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122

My overall question here is why would it matter that delves give good gear? The intent of a game, any game is to offer people a leveled playing field to have fun so they can do what they want. Of you are doing delves only so that you can have better gear for M+ or mythic raids instead of doing them because you enjoy the content, then you are not the intended audience for that mode because you are getting no enjoyment from it.

At the end of the day a majority of people don’t do mythic anything, whether it is dungeons or raids.

Blizzard has already said they are seeing growth on subscribers since release rather than seeing a drop, so what they are doing is working regardless.

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123

You want me to say “its undertuned from a hardcore player’s perspective” because if I say its undertuned for casual players alike, you’re going to disagree based on whatever you define a causual player to be. If you want to call me dodgy for my response, what can I do about it?

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I’m trying to get you to understand that perspective matters, and when someone says some content is undertuned or overtuned for the rewards, they have to add what kind of ruler they’re using to measure that under or over attunement.

So far, I see a bunch of hardcore players saying that delves are under tuned for the rewards they give, ignoring the fact that a lot of casuals are having difficulty completing their delves to get those same rewards, because they have a lower skill cap level.

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125

How many of those will go back into M+? How many will be content to stay in the new pillar of content that was created specifically for them?

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I see it being improved upon.

Follower dungeons are not just good ways to learn the basics of the dungeon, especially routing, but they’re good for doing dungeon quests so you don’t hold up a group going after objectives. If they can improve the AI and push follower dungeons into heroic level, I see a great future for them.

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127

However many want to acquire and maintain a high item level.

I’m simply pointing out that just because a lot of people are doing delves does not mean they’re liked or popular. It simply means the rewards are attractive.

I’m sure there are a lot of people who genuinely like them, but there are also a lot who prefer mythics and wish they could get the same ilvl rewards for their efforts, and currently they do not.

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To be fair, you took that one line and removed it from the original context. The original context was “Delves are undertuned RELATIVE to the rewards they give…”

And their point was that when something gives power this quick/easily, it tends to be well liked REGARDLESS of whatever the content is.

And because they are currently rewarding high relative to the effort needed, they’ll almost certainly have rewards reworked in the next major patch, which has historically been what happens to content like this

Hence, the point of their post was to pose a curiosity as to whether Delves were ACTUALLY popular as content, or for their carrot

M+, for example, doesn’t really start until the gear grind is basically over, and the content that people play it for as an endgame lane is still enjoyed even after the rewards are had.

There’s a very real chance that delves won’t follow suit if they shifted the rewards more accordingly. For example, the difficulty of a +10 is more in line with most other lanes of content’s reward, assuming you’ve got the appropriately leveled Bronn to match.

If we saw Delves only reward Veteran for bountiful chests until a 10, however, would Delves still be as popular as they are? Or would we see a shift back towards favoring M0 and away from Delves?

Basically their point was just that it’s a tad too early to make the claim of “success” based off of where we currently are, as we haven’t yet seen them in any other form; there’s a very real chance people don’t like delves, but like easy Champion gear from Delves instead, for example

129

I wish the Story mode would be the entire Raid, as there is more story elements within the entirety of the raid besides the very final end boss. While, the end boss does hold the key story element of the Cinematic, but I wish it was the entire thing.

It was how I envisioned story mode was when I first heard about it. I didn’t care if their was rewards or not tied to it, as seeing the entire story is rewarding enough. I was a little saddened when it turned out to be only the final boss.

Here is to hoping future developments of story mode include more of the raids other story elements littered throughout.

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130

Of note, the only way you can realistically fail Delves is by playing them like M+

You don’t even have to be good to complete Delve 8s. Like as long as you don’t run in and aggro everything under the sun, a decently leveled Bronn can effectively solo Delve 8s for you with almost no input and very VERY little decision-making

Ironically, it isn’t that increasing skill is making this content easier, but that misplaying content makes it harder; that’s not on the CONTENT, however

Like almost nobody would dare say an M+2 is remotely skill intensive or challenging, but it’s disingenuous to call it “hard” if you’ve got a group who’s actively choosing to stand around and not time the key; this is the same thing we’re seeing with Delves

Like for a reference, I had a super casual friend who struggled in Delve 3s and 4s and asked me for help. I watched him run one, and all I did was ask “Why are you pulling everything instead of picking off guys in small pulls?”. And that question must have clicked, because within the hour he had gone from struggling to complete a Delve 4 to soloing, with ease, his Delve 8s; effectively zero change to player skill involved, just a minor tweak to approach.

But of note, on the context of skill, this very particular topic is the basics of every team activity, and certainly DPS. If one were to wish to make the point you’re trying to make, one would also have to acknowledge that a skill deficit is on the player and not the content, first.

But the moment you DO do that, you end up with Delves being fairly trivial for Champion gear in like 80% of the scenarios

You don’t even have to to Delve 8s to level Brann! You can literally just run a few days of bountiful delves, level up Brann, and then bump him to 8s and he can effectively solo much of them as long as you don’t do anything extra to let yourself die

Delves also get easier by proxy if playing multiple toons, as you can basically power level Brann earlier on if you desired.

You basically don’t have to play well to finish Delve 8s for the gear

You have to play below the minimum level of competency to not beat them.

And we can certainly make a claim that “delves are probably fine because people suck and have a lane to improve”, and Delves could be good for that if they leaned into it

But there is a difference between the content being hard versus a player having a hard time. The content has a static difficulty, and the gear relative to that content as of right now is a tad high.

And to clarify, I’m not saying that Delves shouldn’t offer good gear, just that if an 8 is to offer champion gear, then the difficulty curve needs bumped up. If an 8 is to stay the same difficulty as it is, which IS fine, then the tier for which champion gear drops needs to be at a higher level.

And by all means, they could just as easily keep scaling Delves higher and higher to offer better drops or GV, even, and I would love that! But a player underperforming is NOT indictive to the content itself, if the context is players who aren’t playing at a basic proficiency of a game

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131

Wait seriously? Mind linking?

I love this too. No more waiting 30 mins in que just to complete a quest. Maybe Blizzard leaning a bit into FF14’s making their game more solo friendly with the when it comes to story content. :thinking:

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I could lose 3 of 3 and not be phased.

Delve 1-11
Story mode
Follower mode
Normal, heroic, mythic, m+, m++++++++++++
Lfr, normal, heroic, mythic raid

I would rather see more use of the world. More time spent on one more of raid or dungeon. More time spent on quests and world quests. Quality experiences are better than repeating the same stuff over and over.

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Truthfully, you seem to me missing the point I’m trying to make, as your first sentence is not correct (italicized part).

There IS a range of capability of paying customers that consume the content. Some can complete, while others cannot, when the diffculty to do the thing is difficult.

Casuals can and do fail higher level delves right now. Because you can’t imagine that is so doesn’t mean it isn’t so.

That’s a great example, as I myself went though something like that. Not will single-target pulling, but with using the environment to my advantage (mine carts and/or exploding mobs in my example).

Once I figured that out, I was able to clear higher delve levels than I was before.

BUT, I still hit a skill ceiling (I struggle at level 8 currently, on a prot spec) for various reasons that are not attributed purely to learning skill (get ‘gud’), and mostly physical in nature.

And that is my point, but not how you expressed it.

I’m speaking about the CAPABILITY for someone to be able to complete the content after they have mastered the studying of the content, regardless of WHATEVER level of difficulty the content is at.

Their overall max capability (aka skill ceiling) is something you can plot on a bell curve of skill ceiling by player, assuming everybody already knows the encounters and tricks to complete them. There’s still issues like sensory overload, dexterity of fingers, focusing eye sight, noise and nausia/movement, literally not having the mental aquity to learn the encounters well, etc., etc., that would put someone more along the sides of the bell curse of skill cap.

I haven’t found that to be true, especially since his nerfing. And especially so with his AI, he tends to pull more than what you want to deal with when you’re trying to single-pull mobs.

And there’s also an issue of sometimes some trash mobs hitting for WAY harder than they were before, like a scaling bug issue of somekind. One time they’re fine to kill, the next time they almost kill you with 10% hp left, and the third time you’re back to killing them fine.

The delve encounters landscape is not as static as you may think it is currently.

That’s an assumption on your part, and goes to my point; HOW do you measure ‘minimum level of competency’, with a casuals skill-cap, or a hardcore player’s skill-cap?

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134

If we had a more accepting and forgiving community, we wouldn’t need these features as much. But since we don’t i am very glad they are here.

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135

I love delves. I don’t do them for the gear, it’s the challenge for me. I don’t do anything but follower dungeons due to the toxicity in the dungeons by M+ and speed runners. Even if it’s not a mythic, so many people think it’s timed (they act like it) and they rush.

Delves are a challenge for me, like Torghast was. The only reason I even care about ilevel is when I run with my guild folks in a raid, which isn’t that often. I play for story, for a challenge, and for fun. Yes, fun, that’s a big reason to play the game and I don’t find rushing through content fun.

Delves and follower dungeons were built because there are many people like me who just want to run where we have some bit of control of how it goes and we can, if we want, kill everything in there and come out on the other side without dying.

People like things for different reasons in this game, which is perfectly okay. Your fun is different than mine, both are okay.

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136

Delves are fine. I think the only real mistake, gear wise, was letting us stockpile keys in the preseason.

Yeah because the questline for it gives a decent exposition of the story and it’s a quick and dirty way to see the end-game cinematic without breaking immersion by going to YT.

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137

Can’t do links but it was posted by “at Warcraft” on twitter, on Sept 20th at 5pm EST.

of 16,438 votes for “what is your season 1 focus”, the spread was:

Raiding 23.6%
Dungeons 29.8%
Delves 34.8%
PVP 11.8%

Considering this was on social media, so already a minority much like the forums, this doesn’t even take into account the average, casual majority that will just do delves because it is pointed out by the campaign as a soloable path of least resistance to “good enough” gear.

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138

16k is a pretty good sample size.

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139

No you don’t.

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I kind of envisioned a massive silent majority of normal players really enjoying, playing, and goofing around in Delves for rewards and progression. Was hoping that it would help make the game fun again for those that felt left out of the rest of the endgame.

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141

Thank you!

Despite how some of the “armchair experts” here feel about the mode that could very well be the case.

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