I think the main problem with solo content is that with few exceptions, like creative builder games ( sim city, minecraft, roller coaster tycoon ) or procedurally created world games, there is very little replay value and very high development costs for the content.
With great single player game like Witcher 3 and Hogwarts Legacy for example, we’re talking years of development for two weeks of play time. Maybe you’ll do a second play through, but playing it over and over for six months? Haven’t found that game yet.
So this argument I see on the forums that development spends all it’s effort on multiplayer content is an absurdly false premise. The effort spent on 8 dungeons and a raid is minuscule compared to the rest of the game. It’s just that those 8 dungeons and a raid have a lot more replay value because they’re multiplayer content. Make them single player content and they have as much replay value as the rest of the game. One and done.
So what’s being asked for most of the time is a unicorn. You’re not going to get 6 months of great single player content. Not because they don’t want to make it, but because it would require 10’s of thousands of people to pump out quality single player content as fast as we can play it. But quality and an organization that large is probably mutually exclusive.
So we get to an MMO and we have a VERY vocal contingent demanding the same carrots from single player content that they see players get from group content. Envy and jealousy The problem is, if they do this, what’s the carrot for the multiplayer content? If you can get the same stuff in single player content then that becomes the path of least resistance and all the content becomes a one and done experience.
Envy and jealousy are much more destructive than greed. At least when properly harnessed greed can create things. Envy and jealousy just seek to destroy and take.
Im grateful m0 was revamped (i still wish m0 was queueable)
I just enjoy.being able.to do delves.with me and one friend And have a.shot at.some stronger gear.
We can go slow amd tedious. We can wait on CDs amd be strategic. We dont need to zerg. Huge Win.
For me personally, Delves are what I’ve been wanting.
I loved OG Mage Tower and all I wanted since was something similar that also offered gear progression and increasing challenges. Cosmetics are awesome, but I get a lot more enjoyment out of difficult content that I actuality have the really think about that offers a useful reward in the end.
The only thing more I could really ask for, but I don’t see it being a realistic ask, would be having each Delve tuned per spec for solo.
I like delves because they present a challenge without the pressure of a timer or a group. It’s just me, Brann, our toolkits, and the content. They are the kind of content I’ve been hoping for, and now that they’re here, paired with follower dungeons, they are hitting the spot.
Yes, I love Delves.
As someone who only does LFR and has developed almost an aversion to Dungeons, I think they’re fun, though more Class appropriate gear drops would be nice.
I’ve come to enjoy them more than I originally thought. Like so many people here I’m a lot older now, I still want good gear, not the best, but good. Feels in the right place to me. Returning after 6+ years away I’m not interested in giving my time to raids anymore.
I can see casters giving a lot of people problems and the rares, especially lieutenants feel overtuned. Removing them from T8 feels like the right call.
They’ll be fine if the elitists stop treating them like they are going to result in even those of us that have managed to do T8’s the first week for the 616 piece are gonna outpace the tryhard sweatlords.
Upgrades will take quite a long time, it’s 1 guaranteed heroic piece a week, and stop pretending like normal raids are hard as if champ gear is precious. I have gotten 2 total whatever the 2nd crest is called and done quite a few 8’s, I won’t catch you.
Rest assured those of you so worried about the gearing you will stay far ahead and delve only players won’t hit what you do with upgrades. Also know, besides being older, players like I just described are why so many of us want this option.
I love the idea of delves. Haven’t really done any yet as I’m not max level but I’m glad they are there for when I do.
I think things are pretty good right now. A solo avenue for gearing (delves) and story mode routes for the other things (follower dungeons and LFR). The gear from the former will help give a sense of progression, something a solo player never really got until now. It will also let me PvP without constantly feeling like undergeared fodder.
I quit in Shadowlands because solo play was bleak and scorned by the devs and playerbase. Because the game seems to respect solo players now, it is why I came back for TWW.
It’s wild how they came up with tons of cool and interesting bosses for Brawler’s Guild but couldn’t make a single one for a major expansion feature. All of the “bosses” in delves do the exact same very basic mechanics (interrupt, pulsing AoE, fire on the ground, damage cone, etc.). Not a single one of them feels unique or engaging. The hardest part for me is not getting bored half way through the fight and accidentally walking into something bad because I stopped paying attention.
The delves are a miss because you can’t hardly solo them. The whole point of them was to give a solo option to dungeons. Sure you can do them in a group but they were supposedly made with solo play in mind. Then they changed the scaling and now it’s just more group content or designed for solo players with good gear already who play at mythic level.
It’s a shame too. I’d hoped they’d be like delves in ESO kinda, you absolutely can solo those and they scale to you. It gives solo players something to do other than overland content. If you want harder challenges then vet dungeons and vet trials are there for you. But nope, they’re just a different type of dungeon.
Casual BG’s, delves, world PvP, and professions. If there is stuff to chase outside of raids and m+ I can stay happy as long as the class design is on point in PvP. Currently, the game has a good mix of activities for me but the class design is not on point. My sub will likely lapse of classes aren’t fixed and I doubt I’ll buy into the next xpac.
Here’s the thing – you’re not wrong about the nature of solo content being much more resource intensive than repeatable group content. Where you (and likely Blizz) are mistaken is that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
A lot of the frustration with solo-oriented players is that they are coerced into doing the repeatable content (often made for groups), when what they actually want is a satisfying conclusion to what they were already doing before then.
Sure, they’ll be “done”, and maybe unlikely to stick around. But they’ll be happy about the experience they had, and as such are likely to come back later. And believe it or not, we’re largely accustomed to the wait between releases; this is why you play multiple games, because no one game can keep you going forever.
I always find it strange when gear is brought into the discussion, because that SHOULD be separate from the preferences of players as far as those who actually do like solo content.
The carrots are ineffective on those who are looking for a particular experience, unless that experience is a power trip specifically. That being said, it is a core to what motivates a lot of WoW players… but that has nothing to do with someone between group-oriented or solo-oriented player.
That’s just someone caught up the Skinner Box design of WoW looking for the path of least resistance, and fewer people to deal with generally means fewer headaches. The solo approach is also much more flexible in terms of schedule.
But that’s looking for an easier progression path, not an enjoyable experience.
But there’s been years of threads “Demanding” more solo content when there’s tons of solo things to do, alts, achievements, mogs, mounts, pets, role play, lfr, follower dungeons… Blizzards bent over backwards to accommodate the “I don’t want to group” crowd.
But it usually doesn’t take a lot of discussion to uncover that what most of them are really asking for is a solo gearing path that gives them the same gear as group content.
For example
What’s coercing them into group content? They have LFR and follower dungeons now. So they can see the stories, they can see the content. The only thing coercing them into group content would be that strange discussion about gear.
I look at mage tower vs torghast and mt was just so much better, but I get it’s extremely hard to make those encounters, and not everyone could do them/liked them…I will say that’s the biggest stretch of play time I’ve had since vanilla was working on those towers, loved them.
Torghast on the other hand was garbage, the mechanics were almost nonexistant and you couldn’t do anything like range/kite. I remember getting hit from 100 yards by a boss spamming attack through a wall and thinking “yep, I’m done”. You could spend however long running torghast and if you got the wrong buffs (or were the wrong spec/class, just be mathematically not allowed to finish a run.
So what do I want now? MT like fights within delves, where mechanics and paying attention is what matter. Don’t arbitrarily give bosses unavoidable,spammable damage and so much health I want to watch t.v. on the side. I think about the kobold dudes in kriegvals that have something like 55 million hp in duo, and it’s just so mundane running into any of them. Instead make not following mechanics very punishing, and make the mechanics doable by any class.
Delves are probably the best idea Blizzard has had in years. I know ten people who want to do delves as their main content focus.
If they fix the current issues and don’t allow them to become diet M+ (requiring a tank and healer to be successful, etc) they could be seriously successful.
I don’t need to go sign up for a normal raid to know that it will be about as complex for a semi-competent group as LFR was for me today. Nor join a semi decent guild to know that heroic gets to that point fairly quickly too. I’ve done it before, 10 years ago mind you, but I’ve done it. I’m older now, delves give a nice option to gear at my own pace and upgrades are considerably slower for champ/hero track gear and accumulation.
Not everyone playing solo now is an altoholic that just farms mogs and mounts.
