Horrific Visions - Do you actually enjoy them?

[crakerjack]

I think they're w/e, but my overall experience of BFA has just been a downer. While it's still light years ahead of any other MMO out there IMO, I'm just disappointed things couldn't be better.

[darklogrus]

Personally it feels better as a melee then it does as a caster and I feel Org is a better experience then Stormwind. It feels more designed for higher specs, with proper Az traits and Essences.

[Marrilaife]

I don't enjoy them because it has become another focal point of peer pressure, e-peening and ridiculing. I absolutely don't need to do stupid masked runs to be "raid viable" but people around me behave as if that was the case.

I saw it before with ap farming, leggo farming in legion, essences, m+ farming, etc. But while some of these have a high chance of giving you something, masked run only gives you 1 piece of loot per week and it's only good if you manage full clear with 4-5 masks, anything below that and you might as well run m+ which feels less grindy and less stressful.

What's even worse, if you end up doing it with a fail group you just lost a vial for nothing with no backup. At least in m+ if you deplete the key you have a chance to upgrade it back. With vials, they have limited sources of origin and they work on a system of diminishing returns, so if you "waste" one of the 3 vials you can only make it up by excessive grind (dailies, events, mobs in mini-visions until sanity runs out, rares), or be a week behind.

[Powerogue]

Really great actually. Getting the bare minimum for your cloak upgrade initially isn't hard, but I always feel encouraged to see how far I can push it. I know some people freak out over being even one vision behind max progression, but I wasted my first 5 of them before I had any idea what I was doing, then my computer settings were screwwy making me miss out on a few more weeks due to unplayable d/cs, so now I don't care, it's just "aw dang, well, better luck next run" and that's not that stressful.

My different classes have different strengths/weaknesses to it, for example my ww monk can chain pull bigger packs, but can't heal mid-boss, skip packs with stealth, or vanish to escape a bad situation like the rogue. But then again that can come back and bite the rogue during the "firey hops" affix, as I kept getting hurled into packs I had stealthed past. It's currently something of a rivalry between those two as to who can progress their cloak faster, with the monk just now taking the lead today.

I want more content like this.

[Azerate]

Yeah they are a fun mini-game. I'm also not rushing to collect the currency so I'm not doing 5 a week so it still feels fresh.

I mean in many other patches we would just have a weekly %+ to our power in some form, and here you actually have to play the visions to get the weekly upgrade. It's pretty creative, at the very least. I'm looking forward to building my talents slowly over the weeks and progressing further and further.

Also, I find the SW one way easier than Org. Not sure why, maybe cause I'm Alliance and have much better feel for the SW layout. Can almost do 3 zones in SW, while I struggle to finish the 2nd one in OG

I don't enjoy them because it has become another focal point of peer pressure, e-peening and ridiculing. I absolutely don't need to do stupid masked runs to be "raid viable" but people around me behave as if that was the case.

I saw it before with ap farming, leggo farming in legion, essences, m+ farming, etc. But while some of these have a high chance of giving you something, masked run only gives you 1 piece of loot per week and it's only good if you manage full clear with 4-5 masks, anything below that and you might as well run m+ which feels less grindy and less stressful.

What's even worse, if you end up doing it with a fail group you just lost a vial for nothing with no backup. At least in m+ if you deplete the key you have a chance to upgrade it back. With vials, they have limited sources of origin and they work on a system of diminishing returns, so if you "waste" one of the 3 vials you can only make it up by excessive grind (dailies, events, mobs in mini-visions until sanity runs out, rares), or be a week behind.

It's kind of your own fault for being gear-crazed and caring too much what some assholes say you should be doing. Just do it at your own pace and try to enjoy it. Didn't even know people are doing those for loot.

[Torva Tiger]

I'll make a bet that 90% of people here don't do them as a group and mostly try and solo it with all the challenge that comes with that.

[Destinas]

I'm neutral about them. There are okay rewards with collectibles (fun toys, shitty pets), and at the moment I'm having a bit of fun progressing through them at my own pace. However, I know I'll absolutely hate them when my cloak is fully upgraded and I'm just repeating them over and over to get things that haven't dropped for me.

Mostly I'm doing them to get currency to upgrade the console thing to get the backpack transmog. With that, I feel like I'm progressing toward something, so it's not horrible, but it's not great either.

[Aresk]

I've been loving them. I failed several and have still gotten to the bottom of the tech tree (now going back to get the other seven talents that I skipped on the way down). I only run them on one character, a druid, so I think that makes them a bit easier (both for getting the currency and doing the run). I've done a few runs with other people and a lot solo, and while I enjoy the solo run, I don't mind helping out guildies that dislike them. I found the jump in ease after getting the bottom talent ridiculous; I went from just shy of doing four areas in Stormwind to doing a full clear with an entire orb unused. While I haven't had a vessel since unlocking the first mask, I look forward to trying it with masks and upping my own challenge while helping friends get their pages.

[Marrilaife]

It's kind of your own fault for being gear-crazed and caring too much what some assholes say you should be doing. Just do it at your own pace and try to enjoy it. Didn't even know people are doing those for loot.

I don't know how did you conclude that I'm "gear crazed" when I said I don't think mask runs are worth it. I'd like to "do it at my own pace" if I wasn't belittled by people around me about it. And it's funny how now we live in the age when people are excused from being assholes towards others because "you should just not care about it".

If the whole visions stuff would be "cloak upgrades and then cosmetics only" nobody would be harassed about not rushing ahead of the crowd and not bothering to min max the shit out of it, it would be actually "just for fun" after you did the weekly cloak upgrade. But nope, Blizzard had to cram essence, 470 gear and buyable sockets into the system. So there will always be people that won't just "live and let live".

I miss times when wow wasn't about a dozen "alternate progression" systems and side content was "just for fun" (like for example, farming love rocket mount). But then playerbase whined that whatever isn't "mandatory for progression" is a worthless waste of time, so everything became tied to the character power progression curve.

Islands are another victim of this. They could've been so much more if they weren't sold to us as just "AP grind 2.0".

[Rydanis]

Best thing in the game since mage tower imo. My single complaint is that they're currency locked, I wish I could run as many as I want whenever I want. It's weird to me that Blizz would limit the number of times you can do this content when they're so concerned about time played metrics, mine would absolutely in increase if not for this limitation.

[KaPe]

It's weird to me that Blizz would limit the number of times you can do this content when they're so concerned about time played metrics, mine would absolutely in increase if not for this limitation.

Why would they be concerned about time played when their main metric are MAU, which simply measure monthly users, not their actual in game activity level?

[sweatshopkids]

It's pretty miserable as Shadow, that's true. I'm almost tempted to try as Disc, but then again, nuking multiple packs with Focusing Iris/Eruption is the only saving grace. But when compared to running vision on a melee alt, the difference is staggering. Having nearly zero on demand burst is pretty limiting on bosses, too, and I can imagine it only getting worse with multiple masks. Voidform playstyle is really poorly suited to that type of content.

Yeah I can do 2 bonus areas solo at the moment and that's my limit. Hopefully with the tree filled out and the cloak at level 15 I'll eventually have more fun in there.

Going in with friends makes it a bit more bearable.

[schwarzkopf]

Now that the entry keys are easier to get - yes.

There is room for practice now.

[aceperson]

To me, they are just stressful and it's just a bunch of "move out of the AoE" every single time I cast a spell.

that's how basically all player based content in wow is. do what you can, dodge what you can, win or lose, repeat. wow isn't an original series, it innovates on previous content to make it better. if you can't look passed the very basics of the game and have fun, you are probably tired of the game to an extreme level and should take a break.

[Babadoo]

Having timed content isn't a bad thing though, gets the adrenaline pumping on if you can make it or not, every decision has to be weighed "do I have enough time to open this mailbox to try for mount?" "can I finish this zone?" "when should i turn back to complete?"

Without a timer these would be low stress and boring

If you want adrenaline pumping do fuckin arenas. Everything is timed now and it's insanely stressful. I rather have slow tactical play with things that are deadly than GOGOGO AOE mentality.

[This One Time At Bandcamp]

Best content I have seen in a while.. Especially since we need to clear more zones to get upgrades.

Though I dislike farming the Vessels, only to find out I cant use them until next week. (Or you can, but you cant upgrade the cloak further)
But I have so many vessels in my bag, just waiting to get used - because I want to get exalted as soon as possible.

#TimeGating

[Onikaroshi]

If you want adrenaline pumping do fuckin arenas. Everything is timed now and it's insanely stressful. I rather have slow tactical play with things that are deadly than GOGOGO AOE mentality.

You mean, if I want to spend 10 minutes stunned do arenas. Arena's are awful, I HATE pvp.

[Drakile]

As a demo warlock, they are not very fun solo. The fact that Demon Hunters and other melee can just waltz through them mass pulling and AoEing whatever they want and still be fine is added salt to the wound.

Also the "Your first rez costs no sanity" Needs a buff, the other version of that, the 500 Sanity Reicarn gives way way more sanity than the free rez from an ally, why even grab that talent? you rez someone with it they come back with about 50-100 sanity. The sanity reicarn is leaps and bounds better than a free rez that grants no sanity.

[xStevooo]

No they are bland and boring, i don't even bother anymore.

[thilicen]

I do very much so, it's nice to have some goals to work towards.