Unfortunately, it has been the revers to that with WoW. One might argue that one of the key demographics WoW was designed to cater to were solo players. Imagine the consternation, then when low level profession progressions were gated behind dungeon and PvP content, for example. It doesn’t seem to be that bad now, but I’ve done very little content from the current expansion so far.
1 Like
I’m an older player and find that my reaction times aren’t exactly what they should be anymore. I don’t raid or run dungeons these days due to my inability to respond fast enough - hence, I do play solo all of the time unless I’m with an RP group and I can chat my way through that.
1 Like
There’s that to be sure. There’s also, for me, the inability to plan when ic an enter the game, and for how long. That makes it very difficult to be part of an active guild, and pick up groups, in my experience, are just not fun nearly all the time.
Problem is that to make almost anything nowadays you need those items that only drop in dungeons and raids. And you usually need to make those items to max your profession. I wish they would go back to the model where they put the recipe for end game items into the instances and left the materials out, unless it is only required to craft that end game item.
1 Like
That’s fair. But that subset of players is -extremely- small. Things like one-time big rewards (think MOP legendary questline), that sort of progression for solo play would be great. I have a hardcore raider mindset, but “effort-driven solo content” is how I enjoy my time outside raids.
With regards to professions… simply put, I agree. They need a revamp on professions and bring more RPG elements to the game. Making professions difficult to max out is fine, and raid mats are fine, but rare patterns should exist from world content. (I actually don’t mind this type of gear being Heroic-quality, given it was BOP).
(I have a lot of profession ideas posted on the forums, but it’s way too bulky for this topic.)
2 Likes
I don’t argue for stuff like single player raids, I will argue for allowing less than full group queueing for stuff like IEs or dungeons so that if you have a guild like I had in Wrath that was smashing through everything with just 3 of us that isn’t punished. I’d really like to see how far I could get in IEs by myself.
I feel there needs to be a way for questing characters to somewhat keep up with raiders gearwise, just because the new zones get balanced with at least some raid gear in mind, so there needs to at least be a way to progress on your own to handle the stuff you run into solo questing.
I just want them to get as far away from what they did in Legion as possible, there was just a lot of lazy “we’ll just throw a trinket into the dungeon near the end boss they have to pick up” profession (and archeology) quests that didn’t need to be in there. And not just for solo players, even when I had a guild it was nice to have some sort of wind down activity I could do in game while chatting to the guild and not have to pay that much attention to.
1 Like
Meh. Mmo just means a lot of people are playing a online game, that may, or may not have options to group up with others. A lot of online fps games were called mmo’s back in the day, and still might be by the folks who play games in that genre. It’s just funny that a lot of people who play this game think that wow, or other rpg type games are the only games that can possibly be called a mmo lol.
4 Likes
Ah so I have the same access to get that 455 OP trinket one of my guildy rogues got for failboating a 10 to completion?
Oh wait, nope. I was randomly given a 440 belt with garbo stats for timing a 10 skillfully and pushing an 11 from my chest!
Having the same CHANCE at getting something randomly and having deterministic access to something are entirely different.
One is completely garbage and ends up wasting someone’s time and effort, which also leaving them less than competitive if they decide to boycott the whole system altogether. Basically, if you want to be powerful in this game, you have to do everything AND you have to get lucky while doing it. That is top tier garbage design.
1 Like
A simple fix for this would be to allow flexible dungeons and raids. The difficulty would balance to how many people are in the instance. If the raid or dungeon only has one participant entering without a group, then mobs and mechanics adjust for solo play. If the group is 10 or even up to 40, then added mechanics and enemy health scales up to make it challenging for a group of up to 40.
Example: If a solo player walked into a raid like the Tomb of Sargeras, and had no party, then the whole instance would adjust to solo play. The difference is that certain mechanics will be missing to make it viable for solo play, but telegraphed attacks from bosses will make you have to move frequently. Since it’ll be solo-compatible, you’ll have to be cautious like if you were playing Dark Souls. Depending on the difficulty setting of the raid, the boss will have more health.
Auto-attacks will have to be tuned down for solo play, or disabled entirely. Operating a dungeon to operate in single-player mode though will set it on the heroic or raid timer, so you’ll be waiting a day to a week depending on if it is relevant or not. Solo should have a separate instancing though from groups.
I can see solo mode having the gear be made into craftable parts, like it says “You must gather 5 chest fragments to craft a chest piece”, so based on chance, you could get all 5 pieces of your chest in a single run, or you could end up with only one piece. I wouldn’t mind having to farm a raid I could solo if I had to put each piece together. Things like rings and trinkets though would have to be available as is, due to the simple construction.
Maybe make the armor fragments require a crafting profession in order to put it together, making professions like Leatherworking, Tailoring, and Blacksmithing critically important for solo progression. So say you picked up 5 pieces for the plate chest, you can only put them together if you’re a blacksmith, and you have to be near an anvil.
Even make soloable craftables into something of a quicktime event to make it a bigger time sink. Press the corresponding command when the trainer tells you to. Get it done without fail and your normal mode has a chance to become better than mythic+ gear!
Put raiding on a backseat for an expansion or two, focus on solo content more. Make it more solo friendly.
And for the love of Christ Blizzard! ADD battlegrounds! We liked Strand of the Ancients, and hate the Kotmogu and Deepwind battlegrounds! Also, put fixed stats back in to battlegrounds so twinking dies! And NEVER listen to arena babies who think they are entitled to faceroll under-geared players because they touch themselves over arena rankings!
2 Likes
Im just here to kill Gnomes.
I’m a kindergarten teacher and that’s the only thing that keeps me going.
Don’t judge me.
*no really a kindergarten teacher.
No, the endgame content is what makes wow a better mmo than most, cutting on it would be like cutting the best part of wow.
That doesn’t mean they can’t make more solo content, but asking to cut your best content isn’t how you should do it.
I’m all for normal dungeons and LFR difficulty be doable solo or more content like mage tower and chromie scenario and more profession stuff. But again, that doesn’t mean because you prefer solo gameplay that everything should be doable solo and cater to solo players.
3 Likes
Agreed. The raids are the “meat and potatoes” of the game. Most of the epic lore is in the raids.
1 Like
Raiding isn’t as big as it’s hyped to be. It can take a back seat for ONE expansion.
Battle For Azeroth was all set to be the strictly PVP expansion by it’s name alone. Blizzard could have focused on making more battlegrounds. There are some themes we have yet to see.
One being, an airship themed PVP battleground. Two airships, two armies shooting at each other. The ships could either move in set patterns, or have one player steer while the rest of the group shoots. Things like boarding the enemy ship to disable canons would be downright chaotic. Between rocket launchers aimed at canons above and below deck, and then the ship having it’s ultimate attack as a one-hit-kill finale. It could have a team size limit of 20 people.
There ya go, a new battleground idea that is unique.
1 Like
So how hype do you think the other scenes are? Viewership for the race for world first is higher than M+, M+ viewership is higher than pvp. We all know this isn’t the game anymore for people that main pvp as their main activity with Ion telling pvpers he’s fine with best pvp gear being pve gear and no pvp vendors. But that doesn’t mean I’m agaisn’t pvp but you have to be realist about it.
Doesn’t matter how many BGs they make, I’m not doing ranked PvP because PvP meta is worse than PvE meta in terms of imbalance, and I don’t have fun unless I win, so random queue is an absolute hard no.
You literally cannot solve my problems with WoW’s PvP, ergo, I’m not interested in an xpac that focuses on it and would quit.
In terms of non-soloers? Sure.
I think there is a problem for soloers lately. Legion was a mess for soloers, for a number of reasons. BfA is a bit better, so there is hope there. i don’t think I’ve heard Ion ever use the word “solo”, and when he uses the word “casual”, I think he means raiders who don’t raid every day.
I think we solo centric players just don’t want to be further marginalized.
2 Likes
Why do you think BFA is a mess for solo players?
Both expansions offered the most content and rewards for solo players atleast up to now in my understanding. I’m genuinely asking this.
3 Likes
It’s an old, tedious argument at this point. We’ve already mentioned in the thread here the requirement for a dungeon on what was, in effect the SECOND alchemy quest. We saw a great deal of formerly solo-centric content requiring group content to proceed, along with other content gated with PvP, which is another argument entirely.
If you are further interested in this, there is plenty in the foru8ms about it. I do not intend to re litigate it all here.
2 Likes
I personnaly don’t see queuable content as terrible for a solo players, you often don’t need to talk in those or interact with other players. But I understand the point.
But you also need to understand that as for solo players content and rewards in Legion and BFA, you had wqs that gave ap and legendaries and right now ap and benthic gear. Both of those offer a lot of content and great rewards for it. But for sure I think they gatekeep too much profession stuff behind dungeons and raids. I liked older expansions crafting pre-wod by far, even if there was some good things with wod crafting.
Look, part of the point is WoW had always had a variety of content available to players, and in Legion they cut back on a lot of that variety. And that makes the game less enjoyable to a portion of the playerbase that none of us really has an idea of how big it is.
Look, I know Legion dungeons weren’t hard, I was soloing some of them during the expansion. But I don’t really enjoy dungeon content with strangers, so rushing along with my slow paladin butt while the faster bits of the party clear out content and I get to smack on a boss didn’t really entertain me on its own. And everything funneled into those dungeons, I mean, there was a so called Archeology quest that you could finish without even finding a single shard because it was just “use the prospect skill X times, then pick up a spear next to the end boss of the dungeon in Highmountain.” It was the laziest thing I’d seen.
And as I’ve said again and again, a really good reason to have content that does not involve instances, and especially instances that require a group to do, is that it provides content that you can do when you say want to hang out with the guildies in chat but aren’t in the mood/tired of running them that day.
2 Likes