I’m probably alone in this sentiment, but I feel like we’re getting new content patches way too fast. Forbidden Reach was vibrant for a couple of weeks, but then a new patch had started getting datamined, with catch-up mechanics, and soon FR was empty. Same thing with Zaralek Cavern.
I’m enjoying doing Time Rifts for Soridormi rep to get the “Unparalleled” title, but now with the launch date for yet another patch and another catch-up mechanic coming next month, the groups doing the Time Rifts is starting to dwindle dramatically. These are not easily soloable. Do the devs have a reason for pushing the content out so quickly? is it because people complained about “time-gating” in the past?
23 Likes
Too fast? God no.
FR got empty because there was nothing else to do there beyond farm a few rares and maybe get a ring that was only good for half the specs in the game after you finished the questline.
I’m sure there is a speed of content release that would be considered too fast, but IMO we have not ever seen that speed - and if we did it would be either vanilla or Legion that was fast.
Dragonflight is not fast. (Not as bad as prior expacs tho)
7 Likes
Agreed with Letholas, and I’ll reiterate the point I made in another thread on this matter: the issue isn’t the speed of content cadence, but the design philosophy behind the content itself. If said content is designed to be relevant exclusively for the one patch, then it doesn’t matter if the next one comes sooner or later – having it stay around for longer wouldn’t make it better. Ideally, planned obsolence shouldn’t be a thing for most content (though it is ofc unavoidable in some situations).
10 Likes
I completely disagree. The content pacing is great and is keeping my interest in the game delivering a lot of optional content for me to go and do whenever I feel like it. There has been no ‘catch up’ which replaces Zaralek so far until 10.1.7. Zaralek has felt pretty dry for a while now, before 10.1.5 even came out. The reason why that place feels empty is because the design of the zone isn’t all too fun, there isn’t that reason to go and do stuff there and I can only speak for myself here but I don’t find the Niffen very interesting and the theme of the zone is a big swing and a miss focussing on all the wrong things from a theming/story PoV.
The reputation vendor is pretty threadbare and the other cosmetic rewards are uninspiring whilst player power is more easily obtained elsewhere, combine that with the general feeling that all of the rares in the zone are impossible to do by yourself unless you are either a tank or well geared (and even then you’re going to spend multiple minutes slowly wittling down the bullet sponge rare mobs) then why would anyone be there? That isn’t a consequence of a good content schedule, it’s a consequence of poor design decisions.
Looking at Time Rifts, is it really anything to do with the fact that 10.1.7 is on the horizon, or is it more the case that people who were interested in that content have probably finished it what they wanted to get out of it. There are only so many rewards on offer, I already have every mount from there, an entire transmog set, multiple pets and a couple of extra transmog pieces and I’ve spent ~4 hours total doing them very casually and intermittently, if I look at the time and see it’s close to the hour mark I go and do it. The Time Rifts are designed in such a way that it doesn’t really matter that there aren’t that many people there doing them, you can bash as much as you want in the first 8 minutes, the rewards are mostly at the end in the little miniboss.
The gear from Time Rifts isn’t really that great both in its power level as well as rate of acquisition, so it is of little surprise that people aren’t doing it all the time on alts like they may have done for other alt-gearing methods in the past. I’m not entirely sure how it works but I feel as if the drop chance for the token to convert into a gear piece is either extremely low drop rate or only happens once per weekly reset or something.
The content is moving at a good pace, most of it is super optional and heavily focussed on cosmetic rewards giving people a reason to go back long-term if they weren’t playing at the time or weren’t interested at the time.
2 Likes
I’m right with you on that sentiment. As a casual player that does not have the IRL availability to spend hours a day working over content, I find myself with a level of frustration at the pace of the constant new content. I can’t even get a single toon through a zone completely, let alone any of my alts. That adds another level of frustration, as now I feel like I can’t afford to spend time on the alts that I normally enjoy playing, because I have to invest all of my time on my main if I want to even come close to getting the rewards of the current zone prior to the next thing starting.
As previously mentioned, new content starts and then areas that require group cooperation to complete are now dead and barren. Forget even participating in those areas if you play at night EST.
I finally have had to just say to myself that I’m going to skip the content of the next patch and keep working on the former zone. I don’t like to do that, especially from an economic standpoint, as your best coin is made on the new mats; but, what else can you do. You can’t do EVERYTHING, as fun as all of the game options are when you have the time. But unless you are willing to hours and hours a day, you can’t keep up.
I feel that the casual player has long ago been left behind for those that live in a FedEx society of wanting it (and gratification) immediately. Long gone are the days of Vanilla where you had to have determination, longevity, and grit to grind out each level and gratification was delayed for days or weeks to achieve an objective.
10 Likes
I would say that the speed is fine. What I worry about more is people’s own mental capability to realise that they do not have to do all cooldowns and lockouts pr. week. it is okay to miss a hunt by now. My own view, I love that there is so much in the world but we have two issues in it.
1.: Some people feel the imaginary demand of having to do everything.
2.: Some events like the Soup Event, end up going barren.
Note: Soup event is a mention because you should update it again so people have a chance to get the ‘boss’ as well, just make the rewards be dependant on how good the soup is.
While I personally prefer the huge content drop every ~6-8 months and then getting to spread the content out over the next ~6-8 months on my own schedule, I think Blizzard has made it work better than I’d anticipated. There’s some neat side content every 2 months or whatever it’s been, every 6 or so there’s a new raid/M+ season.
Cosmetics make the content (to some degree anyway) evergreen, which is also a plus.
I don’t think content is moving too fast, I do however feel like content is getting too fast forgotten. All the previous events are pretty much ignored by Blizzard, having the restrictions loosened on the Time Rifts come next patch wouldn’t be unwelcomed.
Same goes for the soup, raid on the dragon fortress (forgot the name) and the Hunt
3 Likes
The increased content saturation has been most welcome.
Future iterations of events such as Zaralek Caverns rares, Researchers Event, Time Rifts, DreamSurges, etc, need to have solo player consideration scaling values. I emphasize the word need. There are so many instances of players, discussions I know of personally where people cannot solo rares. Cannot defeat a time rfit because they were 1 minute late to the initial portal activation and now they have to try and kill LIch King, Nzoth boss, or another fight that is just not soloable for them.
While the current content concept is more obviouly gauged around group content. It’s frustration and wasted time for many players when they get caught out at the wrong hours of the day, low player engagement, or inability to complete outdoor content.
A delayed time frame for decreasing Rare hp values if it has been in combat with one person for (x) amount of time would be wonderful. It’ll retain it’s massive HP values for 30 seconds into the fight. When nobody else attacks the mob, maybe it goes down by 10% values every 10 seconds. The vast majority of every normal player don’t possess the retention to not attack a rare immediately. (assuming people tried to bait super low HP values to one shot it for a large group / multiple people)
3 Likes