To Wannabe Game Designers - What would you create instead of Warfronts and IE

[deadman1]

Its pretty easy to get mad at Blizzard for creating content you dont enjoy...but as soon as you ask "what would you do differently?" people get silent.

I don't need to have a solution to not like something. It's not my job.

You don't have to be a carpenter to notice a wobbly chair.

[Nyel]

Warfronts and IE suck because they're bad. But because class design is terrible they suck even more.

Blizzard can create a dozen of raids but without fixing the mess the classes are it won't change anything honestly.

[NPCmime]

Fix the progression from dungeons, to LFR, to mythic +, to norm/hc/mythic raids. LFR could be a starter raid to practice mechanics rather than just story mode or a way to get epic gear more casually. Mythic+ shouldn't overpower gear from raids (except for maybe LFR). Also, since LFR isn't that hard, should it really give epic gear? It would make more sense for it to give rare/blue gear instead, to reflect it's easier difficulty (gear border color used to be indicitive of dungeon/raid progression and now it's all confused - an orange border used to mean something special). Same for dungeons, both normal and heroic (not mythic, though). Mythic dungeons should just be a stepping stone to higher difficulty raids, it makes no sense that a smaller group should get more rewarding gear than a raid-sized group. But as things are, I would only make the rewards more niche/limited, rather than allowing people to switch and upgrade all gear pieces (neck, rings, trinkets, armor). Either that, or... if mythic+ is going to be almost as good, might as well just make it less confusing and make it the top progression (higher difficulties are strained by less players playing it, anyway, and smaller groups could alleviate that), and make it gated behind raids. Spreading rewards around could make people more inclined to explore other content, although just don't make PvPers have to PvE and vice-versa.

Make rep vendor gear/items important again. Before entering dungeons a new player could gear up via rep vendor gear. Outgearing the gear you can get from a rep vendor before you have enough rep makes it pointless to get. In previous expansions there were items that were crucial to upgrading your gear that you could only get from rep vendors or professions. This gave players a reason to go out into the world and do content they might have otherwise just skipped over.

Make gear more customizable. Secondary stats used to do that, and you could pick and choose gear you got from a vendor with points/medals that dropped from each boss in a raid, to get the exact right stats to the minimum stat requirements needed to be an effective raider. It allowed to swap different pieces in and out and this also gave players something to do when not raiding or PvPing. It gave a more accomplished feeling of progression as well. Saving up for tier sets in both PvE and PvP was exciting and gave players something to look forward to.

Balance battlegrounds vs arenas more separately. 2/3 players versus 10/15/20/40 players tends to drastically change your ability to survive. Maybe separate premades from randoms as well (this could also be a solution to guild groups kicking others for no reasons in dungeons as well, but I don't know how you would balance that if not enough guild groups queue in situations where they don't have a full group).

Remove guilds announcing everything a player does, because it's annoying and kind of stalkerish (they could bake in when someone queues into individual characters if it helps harassment cases, just make it private; Blizz has made bad design choices in regards to accountability and protecting victims of stalkers; they should also make it that turning off different chats doesn't prevent the UI from keeping a record of what's said). Stop selling items that net gold in the Blizz store and fix the in-game economy (inflation). Make professions have more of an impact again.

Make spells/talents more synergistic. Balance druids used to be able to innervate healers, and this created cooperation. Mages used to have a spell that increased healing. Spriests used to have VE as a passive buff that healed the entire raid for a reduced amount. Paladins used to be able to sacrifice themselves to put a 100% invulnerability bubble on someone else for 2-3 minutes if they thought the raid was wiping. Classes without rezzes could get an item that ressurrected others from Engineering. Alternatively, cross-class combos in combat have never been added to WoW. Also, having spells on a class that complement each other would be exciting, too.

Make talents less frustrating by making them alter specific spells instead and make individual abilites baseline again. (For fire mages: Row 1 - Talent 1: Dragon breath no longer does initial damage and now leaves a DoT. Talent 2: Dragon Breath now makes the mage do a 360 spin. Talent 3: Dragon Breaths initial range is shorter but the damage (not the disorient) branches out farther. Row 2: Talent 1: Give 2 charges of blink and increase the range by 5 yards. Talent 2: Shimmer. Talent 3: Arcane port that returns you to your position when you activated the spell., etc..) This could also by synergistic to WoW environment, making choices have more of a tactical impact (Rogue, row 1: Talent 1: Sprint now allows the rogue to walk over water over it's duration.) This could also make designing BG and arena maps more fun for devs, as figuring out how to design maps with obstacles that challenge but don't hinder (water, multiple floors, etc), but can play into talents, could be interesting. (An ability that allows a player to look around a corner - but not through a wall - could be interesting again. I know shamans, priests, and hunters use to have spells like this. Also.. finding work arounds of Shimmer and DH x-ray vision could help other classes be less frustrated by this counter-intuitive play, while enabling them to retain unique abilities.)

Possibly bring back secondary stat requirements for raids? (Hit rating, if not expertise or armor penetration - raid prep gives people something to do). Bring back meta gems and gem/enchant variety (more than just flat base stats) and gem slots in sets. Remove random titan upgrades (or bake them into M+ to make it a go-between for dungeons/lfr and raids. the progression could be quest gear > vendor gear/WQ gear > norm/hc dungeons/lfr = rare > mythic = titanforged rare > norm/hc/mythic raids = epic (OR) (....) norm/hc dungeons/lfr = rare >norm/hc/mythic raids = epic > mythic+ = epic titanforged w/ other minor upgrades like more gem slots).

Stop instance-gating content (with the exception of dungeons and raids). Trying to down a World Boss only to be thwarted by the enemy faction made doing World content exciting (RIP WM). With maybe one new exception/addition: Add guild instances like people asked for for years. Player interaction is probably the most interesting aspect of an MMO, and limiting or deterring it makes playing less exciting. Just give alternatives to people that don't want to.

Don't make anymore time-gated reward aspects... This is an action MMORPG, not a Facebook game. Passive rewards are boring.

Stop putting versatility on everything (except for maybe tank gear or PvP gear; not gonna lie, though, if tanks had more specific secondary stats instead, gearing them would be more interesting. It's basically just Resilience renamed and they claimed they removed Resilience due to balancing issues. Maybe something like Dmg absorb, healing received, etc.. Basically break Versatility up). Catch-all secondary stats are incredibly uninteresting and take away from customization and variety.

Possibly make dungeons have more choice. Bring back random spawning chests in dungeons, and bring back the ability to /roll for it. Make them have exciting loot again (BoE's), but don't make them heavily depended on. Design dungeons to have a choice of branching routes that can change how the encounter goes (I won't go into specifics on this one because I would know less about how it could effect players than Blizz would, but a choice between left path or right path could make things more exciting, depending. Maybe the bosses could remain the same but the fights change depending on which route you take first?).

[Deleted]

So, you want raids to be tuned so 90% of the raiding population will be unable to clear them? What an absolutely retarded idea.

No it isnt. You just dont understand how player mind works. Yes not many would clear entire raid but unbeaten content brings into the game far more value than accessible content whay everyone gets to do. That value is psychological. Exlusive content is far more intetesting. Have more interesting rewards. It sets goal regardless if you will end up doing it or not. It makes feel world bigger and more epic. You will always have someyhing to so and strive for. Etc... Making raiding content accessible for everyone have done 1 thing. It made people quit faster and nothing els.

[Deleted]

Fix the progression from dungeons, to LFR, to mythic +, to norm/hc/mythic raids. LFR could be a starter raid to practice mechanics rather than just story mode or a way to get epic gear more casually. Mythic+ shouldn't overpower gear from raids (except for maybe LFR). Also, since LFR isn't that hard, should it really give epic gear? It would make more sense for it to give rare/blue gear instead, to reflect it's easier difficulty (gear border color used to be indicitive of dungeon/raid progression and now it's all confused - an orange border used to mean something special). Same for dungeons, both normal and heroic (not mythic, though). Mythic dungeons should just be a stepping stone to higher difficulty raids, it makes no sense that a smaller group should get more rewarding gear than a raid-sized group. But as things are, I would only make the rewards more niche/limited, rather than allowing people to switch and upgrade all gear pieces (neck, rings, trinkets, armor). Either that, or... if mythic+ is going to be almost as good, might as well just make it less confusing and make it the top progression (higher difficulties are strained by less players playing it, anyway, and smaller groups could alleviate that), and make it gated behind raids. Spreading rewards around could make people more inclined to explore other content, although just don't make PvPers have to PvE and vice-versa.

Make rep vendor gear/items important again. Before entering dungeons a new player could gear up via rep vendor gear. Outgearing the gear you can get from a rep vendor before you have enough rep makes it pointless to get. In previous expansions there were items that were crucial to upgrading your gear that you could only get from rep vendors or professions. This gave players a reason to go out into the world and do content they might have otherwise just skipped over.

Make gear more customizable. Secondary stats used to do that, and you could pick and choose gear you got from a vendor with points/medals that dropped from each boss in a raid, to get the exact right stats to the minimum stat requirements needed to be an effective raider. It allowed to swap different pieces in and out and this also gave players something to do when not raiding or PvPing. It gave a more accomplished feeling of progression as well. Saving up for tier sets in both PvE and PvP was exciting and gave players something to look forward to.

Balance battlegrounds vs arenas more separately. 2/3 players versus 10/15/20/40 players tends to drastically change your ability to survive. Maybe separate premades from randoms as well (this could also be a solution to guild groups kicking others for no reasons in dungeons as well, but I don't know how you would balance that if not enough guild groups queue in situations where they don't have a full group).

Remove guilds announcing everything a player does, because it's annoying and kind of stalkerish (they could bake in when someone queues into individual characters if it helps harassment cases, just make it private; Blizz has made bad design choices in regards to accountability and protecting victims of stalkers; they should also make it that turning off different chats doesn't prevent the UI from keeping a record of what's said). Stop selling items that net gold in the Blizz store and fix the in-game economy (inflation). Make professions have more of an impact again.

Make spells/talents more synergistic. Balance druids used to be able to innervate healers, and this created cooperation. Mages used to have a spell that increased healing. Spriests used to have VE as a passive buff that healed the entire raid for a reduced amount. Paladins used to be able to sacrifice themselves to put a 100% invulnerability bubble on someone else for 2-3 minutes if they thought the raid was wiping. Classes without rezzes could get an item that ressurrected others from Engineering. Alternatively, cross-class combos in combat have never been added to WoW. Also, having spells on a class that complement each other would be exciting, too.

Make talents less frustrating by making them alter specific spells instead and make individual abilites baseline again. (For fire mages: Row 1 - Talent 1: Dragon breath no longer does initial damage and now leaves a DoT. Talent 2: Dragon Breath now makes the mage do a 360 spin. Talent 3: Dragon Breaths initial range is shorter but the damage (not the disorient) branches out farther. Row 2: Talent 1: Give 2 charges of blink and increase the range by 5 yards. Talent 2: Shimmer. Talent 3: Arcane port that returns you to your position when you activated the spell., etc..) This could also by synergistic to WoW environment, making choices have more of a tactical impact (Rogue, row 1: Talent 1: Sprint now allows the rogue to walk over water over it's duration.) This could also make designing BG and arena maps more fun for devs, as figuring out how to design maps with obstacles that challenge but don't hinder (water, multiple floors, etc), but can play into talents, could be interesting. (An ability that allows a player to look around a corner - but not through a wall - could be interesting again. I know shamans, priests, and hunters use to have spells like this. Also.. finding work arounds of Shimmer and DH x-ray vision could help other classes be less frustrated by this counter-intuitive play, while enabling them to retain unique abilities.)

Possibly bring back secondary stat requirements for raids? (Hit rating, if not expertise or armor penetration - raid prep gives people something to do). Bring back meta gems and gem/enchant variety (more than just flat base stats) and gem slots in sets. Remove random titan upgrades (or bake them into M+ to make it a go-between for dungeons/lfr and raids. the progression could be quest gear > vendor gear/WQ gear > norm/hc dungeons/lfr = rare > mythic = titanforged rare > norm/hc/mythic raids = epic (OR) (....) norm/hc dungeons/lfr = rare >norm/hc/mythic raids = epic > mythic+ = epic titanforged w/ other minor upgrades like more gem slots).

Stop instance-gating content (with the exception of dungeons and raids). Trying to down a World Boss only to be thwarted by the enemy faction made doing World content exciting (RIP WM). With maybe one new exception/addition: Add guild instances like people asked for for years. Player interaction is probably the most interesting aspect of an MMO, and limiting or deterring it makes playing less exciting. Just give alternatives to people that don't want to.

Don't make anymore time-gated reward aspects... This is an action MMORPG, not a Facebook game. Passive rewards are boring.

Stop putting versatility on everything (except for maybe tank gear or PvP gear; not gonna lie, though, if tanks had more specific secondary stats instead, gearing them would be more interesting. It's basically just Resilience renamed and they claimed they removed Resilience due to balancing issues. Maybe something like Dmg absorb, healing received, etc.. Basically break Versatility up). Catch-all secondary stats are incredibly uninteresting and take away from customization and variety.

Possibly make dungeons have more choice. Bring back random spawning chests in dungeons, and bring back the ability to /roll for it. Make them have exciting loot again (BoE's), but don't make them heavily depended on. Design dungeons to have a choice of branching routes that can change how the encounter goes (I won't go into specifics on this one because I would know less about how it could effect players than Blizz would, but a choice between left path or right path could make things more exciting, depending. Maybe the bosses could remain the same but the fights change depending on which route you take first?).

I still wish i could do a "full Leech" gear set for my demon hunter.

Customization is still not on those levels sadly

[Aelwe]

Warfronts and Island Expeditions are not bad ideas per se, they're just not that interesting, are extremely repetitive and unrewarding. And at the end, I don't think most players want new types of content, they want more of the same: raids, dungeons, quests, etc. The efforts to develop the warfronts and expeditions could have gone into having more and better content even if that just means more of the same, it's what people like and play.

But the worst of all is that they keep discarding new content even when it's good: see the class halls and artifacts, they were good, most people liked it, there could be many ways to improve on this and develop it further in BfA, but no...instead we got Azerite, warfronts and the island expeditions. The good part is that they'll be abandoned in the next xpac.

Oh, and with BfA being the re-introduction of Zandalar and Kul Tiras, two naval nations, it would have been the perfect chance to introduce player controlled ships (a thing that people has been asking forever), this could have maybe improved the concept of Island Expeditions. Big missed opportunity.

[AlmightyGerkin]

More raids. I'd gladly produce 2-3 raids per raid tier and alienate all IE/WF.

What you are implying is asking players to wait even longer to do content. Raid tiers requires designing, testing, and introduction of how lore fits into the raid and the biggest factor is Time. Seems what you want is for players not to wait 4months give or take but to wait a good 6-8.

[themaelstorm]

To be honest, I think WF and IE, in concept, are pretty good ideas. Implementation is where they fail.
I have suggested improvements for IE here.

For WF I'd do something similar to IE in terms of rewards etc. In addition, I'd change the gameplay. I haven't had chance to play the game much recently so I don't know if they already made changes but:
1) Make the enemy stronger
2) Enemy also produces soldier types depending on what areas they hold but also depending on enemy commander and each warfront has more than one commander. You need to counter these units
3) Players need to find balance between defense and offense and each player carries some sort of aura. Without the aura NPCs will fail terribly.
4) Enemy commanders can make pushes. Losing zones gives them extra buff so while you get extra units and more player "auras", it's not insta snowball

So gameplay would be like
>We have the mage commander
>Let's take the mage-counter zone first, probably balanced between defense and offense
>Build mage counters, attack another zone
>Shift defense into more offense over time
>Watch for surprise attacks and enemy commander pushes

[Sencha]

Add an in-game candy crush. The 2018 WoW audience will love it.

[Dolus]

Blizzard has the ability to implement interesting mechanics into raids, etc. The Hour Glass in End Time was really cool. I felt that the artifact weapon system in Legion was fun.... the Mage Tower.. etc. The Mythic + system in the last expansion was better. I enjoyed the gem system from back in the day. I also didn't mind reforging. The current story line in this expansion is very... bleh. Anything would have been better... even Return of the Lich King (Bolvar Fordragon).

[AlmightyGerkin]

Solo Scenarios like the Mage Tower but Gear Scaled so you can't out-gear it.
Bring back Challenge Mode

I did like the solo scenarios Troves the thunder king and the mage tower. To a certain level it would scale but than once you beaten it would not be a challenge anymore

Like to see Mage towers brought back in some way and challenge modes also. Hate myself a bit cause I never really got into the challenge modes and nor paid for a completion of the sets/weapons even though I had the gold they wanted for it.

[Bakis]

Sadly neither WF and IE used up any class devlopers so I guess I cant pick class balancing pve/pvp can be picked.
Since its content, instance designers, mechanic designers etc I would pick one more raid for sure, then 2 more 5mans.

[Deleted]

I don't think Warfronts are bad per se. They are boring , bc you can't lose. They suffer from being content for random groups.
I would've made them solo content and and one extra difficulty for 3-5 persons with better rewards.

[Deleted]

More raids. I'd gladly produce 2-3 raids per raid tier and alienate all IE/WF.

Then people would complain about the lack of new features and how Blizzard doesn't innovate and every expansion is just more of the same.

[SirBeef]

More raids. I'd gladly produce 2-3 raids per raid tier and alienate all IE/WF.

Wasted resources, not many, by percentage, raid. This is coming from a guy who pretty much only raids.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think Warfronts are bad per se. They are boring , bc you can't lose. They suffer from being content for random groups.
I would've made them solo content and and one extra difficulty for 3-5 persons with better rewards.

I would crank the difficulty of them, or the length it takes to complete one. Obviously you don't want to spend a decent chunk of time with randoms only to fail.

[eduwneso]

I would argue that an average person could not tell the difference between a shitty plate of something and an expensive one if they were both presented the same (e.g. $5/lb meat vs $20/lb). But you could take the same comparison to an expert who would easily distinguish the two.

Also, to know you got a shitty plate you'd have to know what a better plate was or at least aware of a better plate.

(Note: just saying your analogy is really bad not arguing one way or another).

And also, adding to what you said, if you don't like salads for example, it won't matter to you if the salad is a shitty one or a very good one

- - - Updated - - -

Remove Island Expeditions and AFKfronts I mean Warfronts as if they never existed. Ditch the Azerite crap, and delete all AP related stuff, get rid of it altogether. The whole game design of grinding for AP in Legion and now grinding for or Azerite is boring as Fuk, and should be totally thrown out in the next expansion.

Go back to MoP Raid gear, with the tokens badges thing. To get upgraded gear you run the Raids, be it LFR, Normal, Heroic or Mythic. Each Raid setting gives different iLvl tokens to be used to buy upgraded gear from the NPC in the city. And that's it, that's how you gear up.

- Launch 2 Raids at the same time, a major big Raid with 10 bosses, and a different smaller 3 boss fast Raid.
- Add couple new dungeons in each .1 patch release
- Bring back Mage Tower
- Bring back Challenge dungeons for class specific gear
- Bring back Class Halls

That's a nice feedback for next expansion (and I mean it, it's not sarcasm), now try to give feedback to improve the systems we have because they will not go away during this expansion. You are not helping in any way just saying "remove it" and you know they won't because they are core features of BFA you like them or not, so try to give ideas to make them better as other people have done here isntead of just ranting about something you don't like.

[Army Dreamer]

I'd remove the limit to 2 main professions and let people level any and all of them. Also would make crafted gear appealing again. Would bring back colored gem sockets and socket bonus, including meta get activation. Would restore the professional bonus relevancy.

Not actually related to this patch specifically, but still.

And of course, let people fly, at least after the full map exploration.

[Yriel]

I think randomly generated solo dungeons with a large number of feature selectors and interesting rewards would be a great addition to wow. You could even place entrances to them all over the world, you would then walk to a npc, he would give you a generic background-story, you could add/remove extra features like mini-bosses, traps, mob-density and style, puzzles or whatever and it would generate a dungeon for you that you have to travel to, play through, kill the endboss and get a nice reward for it. The more stuff you add the better/rare the rewards would be.
It could even build the bosses for your spec so that ranged chars, for example, would fight bosses that wouldn't try to melee them but instead do more of wildstar-like ground template attacks and so on.

Anarchy Online had such a system and i liked it very much.

[InfiniteCharger]

Some ideas I have.

Zones:

If I were designing BFA the main thing I would do is make most of the activity actually take place in zones.
Island expeditions were simply designed to camouflage instanced PVE with an azerite wrapper.
I suspect that they did this in order to improve performance and stability but at the end of the day it detracts from lore, story and gameplay.
It makes no sense for Azerite nodes to be spawning on islands and not in Silithus where the sword landed.
If anything the first war front in the game should be silithus and based around control of azerite nodes and should have started in Legion.
As such, war fronts should be zone wide and not based on instance content. It is simply an open world battleground.
Less players in instanced content and more content in zones means more activity in said zones.

These battlegrounds however would be different in that there would be triggers required to initiate combat.
For example, there would be azerite nodes, mines, farms and other controllable nodes that can be attacked controlled by either faction.
How many of these nodes are controlled by a faction would determine what kinds of NPC units can spawn in support of world PVP.
NPC units would not be infinite or based on a timer. They would have HP and a respawn rate determined by control of various nodes.
Each faction should have bases in the zone from which to base their assaults/defenses with additional bases being capturable.
Initiating a siege of faction controlled assets could happen without NPCs via players only or with NPC support if enough azerite or other resources are available. Once an assault is started, quests for assault or defense as appropriate would automatically spawn in the zone in support. There is no timer on this battleground. The siege/defense ends when one side wins most of the objectives in the zone.
Defending the primary faction stronghold in the zone would always generate quests with more achievements and rewards.

Azerite system:

Azerite should be a resource not tied to a necklace or any other loot drops. As such players should be able to mine or collect various types of azerite. Azerite shards, dust, crystals and so forth should be the basis of a new type of resource in game that affects professions. As such enhancements to weapons and armor would be through professions such as crafting and enchantments.
Loot drops would still be powerful but based more on standard gear stats, not on any sort of azerite system.
As such, abilities and talents would be available based on traditional talent tiers at level 115 or 120.
Azerite enhancements from crafting would enhance existing talents and abilities sometimes significantly.

The lore around azerite would be developed as time goes on and more is learned about the resource in the game.
This would provide the backdrop and context for the faction conflict and professions incorporating azerite into their designs.
More understanding of Azerite what it is and what it means about the titan inside Azerite should be a major story point in game.
If anything, this is something the Draenei should be investigating since they arent otherwise present in the story.

Of course most of the above won't work with the current system of phasing and sharding because you can't have zone battle grounds spread across different shards and phases because players are not locked to shards. It would be chaos keeping track of which shard you are on when participating in campaigns lasting more than a couple of hours. And with the new pvp toggle, that makes it worse as it is based on sharding tech. This is why war fronts are on a rotation and island expeditions are instanced and separate from the main zones.

[Zequill]

Remove WF and TF and reduce the amount of loot obtained by at least 5. Remove necklace, put back old talents system.

Waiting for your draft of 36 tree that let player put 111 talents point in them.