Where did all the development effort go? Legion vs BFA feature comparison

[Deleted]

legion was very shit too evne tho it had more content, but bfa is worse

[Acog]

By this time during Legion the game felt so much better. I also didn't un-sub by this time in legion like I did for BFA. =D

[Thetruth1400]

If u put in only 50% effort while only 25% of players quit, that is profit in the short run, and thats what matter these days.

That's a big if, but also extremely poor for the long term health of the game.

We saw it in WoD; a complete dumpster fire of an expansion where the play base cut in half within 6 months and then Blizzard went into silent running mode so we never knew just how bad it got.

Seems we're probably in a similar situation with BfA. I'm not saying BfA doesn't have it's good points, but it seems most of the systems they put in place this expansion have kind of flopped.
- Warfronts are boring and only available for 7 days a month. Blizzard can argue "No it's 3.5 weeks!" but that's just a BS distraction and doesn't acknowledge that they're gated content that isn't very compelling anyway; just a "do this once for the decent piece of gear" then ignore.
- Island Expeditions; again, a boring rush to complete and nothing very interesting to them. The only reason that people are even doing them is because of the ease of leveling with them, the easy Azerite Power, and the whole host of collectables on them. Truthfully, the only thing keeping them afloat is the rewards they give because the content itself isn't compelling.
- Azerite Gear is a nightmare. Again, it's not really compelling content and the entire system is poorly designed. The traits are, for the most part, just stat boosts which aren't interesting. The balance on them is horrid and there is always a best, so unless you have a way to target that specific trait any "upgrade" doesn't even feel like one. Likewise, the neck inflation cost makes pieces of gear essentially useless until you grind, grind, grind, your way up to where Blizzard says you should be.

Frankly, I agree with OP; it seems like they're either phoning it in this expansion or there is some truth behind the 2 alternating teams theory and we're just on another expansion in the hands of the B (if this were on a grading system more likely D rank) team.

[Swalload]

Recognizing that Legion had lots of content updates over the course of 2 years, Legion at launch still felt vastly more complete.

Legion Dungeons: 8
BFA Dungeons: 10

Legion Raids: 2 (Emerald Nightmare + Halls of Valor)
BFA Raids: 1 (Uldir)

Legion Zones: 6, 3 per faction
BFA Zones: 4 + 1 end game dedicated zone

So far so good, roughly comparable.

However, the next details showcase how thin the content becomes. Bold represents objectively superior content.

Legion: New Class (Demon Hunter)
BFA: 6 new allied races, reskins of existing character models, require Legion achievements of varying complexity

Legion: Class Order halls (8 class quests & NPCs)
BFA: A reduced mission table + faction campaign (about 2 hours of quests)

Legion: Artifact Weapons (including skins, abilities, artifact power, and quests)
BFA: Heart of Azeroth (including 3 pieces of armor with randomized abilities and random drops)

Legion: Tier sets for each raid, for each class
BFA: Armor types

Legion: Transmography 2.0, Mythic+ dungeons, World Quests
BFA: Expeditions (see: heart of azeroth), a Warfront, voice chat 2.0

I'd argue that Legion wins the last category, as World Quests and Mythic+ dungeons are the main focus of the end game at this point for the majority of active BFA players. Expeditions are being farmed out of necessity for azerite (and some vanity collectors), and Warfronts are only available 2 weeks at a time to a faction with virtually no value after ilvl 340 gear.

My question is... where did the development resources go for all of Legion's new features, versus what was delivered in Battle for Azeroth?

Were Warfronts and Expeditions so difficult to develop, that they consumed all the resources that build the equivalent of 8 Class Hall campaigns, class armor sets, the new transmography system, the new Mythic+ system, World Quests mechanics, and a new tank/dps class?

One area not covered: class and mechanics changes. I'd argue ability reduction and GCD changes were bad design decisions, as are the PvP changes...however these tuning changes occur every expansion; survival was changed and demon form was removed in Legion for example. Also, the deliberate gold deflation put in by Blizzard this expansion fix problems introduced last expansion. Professions aside from herbalism and alchemy are mostly useless, but that was a problem since WoD.

Okay a few things need to be corrected, but first I want you to know that I do agree Legion appeared to come with much more robust content than BfA.

Halls of valor was not there on release.

You're trying to match things together as if they had similar values or as if they were one or the other when it comes to production, which is often not the case at all (I'm a game dev, not just talking out of my ass).

One of the very big thing you're not mentioning is the size of the continent and amount of quests. BfA is far bigger not just visually but in terms of quests to do. In Legion we had almost everything done when hitting max lvl, while in BfA we need only 1 zone and a half + the warcampaign (which we only have access to half of it before 120). On top of that there's en entire enemy side as well so that's only counting ONE SIDE. To put it simply, we do only 25% or less of the questing content from 110 to 120 while we did about 85-90% in Legion. So there's one of the very big chunk of development effort missing in your maths.

Another important thing is all we see is the final product. We have no idea how much stuff was cut and trashed, we don't know how many times they had to iterate and rework stuff. It's possible that island expeditions were changed many times over and sadly reached what we have now and nothing better than this was achieved during production so it was considered "good enough" for release, "better than not having them at all" or "we can't spend anymore time on this for now". This kind of stuff happens all the time and as players we are not privy to that information.

Another very strong possibility is designers were put on a new project, leaving the WoW team with less than usual (this should usually be planned by management to have the right amount of people for the goal they want to reach), maybe at some point they realized they were missing people and brought in more but it was too little too late? We don't know. To me it seems obvious they had a lot more artist ressource than designer ressource, all the arts in BfA is fucking top notch, from map to animation to music.

So unless Blizzard comes here, we won't have a real answer.

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Legion had 10 dungeons, 2 mythic only like BFA.

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And yeah, IDK what happened with the team that brought us Legion. It makes no sense this abyssal drop in quality and quantity

The extra 2 dungeons came in later, Legion opened with only 8 like OP said.

[RobertMugabe]

damn i was gunna go more 2/10

I just have low Standards already

[clevin]

Another important thing is all we see is the final product. We have no idea how much stuff was cut and trashed, we don't know how many times they had to iterate and rework stuff. It's possible that island expeditions were changed many times over and sadly reached what we have now and nothing better than this was achieved during production so it was considered "good enough" for release, "better than not having them at all" or "we can't spend anymore time on this for now". This kind of stuff happens all the time and as players we are not privy to that information.

that's kind of OP's point, though. It feels like we have less stuff at this point of BfA and they're speculating on why. We can't know, of course, but it feels like either some features took a lot more time and effort than it might feel like they should or....

Another very strong possibility is designers were put on a new project, leaving the WoW team with less than usual (this should usually be planned by management to have the right amount of people for the goal they want to reach), maybe at some point they realized they were missing people and brought in more but it was too little too late? We don't know. To me it seems obvious they had a lot more artist ressource than designer ressource, all the arts in BfA is fucking top notch, from map to animation to music.

... this and dev resources were reassigned or lost to attrition (or a combination).

[probert]

You're trying to match things together as if they had similar values or as if they were one or the other when it comes to production, which is often not the case at all (I'm a game dev, not just talking out of my ass).

One of the very big thing you're not mentioning is the size of the continent and amount of quests. BfA is far bigger not just visually but in terms of quests to do. In Legion we had almost everything done when hitting max lvl, while in BfA we need only 1 zone and a half + the warcampaign (which we only have access to half of it before 120). On top of that there's en entire enemy side as well so that's only counting ONE SIDE. To put it simply, we do only 25% or less of the questing content from 110 to 120 while we did about 85-90% in Legion. So there's one of the very big chunk of development effort missing in your maths.

Another important thing is all we see is the final product. We have no idea how much stuff was cut and trashed, we don't know how many times they had to iterate and rework stuff. It's possible that island expeditions were changed many times over and sadly reached what we have now and nothing better than this was achieved during production so it was considered "good enough" for release, "better than not having them at all" or "we can't spend anymore time on this for now". This kind of stuff happens all the time and as players we are not privy to that information.

Another very strong possibility is designers were put on a new project, leaving the WoW team with less than usual (this should usually be planned by management to have the right amount of people for the goal they want to reach), maybe at some point they realized they were missing people and brought in more but it was too little too late? We don't know. To me it seems obvious they had a lot more artist ressource than designer ressource, all the arts in BfA is fucking top notch, from map to animation to music.

So unless Blizzard comes here, we won't have a real answer.

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Thanks for your post and insights.

Its hard to measure scale of zones vs Legion, although I will challenge the leveling timelines and breakdown.

At launch of BFA, it took me all 3 zones -- without heirlooms, boosts, or rested XP -- to get to max level. I was about 75% through Zuldazar when I dinged 120, and then spent another half day completing all the quest lines and unlocking King's Rest.

In Legion, it took me roughly 3 zones (out of 4 leveling zones) to hit the level cap; Highmountain i did entirely at the level cap and the same obviously for Suramar.

But you are right -- one design mistake I think they made, was segregating the quest load across factions. 20-30% faction specific adds flavor, but by splitting 50/50 they really penalize alt leveling. And if people don't play both sides of the divide, they will miss half the content from the expansion.

In terms of design, you're entirely right... warfronts might have ended up more complex than expected and sucked up more time. perhaps the zone size was a non-linear growth to development effort,

[Dracullus]

The extra 2 dungeons came in later, Legion opened with only 8 like OP said.

Content that you can unlock first week (second if you don't no-life first days) is suddenly not launch content?

Maybe Suramar and most leveling zones from older expansions aren't launch content too, you couldn't get quest here first second of expansion. Or even better, let's call everything but initial Magni scenario "not launch content" ;D.

Thanks for your post and insights.

Its hard to measure scale of zones vs Legion, although I will challenge the leveling timelines and breakdown.

At launch of BFA, it took me all 3 zones -- without heirlooms, boosts, or rested XP -- to get to max level. I was about 75% through Zuldazar when I dinged 120, and then spent another half day completing all the quest lines and unlocking King's Rest.

In Legion, it took me roughly 3 zones (out of 4 leveling zones) to hit the level cap; Highmountain i did entirely at the level cap and the same obviously for Suramar.

But you are right -- one design mistake I think they made, was segregating the quest load across factions. 20-30% faction specific adds flavor, but by splitting 50/50 they really penalize alt leveling. And if people don't play both sides of the divide, they will miss half the content from the expansion.

In terms of design, you're entirely right... warfronts might have ended up more complex than expected and sucked up more time. perhaps the zone size was a non-linear growth to development effort,

This expac literally has one of quickest levelling and still we have someone whine about this.

It took me 2 zones (Voldun + Nazmir) with all side objectives that I found + 3 outposts intro quests + 3 dungeons (when I got quests for Temple, Underrot and Motherlode) to get 120. Almost same situation on Alliance (full Drustvar + full Tiragarde + 3 outpost - no dungeons this time). Oh, forgot to mention - all with War Mode off. Zuldazar/Stormsong were basically max level zones for me.

And for alts you have also:
- daily dungeon and farming dungeons in general
- levelling through islands - it has pros (you can farm achievements/pets/mounts/transmog and get alts at same time) and cons (no gear)
- invasions in 8.1 - slow, but require just do 5-6 world quests every few days (if it will be similar to Legion 7.2 invasions); EXTREMELY efficient if you level all 110+ alts at once.

[Swalload]

Content that you can unlock first week (second if you don't no-life first days) is suddenly not launch content?

Maybe Suramar and most leveling zones from older expansions aren't launch content too, you couldn't get quest here first second of expansion. Or even better, let's call everything but initial Magni scenario "not launch content" ;D.

Weren't we forced to wait some ridiculous amount of time for quests to unlock or some shit? I know they were in the game at release but I just feel like it took forever to actually get them compared to King's Rest and Siege of Boralus which we barely have to work for and only one of them is time gated by WQ respawn for rep. Maybe I remember it worse than it was.

[Indless]

We got the craptastic warfronts, and island expeditions and the god awful azershit pieces.

[Dracullus]

Weren't we forced to wait some ridiculous amount of time for quests to unlock or some shit? I know they were in the game at release but I just feel like it took forever to actually get them compared to King's Rest and Siege of Boralus which we barely have to work for and only one of them is time gated by WQ respawn for rep. Maybe I remember it worse than it was.

Nah same stuff, do Suramar WQ, return in 12 hours/full day to respawn them. It was even less grindy, we were doing Suramar quests and Withered army training in between - both gave rep.

[iamthedevil]

Blizzard likes to use the seesaw method to keep us on the playground. One good, one bad, one good, one bad.

[La]

You mean all that extra development time from abandoning WoD mid-cycle going into Legion? Where they had a massive headstart on things, in Legion?

Yeah. They didn't have that for BFA

[Deleted]

You mean all that extra development time from abandoning WoD mid-cycle going into Legion? Where they had a massive headstart on things, in Legion?

Yeah. They didn't have that for BFA

So might as well push the release date, makes perfect sense indeed!

[monteiro]

Atm, our best hope is that BfA will have the same fate as WoD and they start working on a new expansion asap.

[Reforge]

Every other xpac is gonna be legion quality now it’s better business that way according to their diagnostics

[Lorgar Aurelian]

alot of your comparison are heavly flawed as you don't seem to have actually compared them just gave them a glance.

zones: legion had 5 zones which all shared the same story across faction with stormheim being the only zone with real differences not counting patch added suamar quest. bfa then has 6 zones all with there own faction's story so more then legion. this also doesn't count say Arathi which has been fully redone but lacks quest.

order hall quest/npcs: see above the work that would have gone into those quest and npc's would have instead been used to make another zone filled with said quest and npc's

artifact weapons/bfa weapons: legion had weapon skins tied into the artifacts where as bfa goes back to the old method of having weapon drops no less effort there.

tier sets/Armour sets: legion had more tier sets that's true but it also used those tiers for the pvp sets. bfa has more amour sets in different places with there being more lvling sets then in legion and pvp sets not being a reskin of the raid sets like in legion, so no loss of effort.

bfa has no less effort then legion that effort has just been put into different places.

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and you're both wrong. OP is correct... forget whether we liked the artifact etc, BfA feels like it has less at launch than Legion did so the question is valid.

it doesn't matter how it feels if you want an actual comparison in most places bfa does not have less then legion.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

A Team VS B Team, the writers had this great idea for a plot that nobody honestly cares about and long-time players recognize as the same story told with a different Warchief, Legion was such a success they assumed they could just do all the same things and it'd be just as good.

Whole host of reasons.

[Mazinger-Z]

Honestly, most of the GCD, class changes and azerite abilities/system are objectively pretty poor in this expansion compared to other expansions.

The GCD and class changes reek of reflecting either the devs own inability to play the Legion game or believing that the level of synergy/complexity is somehow a barrier to entry to playing WoW. Or they thing we're getting too old to press that many buttons.

And it's clear they're focusing on the classes that make up the bulk of the playerbase / casual scene. That's why Hunter isn't a massive fustercluck and got most of the complexity from Survival removed and is still in better shape than a lot of other classes.

Shaman is getting wrecked is the same reason, as it's a low pop class due to years of neglect.

[Thimagryn]

Towards the Black Empire expansion

/tinfoilhat