[Feature Request] Exploration Mode

Community General Discussion
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Edit: Renamed feature request from “RP Difficulty” to “Exploration Mode”

Bear with me, General Discussion. I know seeing ‘RP’ in the title forces a certain perception.

Dungeon/Raid Difficulty settings. We’ve got Normal, Heroic, Mythic, 10 man, 25 man, Flexible shifting groups. It’s great. It gives difficulty settings for any group of any size. Love it. This is an appeal for a new difficulty setting for Dungeons and Raids.

Dungeon/Raid Difficulty: RP
An empty instance. That’s it. Want to go into Karazhan for a social event? RP Difficulty. Heated battle event planned, and Siege of Boralus is a good setting? RP Difficulty. And in RP difficulty, have the player cap set to Flex. Ideally, with a much large capacity (To use Karazhan as an example, I recently hosted an event of 17 people, which prevent Karazhan from being used since it’s 10 man only). I understand if large flex groups can’t be allowed within a dungeon instance, but it would be great.

Doubt: “They shouldn’t do something for such a small population.”

There’s a fairly sized population of RPers, but RP difficulty wouldn’t be useful only to the RP population. Mythic+ runners could run their group through RP Difficulty to teach them paths. Raids could run new members through their strats. Hell- make it so duels can be initiated in RP Difficulty, and PvPers could fight in new and interesting locations!

I know it’s a long shot that will likely never be… but I feel like- an instance starts as empty, and is populated by NPCs after it’s built. And once cleared, your lockout keeps it empty afterwards. Conceptually, shouldn’t it be as simple as “create additional folder with empty instance tied to RP Difficulty toggle”? (I know programming isn’t as simple as that, but it really should be a pretty simple task still, right?)

Anyway… Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

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At that point you may also wish to consider things like a Free for all toggle for PvP etc. Or setting up temporary factions within the instance. Just a thought.

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Baby steps. Gotta start with something small and work our way up :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Because temporary factions in an instance would be great for RP, holy crap. But I figure that would be something that’ll NEVER happen lol.

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It’s really no different than arenas really, you create two groups. Clearly mark them and then make them hostile. The game supports it in theory, now whether it supports that outside arena contexts… is another question.

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I could get on board with this. OP’s post is well written and they make some good points. I don’t role play a lot but I have a few times. I can see where this would be a lot of fun and very immersive.

Not to mention this is one of the first threads I’ve read in days that isn’t a troll or something utterly ridiculous.

+1

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I could see a lot of opportunities for fun outside of RP too. Particularly PvP things…

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Absolutely! I gear it towards RP because that’s the standpoint I’m coming from, but it’s definitely a feature I could see all manner of players finding a use for.

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That too. We all know how bad pvp in general is aching for improvement so I doubt that would happen. We can dream though…

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Well I wouldn’t expect any sanctioned battlegrounds or anything, but if you wanted to do a PvP version of say ‘Defend the tower’ in the Kara library for example… or ‘Hide and seek’ etc.

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RP difficulty: Goldshire with three “enhanced” female draenai

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Huh, not at all what I was expecting TC. Interesting idea for sure though :slight_smile:

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Not going to lie… it wasn’t what I was expecting either. But it’s an interesting idea and I figured “Why not run with it?”

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I like it. That’s pretty much all I have to say the moment.

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Caught me by surprise.

I was expecting something like “LFR But Solo.”

I actually like this idea, more tools means more potential for RP/PvP/RP-PvP and the like. I’d actually enjoy seeing this. Although it’d probably need some unique UI to make sure it’s not in the typical LFR screen… Maybe an NPC to stand outside the instance who takes your ‘reservation’?

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I’m glad to have provided what appears to be an agreeable surprise in topic!

And I’m glad others are seeing all the potential this would have! Especially during times of content drought. Would let people get real creative with the things they did to fill time between patches and expansions, on top of all the use it would get from RPers.

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Came here expecting a joke about LFR, found an actual good idea. This would be really cool!

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Maybe instead of calling it “RP difficulty” you could just make a setting that says “Instance Map Only” and that might sound better.

Just a thought.

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Definitely fair. “RP Difficulty” is just the easiest way I could think to describe it clearly given the driving force behind the idea coming from RP.

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how about sandbox mode, I would like to be able to queue into an island with up to 40 people or down to 1 person, have no enemies, rewards or timer, and have an empty island environment to provide RP backdrops and storyline areas.

(also solo queue island expedition since I can solo them anyways but that’s beside the point)

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This is a really interesting idea. I never RP (I’m terrible at it) but my guilds have held various in game gatherings over the years. Several times these have been in game memorial services for guildies who have died and trying to find a private location where some jerk won’t come crashing into us just to disrupt what we’re doing can be a challenge.

I don’t pretend to know the programming involved, but since raids at least are dead empty (trash and all) once cleared, there has to be some trigger for the raid to spawn that way. I can’t see how it would be a problem to use that same trigger and call it RP mode. You would need to make sure RP mode didn’t tie you to dead bosses would be all.

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