Hotfixes for Creatures in Island Expeditions

I just wanted to draw attention to the latest hotfixes update:

  • Developers’ notes: Following up on recent community feedback that we requested, a number of quality-of-life concerns led us to changes that we intend to address many frustrating combat experiences with certain Island ecologies.
  • Azerite-themed enemies
    • Enemies now prefer not to use Resonant Burst, Resonant Shield, and Volatile Geyser when a nearby enemy has recently used the ability.
    • Reduced the number of Resonant Focus orbs created per cast of Resonant Burst to 2 orbs (was 4).
    • Removed the Knockback component of Resonant Backlash (triggered from Resonant Shield) on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
    • Reduced the Knockback magnitude of Resonant Focus orbs on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
    • Volatile Eruption’s disorient effect (triggered from Volatile Geyser) has been reduced to 1 second on Normal and Heroic difficulties, and reduced to 2 seconds on Mythic difficulty (was 3 seconds).
  • Kvaldir enemies
    • Greatly reduced the magnitude of the two visibility-impacting effects (Fetid Mist, Eerie Fog) triggered from the Kvaldir invasion.
  • Musken and Yak enemies
    • Removed the knockback effect from Ram.
    • Trample damage reduced by about 50% and is now melee defense.

.
.
I thank you for your feedback and please let us know how these changes feel after you get a chance to experience them. If you are continuing to have particular issues, please be as specific as possible about the creature, abilities, and difficulty level that is causing the trouble.

13 Likes

And that’s it? So few changes based on almost 400 feedback posts in US alone?

Still nothing about Rewards? Like increased drop chances for mounts/toys? Since BFA release i’ve been doing islands cap every week on multiple characters and got 0 mounts, may be 1-2 toys and many pets/transmog I don’t care about. More Dubloons drops?

And you didn’t even fixed all those mobs mentioned in recent feedback thread… No AI fixes too…

You should go over that feedback thread again, you missed a lot of things.

73 Likes

Can the BFA Advancement research be brought down from 5 different Islands to just 1 Island? It’s great you’re updating them, but for those of us who can’t get the feel into doing them would like to opt out entirely. I like to meet halfway on that and do just 1 IE per character in order to move further in the Advancement researches.

14 Likes

The real hotfix should be to remove island expeditions entirely.

38 Likes

All the feedback given to you and this is what was changed? That’s it? Why ask for feedback to begin with?

33 Likes

Damage still seems pretty damn high on a lot of stuff, and there is a lot of CC that still seems pretty stupid. Night Shade thing hits for like 100k, something disoriented me forever, basilisk cone hit me for 150k I think it was.

I’m just not feeling very engaged, I feel annoyed. The health is pretty high, it’s a lot like Fortified weeks in M+. It’s just tedious, rather than fun.

11 Likes

This is great and all, but really? that’s it?

Why not also up the drop rate on items, and increase the amount of doubloons we get. There are so many problems with island expeditions right now lol.

24 Likes

Reduced knockback hotfix LOL!!!

7 Likes

Thanks. These fixes are useful as the Azerite mobs were -ridiculously- overtuned. Every time a message popped up that said that the AI had started an Azerite Rupture, I would laugh because they just ruined their chances of winning the island by fighting those mobs.

Still, there’s several other issues that you haven’t addressed with these hotfixes. Some of them are REALLY obvious (Old God invasion tentacle spawn rate is absurd - anyone who plays an Old God invasion will hate it), but some are more subtle and require a lot of island experience to notice. I’ll list a few.

  1. Old God invasion effect is beyond frustrating. The tentacles that spawn are zero threat to the player, but they spawn at a ridiculous rate and lock everyone into combat forever unless you clear every single one (and new ones will spawn while you’re doing that). I suggest that you decrease the tentacle spawn rate by a huge amount (maybe 1 per 60 seconds) and increase their power level substantially instead (so there is a reason to kill them besides them locking you in combat).
  2. AI does not use Azerite Ruptures correctly a lot of the time. I don’t know if this is because the Azerite mobs were so stupidly overtuned that the AI would wipe and then forget what they were doing, but I very often encounter islands where the AI starts the Rupture twice and then leaves. This is really bad on their part because the third ‘tick’ of the Rupture is the best one (it spawns a rare worth a large amount).
  3. The special Rupture nodes and Deployable Extractor nodes are not visually distinct in the world itself. The map is the only way to tell the difference (they have different map icons when you are close enough). Both events are started by an ‘Azerite Extractor’ NPC that have the exact same model and name. Looking at your map should not be required to figure out what the event is. You should at the very least change the name for the NPC, so that you can easily tell which is a Rupture and which is a Deployable Extractor.
  4. Out of those two special events, only the Deployable Extractor event that passively works for you is worth doing in my experience. Even with these nerfs to Azerite mobs, I don’t think that will change. The mobs are just too deadly and too annoying to be worth a relatively trivial amount of Azerite that you could get literally anywhere else on the island. Every time somebody in my group activates an Azerite Rupture event I just sigh to myself and try to decide whether I should let them die a horrible death for wasting our time or help out and potentially lose the island as a result. To fix this, you should probably buff Azerite Rupture events to have a better reward. Maybe spawn two of those rare mobs on the third activation tick instead of just one or make some Azerite ‘wound’ circles spawn after you kill the rare for extra incentive.
  5. Several of the new mobs have badly tuned damage values. For example, the new ‘Steam Worm’ mob type that burrows underground and strikes random targets does ridiculous amounts of damage (100k+ per hit, loads of circles). This actually ruins some islands because the AI can’t beat these mobs. If an AI team encounters this worm type, they will wipe for literally 5 to 10 minutes. I’m serious. I was in an island where I watched their team chain wipe for over 5 minutes to kill this rare.

I enjoy islands in general (moreso after the Patch 8.1 changes), but when you encounter mechanics that just seem completely unfair or excessively frustrating (tentacles), it does somewhat sour the experience. Unlike many people here though, I don’t want islands removed from the game. They are a fun little activity to do with small groups of friends. The game would be worse off without them.

12 Likes

Bornakk, thank you for the update.

However

Still nothing about Rewards? Like increased drop chances for mounts/toys?

Im afraid this is the issue that is yet to be addressed. Doubloon drop rate hasnt been mentioned, and whilst I get the idea that these need to be worked for over time, the drop rate to purchase items is still too erratic.

15 Likes

I assume they have the droprate of mounts from raids

1 Like

Awesome changes guys! Keep up the good work focusing on irrelevant content that you don’t even listen to feedback and helping people unsub!

9 Likes

not bad for 1 - 2 days work I guess, thanks. keep them changes coming.

5 Likes

So still not worth doing is what you’re saying. Sounds good

18 Likes

The real hotfix would be to greatly increase the AP rewards from M+, Raids and PVP so that we feel far less obligated to do Islands. Islands themselves aren’t bad, its the feeling of “having” to do them, along with emissaries, weekly M+ among other things in order to keep our characters up to date.

6 Likes

The real fix would be to make them fun enough to bother doing without increased rewards.

4 Likes

as i have said before i had enough doubloons to buy the albatross and seahorse on day 1 i am only 200 from buying the last items on the vendor also i am 2 pets away from that goal.
i have yet to see a mount drop at all period no matter what difficulty i do them on .
this needs some adjustment as it is silly.

4 Likes

Yeah drop rates of rewards like dubloons will come under “play more, spend more money”

4 Likes

Not sure but lately i been getting rewarded like 95% of the time all i been getting is non stop items and pets feels pretty rewarding to me.I want mounts but the drop rate feels rather high to me now.

1 Like

These hotfixes are already done and I wanted to make sure people were aware of changes that have happened as we have seen complaints about not being notified when things occur.

We are still going over things so more changes could happen. One thing to note is that we saw the feedback about the rewards but we have seen a number of people continue to run Island Expeditions on normal difficulty, which means fewer rewards than heroic or mythic, so we have to sort through things to get to the bottom of it.

2 Likes