I really WANT to love Legion, but I feel like Blizzard keeps getting in their own way

[s0ul]

I cant go back to WoW again after Heavensward. Legion was really, really mediocre.

I just quit WoW for FFXIV. I am a level 40 Scholar as of right now and it feels like the old WoW, back when the Blizzard Devs actually cared about the quality of their game.

This whole Legion RNG scheme of Blizzard seems like a method of forcing people to stay subscribed as long as possible before they quit out of frustration, instead of creating a game people would want to pay a sub for. This might be extremely difficult to hear for some but a lot of WoW players put too much work into their characters to simply quit. That's why some of them continue to play this garbage. I've been playing WoW since Vanilla and it definitely hurts to see what they've done to the game.

I am not saying Legion is the worst expansion. It has some good ideas, but they could use some originality. The legendary system is the worst part about the game. The Artifact system is awful and frustrating especially when you realize just how easily your class can be destroyed by an incompetent team. The whole heavy RNG-based classes with broken rotations is just lols. This is of course their "vision" as they call it. According to these Devs, we are simply tagging along for the ride. But who the fuck pays for their "vision"?

Look at the Legion BETA forums. Most people were against drastic class changes (especially hunters). Look at the recent PTR tests. Literally 99% of the players did not like what was on the PTR. Yet all of the changes made it to live. The notes were inaccurate, which looks great for a multi-million dollar corporation. Then the buffs and nerfs on Friday. The thousands of replies worth of feedback??? Yeah maybe 1% of that made it to live. These player suggested "fixed" are... On legendaries LOL.

Isn't it the Dev's job to make the classes playable (and fun)? They seem to think it's okay to force players to a garbage RNG legendary system that MAY grant them an item to fix the clunky rotation, etc. I am glad I stopped paying them a monthly sub.

[rayvio]

I do like a lot of things about Legion. but having to relearn how to play every single character every single expansion is something that, every expansion, makes me wonder if I'll even bother with the next one. especially bad this time since I ended up with a dozen level 100s by the end of WoD. thankfully some of them are the same class (just on different faction) but it's still a lot to relearn

[Low Hanging Fruit]

The first couple expansions got it right for the most part. It took the same gameplay of a class and added a little to it. Spiced up the taco a bit but it was still a taco. Now over time this did lead to boat. Weather or not that was a bad thing is debatable but that's not where I am taking this. But ever since they decided to clip the bloat (started hard in WoD) it feels like they have lost the objectivity and direction of the classes which has lead to a lot of "reimagining" and finding the "fantasy" which shouldn't be needed in such an established game. It feels like they are looking for a new starting line to go back into just adding a little each expansion. Problem is they can't find the line. Or so it seems.

Then to add to the madness they put a pure RNG loot system onto of tons of legendaries that can alter all that as well. So with all this madness going on to really repair classes seems just crazy. Just a whole lot of ifs to fix a ton of stuff correctly in one pass.

[Saffa]

How wicked of Blizzard, the owner of World of Warcraft, should change the game the way they wish to. It should be up to the odd players to decide how it should progress.

[Super Kami Dende]

I find they are not confident in their content anymore...

Legion would of been fine without the crazy rng of titanforge and legendary items. It would of been better without the time gating that is ap and research.

They keep falling into the trap of making boring tedious content rather then progressively hard content and after a week or two you realize world quests are just dailies with a new ui.

They need to go back and look at what made tbc and even wrath a success it wasn't a insane grind but a slowly building difficulty curve.

What made those 2 expansions a Success was good timing. The game as it stands now is leaps and bounds better than it was in Vanilla or TBC. Most people just let nostalgia cloud their vision instead of realising that after 12 years they may just be getting bored with the Game.

Also, there is far more "progressively" difficult content now than there ever has been in WoW.

Also people that complain about the Classes getting changed, you realise if they didn't there would be the same number complaining about how the classes are stale and never change.

With a playerbase in the Millions, you won't please everyone.

[Deleted]

Play a ret paladin...DO IT! IT CALLS TO YOU!

I do. It's increadibly boring. WoD was many times more fun and reactive.

But because its legion and legendaries+AP, rerolling isn't an option.

[Jiai]

Being a software project manager (in the industry, so i don't even have to care about balance, just to try to make things work), I don't think it is as easy as some of you expect to just listen to player feedback, put your work on the PTR and bam, everything is automagically balanced and correct on patch day.

It just doesn't work this way. I rarely see anyone posting "we are doing too much damage, please remove 15% of our DPS asap!"People just love to complain on the forums, people love to compare their classe performance (and even more if it proves their class need buffs). People complain when Blizzard don't fix problems, and they complain when Blizzard make too much hotfixes.

And most important, there is a lot more in a patch timing than class balance. At least this time, they released 7.1.5 before Nighthold, giving the time for the most important fixes before the raid.

I'm not convinced the other games are doing much better at balancing, few of them have people putting so much time on their character (it is not really a problem if a few characters are underperforming in, say, LoL) AND have so much competition between people.

[Niwes]

since day 1 blizzard was "extreme". they swinged from one extreme to another. wether general game decissions, balancing, or whatever. it was always: boom, 1000 points left. boom, 1000 points right. there wasnt ever any rational step by step to slowly near the goal. their pendelum knows only 2 states: left extreme and right extreme. this was always the case with wow and blizard in general.

why ? no plan ! why they didnt learned over all that years ? no plan !

[ryanmahaffe]

I just quit WoW for FFXIV. I am a level 40 Scholar as of right now and it feels like the old WoW, back when the Blizzard Devs actually cared about the quality of their game.

This whole Legion RNG scheme of Blizzard seems like a method of forcing people to stay subscribed as long as possible before they quit out of frustration, instead of creating a game people would want to pay a sub for. This might be extremely difficult to hear for some but a lot of WoW players put too much work into their characters to simply quit. That's why some of them continue to play this garbage. I've been playing WoW since Vanilla and it definitely hurts to see what they've done to the game.

I am not saying Legion is the worst expansion. It has some good ideas, but they could use some originality. The legendary system is the worst part about the game. The Artifact system is awful and frustrating especially when you realize just how easily your class can be destroyed by an incompetent team. The whole heavy RNG-based classes with broken rotations is just lols. This is of course their "vision" as they call it. According to these Devs, we are simply tagging along for the ride. But who the fuck pays for their "vision"?

Look at the Legion BETA forums. Most people were against drastic class changes (especially hunters). Look at the recent PTR tests. Literally 99% of the players did not like what was on the PTR. Yet all of the changes made it to live. The notes were inaccurate, which looks great for a multi-million dollar corporation. Then the buffs and nerfs on Friday. The thousands of replies worth of feedback??? Yeah maybe 1% of that made it to live. These player suggested "fixed" are... On legendaries LOL.

Isn't it the Dev's job to make the classes playable (and fun)? They seem to think it's okay to force players to a garbage RNG legendary system that MAY grant them an item to fix the clunky rotation, etc. I am glad I stopped paying them a monthly sub.

"Back when the devs actually cared"

Oh shut the fuck up, you act like none of the devs give a fuck anymore, like they are all sitting in their seats smoking weed and laughing on the forums while twirling their 90s mustaches.

Its obvious that love went into the content of Legion. Just because you dont enjoy it doesn't change anything.

You have no fucking right to simply claim a team of hundreds of people give fuck all about the game or feedback.

Have fun in StormBlood.

[WskyDK]

Diggin Legion.
I don't mind the RNG, as it always gives me something to do or look forward to when I login.
Then again, I'm also completely ok with stopping my playtime if I don't find the game enjoyable. A (seemingly) large portion of the player base seems unable to do this however, so they must accept the changes Blizzard makes.

[Claymore]

Like I said, Legion has a lot to love. And I actually love the Class based quests and most of the Artifacts (although I have a very real issue with Frost being made DW-only and changing Frostmourne to be a pair of 1handers).

I just feel like the way you play and INTERACT with the game keeps changing so frequently, and many of the classes and specs seem to have been reinvented to the point to obscurity, it's just hard to enjoy what's here.

I wasn't being facetious when I said that I WANT to love Legion, but I just hate how alien all of the classes feel to me now, and none of them quite "clicks". Just super frustrating.

[Zephyr Storm]

I cant go back to WoW again after Heavensward. Legion was really, really mediocre.

I keep hearing really good things about FFXIV. Should I finally give it a try?

[Azmoden]

I keep hearing really good things about FFXIV. Should I finally give it a try?

There's a free trial up to lvl 35. The story starts up slow, but really picks up after a while, especially in the expansion.

I just hope you don't mind cutscenes, as there are a lot of them. FFXIV is probably the most story-based MMO I've played (besides maybe FFXI), so if you're not that into the story aspect of MMOs, well, you've been warned :P

[Zephyr Storm]

I find they are not confident in their content anymore...

Legion would of been fine without the crazy rng of titanforge and legendary items. It would of been better without the time gating that is ap and research.

They keep falling into the trap of making boring tedious content rather then progressively hard content and after a week or two you realize world quests are just dailies with a new ui.

They need to go back and look at what made tbc and even wrath a success it wasn't a insane grind but a slowly building difficulty curve.

I know everyone has their own opinions on the matter and I don't mean to derail the thread, but IMO Wrath of the Lich King was the peak of WoW for me and almost everyone that I know personally. We all had FUN playing WotLK. From the class designs, to the raids, to the lore. Everything was great. Then Cataclysm came and the start of the massive sweeping changes that now happen every single expansion. It has really ruined the game.

- - - Updated - - -

There's a free trial up to lvl 35. The story starts up slow, but really picks up after a while, especially in the expansion.

I just hope you don't mind cutscenes, as there are a lot of them. FFXIV is probably the most story-based MMO I've played (besides maybe FFXI), so if you're not that into the story aspect of MMOs, well, you've been warned :P

No, I love story and lore in MMOs. I feel like a lot of MMOs don't do ENOUGH story sometimes.

[Belloc]

Have you ever tried tanking or healing? It sounds like you've always picked DPS classes... maybe you should try another role?

[Schattenlied]

I do hate that they keep changing classes so drastically... I used to absolutely love my Rogue, Cata Subtlety was one of the most fun specs I have ever played, now I can't stand any of the Rogue specs... I don't understand how they could have taken something that was once fun and just slaughtered it... All they accomplish with these changes is pissing off the people who enjoyed how their class used to play.

None of these massive class overhauls were necessary, they never are, I don't understand why Blizz feels the need to keep doing it... They need to settle on something and tweak to perfection, not try to reinvent every class every other expansion. People wonder why the game is always so imbalanced? That's why, because Blizzard gimps themselves with redesigns, they have to start class balance over from scratch every couple years.

[Deleted]

They don't usually do those complete overhauls, it was basically Legion that affected all classes. They usually add a new spell or two or shift things around a bit.

After the Retri rework in Wrath, I had been playing this paladin since then and up to WoD. I really can't enjoy the gameplay now, and I've felt the same for many specs too.

Their problem in my opinion is the abundance of talents and traits that we have now. Every spec has about 28 unique talents to choose from plus their 4-5 unique Artifact Traits (and more coming in 7.2), it is a bit messy and probably a reason why they make so many changes; pre-Legion trying to restore spec identity, and now trying to get things under control.
The Surrender to Madness case is a great example of this messy situation and why I feel they are trying to "tame the beast". Can they really design multiple viable builds for a spec, all balanced at the same time?

Back in Wrath, we had way less "major" talents, way less available builds, more strictly designed specs without such freedom of choice; you could choose to not use the cookie cutter build because you liked something else or you could choose to go hybrid, but both were weaker than the cookie cutter. And even when you were going hybrid, you couldn't make something so strong that they couldn't notice first or balance, because you were restricted by Talent Points. The stronger effects were usually later in the tree.

Despite pruning and sacrificing all those utility spells and buffs, we have come to a point where we have more available spells and passives than ever before. It feels like the Devs are trying really hard to find spells to fill the 28 slots, eventually adding some spells that are uninspired, useless-fillers-outshined by others in the same tier (like Mind Spike, they couldn't find a good place for it so it got scrapped), broken (early Exsanguinate, WoD Arms' Sudden Death in pvp), old spells, or which sometimes harm the class (like Rune of Power and Prismatic Crystal in WoD or Soul Effigy now, I've read many complains about those spells, haven't played them).
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying the old Talents were better; putting all this effort into every spec has resulted in some amazing spells and gameplay styles that they might never had thought about before, like the Unholy gameplay, Outlaw, etc. But in my opinion they need to "trim" the current trees if we want more stable specs, less frequent changes every patch and less but viable builds.

[Allenseiei]

I just quit WoW for FFXIV. I am a level 40 Scholar as of right now and it feels like the old WoW, back when the Blizzard Devs actually cared about the quality of their game.

This whole Legion RNG scheme of Blizzard seems like a method of forcing people to stay subscribed as long as possible before they quit out of frustration, instead of creating a game people would want to pay a sub for. This might be extremely difficult to hear for some but a lot of WoW players put too much work into their characters to simply quit. That's why some of them continue to play this garbage. I've been playing WoW since Vanilla and it definitely hurts to see what they've done to the game.

I am not saying Legion is the worst expansion. It has some good ideas, but they could use some originality. The legendary system is the worst part about the game. The Artifact system is awful and frustrating especially when you realize just how easily your class can be destroyed by an incompetent team. The whole heavy RNG-based classes with broken rotations is just lols. This is of course their "vision" as they call it. According to these Devs, we are simply tagging along for the ride. But who the fuck pays for their "vision"?

Look at the Legion BETA forums. Most people were against drastic class changes (especially hunters). Look at the recent PTR tests. Literally 99% of the players did not like what was on the PTR. Yet all of the changes made it to live. The notes were inaccurate, which looks great for a multi-million dollar corporation. Then the buffs and nerfs on Friday. The thousands of replies worth of feedback??? Yeah maybe 1% of that made it to live. These player suggested "fixed" are... On legendaries LOL.

Isn't it the Dev's job to make the classes playable (and fun)? They seem to think it's okay to force players to a garbage RNG legendary system that MAY grant them an item to fix the clunky rotation, etc. I am glad I stopped paying them a monthly sub.

So... Do you like the RNG of the endgame in FFXIV? Did you try crafting there? I'm sure you will have a great time if you hate RNG... Also do you like grinding gear for months? Being a level 40 scholar, means you've hardly touched the game.

Oh and btw, let me warn you. In FFXIV they also have their vision and they dont give two shits about EU or NA, they only care for their Asian audience, which is us in Korea and Japan, not even China. So you are also tagging along for the ride.

[dippinsawse]

His criticism is that Blizzard makes class change every patch because they think it keeps the game healthy. They have even SAID this themselves in interviews. If he disagrees with that design philosophy, then he's not overthinking anything at all.

Devs at Blizzard have this overwhelming fear that if they don't change class mechanics every expansion drastically, that people will get bored of their class over time, but the truth is that they have changed classes so much over time that people don't have time to really settle in and find something that they LOVE. Sure, a spec might be super fun and engaging in one patch, but you can't grow attached to it because inevitably everything about it will be changed within a year or so.

It's mental. Change just for change is NOT effective or healthy. Find what works and enforce it. Enhance the things around it that don't work. But to change a spec every single expansion (Look at Warlocks literally since WotLK up until now) just for the sake of change is making more people hate the game than enjoy it.

It's not mental. I would absolutely stop playing if they didn't fix issues and change classes. I've actually been disappointed with the lack of changes to classes over the years. Ele shamans and rogues have barely changed in 10 years. Classes like Paladin and Warlock stayed more fresh thanks to constant reworks. The fact that they actually reworked all the classes to such an extent in Legion was a major selling point to me.

People are different. Some people hate change and just want to keep doing the same boring thing over and over again. Some people want variety and to at least be moving in a new direction for better or worse.

Personally I don't understand people like you at all. How can you enjoy just doing the same thing over and over again on just one character? The mechanics in this game are not THAT fun to the point where you think it is perfect and don't want new mechanics and reimaginings to your class. I can understand not liking some specific changes but that doesn't mean it is bad to make changes in general. Just give feedback to those things you dislike.

I honestly don't think they have really changed that much either, you still generally hit the same buttons with a few minor differences. I don't see how people can be frustrated with how their class changed when they are barely even different. I remember ret players whining a ton at the start of legion but even they were barely changed in how they play, it's just some minor tweaks that made them upset (like losing the ability to be a retarded ranged class during wings which was bad design to begin with).

[Claymore]

It's not mental. I would absolutely stop playing if they didn't fix issues and change classes. I've actually been disappointed with the lack of changes to classes over the years. Ele shamans and rogues have barely changed in 10 years. Classes like Paladin and Warlock stayed more fresh thanks to constant reworks. The fact that they actually reworked all the classes to such an extent in Legion was a major selling point to me.

People are different. Some people hate change and just want to keep doing the same boring thing over and over again. Some people want variety and to at least be moving in a new direction for better or worse.

Personally I don't understand people like you at all. How can you enjoy just doing the same thing over and over again on just one character? The mechanics in this game are not THAT fun to the point where you think it is perfect and don't want new mechanics and reimaginings to your class. I can understand not liking some specific changes but that doesn't mean it is bad to make changes in general. Just give feedback to those things you dislike.

I honestly don't think they have really changed that much either, you still generally hit the same buttons with a few minor differences. I don't see how people can be frustrated with how their class changed when they are barely even different. I remember ret players whining a ton at the start of legion but even they were barely changed in how they play, it's just some minor tweaks that made them upset (like losing the ability to be a retarded ranged class during wings which was bad design to begin with).

Well, think of it this way.

I like playing Mega Man games. Each Mega Man game brings a few minor changes to the formula, shakes thing up a little bit, but they all still feel like Mega Man games.

Now, imagine if you took Mega Man away, and then gave me Castlevania. Now, maybe there's nothing wrong with Castlevania, but it's just not the same.

I really want to play a character I don't have to "think about playing" and can instead focus on enjoying the encounters, the environments, and the ambiance. My Death Knight, for example, I simply cannot enjoy. To me, Death Knights are *SUPPOSED* to wield massive two-handed weapons, which immediately removed Frost as an option. Now, Blood feels like a complete mess, and I've never never liked their approach to Unholy since ICC.

For a Class that started out as "the Arthas class", anymore it feels completely removed.

While the Death Knight was always my favorite class -- in terms of Lore -- I think it's an issue that lots of classes struggle with. Warlocks have absolutely had it the worst, but I feel like, at a certain point, Blizzard just needs to settle on some core mechanics for each Class, and just let them be.