Requesting Islands Transparancy... Again

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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Ok, so here’s a breakdown to those who are not up to speed on Islands:

Pre-8.1, island loot was derived from what you killed on the island (as well as azurite loot satchels/boxes/treasure spawned by specific mobs). The only reason people were aware of how this worked was from hours and hours of testing and EVENTUALLY Blizzard came out and told us how it worked with a blue post, describing the ‘score card’ system in better detail. The behavior of players at this time was to either a) Kill only mobs that obtain loot, increasing loot chances, but slowing down the run; or b) Gathering & killing everything, speeding up runs (and xp gained if leveling), but lowering loot chances

In 8.1, Islands were revamped - Mobs were clustered, more invasions occur, and mob health/damage got boosted. Also, the loot system was tweaked so that anything on the island could give you a chance at loot, regardless of what was killed. This solved the issue above where two different group types emerged - it was beneficial to everyone to simply clear the island asap. These changes were welcomed by pretty much everyone, and in addition Blizzard further incentivized islands by giving a treasure map on your weekly island cap, for an additional mission reward. All in all, good times.

Unfortunately, what players realized is that they could simply AFK islands and still get loot. Groups would form, afk 15 mins or so on the boat, and let the opposite faction win. With the new system this team had the same chance of loot as a team that tried and won in 7 minutes. Not as efficient, time wise - but hardly any effort was required aside from clicking accept 4-5 times an hour.

Thankfully, Blizzard was listening to our forum gripes and stepped in to tweak something under the hood to prevent AFK groups from getting loot (happened around 10-14 days ago, hard to tell when because there doesn’t appear to be any blue post signaling this change. No patch notes, no Blizzard CS tweet, no nothing.

The end result however is that whatever changes they made under the hood is also effecting everyone’s chances at loot. All last week, and this new week - Island drop rates seem to have tanked, and nobody can quite nail down why. Did we drop back to the old system where you get loot based on what you kill?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

3 Likes
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I don’t have an exact count but I think I have done over 500 expeditions and that is conservative. They claim there are actually mounts that drop ??? As for gear I have had about 12 pieces gear. Literally only 2 that are leather for my class. 6 plate and 2 cloth. I have seen a 95 or better win percent. Usually only lose when someone wonders that isn’t geared well. I have felt like they keep increasing the damage output from the rares or named npc’s. Every week going up. Also the bots keep getting tougher. I use to be able to solo all three if I didn’t see to many cc’s. But now they cc the hell out of you and it normally takes 2 if not 3 in the group to deal with them. Dependent on allot I know. Other player skill, gear etc.
Seems like these are really only good for farming pets. The azerite reward outside the weekly quest is ridiculous and way, way to much grind to level the necklace.
I have done many many rares and many many portals, killed allot of dragons that make you think OH sweet a chance at a mount hopefully… Well that’s a big NOT !
I asked a GM to look into weather there was a loot drop issue and he said that every loot table is based on a random number generator system. All loot is under this system and has an equal chance to drop or not drop at any time. No matter how many times you kill a boss or complete an island expedition the chance to get items or any specific items will not increase. Characters can go weeks or even months ! without seeing loot you might be looking for.

Some people just hit the jackpot in the narrow little RNG window better than others. I like to think of RNG meaning “Really Not Great” chance rather than Random Number Generator.

I am with most of yas lol, still trying. Truthfully this type of system is allot like gambling. Nothing like repeat customers that really want something :smiley: Great for business somewhere.

Best of…do I say luck ? O;o …cheers ! Happy New Year !

3 Likes
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I did a few Mythic expeditions tonight, and i don’t know if they SEVERELY buffed them or what, but it is insane now. We DID manage to win, but just barely every time. And the entire group was 380+ in full mythic level gear. It seems to artificially just give massive amounts of Azerite to the alliance.

On one island their boat spawned right next to ours, and they attacked us over and over and over the entire run. They ran straight to us when their boat landed and never stopped doing that. We killed them, “which is also harder,” about 10 times while gathering and grinding out elites, and still only won by about 500 azerite.

Islands were never even remotely difficult before this week. Not sure what has changed.

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Blizzard has requested your feedback:

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Why when I get disconnected from
the island Expedition I get automatically kicked from the party even though the two party members in the island Expedition are frends and I reinterred the game immediately after getting disconnected

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Id like to request pvp transparancy. Id like blizz toactually explain scaling and how it works

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I’d like to go ahead and state that as of today’s farming attempts, loot seems to be back to normal. No clue what was changed, but others appear to be seeing a marked difference as well. So whatever was broken (without telling us) has been fixed (without telling us).