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  1. #1
    Brewmaster Spray's Avatar
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    Question Adventure Mode - suggestion for questing experience

    TL;DR:
    I'm suggesting a new feature giving the players ability to switch the „heroic mode” while questing and embrace the totally new experience. The mode would require some planning, strategy and clever management of skills while providing a lot of fun to challengers.


    [Original thread in Blizzard forums]

    Hi!

    Let me begin with a little story first.

    In 2003, I suppose, I bought a gaming magazine in my town, in which one of the main topics was about World of Warcraft. It was shortly after the release of WC3:TFT and being amazed about it myself I didn't even hesitate about buying this issue.

    The article highlighted some of the features in the game, included some speculations and provided some early gameplay screenshots. But there was one particular screenshot and the caption which made me absolutely, truly excited about the game. The picture featured two dwarves by a campfire and a wendigo roaring at them in the background. The caption was: „Two brave dwarves defend themselves against the attack of the wild forest troll” (author of the caption was obviously wrong about the „troll”).

    My feelings? I was absolutely hyped. Warcraft was one of my favourite franchises ever and the thought that I could actually live the adventure in third-person-perspective and fight my way through the world with assistance of my courageous and strong friends was truly amazing.

    Actually, it never turned out to be like that as everyone knows here. One wendigo has never been a threat to two dwarves at once, but it's not the point.

    Why am I even suggesting anything, „what's the point in this topic?” - you may ask.

    Well, I'm leveling my n-th alt right now, it's a Dwarf Hunter. I think that some of you may already get a hint at this point. I'm specced Survival and currently I haven't encountered any „hiccups” on my way. Solo leveling is shockingly easy right now, I can pull 10+ mobs at once, bind them to the ground, sting them, net them with Disengage if needed and finish off with autoattacks without any trouble. But it's not the actual case, I'm not here to rant since, surprisingly, I somehow enjoy how smooth it is right now. (Since I wear three heirloom pieces I feel that it's necessary to point out that these are actually not the case. Even with regular white/green pieces you can absolutely dominate everything around you.)

    The point is – what if we have friends we want to play with? Ever imagined how it feels like to quest with 4 friends? How a party of 5 people deals with the environment right now? I'll tell you – it's a breeze. The problem is, you can storm through anything without even stopping for a while. No food breaks, no mana crises, no stress at all. Right click at everything! And while some of you may find it much more enjoyable than struggling with strong enemies – there are people who actually could use some challenge.

    This is why I think there should be present something like Adventure Mode. I'm not calling myself a visionnaire or inventor of any sort, I'm fairly sure that not once, not twice, but many times had it been thought of behind the development gates. How do I see that?

    Let's imagine we have a group of 5 people. Party leader right-clicks his portrait and changes the world mode to Adventure, just like switching Normal/Heroic/Challenge modes in dungeons. The world phases out and replaces the ordinary monsters with stronger, more vicious, ones. The example of such mechanic can be seen in 1st stage of Golden Lotus dailies, where you need to save 15 Pandaren spirits. You use Shao-Tien Spirit Dagger to use the purple portals which phase you to the „shadow realm” with different monsters. It actually is a cancelable buff, but it shows that such mechanic is already present in the game. The point is following - it would actually provide players a choice, whether they want to level through the content normally or they simply want something more from it. It would create the situation when you can't just push the two main buttons, when you actually NEED to use the crowd-control skills obtained already, which, frankly, often just lay unused in Spellbook or get dusty in the bottom right actionbar and are never even looked at.

    This way we could actually create the epic experience of leveling together and guarding each other's backs. When the lone wolf can actually be a problem if it joins midfight and starts to gnaw on the healer's leg (imagination, imagination, imagination).
    Similar experience? Think Borderlands. 4 people mode is really nasty. „Badass” monsters can be really challenging and frustrating, but the satisfaction of defeating it, that relief and glory... priceless! Bringing it to Azeroth would actually require strategy, positioning, clever usage of traps, stuns, disorienting abilities, etc, etc. I am sure it would encourage many people to come back to leveling and trying out new classes. Right now, you can pretty much choose whatever class you want and level it to the max using 3-4 skills. And then you realize you don't even know how to play the character you just leveled. You wake up with a ton of skills, which you didn't even need to use, unless you played some battlegrounds/dungeons. Whether it's a problem or not – it's arguable, but not the point of this discussion.

    P.S. Some of you may say: „Hey, wait a second! You know, in the real world if 5 archers fire one arrow each towards a wolf, it will die as well. What's the problem then?” - the problem is, it's not a real world. Since we need to have a proper progression feeling, we have this 86 level turtle which would absolutely beat the crap out of the 46 level battle ogre. And it's normal. So whether it's the 6 level wolf or 6 level stone golem, their health levels will be the same, so it's not really an argument. Arrows, fireballs will work the same in both situations. The question is – how to make leveling with friends more challenging? How to provide some fresh air for the experienced players, how to remove this feeling of repetition while leveling 8th alt?

    What are your views on the topic, mates?
    Last edited by Spray; 2013-01-21 at 03:38 PM. Reason: polishing

  2. #2
    I really like your idea, and your enthusiasm that you show throughout your post, your enthusiasm actually hypes me up and makes me really want to have that feeling of danger back in the world whilst levelling.

    You are right about not feeling in danger, levelling is super fast even without heirlooms, and for those of us that love to level and quest and aren't so bothered about *end game* This could be a great answer to that.

    Whether it would be worth Blizzards time is another thing, though I like yourself don't see it as being too difficult to implement, but then I am not a game developer so thats just my own opinion.

    Fantastic idea!

  3. #3
    Brewmaster Spray's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dancing Turkey View Post
    I really like your idea, and your enthusiasm that you show throughout your post, your enthusiasm actually hypes me up and makes me really want to have that feeling of danger back in the world whilst levelling.

    You are right about not feeling in danger, levelling is super fast even without heirlooms, and for those of us that love to level and quest and aren't so bothered about *end game* This could be a great answer to that.

    Whether it would be worth Blizzards time is another thing, though I like yourself don't see it as being too difficult to implement, but then I am not a game developer so thats just my own opinion.

    Fantastic idea!
    Thank you! Glad to know you like it!
    My idea grew throughout past 2 years when I played in such way throughout Rift, SW:TOR and, yes, Borderlands with my friends. While the first two were similar in the terms of toughness while grouping up, Borderlands shocked me how fun can leveling with peers be. I have never experienced such amount of tactical cooperation in any game before. If such feeling could be implemented at least partially into World of Warcraft - man, that would absolutely blow me away.

    Guerrilla-style fighting, ambushes, distraction and management of all skills in the same time? Aw yeah!

  4. #4
    Brewmaster Spray's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tommo View Post
    +1 from me aswell, the idea of an adventure mode is really appealing to me. Heres hoping your thread gets some advertisement by a blue.
    I hardly believe itt anymore since apparently my post is too long and didn't receive even one response on official forums. : P

    Quote Originally Posted by Tommo View Post
    The best bit about this is it would almost seem like a different game, but without having to put all the work in. They could just use existing mechanics and tech.
    Exactly! What is more, it would pretty much remove the urge of sprinting through the content. Right now, I assume, majority of leveling players are leveling solely for the max level purpose. The leveling experience isn't as fun as it should be per se. It's perceived only as a way to achieve the endgame.

    *Billy Mays voice*
    And this is why you NEED a change!
    Experience the leveling like never before!
    Only with shiny and new... Adventure Mode™!!

  5. #5
    Deleted
    I like your idea, but I think this is just what the normal leveling experience should be. Game content has been very nerfed in recent years because most players right now are long-standing players who just want their alts to reach max level instantly.

    Personally, I don't mind fast alts, but I do mind easy alts. Right now, leveling alts is almost a redundant feature that could just as well be replaced with an instant max level button. We see Blizzard going more and more towards that with an increasing amount of heirlooms and other XP bonuses.

    While leveling could still be a relatively quick process, I think it should be a lot more difficult and challenge you as you go through it. That way, the people at max level will actually know how to play their classes.

  6. #6
    Brewmaster Spray's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mojo Risin View Post
    Personally, I don't mind fast alts, but I do mind easy alts. Right now, leveling alts is almost a redundant feature that could just as well be replaced with an instant max level button. We see Blizzard going more and more towards that with an increasing amount of heirlooms and other XP bonuses.
    If the Adventure Mode somehow got into the final game even experience bonuses wouldn't be a problem, I suppose. Heirloom or not, monsters would still pose a significant threat and +exp%? Toughness of the adventure-toggled content will already increase the amount of time needed to level up, so I think it will alone be able to just solve the "fast alting" problem. Who wants the fun with a new character toggles the mode, who just wants a fast alt - sticks to the regular mode. I think it's fair.

    EDIT:
    I edited first post by adding small summary at the beginning, since I guess it was overall kind of lengthy which resulted in small community reaction.

    I wonder what additions may you suggest!

  7. #7
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    This is one of the best ideas I've read for a while, I'll admit, I came into this thread expecting to see something impossible or stupid, but you have won me over.

    I've leveled 9 characters from 1 - 85+ and I would simply love the challenge of an "adventure mode" with some of my friends on a new alt.

    This is something I've wanted from WoW for a while, while I wasn't thinking of something like this, I would just love something that felt more scary and dangerous than what we currently have. Leveling at the moment is fast, and it is easy, and yeah I can see why it is like that and I wouldn't ask them to change that, some people want to level fast, others are new and need to learn the game in a chilled environment.

    I do wonder how many people your idea would cater to though, and whether there would be enough people who would use the feature, but I know I for one surely would.

  8. #8
    This is actually semi-what I was wanting scenarios to be like, and they kind of failed on that. I really wish they'd do this. I also wish leveling with friends was encouraged. Instead, leveling with friends is the least efficient way to do any content in WoW except dungeons, due to XP-sapping and how flat out easy everything is. (plus, it's just annoying to make sure everyone is doing the same thing and so forth). Perhaps that's one thing they could do. Scale enemy difficulty up to how many players are grouped together fighting it, and increase the experience rewarded for such. Something REALLY should be done to how much the game punishes group play. It should be rewarded

  9. #9
    I don't think it will ever happen. Blizzard has stated that they balance around end game and if they were to add something like this they would have to make sure that ever level was balanced in order for it to actually be a fair and challenging experience. Also they just revamped the leveling experience last expansion and took out all the group quests and made it easy like it is today. Doing this would just be going back and basically doing the opposite of what they did in Cata (which IMO wouldn't be a bad idea).

    I really like this idea. I like being challenged and not having things handed to me. And I definitely think there needs to some alternate way of leveling besides questing ad nauseum.

  10. #10
    Brewmaster Spray's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spaceships View Post
    I don't think it will ever happen. Blizzard has stated that they balance around end game and if they were to add something like this they would have to make sure that ever level was balanced in order for it to actually be a fair and challenging experience. Also they just revamped the leveling experience last expansion and took out all the group quests and made it easy like it is today. Doing this would just be going back and basically doing the opposite of what they did in Cata (which IMO wouldn't be a bad idea).

    I really like this idea. I like being challenged and not having things handed to me. And I definitely think there needs to some alternate way of leveling besides questing ad nauseum.
    Adventure mode is hardly a reversion, it rather provides a choice between the regular playstyle and enhanced one. With this being said it actually won't interfere with Blizzard's work in Cataclysm. But I do agree with you that they could still use this as an argument against the idea.

    Aaand regarding balance issues - you're absolutely right. That would require a lot of tweaking, since currently everyone is focused around the balance in the endgame. If they took the idea seriously and implemented that, leveling pace with Adventure Mode turned on would probably increase 5 to 10 times (just a wild guess). Additionally, many people would probably be interested in trying it out which would result in greater amount of world PvP in leveling brackets.

    I can only imagine the initial shitstorm on forums, how the X class rapes Y in 40-49 bracket, etc..:P but still, it's not the end of the world AND, not being enitrely modest, still quite a great idea!

  11. #11
    imo scenarios seem to be a vehicle for this. They have the capacity to embrace this entirely but then their mission was not to be challenging but rather convenient. Still, scenarios where an NPC isn't putting down heals and the mobs have hard hitting abilities require some strategy mixing damage with control (and its not conducive to pugging as a result)

  12. #12
    Brewmaster Spray's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Constellation View Post
    imo scenarios seem to be a vehicle for this. They have the capacity to embrace this entirely but then their mission was not to be challenging but rather convenient. Still, scenarios where an NPC isn't putting down heals and the mobs have hard hitting abilities require some strategy mixing damage with control (and its not conducive to pugging as a result)
    Scenarios made a nice attempt, I admit. Still, they get repetitive after a few times, and they limit you to only 3 people.
    In Adventure Mode you could actually just switch the whole world to the Brutal Mode, using a fixed calculation. While it's obvious it can't be something like "increase dmg and health pool by X%", it still would be just a heroic switch, at least I see it that way.

    This being said, you're not limited to only a few storylines. As long as you're not tired of EVERY questline in the game, everyone would feel a fresh air.

  13. #13
    I think it's a great idea. However, as has been proven with MoP, most players do not want difficult non-raiding activities. Just like they don't really want difficult 5-mans (i.e. Challenge Modes are barely being used). Unless you tie an end game reward to the process, I don't see how it would really be utilized by a large portion of the playerbase. 99.9% of the playerbase would level through the easy mode. So, would all the added work to make a "difficult questing process" be worth it's time to Blizz? I'm not sure.

    One thing I always thought that would work well was removing the min level for quests. So if you wanted a challenge, do a quest 10-levels above you. You would get awesome xp (it would be "red"), and there is pretty much no change needed from Blizz. Also, this would allow for a complete dynamic leveling process. You would not just have "normal" and "adventure" modes. You'd have everything in between and more.

  14. #14
    Brewmaster Spray's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by yjmark View Post
    One thing I always thought that would work well was removing the min level for quests. So if you wanted a challenge, do a quest 10-levels above you. You would get awesome xp (it would be "red"), and there is pretty much no change needed from Blizz. Also, this would allow for a complete dynamic leveling process. You would not just have "normal" and "adventure" modes. You'd have everything in between and more.
    In my opinion removing the minimum level would introduce the "bad" kind of toughness, where it's not hard, because of being hard, but because of the level difference. The challenge would not be caused by necessity of using a strategy or coping with bigger damage, it would just mainly be a lottery, which spells/attacks would hit the target and which would miss, and it's certainly not encouraging, at least from my point of view.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Spray View Post
    In my opinion removing the minimum level would introduce the "bad" kind of toughness, where it's not hard, because of being hard, but because of the level difference. The challenge would not be caused by necessity of using a strategy or coping with bigger damage, it would just mainly be a lottery, which spells/attacks would hit the target and which would miss, and it's certainly not encouraging, at least from my point of view.
    I disagree. You would absolutely be coping with bigger damage (higher level mobs do more damage than lower level mobs), mobs will have more health (you won't be 1-shotting anything), and you might actually need to pay attention to hit/expertise (which is currently ignored while leveling). And mob mechanics would now mean something because they will actually effect you. Like you need to interrupt some spells that would otherwise completely nuke you. Maybe kite some mobs between different folks/pets within your group, etc...

    imho - the randomness of not knowing if your ability will hit or miss adds to the excitement. Being able to calculate exactly what you can do every single time = boring...imho.

  16. #16
    Brewmaster Spray's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by yjmark View Post
    I disagree. You would absolutely be coping with bigger damage (higher level mobs do more damage than lower level mobs), mobs will have more health (you won't be 1-shotting anything), and you might actually need to pay attention to hit/expertise (which is currently ignored while leveling). And mob mechanics would now mean something because they will actually effect you. Like you need to interrupt some spells that would otherwise completely nuke you. Maybe kite some mobs between different folks/pets within your group, etc...

    imho - the randomness of not knowing if your ability will hit or miss adds to the excitement. Being able to calculate exactly what you can do every single time = boring...imho.
    Well, if hit/exp would play bigger role, then it could work.

    Still, it's just the replacement for a native mechanism which should be implemented. At least in my opinion, I know many people, including myself to some extent, who love leveling and do not focus so much on the endgame. I mean, yes, endgame is great, raiding, etc, but currently leveling feels only as a mean to achieve that one last level, like like nothing else mattered except the fact that you're one level closer to 90 and it shouldn't be that way. Everyone should feel the genuine satisfaction of "climbing" the ladder and be excited about the gameplay on every stage in the game.

    I don't know any MMO in which the situation is different, maybe SW:TOR, but it was mainly due to the fact that the "endgame" contained in the release version of the game was simply boring for many people. Still, I'm not playing TOR anymore, but I do remember that I had much more interest in making alts there than I have now in WoW, it just felt better. I actually could get jumped, knocked down, overwhelmed and beaten to death. And I miss that feeling in Azeroth right now...

  17. #17
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    This adventure mode would work even better if mobs would be given a much more developped AI. In this sense, they would be able to attack you with ambushes so you would need to on your toes every time and by adding complex mob scripts to make them attack in numbers and organized formations instead of just one at a time.

  18. #18
    Level without gear on when adventuring.

    Problem solved.

  19. #19
    Herald of the Titans Z3ROR's Avatar
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    I really like the idea of having an heroic adventure mode in the game. I would play that mode for sure.

    Another suggestion for this: Add heroic adventure quests as well.
    Normal quest would be normal just kill 12 mobs of a specific type. The heroic version could have a timer on it. When you fail to score the objective within the timer, quest fails.

    Varations:
    Kill X within Y time
    Find X in specific weather or specific part of the day (like night or dawn)
    Bring X to NPC within Y time
    Bring a specific crafted item to NPC
    etc....

  20. #20
    The huge gaping chasm between the power of a lowbie in full heirlooms compared to the same level character in leveling gear(some of which might be a green quest reward he got 10 levels ago) means trying to make balanced challenging content pre-max-level is pretty pointless. Unless you scale everyone to a certain gear level, but that completely cancels loot progression at lower levels.

    And the thing with higher level mobs wouldn't work because there's no possible way for you to ever get enough hit/expertise to overcome the level diff. Would also mean that any casual leveler would didn't spend a ton of time twinking hit/expertise gear is SOL and excluded from this content.

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