All things considered...BfA had some pretty nice RPG-like fun customization

[melodramocracy]

This thread really begs the question..."what is good rpg-customization then?"

Since most people disagree...what in the hell is good customization?

One of the issues is that rpg customization doesn't work all that well in an MMO, where folks are looking to gear as competitive as they can, even if they might not be playing AT competitive levels.

Azurite traits sometimes stacking is a perfect example. A good number of classes had a 'bis' combo where you'd want to have 2-3 of the same attribute in your gear because of the stacking element.

Corruption is good on paper. Personally I stopped caring about it fairly quickly, but I can see why others would like it. Gearing to a detriment is an interesting option, and if the negative effects were more varied, I wouldn't mind seeing it come back in some form.

Yes, these systems did provide some nice variance, but it all came across as a gear casino.

[kaminaris]

Conversely, I could say "just because you were unlucky doesn't mean it worked like that." Both statements are largely unhelpful. That said, I can totally accept that our difference of opinion on this comes down to personal experience, and may just not be reconcilable because of this.

Because blizzard said themseleves it was tuned around 1 month. Not to mention softcap and that beautiful tale of a guy who did 1500+ mythic plus and still had just 4 leggos.

[FelPlague]

I've not seen anything different with trinkets this expansion than any other. Armor and Weapons with specials is far and few between. The essence system is hot garbage when it makes you do one form of content that has absolutely nothing to do with the other to be viable in said other form of content. Corruption is absolute hot garbage in the fact that it's mostly completely RNG. Azerite Gear I actually have no qualms with.

When the majority of your progression systems are tied to RNG, it's not fun. This expansion has not been fun.

Trinekts that have to do with movement and other memebers, that is different.
Sliver "Dont stand near people unless they also have it"
The tome from nzoth "stand away from people, then near people"
also stuff like "This trinket spawns a thing nearby you need to walk into to activate"
these things are all unique to BFA.

[Magical Mudcrab]

People have some real fairytale memory when it comes to Legiondaries. Fire mage bracers/ring, shaman gloves, shaman boots/shoulders, monk shoulders/helm/whatever the kegsmash/breath combo thing was, DH ring, warlock helm/bracers/ring - all of these were complete game changers to the point that you may as well not even try to raid on the character until you had them, and that's just for the classes that I played. I'm sure there were more. Yes, BFA's gearing, particularly corruption absolutely sucks, but lets not pretend Legiondaries were "good" at any point up until you could just choose which ones you wanted. I once got a BIS legendary for my warlock from a blingtron, but it took my shaman right up until the vendor came out to get his gloves. Oh now you want to play ele? Too bad until you RNG your way into boots AND shoulders.

The issue I have when people look at the Legendaries is that most of people who complain about it seem to just have had particularly bad luck. The example of your Shaman, from my experience, was totally atypical, similarly to how a few players received back-to-back Legendaries was atypical. Generally, people seemed to have been able to get either competitive or their BiS Legendary in the span of a few months, and then were set throughout the expansion. It wasn't a great system, but it was nowhere near as bad as, for example, Corruptions. I would even argue that it was less impactful in some circumstances, as individual Corruption items are able to deal 20~40% of some classes damage (such as Infinite Stars at 75 points).

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Because blizzard said themseleves it was tuned around 1 month. Not to mention softcap and that beautiful tale of a guy who did 1500+ mythic plus and still had just 4 leggos.

Sure, but that example is about as rare as people who were lucky enough to get back-to-back Legendaries from WQs/Dungeons/Raids/etc. Edge cases in which people have incredibly bad luck aren't the rule, they're the exception.

[kaminaris]

Sure, but that example is about as rare as people who were lucky enough to get back-to-back Legendaries from WQs/Dungeons/Raids/etc. Edge cases in which people have incredibly bad luck aren't the rule, they're the exception.

It's not rare. its common

If classes had 14+ legendaries per spec then it took you 13 months to get them, simple as that.

[Magical Mudcrab]

It's not rare. its common

If classes had 14+ legendaries per spec then it took you 13 months to get them, simple as that.

Sure, 13-14 months to get every single one. If you wanted to assume that you would always get your best Legendary last, then we can say it could take over a year; however, the norm was that you would get a good Legendary, sometimes BiS, within 3/4 months. The players who took over a year to get their BiS were outliers, just as people who got back-to-back Legendaries, or had 6/7/8 Legendaries within the first few months were outliers.

[ro9ue]

RPG customization?



Oh, did you mean RNG customization?

[Tradu]

Corruption, essences and azerite are decent ideas with poor execution. Not sure about the fun trinkets, we definitely had better(and more gameplay-impactful) ones in the past.

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One of the issues is that rpg customization doesn't work all that well in an MMO, where folks are looking to gear as competitive as they can, even if they might not be playing AT competitive levels.

Azurite traits sometimes stacking is a perfect example. A good number of classes had a 'bis' combo where you'd want to have 2-3 of the same attribute in your gear because of the stacking element.

Corruption is good on paper. Personally I stopped caring about it fairly quickly, but I can see why others would like it. Gearing to a detriment is an interesting option, and if the negative effects were more varied, I wouldn't mind seeing it come back in some form.

Yes, these systems did provide some nice variance, but it all came across as a gear casino.

My issue with azerite, essences and corruption is pretty much the same: the actual effects are largely uninteresting. There's like 3 interesting corruptions(Glimpse, Ineffable and Racing), the rest are just "you do more damage" passives or procs with no gameplay impact. Same for essences, the vast majority are generic, uninteresting effects(Vision, Lucid and CnS are the only real exceptions). And for azerite, there's 2 entire rings dedicated to uninteresting passives/procs. Then there's 2 rings with "spec specific" traits, none of which have gameplay impact past the first trait of each type. Running the same azerite traits all expansion really hasn't been very interesting either.
This all adds up into a bunch of different effects, basically none of which are powerful enough to have real gameplay impact, and which reduces player agency when it comes to their performance.
If they'd just stuck with one of these systems, added more effects(as options) to it and focused on making those effects have gameplay-impact and be tied to the actual specs.

[Kehego]

Corruption, essences and azerite are decent ideas with poor execution. Not sure about the fun trinkets, we definitely had better(and more gameplay-impactful) ones in the past.

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My issue with azerite, essences and corruption is pretty much the same: the actual effects are largely uninteresting. There's like 3 interesting corruptions(Glimpse, Ineffable and Racing), the rest are just "you do more damage" passives or procs with no gameplay impact. Same for essences, the vast majority are generic, uninteresting effects(Vision, Lucid and CnS are the only real exceptions). And for azerite, there's 2 entire rings dedicated to uninteresting passives/procs. Then there's 2 rings with "spec specific" traits, none of which have gameplay impact past the first trait of each type. Running the same azerite traits all expansion really hasn't been very interesting either.
This all adds up into a bunch of different effects, basically none of which are powerful enough to have real gameplay impact, and which reduces player agency when it comes to their performance.
If they'd just stuck with one of these systems, added more effects(as options) to it and focused on making those effects have gameplay-impact and be tied to the actual specs.

so what you're saying is that tier was boring and uninteresting for 14 years since a bunch of azerite traits are literally previous tier set bonuses?
because same.

[Neuroticaine]

Agreed.
The only real problem with Azerite gear was the specced-locked. So you basically needed 3 pieces of the same gear for each spec.

Fair, but it hasn't been a huge deal for me this expansion. I started all starry-eyed hoping for Demonology to be good because it's fun as hell, but it turned out to be niche in the end, so I've been locked into affliction for most of the expansion. I could min-max for single target and AoE, but for the most part I just focus on what's best for most encounters, while I do keep an eye out for pieces that'd be good for other specs Just In Case.