Dungeon and Raid Solo Accessibility for Old & Current Content

What exactly is WoW as an MMORPG? Obviously it is massive, multiplayer, online and is defined as a role play game. One of the things WoW has long focused on, in my opinion, is the multiplayer aspect of the genre to the extent that any other form of gameplay feels like an afterthought. Multiplayer real time games can be amazing and the friendships and bonds made can last a lifetime. However, there is another side to that. Multiplayer can be a very unpleasant experience for a lot of different reasons. A few of those are:

  • Difficulty finding a group as DPS or a specific class/spec
  • Negative interactions with group members for a variety of reasons, often reasons not understood by the player.
  • Limited ability to execute encounter mechanics due to physical limitation or disabilities. This impacts people with vision, hearing, communication, dexterity, and hand eye coordination among others.
  • Difficulty navigating a dungeon or raid such that a player is frequently lost when running back or trying to find the next boss. This impacts people with poor sense of direction, vision issues, or memory issues.
  • Needing to go AFK at times during a dungeon or raid due to personal needs or family needs. Nobody wants an AFK group member in a public group. This impacts everyone from parents/caretakers to someone who gets a phone call they have to take. We all often juggle multiple things at once.
  • Social Anxiety based on having to interact with others, perform tasking they may not be comfortable with (boss encounters), etc. This is pretty common and for those who have severe issues it means headaches, muscle pain, vomiting, panic attacks, etc.

Why would you want to do “group content” if you don’t enjoy groups? Well that is a common question and it really gets to the core of what the game is - an RPG – the part that feels like an afterthought. Maybe those dungeons and raids should not be limited to only groups of real players. The biggest reason is to complete quests and see the storyline. Secondary is to get crafting recipes and progress that is locked behind the current group content. This is an RPG and players should be able to complete the game and build their character skills without hindrance. Last, but also important, is mounts, pets, gear/transmogs, other drops.

Blizzard is aware of this and has done some great work making older content playable solo! They have:

  • Changed some encounters so that the mechanics don’t stop a solo player from doing the boss fight.
  • Ensured fights are doable solo based on gear/hit points
  • Added fun rewards and Achievements to the old content such as Pets!
  • Made collecting appearances and gear a fun and viable activity with the Appearances collection tab and the Transmog NPC. Lots of Achievements as well.
  • Made Island expeditions that have lots of cosmetic rewards soloable

That is all great but it means that players have to wait YEARS to be able to solo that content and see those stories, get the recipes, get the gear transmogs, etc. I would really like to see it changed so that the RPG element of the game takes priority and we can do the CURRENT dungeons and raids solo. So how?
Some ideas might be:

Single player scenario where the rest are filled by AI NPCs.

Allows the player to see the story through, complete quests, and get any profession related quests/recipes they need that are core to the profession. Gear drops do not have to be the same level as LFR, Normal, Heroic, or Mythic. They should allow access to the basic gear look though and be gear that would make a player viable in LFR. Further, a raid scenario solo means the player can learn the raid layout, sequence of bosses, boss mechanics! This lowers anxiety when going into real group content.

Waypoint Navigation System

To resolve getting lost, a waypoint system that you can opt to use would be amazing. Select the waypoints you want and some footsteps or a guide shows you where to go. We have that mechanic in quite a few quests and scenarios already. Adding it to dungeons would eliminate the fear and confusion of being lost. Maruadon I am especially looking at you! I also want to thank all the guild mates back in the raiding days who volunteered to wait for me after wipes and lead me back to the boss room. I appreciate you!

Customizable settings to address disability limitations for some encounters.

This such as disabling a jumping mechanic if the person can’t make the character jump. Changing options for lighting, sound, visual indicators for boss abilities.

To recap, group play is not enjoyable for many, especially not when it feels FORCED in order to complete objectives or see a story in an RPG. Please, consider solo options for current content. It will let RPG folks see the story, complete their quests, finish their professions. For some it will be a scaffold to doing that group content with more confidence instead of it being a barrier. I think this would be a win for so many who love the WoW universe and the ability to enjoy casual or solo play to build our characters and achieve our in game goals.

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This is a great topic to discuss, and I agree with more or less 100% of what you have written here. Accessibility is very important, and it would be great to expand on it!

These are all valid reasons, personally I suffer greatly from social anxiety which prevents me to do a lot of group content, so I am almost entirely a single-player person outside of random dungeons and the occasional LFR or BGs. Can also add that some people might also struggle with language barriers, not have stable internet connections, and other technical difficulties.

This would be great! LFR was sort of meant to be a way for ‘most players’ to experience the raids, but it isn’t held in a particularly high regard by the vast majority of people. I also think that being able to collect LFR gear from these solo raids would be a good idea, it would also allow us to farm those raids for transmog without sitting in an LFR queue for 2 hours - just a bonus for those who aren’t going to use this feature for solo play.

I suppose they did add the ability to see the end-of-raid cinematic from SoD at the end of the Korthia campaign - but that only covers one small part of the raid. I like the idea that dungeons and raids play a part in the stories, but I do agree that being forced into group content to experience that isn’t necessarily good.

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Something I should add is info about the current resources Blizzard has for Accessability issues.

They do have a team that is a few years old now who collects info on player concerns, researches accessibility issues and solutions, and works with the various Game teams to implement them. My understanding is they are not just reactive, but also try to be forward thinking about ways to make computer gaming a more broadly inclusive hobby.

This article covers the basics and provides the email address for the Accessibility group. They don’t usually reply, but you can at least submit things to them that way. https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/244753

This news post has a Bio of Nikki Crenshaw who is part of that group at Blizzard https://www.activisionblizzard.com/newsroom/2021/05/Global-Accessibility-Awareness-Day-Inclusive-Design-Matters

There is also a trend for the Devs to be more responsive than they used to be to immediate concerns when they pop up. For example a past Season of Diablo 3 had a season theme spell effect group that was causing headaches and seizures. They did tone that down. In Diablo 2 Resurrected they added Accessibility options that were never in the original game - along with Controller use on PC. They just added quick cast buttons to PC as well to make UI customization so much better.

Here are some of the most recent Accessibility updates for WoW https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/world-of-warcraft/23691035/enhance-your-gameplay-accessibility-updates-now-live

None of those are really raid or dungeon specific or allow for solo access to current content, but they are all positives.

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As someone pointed out on the GD forum, this is Mental Health Awareness month, and many of the suggestions in the first post are relevant to that. Games can be great places for everyone, but sometimes that requires some additional options.

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I’m so grateful to you for putting this all into words in a way that I’m not sure I could. I have a few IRL friends whom I love dearly, and who’d probably be happy to group up with me for stuff I wanna do, but I feel absolutely terrible for taking up their time, when they could use it to improve something they actually care about.

I think the main issue is that I’m Playing The Game Wrong™. They like M+, they like PvP, they wanna raid. I don’t care about any of that at all. So I’m just over here like… “any of you willing to sacrifice time for something you don’t care about?” - and I don’t think they should AND I don’t think I should even ask if it’s something that doesn’t give any extra player power in PvE or PvP.

I can already hear “get better friends” or “join a guild that does what you do” but… I’m in a guild with friends and I want to be able to be there even if we do different stuff. And they’ll absolutely 100% unsub for content droughts, whereas I will always have something to do/see/collect. I’m also on a small server cluster, so there are no guilds who aren’t PvP/raiding/M+ focused.

Moreso, it’s not even about “current content” - Legion was ages ago, for example, and mythic Antorus is still just too annoying to bother with when you’re on your own.

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Agreed, but eventually we can usually solo the old stuff.

I have not seen current content that is in dungeons or raids while it is new since Cata. Most of that is my own fault, but for many reasons in the first post, I really can’t handle human groups well.

I just want the best for both - old and new content.

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I can very much relate to this! But I’d also like you to know that it’s not really “your fault” - the game has been pretty much designed around “competitiveness” or, idk, “trying to be an esport thing” if you prefer - it’s all about raiding, M+, and PvP (sorry PvPers, but if it’s of any consolation, yes they do think of you more than me) and it can be a bit crappy if none of that’s your thing.

However, I do think “eventually” used to mean something different before the level squish. Mythic WoD raids were pretty much a breeze even at the end of the next expansion. Mythic Legion raids are still just weird timesinks after (almost) two expansions after they’re done.

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For WoD you have to keep in mind that they got nerfed by almost 50% with 7.0 at lvl100 because artifact weapons that were expected at that level already weren’t accessable before the expansion launch. In addition you had a way bigger ilvl gap within Legion adding even more performance advantages when doing specifically WoD, about 80 ilvls more than in previous xpacs which boils down to another factor 2 in terms of stats. Basically doing WoD raids in Legion you were 4 times more powerful than doing any other previous xpac.

By now Legion raids take a bit more time than usual and the legacy factor is just 8 instead of 16 resp. 25 compared to the first iteration in 6.0. In other words you are comparing the current situation to a standard (in parts) set under unusual circumstances.

If there were further changes to Legion raids it should be about adjusting to solo gameplay. From what I know the Eonar mythic encounter still demands a tedious process compared to other bosses. The mythic Kil’Jaeden shadow phase is better suited for characters with good displacement or immunities.

From a long time soloing perspective over time we’ve reached a moment where more and more is expected to be soloable even faster because high ilvl gaps make slightly older content super trivial where it just results in firing one instant at a boss and moving on. Meanwhile a few encounters each tier have to be stripped by a lot to make that function.
Add to that a faster acquisition pace of Xmog than the nerfs or rather outgearing process happens.
At some point the path of least resistance is so short it no longer exists.

I fully understand that WoD was kind of an exception, but even if we use different examples, none of the older raids have remained such massive timesinks for as long as Legion has. The ilvl squishes have messed up my collection farms before - heroic animus on clothies being an example that immediately comes to mind. The character level squish just added a bit of extra trash mainly: if you took a fresh 110 or 120 to MC, you could basically just do bosses, when you took that same character there after the level squish, i.e. at 50, you’ll pull quite a bit of trash on the way. Well, that and there was this weird bug where high-level characters didn’t really do the appropriate amount of damage in MC specifically.

Also, mechanics aside - some of the bosses in Legion raids just have… too much health, they really do. I’m basically avoiding a lot of Legion stuff simply because it’s, well, tedious to just stand there hacking away forever - and this applies to <M difficulties as well for some raids. Basically, I just don’t think the level of tedium is appropriate for stuff from almost two expansions ago.

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