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

[Archmage Xaxxas]

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?

[derpkitteh]

it's boring, and being timed is annoying.

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

[Stormwolf64]

Boring shit you just did to get AP.

[Jibbler]

My main issue with islands was the requirement to do them for grinding azerite. Even with them being different thematically they all feel the same. It's just an AoE Zerg rush

[Archmage Xaxxas]

it's boring, and being timed is annoying.

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

Do you find the timed aspect added difficulty though? That matters, but also only if met with a respective increase of reward somehow. The timed aspect does allow for that 'race against the clock', or in this case, the opposite faction is the clock.

[Uthan]

I really liked them at first, especially as people started figuring out how the loot drops worked (that you actually had an incentive to explore because you had to find and kill particular mob types to get their loot), only for blizz to go and gut them completely and make it so nothing you do matters, just kill whatevver asap : /

Edit addition: Imo they should've just made how they worked more clear and do some tuning to make it less punishing to get progress from the "wrong" azerite sources rather than remove the whole system.

[Paulosio]

I actually quite like them now that you actually regularly get rewards at other than dubloons and ap at the end... although it's a shame they only got changed to be like that after i'd already got the drops / bought the items on the AH...

I think it could be a really cool idea if they used the island enemy team AI for in the questing experience somehow. Maybe just for named quest mobs / quest bosses or rares.

[Archmage Xaxxas]

I really liked them at first, especially as people started figuring out how the loot drops worked (that you actually had an incentive to explore because you had to find and kill particular mob types to get their loot), only for blizz to go and gut them completely and make it so nothing you do matters, just kill whatevver asap : /

I hadn't even quite been aware of this as a feature. I'd love if they stuck to their guns in making there be a reason to kill certain mobs, with specific intent.

- - - Updated - - -

I think it could be a really cool idea if they used the island enemy team AI for in the questing experience somehow. Maybe just for named quest mobs / quest bosses or rares.

Flashbacks to those Patrolling Alliance NPC's in the Classic Barrens.

[Finear]

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

[even]

I dislike them just as I disliked scenarios in MoP. For me it's just grinding for meagre rewards.

[OokOok]

If they made it a tower style system with levels and the brackets of levels gave a weekly ilvl chest, made it soloable, made it so you could do it with groups of 2,3,4,5, removed the (You have 0:00 to do it it in) and replaced it with (you did it in 0:00 time) it would of opened up a new compeition. One of the other big downfalls imo is that sometimes you have to pug... and pugs love to kick people for no reason or afk at the boat ect.

[Paulosio]

I really liked them at first, especially as people started figuring out how the loot drops worked (that you actually had an incentive to explore because you had to find and kill particular mob types to get their loot), only for blizz to go and gut them completely and make it so nothing you do matters, just kill whatevver asap : /

That was actually the thing I hated because it would just be frustrating if you queued and people started looting / killing azerite nodes / mobs or opening chests as they had no loot on their loot table.... And the fact that AT LEAST 80% of the time nothing would drop other than dubloons and ap even if you did focus on just killing mobs with a focus on specific mob types.

It would take forever for a specific invasion type to spawn, normally not till you were on about 6000/9000 in heroic mode (sometimes a little earlier but often even later) and so you were so close to finishing that you didn't have enough score left to obtain to be able to kill all the mobs of that invasion that potentially had the interesting loot). And for a lot of the drops the ONLY way to find a decent ammount of the correct mob type was the invasions. Without that invasion type you'd be lucky to find 3 or 4 mobs of the correct type in the time it took to get your weekly AP cap (murlocs spring to mind) and then you discover that they hadn't even added to the murloc pet to be the loot table till months into the expansion hence why it was never on AH and nobody had ever seen it drop at the start of the expansion.

[Aeula]

They’re boring, one-shot and stun mechanics are annoying, the rewards are shit and annoying to obtain, it feels mandatory and chore-like.

[Archmage Xaxxas]

If they made it a tower style system with levels and the brackets of levels gave a weekly ilvl chest, made it soloable, made it so you could do it with groups of 2,3,4,5, removed the (You have 0:00 to do it it in) and replaced it with (you did it in 0:00 time) it would of opened up a new compeition. One of the other big downfalls imo is that sometimes you have to pug... and pugs love to kick people for no reason or afk at the boat ect.

'Tower Levels' could be a Second or Third Island to sail to yea? Good idea there. I like your idea of a Timer, rather than Timed Run.

But you found 3 people was an odd choice? I'm definitely one of those folks who really liked the tight-nit group feel, lack of Healer or Tank at times.

[Uthan]

I hadn't even quite been aware of this as a feature. I'd love if they stuck to their guns in making there be a reason to kill certain mobs, with specific intent.

Indeed. It was a cool concept but clearly not enough information or hints that that was how it worked until it was already too late and most people were already fed up with the whole thing, leading them to completely revamp them and remove what little complexity there was to placate people.

[Video Games]

One of the biggest problems is they capped our necks so there was like 4 months of them being literally pointless

[Archmage Xaxxas]

. So if you aren't interested in finishing your AP grind a few weeks before everyone else, or interested in farming mounts/ like any of the cosmetics - there's no incentive. They should have given a reasonable piece of gear every week if you filled the bar

Indeed, it's not like we had a whole line of "Sunken Armor" sets in 8.2 or anything that could have been put in Islands.

[Telwar]

being forced to run it from the table

I'd be FAR happier with them, and do them more often, if I didn't have to go to a specific place to queue for them.

[Archmage Xaxxas]

I'd be FAR happier with them, and do them more often, if I didn't have to go to a specific place to queue for them.

Genuinely valuable feedback I'm sure. Especially considering Torghast is a place, we'll have to see how they handle that.

[McNeil]

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.