Should Blizzard design challenging solo-content?

[Bangdingow]

As someone who has no friends remaining in BFA I'd like for them to do something mage tower-esque again.

[Alopex Major]

I like the idea in concept, but in execution I had zero desire to do the mage tower because I didn't care about any of the skins. Things like the eel mount and shadow unicorn are more what I like.

[Spotnick]

Solo content like Mage Tower, Withered Scenario, Brawler's Guild and the Green Fire quest lines offering permanent rewards are fine. As long as they don't influence season progression and are optional, why not?

[Skorpionss]

I just want more fun permanent minigames, like the Plants vs Zombies one in Hillsbrad... but you know, permanent and different challenges. Maybe add an editor that lets people create their own minigames and share them with others (like the warcraft 3/sc2 map editors).

[faithbane]

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

Mage towers were shit. and its amazing how easily they fooled everyone with minimal effort. All tanks with completely differen toolkits had to do the same tank challange? bunch of completely different play styles put into the same dps fight just cause blizz was sooo fucking lazy to design enough meaningful encounters. On top of everything, when they had tools like challenge mode balancing, tw scaling, ilvl scaling, they chose to make the fights static so it became something to outgear instead of accomplish based on skill. I am still bitter about how much of an half assed job those mage tower challenges were and how easily people ate them up.

[Pua]

BC saw the destruction of global chat as they removed global LFG and replaced with the LFD tool, intending that people simply STOP TALKING to people and join queues.

Just a quick one, to clear this up:

It didn't happen during The Burning Crusade - it wasn't even part of Wrath's launch. It happened in a later Wrath patch (I forget exactly which one).

I like the idea in concept, but in execution I had zero desire to do the mage tower because I didn't care about any of the skins. Things like the eel mount and shadow unicorn are more what I like.

That's okay. Honestly, I'd imagine the system could be worked into just about anything regarding rewards.

Mage towers were shit. and its amazing how easily they fooled everyone with minimal effort. All tanks with completely differen toolkits had to do the same tank challange? bunch of completely different play styles put into the same dps fight just cause blizz was sooo fucking lazy to design enough meaningful encounters. On top of everything, when they had tools like challenge mode balancing, tw scaling, ilvl scaling, they chose to make the fights static so it became something to outgear instead of accomplish based on skill. I am still bitter about how much of an half assed job those mage tower challenges were and how easily people ate them up.

I disagree with pretty much every one of your comments, but fair play - it's rare to see someone who was against the Mage Tower.

[Onikaroshi]

Mage towers were shit. and its amazing how easily they fooled everyone with minimal effort. All tanks with completely differen toolkits had to do the same tank challange?

What tank challenge? It was just a dps challenge where you also had to hold aggro.

[Maxilian]

I normally play solo, but i would still not want this as a big thing for the game, just small couple of things you could do here and there.

[Thelxi]

Of course they should. Mage tower was good imo, but the best was the green fire quest. I spent 8 hours literally progressing on that green fire boss before killing it. It was one of the most rewarding fun I ever had in WoW. Unfortunately ToT gear quickly trivialized the green fire questline, which is why I think they should have stat and level templates in these challenging solo scenarios, so that everyone is on a level playing field.

There are two major problems though with challenging solo content. The first as I mentioned before is that Blizzard has refused to scale people so far, and has shown no interest in making a level playing field for all whatsoever. Gear eventually trivializing everything is a safe bet for anything they make going forward, which kinda defeats the entire purpose of challenging solo content imo.

The second problem is how many different specs there are in the game, and as you could see with the mage tower some specs could faceroll theirs while others struggled doing the very same challenge. The same goes for brawlers guild. At least Blizzard attempted to tune the mage tower challenges according to each spec's capabilities, so for example holy had to do much more burst healing than resto, but that kind of tuning was all over the place and completely failed to create a level playing field; just look at the tank specs and how easy it was for vengeance vs how hard it was for guardian.

[Kaver]

Mage towers were shit. and its amazing how easily they fooled everyone with minimal effort. All tanks with completely differen toolkits had to do the same tank challange? bunch of completely different play styles put into the same dps fight just cause blizz was sooo fucking lazy to design enough meaningful encounters. On top of everything, when they had tools like challenge mode balancing, tw scaling, ilvl scaling, they chose to make the fights static so it became something to outgear instead of accomplish based on skill. I am still bitter about how much of an half assed job those mage tower challenges were and how easily people ate them up.

Okay I get your point, but I think Mage Towers were fun. Am I allowed to have that opinion?

[trapmaster]

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

I hope they bring it back more tougher and harder mechanic for mage tower.

[faithbane]

Okay I get your point, but I think Mage Towers were fun. Am I allowed to have that opinion?

100%! They were fun, and I completed them on multiple classes as well. My criticism was about calling it a good example "Challenging" solo content because of the reasons I stated earlier.

Compared to MOP challenge modes for example, I had a much bigger sense of accomplishment, mainly because of the even playing field and skill/team work requirements.

[PenguinChan]

There should be more challenging solo-play that rewards cosmetics and decent gear. I wouldn't care if challenging solo content gave out Normal raid quality gear either, because it's not like 95% of the people you run into 'deserved' their RNG high-rolled world quest or raid world quest drops. It's kind of weird how many people here dislike solo players getting gear, but then will gladly accept the even easier gear drops with high rewards - just based around RNG.

[Pua]

I spent 8 hours literally progressing on that green fire boss before killing it.

Amusingly, I forgot about that altogether until you mentioned it.

Again, I know of precious few people who disliked it.

[Jastall]

100%! They were fun, and I completed them on multiple classes as well. My criticism was about calling it a good example "Challenging" solo content because of the reasons I stated earlier.

Compared to MOP challenge modes for example, I had a much bigger sense of accomplishment, mainly because of the even playing field and skill/team work requirements.

But that wasn't solo content, which is the point of the thread.

I do think the MT was not perfect; as you said, the Tank one was a bit silly in how some specs had a super easy time (especially VDH) while others had one hell of an uphill battle to fight (Prot Pally). It also was a less of a tank challenge than a DPS challenge where you taunted shit off Velen every once in a while. But the DPS challenges were generally better balanced across the specs, save for that Tauren with a worm that was completely faceroll. My favorite was the healer challenge, which was quite hard for me as I kind of such at healing but made all the more rewarding when I managed it twice.

So sure, the Mage Tower had its issues, but it was part of the reason I played so many alts during Legion, trying to experience as much of it as possible, something which I didn't do in any other expansion. Thus I can't call the model anything but a success, it just needs some refinement is all. Hopefully 8.3 introduces a BfA variant.

[Pua]

It would appear that Ion Hazzikostas has seen this thread... Interesting if there's any commentary to accompany that.

[SirCowdog]

It would appear that Ion Hazzikostas has seen this thread... Interesting if there's any commentary to accompany that.

But guys! Don't you know this is a tiny vocal minority, and blizzard doesn't come here?!?!?

/s


I think that having more content like the Mage Tower and Green Fire is a definite win for WoW. 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+.

What I would like to see is not just one-off challenges like the Mage Tower, but a place where a solo player can PROGRESS the same way that raiders and M+ players do. And not just faceroll mindless leveling. I want content where you're likely to fail a LOT until you gear up and skill up. But in order to avoid gear opverpowering it, any such content would have to be heavy on execution of fight mechanics rather than simple DPS checks, with rewards based on how well you performed, similar to M+.

I think it's definitely possible, but I can already hear the raiders crying about devaluing their accomplishments. The rewards structure would have to be carefully balanced, to avoid invalidating the hard work of group-oriented content. But that's something that Titanforging already does, with M+ rewards often times being more powerful than raid rewards. Again, I think this is something that could be partially mitigated by encounters being more about execution based rather than gear-based. Skill > Gear.

[Very Tired]

I love the Mage Tower. And it isn't even repeatable. A healthy MMO should have a mix of challenging solo and group content. And Brawlers Guild really isn't that challenging, I'm pretty sure tanks have enough dps to do that place.

It would be a nice change of pace as well. The actual skill demand in raids isn't remotely that high, it's moreso waiting for an attempt where all 20 people manage to get their act together at the same time. In solo content it's all on you. No more blaming your group. That is, assuming the solo content is actually difficult in the first place.

[capri sunset]

I think that having more content like the Mage Tower and Green Fire is a definite win for WoW. 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 feel this but I'd just take it in the way of removing gear from the equation entirely, keep the rewards cosmetic and just give everyone a gear template because we've already seen with mop brawler's guild and mage tower there wasn't exactly a shortage of one shot mechanics but it still only took 10 ilvls to trivialise it. That way you can tune it as hard as you like and make it last the whole expansion.

[SirCowdog]

I feel this but I'd just take it in the way of removing gear from the equation entirely, keep the rewards cosmetic and just give everyone a gear template because we've already seen with mop brawler's guild and mage tower there wasn't exactly a shortage of one shot mechanics but it still only took 10 ilvls to trivialise it. That way you can tune it as hard as you like and make it last the whole expansion.

I think that standard gear templates migjt work well for one-shot challenges, but not so much for a series of challenges to progress through. At least not while preserving any kind of feeling of progression lile what raiders or M+ players have.

It's definitely an interesting puzzle to figure out. If you leave some overlap between solo, small group, and raiding activities, you almost have to reward gear from each. But if you make it have its own enclosed system it ends up being basically a separate game.

One suggestion that keeps popping up is to have gear or set bonuses that only work in specific content. We saw that sort of thing in Uldir.

I'll be interested to see how Blizzard tackles the issue. Mage Tower was pretty popular, and I think more like that would be good for the game.