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

[Irian]

Remove titanforging entirely, keep Warforging similar to ToT at a reduced effect. Reduce the amount of gear the game is shoveling out at you. Return to group loot for non-pug content, keep personal for anything you queue for and as an option for lax groups who just want the game to dole out loot. Change Azerite to be a sort of sub-talent tree, with a few class-specific effects like Legion weapons but mostly generic stuff to give new 120s a little boost like added bonuses to crit/haste/mastery/primary and whatever. Azerite armor is gone. PvP currency vendors are back.
Gear has set amount of sockets, like back in MoP. Will reinvigorate jewelcrafting as a profession to have each piece of gear have a set amount of gems.
Changes to WM in 8.1 are fine, keep them as is. I think the problem will correct itself in time.

But as far as the actual subjects of the topic, Warfronts are now a PvP/PvE hybrid against actual players, rewards now properly give PvP currency, and there are several relatively safe places you can go if you aren't interested in PvP like gathering lumber/metal being mainly PvE.
Island Expeditions no longer have a PvP element at all. You have to reach a set amount of resources, that's it. Designed fairly similar to mythic dungeons, but they're an open-world with minibosses that mainly focus around dodging and pseudo-enrages that discourage going in with the typical tank/dps/healer comp (but doesn't make it impossible).
Less procedural generation, give us maybe a pool of six bosses per island that don't spawn and despawn at random and have there be maybe three that will after conditions are met. Stuff like toys/mounts etc will be primarily from the special bosses and getting them to spawn will be kind of tricky for pugs unless you coordinate.

Basically what I'm saying is that Warfronts will properly be a PvE/PvP hybrid AV-like experience that naturally will take a little more time now that PvP is an element, and Island Expeditions are less like pseudo-PvP and more about the idea of a semi-random, "open world" dungeon that you can explore at your own pace, Timeless Isle-esque, complete with rare spawns and the like.

[Deleted]

Easy: Make warfronts pvp in a pvp expansion. Make it like 1k winter.

tbh we have no idea what warfronts are supposed to be. Why are they ingame? What niche are they supposed to fill?
I cant tell you at all. Same with islands. Whats the point in having a 4 weeks roation etc. Warfronts and islands might have been a good idea, but are 100% wasted potential that boils down to commit genocide on mobs with almost 0 difficulty involved.
I really think someone at blizz had a great idea and then they ran out of time or someone just said "ya, no. Thats too complicated, we want everyones grandmother to play and succeed, we will just scrap all the crazy things and will go back to bombing sh*t".

[Kynario]

There should be a million posts here...

In the making.™

[rpdrichard]

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).

Actually if someone serves you a dish so salty or spicy that you can´t even eat it, or something rare or burned; of course you´d reject the food and complain to the owner or manager. Which is pretty much what Blizz is offering right now.

I would allow the players to either advance something everyday or oeverything at once one weekend, not everyone has time to play wow everyday, and right now Blizz is punishing players that don´t do that.

[tehdef]

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

Nice. You just lost your casual base.

You don't have a game anymore.

[tehdef]

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

Now everyone is wondering why 5 points to get Crit is compelling gameplay.

Your players leave for games with newer systems.

[gushDH]

I would make a poll and ask for every spec, when did you think it was the most fun/well designed.

After having the poll results, I would make the winner of every spec the base for current wow.

[Claymore]

First and foremost, WoW needs a proper Housing system. While it might not appeal to EVERYONE, it certainly appeals to a lot of players. Hell, it was basically the only thing allowing WildStar to hang on as long as it did (and with it having gone under, maybe shop around and grab some of the devs that worked on it). Hunting down cool new House-items would be a brilliant way to get players running old content again, now that the well of transmog-runs has dried up for many of us.

In addition, I would probably make efforts to bring Island Expeditions even closer to Diablo 3's "Rifts" system. I would also make it a primary way for letting players level alts, focusing purely on the "quick fun-runs" nature of Rifts in D3.

At the same time, I would completely change the approach to designing 5man dungeons, and make them much more sprawling and adventurous, like some of them were in Vanilla. Secret areas and bosses, really unique and powerful loot, basically "5-man raids". Every trash pack would be designed to be a challenge, including super-powerful patrols that must be avoided. Make them feel like DUNGEONS, not loot-hallways, something that takes 2-3 hours investment, very much in the style of old BRD or old Scholomance. Maybe give each dungeon an ultra-rare, "signature" Epic drop, much like the Runeblade of Baron Rivendare once was, or Ironfoe.

Not saying "Oh, these things would totally fix EVERYTHING", just saying I think these things would probably be well received.

[Soeroah]

Honestly, I don't mind Islands, but I think they would be largely improved with a few changes.

1) Make the rewards targetable, and let us be able to buy specific ones at a high Doubloon cost. I don't mind a long-ass grind, but I'd like to be able to guarantee my goals over the course of the expansion.

2) Make the gear that drops there scale according to ilevel, or make it 340 base, not 310.

3) More puzzle-based exploration, not just killing, maybe for huge chunks of Azerite that can knock 5 minutes off the time it takes to win.

4) For the love of god, let us queue from anywhere. I don't see the immersion or fantasy that comes from the table.

Warfronts, I have no idea how to make them more fun, but I similarly think we should be able to target specific pieces, or at least have the same character be able to avoid getting duplicate items until they've collected one of each thing they're eligible for.


But my biggest wish would be Caverns of Time scenarios (not dungeons) that deal with alternate timelines, what-ifs. I'd like to be able to go to tears in spacetime around the world and do a 20 minute lore-based, cosmetic-rewarding piece of story that explores what would have happened if X went differently, or maybe even to let us view events that occur in the books in the game. It wouldn't really be repeatable, I suppose, but I would love a team dedicated to fleshing things out like that.

[McFuu]

Island Expeditions: current iteration, they are too 1 dimensional, and actually quite boring in their "fast pace.".
They should have never been a race, they should be about exploration and running into rare mobs. The opposite faction showing up should happen organically, like the rest of the spawning mobs do.
Loot needs to be adjusted here, pets and mounts are cool, but if you are a person looking for challenge, pets, mounts, and xmog aren't a draw. Azerite reward should be removed in favor of a mass of currency.

WF: just get rid of them. They would be better as pvp, but that will never happen,and even if it does, it will be shit like the pve mode.
Warfronts should have been 5-10 man flex dungeon experiences with 8ish bosses. Basically they should be like Kara, BRD, UBRS.... The donation system could be used to add vendors or increase chances of a random boss to the dungeon.

[crakerjack]

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.

No, I think instead of wasting time on pet battle bullshit and other single player content, they should reallocate resources towards raid designing.

[therealbowser]

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.

Im gonna be honest, IMO, i dont think this game's engine can create *new* much different content than what we have today.
Its a old engine and a old combat system.

I THINK the only way for this game's engine to deliver "fun" is by content with a heavy "roleplay" feeling to it.

For example:
Wanna roleplay a mercenary to kill griefers and world pvp'ers?
Blizzard can create systems that support that. Maybe even create a player prison.

Wanna roleplay a business man?
Blizzard can create systems to built your empire. The more money you have, the more workers can work for you.

Wanna roleplay a Headhunter?
Go to a nearby board and see the "most wanted" players from your server.

------

Thats my opinion.

What are your ideas?

It sounds like you want a sandbox MMORPG, not WoW. And there's nothing wrong with that, but I have no interest. The "player Prison" system sounds especially abusable; no thanks.

For me, I want what I expected from warfronts in the first place; players having a more direct role over forces and units (some players feeling more like commanders, some more like heroes on the front lines, as they choose or desire) with AI taking over as needed and possibly limiting the amount of interaction players can have in particular areas outside of direct participation. I would also more heavily encourage actual PvP warfronts instead of just these pseudo raids that are incredibly boring with boring rewards.

I would remove the quests for controlling a zone and replace them with world quests; why would we go from 'kill x enemies lolol' after implementing such an excellent world quest system, especially after they even used it for the pre-expansion event in an old world zone? I don't get it. It would also encourage continual participation. The rares are great though, definitely fine with those and how they are handled.

Lastly, I would also include some world quests for the losing faction in the zone if they prefer to do that over turning random resources in; this would always be world PvP quests and they'd always be in danger, but it would be an interesting option. Likewise, I would add these same world PvP quests to the defending faction, so that it could always include some action. While the quests could be completed defeating PvE enemies, you would be encouraged--and rewarded--more significantly for killing players instead, sort of like how world PVP quests were handled in Legion.

Warcraft III was an outstanding game and I had high expectations for Warfronts (that I shouldn't have, and to be fair I did expect to be disappointed, but not quite at this scale), because I thought the game would feel like Warcraft III on a personal level. Instead it's just a bland, boring grind in every stage of them; it's a grind when you hold it, it's a grind trying to open up the warfront, and it's a grind actually participating in it. They could have done so much more than they did.

Oh well.

PS: You are talking about warfronts, right? The old world zones we fight over to participate in bland PvE content? Not Blizzard's new world PvP system? Because I have entirely different opinions on that. Your 'sandbox-esque' suggestions feel like you are talking about something completely different from warfronts so I can only assume.

- - - Updated - - -

No, I think instead of wasting time on pet battle bullshit and other single player content, they should reallocate resources towards raid designing.

What about raid content are you unhappy with right now? Were you disappointed by the raids in Legion, or in Uldir? Did you find the upcoming content for Battle for Dazor'alor to be disappointing?

Most critically, do you seriously think they can just move a team over and improve/put more work into raiding? Because it wouldn't work that way.

I think Warfronts are pretty bad and I'd be okay with them getting scrapped, but 'lolol let's just remove all single player content and call it a day' is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. The only reason I would ever support something like that is if I was literally pushing to kill WoW out of spite, because there's no way that would be even remotely healthy for the game, or fun for more than 5-10% of the playerbase; even most raiders, I suspect, enjoy a little single player content.

But hey, it's your opinion, and that's cool I guess? I just suggest that you think about what you're actually asking for here, and realize how detrimental it could (would) be.

[Linri]

warfronts
get rid of the "auto win" feature
make winning more rewarding, some type of currency or something, the random 340 loot was bleh

island expeditions
let people pick the location they wish to go, perhaps make it a bit more interesting with the rewards offered and chances

idk, i dont care mich for either of these two events, i tend to ignore them both

[Otimus]

Difficulty tiers, more options in general, tiered rewards, THINGS TO WORK TO, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, and making stuff feel worth doing more than a few times would be a nice start. If there was a slider of content in WoW, where on one end, there was a "Totally optional, you don't really need to bother doing it" and "You probably really should do this", almost all of the content save for Heroic+ Raids, Mythic+ dungeons, and Arena for the PVPers would fall on the far side of the "Optional" part. I don't think everything should be required in the game or anything... but almost nothing feels worth doing outside of what's been deemed the "real" content.


Seriously, if they just had a badge system in the game, and almost everything tangibly rewarded you for it, and there was a plethora of interesting gear, toys, and transmogs you could all buy with it, the game in general would be in a lot healthier of a place. Let you also use said badges to upgrade gear to a point. The old legendary system of WoD and MoP were also great motivators to keep at casual content.

As is, they expect artifact power/artifacts and warforging/titanforging to entirely replace all of that, and it's a poor substitute. I like a lot of the content, I like Warfronts, I like Island Expeditions, they just need more to them, and they need to try and motivate me to do that and all the other content more than a handful of times.

As is, I just sub when there's new content, and unsub when I've looked at it. The carrot on a stick has been entirely removed for everyone but the really hardcore players, or players so casual they only play a couple of hours a month or something. Without a carrot on a stick, without some kind of approachably fun grind, what's even the damned point of an MMORPG? Unless you're a raider, you're just kind of fucked. They've pretty much sucked the RPG out of the game, and turned it into a poor man's 5-30 man co-op arcade game with a huge ass lobby.

[Deleted]

It sounds like you want a sandbox MMORPG, not WoW. And there's nothing wrong with that, but I have no interest. The "player Prison" system sounds especially abusable; no thanks.

For me, I want what I expected from warfronts in the first place; players having a more direct role over forces and units (some players feeling more like commanders, some more like heroes on the front lines, as they choose or desire) with AI taking over as needed and possibly limiting the amount of interaction players can have in particular areas outside of direct participation. I would also more heavily encourage actual PvP warfronts instead of just these pseudo raids that are incredibly boring with boring rewards.

I would remove the quests for controlling a zone and replace them with world quests; why would we go from 'kill x enemies lolol' after implementing such an excellent world quest system, especially after they even used it for the pre-expansion event in an old world zone? I don't get it. It would also encourage continual participation. The rares are great though, definitely fine with those and how they are handled.

Lastly, I would also include some world quests for the losing faction in the zone if they prefer to do that over turning random resources in; this would always be world PvP quests and they'd always be in danger, but it would be an interesting option. Likewise, I would add these same world PvP quests to the defending faction, so that it could always include some action. While the quests could be completed defeating PvE enemies, you would be encouraged--and rewarded--more significantly for killing players instead, sort of like how world PVP quests were handled in Legion.

Warcraft III was an outstanding game and I had high expectations for Warfronts (that I shouldn't have, and to be fair I did expect to be disappointed, but not quite at this scale), because I thought the game would feel like Warcraft III on a personal level. Instead it's just a bland, boring grind in every stage of them; it's a grind when you hold it, it's a grind trying to open up the warfront, and it's a grind actually participating in it. They could have done so much more than they did.

Oh well.

PS: You are talking about warfronts, right? The old world zones we fight over to participate in bland PvE content? Not Blizzard's new world PvP system? Because I have entirely different opinions on that. Your 'sandbox-esque' suggestions feel like you are talking about something completely different from warfronts so I can only assume.

Black Desert Online has a prison for players who dont behave (negative karma) and are caught by a "good guy"
There is even a warning on the entire server to humiliate you rofl
You can escape it though.
Or you have to wait the time (cant remember how much time it is)

PS: My suggestions were general. Not trying to "improve" the warfronts we have today.
I think they can be salvaged but i didnt care much to talk about them
I can see you were excited for Warfronts...they could be improved. Its not too late...maybe Blizzard will try to do it.
But IMO we should start thinking about "roleplaying" gameplay

[Zorachus]

I was surprised how many of my characters classes had almost zero revisions or very minors ones. Like Rogue Assassin needs Mutilate 50 energy reduced to like 30, and have the Throwing Knives spell reduced from 35 to like 20. That way the rotation would be nonstop smooth and flowing.

I really miss the old days of Wrath spell casting, where it was a rigid rotation, of one spell after another, rinse and repeat, and they were FAST, little to no cool downs, and instant casting and no ramp up times.

Like my caster classes I just started playing for the first time in BfA, man what a shock to learn they have a super slow cast time. A Mage or Warlock needs 1.5 seconds or longer to get his spell ready and then slowly throw it cast, takes FOREVER. It's like a pitcher in baseball doing his windup getting ready on the mound, pulling his arm back, lifting his leg, then actually throwing the ball. It's not instant it's a good second or two. That fucking sucks for playing a game like that, super slow, very boring. All casters should have instant spells, and zero wait.

[therealbowser]

Black Desert Online has a prison for players who dont behave (negative karma) and are caught by a "good guy"
There is even a warning on the entire server to humiliate you rofl
You can escape it though.
Or you have to wait the time (cant remember how much time it is)

Yeah, I don't mean to attack you for suggesting it or anything; I enjoy a good sandbox MMORPG (or at least I used to) but those types of mechanics really have no place in a game like World of Warcraft. I'm strongly against the player prison system on any game, though, as it's just highly abusable by nature. I would be surprised if it wasn't on that game either, especially given some of the horror stories I've heard for the game.

PS: My suggestions were general. Not trying to "improve" the warfronts we have today.
I think they can be salvaged but i didnt care much to talk about them
I can see you were excited for Warfronts...they could be improved. Its not too late...maybe Blizzard will try to do it.
But IMO we should start thinking about "roleplaying" gameplay

Don't get me wrong. On a number of levels I do agree with this.

First of all, I think Warfronts could be salvaged. It's well within Blizzard's substantial amount of power to improve the quality of warfronts (especially future ones) in a very real and positive way. I don't think they will, though, simply because they don't care enough to do so. It would be a lot of work. If Darkshore ends up bombing we might just not have any more warfronts, despite the fact that at least a few more were directly planned (Barrens is one example). Honestly, I'm okay with this. World quests are good enough; if we lose warfronts but gain new zones with active world quests and an arching story line, I'd be okay with that.

But more specifically, I see that you are talking about 'roleplay' elements. Let me mention straight up front that I love immersion. I think this game would benefit tremendously from more immersive elements. Over time, Blizzard has eliminated a lot of flavor in the game that made it feel more alive. I miss, for instance, having flavor text when you talked to a vendor instead of it literally removing it from old npcs and forgoing it on new ones. (Why not just have an option?)

I think Blizzard looks at these kind of elements as being "meaningless" because they don't have a direct impact on the game. And you can be sure as hell that Activision is even worse than Blizzard was. I can think of plenty of roleplay-like features I'd love to see in game. Being able to put spaces in your name, or using the same system we have for battletags (a visual name, and a name with a number that expresses your actual name, or even like FFXIV where you had a first and last name so that players have more freedom with them), but I just don't see it ever happening.

I can make any number of suggestions including player housing, players being able to utilize the world that is already available in a more meaningful way, even just adding more empty houses and buildings for players to make use of for events (not even just for roleplayers), but none of this will ever have a remote chance. Because, "it doesn't affect gameplay". It's not that Blizzard won't add it, it's just that it's bottom priority, and there will always, always be something higher priority, and if there wasn't they'd use that time to add something new to take its place.

At the very least I'd like to see some more customization features. It would be nice to be able to select your accent as a 'normal' human, to select your eye color as a night elf, tattoo options for a variety of races (especially dwarves, who would also benefit from having a Wildhammer accent as an option), etc. These at least might have some small chance since it affects everyone more directly, even if they are just cosmetic changes. So this is what I'd support the most (in fact, it is what I support the most) in terms of immersive content, since it's what has the greatest chance of actually happening.

... and even then, the odds of it happening are very, very small.

[sil3ntearth]

More raids and more dungeons. Better world quests, dungeon tier sets, and normal raid tier sets.

[Araxie]

First of all: Fun classes.

Okay, elaborate more. "Fun classes" is not something you can just say and have happen. How would you make the classes fun and balanced?

[Felmourn]

Well just for my 2cents that are sporadic and all over the place.

I would want to start making stuff for long term usage. I've seen great ideas of how to incorporate class order halls for BFA and future expansions. I like Blizzard's idea from Blizzcon about portal room that has room for future expansions' portals instead of stacking 3-6 in an unorganized area.

As I have previously mentioned, I'd like the world to feel more engaging. Random events, NPC AI for rares and elites. I like the direction Blizz is moving with the BFA invasions. Finally Horde and Alliance aren't just at a stalemate told through texts, but instead we see actual units go at it(even if they never die and are immortalized fighting).

I would have made Warfronts pvp battlegrounds/pvp zone like Wintergrasp/Tol Barad. When you control Arathi/Darkshore your factions receives bonuses to something pvp and something pve related. Why wait for a timer? "world pvp boss" event.

Random events/dailies/Chromie adventures through out old Azeroth. Death of Chromie was fun imo.

How about revamping professions? How about profession halls that are part of the world. BRD forge to create "epic" gear or something. Dalaran for Enchanting. Wherever Nat Pagle is currently for fishing(give us a fishing water raft mount) etc etc...

Questing - They are finally testing RPG elements about having choices and at that choices that effect your character! YES! More of that please!

Weather to zones that make sense. Up for a vote of if weather affects your character/mount/npcs. Your mount is a bit slower due to slipping on grass/mud when it rains. Your movement speed is slowed during a dust/sandstorm. NPCs hide under shelter when it rains(higher chance to pull a whole pack)

Lore wise, either move forward with the HvA and stop the whole enemy of my enemy neutral for a bit thing, or get over it and sign some freaking treaties.