I do not enjoy island expeditions. I never have, regardless of difficulty, or running it with people I know as opposed to random grouping.
I run islands for the cosmetic rewards only, but because there are so many I’ve never actually gotten anything I wanted. I sometimes purchase island cosmetic rewards I’m interested in from the auction house.
I do not have any suggestions on how to make islands more engaging, they remind me of Mists of Pandaria scenarios in that they are dull, repetitive, and feel just like a chore I slog through because they are connected to rewards I am interested in. Unlike those scenarios the island rewards are random and from a dauntingly vast loot table.
The ‘run 5 unique island’ requirement for upgrades on each character is also frustrating. It takes 2 weeks minimum, I often get the same island many times in a row, and I don’t like islands in the first place, and running them on some alts is just demoralising. Making that requirement account wide would be preferred.
If island expeditions were removed tomorrow and all the rewards moved to some new currency vendors I would consider it a vast improvement.
Edit: Not being able to queue for islands from afar isn’t immersive, if anything it is one more reason not to participate in this content.
I did the new ones with a few toons. I liked that you needed less azurite to finish. I liked that you could get stuff easier, but would really rather just loot the bodies. Don’t like the timed aspect. Don’t like the Horde vs Alliance aspect. First they are hard to kill and if I’m killing Horde or Alliance I would like some honor or currency for it. I just find them mostly annoying and a pain in the butt. I mostly think it takes too long to do especially if your doing more than one character. I only got 6 of 13 toons leveled so far and I feel all I do is chase war resources. For doing these you should get a chunk of war resources. On just 6 toons it will take me a day or 2 to just do the islands on everyone.
I wish there was a version of island exploration where you could go and explore a random island and not have a timer. I don’t like the feeling that I might have missed something important I did not have time to find. Maybe clear the whole island.
I personally don’t think there was any need to change how stuff dropped but the new way is probably easier for a group of strangers. At least now everyone is almost on the same page. But lots of people are having problems with looking around and not killing fast enough when the opposite faction sets up the extractor it gives them a big advantage and people don’t want to take it out.
Only reason I did any was for the Honorbound rep from the weekly world quest which put me high enough for a paragon box and 20 more service medals. I will have my 395 ring this week on my main and I will be done with IEs again.
If relevant gear could be purchased with doubloons then I would do the IEs more, however that still wouldn’t make them enjoyable.
I only do enough Island Expeditions to satisfy the weekly on my main and ignore them on all of my alts. It’s just not rewarding enough for me to want to do it.
I did 4 heroic expeditions and got less than 10 dubloons. I feel like there should be more dubloons at the end. If i need to save up 1000 dubloons for just one mount, you can’t be that stingy with the currency.
My main is a shaman. For my weekly treasure map, the reward was a transmog for cloth bracers. That felt really bad to get.
Also the alliance NPCs are ridiculous. All the hopping around and running circles stuff, it’s the reason I dont pvp to begin with. And killing them seems to gain nothing except to slow the while process down.
I have two points of criticism that I would like to point out. The first is the still horrible drop rates. I have done hundreds of island expeditions across 12 characters and have yet to get a single mount to drop. Why add new mounts if people cannot collect the old mounts? If you are going to give incentive to do an activity then the incentive needs to be real.
I think the system needs to be designed with a definitive end point. I will do islands until I have all of the pets, mounts, and achievements. Then, make it so every player can actually achieve that end point without dumping hundreds of hours of play time into it. People do not have that amount of time. Drops do not need to be guaranteed by any means to make a system like this work- “bad luck protection” is a great way to make this a workable system. For example- every 50 island expeditions you do you will be guaranteed 1 mount. You may get more, but you will never get less.
By utilizing a system like this you as developers can calculate an estimate of how long a player will need to complete the activity before needing to add new content and players will have a goal to work toward that is not another currency system. This allows players to play -and- get what they want (the reason they play). This helps the development cycle as well as you can calculate an average of how much people play and time between patches.
This will help with the questions of content quantity. Allowing players to kick other players “just because” is not a system that works. I have been kicked out of islands while being the top contributor just because I didn’t want to “just hunt rares” or because I wanted to explore the left side of the island instead of the right side. The system of kicking only exists so that players cannot AFK during islands- a better way to fix this issue is to remove the kick system entirely and instead change it to an automated kick system like in Heroes of the Storm- if a player is inactive or not moving for a set period of time- say 90 - 120 seconds, the system automatically kicks the player and brings in a new player.
The only time a player should have control over the system is when they create the entire group- such as a mythic island run or pvp island run.
Overall, I can see the potential of islands- a fun little time sink where you get to fight different kinds of enemies in pursuit of pets, mounts, adventure, etc. Limiting the negative social element by restricting player control over other players in random groups and creating a loot reward system with a definitive- and not obscene- end point will allow this system to thrive for what it is.
Why does everyone cry over being a heals . Heals are fine for IEs . Thats all i do is heal them ! Heals are very useful !!! Be it on this toon my monk or my druid all of my groups have done perfectly fineeee.
Maybe its a l2p issue if you are having trouble with a heals in your groups and i even pug often . Most likely its just you guys have very low dps .
Many of the new mobs come in packs and have frustrating CC - I’m thinking specifically about the yeti groups, where they all charge/stun and all fear.
With your PVP trinket now being a PVP talent, and PVP talents largely being disabled on the Islands, chains of mob CC are largely something you suffer through rather than counter. I don’t mind mobs discouraging the “murderball” tactic of just rolling multiple packs up and aoe’ing them down, but the potential for over-stacking CC effects from mobs and hostile AI is not fun and it is a threshold that is easily hit.
I’ve had worse luck with loot since the updates - sure, that’s maybe unique and definitely anecdotal. But it’s still frustrating. Doubly so when I do finally get some new armor drop and it’s bracers… a cosmetic reward that is invariably hidden.
I like the addition of the azerite extractors and the “wounds” you can heal. But as others have said, I really think the “go go go” mentality needs to be curbed at least somewhat. Introduce variable victory conditions and different ways to meet them. Defeat a chieftain, hold a position for a set time, activate defenses that drive the opposing team off the island, sway or bribe locals to harass the other team, escort a payload… Encourage groups to play more interactively rather than just gathering up everything and AOE’ing it down.
1 How have the changes felt?
2 Have things improved?
3 Has anything gotten worse?
4 What rewards have you been getting?
1 Even with the changes I still feel forced into doing islands, they feel faster now, but still a chore.
2 The mob grind feels improved or faster by about 2min, but that could also be average ilv has just gone up.
3 Logging in less and less, islands feel even more mandatory as a source of ap, but islands themselves objectively have not gotten worse with changes.
4 All I seem to get is currency, and with the currency there is nothing really exciting to buy. I would suggest putting gear on the vendor but that would mean I would have to do islands even more.
Bonus Round - I do not think islands are actually that bad when it comes to new content, what is bad is that they are the only real source of ap outside of daily quests. I would much rather run dungeons with my friends, but instead we feel forced to do islands. What is a multiplying factor is classes are not fun to play, so this only makes content like islands feel even worse.
The difference between drops on mythic and heroic is too great
Portal bosses should give better loot (sacks of dubloons, achie for killing each of the portal bosses, chance at pet/mount only on portal boss loot table)
Still too GO GO GO
There should be a soloable rare pet trap island
Have a soloable or group exploration mode where you can complete quests, solve puzzles, kill rare mobs… for an achievement. Like the “Glory of” achievement.
I am a 380 tank (Bear) and have the following feedback
It was a very positive change to base possible loot tables on what spawned rather than what you kill. It removes a good chunk of the uncertainty in doing it.
You added some TERRIBLE mobs to the island. Namely the new azerite creatures are just bad. The Geodes can nearly permastun me, the regenerating shields are just horrible to deal with, the exploding balls everywhere throw me around like a pinball… It’s bad and the team should feel bad for adding this. 1 step forward 2 steps back.
I run IEs on normal because heroic is a nightmare. I am a 380 tank and I want no part of it. Hell, normal can be bad enough. Take the nerf bat to these things and beat the crap out of them with it.
Rewards should include dubloons 100% of the time with everything being purchasable through a vendor. The random drops is not fun at ALL since we are powerless to target what we want. It also feels like a waste of time if all I get is 150 Azerite for my trouble.
These things are expensive. Gear takes real damage and with no gold rewards this is not healthy for my wallet. That’s a feels bad man.
The opposing faction is VERY inconsistent. Some times they barely get over 1500 resources, others they are plowing through the island and go from 500 to 3,000+ in just minutes.
Overall these are still not fun. I grind them since they are basically mandatory but I would never touch them if given the choice.
Solutions:
Give us a ‘peaceful’ option to do a solo island expedition without an opposing faction. Have there be a random objective (go to X location or kill X mob) with various fun things to do. Think timeless isle as a 1-3 person randomly generated instance. Encourage exploration rather than this race thing
Remove mob CC and one shot mechanics. The fears, knock arounds, charge stuns…it’s terrible and unfun.
And yes, there are mechanics in NORMAL ie that can one shot a 380 tank. That’s just frustrating and poor design.
To be frank I am not sure there is much saving the island expeditions. I think they need to go the way of MOP 3 man scenarios
I’m confused about people’s expectations of Island Expeditions and why they are hated so much. They are supposed to be something you to do for 2500 AP per week, which doesn’t take long at all. And then maybe some pets, mounts and other rewards.
Regarding the actual game play … Granted, it’s nothing ground breaking, but between the pve mob killing and the AI pvp encounters, it’s decent enough. Even the race to reach the max resources adds urgency, which makes it just a little more interesting. I’d also think PvP’ers would enjoy them simply because it feels like a different type of battleground. But in the end, the content is not so different than any other content in the game to warrant so much hate.
IMO, Island Expeditions are great for what they are. 1) A means to level alts fast and 2) A fun little side activity that I don’t need to spend more than an hour per week on for a large bulk of AP.
Are people playing them more than that? Do they expect amazing rewards from them and just bitter that they’re not?
Islands are sold to us as a major part of this expansion as well as warfronts. These are not side events but supposedly major chunks of this expansion and IEs fall FAR short of that. The pve mob killing itself is fine, however because there is a race element, chain pulling is required which puts players under stress. Many of the mobs have annoying CC mechanics like the new azerite geodes with the constant disorients and the pinball effect if you step on a glowing ball. There is no sense of exploration since you need to complete the island asap to beat the other faction. There is no sense of planning other than pick a direction and start murdering that way.
Rewards are another issue. 150 azerite is not much of anything. Dubloons need to be a 100% reward for every expedition and a vendor with ALL rewards needs to be there to hand out what people want. If I do an IE and only get 150 azerite then I feel it was a waste of my time. At least if I got dubloons I could grind my way to what I want.
Islands are bad and the team that came up with this idea should feed bad.
My main beef with them is still the central issue, which these changes did little to address: the core gameplay of Island Expeditions are a dull grind.
Scenarios in MoP at least had some variety to the gameplay (collecting items, tracking down big enemies, etc.) Island Expeditions are just killing mobs and watching a meter go up for uninteresting rewards.
And since they’re the most effective way of grinding Azerite, they feel obligatory rather than interesting. It feels less like I’m being rewarded for my talent as a player and more like I’m just doing chores.
Honestly, if you want my feedback, here it is. Expeditions are one of the worst features ever put in this game. Why would I want to put myself through 15-20 minutes of mindless farming of mobs that take basically no skill? The rewards suck as well. Too much RNG. Sure the weekly quest from the mission board is nice, but I’ve gotten the new azerite residue 2/3 times while some of my friends have got mounts.
I have to force myself to do them every week for the weekly quest now, but before I didn’t do them for a good 4-5 weeks. I saw no point at all.
Talking only about PvP islands, the changes are great! Getting conquest from those is good, capping the weekly quest with only 2 is good, islands taking longer is good.
However, the queues can take for ever at some point. I know it’s hard to get people to do this when it’s faster to cap with mythics but maybe if you can activate mercenary mode the same way it works for non-rated battlegrounds that can improve the queue times
Also maybe, since this islands take a little longer, make them have an extra % chance to drop mounts/pets/toys? If you make this and announce it that may encourage people do queue for PvP islands and reduce queue times
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