[Suggestion] Making 5-man content relevant

[Lionor]

Hi Folks,

I'm generally a big fan of meaningful 5-man content and well over the past couple of expansions it has been let's say not so well delivered. Its a real pitty as the game has literally tons of underutilized 5-man content with the potential to offer so much more to the players. We know that timewalker dungeons are being worked on and will probably involve some down-leveling mechanism which is fine as an idea but I have come up with a new idea to keep 5-mans relevant. So here it goes.

Each expansion introduces new 5-man dungeons which have several modes available (normal, heroic, challenge). My proposal is the following:

- Keep new 5-mans for each expansion under the same regime as now (normal, heroic, challenge)
- Introduce "Legacy Heroics" which will be:
a. queue-able through LFD

b. Include ALL 5-man content from Vanilla up until the previous expansion (so in the current state up until MOP 5-mans)

c. Re-tune all these dungeons to current max-level (just a numbers pass and maybe some mechanics adjustments here and there)

d. Apply the "challenge mode" set of rules/difficulty MINUS the timer, so time is no longer an issue at all.

e. Bosses drop heroic 5-man gear plus 1000 apexis (or current expansion's equivalent currency)

f. Put them on a weekly lockout and cap them to 7-10/week.

f. Suggestion by Golden Yak: Bosses drop some kind of new currency that you could use to buy from a pool of randomized loot (LFR quality) - you'd still have an element of randomness like boss drops, but you'd have an incentive to run any number of dungeons.

- When the next expansion is released, re-tune dungeons for new max-level (including the ones that just become "Legacy") and repeat.

And there you have it, replay value that will take a long time to get boring (so many dungeons in the game after all), meaningful 5-man content at a decent difficulty level, rewards equal to current tier LFR (one drop per instance/capped number of runs per week).

Perfect for those alts who you would absolutely hate to take through LFR, without making LFR obsolete. Just an alternative path.

Would you like an addition like that to the game?

Don't forget to vote!

[Wrathonia]

You had me until point F. They don't need a lockout.

[Deleted]

NO that would be wasted developers time Id prefer to see spend on Quest and Lore.

[Lionor]

You had me until point F. They don't need a lockout.

Well to be fair, if they didn't have a lock-out they would compete with LFR too much and while I personally don't like LFR at all a lot of people do.

- - - Updated - - -

NO that would be wasted developers time Id prefer to see spend on Quest and Lore.

To be honest a simple numbers pass is not that much developer time for a lot of replay value. Its actually a very good bargain in terms of content provided vs. time spent developing.

[kaelleria]

A simple number's pass you say... A lot of replay value you say...

Did you do the MC anniversary event?

[Deleted]

My thoughts would be simply use the scaling system they already have in place and when timewalking dungeons come to life all dungeons auto-scale to group average ilevel. Should therefore both make a huge variety of 5man content (every previous expansion dungeon is suddenly available at max) and challenging (impossible to outgear) content.

[Lionor]

A simple number's pass you say... A lot of replay value you say...

Did you do the MC anniversary event?

touché my friend! touché...

[Deleted]

My thoughts would be simply use the scaling system they already have in place....

You mean the total fail they use for proving grounds? no thank you!

[Wrathonia]

Well to be fair, if they didn't have a lock-out they would compete with LFR too much and while I personally don't like LFR at all a lot of people do.

Honestly, who cares? They should both be viable forms of casual gearing. As of right now, they aren't and dungeons are 100% useless. I couldn't care less if LFR suffers some drop in participation.

[snuzzle]

You had me until point F. They don't need a lockout.

Yup. Why put a lockout on them? Not necessary. You still get better loot from raids. And if they're truly challenging, the challenge will be what limits the completions per week, not an artificial lockout.

[Lionor]

Yup. Why put a lockout on them? Not necessary. You still get better loot from raids. And if they're truly challenging, the challenge will be what limits the completions per week, not an artificial lockout.

For me ideally there would be not lockout, however realistically for game balancing there should probably be some sort of gating/limiting of the amount of items of the LFR loot table one can get in a single week. Otherwise LFR would be completely redundant (Note: I personally hate LFR but that's another issue).

[Shiroh]

I don't like 5-man dungeons. But I'm fine with any change that doesn't force me to do them, so your proposition seems okay to me.

[yjmark]

Great idea. I've suggested this for a while, and would include raids too. Give life back to old content.

[Alomega]

While the idea looks good on paper people tend to take the easiest way out. So that means that only the 7 - 10 easiest / quickest dungeons will get picked by players. If you can't queue for specific dungeon a lot of people will just drop group as soon as they see what dungeon it is, à la The Oculus back in WoTLK...

[Deleted]

Yes please, it's one of my most wanted features. Dungeons are more fun than LFR imo and players should be rewarded for doing them.

[bobo333]

currntly they're just wasted content. make two difficulties though, for those who remember them fondly as a challenge, and for those who like to blindly aoe through

[Deleted]

Add a loot bag (rewarded once a day) with a chance to contain any of the following:

- GR's
- Follower Contract
- One of the WoD rare mounts (Sunhide Gronnling, etc).
- Apexis Crystals
- Reputation tokens
- Epic gear

I'm sure many players would rather run a heroic a day at a chance to own a mount than sit and camp several rare spawns or grind the same mob over and over, especially those with families / jobs.

[Shiroh]

Add a loot bag (rewarded once a day) with a chance to contain any of the following:

- GR's
- Follower Contract
- One of the WoD rare mounts (Sunhide Gronnling, etc).
- Apexis Crystals
- Reputation tokens
- Epic gear

This is actually a good idea as long as it's gear, mounts and contracts that can also be obtained differently. It gives incentive to run dungeons without forcing e.g. a mount collector to do dungeons he doesn't like.

[Kokolums]

Blizz wants people running LFR to get them into raiding. Adding LFR-quality loot to 5 mans means less people run LFR.

You need to come up with an idea to motivate people to run 5 mans without cannibalizing LFR.

[Armourboy]

Blizz wants people running LFR to get them into raiding. Adding LFR-quality loot to 5 mans means less people run LFR.

You need to come up with an idea to motivate people to run 5 mans without cannibalizing LFR.

I don't buy that, LFR is there so that people that normally wouldn't raid will get to see it. Very few people at this point that run LFR haven't done some higher form of raiding. Take me for example, I only do LFR and if it wasn't there I just wouldn't raid at all. It gives me no incentive what so ever to want to move up into real raiding. Access to real raiding is easier than ever, anyone that wants to do it or can do it is already doing it.

Frankly, I don't think there is very many people to " get into raiding ". This game isn't bringing very many new players or first time players in at all, and hasn't for a while. Most of the sub increase is due to old returning players who already know about raiding.

Most players that want 5 man content to be relevant are those that remember Vanilla, TBC, and maybe Wrath and remember how much fun they had doing it. They aren't looking for something to replace raiding, but rather something to supplement it. They want to do it, but they also want a reason to do it. Best boon to the 5 mans this expansion has been adding the coins for heirlooms. I've run more of them for that than any other reason, which I wouldn't of done without it.

People aren't asking for 5 mans to break the cycle ( although I'm fine with it if it does), they just want them to be a part of the cycle again for more than a couple of weeks at the start of the expansion or for leveling. I would even go as far as adding an incentive to do it as a premade group as opposed to queuing. Maybe make that be your " lockout " per se with only epic items dropping if its a premade.