I love BFA so far and maybe I am missing something on the criticisms - did you feel the same way and when did the excitement break for you?

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21

I don’t understand all the hate either tbh. It is almost like they watched someone’s video and decide hey that guy is right, this game is crap.

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Right because people can’t honestly hate something when you enjoy it… :confused: :roll_eyes:

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The way the GCD works now makes the classes I’ve played so clunky it’s not fun at all. There are many valid reasons BFA isn’t good but the GCD bothers me way more because it affects all gameplay.

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:slight_smile: Ha ha - maybe we do have enough BFA threads

I guess I had a long post a week ago or so on when the magic faded for people with Warcraft. That is a grander question about when you were so enthralled with the game you were in a spell. That was a fun discussion, but this is a more practical one

There are some things that are inevitable - after a while the game’s hold fades, people get used to the game and systems, and frankly people get better at the game. What was interesting in classic or BC is just less so, and even if people say they don’t want it, I think to some extent streamlining and easier queues and more content is a good thing.

For some others, they talk about social things that have changed - their guild isn’t as tight knit, their friends have quit, they don’t have time to raid or hardcore PvP anymore. That is too bad, but that’s not the game getting worse - they changed and maybe they wouldn’t have liked the game before either if they were different.

Then some say that there is a specific thing they like, say dungeons or PvP or world stuff, and they don’t like that you can get gear elsewhere - I personally think having more options to gear is nice. Maybe you could say it’s too easy to get gear, and I would mostly agree with that, but I am sure at this point the game is getting more casual because newer gamers are more casual and the older gamers who grew up with the game are older now and on average have less time.

And then finally there are gripes about streamlining and abilities - this has a good debate behind it, but I generally agree with this re: comments about talents, of having 6 choices that matter versus 51 that don’t really. Maybe you could say the same thing for abilities, but maybe they went just a bit too far.

Thus, I sympathize with people’s views, but when you break each of these points down, I do think there is room for improvement, but I guess I don’t buy into the “crisis” that the game is broken or failing or done. I think the player base and tastes in MMOs have changed a lot, and as people have gotten used to the game, it has adapted and changed with them. I also think, often, the most vocal fans are the most hardcore and not representative of most people. For example, I have about 10 friends I know in real-life who play WoW. I play like 1-3 hours a day, which is much less than I used to. That, by far, makes me the most hardcore of my set of friends. Most of them, many of whom hardcore raided or PvPed when the game started and we were 20 now have kids and families and are lucky if they play 3-6 hours a week. I will sometimes make a comment about some part of the game that I think could be improved and we laugh when I realize they haven’t even seen that content yet because they don’t have enough time to play. I sometimes feel like this is a 1% vs the 99% conversation about being worried about unlocking pathfinder when most people playing haven’t even put their pants on yet. Thus, they like all the streamlining because otherwise they would just quit.

Just my thoughts - again not saying it’s perfect, but I am not ready to ring the crisis bell!

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No they can but when they start giving the exact same reasons as some streamer it makes me wonder. I have a friend who was playing all along and then bam he quits and starts complaining about RNG being like gambling and I asked him about it and he said something just ‘clicked’ for him and he realized what this game was about. He has played for over ten years.

He had to come back for the elder toys though :wink:

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They definitely can, but what I am focused on here is not how people feel, which they have every right to, but asking them to articulate why so I can understand why their opinions differ. I think that is more constructive and enjoyable than just posting polemics

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That’s a fair assessment but let’s be honest. If you don’t feel the ‘‘crisis bell’’ needs to be rung than that’s fine, that’s you enjoying the game. We can poke holes and further dissect every argument to show that perhaps the problem and solutions lie elsewhere but that’s downplaying real, valid issues that are with the game.

It would be silly to expect them to pack in everything that made past expansions great into one brand new expansion and ask bob billy and mary what their gripes were with the game so they can individually implement the fixes but that’s not going to happen.

The dev’s are creating this game towards a crowd that they feel might attract more people, they are trying to please everyone and as you can see, is not possible. The best thing is if you enjoy it, keep enjoying it, but ultimately there are issues within Blizzard, and the game that makes people feel like it’s been gutted, made meaningless, less engaging, and frankly lackluster.

A gutted, copy-n-paste legion version.

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One thing that needs to be fixed is Blizzards philosophy and world view.

The fundamental problem with the game is lack of player agency.

You as a player control what you do, but have pretty much no control over your destination.

You can’t control when you get a piece of gear you want. Everything is time gated, so you have no control over how soon you can acquire something. The main mechanic of the game provides “everything”, so everything is homogenous.

The current Blizzard philosophy is “Show, play the game, and you will power up.” But by “play the game” they mean do ANYTHING. Everything rewards gear, everything rewards AP, everything rewards rep. When everything rewards everything, then it doesn’t matter what you do. Just show up, participate, and you shall prevail.

Yet you have no real control, since nothing you do matters, in the big picture, all you can do is simply invest time. Well, folks like goals a little bit sharper than that.

They like to have something more focused than just “show up”.

No, you can’t just sit around town and level up. but the main mechanic of the game is the WQ system, the Warfronts, the Island Expeditions, plus Raiding and Mythics.

But, you really need to do the other content to fuel Raiding and Mythics. You can’t “just raid”, you can’t “just run mythics”, you need to do the other content at a minimum just to get AP.

A simple example is I need 7th legion badges, so I can get the 395 ring. But, that’s all time gated. I can’t buy them, I can’t farm them, I can’t grind them out. All I can do is push 7th legion rep, and do warfront dailies. If I were to push it, I can do all of that in about an hour of game play. I now have 23 hours of “nothing to do” until it all resets tomorrow. My agency has been removed for 23 hours of the day.

Do I want to grind rep for 24 hours? No. But I might want to for 2 hours. Do 2 hours today, and skip tomorrow because it’s raid night.

Do you know how you get a mount from the Island Expeditions?

You play Island Expeditions. Over and over. Hoping you get the right map, hoping you get the right mobs to spawn, hoping that if THOSE stars align, the mount actually drops. There’s a couple mounts you can get collecting currency. But not most of them.

“Just show up, play with no real direction, and stuff will rain down from the sky on you.”

I have a 370 waist piece at the moment. And I run 385 Emissaries all the time. I STILL have a 370 waist piece. (I might be able to buy one with the TR currency, I haven’t check recently, I don’t have much of it).

The way the game works right now is your only choice is how you spend the time in the game, not really how you want that time to affect you. You get to chose the hours, they get to choose the results.

It gets unsatisfying.

Individually, the content is fine. The fights are fine, the quests are fine, the stories are fine, the zones are fine. (and people will quibble about all of these.)

It’s what you do while in them that’s not fine.

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Definitely don’t mean to do that and I love the valid criticisms and love the forums - I read many of you and you are great posters. I am just saying if my peak enjoyment of the game (totally making up numbers) was like a 100, my enjoyment is like a 75 or 80 now. It’s not the same, but it’s also not like a 10.

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Absolutely, some criticisms has made me literally facepalm 'cause it felt like a regurgitation of some streamer. It’s the internet culture we live in now or pretend to.

I didn’t mean to come off snarky, my side is just seeing more posts that seem to bring up the fact that they don’t understand the other side but to me that shouldn’t really matter since IMHO, if I’m enjoying the game, or disliking it, it doesn’t matter why someone else hates or likes it… it’s a game if I like it, I say why, if I hate it, I say why… why others like or dislike it doesn’t really affect my own view on something.

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This is a very thoughtful post - thank you

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BFA is t a bad game. I play regularly now and so does my wife. She does a lot of mythics and I am a leveling toons and professions.
Is the game is different then it was 10 years ago? Yes is it hadn’t changed I think there would be major problems. From the beginning Blizzard has kept it’s promise to continue to update and improve the game. Just like cell phones with updates, sometimes they are not the best improvements but they are still fixes.

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I completely agree with you. I am basically just asking people to look into the mirror of how much they have also changed alongside the game and how much they still really get from the game. I love good criticisms - it is vital and just slurping the game will make it worse over time. However, I can’t tell you how many posts I read when I think “why is this person even paying to play the game if they dislike it that much? They can’t possibly really mean everything they are saying - it is forum-speak”

The same way just because you have fun you shouldn’t criticize, I think it’s reasonable to be honest about how much fun we are really having while wanting to improve things

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My friend who complained about the RNG and gambling though - goes to Vegas to gamble so I think there is something else involved and some people literally do not know why they aren’t enjoying the game anymore.

I think a whole lot of the complaints come down to blizzard is destroying the sense of progression for people. We earn things and they take them away, we level up and chase gear but gain no power.

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I am enjoying BfA very much. Not my favorite expansion as of now (still at least half way to go for it). I love all the zones (first expansion I have really enjoyed them all). The leveling experience keeps getting better. The 2 raids so far have been a blast. Love the music as well. The IEs and Warfronts show some potential. Obviously not perfect now, but there is a lot they can do with these.

Only major thing I am really disliking is the insanely high ilvl gear raining from the skies and you don’t have to do much to get them. I am all for catch up gear, or getting okay gear for things that take little to no work involved but when you can get Heroic raiding ilvl gear for afking in a Warfront or things like that, then yeah, it is a bit much.

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I agree, discussion, reflection and self-realization is healthy and encouraged. A lot of it in my honest opinion comes down to the sunk cost fallacy… and others clearly grew up with the game while wanting the escape but holding out hope changes happen.

I’ve seen the types of posts you mention so many times and it stumps me to why people are so masochistic in torturing themselves when they clearly aren’t enjoying a game which in turn, games should be fun, no? BUT a’las I’m also understanding of it because we are all different… sometimes I have to remind myself that the other person might have some attachment that simply keeps them going back so it’s a balancing act.

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Legion, Late Legion, and BFA doubled down on RNG elements–they got negative feedback on the amount of RNG in everything and disregarded it, stating repeatedly; “SOME rng is good,” as if that was something anybody was arguing.

In terms of the story, the WoW story has never been particularly great, but BFA has failed to really tell a cohesive story. The things that are occuring are held together by thin threads, and a lot of it feels like it’s always to make one major plot character “look cool” in the moment, rather than advance a theme/narrative.

I think as a self-professed “fanboy” you are pre-disposed to rose-coloured glasses. There’s nothing wrong with liking the game (that’s your opinion and you are entitled to it!) but don’t dismiss all criticism as “negativity” etc.

I enjoyed dailies because they were a checklist, I knew the time commitment, etc. I dislike world quests because after a week or two they are just as repetitive as dailies, but more RNG, and there are more of them for less reward each. They are designed to be a bigger timesink than dailies and because dailies come from hubs, they often are more efficient than world quests which involve you going all over the world (without flying, of course).

Raiding is raiding. Not much has changed since Cata, there.

M+ doesn’t appeal to me because my friends mostly quit or aren’t interested in it, and I don’t want to bother trying to find a group. My experiences pugging M+ as a dps were awful. As a tank it was easier to make/find groups, but I’d be frustrated by incompetent dps.

Admittedly, there are still xmogs and such that I want to farm, but after literal years trying to get some things (mimiron’s head, etc) I’ve just given up. They aren’t worth the time anymore to me.

I can forgive BFA for a lot, but the RNG timesinks and rewards have really worn thin on me and they keep getting worse, compounded with the OLD rng timesinks (xmog, mount runs, etc) that I’ve been at for years and years.

Also, Blizz has more or less completely abandoned professions in all but the most baseline of aspects since WoD, and that used to bring me a lot of entertainment.

When did the excitement break for me?

I admit it was pretty early. I was heavily involved in a few class discords and testing beta, discussing class changes and features, and passing that feedback on (sometimes directly to devs through back channels). I don’t blame them personally, but I think it more often than not fell on their ears but they were powerless to act on it, or overworked, or silently disagreed. Either way, seeing the “wizard behind the curtain” was a bad experience, ultimately, because I saw how powerless the wizard was. It robbed me of hope that BFA would turn around. And then, with every Q&A and Ion’s wild gesticulations/dodges of questions, or direct answers he gave that I flat-out-disagreed with, it just got worse and worse. I got tired of trying to defend design choices to the community or just saying; “Well, it’s still early in development, wait, things will change.” They didn’t. BFA went live and bad choices were doubled down upon.

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I’m having fun thus far. I’ve been playing Alliance more than Horde because my friends and brothers play alliance over Horde. So I miss playing my Paladin more. I’ve been enjoying the questing zones, story, art/theme of each zone, and the music. The first raid was pretty bleh to me. The new one is much better and one I enjoy (even though my buddy Rastakhan dies :sob:).

It’s been a nice way for me to kill time when I’m not working. I’m having fun. As long as you’re having fun, that’s what’s important. You should never play something you aren’t having fun with.

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Why even bother posting this then? you know it will always good for you no matter how bad it is actually.

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Tbh I still think a large chunk of those complaining and/or unsubbing are just burnt out because the fundamentals of BfA are so similar to Legion, which they already played for 2 years.

That isn’t to say the specific criticisms they have aren’t valid, but if this were the expansion that launched after WoD, I think basically 0 people would be saying “Wow this is just as bad if not worse than WoD”. It’d be getting praised, just like Legion did, despite its issues.

The 3 big things people like to bring up are Azerite Gear, Class Design, and the GCD Change.

Azerite Gear is currently frustrating because every time you get an upgrade you progress backwards and have to re-earn mostly the same traits you already had on your lower ilvl piece of gear. This is absolutely a real issue, but it’s one that Blizzard has acknowledged and thus is changing dramatically in 8.2 to address such concerns. The traits themselves are generally fine and at worst just feel a little meaningless for specs where Blizzard got the balancing tight enough for your choice to not really matter.

Class Design is sort of in-between for me. I understand that people are frustrated, but at the same time, MOST specs only really had their old Legion artifact abilities converted to talents rather than baseline abilities. It’s a “loss” that I don’t agree with, but it’s -1- thing. Of course some specs had other changes, but by and large it’s just that 1 thing and most specs play basically the same as they did in Legion, yet people are acting like we’ve entered into WoD’s Prune 2.0.

And lastly, the GCD Change. In case you’re not informed, Blizzard added a bunch of abilities to the GCD that previously weren’t on it leading up to BfA’s launch. Mostly cooldowns. Their reasoning never really made sense outside of a PvP context so I never agreed with the change, but it’s a change they started rolling back before it even went live, then continued to revert some of the spells they put on the GCD even into 8.1. At this point, it’s a non-issue for the vast majority of specs.

Like I said, those are some legitimate issues, but I think they get blown out of proportion (along with various tiny issues) by people who probably are just a little burnt out regardless of the current state of the game.

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