Feedback: Island Expeditions

Community General Discussion
202

Still don’t understand the rewards system, sometimes I’ll get a bag of dubloons and 2 boes (green and a blue) other times I get nothing, the portals system is strange sometimes as soon as I see the portal spawn it despawns and all that is left are a few elites to kill other times you go into the portal kill a 122 elite and on the map it shows another 122 but the door is locked and I’ve got no idea how it opens. Are rewards performance based or pure chance? If they are pure chance you must reward every island completed with doubloons as well as the bollocks amount of azerite. Also if an island has a particular mob that has a chance to drop a mount its my understanding that we no longer have to kill said mob just kill whatever is on the map and you may get it…strange the compact nature of the islands is somewhat easier but still some mobs are OP sometimes a rare 122 is easier than the 121 mage casting spells from a distance. It is still a little cluttered during bigger pulls which makes seeing ground enemy abilities hard to dodge when 3-4 of them have it and each of you are sharing aggro. I generall just do them with pugs and the times I tried them with my brother and (5k dps mother) on heroic we lost by 100-200 most times…yeah her DPS is terribad.

Each island needs a special encounter that is beneficial to complete and these azerite extractors either need to be removed or actually do some serious extracting that would make them worthwhile to chase and protect. On heroic to win all I need to do is go after the alliance and let the other 2 players kill and mine my 380 Ilevel means I can solo kill them and stop them from getting an azerite. Still have promise but need work they are still tedious at times and the random nature of loot drops means most of the greens i get are not of any use to me always cloth,leather,plate and the price of them fluctuates from nothing to not much more, 325 are the same maybe make the so called mog items a decent item level so that they are not purely for mogging.

203

Some good comments already. Just to summarize mine :

Gameplay : didnt change much, you said it would enable the party to ‘explore’ and do quests etc : no, doesnt happen, at least in public games. it’s rush/rush/rush and no talk, just rush. no quests, not fancy achievement for a mount, so content is already dead and extra boring

  • azerite : yes, it’s better, not from the island itself, but the 36K + the map reward are a boost. i’m a big azerite grinder (HoA 36) and before i didnt waste any time on islands, now i do my weekly and get the bonus from the treasure map. Yet it you are after azerite, the assaults rewards + paragon rewards are much better, faster way to get tons of azerite.
  • rewards : seems like it’s still very low, i did quite a few runs and no signs of anything exciting so far : no mount, no epics, just some pets and some greens .
  • vendor : the vendor was a much needed and imo non negotiable update, so it’s nice to have it. The prices are insane : 1000 for a mount… ?
  • dubloons : drop rate is way way too low to motivate anyone ‘sane’ to get in just to farm dubloons. sometimes i do 3/4 runs and get less than 10 overall, that doesnt work and need to be fixed : every run should reward dubloons, random number maybe but you should get some every time.
  • play solo : i already posted that months ago and i’m happy to read the comments of others asking for it. Rushing through with farmers on crack is NOT nice, it’s NOT fun so let us enjoy the experience on our own + 99 % of the time noway you can do quests etc etc. I’m not going to start a party each time just ot get some people in, i want to go solo.
  • last but most critical one : the dmg of some rares is way, way too high, so yes you wrote some kind of ‘explanation’ but it kills the gameplay, having 80 % of your HP taken in 3 secs is ridiculous. I know you want to slow us down but that doesnt make any sense and MANY, many people are not trying heroic anymore on some island because thay know they will be wiped 2/3 times etc fix the DMG, if you want to please some hardcore fanatics offer them a M+35 but let us enjoy the challenge as it was before.
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204

Okay, so I didn’t play until only recently. So I cannot give a comparative response, only a response to how my first experience of ever doing Island adventures has gone thus far.

So my first time I zoned in, there were two other folks who did not respond to me or speak a single word the entire time. They ran off in a random direction, I followed because I figured they knew what they were doing. I do not think they did as they just attacked random mobs, split up at some point and died.

I decided I would try to go after the little shiny azerite things on the map that they were for some reason ignoring, as the horde team had surpassed us. This proved to be good, as we started getting more azerite. However there was still no communication, the mobs were not hard, the objectives were solo-able, and myself getting nodes and chests and the other two murder-hobos getting azerite from mobs were able to easily win the island expedition without ever saying a single word to each other, any ounce of coordination, and two people seemingly knowing less on how to do it than me on my first time there.

So I’d say my first impression? There is no direction, no reason, no coherence to island expeditions. It’s run in, run off in a random direction, press tab, smash your face on they keyboard, and pick up the remains. That’s not really fun, IMO. I got bored of it already and I only did a few of them. Nothing new ever happened, no one ever communicates, theres no big cool events or anything. Or at least they don’t do them, someone did scream “Oh great, a dragon, just what we need!” And I found a cool void dragon, but my team ignored me telling them where it was.

There needs to be more focus on doing group things to get higher amounts of azerite and less focus on the little crap mobs dropping azerite because then everyone is just going to murder hobo the whole island. I had groups literally leaving the chests and stuff full of azerite behind as they mounted up to run off to murder hobo some more things.

edit* as for rewards, I have gotten some weapons I do not use, a green belt I did not need, and a pet. I liked the pet.

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205

Ez… I don’t want to do islands. I don’t want to be forced to do islands as the primary source of azerite power. Forcing me to do something I don’t want to do feels terrible. People hate warfronts, but I don’t. I CHOOSE to do them or not. Islands, if I want to raid, I have to do them.

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206

The changes have been an improvement, but islands are still not fun. I just do the 3 mythics per week and that’s it.

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207

I hardly ever post on the forums, so I apologize in advance if this is hard to read for any reason.

Firstly, I’ll answer the questions posited in the original post…
The changes to islands have helped me to enjoy them more than previously. As far as rewards go, I’ve only gotten a couple of transmog pieces that I’m currently trying to sell.

My overall opinion of expeditions, however, has not changed. I do not find them to be worth the time sink as a player who usually strives to increase their character power. This isn’t to say that I don’t or cannot enjoy content that doesn’t give me gear/upgrades so much as this content is tied to something that doesn’t seem worth much in the long term as such a player who seeks that fulfillment. This could be intrinsically tied to the Azerite system due to needing large sums of power to make a difference and the islands eventually just not seeming worth the time. Once I was able to access almost all of my traits on my Azerite pieces, I saw no need to participate in expeditions for an almost meaningless gain in my overall progression.

I do, however, enjoy doing Island Expeditions to level. Leveling through them makes them seem to have a static and obtainable goal that I personally care about: character growth. I would even go so far as to say it would be nice to throw a couple generic quest type greens our way in the pouches for characters/alts below 120 who may want to use such a path to level.

I skimmed the replies before beginning my own and I also think having a more consistent reward structure would help immensely. Rewarding doubloons consistently and putting more of the rewards on the vendor would go a long way, I think. For example, I would consider running them more frequently on my warrior if I knew I was working towards the paladin recolor set.

And, finally, I do hope all the work going into this isn’t for naught. I’m afraid this may become a system that isn’t used for anything going forward, which seems more common the past couple of expansions. I’d like to see this tech used for more than aesthetics in the future. :slight_smile:

Happy belated New Years! :+1:

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208

There still doesn’t feel like there’s any reason to explore or take your time. You’re fighting the timer the entire time.

It’d be great if you could beat the enemy faction a certain number of times and they decide to bail, or maybe the enemy team didn’t spawn at all. I know that’s probably counter intuitive but how likely is it really that the Alliance and Horde always find the same islands at the same time? Toss it in as a random occurrence.

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209

I have seen it asked in trade if the doubloon drop rates have been nerfed.

Looks like they have. Which is why I stopped doing them pre and post 8.1.

Want me to do them? Gauranteed doubloons on all difficulties.

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210

If you applied to same drop formula to Island Expeditions as you did to Timeless Isle, I think people would be MUCH more apt to run them. Every time you do one, you should be getting currency and BoA gear for alts. Toss in the occasional titan risidium or whatever it’s called and I promise you will see an uptick of interest.

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211

There used to be a quest to win 1 and get 100k xp but it was removed with patch. Helps with leveling so please put it back in. Also it should drop more coins and have EVERYTHING able to be bought at the vendor. Not just a handful of things.

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212

Overall they are now tolerable and I will do the weekly 36k for now. They still have some underlying problems imo.

Mob cc doesn’t dr. Getting rooted or stunned for the 15th time in a row and then get hit with all the telegraphed attacks isn’t fun gameplay.

Some mobs damage is just too high. 1 shots aren’t fun. The winged snake looking creatures that blow purple stuff comes to mind.

Enemy NPC ai team needs more tweaking. Mass dispel doesn’t remove the ai pally bubble.

I like how the mobs are clustered with rares in almost every pull now.

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213

For sub-120 characters I find the 8.1 changes have made IE more brutal. I’m dying far more often on the alts I run through Normal IE. The azurite shale spiders (I forget their names) slap alts around like a ball in a pinball machine, and the old god related entities can kill characters far more easily than anything in pre-8.1 IE.

As for rewards, they feel about the same, but since they were always very low droprate it’s hard for any one player to tell. It’s too random to be anything but subjective.

One suggestion: It would be really nice for alt levelling if you awarded a few more green item that are usable by the character itself, rather than current system where random green pieces are very rare and usually the wrong type and wrong level requirement. At least levelling alts would feel like they’re getting something for their efforts.

214

No thanks, not interested.

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215

Tried the new islands.

Still just a 30 minute slog fest of clearing trash and little else.

Did a bunch of island expeditions to satisfy the 5 island requirement to BFA research.

I got 2 pets I couldn’t care squat about, and some dablooms I will never spend.

Please remove the 5 island requirement to progressing through the research tree.

  • P
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216

I actual enjoy doing Islands, even before tides or vengeance even with the certain mobs giving you a higher chance at certain loot. I like what they did with Islands in ToV. Just last night I got the Blue Bat mount from my first Island of the night (quite lucky, yes) but besides that I have noticed a huge increase in item rewards from the end of the Island. From Pets, to Plundered Transmog items to quest items. That being said. The mobs now hit like freight train, some of the mobs and I believe the Dwarf team stun chain the hell out of you which is rather annoying. The mob mostly that comes to mind is the wendigo fear. Maybe lower the CC chains and the damage the mobs do slightly so not even tanks get 1 shot. Thats all I really have to say. Thanks for listening if you are reading this :slight_smile:

217

I chain-ran normal expeditions to level up two alts from 110-120, and have done a few heroics, but nothing beyond that. I haven’t read the changes, and haven’t noticed any differences (I think the azerite extractor might be new?)

I enjoy world PvP and farming, so I’m not really sure why I’m disinterested in island expeditions. Normal and heroic aren’t challenging/rewarding, and anything beyond that (which I’ve yet to try) requires you to manually create a group; if I had in-game friends then maybe I’d have actually tried it by now, but there’s no desire to make a group with strangers for what I’m assuming is a non-rewarding experience. Vanilla wow had quests for tier 0.5 gear, and gear meant a huge deal back then. Quests with rewarding things which people really want should be added (if they’re not already) to up the participation.

  • Only being able to queue from the table is probably a big reason why I don’t bother. I don’t particularly want to do them to begin with, so having to sit in town to queue doesn’t help (I do love the little map sketches on the expedition menu, btw).
  • If it were designed slightly differently, with more emphasis on exploration, then I think it could’ve been a lot more exciting for people (e.g. navigating a boat there through weather/obstacles, or having to sail the boat to multiple islands to complete objectives, requiring some coordination and teamwork). Simple, procedurally generated islands/underground ruins might’ve been a good possibility, assuming the game engine can handle it. Ruins with unpredictable tile traps that 1-shot you with hilarious effects would’ve been great.
  • I never know how hard the mobs are going to hit, it feels like some rounds I’ll get 3-shot by anything, and other rounds a group of 30+ mobs will tickle. Not sure why.
  • I did the 36k azerite weekly quest (on heroic, and took 5 games instead of 4 because 2 guildies decided to boot me), and got a follower mission that rewarded a green belt. Not sure what the possible rewards are, but I’ll probably never bother doing it again. A few rewarding quests that require people to do mythic/PvP expeditions might get such players to go back and give it another try.
  • I feel like beneath the surface it’s well designed, but on the surface it feels somewhat bland. Different races appear, but they all feel the same and you just aoe them down (azerite WQs, you aoe mobs down. Mythic+, you aoe mobs down. Raid trash, you aoe mobs down). If standing in melee range of 5 vrykul enemies resulted in 4 of them pinning you down while the 5th does an 8 second cast 1-hit-kill ranged attack, then you’d depend more on your team and would probably think twice about what you’re doing; you’d think “oh no, mantid do X” or “vrykul do Y”.
  • While unrelated, I really hope they add follower NPCs with rich stories/long questlines/lots of dialogue to the game, to make the world feel less empty when not in a group; with player actions increasing/decreasing hidden rep so the player gradually ends up surrounded by characters that they like. You could equip them with your old gear (like Diablo 2 mercs), and have quests/rewards to upgrade them added in different areas of the game; expeditions being one of them.
219

The enemy team seems way too eager to run directly for us now. I did an island last night that was extremely annoying to do because of this. Not only did they constantly harass us, but friggin’ Sneaky Pete seemed to constantly keep me sapped and disoriented and whatnot. A couple saps every now and then I understand, but it got to the point where I just sat there until my teammates could kill him, so that I could be able to play my character again.

I like that there are different things to do on the islands now like the azerite extractors. I think we need more unique stuff to do to get azerite. I don’t like that the quests are still largely unused. If I have no indication of where to go to get the thing I need for the quest, I’m just going to ignore the quest. We’re too pressed for time to spend it searching the entire island for a shovel or something.

I like that I can now fill my weekly bar with three mythics. Before, I had to do three mythics and then a heroic.

I get lots of pets and stuff now, but I don’t care about any of that. I do like the 5000-gold mission reward for the weekly and really that’s the only reason I do the islands. Don’t really care about AP.

Reposted this comment because originally I accidentally posted it as a reply to a random person.

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220

Azerite Knowledge increase should not have been paused!!!

Increase Azerite rewards from M+

Increase Azerite rewards from Raids

Me personally i don’t care if i can get a mount or transmog. I shouldn’t be forced to grind these because its the only viable way to get my main or alts at a decent neck lvl.

AP gain is a system that is pointless. Putting restrictions on it only forces players into boring grinding and pointlessness. I shouldn’t dred logging onto wow, i should be excited. Most of my time is watching Netflix and mindlessly spaming 1,2,3. To kill mobs in IE.

Its dull, boring, and you need to stop putting gates in this stuff cause its one of the reasons people are not staying subbed to your game.

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221

The horde version is equally painful.

Given that the boat talent does literally nothing and is a waste of resources I’d love to see a consistent way to get doubloons. But that said the boat talent needs to be fixed.

This is a major issue, mythic seems much harder than even mythic+ keys due to this. My expectation is that Mythic should be as hard as Mythic 0. To that end adding a Mythic+ system might be worth it.

This would be nice, I’d rather it be less of a race and more objective based.

This is why only two of my characters have finished their boat talents… because it’s literally not worth the pain on any other character.

I concur on this, I understand Sneaky Pete finding out he has cloak of shadows… but he shouldn’t have cloak of shadows on a cooldown that rogues don’t as well. He’s always able to cloak out of my dots.

I concur on this part, not advocating a return to the old system I just think all the rewards should be doubloon based IMO. There can be an Island specific vendor at the end of mission that allows you to buy rewards.

Ugg this would be awesome, given that the use is primarily cosmetic stuff anyway. Otherwise make it so there is a separate rewards currency from the ship vendor. Doubloons vs Pieces of Eight?

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222

My wife and I really like our islands and this update made them feel even better, but there are still things we’d like to see.

  1. We both feel there should be some gold tied to the completion of each individual one as well, kinda like a dungeon.

  2. I personally would like to see it tied to group finder for normal/heroic. Having to run to the table is kinda lame.

  3. On the note of group finder, heroic should have an ilvl requirement unless it’s a full group of 3.

  4. As someone said above, the 5 islands requirement for research should be account wide. I’ve done them to quest completion for 3 weeks so far on this guy and I still don’t have my unique 5.

  5. It would be cool if we could see our personal azerite gained from the run represented somewhere. The completion reward isn’t really appealing and it appears we collect extra (like in CoA WQs) along the way. Player-driven rewards like that look appealing to me on my completion UI.

  6. Distribute the loot a little more fairly. I’ve run some where I’ve gotten 2 pets in one, and someone else got nothing. Would also be cool to see everyone’s reward, like we can loot in dungeons, just to know that stuff dropped for someone at least. Visible rewards are motivating for me.

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