The thing I'm hoping to see the most in delves is content blizz can't really get away with in typical dungeons. Things that M+ers call "rp filler" like puzzles and things that aren't just killing things. I do hope that's what we'll see in delves going forward.
being an M+er, I concurr that I've had wow friends who would totally ship that kind of stuff. Who knows, maybe I'd like it after a stressful evening of raid prog xD I do think puzzles are definitely fun for solo content
Or like, less of a linear content but make the delves like a dungeon crawler kind of content, you go through puzzles, discover secrets, backtrack to open doors etc. Would actually make it seem like youre exploring a dungeon instead of a purely linear go from a to b content... in the style of old school quake or doom level design but adjusted for wow, ykwim. Altho regretably that would become linear content really quickly after youve done them all and start farming them...
I really wish they would utilise their back catalougue a bit more. We were doing Dragonflight and standing next to Chromie, timewalk the Sanctums in Wyrmrest and give it a storm cache or something. Almost 0 effort. WoW has 20 years of content there should be literally 100's and 100's of ways to get my character entry level gear (say 476-480 there's way too many dividers in the game. "That's older content" "That's timewalking" "That's only awakened this week" etc.
Not just the mage tower, but what you're talking about with delves is exactly what scenarios in MoP were. Looking forward to doing them again in Pandaria Remix
@@vinni3c I remember them being pretty challenging at the gold level, plus you had to do silver I think(?) to even queue for heroic dungeons at the time.
“Social Spectacle” is such a great term for the flavor of the abilities. Wow has so many abilities that make it “WOW” just as any character or city does. Chain lightning, whirlwind, eye beam, just to name a few. Giving each tree something to show off to their buddies is fantastic
I'd love to see a semi-difficult 5-man or even 10-man boss akin to extremes in FFXIV: you go in, prog just that one boss in an hour or so, then farm it for a weapon or a mount or something, no need for trash or big dungeon design, or an elaborate quest line, just a boss in a room to kill that's challenging but isn't a massive time/social commitment.
I think somethin like this would be cool but I think an attunement questline for something like this would actually be sick to make the boss have some lore and some reason you want to go kill it.
I'm quite happy with the hardmode on dawn of the infinite that was added this patch (no not the stupid no deaths run). It was quite challenging this week in 495 ish gear and gave rewards worth doing, and luckily it wasn't timed for a change.
@@Dude32323 Dawn of the Infinite hardmode is cool, but megadungeons are the exact opposite of what trials are in FFXIV when it comes to time commitment. The bosses on hardmode mostly die in under 2 minutes and aren't that heavy on mechanics, but the whole thing takes a long time with all the trash. Extreme trial is a single 10 minute boss fight, but if you're progging it from scratch you might need an hour to get the first clear. If you happen to have half an hour and have the achievement you can join a farm group, do 2 or 3 runs, make some progress towards a mount, and get the dopamine hit from nailing the mechanics.
The formulaic point you make has been a key issue for me. I feel like the last real risk they took for a new form of core gameplay was M+ back in Legion. Since then it's the same formula + some system sprinkled on top. Your idea of 5 man multi-phase boss fights, or just random non M+ dungeons is exactly the sort of thing we need. Or imagine with Warfronts from BFA were actually difficult organized content where the raid leader is the RTS player and the raiders are the units (what I thought it would be when announced at Blizzcon but it ended up being an LFR zergfest) They need to get creative tbh
@@Moaningbirdmakes me feel bad when I look back and realize that Thorgast, for all the suffering we all had to go through to get that stupidass soul ash, was inherently very interesting and if obligatory grind wasn't tied into it, there were people who enjoyed it for the sake of itself (and it had a real, adjustable difficulty ramp + it was spec oriented like Growl pointed out, albeit more or less successfuly in practice lol).
@@n3v3r1s4 i would enjoy torghast more if my class didnt end up weaker on the end of the run compared to when i got inside... my only issue was that the abilities you got were weak and the "affixes" just made you weaker than what was your baseline. It took an hour to realize youre not gonna finish the run and you had to do it again.... unless you played one of the 5 specs that could fly through torghast with ease it was not that fun having to restart every time you did not get your bis anima powers because youll just not be able to finish it
the way you explained the Delves idea could be linked to how class/artifact quests worked in Legion. It involved strategy and how you could manipulate your knowledge to achieve something.
100% agree with the gear aspect. Investment of time should mean good gear, no matter if its world, dungeon or raid. World with a guarantee gearing should however take more time.
I think Delves should be less of a quest and more of a dungeon. And have a competitive rating similar to M+. And they should be spec-specific. "Oh, this Blood DK cleared a max level delve in 10 minutes? How did they do that? Let me try beating his record." type of situation. Some specs will be have an easier time solo-ing a high difficulty delve but also the other players of that class will so balancing won't be an issue.
The problem with delves is that if they provide a challenge, people will bitch that they take too long to fill out their vault, and if they're too easy, people will bitch that facerolling content just to fill out their vault is boring. It's a lose lose for Blizz because their player base is so big, there will always be a large contingent of complainers.
Agreed. I don't have a full group of people to push r1 with and pugging is awful so I make it to around 3400-3500io and that's it but there are no rewards for it. Even for 3k you get nothing. Pvpers have their own set recolor, badass looking glad mount and weapon enchant.
I love your take on delves, challenge and how much more exiting it would be if they were role specific! I feel that making delves rolespecific would inspire more creative delves were specific utility and niches could be a bigger part of the mechanics. Which, on top of being fun and rewarding, would also teach newer players their entire toolkit, which could help them improve if they ever wanted to try out other content, like mythic+.
I'm just hoping for some more deterministic gearing (bad luck protection systems that guarantee that eventually i can get the loot I want, even if i have to wait for X weeks to get it if im unlucky)
I'm so happy to have someone who plays at a high level truly speak up on issues I agree with. I had stopped playing for a little while because gear was too gate kept. I couldn't get Evoker legendary OR the trinket from Echo of Neltharion, after legitimately 3 months of grinding LFR, normal, heroic raid for Legendary. Even offered to buy the trinket to only have someone max geared win it for their friend. It felt bad to have invested so much time to not EARN the flavor items for my class. And losing them to people who didn't need them. I started playing WOW when it was in beta right before vanilla release. While I don't miss how grindy it was back then, I do miss the fantasy. Growl speaks to all of this, even as someone who hasn't played the game as long as some of us. Please get him on the development team. Much love and long time follower.
I think the big thing with hero talents is like you said, they have to FEEL different, even if the actual mechanics of it isn't different. Diabolist for warlock does this really good, you summon huge demons that blast things like crazy, even though no one else can see them the visuals are incredible.
8:30 exactly. And tbh some of those who are playing solo might be doing so because of certain conditions of IRL (i.e. irregular shifts or constant field work that takes you out of town). Allowing ppl who want to challange themselves and who cant commit to a schedule or dont want to will enrich the MMO imo.
Ive long said that M+ marked the death of dungeon creativity. With M+ came the compulsion make sure every new dungeon was designed to work within its structure and so they all became time trial content instead of feeling like adventuring into a dungeon designed around how the creators feel it should be designed. Despite that there is an existing community that enjoys M+, i believe to this day that the game would be healthier if it never existed. Rescale rescale Heroic to what Mythic is now (after the rescaling they just did) or even harder since M0 is still a cake walk and rescale Mythic to be genuinely difficult with extra boss mechanics like they do for raids without any timer, then design your dungeons to be dungeons instead of a mostly straight line with 4 bosses. Add hidden stuff in the nooks and crannies, choose how many bosses there are based on the dungeon and the story around it, you get the idea. And if you want to keep M+ since it already exists - design some dungeons that dont need to be included in it. TLDR: The M+ formula is too rigid and has grossly hindered dungeon creativity
On your point one… not only does it need to be fun, it needs to be impactful. When you click that talent, it needs to feel good. Just as much as when you use it on the battlefield, it needs to feel good and look good.
On the point about 5 man raid type content - Dragonflight's Seson 4 Dawn of the Infinite hard more is a perfect example of this. The squish of M+ 2 to 10 into Mythic 0 really bumped up the difficulty of the mega-dungeon. There are quite a few mechanics that got removed for M+ since they made it too punishing but when there's no timer - it's not an issue. More dungeons like this moving forward would be a huge win.
The thing I was most excited for about fel scarred dh was the fact that it could be flashy and everyone would know I was this fel demon doing huge amounts of fire damage… I love when blizzard makes classes feel more unique. I loved when they updated a lot of old spells. I do high end content and I love the combat style in this game more than any other. I just wish it was a tad more flashy.
Great ideas, all of them. It would be nice if they randomly made a dungeon every once in a while that was not in M+ format but just optional difficulties normal, heroic and mythic, and where mythic is as hard as a difficult mythic raid boss but tuned to be for 5 man, no timer. Make the mechanics not just like usual boss fights but in story format like the mage tower that you can do with 5 people in which everyone needs to be on point and carries are impossible. Reward completion with some awesome transmog or something. It would be a nice incentive to get better in the game during the expansion to have this other type of challenge in the back of your mind that you once in a while give another go with some friends, without the restrictions of needing a key or depleting a key or needing it to be timed. Some kind of ultimate goal to work towards, not something you expect to complete quickly.
the last tier in delves ( tier 11 ) is just 1 room with a really hard boss ala mage tower with a reward only available through the season . from the delves themselves
I think osrs is the perfect example of extremely challenging solo content that most people enjoy, in fact all the hardest achievements in that game are solo and it rocks everyone remembers their first fire cape
@@hvirdberg8532 because why not? What does it take away from anyone? Nothing. It adds to the game. We're all not saying make it as fast and easy as mythic raiding, but being able to get the option in the vault weekly like mythic+ isn't a bad idea and hurts no one. The argument that it makes people feel obligated to do it is on the people who feel that way, not everyone else or devs.
Funny you mentioned Evoker because I am actually pretty concerned about what Engulf is going to do with my M+ bindings, as I already have them nearly full with cc and defensives. Pres is almost certainly taking Unravel in a ton of content next expansion too, very scary scenario. I kinda hope they holy priest all the specs a little, I have so much button real estate on Holy now which is wild.
the DOTI hardmode this week was super fun as 5. Took us about 10 attempts on the last boss and the rest of the dungeon was fine. Was good to have hard untimed 5 man content. will be easy next week however once we have more gear
The problem with your suggestion of role specific delves is it's not a solo experience. You go in by yourself sure if you want but it's also made for five man groups. So what if you go in with a bunch of different rolls? How is that going to work?
It’s wild to me that WoW players are worried about being able to recognize abilities when League of Legends has 150+ champions with a ton of different skins and visual clarity is super important for that game.
I wish they would do things like the opening of AQ. Make a server do something to open something, even a dungeon would be cool. You can add a time gate so people don’t miss out or do it by server group. Make us earn something. I wish blizz would play hell divers 2 and see how good a live service game can be.
100% I lean towards the casual playstyle but I love difficult games. I need challenging mechanics to stay excited, it's why i play healer as it's a little more dynamic.
I really like this format Growl. Gives me something to listen to at work. More please! Your example for Voidweaver is spot on. It doesn't have to be something that throws your spec on its head and changes the entire playstyle, if it looks sick as hell that will work. For example, imagine if Templar for ret made your wings give you a crusader helmet of light. Just some flavor animations. I am the stereotypical dad with kids. I work full time, I have 4 kids, but I love wow. I've done mythic, I have aotc, and I love getting better. Not having anything challenging besides getting into a group for m+ is a bit lame. I want to be challenged, I want to play my paladin to the absolute best I can. That's why I play the spec. I love being able to help and do stuff while also blasting. You hit the nail on the head, every single solo thing they release is something I blow up in 5min and I'm like "ok I guess Im going to go back amd sit in lfg trying to do a key since that's what will challenge me" It's not fun to just sit in lfg for hours clicking refresh. I'm at the point I'm doing keys I don't want to do just so I can play the game.
To your point about adding new dungeons and mini-raids mid-expansion, Ion said in an interview that the development team learned from Legion that players prefer to keep playing familiar dungeons and raids rather than learn new ones. 💔 overall, participation in them was apparently low. Besides that, they should just make delves be like horrific visions mixed with the mage tower (and dare I say, the powers you’d get from Torghast)
6:33 I write complaints on the submission form all the time about this. I'm a fucking druid and that centaur guy for the profession knowledge shards tells you to go out and kill Thousandmile for inspiration. It should involve me getting in my deer travel form, going out and talking to the big Moose and we go back to the cave and beat that guys ass, stomp him into the ground. Tell him if he needs inspiration, think about Thousandmile's hoof on his face again. THAT would be how a druid would handle that. There are so many times that my nature loving druid is forced to go full genocide on non-hostile animals that he would never do. The idea you can RP in this game is laughable in the extreme.
I just hit 500 iLvl as a completely solo player. I don't need to be any higher than this, in fact, as a solo player, I could have been fine around 480/490. And then when the expansion comes it's not going to matter.
Thoughts on your points from the perspective of a game developer: Hero talents: This makes a lot of sense and I think Blizzard is working on giving each hero spec a unique visual identity by launch. Delves: I think you're underestimating how many new or hyper-casual players there are, and it's important for Blizzard to have more content for them. That said, I personally would like to see more challenging solo content, but the design for the current set of delves is probably mostly done. They will have to work within the constraint of trying to make the higher tiers difficult as spec-agnostic gameplay, but maybe they'll have some spec-specific challenges by the end of the xpac. Content schedule: this is 100% they would have had to start planning for 2+ years ago. Hopefully the improvements during Dragonflight are a sign that they're on this path, but no amount of feedback at this point is going to change it for TWW
It's really boring that expansions are so formulaic now, 8 dungeons and raid => newpatch with raid and megadungeon -> new raid. I would love to see some extra content shoved into this formula to break up the monotony of the major patches
Regarding your delv complaints, Blizzard already stated that the later difficulties of delvs should be as challanging as the mage tower. So you get what you want ^^ but of course not on easy mode.
This is a great video. WoW is not a young game and players sometimes are not teenagers anymore. Sometimes we don't have that much time to socialize in-game and coordinate our time with other players so we can spend 5 hours pushing keys or raiding together. All we want to do is log in and do something fun solo yet challenging, without merging into the wildness of LFR... Instead of just doing quests...
Honestly recent development has been miles better than what we've had prior. Imagine a team of people whom strive to immerse themselves in the creative process and simply spits out new things on a regular basis to the feedback of thousands and then from said feedback they then formulate the next new thing. Why I would make a somewhat uneducated guess that such an environment might just be one of many quintessential things, if not the very foundation of any creative endeavor. :) I can only hope that the dev team no longer feels shackled, fuck me do I want them to just machine gun out content in our face. If it's bad, if it's good, if it's meh don't care, but for the love of all the gods divine simply MAKE STUFF so that you can get better at making stuff, jesus lord have mercy. Thank for video, growl. Sincerely, friends
I really don't think this expansion is going to be absolutely incredible, but I think it's gonna build the foundation for the upcoming expansions. I think general perception will be that TWW will be a 7/10, while the next expansion seems like it's gonna be a 10/10
i agree, we need another megadungeon that isnt mythic plus but still whoops our ass on release for like a week or so cause mechanics are challenging and fun like Mechagon or Tazavesh the veiled market
I actually find the garrisan mini game when you have to heal the party pretty fun. That format was fun but a bit too repetitive. Would love to see some more of that but maybe mage tower like in it's own evironment. Also, would like to have some quests to change the spell fx on weapons and talents.
I await delves with baited breath. I'm not a "casual" player in the sense that I like easy content (I raid mythic and do high keys when I can); but I am casual in terms of time commitment. I can put 6 structured hours a week into raid but other than that I just play when I can - maybe another 5 hours a week on average here and there. Most of my guild is the same. If we can't line up a time to crank out some m+, we're either gearing slowly or pugging to get geared outside of raid, and everyone knows that pugging is a uniquely bad experience a lot of the time. At the same time, horrific visions and mage tower were absolutely incredible single-player experiences for me. If the higher delves comes out anything like those, AND they give you decent gear so I can work on gearing on my own when my schedule doesn't line up with my guildies, I will be extremely happy with this expansion. If they nail it I will never pug a single m+ group again.
I either want Heroic raids to become more difficult, or make mythix flex 10 to 20 players then give race to world furst players (literally less than .1%) something more difficult than mythic or have their achievements locked to 20 player mythic. I'm in a guild of about 15 irl friends/family (about 3 groups of 5 that are interconnected by one or two people) we've all played together for 3 expansions now and Heroic/AOTC raiding is just way too easy for us. Most of us have at one point done mythic raiding (within the past few expansions) and we all agree it's the perfect level of difficulty/fun balance but the truly hard part is having a roster of 20 (and a couple more on bench) guys to show up consistently 2 or 3 nights per week. None of us want to take the time to actually guild lead and recruit randos that are fickle. It would be nice to have flex mythic 10 to 20. I'm sure there are many groups of players or guilds that have about 10 to 15 players that would love to be able to jump right in to mythic flex. Or groups of 5 to 10 friends that would love to just have to pug one or two guys for mythic flex (who might become friends too).
I think everything about raiding needs a complete overhaul, specifically gearing and rewards. If I'm gonna hang out with guild friends and goof off, I want to with EVERYBODY. Not just 4 other people in M+ (in a timed, no mistakes environment) Also, raids being a once a week thing they NEED to drop better gear. The vault is also once a week, but the vault gives Myth gear. And nobody's doing mythic raiding.
How do you feel that you walk up to an open world mob then flame shock-lava burst and it dies? Then doing it for 5 hours or however long it takes to level up nowadays
The next expansion will be nice - yeah im always pretty hyped for a new expansion but as you said: we built upon the previous expansion and especially in DF we got super good changes even tho I couldnt went as hard as I did in SL because of uni but kept up with all the new changes Im a keybind nerd and I still favor less button bloat like they are trying to do with some abilities have others incorporated in them like windwalkers new fist of the windlord with bonedustbrew finally gone as that one button you had to press to do dmg so it just became another gcd to press before actually playing the rotation...Id rather have 2 to 3 abilities in 1 that has big influence in dmg and opening for further rotation than pressing 3 diff. buttons just to do the same thing thats what SL and mostly DF with the initial specc reworks have braught us and I hope they built onto the new concept in TWW so that people finally come back..but for that they would also have to rework the whole new player experience once again / overhaul the complete idea that we currently have with bfa see all these good changes come handy for players that already have been there when stuff was worse in all terms and they also got used to the retconed lore but for new ideas and concepts to be succesfull, they need to introduced them to their own part of the community...
I like the idea of delves and catering towards your class/spec. WoW is seemingly approaching Path of Exile like status for MMOs. In the sense of "I want to do the end game content I want" in this case there's only 3 but actually 2 end game contents at the moment. M+, Raids, PvP. I certainly hope Delves can add or be transitional towards the PvE side of end game. I would like Blizzard to add a form of endgame content that is just part of the world. Like Torghast was a huge MISSED opportunity to give us endless transmogs in an arcade PvE style content.
Second comment...sue me. Did you watch the naguura interview? Im not sure what tier is available on alpha atm but the designer was saying that reqards capped out at 8 and he wanted to really challenge people in 9/10/11. Then there was a '13th' delve that was just a super hard boss or something. Super right about the solo/small group that has some subtance to it. It doesnt even have to be super hard, it just has to not be a complete pushover
Higher delvs gonna be like Mage towers with just mob. If you didn't know you should watch the Naguura interview video. It's called sth. like "I asked them about endgame" or sth. Like "the endgame in the war within is gonna change".
Would be better if they made made other classes like hunter more m+ viable via a rework to their utility and survivability. No changes since DF beta feels terrible and the hunter hero trees are very lacking. It's obvious when Blizzard runs out of ideas, they stick in "ability does X% more damage" nodes which is filled through our class, spec, and hero trees.
The key problem in implementing these suggestions and improving the quality of gameplay, etc., is that Activision/Microsoft is not prepared to actually invest in the game to hire enough staff to implement them. This is why we have still have specs that have required major dev attention for years, etc.
I’d like to see Raids to be shorter, more smaller 3-5 man boss raids, less trash vs. same number of bosses per phase just split up a bit better, but that’s because I don’t have the time anymore to do long 10-12 man boss raids. But that’s just me..
Lol, they could also add more dungeons and raids, while they're at it and make learning new classes 'easier' if this expansion and on are meant to be alt-friendly, and accessible to new players. Delves shouldn't be tainted by the sweaty players and their wants, they added delve 13 for a challenge, also I would like to see a leveling raid!
I mean the devs have said delves are made for the open world players. sure they might want a bit more challenge then the current open world but not as close to any high end people
If they're going to be going after button bloat they desperately need to fix druids in general. While sometimes I like having a million buttons sometimes it gets annoying having to remember them all.
I want new stats or updated mastery. Some masteries are only “dmg increase” and boring. Also, some more most procs and abilities should scale with stats like “ability has chance equal to mastery%” or “on crits” etc Basically, any % value you see should be tied to a stat in some way and not just a random number.
I honestly can't think of any good reason why a casual overworld player shouldn't be able to get mythic gear on par with last mythic boss of a different transmog but same ilvl farming rep and doing dailies, something that takes like 3 months for serious casual players and most only accomplishing it maybe like 2 weeks before a new season. Giving casuals a reason to play is also important because everyone wants gear and the argument against is has been flat out denied by Ion. The best would be someone who does like +20s for most gear but then could also keep doing rep grinds to get mythic raid gear by the end of the season, that's just more worthwhile content. People usually only have problems with systems like that when they become a chore where you HAVE to do it and your player power no matter if you're a casual or a mythic raider is tied to the same system. Let there be more equal but separate paths to get to the same ilvl at the end of each season.
Making non timed but difficult dungeons like dawn hard mode was every season would be a real good thing for wow. People like mega dungeons especially when they provide a challenge. Putting bis chase items in them is a bit weird though. I've been doing dawn this season on my rogue chasing the dagger which is bis. I'm not a dick so I see the whole dungeon through even though my dagger drops off the second boss. Every group I'm in we end up rotating 10 people in cause people leave after the boss that drops their item. Just shows how toxic most of the community is these days. People have been on the gear treadmill so long they don't even care anymore especially when it comes to pugs.
Honestly, I liked the PvE aspects of Plunderstorm, gathering plunder and killing mobs, but the PvP just felt like a distraction. You did get plunder by PKing, but I felt it was more efficient to do PvE.
You hit the nail o nthe head. Wow is severely lacking in midcore content. If you play high end or super casually you're eating good, but for those of us who are casual but still want to feel challenged there's basically nothing to do. I hope they uitilize some of the Plunderstorm tech in retail wow. Having everything be a skillshot you can dodge allows you to create fun side content like Torghast without it being a failure from the get go. Having mobs always deal white hits, which are unavoidable, means you can't make a lot of the content very challenging for solo players without it feeling like bullshit.
hello growl, this is friends
Every single time I say the same thing :)
The thing I'm hoping to see the most in delves is content blizz can't really get away with in typical dungeons. Things that M+ers call "rp filler" like puzzles and things that aren't just killing things. I do hope that's what we'll see in delves going forward.
being an M+er, I concurr that I've had wow friends who would totally ship that kind of stuff. Who knows, maybe I'd like it after a stressful evening of raid prog xD I do think puzzles are definitely fun for solo content
Or like, less of a linear content but make the delves like a dungeon crawler kind of content, you go through puzzles, discover secrets, backtrack to open doors etc. Would actually make it seem like youre exploring a dungeon instead of a purely linear go from a to b content... in the style of old school quake or doom level design but adjusted for wow, ykwim. Altho regretably that would become linear content really quickly after youve done them all and start farming them...
I really wish they would utilise their back catalougue a bit more. We were doing Dragonflight and standing next to Chromie, timewalk the Sanctums in Wyrmrest and give it a storm cache or something. Almost 0 effort.
WoW has 20 years of content there should be literally 100's and 100's of ways to get my character entry level gear (say 476-480 there's way too many dividers in the game. "That's older content" "That's timewalking" "That's only awakened this week" etc.
Not just the mage tower, but what you're talking about with delves is exactly what scenarios in MoP were. Looking forward to doing them again in Pandaria Remix
Were scenarios good? My toxic trait is basically ignoring any content that doesn't help gear me up
@@vinni3c I remember them being pretty challenging at the gold level, plus you had to do silver I think(?) to even queue for heroic dungeons at the time.
@@vinni3cScenarios were good but by siege you were forced to run like 10 of them to get valor capped for the week so they quickly got old.
“Social Spectacle” is such a great term for the flavor of the abilities. Wow has so many abilities that make it “WOW” just as any character or city does. Chain lightning, whirlwind, eye beam, just to name a few. Giving each tree something to show off to their buddies is fantastic
I'd love to see a semi-difficult 5-man or even 10-man boss akin to extremes in FFXIV: you go in, prog just that one boss in an hour or so, then farm it for a weapon or a mount or something, no need for trash or big dungeon design, or an elaborate quest line, just a boss in a room to kill that's challenging but isn't a massive time/social commitment.
I think somethin like this would be cool but I think an attunement questline for something like this would actually be sick to make the boss have some lore and some reason you want to go kill it.
I'm quite happy with the hardmode on dawn of the infinite that was added this patch (no not the stupid no deaths run). It was quite challenging this week in 495 ish gear and gave rewards worth doing, and luckily it wasn't timed for a change.
@@Dude32323 Dawn of the Infinite hardmode is cool, but megadungeons are the exact opposite of what trials are in FFXIV when it comes to time commitment. The bosses on hardmode mostly die in under 2 minutes and aren't that heavy on mechanics, but the whole thing takes a long time with all the trash. Extreme trial is a single 10 minute boss fight, but if you're progging it from scratch you might need an hour to get the first clear. If you happen to have half an hour and have the achievement you can join a farm group, do 2 or 3 runs, make some progress towards a mount, and get the dopamine hit from nailing the mechanics.
13:42 Shows M+ player brain, trying to jump down from smallest hole to be more efficient and fast. (and I like it)
The formulaic point you make has been a key issue for me. I feel like the last real risk they took for a new form of core gameplay was M+ back in Legion. Since then it's the same formula + some system sprinkled on top.
Your idea of 5 man multi-phase boss fights, or just random non M+ dungeons is exactly the sort of thing we need.
Or imagine with Warfronts from BFA were actually difficult organized content where the raid leader is the RTS player and the raiders are the units (what I thought it would be when announced at Blizzcon but it ended up being an LFR zergfest)
They need to get creative tbh
Islands, warfronts,, torghast,
Thorgast was way more risky than delves.
@@Moaningbirdmakes me feel bad when I look back and realize that Thorgast, for all the suffering we all had to go through to get that stupidass soul ash, was inherently very interesting and if obligatory grind wasn't tied into it, there were people who enjoyed it for the sake of itself (and it had a real, adjustable difficulty ramp + it was spec oriented like Growl pointed out, albeit more or less successfuly in practice lol).
@@n3v3r1s4 I completely agree
@@n3v3r1s4 i would enjoy torghast more if my class didnt end up weaker on the end of the run compared to when i got inside... my only issue was that the abilities you got were weak and the "affixes" just made you weaker than what was your baseline. It took an hour to realize youre not gonna finish the run and you had to do it again....
unless you played one of the 5 specs that could fly through torghast with ease it was not that fun having to restart every time you did not get your bis anima powers because youll just not be able to finish it
the way you explained the Delves idea could be linked to how class/artifact quests worked in Legion. It involved strategy and how you could manipulate your knowledge to achieve something.
100% agree with the gear aspect.
Investment of time should mean good gear, no matter if its world, dungeon or raid.
World with a guarantee gearing should however take more time.
I wish they would add instanced old story lines missions. Then throw a challenge mode on it for transmogs.
MSQ should be like scenario tbh, queueable content that you can solo or queue with others.
I think Delves should be less of a quest and more of a dungeon. And have a competitive rating similar to M+. And they should be spec-specific. "Oh, this Blood DK cleared a max level delve in 10 minutes? How did they do that? Let me try beating his record." type of situation. Some specs will be have an easier time solo-ing a high difficulty delve but also the other players of that class will so balancing won't be an issue.
The problem with delves is that if they provide a challenge, people will bitch that they take too long to fill out their vault, and if they're too easy, people will bitch that facerolling content just to fill out their vault is boring. It's a lose lose for Blizz because their player base is so big, there will always be a large contingent of complainers.
I dont understand why there is no mount for high ish keys etc. 3400 3500 io. Title is unobtanaible for normal people, and keystone hero is formality
Agreed. I don't have a full group of people to push r1 with and pugging is awful so I make it to around 3400-3500io and that's it but there are no rewards for it. Even for 3k you get nothing. Pvpers have their own set recolor, badass looking glad mount and weapon enchant.
I love your take on delves, challenge and how much more exiting it would be if they were role specific! I feel that making delves rolespecific would inspire more creative delves were specific utility and niches could be a bigger part of the mechanics. Which, on top of being fun and rewarding, would also teach newer players their entire toolkit, which could help them improve if they ever wanted to try out other content, like mythic+.
Also just saying but just because its labled "Dungeon or Delves" It can just be an instanced area and open up more ideas.Just saying.
I wish they add cosmetic gear "mage tower-like rewards" as a reward when finishing high level delve stages 😍
I'm just hoping for some more deterministic gearing (bad luck protection systems that guarantee that eventually i can get the loot I want, even if i have to wait for X weeks to get it if im unlucky)
Holy the mini mage tower delves would go so hard, and I think you could share a lot of them across multiple specs
I'm so happy to have someone who plays at a high level truly speak up on issues I agree with. I had stopped playing for a little while because gear was too gate kept. I couldn't get Evoker legendary OR the trinket from Echo of Neltharion, after legitimately 3 months of grinding LFR, normal, heroic raid for Legendary. Even offered to buy the trinket to only have someone max geared win it for their friend. It felt bad to have invested so much time to not EARN the flavor items for my class. And losing them to people who didn't need them. I started playing WOW when it was in beta right before vanilla release. While I don't miss how grindy it was back then, I do miss the fantasy. Growl speaks to all of this, even as someone who hasn't played the game as long as some of us. Please get him on the development team. Much love and long time follower.
I think the big thing with hero talents is like you said, they have to FEEL different, even if the actual mechanics of it isn't different. Diabolist for warlock does this really good, you summon huge demons that blast things like crazy, even though no one else can see them the visuals are incredible.
Love the smooth jazz in the background lol
11:00 What are you talking about? Legion is the only outlier that doesn't fall into this and that only for the first 8 months or so.
8:30 exactly. And tbh some of those who are playing solo might be doing so because of certain conditions of IRL (i.e. irregular shifts or constant field work that takes you out of town).
Allowing ppl who want to challange themselves and who cant commit to a schedule or dont want to will enrich the MMO imo.
Ive long said that M+ marked the death of dungeon creativity. With M+ came the compulsion make sure every new dungeon was designed to work within its structure and so they all became time trial content instead of feeling like adventuring into a dungeon designed around how the creators feel it should be designed. Despite that there is an existing community that enjoys M+, i believe to this day that the game would be healthier if it never existed. Rescale rescale Heroic to what Mythic is now (after the rescaling they just did) or even harder since M0 is still a cake walk and rescale Mythic to be genuinely difficult with extra boss mechanics like they do for raids without any timer, then design your dungeons to be dungeons instead of a mostly straight line with 4 bosses. Add hidden stuff in the nooks and crannies, choose how many bosses there are based on the dungeon and the story around it, you get the idea.
And if you want to keep M+ since it already exists - design some dungeons that dont need to be included in it.
TLDR: The M+ formula is too rigid and has grossly hindered dungeon creativity
100% with you in the delves part. We solo casuals want solo challenging content, no loot piñatas or puzzles to solve
On your point one… not only does it need to be fun, it needs to be impactful. When you click that talent, it needs to feel good. Just as much as when you use it on the battlefield, it needs to feel good and look good.
On the point about 5 man raid type content - Dragonflight's Seson 4 Dawn of the Infinite hard more is a perfect example of this. The squish of M+ 2 to 10 into Mythic 0 really bumped up the difficulty of the mega-dungeon. There are quite a few mechanics that got removed for M+ since they made it too punishing but when there's no timer - it's not an issue.
More dungeons like this moving forward would be a huge win.
The thing I was most excited for about fel scarred dh was the fact that it could be flashy and everyone would know I was this fel demon doing huge amounts of fire damage…
I love when blizzard makes classes feel more unique. I loved when they updated a lot of old spells.
I do high end content and I love the combat style in this game more than any other. I just wish it was a tad more flashy.
Great ideas, all of them. It would be nice if they randomly made a dungeon every once in a while that was not in M+ format but just optional difficulties normal, heroic and mythic, and where mythic is as hard as a difficult mythic raid boss but tuned to be for 5 man, no timer. Make the mechanics not just like usual boss fights but in story format like the mage tower that you can do with 5 people in which everyone needs to be on point and carries are impossible. Reward completion with some awesome transmog or something. It would be a nice incentive to get better in the game during the expansion to have this other type of challenge in the back of your mind that you once in a while give another go with some friends, without the restrictions of needing a key or depleting a key or needing it to be timed. Some kind of ultimate goal to work towards, not something you expect to complete quickly.
the last tier in delves ( tier 11 ) is just 1 room with a really hard boss ala mage tower with a reward only available through the season . from the delves themselves
I think osrs is the perfect example of extremely challenging solo content that most people enjoy, in fact all the hardest achievements in that game are solo and it rocks everyone remembers their first fire cape
I agree with you strongly about the gatekeeping. Delves and world content should still be able to attain top myth track gear, just more slowly.
Why?
@@hvirdberg8532 because why not? What does it take away from anyone? Nothing. It adds to the game. We're all not saying make it as fast and easy as mythic raiding, but being able to get the option in the vault weekly like mythic+ isn't a bad idea and hurts no one.
The argument that it makes people feel obligated to do it is on the people who feel that way, not everyone else or devs.
Funny you mentioned Evoker because I am actually pretty concerned about what Engulf is going to do with my M+ bindings, as I already have them nearly full with cc and defensives. Pres is almost certainly taking Unravel in a ton of content next expansion too, very scary scenario. I kinda hope they holy priest all the specs a little, I have so much button real estate on Holy now which is wild.
the DOTI hardmode this week was super fun as 5. Took us about 10 attempts on the last boss and the rest of the dungeon was fine. Was good to have hard untimed 5 man content. will be easy next week however once we have more gear
The problem with your suggestion of role specific delves is it's not a solo experience. You go in by yourself sure if you want but it's also made for five man groups. So what if you go in with a bunch of different rolls? How is that going to work?
It’s wild to me that WoW players are worried about being able to recognize abilities when League of Legends has 150+ champions with a ton of different skins and visual clarity is super important for that game.
The delve idea sounds like proving grounds with a small story attached. Sounds good to me.
I wish they would do things like the opening of AQ. Make a server do something to open something, even a dungeon would be cool. You can add a time gate so people don’t miss out or do it by server group. Make us earn something. I wish blizz would play hell divers 2 and see how good a live service game can be.
It’s eerie how much this video reflects basically all of my wants for the game, keep cooking 👨🍳
I think delves could be a banger of a solo system if it’s like infinite archives in ESO or Manastorm in Ascension
100% I lean towards the casual playstyle but I love difficult games. I need challenging mechanics to stay excited, it's why i play healer as it's a little more dynamic.
The delves being catered to your class like mage tower take is premium. COMPLETELY AGREE
I really like this format Growl. Gives me something to listen to at work. More please!
Your example for Voidweaver is spot on. It doesn't have to be something that throws your spec on its head and changes the entire playstyle, if it looks sick as hell that will work.
For example, imagine if Templar for ret made your wings give you a crusader helmet of light. Just some flavor animations.
I am the stereotypical dad with kids. I work full time, I have 4 kids, but I love wow. I've done mythic, I have aotc, and I love getting better. Not having anything challenging besides getting into a group for m+ is a bit lame. I want to be challenged, I want to play my paladin to the absolute best I can. That's why I play the spec. I love being able to help and do stuff while also blasting. You hit the nail on the head, every single solo thing they release is something I blow up in 5min and I'm like "ok I guess Im going to go back amd sit in lfg trying to do a key since that's what will challenge me"
It's not fun to just sit in lfg for hours clicking refresh. I'm at the point I'm doing keys I don't want to do just so I can play the game.
To your point about adding new dungeons and mini-raids mid-expansion, Ion said in an interview that the development team learned from Legion that players prefer to keep playing familiar dungeons and raids rather than learn new ones. 💔 overall, participation in them was apparently low.
Besides that, they should just make delves be like horrific visions mixed with the mage tower (and dare I say, the powers you’d get from Torghast)
I would love some regular dungeon content or mini raid content. I think that would be a nice change of pace. Great idea
Excellent breakdown. You summed up many of my problems with WoW in a short succinct video.
I think you're quite right about open world / single content, a role specific activity that's a bit of a challenge is still lacking I think.
6:33 I write complaints on the submission form all the time about this. I'm a fucking druid and that centaur guy for the profession knowledge shards tells you to go out and kill Thousandmile for inspiration. It should involve me getting in my deer travel form, going out and talking to the big Moose and we go back to the cave and beat that guys ass, stomp him into the ground. Tell him if he needs inspiration, think about Thousandmile's hoof on his face again. THAT would be how a druid would handle that.
There are so many times that my nature loving druid is forced to go full genocide on non-hostile animals that he would never do. The idea you can RP in this game is laughable in the extreme.
I just hit 500 iLvl as a completely solo player. I don't need to be any higher than this, in fact, as a solo player, I could have been fine around 480/490. And then when the expansion comes it's not going to matter.
Thoughts on your points from the perspective of a game developer:
Hero talents: This makes a lot of sense and I think Blizzard is working on giving each hero spec a unique visual identity by launch.
Delves: I think you're underestimating how many new or hyper-casual players there are, and it's important for Blizzard to have more content for them. That said, I personally would like to see more challenging solo content, but the design for the current set of delves is probably mostly done. They will have to work within the constraint of trying to make the higher tiers difficult as spec-agnostic gameplay, but maybe they'll have some spec-specific challenges by the end of the xpac.
Content schedule: this is 100% they would have had to start planning for 2+ years ago. Hopefully the improvements during Dragonflight are a sign that they're on this path, but no amount of feedback at this point is going to change it for TWW
It's really boring that expansions are so formulaic now, 8 dungeons and raid => newpatch with raid and megadungeon -> new raid. I would love to see some extra content shoved into this formula to break up the monotony of the major patches
Like plunderstorm and mop remix?
Love the music 🎶
Regarding your delv complaints, Blizzard already stated that the later difficulties of delvs should be as challanging as the mage tower. So you get what you want ^^ but of course not on easy mode.
This is a great video. WoW is not a young game and players sometimes are not teenagers anymore. Sometimes we don't have that much time to socialize in-game and coordinate our time with other players so we can spend 5 hours pushing keys or raiding together. All we want to do is log in and do something fun solo yet challenging, without merging into the wildness of LFR... Instead of just doing quests...
Honestly recent development has been miles better than what we've had prior. Imagine a team of people whom strive to immerse themselves in the creative process and simply spits out new things on a regular basis to the feedback of thousands and then from said feedback they then formulate the next new thing. Why I would make a somewhat uneducated guess that such an environment might just be one of many quintessential things, if not the very foundation of any creative endeavor. :)
I can only hope that the dev team no longer feels shackled, fuck me do I want them to just machine gun out content in our face. If it's bad, if it's good, if it's meh don't care, but for the love of all the gods divine simply MAKE STUFF so that you can get better at making stuff, jesus lord have mercy.
Thank for video, growl.
Sincerely,
friends
I really don't think this expansion is going to be absolutely incredible, but I think it's gonna build the foundation for the upcoming expansions. I think general perception will be that TWW will be a 7/10, while the next expansion seems like it's gonna be a 10/10
How much GB of disk is needed for War Within?
i agree, we need another megadungeon that isnt mythic plus but still whoops our ass on release for like a week or so cause mechanics are challenging and fun like Mechagon or Tazavesh the veiled market
I actually find the garrisan mini game when you have to heal the party pretty fun. That format was fun but a bit too repetitive. Would love to see some more of that but maybe mage tower like in it's own evironment. Also, would like to have some quests to change the spell fx on weapons and talents.
I await delves with baited breath. I'm not a "casual" player in the sense that I like easy content (I raid mythic and do high keys when I can); but I am casual in terms of time commitment. I can put 6 structured hours a week into raid but other than that I just play when I can - maybe another 5 hours a week on average here and there. Most of my guild is the same. If we can't line up a time to crank out some m+, we're either gearing slowly or pugging to get geared outside of raid, and everyone knows that pugging is a uniquely bad experience a lot of the time.
At the same time, horrific visions and mage tower were absolutely incredible single-player experiences for me. If the higher delves comes out anything like those, AND they give you decent gear so I can work on gearing on my own when my schedule doesn't line up with my guildies, I will be extremely happy with this expansion.
If they nail it I will never pug a single m+ group again.
I either want Heroic raids to become more difficult, or make mythix flex 10 to 20 players then give race to world furst players (literally less than .1%) something more difficult than mythic or have their achievements locked to 20 player mythic.
I'm in a guild of about 15 irl friends/family (about 3 groups of 5 that are interconnected by one or two people) we've all played together for 3 expansions now and Heroic/AOTC raiding is just way too easy for us. Most of us have at one point done mythic raiding (within the past few expansions) and we all agree it's the perfect level of difficulty/fun balance but the truly hard part is having a roster of 20 (and a couple more on bench) guys to show up consistently 2 or 3 nights per week. None of us want to take the time to actually guild lead and recruit randos that are fickle. It would be nice to have flex mythic 10 to 20.
I'm sure there are many groups of players or guilds that have about 10 to 15 players that would love to be able to jump right in to mythic flex. Or groups of 5 to 10 friends that would love to just have to pug one or two guys for mythic flex (who might become friends too).
I think everything about raiding needs a complete overhaul, specifically gearing and rewards.
If I'm gonna hang out with guild friends and goof off, I want to with EVERYBODY. Not just 4 other people in M+ (in a timed, no mistakes environment)
Also, raids being a once a week thing they NEED to drop better gear.
The vault is also once a week, but the vault gives Myth gear.
And nobody's doing mythic raiding.
Are the changing themes in each delve playable in the Alpha?
How do you feel that you walk up to an open world mob then flame shock-lava burst and it dies? Then doing it for 5 hours or however long it takes to level up nowadays
Good video. Based on all the positive feedback, decided to try wow again after 15yrs to see what it‘s all about now. Will play a warlock
I'd love more content where you just spit and cook ideas.
love this content growl
The next expansion will be nice - yeah im always pretty hyped for a new expansion but as you said: we built upon the previous expansion and especially in DF we got super good changes even tho I couldnt went as hard as I did in SL because of uni but kept up with all the new changes
Im a keybind nerd and I still favor less button bloat like they are trying to do with some abilities have others incorporated in them like windwalkers new fist of the windlord with bonedustbrew finally gone as that one button you had to press to do dmg so it just became another gcd to press before actually playing the rotation...Id rather have 2 to 3 abilities in 1 that has big influence in dmg and opening for further rotation than pressing 3 diff. buttons just to do the same thing
thats what SL and mostly DF with the initial specc reworks have braught us and I hope they built onto the new concept in TWW so that people finally come back..but for that they would also have to rework the whole new player experience once again / overhaul the complete idea that we currently have with bfa
see all these good changes come handy for players that already have been there when stuff was worse in all terms and they also got used to the retconed lore but for new ideas and concepts to be succesfull, they need to introduced them to their own part of the community...
I like the idea of delves and catering towards your class/spec. WoW is seemingly approaching Path of Exile like status for MMOs.
In the sense of "I want to do the end game content I want" in this case there's only 3 but actually 2 end game contents at the moment. M+, Raids, PvP.
I certainly hope Delves can add or be transitional towards the PvE side of end game.
I would like Blizzard to add a form of endgame content that is just part of the world. Like Torghast was a huge MISSED opportunity to give us endless transmogs in an arcade PvE style content.
I agree on delves but I feel like most people would complain about getting “harder” objectives lol
this video is just spot on
Second comment...sue me. Did you watch the naguura interview? Im not sure what tier is available on alpha atm but the designer was saying that reqards capped out at 8 and he wanted to really challenge people in 9/10/11. Then there was a '13th' delve that was just a super hard boss or something.
Super right about the solo/small group that has some subtance to it. It doesnt even have to be super hard, it just has to not be a complete pushover
Higher delvs gonna be like Mage towers with just mob. If you didn't know you should watch the Naguura interview video. It's called sth. like "I asked them about endgame" or sth. Like "the endgame in the war within is gonna change".
Mage tower was my favourite thing they have ever added apart from M+
Would be better if they made made other classes like hunter more m+ viable via a rework to their utility and survivability. No changes since DF beta feels terrible and the hunter hero trees are very lacking. It's obvious when Blizzard runs out of ideas, they stick in "ability does X% more damage" nodes which is filled through our class, spec, and hero trees.
Point 3 - sounds a bit like you want it in a simillair way to how Helldives 2 does it, they release things willy-nilly.
The key problem in implementing these suggestions and improving the quality of gameplay, etc., is that Activision/Microsoft is not prepared to actually invest in the game to hire enough staff to implement them. This is why we have still have specs that have required major dev attention for years, etc.
I’d like to see Raids to be shorter, more smaller 3-5 man boss raids, less trash vs. same number of bosses per phase just split up a bit better, but that’s because I don’t have the time anymore to do long 10-12 man boss raids. But that’s just me..
Yeah I am also worried Delves will basically be massive damage sponges.
Growl spitting straight fire when talking about delves man for real. Hit the nail on the head.
ikr? delves are awesome!!
I'm playing more consistently than ever. I haven't felt so optimistic about the game in a long time, maybe ever.
I wish delves were more like random gen BRD that we have to figure out what's going on to win.
Delves should try more random , boss maps
Lol, they could also add more dungeons and raids, while they're at it and make learning new classes 'easier' if this expansion and on are meant to be alt-friendly, and accessible to new players. Delves shouldn't be tainted by the sweaty players and their wants, they added delve 13 for a challenge, also I would like to see a leveling raid!
Resto hero talents aren't the issue. Befoee anything else, our class tree and their recent proposed rework of it need a monk-like revamp.
I mean the devs have said delves are made for the open world players. sure they might want a bit more challenge then the current open world but not as close to any high end people
If they're going to be going after button bloat they desperately need to fix druids in general. While sometimes I like having a million buttons sometimes it gets annoying having to remember them all.
I want new stats or updated mastery.
Some masteries are only “dmg increase” and boring.
Also, some more most procs and abilities should scale with stats like “ability has chance equal to mastery%” or “on crits” etc
Basically, any % value you see should be tied to a stat in some way and not just a random number.
I honestly can't think of any good reason why a casual overworld player shouldn't be able to get mythic gear on par with last mythic boss of a different transmog but same ilvl farming rep and doing dailies, something that takes like 3 months for serious casual players and most only accomplishing it maybe like 2 weeks before a new season. Giving casuals a reason to play is also important because everyone wants gear and the argument against is has been flat out denied by Ion. The best would be someone who does like +20s for most gear but then could also keep doing rep grinds to get mythic raid gear by the end of the season, that's just more worthwhile content.
People usually only have problems with systems like that when they become a chore where you HAVE to do it and your player power no matter if you're a casual or a mythic raider is tied to the same system. Let there be more equal but separate paths to get to the same ilvl at the end of each season.
Making non timed but difficult dungeons like dawn hard mode was every season would be a real good thing for wow. People like mega dungeons especially when they provide a challenge. Putting bis chase items in them is a bit weird though. I've been doing dawn this season on my rogue chasing the dagger which is bis. I'm not a dick so I see the whole dungeon through even though my dagger drops off the second boss. Every group I'm in we end up rotating 10 people in cause people leave after the boss that drops their item. Just shows how toxic most of the community is these days. People have been on the gear treadmill so long they don't even care anymore especially when it comes to pugs.
okay yall can flame me but I will open admit that I just NOW realized that's a waffle on the cat's head... wait IS it a waffle tho?
I hope this ends up being Metzen’s baby. I might go hard on this expansion since classic is getting stale.
3:31 because the fact that you are dark and see through isn't clue enough.
There are a lot of people who play this game, and a lot of them including myself and many of my friends and family like passives.
show talents?
Honestly, I liked the PvE aspects of Plunderstorm, gathering plunder and killing mobs, but the PvP just felt like a distraction. You did get plunder by PKing, but I felt it was more efficient to do PvE.
Agreed about Delvs mate
Blizzard realized WoW is the last game they have that isnt declining massively so theyre finally doubling down on it.
You hit the nail o nthe head. Wow is severely lacking in midcore content. If you play high end or super casually you're eating good, but for those of us who are casual but still want to feel challenged there's basically nothing to do.
I hope they uitilize some of the Plunderstorm tech in retail wow. Having everything be a skillshot you can dodge allows you to create fun side content like Torghast without it being a failure from the get go. Having mobs always deal white hits, which are unavoidable, means you can't make a lot of the content very challenging for solo players without it feeling like bullshit.