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

[Big Thanks]

Azerie Gear
Corruption
Essences
Fun trinkets
Armor and Weapons with special unique passives/actives
Benthic Casino Royale

And Shadowlands is promised to fix the problem of "acquisition agency"
Future seems bright to me.

Do you enjoy this fun little things?
Or "customization" for you is a pain in the ass because it only means you are required to farm a specific thing (min maxing)...without total control over the acquisition methods?

[Broken Fox]

Yeah Corruption is fun.

Also Vulpera camps. That shit is useful.

[Neuroticaine]

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.

[Darkeon]

There's definitely an high amount of gameplay customization to be had.

Unfortunately it's all borrowed powers and other systems with elevated amounts of RNG, boosted up to ludicrous levels.

[Syegfryed]

essence and azerite gear are dogshit tier and should not be considered "rpg like fun customization"

trinkets with some effects, and corrupted gear could, if the later was not so broken

[AlmightyGerkin]

These systems were a big step down from its predecessor

[Wheeler]

Disagree completely.

Corruptions started out good, but quickly have devolved into "Wear stuff that increases base stats" for just about everyone. Every bit of it that isn't stat increases (RNG ones at that) are procs that are - you guessed it - RNG. Before you at least swapped some stuff depending on the encounter type - until they nerfed that into the ground.

Azerite Traits were tied to power, and the only way these could have been fun was with some cool class customization in the later rings. That never happened. Heal, or Shield. Boring. Plus - There were ones you literally had to take to make your spec work correctly. Not do the most damage (They did that too), but PLAY correctly.

Double on use isn't fun whatsoever. Font is something I never want to play with again. Coral, MUCH more so.

Everything is proc-based in BFA. None of it is fun. Legion Legendaries were fun.

[Daedius]

Azerite gear.... yeah no.

As a Shadow Priest in Legion we were balanced around Surrender to Madness. BfA we're balanced around the Azerite trait that gives crit per Void stack.

And I bloody hate the Insanity Void mechanic to bits!!

Bring back Class sets please.

[Asrialol]

These systems were a big step down from its predecessor

... You mean artifact weapons with 0 customization? They were awful.

[Razion]

A lot of the things implemented almost required add-on tracking if you wanted to play around a lot of the mechanics provided.
Temporary buff? Hope you're looking in the top right corner of the screen so you can catch it.
Internal CD about to make a large damage spike available? Hope you got an add-on tracking it.

On the very high end these kinds of systems may have been good if the community had banded together to support each other in optimizing play around all these effects, but it seems like over the course of the expansion no one even wanted to bother. I don't think I ever saw anyone say, "oh yo man you gotta use this Azerite and Essence tracker addon." The reality of the situation was people just used sims to decide what was best and probably never even experimented with or played with a lot of the various abilities in the expansion - and if they did, they probably never had the addons that may have gave them an experience of actually interacting with a lot of these effects. On the community side I think these systems failed. They didn't capture the motivation of content and add-on creators to an extent where utilizing player resources became common enough to facilitate interaction with these gameplay systems. So for that, I don't think these "customization" options had much merit.

Some things were cool though. Like, Remorseless Winter giving Rime when it hits 3 targets. That was cool.

[Kehego]

... You mean artifact weapons with 0 customization? They were awful.

people on here for some reason think that their artifact weapons were somehow different from other people's. I don't get it.
*maybe* you had options in how you leveled it (not really cus everyone followed the same path and respeccing was extremely costly) but past nighthold everyone had the same traits

whatever

- - - Updated - - -

Disagree completely.

Corruptions started out good, but quickly have devolved into "Wear stuff that increases base stats" for just about everyone. Every bit of it that isn't stat increases (RNG ones at that) are procs that are - you guessed it - RNG. Before you at least swapped some stuff depending on the encounter type - until they nerfed that into the ground.

Azerite Traits were tied to power, and the only way these could have been fun was with some cool class customization in the later rings. That never happened. Heal, or Shield. Boring. Plus - There were ones you literally had to take to make your spec work correctly. Not do the most damage (They did that too), but PLAY correctly.

Double on use isn't fun whatsoever. Font is something I never want to play with again. Coral, MUCH more so.

Everything is proc-based in BFA. None of it is fun. Legion Legendaries were fun.

You do realize that most classes just used boring stacking buff legendaries, yea?
Anger of the half giants made your generator generate a bit more. That was BiS for DH the entire expansion. *yawn*

Arms BiS reduced the cost of mortal strike. Fury BiS gave you a tiny bit of rage when you used rampage. Those are somehow more exciting than azerite traits that do the exact same thing? lol.

[Big Thanks]

Disagree completely.

Corruptions started out good, but quickly have devolved into "Wear stuff that increases base stats" for just about everyone. Every bit of it that isn't stat increases (RNG ones at that) are procs that are - you guessed it - RNG. Before you at least swapped some stuff depending on the encounter type - until they nerfed that into the ground.

Azerite Traits were tied to power, and the only way these could have been fun was with some cool class customization in the later rings. That never happened. Heal, or Shield. Boring. Plus - There were ones you literally had to take to make your spec work correctly. Not do the most damage (They did that too), but PLAY correctly.

Double on use isn't fun whatsoever. Font is something I never want to play with again. Coral, MUCH more so.

Everything is proc-based in BFA. None of it is fun. Legion Legendaries were fun.

I dont know what is peoples problem with passive damage increases.
Isnt it fun seeing your DPS sky rocket?

SURE, in the perfect world ALL customization would change your playstyle to the point of feeling you are playing an entire different spec...
But i dont think is fair to ask for that...just imagine all things you get chaning your playstyle...

Just from my example.
I do random BGs with Brewmaster Monk atm and my DPS was 7k...pitiful i know.

I picked Crucible of Flame essence and got a corrupted item that does damage in AoE...and my DPS sky rocketed to 10k.

Isnt this fun?
(in PVE i do a lot more damage...like 15-18k)

[Rogue Karl]

I mean they brought back a more bland version of glyphs... and rather then make them craft able and unique for each class they made them time gated and generic...

I wouldn't call that a improvement.

[Powerogue]

Azerie Gear
Corruption
Essences
Fun trinkets
Armor and Weapons with special unique passives/actives

No
Seriously?
Yes.
Not more than usual.
I have seen one of those drop all expansion.

Really not seeing it. My appreciation of customization this expansion was in the transmog, particularly racial sets and the tiers of warfront gear that I can mix/match.

[Mendzia]

BFA and RPG?
These are like total antonyms.

[froschhure]

These systems were a big step down from its predecessor

For me it dematerialised into a big moneyglobb

[Licketysplit77]

Totally Agree

I've seen posts and videos where people have complained that there wasn't enough RPG in the game.
This expansion has seen some, Corruption has been a lot of fun for me.
fun risks of balancing Death/Power

[AlmightyGerkin]

... You mean artifact weapons with 0 customization? They were awful.

Liked them way better than what we have now.

[spalernTJ]

The core ideas are great, sure. Having more to gear than just stats (Azerite Traits) Is great and all. But it feels like a gimmick. It had insanely huge shoes to fill, because of what was lost in the process; Tier sets, Weapon Traits and pruned classes. Pre-launch there were promises of Azerite traits that altered playstyle heavily, yet other than Glimmer Paladins, I have not seen or heard much of anyone where this was the case, and If I'm not mistaken, glimmer was brought forth BoD? All in all, Azerite traits could've worked, if the fundamentals of classes wasn't so bad to begin with. The biggest issue is the "Borrowed Power" aspect, and that in many cases, classes feels unfinished without said borrowed powers. The borrowed powers should add onto a fully fledged spec, not be the finishing touches.

Corruption again is a good idea as a replacement for Titan & Warforge. But the impact of these were and still are incredibly unbalanced. First of all, this is from a healer's perspective, I don't mainly play DPS, but I cannot imagine it's any real fun having random gear proccs do so much damage for you, is it? Also can we talk about how much this system shafts healers? I know we're in an age where the Holy Trinity (Tank, Healer, DPS) is leaning more and more towards DPS, but there's not a single fun effect designed around healing, and all the negative effects only really punishes healers in group content. I'd like to see more varied effects that isn't 100% centered around DPSing, and I'd like to see the negative effects more personalized. If the negative effects of standing in the Eye shit and eating your clones on a DPS was a reduction to your damage, would you still just tank it? What if it drained mana from healers? Slowed down cooldown recovery for tanks?

Essences -Again- a good idea, a variety of extra abilities and passive effects to choose from and mix and match as you see fit - Except we live in the age of simming, and as a healer, it feels like there's not much of a choice. I wanted to play with the trait that gives haste to other players when I heal them, but it's just way too inconsistent and low on procc rate, that it's just wasted. I love the idea of support passives / abilities. I absolute despise how the optimal way to play a healer is to squeeze as much DPS out as possible. I want to make others shine, that's why I play healers and supports in my games, and it's not really fun spamming smite half the time and throwing the occasional heal.

Fun trinkets - I see no more "Fun" trinkets than any other expansion. At least from a healer point of view.

[Magical Mudcrab]

... You mean artifact weapons with 0 customization? They were awful.

The artifact with 0 customization, but also ensured you did not need to farm weeks upon weeks for a specific set of Azerite traits or Corruption effects in order to have comparable dps to your peers. Granted, the Legion Legendaries for some classes had similar issues (like Pyromancer's Bracers for Mages), but for the most part the effect wasn't as exaggerated as Azerite or Corruption has been.