Originally Posted by
ippollite
(Preamble edit: To be clear, when i use the term casual here (i really should stop using that term), im specifically talking of the player who taps out before LFG and is somewhat power driven (RPers and collectors may not be who im speaking of). Im not talking about the player who has x-hours per week to log in, or the player who has only managed to clear +14 mythic dungeons and/or up to SLG in mythic nathria - they are scrubs, not casuals - kidding! But i dont want the endless back and forth on 'what really is a 'casual' - i've defined them accordingly, and i accept this is a subjective definition in the platonic scheme of things.)).
So what's different?
Well, you alluded to one big difference: the speed of capping out in casual content. Another might be how you cap out. If you take renown as a case in point, think about how you'd formerly garner the gear, storylines and power progression behind that system (im ignoring anima as a system since its mostly cosmetics, though it does carry over into renown for those upgrades like gear (and is also one of your core renown upgrade quests every week)).
In Legion it was straight up rep, or engaging in world content (for your artifact weapons). In Bfa it was again rep and general world content + weeklies to upgrade your azerite neck (unlocking the gear dropping in the world and from those world quests). I dont wanna get bogged down in details, but lets also throw in massive RNG in legion (legos) and bfa (warforging/socketing). The main gist is this: The power progression system rewarded you literally for your time investment in game. The more content you did, the more artifact power or azerite power you'd accumulate. In playing the game normally, you'd also have the RNG gods playing alongside you. And for gear, all this activity contributed your rep which unlocked certain pieces of gear or storyline elements. But you HAD to play the core game experience (in the world or in the instanced game).
Now lets look at renown again. What happens? Well, you get three weekly quests each taking <20 minutes a pop (later reduced to two). Throw in a torghast lego (where you'd have been building your ash), maybe an epic calling here and there, and a world boss. You are now completely done for the week. At most its 3 hours of your time. At least, its about an hour. One hour a week of actual progression gameplay. Now compare that to its two prior systems heavy expansions. In both of those, all content was viable, all content helped progress your power. You could do as much busy work/chore farming as you like and still see some progression. It was certainly slower and more tedious. But it gave casual players something engaging to do throughout the entire week (not just for two hours every reset).
So what we have is the complete transformation of the casual players gameplay loop. Thats a pretty big difference, right? We can also ask why did they do this in a very objective and non-blaming way. Who benefited from this change and who didnt? Well, i didnt. Obviously. I just explained why. I want to play the game, but theres nothing engaging to do as a non-lfg player. I mean i COULD farm anima all day for recolours. I could pokemon collect all the lego appearances. I could just grind gold forever using the mission table. But, i just wanna play the world game as ive always done. Now ive no incentive to do it. So it cant have been for casual players like me, because its fundamentally made our experience far quicker to consume (and cap) and far less engaging once you reach that cap. So why did they do it? Who is this change actually benefiting? I bring it up because theres a tendency to blame casuals for being 'catered to with a free normal raid gear set', and that 'we should stop complaining' because blizzard gave us 'free epics for doing nothing'. But it wasnt for us was it? It broke our gameplay loop. It was instead for players who could quickly hit 60 and reach the real end game content (non world, instanced) with as little friction as possible. I did say 'no blame' and what i mean is that this might be the ultimately correct design decision. We really have no idea. But its not a bone thrown to us world non-lfg players as is often assumed.
So i hope thats a fair assessment of what's actually changed in our game play experience. As i say, its not an advantage (though, one might argue time --> power was an advantage we no longer have), but it helps maybe explain why this expansion is in trouble with that playerbase and why the complaints arent just moaning for the sake of it. There is a fundamental difference not only the pace of the cap (which you identify) but also both the cap itself and the means of reaching it.