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  1. #1

    I don't like BFA dungeons and here's why

    Hi guys, I thought I would share my opinion on BFA dungeons, and general design of bfa mythic +. So first off, I don't think dungeons are bad. I think most of them look okay and have cool story behind them. That being said they have a ton of problems:

    1. They are too damn long and there is too much trash. Average time of dungeon has gone up dramatically since Legion and I hate it. Most of the dungeons have rediculous amount of trash, so much so that for me it kinda overshadows bosses especially in fortified weeks. Also it kinda blends dungeons together when all you do is kill trash, kill trash and kill more trash. Nothing unique, cool or fun about it. Especially since there is literally no short dungeons like Maw of Souls and medium lenght dungeons are minority. How did they not learn that in legion, the longest dungeons such as Halls of Valor and especially those later added
    seat and cathedral - most of the people didn't like them. And now in BFA they are all they get.That leads me in 2nd point

    2. Now this is subjective - but stylistically they are so much worse than Legion dungeons. I get that they had to fit the theme of expansion and lore but they kinda seem ordinary, bland compared to Legions ones where there was so much more diversity, the legion ones, at least to me, were so much more original, and overall better designed. (i'd like to read what you think of this)

    3. Why are Fortified and Tyrannical level 2 affixes? There is nothing fun about them they are literal stat sticks, it was so much better in Legion when they were 10+, they could have at least made it 7+ with introduction of 4th affix. It's just making the dungeons even more boring especially in lower keys. Guess it levels out higher up.

    4. Trash mehanics, I know I kinda already said this, and I know that they nerfed most of the annoying sh*t and I know that it's supposed to be there to kind of raise the skill cap and introduce different team comps but god damit it's done so poorly that it makes me and some people I know (can only speak for us) not wanna run some dungeons. Again, this is subjective as well,as this whole thread and I have no data to back it up but this is how I feel so you may agree or disagree.

  2. #2
    I think the biggest problem with a lot of dungeons is the difficulty to reward ratio, more specifically to dungeons below +10. It makes it very difficult for people who are actually trying to gear up through M+ to do so, so those dungeons get overfilled with people whose ilvl is generally above what should be required.

    I think that dungeons focusing more on trash and the affixes is far more interesting and creates a better challenge than if you focus less on trash and more on a boss. The only way this would be different is if you made less trash but created unique mechanics, and added affixes that affected boss mechanics in M+ dungeons.

    The overall aesthetics of the majority of dungeons is pretty boring, and are very obviously emphasized as reused outdoor zones with no changes. Shrine, Freehold, Atal, Siege. The Motherlode is probably my most hated, while The Underrot, Temple and King's Rest and Manor being the only dungeons that are actually visually impressive.

    Overall I would say that the focus on dungeons being filled with trash and the combination of several affixes together, along with being on a timer makes for an overall unfun experience that I do my best to avoid, minus once a week for a 14-15
    *Insert every single ridiculous PC parts detail here that no one cares about*

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by La View Post
    I think the biggest problem with a lot of dungeons is the difficulty to reward ratio, more specifically to dungeons below +10. It makes it very difficult for people who are actually trying to gear up through M+ to do so, so those dungeons get overfilled with people whose ilvl is generally above what should be required.

    I think that dungeons focusing more on trash and the affixes is far more interesting and creates a better challenge than if you focus less on trash and more on a boss. The only way this would be different is if you made less trash but created unique mechanics, and added affixes that affected boss mechanics in M+ dungeons.

    The overall aesthetics of the majority of dungeons is pretty boring, and are very obviously emphasized as reused outdoor zones with no changes. Shrine, Freehold, Atal, Siege. The Motherlode is probably my most hated, while The Underrot, Temple and King's Rest and Manor being the only dungeons that are actually visually impressive.

    Overall I would say that the focus on dungeons being filled with trash and the combination of several affixes together, along with being on a timer makes for an overall unfun experience that I do my best to avoid, minus once a week for a 14-15
    I have gared with m+ only because i hate raiding in first 1-2 week - people learn too slow. Overall difficulty is fine imo but if someone is new in wow and he try +10 for first time some affixes can make it nightmare.

    About tyrannical/fortified. It's level 2 affix so everyone have to deal with it. It's much better than 3rd affix like it was in legion. Yes, this affixes are boring but the only way they can make affixes more funny is to add like 2 affixes to each tier, nerf every single one affix and add new affix every 2 levels so it;s on lvl 2, lvl 4, lvl 6 and lvl 8. This can make dungenons much more interesting but it must be done with brain.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Dotality View Post
    Hi guys, I thought I would share my opinion on BFA dungeons, and general design of bfa mythic +. So first off, I don't think dungeons are bad. I think most of them look okay and have cool story behind them. That being said they have a ton of problems:

    1. They are too damn long and there is too much trash. Average time of dungeon has gone up dramatically since Legion and I hate it. Most of the dungeons have rediculous amount of trash, so much so that for me it kinda overshadows bosses especially in fortified weeks. Also it kinda blends dungeons together when all you do is kill trash, kill trash and kill more trash. Nothing unique, cool or fun about it. Especially since there is literally no short dungeons like Maw of Souls and medium lenght dungeons are minority. How did they not learn that in legion, the longest dungeons such as Halls of Valor and especially those later added seat and cathedral - most of the people didn't like them. And now in BFA they are all they get.That leads me in 2nd point
    The issue with Seat and Halls of Valor wasn't the length, it was the extremely punishing mechanics on higher difficulties.

    The lack of a short dungeon like Maw really only hurt for Dungeon week but you can get Freehold done even faster than Maw was ever done in my opinion.
    I would honestly argue some of the trash has too much going on at once at times to be "blended together".(I'm looking at you, Motherlode and your "I'm going to cast a CC while another mob is casting a transformation spell and another is casting an aoe!")

    No one had any issues with running Return to Karazhan when it was new, and apparently it was successful enough that they're making "megadungeons" a thing now.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dotality View Post
    2. Now this is subjective - but stylistically they are so much worse than Legion dungeons. I get that they had to fit the theme of expansion and lore but they kinda seem ordinary, bland compared to Legions ones where there was so much more diversity, the legion ones, at least to me, were so much more original, and overall better designed. (i'd like to read what you think of this)
    With the exception of Underrot and Waycrest Manor, I agree on this.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dotality View Post
    3. Why are Fortified and Tyrannical level 2 affixes? There is nothing fun about them they are literal stat sticks, it was so much better in Legion when they were 10+, they could have at least made it 7+ with introduction of 4th affix. It's just making the dungeons even more boring especially in lower keys. Guess it levels out higher up.
    This is actually something that makes me angry from a balance point of view.

    They wanted to stop the drastic jump in difficulty from being at the 10 range, but all they ended up doing was +2s to not be worth the time. Sure, some people will push a +2 key to get it to something higher, but no one is going to want to farm +2s for gear.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dotality View Post
    4. Trash mehanics, I know I kinda already said this, and I know that they nerfed most of the annoying sh*t and I know that it's supposed to be there to kind of raise the skill cap and introduce different team comps but god damit it's done so poorly that it makes me and some people I know (can only speak for us) not wanna run some dungeons. Again, this is subjective as well,as this whole thread and I have no data to back it up but this is how I feel so you may agree or disagree.
    I mean, there's always going to be something people hate. I don't think having trash without mechanics would be any better.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Dotality View Post

    4. Trash mehanics, I know I kinda already said this, and I know that they nerfed most of the annoying sh*t and I know that it's supposed to be there to kind of raise the skill cap and introduce different team comps but god damit it's done so poorly that it makes me and some people I know (can only speak for us) not wanna run some dungeons. Again, this is subjective as well,as this whole thread and I have no data to back it up but this is how I feel so you may agree or disagree.
    Its obvious they designed the dungeons in BFA for MDI first (Like rezzing to the start of the instance for whatever fucking reason), but that is not the problem.

    In Legion most dungeons apart from Cathedral (which had multiple) only had 1-2, ACTUALLY DANGEROUS packs no matter the affix for in the whole dungeon.

    In BFA, they changed that to more like a dangerous pack every second or third pack, making it much harder overall.

    At least this is the feeling as a tank.

    The community, at least the majority of it is not trained for this type of stuff.

    You cant take them from faceroll dungeons for 5 years, to "Here, new thing called M+ ,a bit harder, but the base dungeons are faceroll a bit so you will be fine" to "Yeah, the dungeons in BFA all have packs of mobs with 20 abilities to counter, better get playing".

    For some like myself, not a problem but when once every other month i decide to randomly help a pug, only to watch, 0 interrupts, 0 CC, 0 countering the most basic stuff (Like the Pterodactyl fear in Atal) then yeah, community problem.

  6. #6
    My problem isn't so much that there's a lot of trash or that it's hard, but that there's so much emphasis on weird skips, cautious pulls, and avoiding patrols. WoW has great combat mechanics, but it does not have good mob avoidance or pack skipping mechanics. All of them are awkward and finnicky, and one mistake can result in an unavoidable wipe on higher difficulties. Tight environments with cramped camera angles also don't help. It all results in BfA's dungeons feeling incredibly claustrophobic, with unsatisfying pacing and moments of high tension that derive from banal things like "is that extra pack going to pull?" rather than encounters that are designed to be intrinsically intense and challenging.

    Mob-dodging isn't a good thing to build the difficulty of your dungeons around.

  7. #7
    My problem with dungeons is that when they were fun for me they weren't about rushing through. M+ has placed the emphasis on blasting through them as quickly as possible leaving little time to actually bs and have fun. The new M+ invitational has reduced the dungeon design to 4 bosses, similar layout, all bosses in instance relatively same difficulty. The skips and layout knowledge are also annoying tedium for anyone but try hards.

    Its just a generic gang bang as quickly as possible 1-100 times a week. Boring as fuck. Outside of my 10 I have zero interest. If they didn't award AP I wouldn't even bother with the 10 anymore.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Dotality View Post
    3. Why are Fortified and Tyrannical level 2 affixes? There is nothing fun about them they are literal stat sticks, it was so much better in Legion when they were 10+, they could have at least made it 7+ with introduction of 4th affix. It's just making the dungeons even more boring especially in lower keys. Guess it levels out higher up.
    Although I don't exactly agree with this: It's because the dungeons are designed around the two affixes. Some bosses become significantly harder with Tyrannical, because it causes the fight to go on longer, and 'soft enrage' mechanics start to stack up. Conversely, some trash pulls are made way harder (and the timer harder to beat) when the trash has more HP/Damage.

    The problem, though, is that "boss has more health" is just a generic upgrade for any boss, which makes the affix pretty brain dead. Like I said, I don't really agree with an affix like Tyrannical even if there's a deeper 'reason' for it being there.

    Trash mehanics, I know I kinda already said this, and I know that they nerfed most of the annoying sh*t and I know that it's supposed to be there to kind of raise the skill cap and introduce different team comps but god damit it's done so poorly that it makes me and some people I know (can only speak for us) not wanna run some dungeons. Again, this is subjective as well,as this whole thread and I have no data to back it up but this is how I feel so you may agree or disagree.
    It sucks, but trash is now just as 'important' as bosses in dungeons. M+ """"""""""esports"""""""""" were a real hit in Legion and Blizzard is riding that wave hard, so now every new dungeon is literally designed with M+ in mind. This leads to trash pulls that can actually be more difficult than bosses (look at the trash pull before the zombie boss in Atal'Dazar versus that horrendous trash pull right before him, for instance. Or the fucking Motherlode.) Outside of M+ this isn't usually an issue, but it does mean you have to memorize trash pulls in addition to boss pulls if you want to do higher level keys.

  9. #9
    Scarab Lord Boricha's Avatar
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    My issue with BFA dungeons was primarily too much focus on trash mechanics and skips, not enough on bosses. Having trash with mechanics is fine, there's just too much of it and the dungeon becomes tedious. They also designed a lot of mechanics around the idea that they can be ignored until higher m+ damage scaling. There were already a lot of unprepared people getting into mid-tier m+ groups thanks to WF weekly, world bosses and titanforging, but mechanics suddenly going from irrelevant to deadly makes things much worse.

  10. #10
    They designed BFA dungeons in such way to appeal M+ feature. Just remember "old old OLD" dungeons... Like TOC for example.. Or OCC, Escape from Durnholde, Stratholme... Dungeons were designed in such way to tell an EPIC story about current event/history of one place/character/event... And now they just focus on trash positions, boss mechanics and M+ numbers. They give 0 f*cks about story/design/"feel" of it...
    Another 2 examples from the past:
    1. (1 longest) BRD - 1 of the most epic dungeons EVER.... and it could NEVER be implemented in "m+ system".
    2. (1 shortest) HOR (wotlk) - same thing goes to it... AMAZING dungeon, amazing FEEL, amazing STORY.... but same as above- it could never be implemented in "m+ system".

    Sadly, but that's the reality of WOW-dungeons atm.

  11. #11
    @OP, I totally agree with your stylistic point. IMO Legion dungeons looked far superior.

    I myself enjoyed running heroics over and over again when I first started WoW in TBC.
    However, over the years the 5-man dungeons got less and less important.

    Enter Legion, god damn I enjoyed spamming M+ with friends and even puggs.

    now BFA, dungeons look underwhelming and trash is so annoying.

    So yea, something that so many players before me have already said.

    I just hope M+ will be more enjoable to do in the next Xpac

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Palapop View Post
    They designed BFA dungeons in such way to appeal M+ feature. Just remember "old old OLD" dungeons... Like TOC for example.. Or OCC, Escape from Durnholde, Stratholme... Dungeons were designed in such way to tell an EPIC story about current event/history of one place/character/event... And now they just focus on trash positions, boss mechanics and M+ numbers. They give 0 f*cks about story/design/"feel" of it...
    Another 2 examples from the past:
    1. (1 longest) BRD - 1 of the most epic dungeons EVER.... and it could NEVER be implemented in "m+ system".
    2. (1 shortest) HOR (wotlk) - same thing goes to it... AMAZING dungeon, amazing FEEL, amazing STORY.... but same as above- it could never be implemented in "m+ system".

    Sadly, but that's the reality of WOW-dungeons atm.
    I agree, but you also have to consider with the BS "faction war" theme half of the dungeons will feel completely out of place for each faction, so it is very hard to focus on a story, if half the time the story will be a complete joke to the people running it.

    And if you are Alliance, the raids will feel like that, too.

  13. #13
    Dungeons are no longer dungeons, they are soulless mechanic simulators, just as raids pretty much.
    Last edited by Tolbybolton; 2019-02-23 at 07:52 PM.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Tolbybolton View Post
    Dungeons are no longer dungeons, they are mechanic simulators, just as raids pretty much.
    Nailed it.

  15. #15
    BfA dungeons are just way too "engineered". Launch dungeons were so loaded with mechanics, be it debuffs, interruptable casts, caster mobs in generala dn other stuff that needed some level of attention. And they had to be nerfed eventually ebcause all that stuff didnt mix with having it scaled up to eleven with additional affixes to ruin your day.

    Some dungeons still feel jsut terrible to play with certain affixes. Sanguine got from basically irrelevant to super annoying when so many mobs like to be stationary or you have a claustrophobic dungeon like shrine were you barely have space to fight because the next trash pack is 5 meters away or you literally have no space in dungeons like Tol Dagor and Waycrest Manor.
    You alos have so many bursting trigger packs of many small insginificant mobs who all burst and you sit there either hoping your healer amanges those stacks or you have to pick off a few mobs ata time in a game where evryone has passive cleave and AoE and it jsut turns into non gameplay and non-fun pacing for no good reason.

    In legion I felt dungeons were not properly designed with m+ in mind which caused so mismatching but was still good enough. In BfA the dungeons are seemingly made for MDI or are simply overengineered in some attempt to artifically increase comp diversity by making specifc utilities way too storng in one dungeon and useless in another, while hoping to keep busy with mechnaic overloaded packs which makes the dungeons just unenjoyable.

    Some fo the dungeons have a really cool theme or fanatsy but the execution is meh because it feels like they had to make mechanics that needed some sort of counterplay and fit as much in as they could to give more room for some high end management of singular packs while killing excessive mass pulls because you cant either stack the mobs or keep all under control.

    Overall the dungeons generate too much tedium because most of the added pay attention for paying attentions sake arent very fun and the messy interaction of dungeon design in combination with a bunch of affixes just gets me annoyed with most of the dungeons.
    Reaping is genuinely fun and msot dungeons bettered themselves via the tuning and mechanical changes but I still dont enjoy m+ as much as in legion and I'm not seeing myself looking back fondly on BfA dungeons, maybe KIngs Rest being an honorable mention but its linear design also doesnt really make it a good dungeon for m+ specifically.

  16. #16
    They were overly cautious in making bosses easy and ended up making tyrannical much easier than fortified.

    Also all the dungeons need the same thing, so you end up with all the same specs in mythic+. Always a rogue, always a demon hunter.

  17. #17
    I’m definitely feeling this expansion that dungeons and to an extent raids are being taken in a direction to make them “as optional as possible” because of how many more options we are being given.

    For example: Dungeons can have wacky and annoying elements that would make PUGing a nightmare... because we have world quests, islands and warfronts.

    My guild have been hardline “dungeons all night” people in the past... and we generally don’t touch them more than once each now because they are nowhere near the most efficient, enjoyable or “inevitable” path for... well anything now.

    If you don’t have stars in your eyes for unnecessarily higher ilvl and the modes that require them (anything above heroic dungeons or LFR), there is literally no reason to run a dungeon more than once for story and then for the odd Wq.

    And because of that... they’re now in a space where if you’re there a lot, you’re ambitious, and if you’re ambitious, anything goes when it comes to challenge. The “access level” to the game is covered elsewhere.

    Dungeons are seen by the devs as “allowed” to be annoying, because we have so many options.

  18. #18
    Fluffy Kitten Aurora's Avatar
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    It's reached a point where I think mythic+ may be doing more harm than good to the game. I missed the time when dungeons felt like a unique adventure instead of endless repetition fitting an exact template.

  19. #19
    Have you really not understood that the existence of incredibly quick dungeons is what makes people avoid longer dungeons? The proportional reward vs effort is what people use to gague whether something is worth doing, which is why Atal'dazar and Freehold are so immensely popular atm. They're quick and easy, that's all there is to it. I myself loved HoV aesthetically and wanted to run it far more, the only issue with it was tyrannical bosses one shotting on high keys and myself playing a squishy priest!

  20. #20
    I feel like they tried very, very, very hard to turn M+ into an esport and made dungeons unfun to anyone that just wants to zerg a dungeon down every now and then. M+ was fun for me in Legion. I'd heal(mostly DPS) as a resto druid in +10 carries and enjoyed it. Now? I honestly just don't care to do any but I have to do at least one a week.

    Too many mechanics, too many interrupts, too many dispels/purges, too much trash, and mob percentage is tuned too tight. What they need to do is just start making M+ progressively more difficult; as in base mechanics up to a +10, a few additional mechanics from +11- +15, and a final addition of mechanics +16 onward. That would appease everyone in my mind. Doubt they'd ever do that though. Too much additional work.
    Whaleshark /spits on your science.

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