused on Covenant class abilities that were outliers on either end of the spectrum, including some substantial redesigns where necessary. The coming weeks will see continued iteration on these abilities, as well as the soulbinds that complement them. Balance in this area means pursuing a mix of offsetting strengths and weaknesses rather than identical capabilities, and our goal in this process is that every class/covenant combination should have something to commend it.
Alongside these specific areas of focus, we are all using this time to tune various endgame rewards, fix bugs (thousands of which continue to come from the in-game Bug Report tool - thank you!), and add the finishing touches that will hopefully make your journey into Shadowlands a magical one when the time comes.
Thank you very much for all of your testing and feedback!
(Source)
C'est à la fois un drame pour de nombreux joueurs mais aussi une excellente nouvelle pour la qualité de l'extension à venir : World of Warcraft : Shadowlands a vu sa date de sortie officiellement repoussée.
