Feedback: Island Expeditions

Community General Discussion
41

overall the changes are for the better. the adjusted amount of damage is a welcome change. people complaining about the amount of damage dealt are pulling too much, which is what these changes are meant to do. (stop you from trying to pull everything) the reward structure needs work, however. seeing rare mobs spawn and knowing that killing them doesn’t increase my chances of getting any specific loot from them feels bad and there should be more rewards obtainable from the dubloon vendor. also, a minor complaint, but it feels terrible not getting anything 3 islands in a row then suddenly you get a bag with 10 dubloons from the 4th. the dubloon bag at the end should be a guaranteed reward you get every island so you can actively work towards things at the vendor that isn’t rng. i know it’s small, but the islands need ways for you to work towards a meaningful reward other than the weekly ap/map.

just spitballing, but another idea would to have rare creatures drop special tokens pertaining to them, that can be redeemed for a reward off their loot table from a vendor similar to the coins from the gnomeregan pet dungeon works.

42

I like it. It feels better then at launch and there are enough events and spacing to not really feel like you have down time in between packs. Some things I think could use some work are:

-Better Powerful foe markings/rooms.
-Better quest item markings. Often I see groups skipping them because the item you need is hard to find

Those really are the two I can think of off the top of my head. Some NPC variation would be nice or fighting along side our own factions champions rather then seeing them standing in part would be fun.

As a “future” direction I would like to see more MoP era scenario style objectives. I really do miss MoP scenario’s and would like to see some more Island expeditions that have that silly fun of riding barrels.

More ooker dookers!

2 Likes
43

My feedback is that you know how rewards drive participation and you know that IE rewards are too low. If you really want people to go all in on cosmetic rewards they need to be more frequent and the content can’t be as mind-numbingly boring as IEs.

6 Likes
44

Let me add based on the other replies:

Make doubloons guaranteed. Amount varies.

Add all rewards to vendor or rotating vendor with different rewards each week. Make rewards from vendor BoP, but drops still BoE.

If I could earn my way to all mounts and armor, etc., I would be happy. Even if it was a 1000 or more doubloons each mount it would be great. Something to work towards. As is there’s a very limited amount of rewards to buy right now. Being able to target this stuff would feel so much better. This isn’t like a raid boss where there’s at most one or two things to go for. There’s too much here that can drop. Which makes the RNG feel too frustrating and unrewarding.

13 Likes
45

Ugh.

At this point, how many times do you need to be told?.

The rewards, especially the mounts are far too low of a drop rate. I’ve lost count of the amount of these i’ve done but at one point I was doing at least 10-20 a day for months and i’ve seen no mounts drop. At least previously you had the illusion of being able to target them by killing specific NPC’s.

Also, some of the mobs are overtuned, unavoidable one-shotting abilities. The elemental invasion with the randomly spawning AOE’s are incredibly annoying, combine this with the enemy team attacking you in this zone, or one of those new ultra-annoying CCing Azerite spider things being around and oh boy, you’re in for a time.

At worst this should be dull, boring content which is made compelling by a linear and satisfying reward structure sprinkled in with some RNG yay moments. As it stands it’s boring and frustrating and I feel like i’m pulling a time-sucking lever which has the same odds of victory as a lottery scratch card.

20 Likes
46
  • The drop rate on dubloons feels even worse than it did prepatch. I’ll be lucky if one bag has more than 5. Not everyone had the time to grind these out for rewards before the patch, and this feels like a punishment more than a grind. Maybe add 250-500 dubloons as a rare Treasure Map prize? Or even throw them in with the rare quest drops? Traveling halfway across the world for a very minor AP increase is not rewarding at all.
  • Necromancers and the constant ping-pong effect from elite Azerite mobs are utterly frustrating. Really discourages larger pulls for when a competent (and geared) tank wants to pick up the pace, and keeps groups locked down more than they need to be.
  • AFKers are still a huge problem. The defeatist attitude of ‘AFK and let them win’ just wastes more time than actually getting things completed. Perhaps instill penalties for people that do not have a contribution percentage in terms of Azerite looted/mobs killed/etc?
12 Likes
47

A lot of what I’m going to say is based on “feel”, but here goes…

  • It “feels” like mobs do much more damage now…
  • It “feels” like there is more cc inflicted upon you, with potential 1-2 shot mechanics…
  • It “feels” like I’m getting far fewer Dubloons than before…actually, no, I AM getting fewer.
  • It “feels” like the rewards, while varied, are scarce…
  • It “feels” like casters do too much damage…but, it felt like that before.
  • It almost “feels” like having a tank, pet class or dps class with superior self-healing (DH) in the group is a necessity…
  • It now “feels” like there’s item level scaling involved. Is there item level scaling involved?

All of this is across the multiple 120 characters that I have done Islands with (Mage, DK, DH, Fury War, Rogue).

19 Likes
48

I’ve enjoyed the islands I’ve done, but I think azerite extractors are the new “always happens” event to replace the old one and it feels stale already. Would like it to be a rare event like the other things that happen. In addition, they still feel like all you do is kill a bunch of trash in a big randomized dungeon and I would love less of that and more interesting and larger encounters (especially non-combat encounters, puzzles, etc!) Would be great if the terrain mattered; so often I ignore where I am in favor of where the azerite crystals and rares are.

As for the rewards, they have improved in general but there’s still a few issues- mainly, the times you run several in a row and get nothing. Smoothing out the rewards and perhaps offering a dropped item of some sort on each island (even if it’s a more common item) would increase the feeling of value for doing them.

Hope this helps!

2 Likes
49

It still feels like a kick in the mouth to do a few Islands in a row and not even get a single dubloon.

There should be at the very least a minimum of 4 or something each run. I’m sorry but I, and I suspect many, feel like AP is a complete ‘nothing’ reward.

This in itself speaks to an issue of the content, because it should be something fun that we want to do for its own sake-- not just for the carrot.

The fact that it is still KILL KILL KILL in what should be an EXPEDITION really does make the content feel old fast. Slightly different locations and mob skins doesn’t change that fact.

There still isn’t enough in the ways of quests and objectives.

11 Likes
50

Please nerf the azerite crabs, the have too much health, do too much damage, and on top of that have a shield that gets put up way too often that you either need to go through or hope you have a shaman to purge it off. I haven’t even tried the mythic version of island expeditions after 8.1, but knowing that there is an even more difficult version of the crabs there makes me not want to touch it. I’m not even against hard mobs in island expeditions, but the crabs don’t even feel worth it to pull, let alone kill.

Also, adding diminishing returns to mob CC would help a ton.

7 Likes
51

Only done 1 week of islands on an alt, because they are incredibly uninteresting, and seemingly pointless, and i was really only doing it for rep.

No rewards aside from dubloons.

Azerite is just such a crap reward. Getting a map to run a mission table quest for more azerite is just so completely meh…

3 Likes
52

I’ve been doing them since the beginning, and I’ve gotten 4 of the 9 mounts (primarily what I’m chasing), and many of the pets/mogs. I feel that the only way to get what one wants is to multibox or run them ad infinitum. Perhaps it would be best to add all the items to a vendor and allow us to exchange dubloons for the vanity items rather than hoping the lottery favors us each time we run one. Also, I noticed that the drop rate of dubloons was nerfed since the patch launched. Is that intended or accidental?

3 Likes
53

The mount drop rate is still way undertuned, coming from an avid mount collector. It’s frustrating to do the same content over and over when you only care about a small handful of items left there. I have the quests and pets many times over, I’m done with the transmog my mage can use, and I only have 2/8 of the mounts. I know many people who are in a similar situation.

Also, on the mob front. The new crabs who spam a shield and chain stun aren’t fun. Also, the AI teams ability to chain stun with no diminishing returns sucks, especially since you can’t do the same to them. No reason to not enable PVP talents in normals/heroics/mythics.

6 Likes
54

making every single mob have no diminishing returns on their ccs/stuns/disorients is S U P E R E N G A G I N G. sorry for pulling more than 1 pack at a time as intended?

6 Likes
55

Caster-type mobs, particularly the Trolls, deal WAY too much damage. They’re fine if they can’t get their rebuffs off on you, but when there’s 3 of them in a group that each have two different spells to rebuff you by an insane amount, it’s just horrible to deal with.

4 Likes
56

I like the changes to islands in 8.1. They are a lot more fun and varied, since it seems more focused on killing rares and doing events, which is much funner than killing a bunch of random mobs. They also seem to drop more cosmetic items, though they still seem rare.

The only issue I have is that there is little reason for me to do them over other content. For a more casual player like me, AP is just not a compelling reward. AP has always been more of a “consolation prize” sort of thing for me, even back in Legion.

Making the cosmetic rewards easier or more consistant to get would motative me to do more islands. The dubloon vender is a good improvement, but it seems like such a grind to get the mounts, with how few coins you get on each island. Maybe if the weekly quest rewarded a big chunk of dubloons? And of course, more items added to the vendor would be appreciated!

3 Likes
57

Don’t think pulling multiple packs at a time is intended and in fact is discouraged/punished because it draws you away from all the Azerite chests they were protecting which in some cases don’t open until the mobs die.

I HATE when I get stuck with some “hero” tank who pulls half the island and then immediately dies and trains all his mobs onto me while I’m trying loot all the chests/nodes (which are the best source of AP) that he skipped over so he could kill 50 mobs that take 5 minutes and drop a combined 200 AP.

1 Like
58

It feels better not having to worry about your teammates killing the wrong type of mob or looting the wrong thing.

In the future, I hope they don’t scale up in difficulty until the new season actually hits. They feel like they take a bit longer than they should right now. Higher item level at the end of January will probably put it back to where it was before 8.1, in terms of speed.

There are a few annoying abilities.

The most annoying to me are the orbs that the Azerite mobs throw out. Can’t remember the exact ability name - Azerite Resonance? The cast is interruptible, but even the little adds cast it so it’s pretty easy to end up being ping pong’d all over.

Hydro Eruption either casts too fast or has too large of a circle. Very difficult to avoid as melee, and it’ll take out most of your health bar on Heroic.

Sucker Punch from the pirates feels like it stuns a little too long since there’s frequently multiple sucker punches in the same area.

Melee mobs are much easier than caster mobs, in general, but it was the same before the patch.

Some of the enemy teams go a little overboard with slows and CCs. Dorp’s Pain Suppression absorb is absurdly high if an interrupt gets missed. The 2 Blood Elf fire mages spamming disorients and blinking is infuriating. All AI teams seem to attack more often than they did before 8.1. I’m not sure if that was a deliberate change or if it’s because things got scaled up and they will avoid us more once item levels go up. Either way, gear will make them easier to kill, I suppose.

As far as rewards go, drop rate has been about the same as before the patch for me. Would be nice to have a method to multiple your chance at a reward on the islands. The Treasure map has been hit or miss. I got gold, residuum, and AP the first few weeks which was ok. This week I got mail bracers, which felt bad. Maybe transmogs for that should only pull from items your class can use.

Edit: Forgot something. I like the mob placement much better than before patch. Having 1-2 elites, some non-elites, a mix of small and big nodes/chests, and sometimes a rare makes for intuitive routing.

2 Likes
59

Island Expos are just not fun. I don’t care what you do the reward structure, when the base content isn’t fun, the rest doesn’t matter. We didn’t like scenarios in MoP, we don’t like these now. We don’t pay to mindlessly kill easy mobs for 20 minutes. Even casual players do not enjoy this. Everyone wants content that pushes them as a player, not hello kitty island explorer. Stop beating the dead horse and pull the plug.

6 Likes
60

The Azerite Ruptures are terrible time to azerite reward ratio, and if I see them I skip them, and instead just try to grab the azerite shards nearby. The deployable extractor that you gives an instant boost plus a steady steam is much better than this version and feels rewarding to find.

Many elite mobs have high health, but low azerite reward compared to named elites, meaning I have less incentive to fight them and just hunt named rares and the quests which reward higher AP in the same time frame, and killing small mobs that guard a few boxes of AP nearby which take a few seconds to kill, loot the boxes and move on compared to a mob which has 500-700k hp giving out 200 azerite ( elite brightwing and nightwings come to mind).

Certain azerite elementals have a shield that they use too much and become way more annoying to kill.

Old god NPC’s that can use the shadow crash are a bit too hard to detect. The landing zone isn’t easy to see, and even a couple other mobs around makes it difficult to tell that it was cast if you weren’t looking. Other high damage moves usually are flashier. Perhaps the animation could have a landing zone indicator, or go higher into the air?

Troll shadow bolts still hit very hard. And with the tuning of health to azerite, don’t feel rewarding to fight compared to the risk of dying if you pulled one or two too many.

Titan residuum feels unrewarding to get on my alts weekly treasure map, because getting 21 residuum on an 375 DK doesn’t bring me very close to buying even a 370 azerite armor. Either the reward needs to be larger, which would bring problems with RNG on who gets extra titan residuum and thus easier 415 gear from armor vendor, or it needs to not be a chance to appear in my opinion.

Not having to target specific types of enemies for loots feels much better, since I don’t have to worry about missing a rare or having it stolen by horde and not having a chance at a cool pet or transmog.

The pacing of the horde NPC’s collection sometimes is strangely fast, and other times much slower. I’m not sure if this is RNG on where they spawn, which team they are, or what island it is, or perhaps a combination of the three.
However on average I am more worried about the score than before than now. As a 382 guardian druid, that doesn’t feel very good since my gear doesn’t feel like it helped at all and is no different than my 345 paladin.

The 10 minute mark for azerite detector is a bit useless in most islands, as most of them are over by then, or very close to done. Maybe 5-7 minutes before turning on would work better?

1 Like