Should Blizzard design challenging solo-content?

[Zandalariprelate]

Yes, more solo content like the challenges from the Arkham games or the God of War series would be neat with WoW

[arkanon]

Here is my opinion, for what it is worth.

I would love to see more solo content, absolutely. However, for me, the most successful and enjoyable solo content has cosmetic rewards. Ill try to explain why. If this solo content rewarded gear, it would quickly become a serious progression path. I do NOT want players bypassing group content to obtain gear through solo play. I DO want players to be rewarded for their efforts, solo or otherwise.

When we look at solo content that has worked well, i believe it fits this mold - green fire, mage tower, to a lesser extent proving grounds. I really enjoyed the mage towers. I enjoyed the challenge, i enjoyed the adrenaline boost when you got or almost got that kill (when it was still challenging) and looking back, i dont think i mind it being quite easy towards the end.

Personally, i think the answer is scaling. Now, to be clear, i am NOT a fan of the mob scaling with gear bullshit, but i am a huge fan of content scaling with the number of players. And i would like to see it massively expanded upon, and i see a lot of potential for some very popular game systems using this tech. First, an example:

Island Expeditions (IE) : An interesting idea, with in my opinion very poor execution. One thing i see quite often in relation to the classic release is the sense of exploration and adventure people used to feel when they first played, and how that is totally gone now, and i agree. With the way the internet is, how data mining works, and how the community is now, Blizzard can never really have any secrets left. Unless they venture down the path of random generation and randomized encounters. I would love to see IE scale from 1-10 players, and allow us to explore at our own pace. I would love to see everything that is there now, but with even tougher bosses. If i was having a quiet one and just wanted to put some music on and do some solo content, there is nothing really challenging at all for me, so everything gets boring very, very quickly.

I would love to have something to do that rewarded cosmetics, mounts, currency, crafting materials etc etc.

[khazmodan]

I seriously doubt that more solo challenges will save WoW but some of the best lore I have seen in game has been from solo experiences. The truth of WoW now is; any pug or open world experience is more than ever like a solo experience with the cross realm groups, sharding and phasing. I personally feel about as disconnected from the players in town as I do when I Travel to another big city in real life and walk through a crowd of people that are quickly going somewhere else. It used to be that I was impressed by people on the same server with me, with achievements that I had not done yet. Now, I couldn't care less about anybody I see in game except for a few guildies, so the desire to do those challenges and have something to talk about with players has been almost eliminated...

[Pua]

But overall I think challenging content in a general sense is something that WoW has been lacking outside of mythic raids and high tier M+.

I completely agree, as it turns out.

I think Heroic raids and a certain point of the Mythic+ dungeons are the only challenging content in the game, and you can 'complete' it without bothering with either of them. I think the key point in your entire post is one word:

Progression.

Vote number one, a continual system rather than just one-off bits, is the more popular choice - that implies that the system, whatever it is, needs progression of some kind. Personally, my favourite would be that gear development was completely overhauled; that statistics, or procs, are introduced to all three of the main contents (let's say group-PvE, single-PvE and PvP). That way, single progression would deliver gear that enhanced your performance with single content but would have no impact on dungeons and raids. This is one example:

- Soldier: Every critical strike you land increases the damage inflicted by your team mates by 1%. This increase stacks at 5.
- Explorer: Each time you solely kill an enemy, you will self-heal 3%.
- Warband: Reduces the damage you take from other players, and increases the damage you do to other players, by 10%.

Now, these are just pure examples with practically no intent to think them through or balance them. It's just a concept of developing gear-orientated rewards that groups, solos and PvP players benefit from; and, most importantly, in a way that doesn't impact other aspects. Not only would such an approach mean that players get their own rewards without having to play content they don't like, suddenly the chance to specialise professions and develop them reappears. I used to love profession-related specialisations, and this type doesn't present any balance related issues.

'Tis my stance, anyway, regarding the fact that the highest vote is a clear "yes, single-player content is what I want" while "make it deep" is winning overall.

[bufferunderrun]

for me it would be better if blizzard start developing warcraft solo games a la skyrim/witcher, it would be more costly for them but would give the opportunity to draw new players toward the ip, have a better platform (than books) to build up the story and new characters and also impact less the multiplayer activity of the mmo.

[Fred Skinner]

Only a very few people are interested in challenges. If blizzard would add solo content, it should have at least two different difficulties, heroic and normal. Normal should have world quest difficulty, heroic should have mage tower difficulty for those who like it.

We talked about AI bots as mercenaries for every kind of content in the other threads. There should be a special version of dungeons or raids to be playable with NPCs, as like followers from the mission table.

[micwini]

Brawl'gar arena is pretty challenging, when you get up in ranks.

It isn't hard at all. The most wipes I had was 3 on the final boss. Most bosses died within 10 seconds if you used cooldowns. It wasn't this way in MoP for sure, even with good gear.

[Jeryl59]

Easy reward solution (+ adds replayability) :
A currency that allows you to buy the stuff that has been removed from the game (MOP and WOD challenge rewards, Mage Tower, MOP legendary back, limited time raid mounts, etc.)

You get a coin each time you complete a challenge and items costs more coins depending on how hard it was to get them previously. (ex : 10 coins for the MOP legendary back, 100 coins for 1 Mage Tower skin, etc.).

If the solo challenges are hard enough, it doesn't devalue the accomplishments of those that got it before. And it allows new players to get stuff they missed (which is a major turn-off for the collector type of player)

[Dormie]

If they added solo content I wouldn't want it to take up much dev resources, and I also wouldn't want it to be purely for cosmetics. I barely touched Mage Tower because idc about collecting skins.

[Arinnaya]

Yeah, they should. The Mage Tower was great. From what I can tell it was pretty popular too.

Suramar was good too. Not as challenging perhaps but a cut above leveling I thought. This stuff plays well with customers too.

I thought the Suramar questline was absolutely excellent and a real enjoyment to play through. I'm disappointed that they didn't have phased vs non-phased versions to allow someone to go through the initial quests without having Tyrande/Liadrin etc there so you could replay it. Questing in Suramar city was fraught when there was no flying and you had to be careful not to lose your disguise and the story was a really good one.

I really liked Mage Tower as well, but it doesn't necessarily have to be really challenging solo player content, but a zone like Suramar with an engaging storyline and little side-quests like unlocking all the portals and all the ley-lines was a big hit for me.

That said, things like the Mage Tower (and tbh also MoP/WoD challenge modes) shouldn't be time-phased - we know that character scaling exists for timewalking etc so that's how it should be dealt with - if I go in with a 120 to Mage Tower, it scales down to 110 and gives me an appropriate level of gear - that way it's a purely skill based challenge. It was also kind of ridiculous how once you'd done the challenge you could never do it again on that character.

[FuxieDK]

It isn't hard at all. The most wipes I had was 3 on the final boss. Most bosses died within 10 seconds if you used cooldowns. It wasn't this way in MoP for sure, even with good gear.

Ofc you are doing 100K dps, so you can kill stuff in 10 sec..

Also, a boss like Ahoo'ru was first a rank 7 boss, then move to special rank (i.e. AFTER rank 7), but is now Rank 3 or 4.. It's is still every bit as difficult as it always was, but come much much earlier this season..

STOP TROLLING...

[Pua]

How so? Curious

A user sent him a tweet that linked this thread, and he liked it.

[Has lost its way]

I would say yes but in moderation... Mage tower is kind of the biggest concentrated effort I would want to see for it.

[ssviolett]

Yes! Definitely! It shouldn't be the main point of the game, but its a nice addition. I really, REALLY liked that solo run with Nightfallen every week - was one of my favorite activities. I'm really sad Blizz didn't add that another difficult high level zone like Suramar in BfA and that awesome faction like Nightfallen with its quests and that dungeon.

- - - Updated - - -

Here is my opinion, for what it is worth.

I would love to see more solo content, absolutely. However, for me, the most successful and enjoyable solo content has cosmetic rewards. Ill try to explain why. If this solo content rewarded gear, it would quickly become a serious progression path. I do NOT want players bypassing group content to obtain gear through solo play. I DO want players to be rewarded for their efforts, solo or otherwise. .

Indeed! that's why I mentioned Nightfallen but not Brawlers Guild or Mage Tower. Nightfallen dungeon gave you some sort of progression and nice rep rewards.

[Otimus]

Sure, why not!

I'd also like more interesting stuff for smaller groups. Better 5-man content that just isn't Mythic+, and let normal raids scale down to 8 players. Better 3 man content, too, while we're at it. Also making questing more fun and engaging would be good too. More stuff that's fun and engaging with groups while questing would go a long way that isn't just stupid "REQUIRES A GROUP" quests or stupid ol' world bosses. (Personally, I think a game that wants to encourage community, if it indeed does, which I think it doesn't, shouldn't punish you for questing in a group -- it should reward you for doing so. That's why WoW has so many problems with community, IMHO, at it's core, it discourages at many levels from playing the main bulk of that content with people, and it breeds a level of selfishness, and Blizzard's only answer for why they do this is they don't want to make people "feel like they have to do it that way". They really need to abandon that attitude. You can reward people for things like that while also not making it oppressively bad for people who don't. They're just not willing to try.)

[ssviolett]

I thought the Suramar questline was absolutely excellent and a real enjoyment to play through. I'm disappointed that they didn't have phased vs non-phased versions to allow someone to go through the initial quests without having Tyrande/Liadrin etc there so you could replay it. Questing in Suramar city was fraught when there was no flying and you had to be careful not to lose your disguise and the story was a really good one.

Honestly, once I thought that Legion would be the last addon to WoW. Just think - Legion defeat, Illidan, demon hunters, ability to weild Doomhammer\Ashbringes - all people dreamed about since 2007. Then such awesome additions like Suramar and Mage Tower.

[Dastreus]

Mage Towers were great. That is all I’m going to say on this topic

This a lot.

[Grevmak]

Hell yeah. I loved the brawlers' guild when it first came out in MoP and was difficult, my Warlock was my main at the time so the green fire questline was also really enjoyable and Mage Towers and the likes are tons of fun.

I'd love more of that, maybe even in the same vein as that MoP arena you could do in Bronze, Silver, Gold and Infinite difficulties. Just...Less boring and with more enemy types, or maybe even only Boss-based like the Mage Tower.

These things are great solo activities. Don't detract from developement of group content like Raids, M+, Arenas and RBGs but do give us more solo stuff to do. It's almost always fun to me atleast, and most people seemed to enjoy atleast the Brawlers' guild, the Warlock quest and the Mage Tower.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

The game has a good amount of solo stuff as is, I'm happy with it.

[Itisamuh]

I am certainly not opposed to more solo content in general whether challenging or not, as I mostly play solo anyway, but these things tend to highlight class imbalances. Even something as simple as the proving grounds was far easier for some specs than others, nevermind something like the mage tower challenges.