In MoP they gave daily currency reward, I don't remember what. Valor points or whatever, so people did them.
World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
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Foggy
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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They need to strike a balance between incentivizing people to run dungeons and making it a requirement indefinitely. I like what they did with timewalking with mounts, do that with Legion dungeons. Let me run them for gear and then only come back if I want pets, xmog, and mounts.
Sterling
El Presidente
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Valor was fine. You didn't have to do dungeons. You could do dailies instead or scenarios or you could eventually buy them with timeless coins. Plus you could get some Rep with dungeons. It was good because it was something you could do without feeling like you were required to do them. You did have to do "something" to cap valor each week though.
Miele
Lord Nagafen Raider
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WoW stopped having dungeons in 2007 with TBC release, where they became short hallways with 3 rooms. Even in vanilla dungeons were sometimes more linear than desirable, but it was way less obvious and generally speaking much more interesting.
I find it baffling that people are willing to torture themselves for hours against a single boss in a shitty raid, but refuse to spend more than 10-15 minutes running a "dungeons". I grant that Blizzard is completely inept in providing tangible rewards for non raiders and always has been, but the sad state of affairs is that if Blizzard does it in a certain way, every other copycat has to do the same exact thing, so say goodbye to good dungeons EQ-EQ2 style or even vanilla wow style. Enjoy linear hallways with linear (but randomized stats) drops and speed runs, because slowing down is wrong on so many levels.
Yep, this genre is fucked up.
Aaron
Goonsquad Officer
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One thing I loved about MoP dungeons was the ability to champion a faction. What they should do in Legion is to bring that back, but also include the ability to champion old factions. They could then also add a quartermaster somewhere that sells mounts, pets and other stuff based of rep from those old factions. It would work especially well with those factions that at the moment can only be raised by repetitive daily quests such as the Skyguards in BC and the walrus people in Wrath.
It's pretty amazing how everyone that still plays WOW and has played it off and on pretty much have been mentally fucked by Blizzard into thinking their game design is actually good. Almost all of you have been playing shitty games for years now. Dungeons have become more more and more linear as you say. Is it really fun running in a straight line through shitty trash and decent scenery? Some of the boss fights are fun and have some interesting strategies to them, I won't deny that, but dungeon design and everything that goes around it (motivation behind it, where they fit into the game itself) is fucking just bad.
Same thing goes with Raids for the most part. How are people not tired bashing their head against a super tuned encounter? Shit is so bad it literally gets people to quit their game and stop playing with their friends. Shouldn't that tell you that design is ass? I won't even mention how mind blowingly dull, boring and grating LFR is. That shit is just bad.
The leveling experience, the world experience is and has always been top notch for a themepark MMO. The achievement grinding, pet/mount collecting and all those systems are quite fun for a lot of people, Blizz gets an A on that one. I had more fun doing old raids in my short stint in WoD than almost anything else.
I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard keeps the same design though. It's easy, it's cheap and it takes no risks. They really should be looking at ways to get people to focus on dungeons. Stop making raids but make bigger dungeons. If you have a 2-4 group raid, make dungeons that force your raid to split up into separate wings and do timed events. Attempt to add more dynamic events to them. I haven't drank my first cup of coffee yet, so my brain isn't working but everything from rewards, attaching dungeons to the outside world, connecting dungeons to each other with quests and other means. I dunno rambling now. You get the point.
TLDR: Blizzard is shitting on your brain and makes terrible content for you to consume when it comes to group dungeon/raids.
McCheese
SW: Sean, CW: Crone, GW: Wizardhawk
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kaid
Blackwing Lair Raider
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Yes I have no idea why they got rid of that in WOD. it was a great way to work on a rep without just mindlessly grinding away at reps a la the WOD starting three reps which were pure murder all of the things to acquire grinds.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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And I can remember when the level 3 Trading Outpost required THREE exalted reps (which was intended to have it only be useful for alts).
I think people are stupid for playing WOW strictly for raids. It's awful gameplay from almost any perspective (obviously my opinion). You choose to ignore the part of the post where I said I think Blizzard does an excellent job giving people a platform for other non-dungeon/raid activities: Achievement/Mounts/Pets/Toy/Alts(leveling content)
I honestly think these activities it what holds most people not doing bleeding edge stuff for the sake of doing bleeding edge stuff. I don't think the current raids and dungeons is good enough gameplay to be the sole main reason for playing the game for most people.
You'll notice a trend here that most people are now talking about getting achievements and mounts as the only reason why they are playing. Not the challenge or the engagement of Dungeon/Raid running. I'm just saying that WOW players deserve better and more interesting dungeon design. It's mostly been dumbed down over time. The encounters themselves are interesting, but everything surrounding them has been getting worse. Might as well just create a single arena and just challenge people to beat encounters. Why bother building a giant raid environment?
Foggy
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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HFC is a great raid. The problem isn't the content, it is that raids/players finish what they are capable of but then start attempting fights at difficulties they are not capable of doing. Instead of being honest with themselves, they rage out and raids explode because it is obviously other players' fault the raid cannot kill the boss. It is like playing a single player game on hard and declaring the game is bad because it is too hard for you at that setting instead of enjoying it at the normal difficulty.
I guess I am lucky that my raid is very honest about our capabilities. We only raid twice a week (a total of 6 hours) and are 13/13 H, 1/13 M (just started it in earnest this week). As we started mythic we decided we would give it a good effort but if we felt like we were just bashing our heads into a wall on an encounter we would reassess and scale back and/or take a break. Advancing as far as we can is the goal, but really the majority of the raid is there because we enjoy playing together for that 6 hours. A lot of raiders have lost sight of the point of a multiplayer game, to enjoy playing it with other people.
The rest of your post can be summed up with: "Personally I like sprawling dungeons and do not like raids so I don't like WoW." Fine, but that doesn't mean WoW is a bad game, it is just not designed in a way you like.
Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Holy fuck people need to read that about a million times. These games are just activities that you get to share with friends. If people took the time and cared more about the people they play with instead of gear they would have a lot more fun. Even fucking horrible MMO's are fun if you play with friends.
Ultimately if you play with friends, you can enjoy any kind of activity. Wholeheartedly agree with that. However, I think there are things you can do now that can make that experience even more entertaining. The only thing about WOW dungeons/raids that has advanced over the last decade is encounter design which, for the most part, is pretty top notch.
I don't like your sum of my post. I like raiding, if I had time for it these days. I define raiding essentially as multigroup dungeons, or anything with 10+ players. What I don't like about WOW raids or most modern day raids, is that it's essentially a giant environment that can house 5-10 encounters in it and everything in between is just static mob spawns for the most part. There is so much room for extra things to do in these areas with regards to content consumption and types of content, and the surround systems involved in it.
There's a whole lot of room in between sprawling and tunnel dungeons that I don't think it's fair to label it that simply.
edit:
Just to give some kind of example, why don't we have environmental challenges? GW2 had jumping puzzles. WOW has those glider/whatever treasure points in Nagrand. There are challenges everywhere, why not have them in dungeons. Classic N64 zelda has some great dungeon puzzles. Why don't we have key hunting, traps, dynamic dungeon design, all the interesting things you've seen in old games like DDO? Why don't we have multiple wings in a dungeon/raid where you have to split up your group/raid and push through them simultaneously? Why don't raids and dungeons have leaderboards? (Didn't scenarios have these? I don't remember.)
Why isn't Blizzard doing more interesting world design by putting dungeons underneath dungeons like oldschool MC? Why aren't they connecting dungeons together to create alternative pathing and entry points? Why aren't achievements driving you to complete a certain combination of dungeon types in a timed fashion? If gear has a score (ilelvel) system, why can't there be a point system inside dungeons that gives you a score?
Why can't you grind out dungeon currency of whatever source and combine it with other dungeon currency and create different kinds of gear or whatever. Why not learn some shit from Diablo 3 with their crafting system and implement that exclusively in WOW dungeons?
There are just so many different kinds of things you can be doing inside dungeons and around them that just having a dungeon that is a linear path from Boss to Boss to Big Boss is so fucking simple that it hurts to think how much better the game could be.
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Agree with you dudes. I like challenging content, but not without the people to do it with. I play 9 hours a week essentially and it's 100% mythic raiding. The guild I'm in is not one that's going to implode.
I gave up on wow shortly after TBC launched because I didn't really like the direction the game was heading in. Played here and there but not heavy again until this expansion. I can't tell you that I love the state of the game as is more than I did vanilla. I don't, but I find little to complain about with the raid encounters. They're certainly more creative and challenging now than they were at the start of the game and I get a lot of the same social elements I used to just within the guild.
I'm not really sure where the middle ground is with raid tuning though. Draegan, you're right that the bulk of their player base are not bleeding edge raiders. But they obviously gain something out of the world first race. It's probably a good thing for Blizzard to have guilds like Method (RIP) and Midwinter backing their game. And for those of us that do take part in Mythic raids, I'm not sure there is an issue with the fine tuning. Sure, it sucks sometimes to have 3 people die and know you're going to wipe, but what's the alternative? You can defeat an encounter without 20% of your raid? That would make all Mythic content trivial.
I gave up on wow shortly after TBC launched because I didn't really like the direction the game was heading in. Played here and there but not heavy again until this expansion. I can't tell you that I love the state of the game as is more than I did vanilla. I don't, but I find little to complain about with the raid encounters. They're certainly more creative and challenging now than they were at the start of the game and I get a lot of the same social elements I used to just within the guild.
I'm not really sure where the middle ground is with raid tuning though. Draegan, you're right that the bulk of their player base are not bleeding edge raiders. But they obviously gain something out of the world first race. It's probably a good thing for Blizzard to have guilds like Method (RIP) and Midwinter backing their game. And for those of us that do take part in Mythic raids, I'm not sure there is an issue with the fine tuning. Sure, it sucks sometimes to have 3 people die and know you're going to wipe, but what's the alternative? You can defeat an encounter without 20% of your raid? That would make all Mythic content trivial.
You should ask him about how he'd design it. His plans are very...entertaining.
Foggy
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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One of the main issues with those type of changes, while I am sure they would be fun if implemented well, is that Blizzard would have to retrain their players to enjoy "trash" (defined as any content between bosses). Players hate trash, and actively complain about trash that requires effort. The attraction is the boss fights. If you make the trash engaging, i.e. requiring effort, WoW players will complain because there are no rewards. If you reward it, it is now a boss fight. Blizzard is basically stuck. They can only innovate so much because their customers expect a certain product. What sucks is another game did not take the WoW model and improve upon it in a meaningful way. That could have pushed WoW to actually innovate and their customers would accept it. Instead, we get tiny "improvements" stolen from other MMOs like increased story telling, bonus objective areas, etc...
If you asked me years ago if that were the case, I would agree with you. Now I'm pretty sure that isn't the case. There are plenty of games out there that have a lot of these mechanisms in one way or another that people actually enjoyed. Why do people do jumping puzzles in GW2? Most of the time people are doing them to either be completionists or just love doing them. I dunno. All the dumb ideas I have are just examples of different things you can do. You don't have to train people, you just have to tell people there is a shiny at the end of it and you'll get people to do it eventually.
Blizzard should have enough brain power to think of something more to do other than pushing through a hallway to get to the next encounter right? If the attraction is the boss fights, why hasn't Blizzard just cut out all the art and building for dungeons/raids and just do progression through the Proving Grounds or whatever it was you had to do to flag your character for heroic dungeons in WoD? Why not just repeating encounters? Why else build these huge zones just to house encounters. The only thing those zones do for you is give you a really cool environment to walk through, it serves no other purpose.
Maybe they're too scared to re-design their methodology. I don't know what the culture there is any more. They seem to know what they are doing in D3 finally. They found the fun there from a mechanical and reward point of view.
Blizzard should have enough brain power to think of something more to do other than pushing through a hallway to get to the next encounter right? If the attraction is the boss fights, why hasn't Blizzard just cut out all the art and building for dungeons/raids and just do progression through the Proving Grounds or whatever it was you had to do to flag your character for heroic dungeons in WoD? Why not just repeating encounters? Why else build these huge zones just to house encounters. The only thing those zones do for you is give you a really cool environment to walk through, it serves no other purpose.
Maybe they're too scared to re-design their methodology. I don't know what the culture there is any more. They seem to know what they are doing in D3 finally. They found the fun there from a mechanical and reward point of view.