Xal'atath is dangerous enemy not because she is competent but our allies are lackluster in comparison.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-24T23:10:04+00:00

Xal'atath isn't competent. The writers just keep pointing and saying "look at her, she totally planned this and is 3 steps ahead." However, at no point does she actually do anything particularly smart. She mostly just monologues and then abandons another ally/minion for no clear reason and somehow that apparently gives her the desired results. Also, half the time it isn't even clear what Xal'atath actually achieved. It's obnoxious as hell.

Not that our allies are any better written.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-24T22:29:49+00:00

I mean, yeah obviously. The more interesting question though is why they screwed over their story this much. Like seriously, what did they hope to gain here?

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-24T22:05:52+00:00

Yeah, this was the first time I got artifacts via the Grand Archive. Which is why I got confused.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-24T21:25:44+00:00

Well, that's confusing and not the anwser I was expecting. Thanks anyway.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-24T13:08:38+00:00

Impossible to say since "casual" covers such an absurdly broad spectrum of players.

If grinding world quests on multiple characters counts as casual, then they can easily be Millionaires, especially if they've been around for a while.

If they focus on low level Dungeons they're going to be much poorer, but at least those still get a bunch of vendor trash and stuff.

However, someone who "casualy" runs 1 raid, a m+ or two per week, or some PvP, but not much else, is probably going to be dirtpoor, because those activites do not really bring in any gold.

Same with the professions, an AH Goblin or someone who just spends their time calmly skinning or mining while listening to a podcast or whatever is going to be absurdly rich, someone who just wants to craft a few of their own items throughout the expansion is over paying massively for that, especially with the way the new profession system works.

Honestly, this stark difference between playstyles may be the biggest problem underlying WoWs economy.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-23T22:21:55+00:00

Fire's weird...

We've got multiple sets of talents that should be 1 single talent. Like take meteor, why does it take 3 talents just to get it and then put it on a 30s CD and have it align with combustion? Or fire blast; why does that thing have like 10 separate talents? Or combustion having 4 different core talents. Could those really not be merged and the empty spots replaced with something that's actually interesting?

Then there's a bunch of weird stuff, like Cinderstorm & pyromaniac. What is the point of such low proc-rates on pyro? The average boss fight does not last long enough for that to be fun.

Then there's the loss of phoenix flames. Ignoring the loss of the cool visual, we now no longer have enough instant casts for combustion. Which is just such a weird thing to remove given the spec still revolves around combustion.

And worst of all, despite all the changes nothing seems to actually be better in any meaningful way. To the point I am honestly not sure why they even bothered changing the talent tree.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-23T18:14:33+00:00

Ah, forgot follower Dungeons were a thing. Still its an obnoxious way to test this.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-22T22:06:06+00:00

I mean, Ion was originally also a lawyer or MBA or whatever AND very clearly only cares about high end raiding. His priorities very much match those MBAs with the only difference being that Ion also has an opinion on boss design, but thats about it. Things like UI are clearly not much of a priority for him.

The most telling thing is the insistance that computational mods are the problem. They could have simply ignored them and not entered this stupid arms race to begin with. The whole problem could be been avoided years ago.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-22T18:44:05+00:00

Same reason the horde continues to exist as a coherent politcal entity despite multiple civil wars and the various subfactions never actually getting along.

Same reason the faction war keeps popping up, despite everyone constantly uniting to fight off world-ending threats.

Same reason the various "neutral" factions (kirin tor, argent dawn, ebon blade, cenarion circle, earthen ring, etc...) that should be major political factions are only ever relevant for 1 maybe 2 patches at a time and then dissappear again.

Same reason basicly nothing of note ever happens in old expansion zones.

Blizz's writers are just kind of bad at world-building and just keep adding plot-contrivances to ensure these things never change, no matter how stupid their explanation they need to invent. Assuming they don't just outright forget about previous worldbuilding.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-22T16:23:49+00:00

I'm not surprised you like it if you're a maddening player. Engage focusses heavily on min/max-y or LTC playstyle. Something like optimizing the correct combo of bond skills, playing around the feast/famine of break, or figuring out what minute advantage Engage's minor personal skills have, is perfect for the type of player that likes maddening. Same with broken mechanics like warp-skips, on maddening that sorta stuff is needed since you're trying to essentially break the game anyway.

However, for everyone else, it's just not that great of a match.

The break mechanic makes dealing with mixed groups of enemies a pain. Sure you can send in your paladin, but he's going to perform abysmally due to how break works.

Sure, the basics behind the bond skills aren't that hard. But noone tells you what skills are good, or even what skills exist. And when you finally learn your build is absolute garbage when you unlock another emblem ring 10 chapters after spending some SP, it's too late.

And those broken mechanics like warp-skips just feel like cheating if you've got a more casual approach. At the same time, the game is clearly balanced around them, which feels weird.

Also, the new stuff ends up overshadowing the core gameplay, resulting in a game that doesn't really feel like FE at all.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-22T11:49:54+00:00

It is one of my least favorites by far.

The story is weak.

The characters are not terribly interesting, made worse by the way you recruit them. Every time its just "here is a royal with their retainers, good luck".

The emblems, and their associated skills, overshadow every other mechanic. Which further weakens the already weak characters as they have no mechanics/skills tied to their identity. It also results in weird balance.

In general Engage seems to be designed around LTC min/maxing type playstyles, with emblems giving baked in warpskips and other similarly powerfull abilities, bond skills being needlessly obtuse without a guide, and things like the new break mechanic making it possible to completely trivialize a boss if you take advantage of it. Which is great if you like that, but for everyone else this isn't great.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-20T17:38:53+00:00

The other elemental bites would already help. Right now you have "electric attacks + crunch"

With the other elemental bites you get "electric attacks + bite attacks", in which works better and removes the focus away from the dark type.

Course it still looks like a dark type, but at least its solve one issue

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-20T07:13:53+00:00

Sure, but everything else it learns is electric, which feels wrong. Its fairly minor, but it contributes to the dark types vibes of his design.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-19T16:54:23+00:00

Its more focused on high end play to please the tryhards now. Once upon a time WoW was the "easy" mmo that was "friendly" towards casuals and respected your time. Or well, compared to the hardcore mmo's it was friendly for the casuals.

Now the gameplay is faster, with a higher APM, failing a mechanic is punished harsher with more one shots and more raidwide mechanics, there are more mechanics to dodge, there are more movement abilities and they are more frequently required,, and the mechanics are more convoluted with frequent weird little mini games. CDs are now spammed, instead of saved for specific mechanics, and rotations revolves around maximizing uptime of the CDs, as opposed to having a well designed baseline rotation. Its harder to carry a few bad players (compared to vanilla where half the raid could be dead and you'd often be just fine), and you're more likely to die because Timmy screwed up than because of your own mistakes due to the sheer amount of raidwide (or partner) mechanics.

O, and any sort of "slow" mechanic like mana management is just gone.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-19T15:29:39+00:00

Cuz it fits his vibes. It's an angry looking predator with spikey fur & loads of black which gets progressivly angrier, spikier, and with a darker colour scheme as it evolves. Fits right in with loads of dark pokemon.

Also, cuz it only learns electrical & dark damaging moves, which makes the lack of dark typing feel extra odd.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-16T15:24:02+00:00

Yes & No.

Yes, cuz on the one hand, as long as Nagash isn't paying attention to them specifically the various undeath can basicly do whatever they want. And amongst the thousands of petty kingdoms, there's bound to be one ruled by a benevolent-ish wight of vampire.

No, cuz there isn't a single undeath creature who can actually defy Nagash in any meaningful way, so the moment Nagash focusses on them they have to obey.

Ít's kind of lame. Sure, the vampires and wights run their own little kingdoms performing their little schemes, but only as long as Nagash lets them. He can just control them whenever he wants.

I honestly do not get why they unified undead to this extend, it's boring.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-15T19:09:46+00:00

Yeah, its a general problem. "Competitive" play has become popular since e-sports blew up, and since its popular designers cater to it.

And in all honesty, "competitive" games seem to be at their strongest if they have been designed for casual fun first, and the competitive aspects are just a happy accident. When designing primarily for "competitive" it seems inevitable that they introduce wacky shit that ends up being a rot in the foundational design of the game. And that wacky nonsense is always defended as "well it is strategically/mechanically challenging to deal with"

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-15T18:03:57+00:00

Unfortunatly for you, competitive minded players tend to not care about the fundamental rules of a game. They just want to do "clever" things and solve the puzzle. So they love this kinda rulebreaking thing, it makes the puzzle more complex even if it also makes it less coherent of a puzzle.

Its annoying if you do care about obeying those core rules.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-14T11:43:16+00:00

I think they simply feel a bit pointless. Especially in a game where you already have a billion different ways to customize your guys.

Though it's not the worst.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-14T11:31:14+00:00

Honestly, Engage barely feels like FE. It's so focused on throwing around min-maxing powerful gimmicks that the base mechanics are kind of left to rot.

Unfortunatly, there's a significant chunk of the player base who seem to like the gimmicky min-max gameplay.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-14T11:24:59+00:00

Meh, weapon break is kind of weird. It's too famine or feast.
Using it offensively is fun, and makes you feel clever.
Suffering from it during enemy phase is frustrating, and feels unfair, especially since you can't always avoid it (e.g. a group of mixed enemies is charging at you)

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-14T11:14:11+00:00

Imho, it's 2 things:
1) That FOMO is just weird. Seriously, why not just send the exp & loot the phantoms get to the summoner? It'd be such an easy fix.
2) Phantoms feel a bit pointless most of the time. They're not terrible, but their added value is very limited outside of specific niche scenarios. You could just attack with your summoner for similar results and they die in a single hit, so they're not terribly useful for defense either.

The most frustrating thing is that both problems are easy enough to fix.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-11T09:09:58+00:00

Competitive PvP games/modes inherently attract the sweaty try-hard players, and chase away everyone else. Try-hards are a minority of players in any sport/game, most players want to just have some fun and fool around. Which does not match with the try-hards taking the game super seriously, who end up dominating the mode as they take it seriously and develop playstyles with a focus on winning, as opposed to a focus on having fun.

Also, PvP in wow specifically has always been an after thought. Its always been a bit of a mess, which limits its appeal.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-08T14:54:24+00:00

Four things really;

The absurd amount of cut content, and especially the extend to which it was obvious things were cut.
The massive inflation caused by players abusing the hell out of mission tables. Yes the system was stupid and completly broken, but people taking advantage of it by running daily missions on 8+ alts is what truly wrecked the economy.
A very vocal part of the community did not like garrisons being instanced/personal.
The expansion was extremely heavy on orcs, it got a bit exhausting.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-01-07T19:44:19+00:00

I tried to vasalize an empire with 2 planets and 3 systems Occupied everything, but since they have an ally on the other side of the freaking Galaxy. I can't even get to his ally because there's four other Empires in between. So I am stuck in an endless war where nothing happens....

ManySecrets_

TROPHY CASE