With these latest fun nerfs it’s started to show that the design team isn’t monitoring player activity at all and lets go under why.
1: Lack of understanding of Player habits. If people would rather kill a singular boss over and over than do normal delves it highlights a fundamental issue design wise with delves (bad time investment > reward design, bad gameplay flow in regular delves, or the litany of other problems delves have had since release)
2: Punishing players for different routes used to progress in the game. Just because players are doing something that you don’t agree with doesn’t mean it’s any less viable especially when they’re using it the exact way you intended when you implemented it. Why ever make it able to count towards the vault progress if the intended goal was to not spam it? The tradeoffs for spamming it = no bounties / bountiful loot which I feel is more than fair. It’s a kiss/curse design.
3: the people this primarily affects are casuals who are stripped for time weekly and altoholics who just wanted to fill their vaults quickly. Most significant gains aren’t coming from delves so ultimately this was a dud change.
Overall I know Blizzard’s intentions is to make the game fun, but this whole season has just reminded me too much of SL season 1. Hoping season 2 is a banger, but for S1 it’s safe to say this season is mostly chalked. Hoping lessons can be learned from this and fixes can be sent in the next season to hopefully retain whatever is left post this season.
The change was needed. It was an obvious oversight. Delvs would die so quickly if all everyone had to do was spend 30 minutes farming an easy boss 8 times.
I think if players started asking themselves “what do I find the most fun?” instead of “what is the path of least resistance to the best gear?” we’d have fewer issues like this. No one spammed Zek’vir because it was fun, they spammed it to fill out their vault and then log off for the rest of the week
Whether that’s a lack of “fun content” to do in the first place, or simply people’s inability to just put the game down and go do something else they enjoy is another discussion altogether
Players taking the path of least resistance isn’t bad design or anyone’s fault. Its just a path that needed to be closed down. Play the game if you want the rewards. Delves aren’t mandatory.
You have an entire week to work on characters. If people can’t exhibit self control and feel like they need to play all day to fill a vault for every last alt, that’s very close to problem gaming/addiction. Again, this mode is not mandatory.
Delves are fun enough for what they are. People just want to fill their vaults quickly and farming Zek’vir kills was efficient but I don’t know how many players will honestly say the method’s fun.
No it wasn’t. The loophole is a symptom of a larger problem.
Did it need to be addressed? Yes.
But as Prof. Lupin would say, Blizzard “once again you’ve put your keen and penetrating mind to the task and as usual come to the wrong conclusion.”
You should not have to do 4 non-bountiful Delves to max out your weekly vault. This is the main problem that pushed people to do Zek’vir.
That would’ve been a much better change. 4 bountiful to max out all 3 slots of the Vault would have been on par with the rewards of the other systems, considering there is a hard cap at 616.
Those two items go hand in hand for a lot of us time strapped casuals. I want to pop mobs like little loot pinatas. Nowadays if I play 5 hours a week, I’m doing good
yeah would much prefer if the rewards was 1-2-4 vs what we have now which is 8 to max having to spend three hours a week for vault honestly I will likely stop now on my main since I no longer need the tier and vault gear is generally a dumpsterfire
I dont think there’s anything wrong with this change only because people are outgearing it very quickly. It’s not like it scales with ilvl or something.
I appreciate you posting, the more awareness the better. Combined with how rough Mythic+ has been this season with no changes in sight, I think all we can really do is pray at some point they listen to our concerns and stop catering to the top 5% and nerfing all the fun things we find to make the game a bit more enjoyable. The casual to mid-tier playerbase are the ones whom always get impacted the most but we also make up the majority of the subscriptions. And at the end of the day, the subscription numbers dipping should prompt a response.
Why? If you’re that strapped for time wouldn’t you be better off finding a different game? MMOs aren’t typically designed for 5 hours a week, whether they’re good or not
Actually I spammed it last week despite having keys available, because i would rather do non delve activities. it was a great way to get it out of the way quickly so I could spend my limited time doing activities i enjoy more like raiding or M+
The only benefit i get out of doing t8 delves besides vault is the chance at a map which gives me a chance at heroic gear which I’m still missing in a few slotss.
TBH i’ll probably just wait for one of the fungal folly stories that are super fast then spam that now. It takes slightly longer than zekvir, but not by that much, i can knock it out in 4-5 minutes, so if the concern is “oh noes players are filling delve vault too quick” congrats its not even fixed lol.