They are making their money on other games and don’t care.
2 Likes
So more “rush rush rush” focused game play by Blizzard? Are we going to start seeing M+ island expeditions and other stuff coming up?
1 Like
I personally am thrilled about the new changes, and am looking forward to doing the Island Expeditions going forward. Thank you!
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Last quarterly report had their other games performing below expectation with WoW making up the difference+.
all players on an Expedition will have a chance
So we get more RNG rather than actual attainable rewards.
2 Likes
Now, you have the whole table that’s dropping
You have a “chance”…which means that we will be at “Hey nice job no pets no mounts but here have some azerite”
1 Like
My financially backed patience for this old chestnut is worn clean through. Continuing to trot out this kind of understated apology will have diminishing returns from me as this expac slowly progresses.
22 Likes
sometimes we need to review what people are saying, compare to how they are playing, and from there we can make more informed decisions on changes.
The fact that people were getting nothing from IE runs sans azerite was apparent from day one. The feedback to the appalling low low droprates was given on day one. That there is a vendor with ONE mount on it is a start…yet all the others that very few have seen are still RNG.
Bornakk: I dont mind grinding I dont mind making an effort, I do mind when at the end of the run all I have is azerite. “You have a chance” isnt good enough…all the current mounts and pets should be on a vendor for doubloons.
5 Likes
The answer is simple
Make rewards worth the effort.
If I had a chance on every run of a mythic piece of gear / weapons dropping even a small chance I"d run it like crazy.
pets and mounts and xmog, = meh
More power and progression = give me some of that.
1 Like
This change is neither interesting nor useful. The only changes needed are for more mob types to drop each piece of loot, and to assign better cosmetic rewards (i.e. mounts) to each of the useless invasion types (e.g., Vrykul, Troll, Venture Company).
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I’m all for having mysteries in the game and letting the playerbase discover things on their own, but the loot system and tactics for actually getting/farming the loot you want from expeditions was just way too complex and absolutely NOTHING in game hinted at it, leading to like 90% of people doing expeditions to think it’s just pure RNG for any kind of loot.
I mean having online/addon help is almost a requirement if you want to adequately farm the loot. It’s just too complex and hidden.
4 Likes
I actually fully agree that some things should be left up to the playerbase to figure out, however I don’t think rewards from islands are really one of those things.
The secret puzzles are a fantastic idea, adding other things like that giant Kraken off the coast of Stormsong that comes closer if you ring the bell was fantasticly creepy.
I think the mysterious and awesome things should generally be random unexplained events that happen in the game for the players to figure out or see. The snake tail in gundrak for example, the kraken in stormsong, the pre patch cata earthquakes, orbs for the tentacle mount in legion etc. Stuff like this is awesome and leaves people discussing it for a long time.
I don’t think things like that should be in the form of game systems. Maybe there’s a way to do it but if you have a game system that you just don’t explain to your players, they’re going to get upset and frustrated as opposed to having a random event in the world happen. Game systems affect how you play and what you spend your time on whereas random events like the Earthquakes will be random and unexplained/mysterious.
Other mysterious things are like designing a small area of the map that has something you wouldn’t really expect, similar to the zone that had zombies burying humans alive or the Kraken in stormsong. While it sounds harsh, it’s as mysterious and creepy as you can really get. It’s fun to explore things like that especially during the pathfinder exploration or leveling.
2 Likes
Scoff Can you believe the nerve of game devs? What’s gotten into them? Island Expeditions are just another notch in the belt of a long list of disappointing features!
Why, I bought a new game the other day and I counted an entire 46 seconds of gameplay in which neither of my hands were being held. It was absolutely traumatic, at one point it even required some actual decision making and thought on my behalf. I felt physically ill.
Lucky there were some youtube guides so I could go back to switching my brain off, turn the sound off, stop reading any text, and get back to what’s really fun: auto-piloting through the game and then complaining on the forums the content is uninspired, unsurprising and boring.
I for one am appalled it took Blizzard this long to spoonfeed me exactly how the Island Expeditions work. Until now I only had a semi-exact idea from the dozens of guides on the internet. Only semi-exact! Do you know how insecure that made me feel? What am I supposed to do, Blizzard? Explore? Figure it out for myself?? PLAY??!
2 Likes
I mean the change makes sense, however honestly i agree with other people that it shouldn’t of taken this long to say how the loot worked.
Yes finding out how things work can be fun - but this was to much of a “secret” and confusing for most players. You guys should of figured that out after month 2.
Then why do we still have the giant Azerite monster that drops in the middle of every expedition while the interesting stuff happens at the end when the Azerite goal is so close it’s rendered moot?
1 Like
Nah, you’ve got a bad opinion on this one. Sorry.
1 Like
I actually liked targeting loot. I felt like I was being rewarded for exploring the islands and finding the rares. The one mount I got from an island I know I fed into the loot table myself because I was the only person who bothered to track down the single pack of Twilight Dragons, kill them, and loot the chest while the rest of my team stayed on the beach AoEing crocs and crabs down from start to finish.
I think its a good idea to get rid of the divide between people who played that way and people that played IEs my way. Its good we have a common goal to finish the race as quick as possible now.
But I hope you, Blizzard, understand that something of value is being lost here. If I want to grab mobs in bulk and AoE them down I have Mythic+ for that. I have Warfronts for that. I have leveling alts for that. I have mount farm groups in Nazmir. I have almost literally anything else in the game for that.
Island Expeditions were the one thing that could reward you for being more precise in your killing and going at a different, slower, tempo. You’re dumbing the game down so that you no longer need to explore. You just kill stuff (ANY stuff) for a pull on the old RNG slot machine and can get a pirate hat without ever actually seeing a pirate on your island. I understand why its a necessary change but I’m sad to see the loot system get dumber.
tldr; thanks, I hate it.
1 Like
And yet the HotS team explains new battlefields, and heroes, the strengths and weaknesses, and then reviews player performance and playstle, and then does fixes.
In fact most of the teams do explain new features and have a overview guide for it, except the WoW team.
2 Likes
The issue is that letting months go by when people are booting others (who were doing it exactly as you wanted them to - speed) and giving them deserter buffs so they can’t continue to play is probably something that should have been fixed a lot earlier.
It happened a lot to me (and also a LOT of spiteful messages since I didn’t comply with pet farmer’s opinion of how I should play islands - apparently doing it the way Blizzard wanted me to all along meant there was “something wrong with me”) and I detest islands because I was trying to get revered honorbound on 6 toons and it became a real hassle. (And I’m not sure why I want 5 followers, the mission board is horrific, I guess I have long-term hope you guys will make it worth doing by mid way through the xpac).
Almost no “fixing” of islands can make up for the bad times I had in there already. I strongly suggest you react a bit faster when situations like this happen - especially with content that is core xpac content that you are continuing to spend resources on.
Tomorrow, for example, I will run 5 toons through the weekly island grind and probably get booted a lot and wonder why it took so long for this to get addressed.
9 Likes
The answer is simple
Make rewards worth the effort.
If I had a chance on every run of a mythic piece of gear / weapons dropping even a small chance I"d run it like crazy.
I agree with this.
pets and mounts and xmog, = meh.
I would still run if there was some sort of bad luck protection, but with my experience and mileage, it seems I’d have better luck winning a Las Vegas slot machine.
I’ve ran plenty Island Expeditions, I’ve had 3 transmog drops and two were identical mail pieces. It takes 15 minutes of grinding to do an Island expedition, less than 1 second to pull the lever on a one armed bandit slot machine.
More power and progression = give me some of that.
I’d like this too.