Give us our dungeons back

[Azokhar-stormrage]

Lol good one

[Nifelheim-khadgar]

@Meriweather-thunderlord

What is it that you want from the game? What is it that you think we’re arguing about here today? You just keep coming at me, and I have tried to respond to figure out what the core issue is. It’s clearly not alternate paths to gear, because like 10 people lined those up for you. It’s clearly not a path to raiding because you’ve said you don’t want to raid.

I’m not gonna speak for Shamrond, they can def speak for themselves, I’ve seen. But since they quoted me, I’ll try to shed some light on my perspective.

You noticed how point number 3 up there lays out how the border between casuals and hardcores, once roughly coterminous with the border between raid and 5-man content*, isn’t any longer. You could once virtually interchangeably label a hardcore player as a “raider”, more or less.

*Edit: “5-man content” probably wasn’t the right term to use when I meant the world and leveling experience; dungeons back then were over large level ranges and meant to be explored in different pieces by different people, so it’s not very applicable to the modern content striation

Well, that’s changed over the years. I’d say it’s been a pretty steady drop, but the casual raider has pretty much entirely eclipsed the Vanilla casual as the de jure low-tier content demographic.

The Vanilla-style casual just doesn’t have much meaningful, rewarding content left to them before being asked to make the leap to playing what the developers clearly consider to be the actual game. It’s almost like they aren’t expected to exist. You ask for that now, and people are completely bewildered. It’s like asking people to see the color plorgle. That’s how these circular conversations get spinning on here.

I don’t want a “gear path”, I just want the part of the game meant for me to feel complete, rewarding, and meaningful, like it used to be designed. Hell, at this point I’d settle for “meant to be experienced by a real living human being”.

I used to raid, but I don’t feel much call to it nowadays, because this game is honestly kind of anti-social outside of the prescribed premier experience. I don’t need any more of a conveyor belt to the raid experience than I already have; I’m actively avoiding that conveyor belt and finding it impossible.

iLvl bloat gets brought up because it’s emblematic of the desertification of the world experience for the sake of endgame. It’s not really the problem, just a symptom of the prevailing design outlook.

I can either jump into the fray, restrict myself to queues (which are awful and unrewarding), or just resign myself to the content “meant” for me, which is basically digging latrines on a list so every week I get pity-bumped to the next prescribed character value number.

Like I’d said, I don’t wanna take away peoples’ stuff. I just wish that stuff didn’t have to come at my expense.

[Shantarin-wyrmrest-accord (Shantarin)]

There’s no scaling rewards.

Legit, the only problem with M+ is the fact that the only game mode for it is time attack.

[Clarrisse-korgath]

Let’s just go back to the design philosophy of cata heroic 5mans and tell the complainers to stick to normal mode.

[Raiimir-stormrage]

@Nifelheim-khadgar

I don’t want a “gear path”, I just want the part of the game meant for me to feel complete, rewarding, and meaningful, like it used to be designed.

This is only true if you raided.

Otherwise, the game always abruptly stopped progression wise.

If anything, you have this now more than ever with all content spheres allowing for a way to pursue progression well beyond the initial “toe dip” per se.

[Deathriana-whisperwind]

I agree that world content has often been forsaken and pretty much exists to serve the endgame, that’s a fair point.

[Snapex-moon-guard]

I agree OP but you’re gonna get nowhere with these people. M+ greatly appeals to gamers with ADHD who require constant stimulation and challenge due to their inability to stop, look around, and appreciate the environment.

They require stimulation in order to silence their overactive minds full of negative thoughts and inability to be satisfied, hence the endless ladder of keys. They don’t play games for an immersive adventure anymore, they play to get their FIX of mental stimulation.

Therefore they REQUIRE the gogogogo mindset. And blizzard relies on this type of player because these are the people that watch streamers, who are basically free advertisements. This is how games are now, the past is gone.

[Pyri-shadowsong]

that’s definitely true. everyone who enjoys things you don’t enjoy undoubtedly has a mental disorder of some kind. tell us how you feel about people who dress in a way you don’t approve of

[Nifelheim-khadgar]

It’s not quite about the experience ending abruptly so much as there being just less depth of play and less sense of being in a living world. Less community interaction at that level, too. Far less.

Take the scope and texture of the casual leveling experience. I can exhaust what’s available to me now in far less time before being put on a very transparent WQ/Covenant filler pattern. I greatly dislike the class fragmentation and homogeneity for the sake of flexibility, utility, and ease of viability tuning (lol). A lot of QoL stuff has smoothed out the granular engagement of playing the game moment to moment. Just going on a quest and fighting a mob feels more satisfying and engaging in Classic.

This, again, is stuff that I’ve found generally hard to convey to people when the game’s long bought into the perceptions of its upper echelon about the purpose of the leveling and world experience being to gatekeep raiding.

[Angrymama-zuljin]

@Allolria-khazgoroth

Instead of the classic WOW MMORPG experience of dungeon crawling,

Not sure I want to spend 2 hours per dung. But thanks no thanks.

@Allolria-khazgoroth

A timer doesn’t suddenly make a dungeon take more skil

Oh yes it does. You learn paths, little gimmicks. Did you know, for example, that in Plaguefall you can use barrels to deal damage to enemies? It is not that easy to position a pack of mobs to friendly fire and prevent your teammates getting hit at the same time. So yes, you’re pushing your abilities and thus you get better.

@Allolria-khazgoroth

it just promotes a gogogo speed clearing mentality.

YES! AND I LOVE IT!

@Allolria-khazgoroth

I am completely disconnected from the dungeon.

Turn sound on? Music. Ambient sounds are dope!

@Allolria-khazgoroth

Ideally we would have a set ilvl in the dungeon and dungeons of different difficulties.

Yeah, we have that. Normal 158 and Heroic 171 or something. M0 184 and so on.

@Allolria-khazgoroth

Leave M+ for the people who enjoy the gogogogogo timed diablo content.

But didn’t you just say to get rid of it? I am confused.

[Snapex-moon-guard]

Cope cope cope

You know I’m right. It’s a sad fact of the gaming in industry nowadays that games are created to appeal to the mentally ill as literal drugs.

[Raiimir-stormrage]

@Nifelheim-khadgar

It’s not quite about the experience ending abruptly so much as there being just less depth of play and less sense of being in a living world. Less community interaction at that level, too. Far less.

Uh ? Community interaction exists at all levels pretty much. It’s called guilds.

@Nifelheim-khadgar

Just going on a quest and fighting a mob feels more satisfying and engaging in Classic.

Errr. you and I play a very different Classic. Just going on a quest in Classic feels like pulling teeth to me now that I’ve experienced a much more modern WoW questing experience with actual story lines and well designed questing hubs.

@Nifelheim-khadgar

This, again, is stuff that I’ve found generally hard to convey to people when the game’s long bought into the perceptions of its upper echelon about the purpose of the leveling and world experience being to gatekeep raiding.

Maybe if you didn’t use random words from a Thesaurus and instead actually explained your thoughts, you’d have better luck.

[Angrymama-zuljin]

@Allolria-khazgoroth

Progression used to be farm dungeons for BIS > get raid loot slowly. This was a lot more fun.

You can still do it if you want to.
Normal > Heroic > LFR > Normal raid > Heroic raid > Mythic raid.

You probably forgot how hard, back in Wrath let’s say, it was to actually go from Normal to Heroic. ICC10 N vs HC? You had to have almost every piece (besides other BIS from other places like ToC5 tank trinket) 251 ilvl to even attempt 264 Heroic 10.

@Allolria-khazgoroth

M0 is irrelevant after the first 2 weeks of the expansion.

But if M0 becomes irrelevant…don’t you think there should be something else to do?

@Allolria-khazgoroth

They have taken away the relevance. 5 man dungeons used to be relevant for a lot longer than they are now.

LOL

[Bynde-thrall (Bynde)]

My question is, and I sadly think I know the answer…I am chap 2 of Kyrian campaign and I have to do dungeon Spires of Asc.

Can I not proceed in the chapters until I do this?

[Weeven-illidan]

@Flappydrood-area-52

Nothing changed, though. M0’s still exist. M+ allows for a new challenge with existing content. It’s a good thing.

Then why not offer an alternate progressive difficulty dungeon mode without timers?

[Thôr-silver-hand (Thôr)]

Well they dont care about what you want they want that esport ad rev its the whole reason they created that crapfest mythic event. If you all stopped watching that dumpster fire they wouldnt have kept pushing it. Now we got SL torgast and the worse dungeons since cata.

[Nifelheim-khadgar]

@Raiimir-stormrage

Uh ? Community interaction exists at all levels pretty much. It’s called guilds.

Nah, world content design nowadays means everyone I see may as well be an NPC who’s kinda in the way of my path to max level. Far less emergent social structure. The guild is everyone’s favorite get out of jail free card talking about this, because it’s the only piece of the original design left standing. It was never intended to hold the entire thing up on its own.

@Raiimir-stormrage

Errr. you and I play a very different Classic. Just going on a quest in Classic feels like pulling teeth to me now that I’ve experienced a much more modern WoW questing experience with actual story lines and well designed questing hubs.

I don’t think so. I think you and I are just different people who get different value from the game. Story’s cool, quest hubs are alright, but chewing through scaled content like a combine harvester loose at a Wendy’s all by myself is less fulfilling than the slow burn of playing my class back then.

And I wanna point out here: There’s a gradient slide between Vanilla and now; it isn’t a series of discrete lurches, one of which breaks the game and labels its xpac the point of failure.

@Raiimir-stormrage

Maybe if you didn’t use random words from a Thesaurus and instead actually explained your thoughts, you’d have better luck.

Weirdly antagonistic.

[Tékota-malganis]

@Kacashi-malganis

I didn’t play Vanilla, did you get the best pieces of gear from dungeons? Or from the raids?

There’s a few pieces that were bis from dungeons but only up until a certain point of course. Pretty sure nothing surpasses Naxxaramas. Maybe just some of the last pieces of dungeon 2.0 sets

[Sarama-firetree]

@Shamrond-lightbringer

on weekend nights you block out two solid hours with no pause button and no in-home distractions to play a video game.

There’s plenty of guilds out there taking breaks during the raid and where needing to afk because something happened comes up.

[Raiimir-stormrage]

@Nifelheim-khadgar

Nah, world content design nowadays means everyone I see may as well be an NPC who’s kinda in the way of my path to max level.

Same as Classic really. Solo leveling as always been faster than grouping. Doesn’t mean you can’t group level. A lot of people do. This is a personal choice.

@Nifelheim-khadgar

I don’t think so. I think you and I are just different people who get different value from the game.

Maybe, but there’s nothing immersive to me in the Classic leveling experience. It’s disjointed 1 off quests with no actual story motivation or pay off. You do a chore because someone asked and that’s the end of it.

@Nifelheim-khadgar

There’s a gradient slide between Vanilla and now; it isn’t a series of discrete lurches, one of which breaks the game and labels its xpac the point of failure

There really isn’t. There’s a clean break around Cataclysm and moving forward, and TBC/WotLK and Classic era questing.

What we have since Cataclysm is polished, and offers an actual RPG story telling experience while leveling, while what we had in Classic/TBC/WotLK was mostly a series of unrelated chores. The break is easy to see.

@Nifelheim-khadgar

Weirdly antagonistic.

There’s no point in using big words when you have what are albeit, very small and oddly stereotypical ideas of “Classic >> Retail” in the end.

Let’s face it : Classic is on the launcher now, we can see how much nostalgia was responsible for most “Game was better before!” rants. It isn’t, Classic is hot garbage, it’s exactly what I remembered it to be. The game is massively better now.