What rewards? I haven’t seen a single one (that I can use).
Also, thanks for nerfing the dubloon drop rate.
18 Likes
Rewards drop chance is still too low. Doubloons should have 100% drop rate, and rest of rewards need drop chance increased significantly again.
Make Doubloons currency account wide. It sucks having a lot of doubloons spread across 10 characters and being unable to buy anything while having enough…
And I don’t like increased mob difficulty. With 8.1 they do much more damage (including unavoidable damage), too much CC and so on… Those huge ground AOE circles you have to run out of are almost impossible to dodge for example…
Also I don’t like scaling nature of the islands. As I get more and more gear, I don’t feel stronger while on islands AT ALL. They should not scale period.
And why only 3 islands are available every week? What the point of this restriction?
33 Likes
Please remove the automatic ending once you complete the island. I would love to explore the islands and be able to go back, without racing, to kill all the mobs, look for gear, complete quests, etc.
28 Likes
I actually did enjoy grinding service medals for the i395 ring. I would probably do more island expectations if there were something equipable on a max level character that had a reasonable grind. Maybe offer a special bonus token on a weekly basis that can be swapped in for loot? Thanks for listening.
4 Likes
Add more islands and make them all available every week.
Stop with mob themes and just have a random mob type for every island so that even if you get the same island twice it will be slightly different.
2 Likes
I think they should focus on the PvP side of islands more, they can develop it a lot more and they wouldnt even need to drop a sweat for it - they can do it in an afternoon.
If Islands solo Queue for PvP was a thing, people would be trying to win it more, thus making more groups for it, engaging, developing strategies - all just to go through the weekly thing faster. It would create an entire ecosystem around Island expeditions that currently doesn’t exist, and I am super intrigued by the fact they know this and chose to not do it.
The bots shouldve been just a thing for people who want to avoid PvP in all possible scenarios, not the standard.
3 Likes
Since the launch of patch 8.1, the island difficulty has increased noticeably. Nothing was in the patch note about a dmg increase to the mobs or more frequent cc, however it seems as if everything was scaled up for the new “pve season” on January 22nd prematurely, something similar to how you do with dungeon content in the past with increased rewards associated with them. Just to add a side note here, it’s very noticeable that the faction npcs now hunt you down to the end of the world, and that game play isn’t fun.
27 Likes
Difficulty is good. Mythic feels like mythic and can be sometimes challenging to beat the AI. But then again, there seems to be no real drawback to the AI winning which is kinda weird (you still can get items and you keep all the azerite you collect?).
Things that can chain stun/snare/fear/disorientate are annoying and I learn what packs to straight up avoid. I’ll never fight a pack of yetis again (hello chain fear).
Issues of not being able to drop aggro and so you can mount up seem to be gone for the most part.
The new islands are cool and I like the variety of mobs - and feeling safe to loot azerite nodes and chests again. Trying to finish islands quickly feels much better.
Not getting items can be very disheartening when you watch your team mates get something every run. Sometimes its the opposite and youre getting something every run and youre watching someone else walk away empty handed. RNG is RNG but its not very fun doing a run for 20 minutes to find out it was for nothing, and then have that happen 5 times in a row.
Big improvement, but could still use more depth and a variety of things to do perhaps. And less RNG somehow.
3 Likes
Island expeditions are a weekly chore that I still dread. The only reason I even bother is because it is the most significant AP source (the 2500 weekly reward). Reducing the azerite to 36000 helped but doesnt change the fact that Islands are just no fun. Can we please move the AP reward to some other activity so we don’t feel compelled to run Islands?
15 Likes
Your artists created all of these beautiful mini zones, and all you fill them with is random trash packs.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the mystery dungeon genre of games (but I’m sure you must be familiar because Diablo uses similar concepts), but one of the ideal parts of proceduraly generated content is that the areas themselves are proceduraly generated as well. Going to the same island and just seeing random creatures there isn’t engaging or fun.
Re-purpose the islands, give them each some small story content related to one of the other factions (Twilight Dragons, Black Dragons, Helya, etc) to update us as players as to what they’re up to right now. (Besides, lolLookGuysAzerite!)
If you’re going to stick to them though, a few thoughts: Finding out what loot you get at the end is kind of boring. Make it so that you actually loot the items while exploring the island (and allow a victory to include being able to explore the entire island). I realize the AoE CC is probably tuned because you can’t assume that there will be a tank in the group, but it still feels dumb to get CC’d for 5+ seconds in PvE content.
Try again next expansion with true procedural content.
16 Likes
From a pretty hardcore grinding perspective here.
I’ve done a ton of islands, before and after the update in 8.1 and I can say, even though the overall pace and playability of islands is better; the reward structure still feels flawed. Before 8.1 you knew that if certain mobs spawned, killing them and looting their treasures would give you a chance at receiving their loot table.
Now, in 8.1, it doesn’t feel that way at all. Now I see a bunch of named creatures I want loot off of, and instead of having my odds increased based on what I killed (in other words targeting loot that I was after), I’m merely at the mercy of RNG in terms of what drops. This feels absolutely terrible. I hate that feeling.
I do lets see, 4x at least 6 toons, so minimum 24 heroic islands per week, and I have not seen ANYTHING that I’ve wanted in terms of drops.
Can anyone else sympathize with my frustrations here?
28 Likes
I have done considerably more island expeditions across multiple characters. I even did one for fun.
However, I HAVE to echo the fact that there is still WAY too much RNG involved in the reward system. This is a game-wide problem, but it is particularly bad in Island expeditions.
Also of note… I have been getting CONSIDERABLY fewer random drop rewards. When I first started doing them I was getting pets and transmog rewards at least half the time. Nowadays I’ll get a pair of bracers maybe every 7-8 runs. Don’t know if I was lucky before or unlucky now, but I have definitely getting much fewer interesting drops.
6 Likes
A few thoughts:
They are quite a bit more difficult now. I still get them done, but it’s a notable increase. Might want to tune heroic down a bit more.
Rewards are still frustrating. Getting 4 things from one island and then on a different toon 5 in a row of nothing but maybe a couple of doubloons does not feel rewarding. Far too RnG.
The alliance seems to gather azerite much faster than before.
Some AOE attacks are super frustrating for slower melee like DKs. Getting out of them can be impossible and hit for far too much.
Some of the AOEs like from the void themed mobs can be quite difficult to see on certain islands.
The new “bursting bones” attack from the necromancers is insane and overtuned.
4 Likes
This. More options to explore rather than race would be nice.
9 Likes
as the primary reward is azurite, I find it hard to feel motivated to repeat them
other rewards are casino drops with no dupe protection
just feels like a really grindy slot machine that never pays out anything but pennies
21 Likes
I’ve been doing these weekly on my main since 8.1 dropped, as well as using them to level alts. Here is my experience:
Pros
- Improved drop rate for pets.
- The new maps add a little more variety.
- The Azerite extractor adds a little something new.
- Added dubloon rewards are appreciated.
- Random rare mission rewards are a nice touch.
- Generally speaking, the random terrain and AI shows promise.
Cons
- Islands still feel too rushed, with no chance to explore, do bonus quests, or do anything other than rush to farm Azerite.
- Not enough incentive to win. It doesn’t really seem to matter if you win or lose.
- Dubloon drop rate is way to stingy. Islands just aren’t fun enough to want to farm them for hundreds of dubloons when you only get a couple per match. It shoudn’t take an entire expansion to collect enough dubloons for all the rewards.
- Larger issue, but Azerite is still not very exciting. Why am I farming Azerite to upgrade my necklace, again? What cool reward do I get for doing so?
Proposed Solutions
- Slow down the acquisition of Azerite on islands so that matches take a little longer, however increase the XP/rewards accordingly based on time spent. Incentivize exploring and doing bonus quests with extra rewards.
- Incentivize winning with extra XP/rewards.
- Give us ways to get more dubloons more quickly. Either just increase the drop rate, or add interesting ways to collect dubloons on the islands (maybe treasure chests).
- Finally, if Azerite isn’t going to be a sufficient reward (which appears to be the case until 8.2), double-down on secondary rewards. Dubloons, pets, and XP are a good start. The rare quests are an even better one. Maybe some kind of follower equipment drops? Give us more reason to care about the mission tables in this expansion, and put more connections between missions and islands.
25 Likes
Copying and Pasting from my topic I made earlier:
"Allow me to start with stating that before 8.1 I was a frequent runner of Mythic Island Expeditions and that while they were tougher than Heroic by a fair margin, they were still doable. From the Mythic Island Expeditions I have ran in this 8.1 patch I have not been able to complete a single one
When my group was trying to just clear one group of mobs. The enemy team was already 1-2k ahead and blitzing through them all with noticeable ease. We saw them take the extractor in little time and beat it’s waves over and over like it was child’s play. This shouldn’t be a thing as we had no ability at all to take it due to the Azerite Crabs having infinite shields and infinite CC. It’s to my knowledge that the enemy teams have a damage multiplier tied to them along with their new abilities that allow them clear these events faster.
I am not 100% certain that this is the case. But Mythic Islands feel extraordinarily tuned to the AI’s favor to win. It shouldn’t be a default “Here’s a 10x damage boost to clear all the mobs faster than you!”. I originally thought they scaled in item level with you but that’s not something I think Blizzard would want to have happen."
8 Likes
Same. I’ve capped 3 toons every week plus I don’t know how many extra on my doubloon grinding toon and I’m getting drops but it’s a lot of duplicate pets and bracer “mog” for armor types I don’t use … never mounts.
6 Likes
After consistently running IEs, and enjoying them overall, there are a few things that do stand out that could use some tweaking. Please keep in mind that most runs I do are in normal or heroic, as I do not have a consistent group to do mythics or PVP.
The majority of the runs, I have received azerite and nothing else. When I do end up getting a reward off the loot table, chances are its something I’ve already received, such as the Snapper and Mischievous Zephyr battle pets. Thus far, I’ve received five of both them, and either traded or sold the extras on the AH for the pets I haven’t received off of the loot table. Doubloons are hit or miss - sometimes I get a pouch with four of them, but overall, nothing. It is nice not having to target specific groups anymore, but the loot rewards still feel very lackluster. Personally, I’ve seen a lack of diversity in what has actually spawned off of the loot table, making the times I have received something new and different very exciting and a reason to keep going.
The pack AOE stuns and abilities now hurt a lot more than they used to. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however, getting one shot by an ability at ilvl 378 while helping people grind out normal IEs on their alts for their weekly cap feels really bad. (Yes, I know I can dodge and whatnot, but the first time it happened it caught me off guard.)
The animations on some of those AOE abilities gets hidden or is difficult to see overall because of the island terrain as well. The disorienting flash off of Azerite elementals, for instance, often gets hidden in the darker terrains, whereas some elemental stuns/AOEs are completely hidden, such as in the frost elemental terrain. If those were tweaked a bit, it would help tremendously. I’ve had to adjust the colorblindess settings on my monitor to try and make them stand out a bit more, with limited success.
There’s a lot of potential here for IEs to be more fun and rewarding than they are, and I just want to say that I appreciate the dev team reaching out to the community to see how they can try and change it so they don’t feel like a chore.
3 Likes
First, I’m going to write this, I know my Feedback wont be read like many others here, but I’m doing this so many can see my post because its under a blue post ![:man_shrugging:t5:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/man_shrugging/5.png?v=6" ":man_shrugging:t5:")
. That being written, I still find Island Expeditions boring.
Here are my positive and negative on it;
- Positive thing about the update is that it provides more variety that fits different play styles. It gives players “Freedom”, which we don’t see much of, and more “Open Door” options when doing Expeditions. Players can gather Azerite, or Kill Elites/Rares, or Missions, or do X marks. These additions increased its “slow” paced style it had and becomes much a faster paced style to do the weekly, which to me is the only rewarding thing. Once that is done, Island Expeditions is done and no more until next week. This is how I feel.
-
Negative thing about the update is that Islands are not rewarding, still.
You may have added in a map to have at your war table, some pets, and other stuff to the vendor, but what else are players really getting from the Expedition(s) beside Azerite and Coins? What is this Expedition really? There are no cool loot and Transmog drops from Rare Mobs, no random Raid boss that spawns onto the map after being triggered by mobs dying and getting an Item for it. No cool Treasure chest you find that must be protected by a certain waves of mobs to get goods from. There is no “real” immersion just the “oh look let me do the weekly and log out” feeling. Its not engaging and enjoyable, and to be honest, the more I do it the more I don’t. If you take away Azerite/Achievements/Coins from it, looking at “metrics”, since Devs choose this over players Feedback, Island Expeditions would be an empty instance just like 85% of WoW zones/Cities. The reason why I write Items because the RNG system makes it hard to get items and this would be another source that could help that.
4 Likes