Right now, it’s a miss (depending on what you play) which is weird. This isn’t the first time we’ve had content that was Solo/Group friendly. Visions/Torghast did exactly this and I don’t seem to remember them being nearly this bad. Granted we didn’t have Tiers in Visions but we did have Masks.
Honestly, I think they bit off more than they can chew with trying to make this AI companion work. If they’re balancing around the fact that we have Brann in Solo, it’s going to make their job much harder…because Brann’s AI sucks and if he’s too OP then it’s not a challenge and if he’s too UP then you end up with what we have now. It would’ve been much better to have just let this be Torghast 2.0 (Which if you get rid of Brann it basically is Torghast)
Honestly I woulda loved torghast, but with the gear you get from delves. I loved the roguelike aspect of torghast, and the fact that you could build different powers and become an absolute unit no matter the class. Was just depressing they only ever had a couple crumbs of cosmetics, and the mats for legendarys from torghast as far as rewards went.
The difficulty hugely varied from class to class for each scenario. For some classes they were a joke, and others much more difficult, which leads into my second point
Many effectively required a specific legendary (or two) to get past. I’ll use myself as example.
I was trying to get the appearance for affliction (twins scenario) I was in… largely mythic NH gear when MT came out. I struggled mightily. I thought "ok, there must be some talent set up, strategy, gear and/or rotation i’m not thinking of. So i did some looking and after doing so, I still struggled.
I then came across a post on the warlock forums from someone that was like 30-40 ilvls lower than me claiming they had done it. I though "no way, they are jsut trolling, but sure enough, they had the appearance. I thought, “how could they have possibly done it with SO much less gear?!”
The reason? They had the legendary ring (Sacrolash’s Dark Strike) and I didnt. I then waited like, a month before i finally got that drop. I then did the challenge and it was laughable at how much easier it was
I thought torghast was great, though the environment/background got a bit dull since it was more or less ~the same in every run/floor. While I will concur that the wrong buffs and class/specs were issues, once you got powerups rolling it was a blast.
Playing solo content doesn’t necessarily mean wanting to only play easy content. LFR, alt leveling, mount/mog collecting and follower dungeons tend to be mindless chores that I can do while watching TV, and the story is… well, it isn’t worth playing the game for, let’s just say that. I enjoy having challenging content that requires focus just like the people that enjoy challenging group content.
Number Go Up is one of the cornerstones of RPG design. Even if you’re not actually doing anything practical with better gear, it’s still naturally satisfying to see your character improving. Even then, solo players still have uses for gear: The most excited I’ve been to get gear was when I knew that it would make it possible to solo Kael’thas and Malygos during Cataclysm (back when soloing legacy content was still a struggle), and when I knew it would help me progress through Brawler’s Guild/MT, and even now knowing that it will help me progress through Delves.
There are always some, but what solo players really want from this game is a solo endgame path that provides reasonable ilvl upgrades, something this game has done a very poor job of providing, despite several years of senior devs talking about how they intend to do a better job.
Other MMOs do this successfully. WoW never has, and their current attempt, Delves, is, at this time, unsuitable for sol play for WQ ilvls.
Anything that crowbars this game away from the terrible, impatient M+ crowd is a good thing, long term, for the games health.
I’ll do M+ once, maybe twice a week with friends when we start, otherwise, I’d rather play solo and do something meaningful than put myself through the soul sapping hell that is Mythic plus and it’s so called community.
I used to love Heroic raiding, M+ killed it entirely through BFA and again in SL, leaving our guilds as 7-8 people tops counting both sides as none of us wanted M+ and most simply walked away for other hobbies.
God forbid you were in one of the many, many guilds who had fun running normal raids who just evaporated because of easy mode 10minute runs in 5 man cliques totally trivializing all gear from it overnight.
Then the sheer attitude of the people running M+ both on this forum and in-game makes me never, ever want to join in with it other than with the 5-6 friends I have, who stuck around after M+ cannibalized our Ally and Horde Heroic guilds.
So yes, I’m enjoying delves.
Am around 580~, didn’t reward Blizzard and get early access, pushing 7’s on my Paladin and having a load of fun, and finding a fair challenge in them even after the hotfixes plus I can get a meaningful option in the vault Tuesday Lootbox, without being forced into some god awful game mode I abhor such as Rated PvP or M+.
Yes delves are great. Do they need some tuning yes. But it’s the first week of high tier delves tuning will come.
I love them so far have done a few 8’s I usually do 6’s and 7’s depending on the delve some of them have some unfair tactics until some tuning is made.
Even with turtle shell I am not mitigating an onslaught of 2m hits enough to survive. I think a number got crossed in that pass lol.
I want the nzoth nightmares back. that was peak solo content. these delves are just pandarian scenarios baked in to the war within with the ability to solo it.
ive been playing solo since they implemented the pug system before i used to use an addon never joined a guild always did hc and sometimes even mythic raid m+ 18 up i dont have time to be in a guild and follow their schedules and fill their resume to join
Well, the point of delves is to be optional. So you enjoy the torghast delve if you enjoyed it back in shadowlands. I thought it had great potential, but it got meh really fast.
Honestly, I enjoyed the visions and want more stuff like that. Options to go after optional toys and mounts, or to find crystals to boost how much currency you get out of a run.
My issue with torgast was not just that it had a timer, but that all the tile sets were drab and depressing, along with mobs that just as meh.
If we get another system like torgast, we need more colorful and varied tilesets and mobs.
I think something that is a mix between visions and torgast would be pretty cool.
I have about 5 more years in MMOs than you, where the only real way to level up was to group up and grind mobs. Everyone PUGd and we all knew what each class brought to the table and how to work together. It was a beautiful experience and why I cringe when I hear people say you need to join a guild to experience good gameplay from other people. In reality, we just need better developers. Developers who understand that we learn through repetition and if those lessons aren’t occuring until group content at end game, what do you expect from inexperienced players?
It’s a combination of modern game design and real life responsibilities that I have that make me a casual solo player. I consider solo activities, activities that I can do with little barrier to entry created by another person. Queable content falls into this, as does leveling, pet battles, crafting and so on. I consider casual to refer to your time commitment to the game. I play 1 hour a day, 7 days a week, so I think I qualify as casual.
What bugs me is that MMOs went from a time consuming, watch what you pull experience whose pace enhanced the feeling of adventure and exploration, to a speed run where you chain pull a pack of mobs to AoE them down, with little risk of dying. Every MMO is like this now, which sucks because leveling was always my preferred content.
I think WoW boss mechanics have gotten too complex, where many people require DBM-like add-ons to understand what’s going on and what to do about it. I prefer more telegraphed mechanics like Wildstar and FF14. I’m a casual solo player that does not want faceroll content, but can be done in 30 minutes, with very little barrier to entry from other players. I want to be able to progress at my pace and end the season with a full set of gear for my main, if not for the three classes I play.
It was easier with some legendaries, definitely. I’ll say personally I didn’t worry about legendaries, bad gear, consumable etcs. Went it at level over and over until I mastered some of the encounters (for transmog I did do some later when gear made it much, much easier)
Torghast was literally impossible for some specs without certain powerups on release. I’m sure it improved and by the end people seemed to like it, but I was long gone by then, didn’t get to see the improvements.
Delves are nice. I do miss torghast though. Was fun having all those cool anima powers. Rogue-lite was nice in wow.
Personally I loved anima powers since it made all classes be able to solo them in unique way wether it was leech tanking, stacking vers, or using cool talent comboes you never see just because the meta doesn’t suit them or the tree didn’t allow for it.
I do think it would be cool to have like a follower system like in garrisons but be able to choose our “party” for delves. Like JRPGS. Maybe you want a healer and tank npc, or like in legion those summon abilities to summon your champion.
It would be nice to see some solo delve tailored enchants and gear that boosts survivability on some specs or changes some of the bad specs solo capabilities. Like rogues with vanish… in torghast, using that cd could make bleeds be consumed and potentially kill something and with a helper npc keep you in combat for example to be able to use as a cd.