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  1. #161
    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    For me Battle for Azeroth was a middling expansion. Generally I think it's better than it's reputation but it's true that in terms of systems and game play it was a reskinned Legion. I'm not sure I can blame the developers for thinking "Legion was liked better than Warlords so let's go with more of that" but systems and things are always going to be stale after 18 months so BfA's progression systems were more or less moving deck chairs around and calling it different. My issue with the expansion from the start was that I simply did not care for the theme and the story as it worked out I liked even less. That's my opinion of course.
    In Legion every character and indeed every spec of every character got some lore to go with a weapon, and each weapon had it's own tree and set of abilities. In BfA you got Azerite Armour, and the vast majority of powers on it early on were either generic or junk. What's more, once you finally got a good piece you then had the problem that new gear would be a downgrade until you finally got a high ilevel version of the piece you already had. And this system was the replacement for both the Legion weapon and tier sets.

    Then we got the necklace on top of that, which meant a bunch of grinding, and if you best power was in content you didn't do, well you just sucked. And the powers were all generic - no spec or even class customisation.

    And then we had corruption on top of that, and it was the same but even more insanely powerful, and terribly balanced into the bargain, so some classes simply got more out of it than others did. And the 'fix' for that was to put it on a vendor, but have the options cycle so you had to have the currency saved up, and if you didn't (because you had a new alt or whatever), tough luck until the vendor cycled back around.

    Gearing was absolutely awful in BfA, plain and simple.

  2. #162
    Looking back on it BFA's problem areas were really really bad and they seem to come from the idea that you should only ever play 1 toon which in a game like warcraft is not good. People tend to want variety and while i enjoy infinite power growth systems apparently people do not or do not want to ever feel they are behind another for whatever reason.

    The Neck levels with the various effects should have been the lone expansion long system with actual tier sets from the raids ( this is one of the reasons why i feel no need to raid and with the things like the catalyst going forward never will go back to that ). The azerite armor system was complete trash but i get the idea to want to entice players to engage with the same leveling paradigm over the course of an expansion to get maximum value out of it and looking at the bonus's they provided they were on similar to tier sets. People wanted class specific armor from each tier not some one size fits all armor type either which smells of pure laziness.

    The lack of gearing choices still plagues the game which i hope they address for example i should know by x date that i am done gearing etc, valor should be used to buy the item you are hunting at 272 not be lucky to get it first then spend it. With only 1 option in BFA really put this on full display, the vault while it has its faults is still 3 times better then BFA which is a start but a more deterministic gearing system would be better.

    The Islands were a decent concept but they smelled like the Mists of pandaria Scenarios which again left a sour enough taste in peoples mouths that they were discontinued but they should have found a way to make them more entertaining or enticing to people in a manner that would have made them fun. Warfronts are of the same mindset aswell. I had no problem with them but i did not expect them to be a centerpiece of content and those who did should have known better that Warcraft is literally just a dungeons and raid game with everything else playing second fiddle. It was the type of content that was on neat i get a piece of easy to get gear lets hope its useful this time instead of counting on it. But again imagine if you got a currency for completion that you could say hey i am going to get my shoulders in 3 weeks regardless would have been a better solution.

    Long gone are the days of people waiting things out, the internet and gaming in general has changed. Its either dont make mistakes or just wallow in the mess if you do because most wont give you a second change.

  3. #163
    When I say, that some xpack is bad, then it's not always about specific systems, that could have been changed/fixed/removed/etc. It's about overall feeling. It's about quality of content. It's about enjoyment and fun. I don't know, how to explain it better, but starting from BFA content became some sort of "rough" (opposite to "smooth"). I.e. difficulty and quality of game constantly twitch. For example one WQ can be good and have good design, while other is terribly designed. For example suffers from bottleneck or traffic jam problems. Or new patch content can be overtuned for new/returning players and alts. Such problems turn gaming into constant suffering. And I just don't want to constantly suffer from many problems in game, I've paid for.

    I don't care about Wow 11.0, if it's not solo-MMO. No half-measures - just perfect xpack.

  4. #164
    Legendary! MasterHamster's Avatar
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    Boy, I had to punch my head to re-awaken those neurons that were unfortunate enough to have to be used to store info about BFA. Never, ever despite playing since original classic, have I been so bored in an expansion, that I barely even remember any of it.

    Where to start...
    Removal of Legion legendaries and artifact weapons made us all much weaker.

    No more tier sets, replaced by azerite gear that had obvious flaws that was pointed out by players throughout beta and pretty much the entire expansion, but Blizzard didn't listen. They had their mind set. They know better than the players. Always. You think you don't like it, but you do.
    Removal of tier sets also meant that casual players didn't have much reason to do LFR at all. MoP had a perfect balance in that regard, LFR wasn't a joke from ToT onward and people wanted plenty of gear from them, so people always had a reason to run raids.

    *Themed* Sets, so no more class sets, instead it was by armor type.

    Island Expeditions were fun and exciting for about 15 minutes, then became a grind with little-to-no variance. Pretty much impossible to lose.

    Warfronts were exciting for 5 minutes until you realized that you literally cannot fail. May as well just be a weekly free chest for all the excitement that shit provided.

    Heart of Azeroth was nothing but a stat-stick. Compare to legion artifact weapons and it was a night-and-day difference. Fucking hell did I not care about azerite power at all, after I had all rings unlocked.

    Unless you raided at a high level, or was a cosmetic hunter, more or less all content was so easy to do and clear that gear pretty much didn't matter anymore. Never have I felt like my gear had less of an impact of what I could or couldn't do. Like being stuck on a theme park ride.

    Story was all over the place, Sylvanas was just doing whatever the fuck all over the place yet everything was always shrouded in "THE BIGGER PLAN LUL" that never actually felt intriguing. Her actions just felt out of character. WHICH I GUESS WE CAN NOW SAY WAS LUL #STORYTELLING


    BFA was the culmination of the designs that has led to people giving up on the game. And it shows.
    Last edited by MasterHamster; 2022-05-11 at 09:09 AM.
    Active WoW player Jan 2006 - Aug 2020
    Occasional WoW Classic Andy since.
    Nothing lasts forever, as they say.
    But at least I can casually play Classic and remember when MMORPGs were good.

  5. #165
    Quote Originally Posted by Saltysquidoon View Post
    Level scaling didn't work properly and your character felt weaker as you leveled, that does 'always happen' but it was worse because scaling removed any ability to mitigate it.
    Just tearing out the weapons with no compensation made it feel like they chopped two fingers off of your class.
    Speaking to the above most specs got huge sweeping changes in legion, changes designed around the legion weapons and so the comparative lack of changes in bfa just made them feel worse for the whole expansion.
    Let's not forget the "small indie company please understandu" IOU shamans got because they "ran out of time" to do anything.
    Being a Shaman in the pre-patch was bad, levelling was utterly miserable, and then you hit the half-way and your legendaries all turned off, and at that point it was Classic/Burning Crusade Paladin bad, and you were playing with only half a class due to all the stuff that was ripped out. It was just miserable.
    Most traits were boring passives that didn't even impact how you pressed your buttons
    And for a number of specs you had to have certain traits (and often three of the trait) for your spec to even work right, because Blizzard used the azerite traits as a balancing tool, and they were even blunter than tier set bonuses when used for this purpose.
    Essentially BFA was worse than legion by essentially every conceivable metric (barring perhaps art and sound which is largely subjective) or if you're a furry and like to be a fox person. Why would it be considered good?
    I liked levelling in Drustvar, despite it being a journey of discovery of how the Kul Tirans had run off the original inhabitants and taken their land.

  6. #166
    Quote Originally Posted by fenixazul View Post
    First of, I played Wow until the end of 2018. Meaning that I only played BFA in the first raid tier. I was able to kill Mythic Zul with my guild, and tried the island expenditions, the new allied race, and the warfronts.

    I remember that I really enjoyed the expansion, I quit just because I got a new job and wow was very time consuming.

    So, I really want to know why BFA was so hated. I have read enough information about why Shadowland was considered the worst WOW expansion, but I havent see much information why BFA was hated too.

    Thanks
    Warfront and islands were a letdown

    Azurite gear was convoluted and restrictive (4 pieces of gear HAD to be azurite gear)

    Coming off Legion, the classes felt noticeably worse without artifact stuff

    Horde vs Alliance theme isn't that popular, or ever been done well, yet it's central theme in that one

    Naga zone was an underwhelming zone

    Last patch was underwhelming and they re-used a lot of assets/zones for it

    N'zoth got built up for years and years and was... you guessed it... underwhelming

    On paper, it had a lot of good ideas and had some cool ideas that got cut. It just didn't get executed well and felt half-baked.

    An expansion with a lot of half baked shit they implemented and then abandoned, pretty much sums up BFA

    I liked it more than Wrath, Cata, WoD personally
    Last edited by Mojo03; 2022-05-11 at 09:36 AM.

  7. #167
    Quote Originally Posted by loras View Post
    This, also quite a few classes were just playing terribly (not talking about dps results here); felt like they moronically kicked out their class design / gameplay team.


    Ironically this could mean that BfA content will be a lit better going forward, as better class design might make old content actually fun.

    Edit: Mind you that this does not mean that Shadowlands was in any way good.
    I had hopes for Shadowlands, but it's just turned out bland. I don't hate it, but there's nothing that stands out as great. Even WoD, which until BfA took the crown from it was my most disliked expansion had a raid I liked (Hellfire, at least until I'd run it a million times), and the best leveling ever (several cool zones, and enough XP boosts and bonus XP that you could avoid the zones you didn't like and still level fast).

  8. #168
    Quote Originally Posted by Kalisandra View Post
    I had hopes for Shadowlands, but it's just turned out bland. I don't hate it, but there's nothing that stands out as great. Even WoD, which until BfA took the crown from it was my most disliked expansion had a raid I liked (Hellfire, at least until I'd run it a million times), and the best leveling ever (several cool zones, and enough XP boosts and bonus XP that you could avoid the zones you didn't like and still level fast).
    I didn't play much during WoD, but personally i liked it a lot. The lore had a shitty foundation in time travel, but otherwise it wasn't the hole-riddled bullshitfest that it became in BfA.
    In terms of raids, well, Uldur had a nice atmosphere and Battle for Dazar'alor was fun, but the supposed showstoppers were such a let-down.
    As to the zones: They were cool, but far too little, and it was annoying to have basically empty zones in the opposite faction's areas.

    As to Shadowlands: The zones are just forgettable, as is most of the expansion. Zereth Mortis is the closest thing they've made to something interesting so far, but it's skin-and-bones at best. The pvp is... less shit, but really no more than that. The fact that they got over themselves and reintroduced the pvp vendors helped, but the vast difference in ilvl due to excessive amounts of different "difficulties" still keeps hitting it in the kneecaps. The endless bother-bother-bother "customisations" treadmill in terms of conduits, legendaries and relative covenant locking really does not add to it.
    I still find it hard to believe how badly they managed to fuck up a crafted legendary system; We are not allowed to name our pieces, we are not allowed to alter its appearance in any meaningful way, we're not allowed weapons despite those being the most defining feature for pretty much all characters, we are allowed only a handful of simple effects (Admittedly powerful ones, but still) which makes legendaries feel like an orange trinket in a wrong equipment slot. Also WTF regarding the gold costs and the bird-brained idea of forcing people into one niche type of content for no reward other than to farm for a mandatory piece of equipment.

    Oh and i love that the second legendary's effectively sealed behind a reputation (!) barrier, for crying out loud.
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  9. #169
    Each faction only got half an expansion.

    Why the fuck were we in Uldir? Alliance never even got told.

  10. #170
    Quote Originally Posted by loras View Post
    I didn't play much during WoD, but personally i liked it a lot. The lore had a shitty foundation in time travel, but otherwise it wasn't the hole-riddled bullshitfest that it became in BfA.
    In terms of raids, well, Uldur had a nice atmosphere and Battle for Dazar'alor was fun, but the supposed showstoppers were such a let-down.
    As to the zones: They were cool, but far too little, and it was annoying to have basically empty zones in the opposite faction's areas.

    As to Shadowlands: The zones are just forgettable, as is most of the expansion. Zereth Mortis is the closest thing they've made to something interesting so far, but it's skin-and-bones at best. The pvp is... less shit, but really no more than that. The fact that they got over themselves and reintroduced the pvp vendors helped, but the vast difference in ilvl due to excessive amounts of different "difficulties" still keeps hitting it in the kneecaps. The endless bother-bother-bother "customisations" treadmill in terms of conduits, legendaries and relative covenant locking really does not add to it.
    I still find it hard to believe how badly they managed to fuck up a crafted legendary system; We are not allowed to name our pieces, we are not allowed to alter its appearance in any meaningful way, we're not allowed weapons despite those being the most defining feature for pretty much all characters, we are allowed only a handful of simple effects (Admittedly powerful ones, but still) which makes legendaries feel like an orange trinket in a wrong equipment slot. Also WTF regarding the gold costs and the bird-brained idea of forcing people into one niche type of content for no reward other than to farm for a mandatory piece of equipment.

    Oh and i love that the second legendary's effectively sealed behind a reputation (!) barrier, for crying out loud.
    wrong and loud but go off

    and you've never been able to name shit in this game, what kinda dumbass critique is this? jesus fucking christ.

  11. #171
    Quote Originally Posted by fenixazul View Post
    First of, I played Wow until the end of 2018. Meaning that I only played BFA in the first raid tier. I was able to kill Mythic Zul with my guild, and tried the island expenditions, the new allied race, and the warfronts.

    I remember that I really enjoyed the expansion, I quit just because I got a new job and wow was very time consuming.

    So, I really want to know why BFA was so hated. I have read enough information about why Shadowland was considered the worst WOW expansion, but I havent see much information why BFA was hated too.

    Thanks
    1. story. it was fucked up.
    2. borrowed power system
    3. end-game zones, that ain't fun usually (nor visual, nor system)

    .0 brings new system and story, that works at certain point.
    .1 brings random not so important story and first failure in new system
    .2 fails new system and story is changed absurdly
    .3 re-invented gear systems and re-invented catchups for power systems
    this could be solved if start building game and patches with whole picture in mind

    3. Zones, that are split between factions - this is very dumb. Ally and Horde have half of zones, and other faction can not see what is happeing in opponent's zone. also quests do not match stories and sometimes make very stupid misconnections

    4. new end-game system, which becomes useless very soon - Island expeditions
    5. very stupid RNG loot system, also I'm looking a t you, Island Expeditions
    6. and this special gear system was not funny at all

  12. #172
    Pit Lord Beet's Avatar
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    Everything in BFA was a let down coming after Legion. Legion was the best WoW expansion since Wrath and then BFA was like ultra diet Legion. All the borrowed power and shit.

  13. #173
    Gameplay was awful with so much on the GCD, made even worse by the reduction in secondary stats at the beginning of the expansion. Add to that Azerite being boring, & having to grind for days/weeks to unlock the same traits you've already unlocked on a higher tier item? Add to that all the catch-up nonsense you had to deal with if you returned to the game in 8.3 & the end result is one of the most stale & pointlessly convoluted expansions in the history of MMO.

    Oh, & to anyone saying that stuff was optional? The difference between a max ilvl Warrior with random traits/essences/corruptions & one with BiS was the difference between 60k & 130k DPS.

    (BfA did have some good questing zones however. Drustvar was amazing).

  14. #174
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    my biggest issue was the last tier. Nyalotha was something i been waiting for for years and years. and it was done so poorly compared to what the lore said it was supposed to be. A lovecraftian city of waking nightmare filled with edritch horrors reduced to bland boring purple walls and regular ass mobs was such a letdown to me. leading up to that was fun but nzoth and his city felt like a slap in the face rather than the lovecraftian horor it could have been.
    “Listen, three eyes,” he said, “don’t you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.”

  15. #175
    Quote Originally Posted by Konteil View Post
    my biggest issue was the last tier. Nyalotha was something i been waiting for for years and years. and it was done so poorly compared to what the lore said it was supposed to be. A lovecraftian city of waking nightmare filled with edritch horrors reduced to bland boring purple walls and regular ass mobs was such a letdown to me. leading up to that was fun but nzoth and his city felt like a slap in the face rather than the lovecraftian horor it could have been.
    I was expecting an amazing zone and a amazing raid. Got none of that really.

  16. #176
    Quote Originally Posted by Blackmist View Post
    Each faction only got half an expansion.

    Why the fuck were we in Uldir? Alliance never even got told.
    Funny thing about that - i was raiding alliance on friends and family guild during that time - most of us dont really follow the law that closely, but two of the ladies we raid with do. We were literally 3/4 of the way through the raid when a friend piped up on disc and said "wait...........who the fuck even is this? WHY ARE WE EVEN HERE?"..........the girls started trying to explain, for a bit, then just stopped - "..........you know what, i have no bloody idea why, i dont even know what all this is?"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Konteil View Post
    my biggest issue was the last tier. Nyalotha was something i been waiting for for years and years. and it was done so poorly compared to what the lore said it was supposed to be.
    Although I agree, and this is a COMMON theme with Blizzard, I will say it can often be near impossible to properly represent something from the lore - its easy to explain a setting and environment, but it can be tough trying to shoehorn it into a game. I think the most obvious "mistake" Blizzard make is taking something worthy of an entire expansion, or at very least a substantial and involved zone with quest-lines stretching for months, and making it a dungeon, or a raid.
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyanion View Post
    In no way are you entitled to the 'complete' game when you buy it, because DLC/cosmetics and so on are there for companies to make more money
    Quote Originally Posted by rhorle View Post
    Others, including myself, are saying that they only exist because Blizzard needed to create things so they could monetize it.

  17. #177
    Quote Originally Posted by LordVargK View Post
    • Warfronts were way too easy. It was a scripted event, where your faction would always win, even if your team went fully afk (and many players did. Blizzard's solution? Kick afkers...). In addition the Horde got basically one week of free loot from them to equip alts, while this feature was patched out once the Alliance got to play WFs.
    • You could level cooking with vendor mats. That bug was not fixed for days (and was on ptr), so people assumed it was intended. Well, Blizzard removed the mats from the vendor, leaving all people who weren't fast enough in the dirt.
    These two left the worst taste in my mouth. I missed out of leveling cooking (I usually leave it for last) and Warfronts were just terribly designed. Just awful. There should have been a PvP variant.

  18. #178
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kalisandra View Post
    In Legion every character and indeed every spec of every character got some lore to go with a weapon, and each weapon had it's own tree and set of abilities. In BfA you got Azerite Armour, and the vast majority of powers on it early on were either generic or junk. What's more, once you finally got a good piece you then had the problem that new gear would be a downgrade until you finally got a high ilevel version of the piece you already had. And this system was the replacement for both the Legion weapon and tier sets.
    Some of the blame for that can be assigned to developer decisions to make expansions more-or-less standalones with no real connective tissue between expansions other than the lamentable story. I think that was a bad decision in a lot of ways but was probably better for business. Starting over every expansion is pretty unrewarding for those that stick around.
    "...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

  19. #179
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    Removal of Legion legendaries and artifact weapons made us all much weaker.

    Heart of Azeroth was nothing but a stat-stick. Compare to legion artifact weapons and it was a night-and-day difference. Fucking hell did I not care about azerite power at all, after I had all rings unlocked.

    Unless you raided at a high level, or was a cosmetic hunter, more or less all content was so easy to do and clear that gear pretty much didn't matter anymore. Never have I felt like my gear had less of an impact of what I could or couldn't do. Like being stuck on a theme park ride.

    Story was all over the place, Sylvanas was just doing whatever the fuck all over the place yet everything was always shrouded in "THE BIGGER PLAN LUL" that never actually felt intriguing. Her actions just felt out of character. WHICH I GUESS WE CAN NOW SAY WAS LUL #STORYTELLING


    BFA was the culmination of the designs that has led to people giving up on the game. And it shows.
    Ok so... You ddn't mention the Azerite powers and how ridiculously overpowered you could become. It made Legion stuff look weak. 9 stacks of Twilight Devastation on my Tanks' amor and I was a god. Literally. I don't get how you skipped the most crucial part of the entire expac that was the very system of borrowed power people complained about; the disparity between those that didn't and those that did was enormous.

    The reason I didn't like BFA was when Ion came to speak to me, he didn't take all my ideas with him. The only things he took was the title BFA and the quote I gave him- "Let's bring the War back to Warcraft" and well, the whole expac was a VERY pale reflection of what I wanted. Like all the expacs before it except MoP and Wrath. I had a good amount of input into those and I'm proud of it. Yeah BFA sucked because it was only half the recipe and they made soup while the actual recipe was steak and gravy.

  20. #180
    Most people I know liked BFA. I hated it. Boring zones, boring characters, boring raids, boring story. The best part of it was the Saurfang cinematics. Just my opinion, though.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Val the Moofia Boss View Post



    One belongs to the Warcraft universe. The other belongs to a tumblr cartoon. You tell me which is which.
    This might be one of your worst takes yet, lmao. One on the right looks substantially better, no matter how you look at it. Old models are absolutely awful.

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