BlizzCon | The War Within: Deep Dive Panel | World of Warcraft
youtube video, please check out Ion’s deep dive.
1:05…delves are quick, bite sized epic adventures for flexible grps; either solo or up to 5 players. [quick, bite sized, they are not]
1:21…they are role agnostic…it doesnt matter if you are a solo healer; we’re going to make it work…[for] how you want to play which they certainly are not, given how LFG is forming 5 mans with Tanks, Healers, 3 dps you cant solo heal, bran doesnt tank very well or dps very well, and the forums are full of complaints that they dont want to play Delves the way delves want ppl to play
1:55…[we had dungeons and raids] but if you were an outdoor world player who wanted progression, if you wanted goals, if you wanted a deeper…experience we were letting you down. this is very concretely focused on solo players who dont raid/dungeon for gear.
3:00m…we learned from torghast (and scenarios and islands) how to tune, whats fun and what isnt. clearly, this is flat out wrong. they havent. the on fire forums and the streamers from Talie’s “complainers keep complaining, Blizz rocks” to Asmon’s “do they even play their own game?” tell us, they still dont know whatt they are doing - my argument is that they do and then they freak out by how quickly mythic raiders tear through content and they triple health and shield pools like they did with torghast.
friend, there is no way to take the Blizzcon announcement and say “well, they always said up to 5 players” - yeah, sure. they clearly meant friends. not 20 rejections from the LFG tool because your ilevel isnt 8/8 hero gear. Ion is quite actively telling ppl that Delves were going to be different. And this forum post is showing, that they are not.
That seems pretty clear, and certainly no mention of friends only. Obvious you’re pugging stuff z you’re subject to other people wanting specific things for groups, just like every other premade group content, but pugging or going as a group at all isn’t needed for delves if you don’t want to.
How quick is quick enough for you in the first few weeks where people are still learning and gearing up? I got through an 8 Solo at 583 in less than the time an LFR wing would take, that’s extremely bite sized IMO.
Solo healers do seem to need some attention, but people have still been getting through the delves up to 8 with them. And again, you don’t have to go with 5 or that 1/1/3 just because it’s popular in LFG.
Disagree, it’d pretty clearly apply to small groups that want progression beyond dungeons but not m+ style also. - a group who have been extremely vocal about wanting something that fit their needs for years.
They definitely suck at tuning, but fun is subjective and if you only listen to people who get paid for clicks and the GD sock puppets that just parrot streamers, you’re gonna have a bad time.
So I guess this means the reward structure should be reconsidered, as you’re pointing out something that looks like a symptom of a much bigger problem.
The issue is that before Delves, there was a void of challenging content for both solo players and small group players. Before Delves if I wanted to run something with my wife, our only choices were either trivial content or find at least 3 other people to play with. If Delves were solo only, this gap for small groups would still be unsolved. There’s nothing to suggest that Blizzard would have better balance for Delves if they were solo only, especially since they can already balance solo by a different rule set than groups if they want.
I have been doing solo only on delves and it has been the most fun Iv had on wow in a very long time. Now, im not just running T8s on a bdk and rolling the keyboard. I’m running T11 with every class I can muster to 80 and push myself as hard as I can to clear., Iv yet to clear a 11 solo I’m learning these classes inside and out. Im bringing toons from my other account to chill at the door to up the difficulty and still Solo. I can manage a 9 and I’m close to clearing a 10 with 2 ppl solo… its rough buts its great.
You can call it dungeons 2.0, solo, group, whatever. They are fun and I wish normal dungeons going all the way back to classic would have this style of gameplay. I know… solo in a mmo but honestly, it’s a lot of fun.
Without a doubt, there is definitely work to be done for balancing solo delves across specs. I just vehemently disagree with the idea that Blizzard should remove all group delves as a way to enhance the solo experience. There is no functional reason they can’t make whatever changes to whatever solo experiences they need to make those balanced while still allowing duos and trios (if not up to a full 5).
this genre needs to stop acting like it’s the 1990’s. it needs innovation. you can have an open world game like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey that took 2 years to develop just like a wow expansion and it takes me 200 hours to do all the quests across the entire map as well as the campaign. while it takes me less than 40 hours to do the same for the war within. 40x5=200. the majority of the expansion is just cosmetic. almost all of the systems that are being used in the war with are the same ones that was used from BFA with some tweaks to the numbers and a reskin like renown just changed to look like a battle pass. it’s the same exact system it just shows you what you unlock with the vendor, and they tossed in 1 or 2 of the 20 different currencies in the expansion. standard quests that take 1-2 minutes to complete, world quests also take 1-3 minutes to complete, the vault, the vendors, pvp, dungeons, and raids. now delves which is just a dungeon with a mindless NPC following you. I’m sorry that I’m willing to criticize a genre that the vast majority of video gamers don’t play or support or talk about due to it being stuck in the past and is boring. This is due to things like walls of text, RNG stacked on RNG, and repetition for repetition’s sake that is only rivaled by Roblox.
you keep asking for more of the same then your genre will never improve. this is why all but like 5 MMO’s are dead, and you keep getting games like new world, and lost ark. if you stop trying to chase the 90’s you might actually get a game that isn’t shadow lands with a different cosmetic over it and some tweaks to some numbers and systems in the background.
I’m learning these classes inside and out. Im bringing toons from my other account to chill at the door to up the difficulty and still Solo. I can manage a 9 and I’m close to clearing a 10 with 2 ppl solo… its rough buts its great.