I’ll caveat this by stating that I am enjoying remix to some extent. I’m enjoying it in the same way I enjoy retail, but not in the same way that I enjoyed MoP remix.
I think heroic world tier is a great addition and something I hope Blizzard continue to iterate on and bring into retail.
But now onto why I think they totally missed the mark on remix. IMO MoP remix was successful because of its lack of structure. Blizzard essentially took a previous expansion with a nice self-contained game world, brought it into the retail client with some cool features, crazy player power and just let the player base have fun and do pretty much as we please.
Legion remix has missed the point, it’s introduced much more structure and limits that shouldn’t belong.
Infinite Knowledge: I don’t see what benefit infinite knowledge brings from a player perspective. I’m going to refer to this as a “Braking Mechanism” in that it’s a mechanism implemented to intentionally slow down player progression. We need to increase our infinite knowledge in order to be able to really ramp up our infinite power gains. What’s the point in hampering player progression in a time limited event intended to be fast and fun?
Infinite Power: I see a few issues with this.
- Infinite knowledge shouldn’t exist. We should only have infinite power and from the start should be gained at the full rate.
- Infinite Power should be at the warband level, not character level. This point is a bit unfair as MoP remix was similar here. But with all the moves Blizzard have made towards Warband friendly features, this sticks out as a huge oversight. It significantly hampers the motivation to experiment with alts.
- Limits Unbound should increase all secondary stats not just vers.
Gearing: MoP remix was simple, we had bronze which could be used to upgrade gear. Granted a lot of players provided feedback that having the same currency for upgrades and transmogs was bad, which is fair. The solution is to split it into two currencies. Blizzard didn’t do that, they introduced motes which we use to generate a new piece of RNG gear. This is really, really bad. This is another “Breaking Mechanism” designed to slow down player progression. It works well in retail where slowing down player progression is good. But in Remix it’s really bad. Motes should just simply be for an upgrade currency to bump up gear iLevel.
RNG on jewelry is also bad. Same as above it’s another “Braking Mechanism” to slow player progression and robs us of the independence to pick which abilities we want to put extra points in. MoP remix had gems which allowed us to pick which abilities to go with. Having RNG in remix is a really poor choice.
Infinite Research: This strikes me as Blizzard taking the core gameplay loop from retail of completing our weeklies, filling our vault and bringing it into remix on a daily cadence. I don’t get it, it’s a mechanic to control player behavior by shepherding us towards tasks while also controlling velocity. Why introduce such structure into remix? It’s fine for retail, but creates a treadmill/grind in remix that shouldn’t exist. MoP remix lacked any such structure in favour of player agency.
Time gating: I didn’t care too much about this prior to the start of remix, but now that it’s live and I’ve had several days of game time I find it frustrating. I want to be diving into my favourite content in Legion such as Tomb of Sargares, but I can’t. I need to wait. It’s yet another mechanism introduced to slow player progression in this event.
TLDR:
Blizzard have missed the magic of what made MoP remix work by essentially taking the same player control mechanisms from retail and condensing it down to remix. The retail paradigm is fine for retail, but eliminates the magic of what worked in MoP remix.