Easy Wins for WoW- How to improve overall gameplay experience

Community General Discussion
1

I think there are a lot of leftover game mechanics from 20 years ago that serve no purpose in improving player experience and if the game was remade today would not even be a discussion. Thoughts?

As a now mostly PUG, previously hardcore, raider, there is so much downtime/wasted time in current raiding. People leaving, rejoining, running to raid etc. wastes a lot of time for no gameplay benefit. I loved mythic plus back in the day, but after the recent healer difficulty, stressful gameplay, player leaving, and toxicity I have mostly abandoned the game mode unless I’m playing with friends.

Here’s some of my thoughts to streamline the player experience. If you have any agreements, disagreements or additional suggestions, let me know in the comments below!

Raids

  • Reduce/Remove time wasters. There is a LOT of unnecessary downtime between bosses. If you have 9 bosses and each boss takes approximately 5 minutes to kill, you would clear the raid in 45 minutes to 1 hour, but with down time it ends up being 2-3 hours. Essentially you spend half (or more) of the “raid time” not even killing bosses.
  • Reduce trash mobs between bosses
  • Remove death runs. Raid respawns at boss on wipe. Soul stone healer meta should not exist. Dying is already punishment as you wasted time on a failed attempt.
  • Buffs persist through death as long as you are in a raid group. Again, downtime saving.
  • Checkpoints at each boss (like teleporters in ICC for example)
  • When a player joins a raid, they have an in game option for instant summon to raid entrance. This is a bit of a compromise to just having summon scrolls (which would be fine as well imo) but Still keeps some benefits to having a warlock as you can summon them to an exact location inside the raid

Mythic Plus

  • Remove key depletion. Wasting time on a failed run is already punishment. Either remain at same level or drop 1-2 levels instead of depletion.
  • Possibly good direction with the new notes on reducing mental load and affix complexity, but why are we keeping some of the most hated affixes?
  • New kiss/curse affixes are INCREDIBLY divisive. Could turn out ok but could cause massive issues with your class/spec being worthless 3/4 weeks. Also, most of these seem to add even more stress to tanks/healers and the dps just get a free pass for more damage. The “kiss” should be more generic like a secondary stat buff ie bonus haste instead of x% damage type where some classes like havoc DH or destro lock just get an auto a lot into every group because chaos damage is always good.
  • Somewhat Hot take here but removing most/all affixes altogether would not bother me. Could just redesign dungeons slightly to make certain abilities scale differently at certain key levels or alternatively only have POSITIVE affixes that buff players instead of creating even more hoops to jump through

What other things could be a generally positive effect on player experience?

2

See we had a raid that solved all but two of those problems

Trial of the Crusader

And the people hated it

3 Likes
3

There are only 2 things Blizzard needs to do to make wow better…

  1. Murloc Playable race… And that should be enough… but just in case.

  2. Instanced player housing. Copy it directly from Wildstar. Easy win easy subs.

1 Like
4

There were several reasons why trial wasn’t well received like long RP waiting, All being (mostly) in a single room, gimmicky mechanics etc. Poor implementation of a decent idea

5

Agreed. Good additions. What about already existing content? Would you not change anything at all?

6

I would drop the competitive nature of m+. I would instead change it to a reward risk system. Where players get to choose what kind of affix they are going to get, when they do they will see what rewards they are going to get, and then to move on you take the affixes with you. And then the keys go from something that you can deplete to something that you fill up/charge. and then based on your charge when you turn it in, you get rewards for it. Meaning no more wasted keys or time limits but if you want the hot stuff you need to push it. and no more rating nonsense. I would also make keys or what X item was you need charge, only give out charge or credit for people who finish the dungeon. IF you leave you get 0 credit. and if you are late joiner you get credit for what you did only, not the whole thing. Might be really hard to code in.

Also I would bring back Torghast. and again fill it with various rewards and push the randomiser to the max. Kind of like islands but always make it current. I would say it should only be cosmetic rewards only. but make them epic.

I would also rotate old raids through Chromie, where you can queue up and do things like MC or Icecrown, and then do what Remix has done, make everything that drops in the raids purchasable through a currency that drops, and then sprinkle in unique epic things like special new mounts or themed weapon skins. Make them seasonal and rotate out just like how trading post works.

We as a player base need, along side, normal regular content, we need replable RANDOM content as well.

I think that would do well to help revive a little bit of wow for some people.

7

Nobody has patience anymore… rush rush rush… seems like we just log in to gain points in something…

8

I like your ideas for bringing back old raids and the currency. There’s so much unused content and the time walking raids could be updated on a way that the dungeons have been for mythic plus.

Regarding your changes to mythic plus and torghast also interesting and oddly enough I think Delves will actually be relatively close to your suggestions. The delve follower is upgradable and gives you a longer term objective. I do agree that torghast/expedition systems are things that should be reused in a way to provide more randomized content and could be fun to bring back if done correctly!

1 Like
9

No.

No.

Wipe prevention mechanics exists, you already mentioned it, what you think shouldn’t exists is there exactly so you don’t have to run back.

We have almost no buffs to what existed compared in early World of Warcraft.
It takes 1 button from the classes that need to buff, it doesn’t make you go OOM to buff.
What about removing buffs altogether maybe? what a bad take.

I have one better: we should be able to use our mounts in the zones which the boss was already killed so we can move faster. Teleporters should make sense within the raid, not added just for the sake of having and “saving time”.

We used to have mass summon guild perk in early cataclysm and absolutely the whole community backlash was terrible.

Every class had mass resurrection as well.
I didn’t complain, I wish it would be added back, but I understand why it had to be removed.

Here I don’t mind having scrolls, but for me scrolls should allow you to summon one person at a time, while the warlock allows you to summon many people.

Play M0, there is no depletion or timer. they literally made it for your demographics.

“mental load” ??? lol. What mental load?

Community already has a strong feedback on the affixes and yet they decided to go in the opposite direction to keep the worst affixes and add even worse ones.

Unless they decided to add scrolls for all buffs so we can buff ourselves this could reduce drastically the “meta” need based on the buffs, otherwise I agree here.

I like affixes. Still mad they are removing Spiteful for TWW season 1.

I like having things that we have to care that start happening around us, and affect the mobs. I for one loved Thundering. I hated and loved Prideful. Hated the pressure on tank to calculate the route to get the prideful ready. Loved the buff and our “big pull” after the Prideful or sometimes along with Prideful.

Affixes that I dislike:

  • Sanguine - good for very coordinated groups, with specific classes and properly specced groups. Bad for pugs.
  • Incorporeal: can be quite punitive in pugs, so in terms kinda make you chose certain classes over others for the group.
  • Bursting: the most idiotic and anti-fun affix. We countered with priests and then they decide to nerf priests because of that. should be removed or nerfed to be less letal.
10

For me as a PUGer there is a lot of impatience, but there is a line between patience and wasting time. What benefit Does time wasting bring to the player? I’m not saying to give me easy content or just loot piñatas. If a boss kill takes 8 minutes and we wipe at 6 minutes but running back and rebuffing takes 10 minutes, what is good about that?

11

What’s your disagreement about reducing “time wasters”? How do death runs benefit the player and add fun to the game? Just curious here why someone would be so against something that to me seems to only be a positive.

What’s your take on raid trash? You just like a bunch of stuff between bosses? I’m not saying to remove it all together, but maybe just reduce a bit.

Buffs are minimal comparatively, but food buffs are not instantaneous. Again, what’s the problem with less time between pulls? In PUGs a lot of people leave because they don’t like waiting around between pulls.

I don’t mind the M+ timer. I just again don’t see how depletion is “fun” or benefits the player in anyway.

The “mental load” thing was from the blue post about the affixes. Basically it’s keeping track of affixes, priority mobs, interrupts/abilities, healing/tanking mechanics, player rotation etc.

12

There are a fair number of players who take pride in how much time wasting they are willing to put up with.

13

I saw a 2 hour old video on my youtube suggested that was asmon reacting to zepla interviewing two wow devs and asking about most of “your thoughts” that you listed here. What a weird coincidence.

2 Likes
14

Asmongold has been complaining about pointless time wasting in raids for years.

15

Something that’s worth thinking about…

How much better do you think classic and the panda land thing are doing right now? And the Panda thing seems like it’s a straight up hard grind. Is there a “careful what you wish for” lesson here? We complain, demand, lobby for less grind and friction-less game experiences and if and when we get them we quickly get bored and log off.

16

I always go back to Trial of Crusader.
No trash mob.

The whole concept of a “Raid” goes away when there is basically nothing in the raid, or the dungeon, just bosses. Why are doing this again?

There has to be a balance. You will never have trash mobs like we used to have in Naxxramas, Ahn’Qiraj or Blackwing Lair that if you pulled wrong it would cause in a wipe.

Even then, you see, players are able to walk over those trash speedrunning through these things.

The problem isn’t that there are too much trash mobs in the raid, maybe either you need more than one day to clear the raid because your raid is not that effective, or progression is not as fast as you would like, or because there are too many bosses in the raid / tier.

Since Dragonflight there is an embelishment (that doesn’t lock your 2 unique embelishments) that makes your food lasts for 2 hours.

It is not fun. It is consequence of the failed attempt. Changes were made to this already that you still get loot, and no rating if it goes too much over the timer.

Well there are some degree of complexity. We have addons and weak auras exists for that. If your take is that it shouldn’t take weak aura or addon to help manage affixes then I disagree.

Because clearing trash mobs is not fun for his audience.
That is why he had himself being carried and boosted by others while he was watching videos and doing anything but playing, and only doing stream while raiding or boss.

1 Like
17

Absolutely not. We had this kid that used to raid with us when the rest of his family was asleep, but he never had a headset and would play with speakers.

So, one time he went to the bathroom between boss pulls, one of us (not necessarily me) blared moose mating calls through Discord and the drama that happened afterward will always be remembered until I’m in the grave.

18

Ok so points I left unanswered I am ok with but the following not so much. So starting with above, the purpose of trash is to show you the mechanics of the upcoming boss. They serve a purpose.

That’s they currently work no? You fail a key and its level drops as a result. Depletion went away in legoin in the .2 patch I believe.

This is where it helps to pay attention to talent changes, hero talents, consumes, enchants and trinkets. All classes/specs have access to all damage types.

19

Been around since vanilla and I think time wasting is a big issue that’s only been exasperated as I’ve gotten older and less time to play

20

I’m not complaining about the grind. Just optimizing systems. Too much unnecessary time wasting is the main problem to me. Sometimes I only have a couple of hours to play and when half of my play time is waiting for a group to form or death running, it feels awful.