Why do the people that enjoyed Legion not enjoy BfA?

[pacotaco]

The Azerite system isn't even new, just a new UI, you had it in your weapon and that is apparently how it'll be changed to again.

The difference and the problem with Azerite system is that in Legion you had clear goals to look at, but in BfA it's all too uncertain.

Let me explain:
- Artifact Weapons had fixed traits.
- You had to farm AP to eventually unlock those traits.
- The goal was clear: "if I unlock these traits I get more powerful".
- It had the disadvantage that you had to level several weapons.

Now with the Necklace in BfA:
- You only have to level one item.
- The goal is uncertain: "if I level this item I get... ¿¿??"
- You get item with random traits: that means you can get "better" item with worse traits, so the "better" item it's actually not that good (even sometimes is a downgrade)
- You are constantly farming to unlock the same traits. How much times do you find that you "cant" equip a new piece because you cant unlock all the traits and that means losing power?
- All that plus most of the time you cant actually know what traits are better (and how much) without sim it, because they're too vaguely described or they're too complicated.

[Zaktar]

For me:

A) Azerite treadmill: you pull yourself up to a level to be able to use your traits, then you get the next piece and you lose what you just worked to earn. It didn't *feel* fun, it felt like I kept sliding backwards.

B) Story was fun, but not compelling: it was good enough to pull me through the various zones, but the larger story wasn't strong enough to hold me. Didn't connect to what was happening even after many hours of questing.

C) I was very quickly bored, in Legion that didn't happen.

[Zequill]

When you mindlessly bash the game, you always bash the present version. Cata was mark as Trash, MOP was mark as Trash, WOD was mark as Trash, Legion was mark as Trash. Don`t worry, BFA will be, in a expansion or two.

[Zyrinx]

He's not lying, tho. 2 years from now you'll see people saying "BfA wasn't that bad, you know".

Only if what follows is worse. Funny how that works.

[Stacko]

I think people enjoyed Legion just because it was better than WoD. I didn't really care for it until 7.3.

[Magnagarde]

I am enjoying BfA. Not as much as Legion, but I'm having fun, especially since I've got less time to spend playing than I did back in Legion. I also think that BfA is superior to Legion in various fields, while it also has downsides compared to it aswell.

The way I see it is that the players who spend a lot of time playing are the ones who will first be affected by the "downsides" of BfA. The reason why is because it feels like everything has been dilluted in order to take time from the player, to a point where the pointlessness is more than evident. Sure, a lot of the things you do in WoW become pointless down the road and it's always been like this, save for classic WoW where everyone had to go through the same meatgrinder and up the same stairway (which is what, I believe, also made it appeal to players looking for this kind of rewarding system). It has however never been as obvious as it is now that this seems to be the purpose of a wide variety of systems; there's artificial time gating even within warfronts, which themselves are completely devoid of any critical and skill-based input by the player, but are scripted to take a select amount of time.

The "reward-to-investment" ratio is not where it used to be, everything seems to be directed towards making players spend as much time as possible while getting the least possible rewards out of it. Those who play a lot also want to have tangible advantages over everyone else, especially if they're successful players, but that's not really that evident and tangible right now.

[Zyrinx]

This is the WoW community...they cry over and dramatize everything no matter how big or small they blow it out of proportion they even did it with Wrath, which is an expansion everyone (nearly) puts on a golden pedestal

Its usually best left to ignore the many many many complaints people shit out, because lets be honest. Most of the time its whining or bitching and not talking about the actual issue or why said thing is bad or why said feature needs work. *shrug* Its nearly all subjective and accounts from the individuals experience and how they choose to play the game.

This is silly, there must be 100 concrete examples in this thread alone of "actual issues", many with suggestions (not that this will ever be seen by the powers that be...)

Someone asked a question, the community spoke. Loudly.

[phealin]

Well the problem why people don't like BFA is exactly what you say, it is just the same as Legion.
An expansion is supposed to bring something new to do and BFA haven't really delivered, sure the Warfronts and the Islands are new but it's not really a whole lot and sounds more like something that could be added in a content patch.
Personally I didn't enjoy BFA more than the initial stories of the zones and then I quit for a while, I am sort of enjoying it now but I only do an hour or two of content then I spend a lot of time Role-Playing with friends.

[kaid]

am i misremembering or wasnt legion also considered bad until late in the xpac?

Every expansion is the worst expansion and every class is always the worst most broken unable to play unfun class ever. In reality though the biggest issue is the azerite system did not really pan out the way I think they wanted it too. Constantly chasing the same traits to unlock them over and over has proven to not be I think what they were intending and just feels weird. They have acknowledged this and for 8.2 they are working to make some big changes so they are not going to keep elevating heart of azeroth levels to unlock the armor. So that leaves armor at basically this expansions teir armor that is actually configurable which probably is where it should have been right off the bat. Trying to sell it as a replacement for the artifact missed the mark.

I also think a lot of people played legion so hard that they are kinda burned out a lot of the complaints I have been seeing seem mostly just people who played the game way to hard and are hitting the wall.

[MoanaLisa]

There's a fine line between too much change and not enough.

Some of the problem is that classes were reworked again and other systems were not. I enjoyed the "world" systems in Legion and don't mind them in BfA. I'm unhappy with most of the classes I play a lot. So a lot of what was changed didn't work out.

I'm not overly fussed about RNG/Grinding because I'm not playing for anything like BiS and if something feels like a grind I stop doing that for a while. I want things to do. I'm OK there. It would be nice if the systems that were introduced in BfA (warfronts/island expeditions) were further iterated on. I think there are good possibilities there but I have no idea if Blizzard will do that or scrap them. If indeed, they scrap them instead of improving them for the future, then they're something of a waste. See: garrisons which were not a terrible idea but were implemented without customization and therefore were boring early on.

BfA was obviously designed based on the idea that Legion was something people liked. So perhaps in some ways there was too little change. Granted people yell about too much change. It's a hard target to hit.

EDIT: It's worth noting that I was never a fan of BfA's expansion theme. The story has been better than I expected it to be but I've had it with the faction war and that bad first impression (expressed often as PVP EXPANSION!!!) hasn't gone away.

[Vellithe]

Every step forward also brought two steps back. That's really the issue with BfA. Major issue is how unfun AP grind is (if we can call it a grind) and class design.

Legion was garbage. Legendaries ruined any balancing until the very last patch when they simply rained from the skies, at first it was literally faster to level a whole new character to level 100 and "get lucky" with the two best legendaries right off the bat than it was to grind for them after being given Boots of Walking Slightly Faster. While the Artifact was interesting and added a bit of fun to the classes, the AP grind was just insane. Imagine if having the neck at level 50 gave you a 15% performance increase. That's what Legion AP was at first, until, again, the very end when it was simply raining from the sky and everyone got the important traits for free in a day or two.

So, Blizzard tried to fix Legion, and they sort of did. The AP grind is no longer mandatory - you get the huge bonuses early on and then you only get small bonuses the higher your neck goes. They also removed legendaries, which tbh is better than having crappy legendary design with Bracers of +20% Damage being put on the same level as Boots of Walking Slightly Faster, legendaries would have worked if they were either all Utility or all had about the same performance. Or if you could target them from start, I guess.

The problem is, people got used to AP being worth a ton in Legion, so now they still have the "gotta grind" mentality going on, except... AP is not all that important now, so they get disappointed when they don't get rewarded as much as they did. Also, we got another ability prune, after losing our artifacts and legendaries (which can be seen as another prune), and we simply didn't get anything to make up for it. Most classes, if not all, are currently broken in one or multiple ways. Even though they went back to "bring the class, not the player", classes have become so minimalistic in design that pretty much every class play the exact same way (generate -> spend, occasionally use proc). And even though most classes are exactly the same, you still have to make groups with the same 5 classes for every dungeon because utility is completely bonkers, it's kind of having the Boots of Walking Slightly Faster vs the Bracers of +20% Damage, except now they're hardcoded into the classes and sucks to be you if your class has no utility anyone wants.

Even for all its problems, I still have more fun in BfA than I did in Legion, because I only got my good legendaries in Legion close to the end and I refused to grind for AP, meaning I was pretty much not really viable throughout most of Legion, playing an inferior version of my class simply because I refused to do tons of world quests every day and spend every other moment running Maw of Souls. In BfA I at least get to be competitive by just doing what I enjoy doing (Dungeons and Raids), though the classes do suffer a lot from losing all those abilities without getting any new ones to make up for it.

If they hadn't borked on class design so hard, I'd even say BfA is the best expansion design-wise, the story would still suck of course. However, during WoD I could still just do dungeons and raids and be viable, and WoD was pretty much the apex of class design (also the beginning of "bring the player, not the class"). The biggest problem WoD had was the story and thematic were garbage, which is not very different in BfA. BfA still has a bit of diversity to help things along, WoD was the Orc expansion through and through, BfA is just 75% Troll Expansion, but those 25% offer a welcome reprieve, and at least we have a few more colors than Rust Yellow and Fel Green, thank god we got through Corrupted Red already.

[Frolk]

Me, personally have not enjoyed this game in a LONG time. I believe it has been bad since WotLK. I am, however, confused why people seem to love Legion and hate BfA.

Let's compare BfA to Legion for a moment:
It has the same dungeon systems
It has the same mythic+ systems
It has the same raiding systems
It has the same looting systems
It has the same PvP gearing system
It has the same PvP rank system
It has the same world quest system
It has the same titanforging system

It has, in my opinion, actually has improved PvP gear mattering, added Conquest points and made PvP combat better than Legion.
It has, in my opinion, an improved world, music and quest system.

My understanding has been that a lot of people concidered Legion as "best expansion ever" and that those same people (could be wrong) conciders BfA as the "worst expansion ever".

Assuming Blizzard beleved you guys, and Legion was actually the best WoW has ever been. What exectly is so much worse in BfA than Legion?

Was it the Legendary system of Legion what made it so good?
Was it the Artifact weapon - "you do content to get transmog for your artifact weapon" - what made Legion so good?
Was the classes in Legion that much more fun than in BfA?

The only things left to blame is the NEW systems. Namely
1. Azerite Armor system
2. Island Expeditions
3. War mode
4. Warfront

Blizzard seem to be in the same boat as you guys, they look at Legion as the greatest expansion ever. So they only compare Legion to BfA in order to "fix the game". They spend all their energy on the above 4 systems...

If they "fix" all these systems, do you honestly think the game will suddenly be fun?

"It has the same looting systems" I sure remember having forced personal loot when i did mythic raiding during Legion.

Mained blood/UH in Legion, gameplay is much slower now, it made me quit 4weeks into BFA. I was so looking forward to enjoy BFA, but i didt.
WQ was changed, no more "big" rep rewards like u had in legion (might have changed since i quit)

I must ask, what content to do u enjoy, i have a feeling i already know the answer.

[Aeula]

I’m enjoying BfA more than Legion personally. Though I feel the expansion lacks content. At this stage I just log in to do incursions and my daily Darkshore/Arathi quests. And that’ll be ending soon.

[barrsftw]

It's pretty simple. They took away abilities. Whether they were form Legiondaries, Artifact, Talent reworks, etc. That feels pretty bad. I have no doubt by the end of BfA it'll be back to Legion levels of fun.

That said you're not wrong. People in general are overblowing how 'terrible' BFA is. It's mostly the same as Legion IMO... but like I said. Taking things away never feels good.

[Tradu]

People say WoD was great because either:

A) They didn't actually play it until the very last patch.
B) They're shilling.
C) BfA is SO bad it just makes WoD seem better by comparison.

The thing with WoD is that the content it did have(at least content relevant to me) was very good, the only issue was the quantity, and I'd rather have low quantity high quality than the other way around. Oh, and WoD classes were still close to as good as MoP classes, where BfA classes have continued the downward trend.

[dacoolist]

Me, personally have not enjoyed this game in a LONG time. I believe it has been bad since WotLK. I am, however, confused why people seem to love Legion and hate BfA.

Let's compare BfA to Legion for a moment:
It has the same dungeon systems
It has the same mythic+ systems
It has the same raiding systems
It has the same looting systems
It has the same PvP gearing system
It has the same PvP rank system
It has the same world quest system
It has the same titanforging system

It has, in my opinion, actually has improved PvP gear mattering, added Conquest points and made PvP combat better than Legion.
It has, in my opinion, an improved world, music and quest system.

My understanding has been that a lot of people concidered Legion as "best expansion ever" and that those same people (could be wrong) conciders BfA as the "worst expansion ever".

Assuming Blizzard beleved you guys, and Legion was actually the best WoW has ever been. What exectly is so much worse in BfA than Legion?

Was it the Legendary system of Legion what made it so good?
Was it the Artifact weapon - "you do content to get transmog for your artifact weapon" - what made Legion so good?
Was the classes in Legion that much more fun than in BfA?

The only things left to blame is the NEW systems. Namely
1. Azerite Armor system
2. Island Expeditions
3. War mode
4. Warfront

Blizzard seem to be in the same boat as you guys, they look at Legion as the greatest expansion ever. So they only compare Legion to BfA in order to "fix the game". They spend all their energy on the above 4 systems...

If they "fix" all these systems, do you honestly think the game will suddenly be fun?

Dungeons are designed totally different

Mythic+ is muuuuch harder, to the fact that people can't even fathom how dungeons work right now - 95% of WoW is brain dead compared to how easy they were in Leg

Raiding wasn't as hard in Leg, and tons more people raided back then - games dead compared in BfA

Looting system is the same except less Leeche/etc

PVP gearing is better now

PVP ranking is better now

World quests are garbage compared to Leg

Titanforge/WF is exactly the same as it was in Leg

Leg was better for PVE because it was plain and simple: Off the tail of one of the worst expansions.. everyone was hungry for content and something you didn't even put in OP..

The release timeline for Leg was INSANITY compared to Bfa... we literally don't even have HALF the content we had back in Leg now in Bfa in the same damn time frame. We had TONS of extra mini patches etc etc, again for the carebare PVE side.. the game is lacking a ton

[Tradu]

Part of the problem with BFA is if you want artifsct power you need to either do islands or world quests where as in legion you could Get it from anything. I don't like islands or world quests (I like quests with text/purpose and not a star on my mini map). Dungeons barely give any AP anymore. Why? And random BG once you finish the one for the day it only rewards about 100-150 which is barely anything when you need like 30k for each neck level.

Not just that. AP doesn't have a target demographic. The very top end grinds it because they essentially have to, and the low end ignores it. There's no level of play where it really works properly as a reward.

[IceMan1763]

Count me in as well. I wasn't oblivious to the shite Legion was, just because Legendaries and Class Order Halls.

The Class Order Halls were excellent content in my opinion, not that you would know because the shitty ass design of AP locked you into one class and one spec. Legiondaries I think would have been much more interesting if they were gained through well done quest content, released periodically through the expansion, rather than random distribution. It would have meant each spec would have had the exact same legendaries (they could have also done this with generalized legendaries as well where every class did the same quest when it was released), but they ended up putting a vendor in the game in the end anyway. Completely random distribution is about the WORST possible idea I can think of, and that's the one they chose.

[crakerjack]

I think the only reason I enjoyed Legion for the most part was because I quit WoW in 4.3 so it still felt new. About halfway through Antorus I started to get that same feeling I did back in Cata. Currently I'm already in that mood and we're only a few weeks into BoD. I'm just bored of the game.

[Godric]

It was about classes for me. Class felt clunky after bfa hit and I got spoiled by the class identity of legion. Generally as my interests go, bfa was just a step back.

I thought legion was a phenomenal expansion until TOS/Argus. Though I admit that’s probably from demon/green burnout.