I think I am already sick of prey and it's only been a few days

Community General Discussion
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Yeah, yeah, I know. Typical complaining and all that. But I’m honestly pretty bummed about how Prey turned out. It feels like the Eco Dome situation all over again. Blizzard hyped it up as this big, grand feature, but it just doesn’t stick the landing.

What was sold as “you are being hunted while hunting your enemy” basically boils down to: kill rares, do world quests, click red orbs on the ground. Your prey shows up, attacks you, and you think, “Okay, cool, can I kill it now?” Nope. Every time it hits 50% health, it becomes immune and runs away. You repeat this about ten times, then finally you’re allowed to kill it.

It just feels repetitive and grindy, but not in a good way. Dungeons are repetitive and grindy, but I enjoy them. Delves are repetitive and grindy, but I enjoy them. Raids are repetitive and grindy, but I enjoy them. Those activities are clear and engaging for different reasons. This just feels lame. It’s basically asking you to do the same chores you would normally do, except occasionally your prey shows up to go, “Haha, it’s me! Look at me!” then becomes immune and runs off again. You can’t actually finish the encounter until Blizzard decides you’ve done enough arbitrary tasks through a vague progress system that doesn’t even show how close you are. It just drags things out in a way that feels annoying instead of epic.

I don’t know exactly what I expected when they marketed it as this whole “hunt or be hunted” experience, but the system as it stands is just kind of disappointing.

And I don’t think it’s a difficulty issue either. Making it harder wouldn’t suddenly make it interesting. It just feels boring and uninspired.

For what it’s worth, I love the Midnight dungeons, and I love the Midnight delves, even though I haven’t done as many as I want yet. But Prey feels unnecessary, tacked on, and awkward in how it fits into the game. It could have been cool if it were its own system, but instead it’s bolted onto the open world in a way that feels out of place. Honestly, I’d argue that Remix’s heroic world tier was more interesting, and that was basically just world affixes for better rewards. Prey just feels like something you have to go out of your way for while waiting for Blizzard to say, “Okay, now you can have your fun. You did enough random stuff.”

I don’t know. I realize GD is basically complaining all the time, and I’m definitely part of that right now, but this feature feels like a huge letdown. I kind of wish they had invested that time and effort into expanding Delves instead of what we got.

Who knows. Maybe .1 or .2 will bring major improvements, and by the end of Midnight it could be awesome. Right now, though, it just feels like a chore layered on top of existing chores. Like, “Go do your chores, but with extra chores for a brief moment of fun.”

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Honestly that’s fair feedback. I can see how it can feel a bit underwhelming when maybe the effort needed to get it done exceeds say the same time you’d get a Delve reward.

While I agree with some of your feedback - I think prey does solve some feeling of wanting world to be a little bit more engaging. Many of us are on the reputation grind to get our factions up. This adds a tiny bit of pazazz.

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I think part of my disappointment comes from what I was hoping Prey would be versus what we actually got. I was expecting something less tied to pre-existing content. Instead of “go do world quests, kill rares, and click red blood globs until you can finally kill your target,” I was hoping for more of an actual hunting experience.

Something like: they exist in the open world, you find their tracks, figure out where they are as they dynamically roam, and then take them down. Maybe along the way you run into unique events tied to them, injured victims you have to help, environmental damage they caused, clues that lead you closer, things like that. That would have felt immersive and thematic.

I think the biggest issue for me is that you have to accept a prey target and then go do normal chores to fill a hidden progress bar. That doesn’t feel like hunting or being hunted. It feels like unlocking permission to fight something after doing unrelated tasks.

Even something simpler could have worked. Maybe the prey is easy to find, but you have to weaken them first by doing things around the zone. Lure them into traps, work with NPCs to create tools that hinder them, sabotage their territory, whatever. Then the final confrontation feels earned because you actually interacted with the world in a meaningful way.

I would love to see more open world systems like this in general. I just think the way Prey was implemented, compared to how it was marketed, ends up feeling much less grand and interesting in practice than it sounded in theory.

And don’t get me wrong, I am genuinely glad Blizzard is trying something new. I want them to experiment with systems and take risks instead of playing it safe all the time. I just think this one was a bit oversold, similar to how Eco Dome was presented versus how it actually played out.

At the end of the day, Prey mostly feels like you are opting into extra steps layered on top of the normal chores you were already going to do. That disconnect between the marketing and the reality is where a lot of the disappointment comes from for me.

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I assumed it would work like randomly getting ambushed by the delve seasonal boss in TWW. Except in the over world.

I guess that’s not the case.

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Yeah, not exactly a feature that sells the expac. I would like to see something more from the prey system.

Any ideas on how to make it better?

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That does kind of happen, but only while you are doing daily quests, killing rares, or interacting with the blood globs scattered around the zone. All of that is just to fill a progress bar you cannot really see, even though it sits at the top of your screen. It shows a crystal and vaguely tells you when you are getting closer to being allowed to find the prey NPC.

Yeah, I kind of posed two ideas in an earlier reply.

Either make them more like a Fel Reaver. Easy to find, but you need to figure out ways to weaken them before engaging by working with people (NPC’s) in the zone. As you do things, if you get too close to where they are roaming, they could, similar to Island Expedition NPCs, start hunting you. So if you have not weakened them or prepared enough, it could end up being deadly. At the same time, you could use that to your advantage. If they chase you, you could lead them into a trap you set up in the area.

Or, alternatively, still keep them dynamically roaming, but you have to find their tracks and clean up the damage they caused as you figure out where they are. Help people they hurt along the way, deal with the aftermath, and follow the trail until you finally reach them.

The problem is that, looking at how this system is currently implemented, both of those ideas would be far more work. The current prey system just feels tacked on, whereas something like the above would require a lot more development to implement properly.

But that goes back to my whole point about how they oversold the system from the start. They made it sound like you were actually hunting something, not filling a progress bar by doing world quests and similar activities.

My gut tells me they probably did not have the time or resources to fully bring the idea to life which is a real shame.

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Interesting takes on how to improve the experience. You may be correct about them not having enough time to make it better.

After some contemplation on the things that you said and your ideas, I think I would make them more class-based.

So for example a paladin would have to use a bubble in order to deal damage. But at the correct phases of the fight. Meaning you can’t bubble in the phases between, where you may feel more inclined to.

Maybe even a Class based extra action button, imagine your paladin being able to have a mass Rez or a sick looking light beam damage attack that would be extra overpowered in other parts of the game. Perhaps having to gather anguish in order to empower or charge the ability to full power…

Things like that probably more thought out though and for each class. So lower difficulties will basically test you on how well you know your class/spec abilities. While higher difficulty prey test your ability handling mechanics, even more so. All while giving each class or spec a cool finisher move to end the engagement.

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I’m really looking forward to trying Prey myself for more informative feedback, I just finished the campaign last night, but holding until 90 for the best gear possible.

I can say this though: I want Prey to be a mode where you learn of bounties placed on you, the player. And this fellow hunts you down, everywhere you go. Old zones, new zones, the shady part of towns, they want you dead and to make it stop you need to find out who it is, where they are, and most importantly, how to stop them.

Some may say getting ganked is an inconvenience, but that’s what you sign up for, and I just want them to be able to ruin your day until you can take them out.

I don’t think Prey will be that, but I want it to be.

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probably like everything else in the game…some will hate it, some will love it, the rest will be neither here nor there…but it’ll get used enough anyway IF the rewards make it worth it.

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Oh. That sounds like it’ll get real old real fast. I had thought the Prety system was just an evolution of Grand Hunts from DF but I guess not.

So I generally liked the open world events in DF, mainly because they weren’t really that annoying. I mean I never bothered with the Azerothian Archives they added later or whatever it’s called. But the cooking, Dreamsurge, Time Rifts (there was some issues here), Siege (this should’ve been more often), Grand Hunts, etc were all fine. Oh, Researchers Under Fire kinda sucked but so did all of ZC.

But in TWW? Awakening hte Machine,? Ugh. Theater Troupe? It gets old. Spreading the Light? This was OK. The rest were really just doing WQs.

I mean you can measure my participation by how short on resonant crystals I am from buying everything and… it’s a lot.

Nothing I’d seen in the beta for Midnight made me think “I want to play that”. Literally nothing. I regretted buying TWW. I didn’t buy Midnight. Remix waiting room.

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I feel like there’s a disconnect if that’s how you felt it was sold, or how they sold it.

The idea for Prey (and their earlier trial version through Remix’s “hard mode”) is that you’re opting for an additional difficulty layer as a person who’s focused on doing world content. So if it’s something you’re trying to do from the point of activate a hunt, then focus solely on finishing the hunt, it’s definitely going to feel more annoying - because it’s not meant to be something in isolation in the same way that, say, any of the other world events are.

To that extent, you may also be missing out on some of the stuff like the Riposte mechanic. I don’t think I’ve had to “work” more than 10 or so minutes to reveal the prey; just by doing one world quest, having them ambush me 2-3 times while doing that, I’ve usually got the prey revealed and just waiting for me to go kill them whenever convenient.

Blizzard did make several mistakes in how they released it though. First, having it be Normal mode only for EA is giving us the lamest version of it. It’s not even activated for the levelling experience, so that’s even lamer. In theory, if you’re running Nightmare mode with the extra affixes and stuff on a much lower geared character several weeks from now, THAT is the Prey experience they were trying to sell to people; it’s just this is the version that first went live because they can’t ever figure out that you’re supposed to engage people with the best version of a feature immediately.

Some other parts of it that they messed up is the idea of having to activate it one by one for a specific zone, and that you need to port back to activate it. It just doesn’t really flow well to start with, because it keeps interrupting you if you want to keep active hunts going.

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More like literally just click the red orbs. When I did mine, there was not a SINGLE rare that would spawn. Silver Dragon was dead silent. Also there were only three WQs so I literally had to spend the entire time flying around looking for the red shard.

I had it it my mind that it would be you sign up, and while in the world you get jumped. THAT sounds fun. Just fishing and then WHAM i get walloped. That would be cool.

But nope. Its just a stupid scavenger hunt with a slight chance of death if you are bad.

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You are doing the easy mode leveling version and there’s 4 of them.

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:man_shrugging:

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Wait, this was supposed to be the big expansion feature? Lol. It’s literally “do what you’re already doing except sometimes an extra dude attacks you”

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Funny thing about this is it sounds way more boring than just getting to blast everything in my path.

Different strokes for different folks.

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… did they?
It was like a “oh theres also this” after five minutes of housing.

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whats the reward? anything good?

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You’re not wrong - the whole prey system is a soulless grind. You can tell it was designed to be implemented in the least effort way possible, easily able to recycle and drop in random mobs.

There is nothing interesting or exciting about the system at all.

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Yeah I didnt enjoy the prey system. Hopefully I can avoid it going forward.

Apparently the first 2 boxes drop 220 gear but Im having more fun spamming dungeons and delves for random loot lol.