Islands going forward

[Tech614]

Mage tower? Challenging? Sorry, what? I just went in and pressed all my CDs on my mage and bursted the boss down first try. On my druid it just took time, it wasn't challenging. I went in blind on my priest and didn't check anything, it took me 3 tries then it was done - when I realized I could shackle the mobs at the start it was easy mode. On my rogue I just spammed feint and didn't even do the mechanics you're supposed to do and still beat it, I had blue gear and then the legendary legs. Mythic plus is more difficult than mage tower ever was.

You didn't do them when they fist came out then clearly. Obviously they where a joke after a bit. Some easier then others but they where all pretty hard when they first came out, didn't even have ToS gear when they first came out get out of here if you where an end of xpac champ doing them in argus gear lol.

[AlmightyGerkin]

Oh ya islands were such a big hit. From the linear objective to the joyous rng mounts, items etc.
/s
Toss then in the recycle bin along with warfronts and make something better.

[horbindr]

i don't know anyone who does islands for fun.
i know lots of people who do M+, raids, pvp even questing for fun.

but the question is: does blizzard know that, or will they just go of the participation metrics which no doubt are fairly high.

[Swnem]

I did like islands as content. But the objectives and rewards of the content were at odds with it.

Exploring islands is kind of cool. Grinding AP and being pressured by a timer, is not. It needs to go back to the drawing board.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

If they keep crapping new features that don't pan out instead of...I dunno developing them...we won't get far. Course this forum is predictable. Make Islands into something better then what it already is.

[kaminaris]

If they keep crapping new features that don't pan out instead of...I dunno developing them...we won't get far. Course this forum is predictable. Make Islands into something better then what it already is.

Then what do you suggest wise guy? I ain't sayin dey be perfect but makin dem better is gonna be hard thing to do.

[Osmeric]

Islands demonstrate how threadbare their development budget has become.

If they had ample development resources, islands would have been recognized as inadequate and not very fun, and would have been delayed or omitted. But they had to go with them, because they didn't have anything else to add to the expansion. And then they had to talk them up even though it was obvious in testing the content was crap.

I do wonder if the team knew they were crap early, or if the internal dynamics of the dev team has become so dysfunctional that even internally there wasn't negative feedback.

[kaminaris]

Islands demonstrate how threadbare their development budget has become.

If they had ample development resources, islands would have been recognized as inadequate and not very fun, and would have been delayed or omitted. But they had to go with them, because they didn't have anything else to add to the expansion. And then they had to talk them up even though it was obvious in testing the content was crap.

I do wonder if the team knew they were crap early, or if the internal dynamics of the dev team has become so dysfunctional that even internally there wasn't negative feedback.

Its optional feature that some people enjoy which makes it successful as it is. You say - crap, I say they are pretty good.

[TwoMana]

I quit in 8.1 and never came back. Aside from boring AF BFA, i have several AotC achvs from legion and i even heroic raided and some mythic raid in WoD as a warrior tank, mists i did some raiding but i didnt bother much. Cata i heroic raided. and so on. I have played the game a very long time. and I ahve seen how it changed. Ive done every patch excpet for 8.2 while it was current content. I have 3 120s, 5 110 and the rest are lv 100 with only 1 priest at lv 90. I have all dropped raid and dungeon mounts (achvs ones too) from BC-Cata. mists i still need ToT achv, but im only missing 1 achv.. I dont need to have solely beaten azshara on mythic to have an opinion when i have done everything else.

So, ok, you're not a spring chicken and don't play the game in tourist mode. Cool. So that means you skip the queue dungeons and go for keys instead, you skip the queueable islands and go for the PvP variants. You skip LFV raids and go for the Heroic.

That means you don't actually do any of the things you complained about in your previous reply? How does the existence of those easier modes bother you, when you don't actually have to do them?

You don't play solo, yet solo players/features bother you?

[Cosmic Janitor]

Tbh, I think I would like it actually more if it was solo content. It's in that akward spot where it isn't difficult enough to warrant a proper group but annoying enough that you don't want to do it with randoms.

Edit: In general though, fuck this damn time limited rush content.

[ATZenith]

Personally I think they should take the technology that made islands and use it towards dungeons that change. Have these special dungeons, with the same rewards as normal dungeons (or better)

[Soon-TM]

Make Islands into something better then what it already is.

I could see Islands being refurbished into something not as boring, even if it would require an U turn from the dev team.

On the other hand, warfronts are unsalvageable imo. And I'd be very (pleasantly) surprised if Devs could actually make them work.

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I do wonder if the team knew they were crap early, or if the internal dynamics of the dev team has become so dysfunctional that even internally there wasn't negative feedback.

Considering the huge !@#&show at the beginning of BfA (and even during beta) with class design and Azerite armour, all is pointing to the second choice.

[TwoMana]

You know - an actual fucking Island you can explore with hidden objectives, quests and events.

They have all of that. If you run it with randoms or PVP, then they tend to be a rush. If you run them with a group of friends, you can actually take it easy and explore/do events. It's no different from queuing random heroic vs. running the same thing with your guild group.

- - - Updated - - -

On the other hand, warfronts are unsalvageable imo. And I'd be very (pleasantly) surprised if Devs could actually make them work.

I feel the heroic warfront works better than the rest of them, but it's still undertuned. All they'd need to do is to tune it so you actually, by default lose the warfront, unless you work together with objectives. They are too easy to win and that makes them boring. Make them dangerous.

[Cosmic Janitor]

i don't know anyone who does islands for fun.
i know lots of people who do M+, raids, pvp even questing for fun.

but the question is: does blizzard know that, or will they just go of the participation metrics which no doubt are fairly high.

I'm not so sure that they actually are that high tbh. I think the overwhelming majority that even still bothers only does by doing the 3 mandatory ones and then never bothers with it again, if you read that correct, then the participation is actually atrocious and at the bare minimum.

[Polarthief]

I think there shouldn't be a way forward for island expeditions, blow them up and forget about it.

I disagree. They could have made them about exploration over time and it could have been something neat.

[Nurmat]

No more islands in new expansion, I hope 8.3 boxes have decent droprate for mounts to be done with them.

[msdos]

Personally I think they should take the technology that made islands and use it towards dungeons that change. Have these special dungeons, with the same rewards as normal dungeons (or better)

Procedural dungeons are the next step, basically every other game does these, PoE, Diablo, Final Fantasy, etc. Blizz can't afford to be unique snowflakes anymore, they need to adopt some other standards that work.

IIRC, Final Fantasy has procedural dungeons that you can solo.

[Flutterguy]

To make them more palatable, they need to get closer to their original vision. The objectives shouldn't always be the same. There should be more randomness in an island expedition. They just felt like races and you never really got to explore the islands.

[Zmagoslav]

No more islands in new expansion, I hope 8.3 boxes have decent droprate for mounts to be done with them.

Based on what i've read thus far on the subject the chance of a box containing a mount is about 10%-12.5%.
Boxes that can contain these cost 175 doublons, which means you will on average need 1750 doublons a mount. (of course good or bad RNG could significantly lower/increase the costs)

While this still means a lot of farming islands it still beats the usual:
27%*33%*1% chance of you gaining the mount you are going for.
27% being the chance of your island being active that week (3 in 11 islands are active every week) <- this being purely theoretical
33% of you actually getting the island you want
1% being the drop-chance of the mount (assumed, didn't check for actual numbers)

[Skytotem]

I actually enjoyed Island Expeditions, But think they should have been more based on Exploring rather then a race to the end collecting Azerite. Make people want to explore every inch of the Island so not to miss out on clues to treasure or whatever.

This, the huge rush made them unenjoyable when I wanted to take awhile to run around and see all the nooks and crannies of the isles.