How I would make BfA better

[masterjc]

Hi all.
instead of simply whining around. being rude to each other. be hater or fanboy, let's try offer how BfA could be better.
I'll write down my version. feel free to add your opinion if you like it.
please, don't be an a..le and if you don't like anyone's opinion, be either polite to show your own opinion, or ignore it completely

anyway, I'm gonna try my best

1. Dungeons:
- make all dungeons usable in LFG. no Dungeons should be Mythic only. there are some people who love challenges. and some, who prefer solo play, quick pugs and no hard modes
2. Story/questing progression
- remove Mythic Dungeon requirement from Story quests (Siege of Boralus for example)
- make Campaign quests a bit longer
- all zones must have quests for both zones. if players don't have time to have characters for both factions, they technically miss half content of questing. we have seen in TBC/WotLK/MoP/Cata how there can be neutral quest chains for both factions, and faction exclusive or faction based different quests for same story.
- learn own lore. since Vanilla there were lots of mistakes and retcons. and most of them don't make good explanations and reasons for retconning.
sometimes a bit more work can give quests to be better story (for example, War of the Thorns, that makes almost no sense until player has read short stories for them). etc
- factions seem very uninteresting. they rarely have any introduction. best one for me was 5.1 Patch and MoP. where certain amount of reputation opened up some more quests, be it daily or story quests. and it felt more rewarding. also there were some extra quests at Exalted that gave extra rewards (for example, black serpent mount at end of Shado Pan story)
3. Gear level. at start of expansion, Arathi Warfront gave huge boost for gear level. Blizzard said it was mistake and they forgot to give IL requirement for Warfront. instead of gating content, it would be better to give access to all 120s for warfront, but make reward gear have IL different for people with different Item Level.
4. Azerite Armor - bad decision. some like it, most Don't (as far as I know). idk what to do with it. so I'll pass it. I don't like it at all
5. Professions - there are some rare ingredients, that are way too hard to obtain. and without them players cant make some gear. I tink it would be better if these ingredients (sanguinar, breath of Bwonsamdi, etc would be BOE. we had similar situation in WOTLK/Cata with frozen/titan/chaos orbs) it wold also help gearing too.
also professions have recipes that are gated. one needs to make gear, which requires lots of similar rare items, after it discover another harder recipe, and another, and another. all of those thing above, seem to be punishing players, instead of making them more motivated to play
6. Paragons - this was great addition in Legion. they should have made it at start of game, not in 8.1. and with more rewards. even recolors of gear/pet/mounts or any currency would feel more rewarding. there was no reason to do WQs beyond emissary quests until 8.1 if one already had Exalted with that faction
7. Pet Battles- I think new pet currency made game less interesting. there are so many pets already. and now when it's impossible to buy old items for pet leveling with old currency, and new one is way harder to get, it made pet battles less interesting I think.
8. Mission Tables - TBH they need either better rework, or full removal. atm they make almost Zero sense. few gold and pet coins, some reputaton and azerite. nah. even Garrison felt much better
9. Outpost Upgrades - these 2part quests seem to be almost useless. if they offered some story progression, it would be much much more interesting. I buy one, go to Zuldazar, find pet dragons in all base and.. that's all. no story, nothing useful. only one useful is Nazmir Bloodbeast that gives quick ride for zone.



I might add rest later.
I rarely do play pvp so cant say what to add/remove/improve there

[FelPlague]

1. Dungeons:
- make all dungeons usable in LFG. no Dungeons should be Mythic only. there are some people who love challenges. and some, who prefer solo play, quick pugs and no hard modes

all dungeons are in LFG now.
rest of this is just horrible just... i hate it, and its garbage alot of it... new pet currency really, your mad at that?
and no i dont want a bunch of cool rewards locked in paragon chests

[masterjc]

all dungeons are in LFG now.
rest of this is just horrible just... i hate it, and its garbage alot of it... new pet currency really, your mad at that?
and no i dont want a bunch of cool rewards locked in paragon chests

I mean, it must be from start, not added later for hotfix

reskins arenot as important as unique models.

if Horse mounts were in Paragon chests and not as Faction rewards for alliance, it would make feel less Horse-expansion for alliance

10.
Island Expedition - I would change them to be more like MoP Scenarios, than what it is now. rewards from expeditions (Azerite powers) is pretty meh
11. Old Currencies -Valor/Justice points - add similar currencies for running Dungeons and Raids. higher difficulty,more points. also weekly and Max cap for them. similar as it was in WotlK.
it would give players (mostly casuals) more reasons to do both dungeons and raids. also it gives small and steady progression towards gear. when one can buy some gear with valor/justice points. beyond RNG

[trapmaster]

How do I make bfa better? That’s easy, u uninstall wow from battlenet n wait for next xpac hopefully it’s better. Bfa is nothing better but band aids with blizzard’s stupidity.


Fuck azerite crap, fuck mythic+ crap, fuck professions underwhelming, fuck gcds. Bfa is probably better off selling it for a dollar instead 60 dollars for half assed content.

Oh yeah fuck gating.

[saidolol]

quest req is removed also from kr/sob, maybe read up abit before wall of text of stuff thats not even there.

[Sanguinerd]

As a start I'd fix it by telling Blizzard to forget about the word "balance" and focus more on the RPG part of mmorpg instead. Stop focussing so much about about "hard" end-game content and the people that do it.

Classes should feel different and have different functions. A pure dps class should out-damage a hybrid, a frost mage should do more aoe damage than a assassination rogue but less single-target damage ~ and that is perfectly fine. Those fancy damage charts we're always seeing people cry about should be irrelevant.

[Orwell7]

As a start I'd fix it by telling Blizzard to forget about the word "balance" and focus more on the RPG part of mmorpg instead. Stop focussing so much about about "hard" end-game content and the people that do it.

Classes should feel different and have different functions. A pure dps class should out-damage a hybrid, a frost mage should do more aoe damage than a assassination rogue but less single-target damage ~ and that is perfectly fine. Those fancy damage charts we're always seeing people cry about should be irrelevant.

From my heart.
However, I would suggest one BIG change: make dungeon groups 6 man. More dps slots = faster que times, everyone will be happier.
By getting 4 dps slots instead of 3, you can mix-and-match classes/specs/talents even more, it's just more inclusive.

Guess they cannot do that because of the old engine, so make all dungeons 6-man raids and call it a day. Nobody gives a flying f-- about HOW the game works, if it works and is FUN.

(and please don't come with the balancing hell, they couldn't balance classes properly in vanilla, bc, wotlk, cata, mop, wod, legion or bfa, no matter how much they prune abilities, so it's a moot argument)

[Leodric]

Seriously, what's your problem with mythic dungeons? They are so piss easy I can't fathom anyone not being able to complete them.
You literally need to know the most basic stuff your class offers and move out of obviously bad AOE effects and so on.

All these changes seem to casualize WoW much more than it already is, which is the bane of the game since late Wotlk and early Cataclysm.

- - - Updated - - -

No amount of content can make up for poor gameplay and reward systems. Reward systems can be fixed (and are not as bad in 8.1 as they were in 8.0) but gameplay cannot be fixed that easily. You cannot go from Legion making everyone feel powerful to BfA and be OK with it. Ultimately it is about them abandoning their class design philosophy. Doubling down on the inane idea of "focus on strengths, not weaknesses" while refusing to understand that not all strengths are equal is a recipe for disaster.

that explains a huge problem with BFA right now. It felt like a downgrade playing my ret in BFA compared to Legion. clunky and slow/boring rotation thanks to GCD change and removal or essential skills/playstyle which were fun.

[Morssoe]

*How I would make next expansion better*

[lappee]

Snip

All I can read is "Make WoW Mobile friendly, I want Mobile WoW so I can play 2mins at a time while waiting for train!"

[Uoyredrum]

-Remove titanforging/warforging

-Remove LFR

-Make all raids flex & only 1 difficulty

-Make new raid tiers broken up into multiple raids with varying difficulty per boss & raid + progressive item levels throughout longer raids

-Bring back dropped legendaries + quest line legendaries

-Bring back tier sets

-Bring back 5v5 arena

-Ban RBG cheaters

-Add solo queue rated arena (its own bracket)

-Add individual queues for 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 skirmish

-Bring back pvp vendors

-Make rep gear actually useful (upgradeable or just scaled with rep)

-Make the rep grind less painful (tabards)

-Make rep acct wide

-Bring back MoP style scenarios

-Make professions actually useful & meaningful

-Redesign classes because most of them are awful

[muto]

Make new content. BFA feels like Legion 2.0

[Gratlim]

@Leodric: early cataclysm casual?! Dungeons were a wipefest with careless tanks getting litteraly OS. It was harder / took way more time than Bfa m+. It eventually got nerfed to oblivion, but early Cata was hard-core compared to any exp that followed.

On topic: I agree that gating content from the main storyline behind a difficulty is bad. Any player should have the possibility to see the story. I also agree on the lack of story development and plot holes. I thought those outposts were either placeholders or never finished.

Personally I think Bfa is beyond saving and I hope it dies in fire quickly so that we get the real expansion ala BC/LK/MoP/L as fast as possible.

Key things: they need to work on a talent tree if we are to grind azerite ( ala Artefact weapon), they need to remove a lot of RnG from the gearing system, they need to reverse GCD change, they need to put back token vendors for gear (both PvP and pve) and finally they need to deprun and bring back the old glyph system.

[Leodric]

@Leodric: early cataclysm casual?! Dungeons were a wipefest with careless tanks getting litteraly OS. It was harder / took way more time than Bfa m+. It eventually got nerfed to oblivion, but early Cata was hard-core compared to any exp that followed.

It was harder but not as hard as you try to portrait it as here. Obviously experiences differ, but I had way more fun with dungeons were you had to watch out and not run through it like nothing can stop you. We have m+ now, which is fine and a way to make dungeons harder, but personally dislike the "gated time" approach Blizzard implemented with m+.

- - - Updated - - -

*snip*

Many reasons you've listed make sense and I think it could be a mix out of all of them. But then again I don't think Blizzard thinks through changes like these a lot. It dumbs down to make the game easier for casuals I think. Same with class changes, they might have thought somehting like "instead of a pug taking 5 skilled players from the same class, lets force them take class X which provides buff Y no matter how bad the player is" - that's something I do sometimes when creating a pug just so we have a buff.

[Tart]

Revert class changes to about 4 expansions ago.

[Heeresman]

All I can read is "Make WoW Mobile friendly, I want Mobile WoW so I can play 2mins at a time while waiting for train!"

Unfortunately BfA is not the Paragon of Expansions.....

Pun intended.


WoW Mobile is not the answer either. (Indications of a sort in OP)

[Deleted]

all zones must have quests for both zones

What?

/10

[melodramocracy]

Fixing BfA and WoW itself. List is not complete of course, but here's a few good ones:

-revert gcd changes entirely.

-rethink most, if not all classes (granted, each new iteration is worse than the last, but leaving them as they are now isn't the best move either). In the big picture, higher mobility as a tradeoff of lower output for ranged classes probably blends better with your current instanced content design. Increased active utility also works nicely as a tradeoff for reduced output for a few classes as well.

-fix Silvermoon and the Exodar, for the love of god.

-put portal systems and vendors up to allow players to pick where they want to consider "home", rather than just 1 main city per faction. It's boring.

-probably get rid of heroic dungeons entirely. Hear me out: Current heroics can be easily level scaled so that players can get through them during the leveling process. Once a player hits 120, normals are now instantly 'heroic', and M0's can be viewed as 'heroic'. As it stands now, a player can absolutely hit 120, still not have an ilvl that allows him / her to get into heroics (which themselves drop rather subpar gear compared to the nearly-as-difficult-but-far-more-rewarding M0 system. Heroics aren't bad, they just don't serve much of a purpose.

-make rep progress account wide. You've resolved half the issue with recent changes, but still haven't tackled the notion that players w/ a lot of alts are in for one hell of a timesink, if they even bother, trying to get various recipes on those characters. If I'm revered with turtles, and 1k away from exalted on 1 character, I should be on all of them.

-stop cheesing out with the travel system. When this game was young, zeppelin systems shuttled players from one continent to the next, and the player got to at least see the departure / arrival. Now we get soft "fast travel" rowboats between the BfA continents. Details, details.

-professions are better than they were in WoD, but that isn't saying a lot. Alter end game recipes to also require old world materials, Alter old world dungeon and raid boss loot tables to drop some of said materials, so players have a bit more incentive in running these things when timewalking rolls around (or even better, simply level scale all old world content, and make all of it relevant at end game if you really want to aim for the stars). You have a decent idea with the scrapper... keep that, and give other professions the ability to do something similar, but with more guaranteed results (ie, give blacksmiths the ability to do what enchanters can, with guaranteed drops of mats that aren't available by any other means. Make THOSE resulting mats required for more than just bs recipes)

-give DH's a ranged 3rd spec. Make it work on a more trap-based system ala old SV if you're insistent on continuing with hunters having a melee spec.

-edit: revert master looter changes as well.

[Bas Prime]

1. Make Guilds important again. Have Guild Quests (like Class Hall Quests) to build up and secure a guild fortress. Add profession quest lines to the profession buildings you need to build. Have interesting and memorable npc characters that help you while questing (kinda like Nazgrim). Have an npc enemy force attack the fortress regularily that need to be dealt with in the quest line. Add Guild related stuff. Professions need to improve the guild fortress (tailors create flags and banners, smiths create armor and weapons and so on. Make old raids and dungeons drop stuff for your fortress to decorate or unlock. A guild resource is added, that you get when you do stuff, but you get more, when you do it with a guild mate or in a guild group. Have world quests, weekly quests and monthly guild quests. This stuff can be taken into the next expansion and the ones that will follow, since you can always build up upon it, it is not ignored after the expansion is done.
2. (just for me, this will probably have very little effect for the game and other players) Add a Blademaster hero class for orcs and add Wardens for Night Elves.
3. Make it possible to join the faction if wished. You can group, guild and raid with the other factions players. (Blademaster and Warden could be recruited by both sides if desired) Horde players can still not go into Alliance cities, and alliance players cant go to Horde cities. new neutral hub (not Dalaran, something new) The players will be ported out of the city as it is done in Dalaran when you enter the wrong zone.
4. Make reputation more interesting. You can farm reps and get useful stuff out of it, not stuff you dont need because it is way behind your already farmed gear. Gear should be something you can get in dungeons but also work towards. Dungeons need to be more interesting, maybe different ways to go through, bosses shift places or availability.
5. Dynamic Events and scaling. Seen in Guild Wars 2. Works great, WoW would benefit alot from it (imo) also have account wide gold and crafting materials on one bank.
6. upgrade the engine. This comes from someone who has no idea of how difficult or possible this is, but WoW could use this.
7. More character creation options. hairstyles, tattoos, scars, piercings
8. An adult version of warcraft. like age of conan. Where you have finishers and can cut off limbs and stuff like that. More mature content in general as an option that can be unlocked when you can verify your age to blizz.

[msdos]

I have one change that would flip this game upside down forever.

Make all pieces of gear and all items able to be traded. Remove Soulbound as a concept.

Then introduce currency that can modify gear in different ways: add stats, change stats, remove stats, increase ilvl, etc.
Get this game an actual economy with actual gear in it.

Right now gear is completely pointless within the confines of the game. You literally do nothing but vendor it or disenchant it and right now stats are pretty much pointless, hell, even currency is kind of pointless.