Feedback: Recent Updates to Holiday Events

Community WoW Community Council
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Hi,

Hallow’s End is here, and I feel like giving feedback to it.

The good:

I love the new fight, and I think it’s really great that activating Hard Mode is per individual character.
The new offhand item from the vendor looks stunning.

The bad & the ugly:
So, I am going to sound like a broken record, but I don’t care I am going to say it anyway. Having the Manuscript for this event on such a low RNG drop rate feels really bad, it’s not worth the reward granted how much time you can/have/want to put into, having it as currency on top of having it drop would solve a lot.

The same goes for the new pet, Arfus. I honestly want a reason why the pet could not be both a drop AND be added to the vendor to buy it.

Why is there still a cap on how many dungeons you can do for holiday dungeons like these in a certain amount of time?

This whole extra chance of loot is woefully confusing, plus now with the curses and the information Blizzard themselves applied feel only half of the information after blue posts given on this subject

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I think it’s completely reasonable to have systems in place that doesn’t guarantee a drop. That has an element of serious randomness.
The game need many different options for drops / loot. It should be experimenting constantly with new systems.

The silly low drop chance for some items could use tweaking for sure though.

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I never said the drop has to be guaranteed? Just have a backup in place so that you haven’t wasted 14 days of queueing with multiple characters without anything to show for.

No collector will ask for an easy way out, just… make it less stressful, annoying and unfair.

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The good: The 4 affixes make the fight more interesting.
The bad: Fight curse achievement is bugged, may have to do multiple times.

I got the cosmetic on the first try. I agree about the cap, it’s also in place for other holiday events/in general (love rocket farming is the worst for me trying to push cap). I don’t yet have Arfus, but it’s nice to have additions to the old event (for those of us with the mount and everything else done from previous years, granted it’s all varying RNG with drops). Hmm, Only reason I can see the pet not going on the vendor is it will become more common. I see your side also.

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Love to see threads like this, and I was going to start one myself if you hadn’t, so I’ve updated your thread title and want to ask everyone to please continue the discussion with anything you’d like to say about recent updates to in-game holiday events. We’re all ears.

Thank you!

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The 4 masks are a very cool addition. Especially in comparison to the Brewfest boss that falls over in 5 seconds, the Headless Horseman with 4 masks is actually a fun (albeit still short at around 1 minute) encounter to do.

Just in general I don’t think making everything deterministic (ie putting all the cosmetics on the vendor, dinars etc) is a good idea. There’s definitely an issue with people being too unlucky, but BLP is a more elegant solution, particularly for drops that are completely personal. The feeling of actually finally getting that drop is just completely incomparable to rolling up to a vendor and buying it.

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Perhaps an interesting way to think about why the manuscript itself can be overly frustrating to get is that, currently, dragonriding and by relationg drake manuscripts, are a Dragonflight expansion feature. There has been lengthy discussion and hinting at expanding dragonriding past the expansion, however in the present, that is not confirmed. So about 1 year into DF, we have had 2 holidays with manuscripts added with moderate variance of acquisition.

By this time next year, it is a possibility we will not be in DF anymore. If this isn’t the case, the holiday events will return with a very short duration left on the expansion. These specific manuscript rewards then will essentially lose their relevance.

My 2 cents on the subject are that expansion related rewards being added to holiday events/holiday rewards being updated is a really positive addition. But, not having a deterministic way to get them feels really bad. Arfus on the other hand is a pet reward added. Although it may be frustrating to not get it myself this year, I don’t/won’t feel as defeated knowing eventually obtaining it in a future Hallow’s End will not take away from the uniqueness of the cosmetic.

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I feel like day one clarification needs to be addressed when a new system that helps increase drop rates like this is put into place.

Clarifying what is affected by the new system as well as how many times a day the new system can offer the boost would be helpful.

I would also like the echo the sentiment about Arfus having an alternative way to get him such as tricky treat vendor given that we cannot cage/trade him. The same goes for the drakewatch scripts from all events.

As it stands now without further clarification on these new systems people are having to run through 5+ minute Horseman fights and 8-15 minute queues per horseman across 10+ characters thus wasting a lot of time in their day they could be doing something else if it was said day one that the pet and other rewards were boosted chance for the first run of the day only.

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With the increasing amount of attention dragon riding has been given past the initial launch of the expansion. Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Outland racing (Achievement is available in game currently), and presumably other regions soon™. The plausability that continued iterations leading to Dragon Riding being permament does sound likely, no?

If that is the case, Blizzard withholding an update to items that drop seasonally and their potentially nugatory drop rate would be in line with Internal design. It’s a foregone conclusion that riding will be here one day for all, so they could justify. The seasonal drops would, by that logic, be here for years to come.

If that were true, would that be such a bad thing?

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not including Scarlet monestary feedback as Ive already posted about it but other general feedback for holidays: (this is mostly quest related as thats my area of knowledge)

Brewfest:
honestly barely noticed the changes to this, we got a couple neat breadcrumb quests to lead to brewfest from new locations, Id say the only note on this is we have no way of knowing if these are going to reset next year or not,

Hallows End:
The new headless horseman questchain was quite fun, really nothing negative to say about it at all, little specialty questchains are are really neat in general, hope to see more in future patches,
My only downside to this revamp is the inability to access the original headless horseman fight, I created my WoW account in BFA, and the questchain surrounding the original fight was still in game, but bugged so you couldnt start it, so I never got to do it, it was a lot less exciting than the new one, but I really would have liked the chance to do it.

Trial of style: the quests all around dragon isles to do various emotes was very entertaining, I had a good time running around to all of those, and also it was a fun hunt for the collecting communities to find all, we were a bit perplexed when a few weeks after the event we all lost credit for the quests,

In general:
We could really use a tag on the yearly quests, there currently is zero way to tell which holiday quests we can collect and which we can do every year without just waiting the full year to see if we lose credit,

Future holiday hopes:
-option to do the old headless horseman fight and questchain in hallows end
-Man on the inside quest for both factions in Love is in the air to return, they arent removed from the game but you cant currently accept them, causing a gap in the questchain
-Ahune, The frost lord, and Ahune is here quests for the midsummer questchain to be offered again, again neither is removed from the game, but you cant accept either, I think this is a bug relating to the npc Numa Cloudsister not spawning, it would be great to see this fixed/changed for next summer :slight_smile:

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I think in general what we can take away from all this, is that the holidays are supposed to be fun, mainly collectors are active during these holidays and participate in activities, I feel like I speak for many that Hallow’s End, Brewfest, and Love is in the Air doesn’t make us excited, it gives a dread like feeling of having to battle RNG to get an item. And I don’t think this is what these holidays should be about, we have enough RNG in the game to ‘‘play with’’

Queue times, time-based RNG, and dungeon queue caps are all things that can easily be solved and made feel less stressful.

Queue times - Make Horde and Alliance be able to join up (and fix the queue bug)
Dungeon Cap Queue - Remove them for the holiday dungeons
Time-based RNG: These holidays have multiple activities, there are dungeons, dailies, and other activities for tokens. Why not let people who want to get those items, be able to farm them by doing the dailies and activities and or queueing for the dungeons? Increase the currency for the items fairly higher, especially for the new ones, so the holidays will feel less dead outside of the dungeons.

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Actually another point regarding the updates to Headless Horseman: the ability to choose your own difficulty is fantastic and something that’s probably worth exploring for at least some other content (not sure about raid/M+). Being able to play with friends and letting everybody tune the difficulty to something that suits them seems like a very good feature.

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This 100%. I’m dreading every time I queue for these holiday dungeons now, especially the Horseman since his fight was made a bit longer than the original. Top it off with not one but now three things that feel extremely rare off the Horseman and it’s just a disaster of dread.

I’m running 30 alts through every day and that essentially eats up my entire day. I want to go do other things but by the time my runs are over I do not want to play WoW anymore. This is such a stressful event when I could be much happier farming the candy via buckets or daily activities to get the rewards I want.

Also without further clarification on how drops are affected/how many times a day, people are forced to run through these dungeons multiple times if they really want something from the pumpkins and thus causes burn out and the want to not play WoW at all till the next day.

Like Cyrios said we shouldn’t feel dread doing these. We shouldnt fear not getting a drop and continue holding out hope for nothing.

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Is that a result of player behaviour and not forced game mechanics.

At what point does it go from being you are guaranteed loot at a certain point from endlessly running something to no avail.

How does Blizzard constitute that in game for future events?

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You do realize that these RNG drops are implemented to mess with our brains so we keep playing?

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I’m not saying it has to be a guarantied drop, but you seem to have failed to notice this:

They have the ability to make Holidays balanced and less stressful so that no one feels like they are required to constantly do just the dungeon alone.

You’ve continuously been picking apart our feedback for certain “keywords” and claiming we want guarantied drops when that is FAR from the case. If you’re going to counter argue a point, please read ALL of our posts because the kind of rhetoric that you’re putting words into our mouth is very tiresome and slightly agitating.

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Are farming and grinding not enough?
In my opinion getting the result of RNG is much more exciting than boring repetitive farming of specific currency.
You should never expect to “get” a RNG item. You just try your luck. And is there a holiday item that is essential for a character progression? Isn’t the low drop chance what makes an item more desirable? Would you farm an item that everyone has?

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That’s your opinion which you are entitled to, but to me, doing the boss over and over for 2 weeks in a row on multiple characters without anything to show for is the definition of unfun.

I don’t care if ‘‘everyone’’ has an item, that’s not what collectors are about, we… collect stuff to get closer to the 100%.

Besides, the solution I gave, you can either grind currency or ‘‘try your luck.’’

I am fine with RNG in the game, just not RNG with only able to get those items 14 days a year.

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This. It’s one thing to have RNG on something you can try your luck at year round. But to have it on something time limited with no alternative such as farm currency is another. Someone could get unlucky for several years in a row.

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Cyrios has asked for guaranteed loot chance in so many words in multiple threads now. This was what I was refering to.

I was providing contrast. Objective options to a question that was put forth. I’m not here to coddle players with flat, yes or no.

I want discussions. I want You and others to identify whats wrong and how to fix it. Not just ideally say it’s broken.

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