What a waste....

[Th3Scourge]

I agree but unless they fix acquisition it would still have that problem and the boredom aspect of the traits.
I think we simply need 3 things
1. Drops we work towards
2. More interesting choices (traits that do more than increase a stat or add damage)
3. Paragon trait levels (if they added another 5 ilvl bonus per 3 levels after the final unlock then farming it would be perfectly fine)

We are getting the first 2 soon

The traits should be the easy fix, we used to have drops we worked towards for 14 years in the form of tier sets and in some special instances, legendaries (vanilla - MOP acquisition, not rng legion)

[Silver Forte]

I'd say both are important! gameplay would hardly take place in a non compelling setup, interest would be lost rather fast, and passion would not shine, but caring about gameplay first is a solid strategy for a business

I didn't say art wasn't important. Graphics don't make a game, the gameplay does. If the game sucks to play, it can be the prettiest game ever but it's going to suck. I don't buy games to look at them, I buy them to play them.

[Cæli]

I didn't say art wasn't important. Graphics don't make a game, the gameplay does. If the game sucks to play, it can be the prettiest game ever but it's going to suck. I don't buy games to look at them, I buy them to play them.

yes and I doubt you would buy games that looked like command lines for this matter, I bet that you prefer games where there's a 2d or 3d world where you can enjoy the gameplay.

really I think that gameplay alone is incomplete, a game is gameplay+how we perceive it (graphics+sounds). I also think that so much people, especially younger players, overlook the importance of that. game at the core delivers pleasure. pleasure comes also from beauty in our eyes and ears, not just from sheer game. and it also includes how graphics are made up. a video game is not just a "game", and not just "video", it's both, and both a equally important.

[Deleted]

Its not so much a waste of resources as a total lack of creativity and concept of "interesting" "fun".

its like outside of raids they can't design anything interesting without a gear treadmill like the poorest mobile games out there which have nothing but carrots on a stick instead of good content.

Islands expeditions could have easily been something very fun, but instead its a generic MOP scenario copy paste with nothing but mindless mob killing.
Warfronts are bland as hell too, who thinks that this linear theme parky easy lootfest is pvp?War?

The game is just bland because of developers with no creative capacity or lack of will to do something good whether because of higher ups at activision-blizzard or incompetence. I think its just their policy of the last 3 expansions: minimum effort, maximum benefit. Thats why they aren't developing real games anymore, just f2p or mobile underwhelming products. The passion is long gone

[AcidicSyn]

Nope, actually read my post before you spout more nonsense.

I did, and that's precisely what you're doing. But it's okay, you're entitled to your own opinion, same as I am under no obligation to help you better understand how silly you look.

[Nyel]

Its staggering the amount of resources blizzard is devoting to aspects of this expansion that nobody cares about.
Warfronts, isle expos, azerite. Take warfronts and isle expos out of the game and nobody will notice. Take azerite out and people will be happy.

Its insane that so many resources are being wasted on ideas which are clearly failures. Instead of developers focusing on actual class balance, they're focusing on adding new azerite traits. Instead of getting more/more instersting/more frequent dungeon and raid encounters, we're getting fucking warfronts and isle expos.

I get that some experimentation and trial is needed to discover new and interesting concepts. The problem here is that instead of treading lightly and gauging what works and what doesn't, bliz loaded up all of its resources into a train which has already derailed. And instead of accepting this they are doubling down, adding to the train more of what made it derail in the first place. That being boring, one dimensional grind-fests, existing only to fuel a horribly designed azerite system which the game would be better without.

BFA is like a product from a sh!tty late night infomercial. Its got all these supposed features; Azerite! Warfronts! Island expeditions! Super absorbent! But the reality is that its cheap garbage.

The problem though is that BFA isn't cheap garbage. Its expensive garbage. The amount of art and so called "design" resources that went into these failed concepts is staggering. Hell, we could have probably had another xpac by now.

Get your shit together bliz.

I can agree on everything you said. BfA is expensive garbage and Blizzard seems to stick to it because they just can't accept that they've failed miserably with every feature this expansion has to offer.

- - - Updated - - -

Its not so much a waste of resources as a total lack of creativity and concept of "interesting" "fun".

This. Blizzard hasn't developed a completely "fresh" or "creative" game since... I really don't know. They lost their spirit.

Artifact weapons were fresh, creative and interesting. The "best" feature they've implemented to WoW. And see what they did to it with the horrible Heart of Azeroth / Azerite.

[Deleted]

I did, and that's precisely what you're doing. But it's okay, you're entitled to your own opinion, same as I am under no obligation to help you better understand how silly you look.

Except you didn't, but I guess I'm the silly one.

[Armourboy]

Participation rates are a horrible way to determine if something is enjoyable or not. I mean I generally do some IE and Warfronts every week, but would I call them a ton of fun? No not really. They are something to do, but both are pretty mindless and done only for the rewards.

BfA reminds me a lot of WoD in the sense that the systems work, but they aren't necessarily what I would call fun. Azerite gear has the same issue in my mind.

Garrisons are a pretty solid example. People spent tons of time in them and using them and they worked fine, but in the same vein I wouldn't really call them good. The systems in BfA kind of give me the same vibe. They aren't bad, they just aren't exactly good either.

[Deleted]

Participation rates are a horrible way to determine if something is enjoyable or not. I mean I generally do some IE and Warfronts every week, but would I call them a ton of fun? No not really. They are something to do, but both are pretty mindless and done only for the rewards.

BfA reminds me a lot of WoD in the sense that the systems work, but they aren't necessarily what I would call fun. Azerite gear has the same issue in my mind.

Garrisons are a pretty solid example. People spent tons of time in them and using them and they worked fine, but in the same vein I wouldn't really call them good. The systems in BfA kind of give me the same vibe. They aren't bad, they just aren't exactly good either.

Its basically the problem with carrots on a stick grind games. They aren't designed with fun in mind, they are designed for addiction and keep people on a infinite treadmill.

If you push out from the gear treadmill in WoW, there is very little incentive to do much aside from an occasional dungeon/raid run or some pvp. Its pretty shallow

[Deleted]

Bfa is from start to end a disappointment I think we can all agree on that. I'm really worried about the new Blizzard. Not just the games but also the company, I don't even see much difference anymore with scumbag EA. Some part of me wants to play classic and reforced but the other part doesn't want to support this company anymore with my money. I don't think they deserve it anymore.

[FelPlague]

What I find the most worrisome is the apparent change of direction in artstyle. The art, the music is different. Compare a screenshot with wow vanilla and a new warfront, you'll see. Colors have less depth, less vibrant, it's closer to paint style software that you can see on artstation, different than before.

I'm not saying that vanilla is technically superior, I'm saying that the art and essence is more and more different as time pass. This can indeed undo world of warcraft while the majority isn't even noticing.

Gameplay as we know already changed a lot, probably to scale to the changing market and demographics.

Remove gameplay and art from a legendary game, you're getting a terrible waste yes.

The artstyle has literally not changed... simply gotten higher quality...
if you have some examples feel free to post, but you have yet to say anything other then "its different"
the colours are just as vibrant, and in most cases more vibrant, it has more depth.

[Niwes]

Its staggering the amount of resources blizzard is devoting to aspects of this expansion that nobody cares about.
Warfronts, isle expos, azerite. Take warfronts and isle expos out of the game and nobody will notice. Take azerite out and people will be happy.

Its insane that so many resources are being wasted on ideas which are clearly failures. Instead of developers focusing on actual class balance, they're focusing on adding new azerite traits. Instead of getting more/more instersting/more frequent dungeon and raid encounters, we're getting fucking warfronts and isle expos.

I get that some experimentation and trial is needed to discover new and interesting concepts. The problem here is that instead of treading lightly and gauging what works and what doesn't, bliz loaded up all of its resources into a train which has already derailed. And instead of accepting this they are doubling down, adding to the train more of what made it derail in the first place. That being boring, one dimensional grind-fests, existing only to fuel a horribly designed azerite system which the game would be better without.

BFA is like a product from a sh!tty late night infomercial. Its got all these supposed features; Azerite! Warfronts! Island expeditions! Super absorbent! But the reality is that its cheap garbage.

The problem though is that BFA isn't cheap garbage. Its expensive garbage. The amount of art and so called "design" resources that went into these failed concepts is staggering. Hell, we could have probably had another xpac by now.

Get your shit together bliz.

and where is all your data, statistics or objective informations, that proof all your wall of text is not just your tiny oppinion, but also something blizzard would earn more money with, than what they do now ?

kids... /rolleyes

[Piesor]

Its staggering the amount of resources blizzard is devoting to aspects of this expansion that nobody cares about.
Warfronts, isle expos, azerite. Take warfronts and isle expos out of the game and nobody will notice. Take azerite out and people will be happy.
[...]

100% agree. They are just pushing their agenda despite of the feedback. Since Blizzard is totally numberdriven the only way to react as player is ignoring this content or unsub (like I did two weeks ago). The worst thing you can do is to play something you do not like in the game. Because when Blizzard sees that so many players play this content they think there are no issues with it. They do not see that you just do it for the free epic at the end even if it sucks!

[Niwes]

Bfa is from start to end a disappointment I think we can all agree on that. I'm really worried about the new Blizzard. Not just the games but also the company, I don't even see much difference anymore with scumbag EA. Some part of me wants to play classic and reforced but the other part doesn't want to support this company anymore with my money. I don't think they deserve it anymore.

no, i dont think we „can all agree on that“. wether there is data, nor you realize that a small bunch of mmoc ppl, that feels like a whole universe in your mind, is representative for anything.

all i agree is, that BfA started a giant shitstorm and every idiot and his mother is jumping on that train.

in my eyes there is literally no difference between Legion and BfA, besides the story and the packing. replace orderhall quests with warfront quests, AP with azerite, sceanrios with island exp, azerite gear with Legendaries and keep WQs and you have the exact same stuff. Nothing really changed that much.

dont get me wrong, i dont like that grind rng shit either. but objectivelly there is not much difference between BfA and Legion, besides the story thing (sylvanas shit) and startup reactions of ppls when both launched.

its all about selffullfilling prophecies.

[Steelcryo]

Why is it every thread like this the OP assumes they are right and everyone agrees with them?

I like warfronts and expeditions. I actually hope Blizz puts more time into them and developing them further as they're fairly basic right now but have huge potential.

Look at raids in vanilla, they were fucking awful. I mean they were fun because we didn't know any better but design wise even the devs say they were shit. Molten Core was made mostly by one dude who rushed to finish it. Of course warfronts and expeditions are gonna be a bit sucky right now, it's their first iteration but I hope Blizzard sees the potential and works on them. Raids and dungeons even with new layouts and mechanics, the format after 15 years is stale as hell. Something new is exactly what the game needs imo.

That's not saying ditch dungeons and raids but I personally think them investing dev time into the new features is worth while.

Plus most game devs know the number 1 way to kill a games longevity is not offer anything new so them sticking to the same stuff over and over is a bad idea.

[Cæli]

The artstyle has literally not changed... simply gotten higher quality...
if you have some examples feel free to post, but you have yet to say anything other then "its different"
the colours are just as vibrant, and in most cases more vibrant, it has more depth.

you know just stating the opposite of what I say doesn't make it true...you are apparently part of the majority I was referring to, and I think the majority doesn't really care about the preservation and the importance of particular artstyle and color patterns in the creation of an atmosphere.

no, the colors are not as vibrant, they are not as flashy, the artists more often decide to go with more drab colors, that IS a clear change of art direction, not a technical evolution. but people think better technics or poly is = to better color or artstyle, that's a terrible fallacy.

just look at this, see how the colors are different, more colorful before


you cannot ignore the depth of a color, translucent is not equal to opaque you know, in models like fire elementals they changed the artstyle and made the color different (not talking about abs btw)


you cannot ignore how gradients can result in a difference in color, even though the poly count is much higher


here's a last picture for you, no need to comment this one, this is from a new tiger that will come next patch


I mean I'm not the only one to notice this.
Like I said the majority doesn't notice, my theory is that the majority are not able to pay attention to details. details matter however.
Not saying also that everything is bad, far from it, most of BFA is beautiful.
But what I notice, is that more and more we get inferior models, colors, assets, and THAT is what worries me.
it's almost like the team is changing, and that the good artists are producing good things, and newly hired artists that do not grasp the essence of wow are producing work that gets straight up added live just like that.
painting is not always the way to go, but maybe that's cheaper for blizzard eh.
the undoing of wow, which is what I called it.
preservation matters

[FelPlague]

you know just stating the opposite of what I say doesn't make it true...you are apparently part of the majority I was referring to, and I think the majority doesn't really care about the preservation and the importance of particular artstyle and color patterns in the creation of an atmosphere.

no, the colors are not as vibrant, they are not as flashy, the artists more often decide to go with more drab colors, that IS a clear change of art direction, not a technical evolution. but people think better technics or poly is = to better color or artstyle, that's a terrible fallacy.

just look at this, see how the colors are different, more colorful before


you cannot ignore the depth of a color, translucent is not equal to opaque you know, in models like fire elementals they changed the artstyle and made the color different (not talking about abs btw)


you cannot ignore how gradients can result in a difference in color, even though the poly count is much higher


here's a last picture for you, no need to comment this one, this is from a new tiger that will come next patch


I mean I'm not the only one to notice this.
Like I said the majority doesn't notice, my theory is that the majority are not able to pay attention to details. details matter however.
Not saying also that everything is bad, far from it, most of BFA is beautiful.
But what I notice, is that more and more we get inferior models, colors, assets, and THAT is what worries me.
it's almost like the team is changing, and that the good artists are producing good things, and newly hired artists that do not grasp the essence of wow are producing work that gets straight up added live just like that.
painting is not always the way to go, but maybe that's cheaper for blizzard eh.
the undoing of wow, which is what I called it.
preservation matters

I love how you literally prove in the first post how much you are willing to cherry pick you pick one of the darkest versons of the skin, and in a dark setting.

[Rozz]

The artstyle has literally not changed... simply gotten higher quality...
if you have some examples feel free to post, but you have yet to say anything other then "its different"
the colours are just as vibrant, and in most cases more vibrant, it has more depth.

I have to disagree with this, bc it has changed.

Example: The old Blood Elf Guard (I'm not posting the updated version bc it's on wowhead at better resolution).

The model is rough, but the detail and art style is different from the newest rendition. There is no line work or intricacy that the original has anywhere. Even if there were design upgrades, the majority of the armor has been toned down to be less busy. It's very much a simplified version, despite the newest version having richer colors and being cleaner.

I don't wanna load this comment with tons of pictures, but if you do direct comparisons you can see the art philosophy has changed from armor, coloring, models, weapons, mounts, etc. While some updates have been extremely faithful, others have reflected the current art trends of our present art team. This isn't a complaint, but I'm just saying that the change does exist. They just allocate intricacy to more specific areas of the game. You're less likely to see a green rarity hat have fancy gold trim today, bc they reserve that for higher end armor. This is why older pieces of armor are still sought after, because that level of design is less likely to surface due to various reasons ( the design formula may have changed, they don't have the time to, it doesn't fit the current themes of the expac, etc).

- - - Updated - - -

I love how you literally prove in the first post how much you are willing to cherry pick you pick one of the darkest versons of the skin, and in a dark setting.

Even if you disagree with their color analysis, you can still see changes in their design philosophy. Look closely at the models, there are a lot of stylistic differences.
1) Less/no sand on the feet 2) The toes are closer/not as wide. There is less webbing visible 3)They made the loincloth larger but the wheel attached has more spokes. It's also more centered - more balance in the design. 4) The ears are smaller and no longer webbed. They no longer dwarf the head and let you focus on the face 5) The seashells are taken away from the upper netting and replaced with boat-based armor. This makes them more sturdy and menacing 6) Most of the warm colors were removed and placed on the nails/starfish as pops of color. This also makes the giants less goofy and more menacing. 7) Removed tuffs of hair on the wrists/limbs and placed more hair on the beard and head. 8) The net looks less like they stumbled into it and appears more like a purposeful form of clothing. 9) Method of coloring the skin makes the giants more fleshy and less patchy/scaly 10) They removed most of the scales etc.

There are a shit ton of overt stylistic changes made to these models, despite how similar they look. It's unfair to say changes in designs and stylistic approaches to depict/model characters are just an upgrade in "quality". The fact they changed anything, showed they felt things needed to be simplified or improved to fit their new art philosophy.

[Zoreyai]

lol don't worry. Ion is getting the boot soon, Bli$$ard Activi$ion is hemorrhaging money. It'll change, not sure if it'll be a good change, since it seems like Bli$$ard is going in the toilet, but we'll see.

[Deleted]

no, i dont think we „can all agree on that“. wether there is data, nor you realize that a small bunch of mmoc ppl, that feels like a whole universe in your mind, is representative for anything.

all i agree is, that BfA started a giant shitstorm and every idiot and his mother is jumping on that train.

in my eyes there is literally no difference between Legion and BfA, besides the story and the packing. replace orderhall quests with warfront quests, AP with azerite, sceanrios with island exp, azerite gear with Legendaries and keep WQs and you have the exact same stuff. Nothing really changed that much.

dont get me wrong, i dont like that grind rng shit either. but objectivelly there is not much difference between BfA and Legion, besides the story thing (sylvanas shit) and startup reactions of ppls when both launched.

its all about selffullfilling prophecies.

Of coarse there is always a snowflake who grabs to opportunity to be different just like all the other snowflakes. Even Blizzard admitted bfa is not doing like expected so it's safe to say it's not just every idiot and his mother who thinks bfa is a wasted opportunity.