Nah, you’ve got a bad opinion on this one. Sorry.
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I actually liked targeting loot. I felt like I was being rewarded for exploring the islands and finding the rares. The one mount I got from an island I know I fed into the loot table myself because I was the only person who bothered to track down the single pack of Twilight Dragons, kill them, and loot the chest while the rest of my team stayed on the beach AoEing crocs and crabs down from start to finish.
I think its a good idea to get rid of the divide between people who played that way and people that played IEs my way. Its good we have a common goal to finish the race as quick as possible now.
But I hope you, Blizzard, understand that something of value is being lost here. If I want to grab mobs in bulk and AoE them down I have Mythic+ for that. I have Warfronts for that. I have leveling alts for that. I have mount farm groups in Nazmir. I have almost literally anything else in the game for that.
Island Expeditions were the one thing that could reward you for being more precise in your killing and going at a different, slower, tempo. You’re dumbing the game down so that you no longer need to explore. You just kill stuff (ANY stuff) for a pull on the old RNG slot machine and can get a pirate hat without ever actually seeing a pirate on your island. I understand why its a necessary change but I’m sad to see the loot system get dumber.
tldr; thanks, I hate it.
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And yet the HotS team explains new battlefields, and heroes, the strengths and weaknesses, and then reviews player performance and playstle, and then does fixes.
In fact most of the teams do explain new features and have a overview guide for it, except the WoW team.
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The issue is that letting months go by when people are booting others (who were doing it exactly as you wanted them to - speed) and giving them deserter buffs so they can’t continue to play is probably something that should have been fixed a lot earlier.
It happened a lot to me (and also a LOT of spiteful messages since I didn’t comply with pet farmer’s opinion of how I should play islands - apparently doing it the way Blizzard wanted me to all along meant there was “something wrong with me”) and I detest islands because I was trying to get revered honorbound on 6 toons and it became a real hassle. (And I’m not sure why I want 5 followers, the mission board is horrific, I guess I have long-term hope you guys will make it worth doing by mid way through the xpac).
Almost no “fixing” of islands can make up for the bad times I had in there already. I strongly suggest you react a bit faster when situations like this happen - especially with content that is core xpac content that you are continuing to spend resources on.
Tomorrow, for example, I will run 5 toons through the weekly island grind and probably get booted a lot and wonder why it took so long for this to get addressed.
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The answer is simple
Make rewards worth the effort.
If I had a chance on every run of a mythic piece of gear / weapons dropping even a small chance I"d run it like crazy.
I agree with this.
pets and mounts and xmog, = meh.
I would still run if there was some sort of bad luck protection, but with my experience and mileage, it seems I’d have better luck winning a Las Vegas slot machine.
I’ve ran plenty Island Expeditions, I’ve had 3 transmog drops and two were identical mail pieces. It takes 15 minutes of grinding to do an Island expedition, less than 1 second to pull the lever on a one armed bandit slot machine.
More power and progression = give me some of that.
I’d like this too.
We can do better at communicating and are actively discussing that topic, but I wouldn’t expect us to lay out heavy details on every single system. There is fun in exploring and learning different aspects of the game and we don’t want to make the whole experience a spreadsheet. We missed the mark here and are making changes, simple as that.
I appreciate your understanding! I agree with you and in how it didn’t pan out how we’d hoped which is why we are making some changes.
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I actually enjoy games where all the info isn’t handed to me on a silver platter and discovery can happen naturally. The community more or less figured it out in about a week or two, but then the mix/max GOTTA FARM EEFFICIENTLY squad had to go and of course make it unbearable.
I guess nowadays every game needs to be designed so that each and every facet can be broken down into charts, graphs, ____ per hour, min/max for the sake of people’s optimum dopamine kicks, instead of just playing something because you genuinely enjoy it.
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The big problem in IEs, and in other areas of the game as well, is that if I want to root around and explore… it is at the expense of two other players. Said another way, if I just put my niece to sleep and have a mere 22 minutes to play, and I devote that time to IEs, I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT want to find out the jokers in my group want to just dilly-dally about and “figure things out.”
YOU ARE WASTING MY TIME!
This is a sin. Don’t do this.
Allow ME to choose when I want to explore and just generally waste time AT MY PACE. Don’t make me subject other people to the fact I just want to futz around and not really work toward the GOAL. Inherently this is another problem with IEs is that working toward the little rewards and stuff is counterproductive to winning. Who in the hell designed that???
Honestly, that’s a different discussion. I Just want to highlight that exploring under the guise of “fun” is a subjective thing. It TOTALLY removes that “fun” element when you FORCE other people into your idea of fun (eg: wasting time).
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Not to mention that if the other two go off and finish the azerite, its over. You have no freedom to explore and do what YOU want.
Let us opt to do it solo…AFTER the others have left.
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Bornakk, I’m going to make a baseless accusation that comes from my experience in IEs and my limited experience in online game design.
I think this move has less to do with transparency and more to do with player fighting. I know I’ve been reported and had to report players for excessive harassment due to disagreements in how to handle expeditions while pugging. I think the drama and the reports are piling up because the community can’t agree on how to run the content so the solution is to dumb it down in order to establish a right way. It cuts the player drama and it is, honestly, a good move.
Nothing about the way Blizzard operates speaks of transparency. This statement about how it works is only coming out now because things like Ahoy exist that were exposing the system anyways. This reeks of damage control.
On a completely unrelated note, Bornakk, while I have your eyes anyways, please tell the devs to give my flippin’ Vicious War Riverbeast its /mountspecial animation that its been missing since BFA began. The Horde counterpart works fine. >.>;
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except that there was no time to figure that with your team, it was ‘Go Go GO’ from the start.
And you can’t explore while the other 2 are going for Azerite, cause that’s just called dying in other parts of the island, and then getting kicked for not contributing.
A solo mode mode be very welcome.
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For the same reason that mobs dont drop loot in Mythic +. The content is time sensitive and adding loot to mobs slows players down.
They couldn’t, though. As long as they weren’t ready to actually change the old mechanics, revealing them would have made the problem worse.
This exactly. The old system not only permitted but practically encouraged players to have separate AND CONFLICTING goals with the other members of their own team. This did not go well.
Now (well, next week) everyone has the same goal: win the island, get your chance at loot, then requeue if you want to. It won’t completely eliminate player conflict but it should cut down on it massively.
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are you the same bornakk that has been posting since vanilla ? would you admit how garbage this game has turned out to be, I know you know it
They shoud’ve made IEs solo like the dungeon in Suramar. You gradually build up your little army of NPCs to help you along the way. That would’ve been a pretty sweet way to go about them IMO.
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You’re discussing doing better at communicating? I feel like you have collectively been saying that for years. Seems like by this point you would have it figured out.
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Exactly, their trying to communicate better sucks, stop trying to and just communicate better.
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How many more times is this sentiment going to be repeated by yourself, Ion, and others before you guys actually follow through and begin communicating better?
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I’m sorry but it’s like your follower equipment. What sort of fun do you think we got making a ‘makeshift azerite detectector’ waiting for over 20 successful missions for a successful reward and discovering it was 25 azerite? 25!!
The tooltip could have easily said has a chance of returning with 25 azerite from successful missions. Instead of saying what it did.
I have to give a big fat thumbs down on this and many other issues like crafting, It wasn’t a lack of communication it was outright obfuscation. No one would have wasted the kind of resources required by these items had you taken the time to post the details.
You are very wrong to think this sort of design is fun at all. Your subscription numbers accurately reflect the amount of effort that was put into this expansion.
Even your former fan sites are dwindling and those still up are saying there’s no good reason to comeback for 8.1.
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They wanted the element of discovery because…
a.) A lot of players have been asking for that
b.) It’s been a huge hit with their secret mounts
I understand where they’re coming from but it just fell flat on it’s face because discovery isn’t that fun if you’re forced to do unfun and timed content while trying to discover something.
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