What Killed Islands? - Letdown of a Promising Feature? Or did players stamp it out?

[Granyala]

I realize I'm probably on a fringe here when I say, my favorite feature of BfA has probably been Island Expeditions.
With Warfronts right there next to it honestly.

Only did a few when the expansion was fresh and they were simply put: boring. The AI was dumb, it was just a mob grind and mobs didn't do much.
Generally speaking: I dislike combat in the overworld. Combat in MMOs such as WoW is only fun in raid/dungeon boss fights when actual strategy is involved.
For everything else, I can't be arsed.

Ooh wee the mob does autoattacks (but somehow still doing ridiculous damage to me while I whittle down it's far too large HP pool)... o look it has some pointless ability my current class cannot counter. ZzZzzZ is it dead yet? Nope you shitty gear will see to it that you "fight" this thing for 20s or more and you will like it. Oh btw, his 15 buddies want to get it on with you too. wee such complexity, such fun.

NOT. The less I get pestered with "combat" outside of raids/dungeons the better. Open world content is fun when there is story and exploration of new zones involved. That is a one time thing. After that... ugh.

[clevin]

Whats funny is that the name itself feels like a lie. Its called ‘island Expedition’ yet there feels very little of an actual expedition, more like ‘just rush the place asap and gfto’. Thats not how I picture any expedition.

Aside from the reward and the sameness of how they worked, this... There's no story attached. I think they looked at how people kept rinding Timeless Isle in MoP and tried to recreate it without understanding that a) some of us found Timeless boring as fuck too, b) It was the only content at the end of an expansion that saw the longest content drought ever and c) it wasn't timed.

[TheLucky1]

It turns out that "adding difficulty" reduces player engagement rather than increasing it.

Yes yes we all know that ghostcrawler quote but for that case? They never were difficult, it's just annoying.

[Lucetia]

I want to preface this with that I do love islands so anything I say isn't in an attempt to say they suck.

Well for one, islands always felt too fast with too little of a reward. This is something I've largely gathered reading from online, and experience myself. That being said, I've not tried a PvP island yet.

This makes perfect sense and not sure why people think it should change. You can do a heroic island in about 4-8 minutes. The reward you get equates to that amount of time. If people wanted more rewards then it should take longer to complete. Time:Reward ratio here works. The only exception is possibly increase Azerite gains.

Right from the start, it would seem Blizz put the Island Expeditions in a hot seat, and they were rightfully picked to the bone by content-hungry players. They lacked that sense of OOMPH.

They weren't suppose to have a huge amount of OOMPH. It was additional content you could run in order to get Azerite for your necklace and some side rewards.

Rarely do you run a Heroic Island and feel like you pulled through some awesome Victory. In fact it tends to simply feel rather automatic. And, even worse then, after your automatic-feeling run, you acquire a very automatically determined amount of Azerite. So what did YOU accomplish as the 10+ year player you are? Really nothing extra, even if you carried.

Well there's a reason for that. Completing a heroic gives a specific amount of Azerite and that's it. It's not meant to be a variable reward or anything. There's nothing special to get. You fill up the bar and get a % of what you earned. So if you didn't complete it then you would end up with smaller gains. Being a 10+ year player means absolutely nothing. That's like saying doing a WQ should give you BIG rewards the older your character is. By your definition everything is automatic if running the island is. Running WQ's is automatic. Running dungeons is automatic. Running raids is automatic, etc etc etc. You go into an island and know you get 3 things out of it every time. 1) is X amount of the bar filled up based on your difficulty and 2) is X amount of Azerite for completing it and 3) You get dubloons to purchase things. You have a shot at extra rewards like pets, mounts, etc. There isn't really much to complain about on this.

Islands could have been a really engaging source of truly building your Heart of Azeroth up, hell I'd go as far as to say they should have made Azerite a currency you farm FROM Islands, and that way the incentive is truly through the roof. BfA could have been the craziest stock market or something but I digress.

This sounds completely terrible overall and you would have a huge uproar from the community. Making it an optional source is the way to go, but saying it is one of the main sources would be a no go from the community.

Now how did we help this? Well I remember almost immediately hearing negative feedback about the letdown of expectations regarding Islands.
Upon running them myself, I realized most of this was because of inflated expectations to begin. BUT also that killer factor of Little Time/Little Reward.

The problem is the community expected one thing and wasn't given it so they complained. They were never meant to be bigger than what they were. People were disappointed at how the drops were.

Little Time / Little Reward. So again you want more reward for lesser time? The Time:Reward ratio is fine where it is.

From my gatherings, the player did not feel incentive, but then went farther as to begin crapping on the Island Expedition feature as if it lacked all promise. When in reality, I strongly believe, it needed a different reward/difficulty ratio.

Again, the reward/difficulty ratio was fine. They aren't meant to be bigger than what they were. People expect and demand too much and complain when it isn't done their way.

So sadly, right out the gate this promising feature had it's wings clipped by it's mama and it's friend's at school, (the players) never taking off to what they could have been.
Content stopped being developed probably early, and what content was put in sits sort of unappreciated.

Had Blizzard planned a 8.3.5, Islands could have been a final fix to make them End Game content still, rather than a fresh 120's way to get their first essence and SPLIT.

Thoughts?

They were never ever meant to be end game content. Not sure where you get the notion or idea it should be. They are meant to be a source of Azerite, a side adventure, and something to mellow out to. You get 3600 AP from the quest, whatever amount from your difficulties and a treasure map. It's rewarding enough and there is nothing to force a person to do them.

[Alanar]

They are boring.. no great reward system.

Think about it, this type of content has such value, but the actual gameplay and what you can do there is flat out boring.

The idea of doing certain parts or elements on one of these islans and gaining rewards for doing them sounds good, even potential allied races or huge lore dumps with flavorfull transmog items that mean something. Sadly it's just a rinse and repeat thing and no actual differnt gametypes. For rp or story nerds there was huge potential.. we saw frost trolls who thought to be died out? well why not tell a story here or something.

[Spl4sh3r]

being forced to run it from the table and lack of lf tool for Mythic runs

You used the same tool for Mythic Dungeons as Mythic Islands, so I don't see any issues with the tool to find groups.

[potis]

Both Warfronts and Islands are targeted for extremely casual players, so they are content made for those, along with collectors.

If you ask the expansion hoppers or the "I play 5-10h/month",they dont have an opinion about these type of stuff, they dont play/care enough.

Those people are the majority, but they are also the least vocal because they dont actually give a fuck about the game, they just play it whenever they can, free money for Blizzard , so all you have is the slightly more active players crying dear murder as expected because lets face it, its shit content, it aint fun, its a waste of time and it could have been made way differently and better.

Blizzard just fucked up, they underestimated the community and the amount of crying that it would follow.

[kamuimac]

I realize I'm probably on a fringe here when I say, my favorite feature of BfA has probably been Island Expeditions.
With Warfronts right there next to it honestly.

Sadly, I also rarely do them because of 1) lack of Proper rewards, 2) Lack of player enthusiasm I let get to me, 3) I've just teetered off this expack like never before, unfortunately.

However I want to stress that I absolutely love these Island Expeditions. The new maps were some of my most anticipated patch content. (Same goes for WF's)
The music and atmosphere of islands has been really uplifting, and the gameplay style used to be charming. Only now you simply pull half the island and grind them down, rinse and repeat.

How much of this is Blizzard's doing? Well for one, islands always felt too fast with too little of a reward. This is something I've largely gathered reading from online, and experience myself. That being said, I've not tried a PvP island yet.

Right from the start, it would seem Blizz put the Island Expeditions in a hot seat, and they were rightfully picked to the bone by content-hungry players. They lacked that sense of OOMPH.
Rarely do you run a Heroic Island and feel like you pulled through some awesome Victory. In fact it tends to simply feel rather automatic. And, even worse then, after your automatic-feeling run, you acquire a very automatically determined amount of Azerite. So what did YOU accomplish as the 10+ year player you are? Really nothing extra, even if you carried.

Islands could have been a really engaging source of truly building your Heart of Azeroth up, hell I'd go as far as to say they should have made Azerite a currency you farm FROM Islands, and that way the incentive is truly through the roof. BfA could have been the craziest stock market or something but I digress.


Now how did we help this? Well I remember almost immediately hearing negative feedback about the letdown of expectations regarding Islands.
Upon running them myself, I realized most of this was because of inflated expectations to begin. BUT also that killer factor of Little Time/Little Reward.

From my gatherings, the player did not feel incentive, but then went farther as to begin crapping on the Island Expedition feature as if it lacked all promise. When in reality, I strongly believe, it needed a different reward/difficulty ratio.

So sadly, right out the gate this promising feature had it's wings clipped by it's mama and it's friend's at school, (the players) never taking off to what they could have been.
Content stopped being developed probably early, and what content was put in sits sort of unappreciated.

Had Blizzard planned a 8.3.5, Islands could have been a final fix to make them End Game content still, rather than a fresh 120's way to get their first essence and SPLIT.

Thoughts?

the same what kills visions atm

lack of easy to obtain powerfull gear rewards.

people dont want to farm stupid toys - people want easy gear.

look at warfronts - absolute succes participationwise.

islands and visions ? effectively wasted milions of $$$$$ because people refuse to do them .

- - - Updated - - -

Well it was a simple "kill things and click things" objective. We've been doing that for 15 years. They really could have made it something akin to searching for buried treasure (or azerite) that forced you to explore for clues. Think like finding the spy in court of stars dungeon, but more indepth. Something that could be randomized each time and forced the groups to put clues together to find. Maybe some aspects of Sea of Thieves in there too.

And potentially punted the whole pvp aspect of them out and got rid of the timer.

and yet if blizzard would put 400 itlv in S1 430 item in S2 and now 460 itlv item for completing 5 hc/mythic islands milions would run them each week.

just like milions run warfronts.

thats literaly all they had to do to make them succesfull . but no they put usless ap . and thus people just ignored that feature.

[Archmage Xaxxas]

I want to preface this with that I do love islands so anything I say isn't in an attempt to say they suck.



This makes perfect sense and not sure why people think it should change. You can do a heroic island in about 4-8 minutes. The reward you get equates to that amount of time. If people wanted more rewards then it should take longer to complete. Time:Reward ratio here works. The only exception is possibly increase Azerite gains.



They weren't suppose to have a huge amount of OOMPH. It was additional content you could run in order to get Azerite for your necklace and some side rewards.



Well there's a reason for that. Completing a heroic gives a specific amount of Azerite and that's it. It's not meant to be a variable reward or anything. There's nothing special to get. You fill up the bar and get a % of what you earned. So if you didn't complete it then you would end up with smaller gains. Being a 10+ year player means absolutely nothing. That's like saying doing a WQ should give you BIG rewards the older your character is. By your definition everything is automatic if running the island is. Running WQ's is automatic. Running dungeons is automatic. Running raids is automatic, etc etc etc. You go into an island and know you get 3 things out of it every time. 1) is X amount of the bar filled up based on your difficulty and 2) is X amount of Azerite for completing it and 3) You get dubloons to purchase things. You have a shot at extra rewards like pets, mounts, etc. There isn't really much to complain about on this.



This sounds completely terrible overall and you would have a huge uproar from the community. Making it an optional source is the way to go, but saying it is one of the main sources would be a no go from the community.



The problem is the community expected one thing and wasn't given it so they complained. They were never meant to be bigger than what they were. People were disappointed at how the drops were.

Little Time / Little Reward. So again you want more reward for lesser time? The Time:Reward ratio is fine where it is.



Again, the reward/difficulty ratio was fine. They aren't meant to be bigger than what they were. People expect and demand too much and complain when it isn't done their way.



They were never ever meant to be end game content. Not sure where you get the notion or idea it should be. They are meant to be a source of Azerite, a side adventure, and something to mellow out to. You get 3600 AP from the quest, whatever amount from your difficulties and a treasure map. It's rewarding enough and there is nothing to force a person to do them.

That was a hilarious read.

[Lucetia]

That was a hilarious read.

Glad you thought so and you provided so much feedback in your reply! Not sure I can handle all that feedback. It just shows how out of touch you are with game design, reward design and the goal of islands in general.

[threads]

they'd be fun if you could solo and didn't have to deal with some fake pvp team racing you the whole time.

[Yunaqt]

I dont mind the PVP islands, only need 2 a week to cap and they're relatively enjoyable

[Kumorii]

be able queue from anywhere would help a lot...

[Archmage Xaxxas]

Glad you thought so and you provided so much feedback in your reply! Not sure I can handle all that feedback. It just shows how out of touch you are with game design, reward design and the goal of islands in general.

"Moderator?" am I being baited into an infraction right now?

I just don't deal with such willing misunderstanding on a daily basis okay? It's funny

[Holdodlig]

it's boring, and being timed is annoying.

if it didn't have a timer and could be done solo, it'd be fun.

This. And the fact most of the monster abilities can be ignored.

[Puthred]

For me it felt just the same as just going to any island in the game and killing mobs around, except it had a "kill count" and some uninteresting rewards. Hardly a feature, if you ignore the AI.

[Hinastorm]

The rush rush rush mentality baked in by having to race the other team was a bad idea (I feel the same way about the timer in m+)

And the fact that just mass AEing stuff was 95% of the time the best way to do it.

It got stale and boring quick.

- - - Updated - - -

"Moderator?" am I being baited into an infraction right now?

I just don't deal with such willing misunderstanding on a daily basis okay? It's funny

They can say you're out of touch, and you can reply disagreeing. Not every disagreement on the internet has to turn toxic.

[crakerjack]

I was never sold on island expeditions. I figured it was one of those silly gimmicky features that would sell towards players that prefer solo gameplay. Figured they would be easy and serve nothing more than some cosmetic/azerite grind. Once I hit 120, I grinded out my 40k azerite for the weekly and thought "Wow, I honestly don't know if I can continue doing this every week for the rest of the expansion." They're painstakingly boring and the reward isn't worth it imo.

I believe players stamped it out. There's nothing remotely entertaining about grinding island expeditions over and over and over. Seeing each one through once is about as exciting as it gets and even then that's not that much. I hope the tower of the damned is significantly more rewarding than islands are.

[Very Tired]

There's honestly no point to grinding out AP since it gets easier every Tuesday. I'm not in a top mythic raiding guild so I have no urge to spend a few hours getting my next neck rank a few days earlier than everyone else.


Other than that, there's no challenge to islands. It's group content for the sake of being group content. It's basically the same thing every time from your first go. The devs probably realized how boring it was just testing it, but at that point they were in to deep to fix it.

[Archmage Xaxxas]

The rush rush rush mentality baked in by having to race the other team was a bad idea (I feel the same way about the timer in m+)

And the fact that just mass AEing stuff was 95% of the time the best way to do it.

It got stale and boring quick.

- - - Updated - - -

They can say you're out of touch, and you can reply disagreeing. Not every disagreement on the internet has to turn toxic.

First post on the thread really making claims against anyone in that way, by a Mod. Just cracks me up, because it is kinda 'toxic' if you must use the word. We're just discussing ideas and suddenly I'm a target for someone else's pent up shit. Lol
^^ oof this probably will get me an infraction if I know the rules right. Truth over BS anyday though.
Now to what you just touched on and tons of others have, yea the AoEing of groups is a pretty lame way to finish these.