Rare Elites in Zaralek Caverns and Forbidden Reach

Community WoW Community Council
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I just want to further add that I’m critical of the changes you give us because I want to see the game thrive and for the next update to be better than the last. But when you give us these brainless decisions without utilizing the tools at your disposal aka us, the community council, literally the 100 people you swap out yearly for fresh ideas and new takes, the people who collect ACTUAL community feedback from the masses and in our vein attempts TRY to relay it to you - you then fail. Because time and again we do not understand how you devise such a drastic change and think it would be ok before you send it through.

My criticism of the changes, the purpose of the council, and the development right now might not earn me a spot for a 2nd term but criticism is necessary for any healthy progression.

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I think, it’s a hard line for Blizzard to try to encounter and navigate around given the community.

Currently we can talk and discuss over everything that is publicly known. All decisions, past and present they’ve done.

I think if they were to have us go over design decisions, before it became public knowledge they’d have to most likely have us all sign an NDA, lock down this side of the forum and only those on the council would be able to view it. This would have its own problems:

  1. Transparency would be lost. This could lead to players believing a “Cloak and dagger” situation is occurring.

  2. We already know that a very small populace of the community council even uses the forum. This would then be even more of a subset of a subset of the population when trying to determine these possible changes.

  3. It’ll just take one bad actor to potentially ruin this entire experiment should they lock it down to share possible futures that wouldn’t necessary possibly make it to the public.

I think that if they could ask us questions, they definitely should, given that that decision currently would be known to the greater public alongwith the community council.

I can see how hard of a line this can be to traverse for them. I do imagine that the feedback we provide is utilized and provided. Sometimes I just wish we’d see commentary back. Maybe something along the lines of “We see your suggestion, however we see X or Y happening if we proceed down this pathway which is why we didn’t.” Or “Thank you for the suggestion, upon showing this to our development team they really like this change and you should see this reflected in an upcoming hotfix or patch.”

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Giving us a handful of “Example options” without telling us what they’re towards and have us weigh in on each one would be an acceptable alternative to showing/telling us what their plans are directly.

As it is right now all they have to go on is what we post here and I’m adamant in the fact it needs to be a two way street when it comes to interaction. I’d be fine signing an NDA - we already have an enforced NDA-like system with discussing what we talk about in the discord with outside people but honestly there’s hardly any Dev/CM interaction going on in there its more like glorified chat room/exclusive after school club than what I expected it to be.

I just want to make a difference while they’re still willing to have me instead of making these posts to try to show them how I feel about each and every system and terrible design choice they implement without first utilizing what I thought our intended purpose was supposed to be.

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TLDR: provide a breakdown of suggested alternative changes to improve gameplay

Sorry for coming late to the party and if this has already been hashed out in the discord channel etc. Reading through everything it looks like we’ve been provided feedback which is what we were asking for regarding the change – Thank you for that!

Missing link being a compilation of our input into how we believe this system could be fixed – YES I know we’ve got different discussions on the topic but it doesn’t hurt to put a coles notes version that we can suggest be updated.

Problems: too many rares up all over the map meaning players aren’t grouped for easier rare groups
Current hotfix: fix sharding/issues, increase drop rate of cosmetics, 15m despawn

Community council suggestions currently echo most of the forums. Can we not compile everything we’ve discussed and come up with a CC rundown of what we’d like to see. I like Riokaii’s take on future-proofing and I truly feel sorry that this feels like a personal attack for some of us. My suggestion is to provide constructive criticism and then see what happens, keeping in mind that devs vs individual gameplay vs CC mbr gameplay objectives vary greatly.

  1. Keep sharding/issue fix
  2. If we as a community believe the drop rates “fair”, don’t increase them. Various topics on this discussing availability vs challenge/award for getting low drop rate items. Potentially look at increase in availability/frequency.
  3. Propose other alternatives for the problem presented and remove 15m despawn UNLESS it assists with the actual problem. 15m despawn to me is a fomo tactic to force players to group in order to get an activity done. I personally don’t think this will work as well as other potential solutions to the problem.

Proposed alternatives:

  1. Rare spawn model updated – you can change the frequency like we’ve had in other zones such as only 5/15 spawn per week or 1/15 per hr in a cyclic rotation. Tailor it to what you’re trying to accomplish. We’ve had it in the past and it sucks on off times but may see an increase in zone activity for those times that highly sought after rares are up.
  2. Timer/scaler – if you want as big a group as possible to kill rares as well as them not keeling over from the first melee attack round, put in a 5m timer/announcement and have them scale with players in the area. Seemed to work alright for the treasure goblins as far as I recall and worked more towards what we want to accomplish.

I appreciate the passion expressed for what we see as negative change but think that we can get more accomplished if we focus on constructive feedback. I do hope this is looked into not only for ZC but following Riokaii’s take, standardizing what we might see as “rares” in the future. Food for thought from a gamer who wishes he had more time to game.

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I do not agree with proposal 1:

1 currently is emulating the current fix they already input. 1 does not let the rares spawn naturally and stay spawned, instead now you’re stating instead of allowing 15/15 of be up only 5/15 would be available for an entire week. Meaning you’d potentially have to wait 3 weeks for the rare you want IF the system didn’t do repeats. The other option of 1/15 per hour is also not beneficial as you’d have to potentially wait 15 hours for the rare you’d want.

Neither of these proposals under 1 fix what the community has been mostly vocal about, making the rares Solo.

Proposal 2 has merit. The Zaralek Cavern’s currently does have a notification system, but it’s not like the current Emerald dream version where there’s “actions” to be taken before the rare spawns giving people in far away places time to get there as the rares within The Emerald Dream are mostly soloable.

To provide a Cliff notes version of my proposed changes to make rares going forward more future proof:

1, Have the rare set to be soloable by the least common denominator class. (AKA, every class/spec should be able to solo the rare with limited difficulty at first)

Thoughts behind this: Players that currently playing during non-peak times have had the hardest time with completing content and killing rares. This would open up the availability for them to kill the rares now.

2, Put the scaling technology for health onto the rares should more players be present and tag. Additionally, put a 15 second invulnerable shield around them to give players in other parts of the zone time to either message the entire zone stating they are coming or to give them time to arrive as to alleviate the rare potentially being DoA.

Thoughts behind this: This is to ensure the mob doesn’t get absolutely deleted within seconds of spawning should a group of people be waiting.

3, Have rares be more frequent and have better loot chances based on that frequency. 1% and sub 1% drops need to go. **Certain items that are intended to be super rare should be on rares that have extended frequencies or potentially a rare that doesn’t have an established spawn point. (AKA, can spawn anywhere in the open world of the new content. with this, the super rare loot is guaranteed since finding/locating this rare is now the challenge). Edit based on feedback from Naamah, May have Rares be summoned through items found in a localized spawn area. Could be thematic to whichever rare is being brought forward.

Thoughts behind this: 1% and Sub 1% drops are neither healthy for a player nor healthy for the game. All it breeds is animosity towards the game. (You kill the same rare 15 times on all your alts every day for a week with nothing showing for it… Tell me you won’t be displeased and angry over that.)
Edit: Naamah brings up feedback.
[Feedback][Rewards] – Cosmetics (Mounts, Pets..etc) / Time Sinks - #4 by Näamah-ragnaros

4, Introduce a call-out notification system denoting that a rare has spawned.

Thoughts behind this: Provides players that are doing quests or simply chilling in the zone the call-out notification that something is occurring and that they could head that way if they wished to participate in the rare.

5, Rare spawn timers need to continue in the background even when a player is not present.

Thoughts behind this: A player, in the case of Poundfist, should not have to stay logged in for 3 to 4 days straight without sleep hoping for a rare to spawn. This is severely not healthy and definitely would bring animosity.

6, Rares should never despawn once spawned unless killed by a player(s).

Thoughts behind this: Synonymous with 5 but felt like It needed to be it’s own listed item.

7, With Realm Sharding, if a player creates a group everyone invited should be shunted to their shard not moved to a new shard.

Thoughts behind this: Currently there is a chance upon creating a group that if you invite certain amounts of players from other realms that you and your group will be shunted to another shard. Within this new shard the rare you were creating the group for may not have spawned or be dead already.

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We’ve provided extensive feedback here on this issue, We don’t want this. You already tried this approach.

Can the rares(special encounters) within this zone be re-designed to be actually soloable as requested in my above post?

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I have to say the new hotfix that landed today was a big middle finger to all the wonderful feedback we’ve been giving the team that they themselves requested. Feels like not a single letter was looked at and they instead went with the original idea they themselves cooked up.

No ones going to go down there over supposed increased drop rates when A. They only show up for 15 minutes before noping out over no one playing with them. and B. They are completely unsoloable except by tanks and pet classes that still take 10+ minutes to kill one single rare down there.

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A recent update from someone who decided to try to spawn camp a rare (yay we really love to spawn camp and waste our time don’t we!)

So apparently the rares in ZC pop up for 15 minutes then nope out for almost 7 hours or more when no one interacts with them? Is this the new norm? Because its highly unacceptable.

I am so disappointed in the fact our feedback was not listened to and on top of that spawn conditions were made far worse because someone somewhere thought “Ok so people aren’t actively killing them so they won’t mind if they don’t show up as often right?” WRONG! The reason people weren’t killing them is because you need a group to kill them. If they were soloable with a reasonable health pool we, and by we I mean the entire player base, wouldn’t be sitting here trying to have this conversation with you; the developers, on why everything you’ve done to Z. Caves and NOW Forbidden Reach was such a colossal mistake.

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Make sure to keep it in context.
There are plenty of people that are happy with this alteration.
I am very happy that I can now finish collecting all the transmog off all the rares that previously dropped one item per 20+ group of people. You had to beg, offer up a cashier cheque for some of the drops.

If this is what Blizzard goes with in the future. I would truly hope its applied to current rares. I think I am close to 30 rares killed in Emerald dream with only 3 items dropping across all rares / all toons

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Are you also happy that rares that despawn won’t spawn for another x hours because of their respawn timer? Because that doesn’t seem to be an easier way of collecting your transmog :slight_smile:

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I think many of you have this idea that you need to be able to farm any item off any rare within a day or two.

The system is meant more to be a longer term acquistion. Flying by once every day and if it’s up should be an okay way of life until you get the item. If it takes 2-4 weeks. Why is that terrible?

This game isn’t about instant satisfaction. Many think it is. Which is why I see so many complaints that it’s not in line with that thinking.

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It’s terrible because it adds a layer of RNG on top of RNG.

“Let me fly to Zaralek to maybe see the rare, to maybe get the item I want… oh wait it respawned because noone was near it and now I have to wait 8 hours”

This doesn’t strike me as fun game play.

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What you’re explaining to me is that you’re just now realizing what World of Warcraft is.
This has been the game for decades in many regards.

Maybe that’s not very insightful or useful information on my part. I just don’t understand how you can make an argument about the quality of the game when you don’t seem to understand it.

Of course it’s not fun. It’s not jump out of a plane, get smashed with your friends, superbowl party, F.U.N.
It is what the essence of this game is.

If you want a shift from that, that’s one thing.
I can understand that point of view. Telling people that changes needs to happen based on not having fun is just bad logistics.

If you really want a conversation on how to increase the enjoyment out of this and many other processes in game. Give examples. I haven’t seen any from any person in the last 6 months when they make this argument or claim. It’s, fix this. Thanks.

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That doesn’t make it a good system, and most of the shadowlands rares actually had a decent spawnrate, Dragonflight just went back on that.

What makes you think I dont understand it? Like you I’ve been around since the start, I know what I do not like and I know what I like, and I am pushing for change, and it’s being empowered by people who see it the same way as I do… This quote is actually a really weird thing to say and, to be honest kind of insulting.

The essence of the game is having things that are… not fun? I don’t think irl retorics are appropiate here, since neither of the things you list are actually based off RNG on RNG where you have to also wait for hours on end.

I think "I’m not having fun doing this in a video game because of X, is actually really good feedback, a game should be about having fun.

So, just taking this subject as an example, I took 10 minutes out of my time to find a few where people give solutions, or examples. Let me help you:

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I actually don’t have an issue with the change to the rare spawns in ZC — since I’m still used to the old rare spawning system of Vanilla — but there is one (and only one) thing which annoys me about this situation.

The massive health pools on those rares. If they’re gonna be up for only 15 minutes, then it probably shouldn’t take 5-10 minutes to kill them solo.

And that’s my two cents.

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Excuse me while I find the receipts:

March 23rd: My first post about rares, how they spawn, and how I think something should be changed:

April 10th: This is where I get into discussion about Dragonflight in particular:

June 3rd after the first hotfix fail; I call them out on the fact that the droprates were not increased using an example. They literally only took the example and said “all was well” when it wasn’t.:

Jul 18th: Over a month after the first hotfix I once again reiterated that this change was going to kill Zaralek Caverns as a whole and that the tell tale signs of said death of the zone were already starting to be felt:

It some of these threads I made suggestions on change. Some of them were simply created to drum up discussion on potential points of change and guess what? They did. To say we were all clamoring “Fix this! Fix this!” without giving our words on why or how we’d like to see them fix is extremally false and someone who has been frequent both here and the GD , the only time I’ve seen you post in the GD is when your posts get linked in threads because like some sort of knight you have to come defend your honor.

I have been talking about rares, their spawn rates, THE WHOLE SYSTEM for my entire tenure as a Community Council member. To say you haven’t seen anyone discussing the matters in the past 6 months, I say to you, you must be blind. I don’t know how you don’t go to the GD every day to see the hot topics and not see a few talking about a certain system.

I’d also like to point out that these are all just my posts. Naamah, a more regular advocate than I, has made many more. Again I say to you, you must blind.

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You are completely misunderstanding what I’m saying.
I’m talking in general.
Let me reiterate.

The vast majority of all people I see do not talk constructively about these topics. You guys keep thinking I’m replying to you, about you, for you.

I’m referring to systems, groups, communities. What I say isn’t all literal. It’s not just face value. I can’t even begin to be dumbfounded by that wall of texting that is supposed to put me in a place that I didn’t even know Ravij was in this conversation.

The fact that you guys are talking about these things in depth and have repeated yourselves does not reflect on every single comment I make in every thread. This isn’t the first time I’ve been accused of saying things that aren’t being read in the right manner. It’s my fault for thinking my comments are going to be considered on different levels and not word for word in your context.

Half the time I wonder why such accusations are put into a reply to me, the context is lost completely. I must not be conveying what I mean in an appropriate manner.

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Because you’re accusing people, not just us, of not offering opinions on how to fix things when you just walk into a thread without reading through it.

Half the things we’ve been offering as potential fixes to a bad change have been echo’d or proposed by non CC people. We all, as a community, have collectively agreed on a course of action and you’re acting like no one outside the CC has said anything of value.

I feel it’s one of our duties being on the Community Council to help get people’s opinions heard not just our own. Also not everyone has to give their idea on how a change can be better handled, simply saying “Revert it back to how it was” is just as valid as offering an idea on a fix and there has been a LOT of that in the threads I frequent.

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I wholeheartedly have no idea where you got these notions. I’ve never said anything remotely similar to this. Your interpretations of what I’ve been saying have been wrong so many times now. You and a few others put words in my mouth repeatedly. I’m saying this now to clear the air because I’m a bit tired of it.

I’m not here to explain everything I say or do as though I’m right. I’m not, it’s just opinion and fact based on other people I talk to and meet. When you tell me I’m wrong or tell entire threads “literally nobody”.
I am explaining you guys that’s not true. I’m sharing how and why other players, like myself. Can see beneficial change in systems regardless of your agreement with them.
It has to be my fault for speaking about what I’m saying in a context you’re not familar with or I’m misrepresenting what I mean

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Going to quote what you said earlier; the whole last paragraph:

You wrote this like we hadn’t been giving exactlly that kind of feedback for months. You claimed in the last 6 months you hadn’t seen anyone suggest how to change the system and I displayed every thread I’d ever posted with the feedback I was giving starting in March. This is what I, personally, am calling you out on.

In another aspect, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you’re like me when it comes to speaking on public forums and have difficulties speaking what’s directly on your mind and typing words that will get your point across. I have a hell of a time trying to explain myself in topics that I’m being accused of things while trying to prove those accusations wrong. My thoughts gets flustered and I can’t type right to try to speak my mind. So for now I will back off on the topic and finger pointing because I can understand you’re getting frustrated trying to defend yourself (I’ve been there.) But in all my time of dealing with the same things, sometimes not responding is a valid reaction for your own personal emotions and mental health. You don’t owe anyone a response, especially if they are hard disagreeing with you and it’s affecting you this way.

I’ve adopted the stance of “I’m going to leave the discussion because neither of us are going to change each others minds and I’m ok with that being the end of it.”

Editing for wrong word usage and adding one extra line.

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