Hello, I’m trying for Veilstrider and I’m having a hard time understanding certain aspects’ of game design and philosophy.
I currently need to loot the Domination Cache, which requires a Dominance key. The core concept makes sense to me, kill forsworn mobs loot key for the treasure chest. What I’m having trouble understanding is why the drop chance must be less than 1%. I’m having trouble understanding the Dev team thinking this is a reasonable hoop to jump through. Most of the requirements for Back from Beyond are reasonable for people having played the expansion. But it feels like a few things just have fallen through the cracks of Quality Control or basic game design. I would assume the core idea behind this would be this key was looted while doing WQs in the area or questing, I’ve looted the key on 5 alts but not my main, none of them were hunting the key. I also have around 5 characters that all have different variations of the 3 Rares for Dune Dominance killed but no character has killed all 3. The last 3-4 times I’ve done the rare/encounters over the last 2 weeks on my main the rare I need hasn’t spawned.
I just feel like this content falls through the cracks, not many people are in ZM, therefore less mobs die and less times the rares spawn. Another rare I need for having killed all the rares in the zone on my main isn’t up daily and hasn’t spawned in 5 days. I’m a little confused as to why or how these make it through testing. There are treasures tied to World Quests spawning that also haven’t spawned in a week.
I guess it is odd in my opinion to lock a meta behind such RNG in a way, clearing the raids or completing Torghast with X amount of score are goals you can work towards or improve on and have player agency. The entire meta screeching to a halt because you’re waiting for a less than 1% drop chance key to drop or waiting for a rare to finally spawn for over a week or a WQ to spawn up kind of leaves a lackluster feeling.
My mains a 300 ilvl paladin, the fact that I’m just mindlessly killing mobs for an hour each day in hopes for the things I need to drop or spawn during that time is a little off-putting. I have no control over the rares finally showing up. The other issue is I play many alts and do M+ on multiple toons that all do keys around 15-18 bracket for weekly vault loot. I feel it makes poor gameplay instead of doing something enjoyable I’m sitting in ZM killing mobs… and gaining no character progression. The core idea of the key dropping is great questing or doing a daily and finding this key from a forsworn NPC and looting a treasure chest for the 2H sword is great and enjoyable, and naturally finding this key is awesome. Having to grind for this key on a toon that isn’t gaining any character power for doing so, it’s just so I can chase a meta that for some reason needs to be removed at the end of the expansion after I’ve naturally completed around 90% of the achievements required thru fun and enjoyable character progression and development, doesn’t seem to align with core game design and philosophy.
Another example randomly is the recipe for Prolonged Power Rank 3. It was awarded for killing the Spider world boss in Suramar. When Legion was current the World bosses didn’t have a set rotation. one of them would randomly spawn on reset.
Na’zak the Fiend was the world boss that dropped this recipe, great reference to R.A. Salvatore’s work btw. But this world boss originally only spawned once over a period of 6 months effectively locking alchmist out of the ability to proc extra potion during crafting of these for 6 months. Granted I play to much wow and had already leveled all my tanks to level cap and happened to loot this on my Alchemist to make my own potions or to make them for friends, but this is also just a whoops in the game design.
Is it reasonable to punish players for not having their Alchemist alts leveled and able to loot this item for the 1 time it spawned originally? I’m sure this wasn’t the intended game design the devs wished to create and they did end up going back and forcing the Legion World Bosses to a set schedule.
But if you look at all the achievements needed for Back from the Beyond, you can see this fault in quite a few of them, subjected to random RNG spawns and no player agency or control at all. I’m not asking for you to nerf the achievement more, I’m just wondering moving forward can you think about what these all entail. Killing a rare that spawns when it may give you something interesting, perhaps a pet toy or transmog when there is reason to be in the zone is great and rewarding. Having hit exalted and unlocking my flying Unity conduits and all the player progression from the story and doing ZM when it was reasonable content and tagging the majority of the requirements for From A to Zereth is great, having to go back and mindlessly farm for a random less than 1% drop on my main after having looted this cache on multiple alts because I didn’t get it on my main when the content was relevant is just bad gameplay.