Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nymrohd]

Varodoc has actually already beaten you because you've accepted the frame that character popularity is based on how much (erotic) fanfiction is out there on a single site. No one seriously thinks that Shaw is a more popular character among the broader playerbase than Thrall, Garrosh and Kael.

I do wonder where he got the data, Archive of our own?

[Dioporco]

I don't think Mythic+ should get a solo queue option. I could maybe see mythic getting one, but not M+.

LFD for M+ 1 up to 9

Above 10 only premades

[Super Dickmann]

I do wonder where he got the data, Archive of our own?

Would be my guess, Flynn and Shaw are fairly recent characters and for them to be representative means it can't be fanfiction.net. Incidentally Flynn being more popular than Maiev is madness.

[Dioporco]

Flynn and Shaw are not that popular, they had a bump just because lgbtq couple fan fiction but then ?

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LFD for M+ 1 up to 9

Above 10 only premades

LFG/LFD should be : Random Normal Dungeon \ Random HC Dungeon \ Random M0 Dungeon***




***with same VALOR drop/quantity as +2 otherwise below M+ 10 you can LFD random +2 up to +9 keys based upon your score just like you cant do HC below a certain itm lv

[Sondrelk]

Flynn and Shaw are not that popular, they had a bump just because lgbtq couple fan fiction but then ?

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LFG/LFD should be : Random Normal Dungeon \ Random HC Dungeon \ Random M0 Dungeon***




***with same VALOR drop/quantity as +2 otherwise below M+ 10 you can LFD random +2 up to +9 keys based upon your score just like you cant do HC below a certain itm lv

Canonical couples have little to nothing to do with fanfiction preferences. You are indeed far more likely to get stuff that is only theoretical, like Thrall/Jaina, or Anduin/Wrathion.

Flynn being bumbuddies with Shaw is nice and all for representation, but isn't nearly spicy enough when you could instead wonder what Wrathion did to Anduin on those cold nights in the hot tub.

[Gigantique]

Me too, I already have my name locked in and ready to go, I am very excited I just feel sorry for all the haters.

I'm still reserving myself since I need more info on the details before I let myself get hyped too much, but another set of class mechanics ingrained with a race sounds like something I'll enjoy immensely. And the dragonriding looks amazing compared to the efficient-yet-sleep-inducing flying we have now.

[Sondrelk]

You can't just keep bumping up the threshold for needing to interract with other people for content in WoW, otherwise you just keep making the problem worse.

Mythic+0 dungeons are perfect for introducing players to proper group finder since it is exactly what they have been doing, but with more personal responsibility, and therefore better rewards.

[Gigantique]

Varodoc has actually already beaten you because you've accepted the frame that character popularity is based on how much (erotic) fanfiction is out there on a single site. No one seriously thinks that Shaw is a more popular character among the broader playerbase than Thrall, Garrosh and Kael.

Yo wdym, Shaw loitering on my ship in BfA was so meaningful to me who cares about mister setback and the thrallster? /s

[Nymrohd]

Would be my guess, Flynn and Shaw are fairly recent characters and for them to be representative means it can't be fanfiction.net. Incidentally Flynn being more popular than Maiev is madness.

Yeah the fujoshi have probably run wild with Flynn and Shaw. There is only so much lesbian erotica one can write about Maiev or about Anduin impregnating Wrathion.

[Eurhetemec]

This is really the issue, the community. Several other MMORPGs have LFG features. Never seen people abused in ESO like they so commonly do in WoW if they don't speedrun everything. And I doubt Blizzard can fix that after well over a decade since 3.3

Yup. Culture is everything when it comes to long-term health of communities, not game features people like to blame.

Speedrun psychopathy is an issue that does infect some other games, but yeah, again it's cultural. Like, GW2, acquired a horrible speedrun-or-die culture very early on, in 2013 even. You could join a group to do a leveling dungeon where people didn't even have all their abilities, and you'd get screamed at for not knowing all the "skips" and not being able to execute them flawlessly, and let's be real - some of the skips were hard to execute reliably. I regularly saw groups waste 3-5 minutes trying to do a skip and failing when they could have just killed the relevant monsters in 45 seconds in GW2.

I was actually surprised at how long it took WoW to get like that. It wasn't really until late BfA or early SL that people genuinely started throwing baby tantrums if you didn't speedrun everything.

I think that is fixable, but it requires you to put in behaviour rules similar to FFXIV and to have enough CSRs that when people report violations of them, stuff actually happens. Part of what keeps the same speedrun-or-die culture suppressed in FFXIV is simply that people know if they yell at people about, they may well be doing hard ban time. In WoW you'd need to suspend an awful lot of people before they got the message, I suspect.

[Nymrohd]

I was actually surprised at how long it took WoW to get like that. It wasn't really until late BfA or early SL that people genuinely started throwing baby tantrums if you didn't speedrun everything.

Eh I've seen such behaviours since Valor Speedruns in 3.3. I only run dungeons with friends most expacs but on the rare case I used LFG on an alt I can remember GOGOGO being an issue. And that exact issue you describe is something I clearly remember back with Evergrowth? in WoD and it's stupid jumping skips.

But Blizzard effectively legitimized that gameplay with M+. Instead of trying to create a gameplay loop that is focused on communication during the run, they doubled down to the point that you cannot afford to communicate strategy and routes; you need to know those ahead of time and communication is only there for timing cooldowns/interrupts or the odd mechanic.

[Sondrelk]

Eh I've seen such behaviours since Valor Speedruns in 3.3. I only run dungeons with friends most expacs but on the rare case I used LFG on an alt I can remember GOGOGO being an issue. And that exact issue you describe is something I clearly remember back with Evergrowth? in WoD and it's stupid jumping skips.

But Blizzard effectively legitimized that gameplay with M+. Instead of trying to create a gameplay loop that is focused on communication during the run, they doubled down to the point that you cannot afford to communicate strategy and routes; you need to know those ahead of time and communication is only there for timing cooldowns/interrupts or the odd mechanic.

I think it was the right choice to make M+ though. Unless they specifically made dungeons in such a way that taking more time was not just beneficial, but required then you would still have the optimization mindset seeping down.

I guess if they made dungeons more like raids where trash was just there for pacing and variety, and one would expect to spend hours progressing on a single boss was the norm then that might have worked. I just don't think that kind of gameplay really gels with the concept of 5-man dungeons.

[Eurhetemec]

Eh I've seen such behaviours since Valor Speedruns in 3.3. I only run dungeons with friends most expacs but on the rare case I used LFG on an alt I can remember GOGOGO being an issue. And that exact issue you describe is something I clearly remember back with Evergrowth? in WoD and it's stupid jumping skips.

But Blizzard effectively legitimized that gameplay with M+. Instead of trying to create a gameplay loop that is focused on communication during the run, they doubled down to the point that you cannot afford to communicate strategy and routes; you need to know those ahead of time and communication is only there for timing cooldowns/interrupts or the odd mechanic.

Oh yeah, I'm not saying it never happened, just that it wasn't routine or casually accepted until later M+. I remember the Evergrowth skips and Valor Speedruns (the latter were one of the major reasons early LFG sucked balls - you had morons trying to shave 30 seconds off the run and actually managing to wipe the group and add several minutes - I refused to use LFG unless we had 3 people already in that period), but there was heavy resistance to that stupidity and it wasn't normalized. If you said you weren't doing it, sane people were fine, and "people" who pulled adds dangerously to try and force you to speed up often got kicked.

Early M+ was weirdly okay despite the timer, I think because the timer was pretty generous. But then BfA/SL had much tighter timers (imho) and that seems to have lead to people getting much more antsy about it, and it eventually becoming normalized, and back-bleeding into virtually all dungeons.

[Nymrohd]

I think it was the right choice to make M+ though. Unless they specifically made dungeons in such a way that taking more time was not just beneficial, but required then you would still have the optimization mindset seeping down.

I guess if they made dungeons more like raids where trash was just there for pacing and variety, and one would expect to spend hours progressing on a single boss was the norm then that might have worked. I just don't think that kind of gameplay really gels with the concept of 5-man dungeons.

I remember TBC and Cata heroics. At the proper gear level if you did not CC and if you overpulled, you were toast. Problem with M+ was that tanks in Legion were probably the strongest they have been since MoP (tbh probably stronger than MoP even) and AoE stuns and CCs were ubiquitous which allowed the kite meta. It just made sense to speedrun because the design depended on it. And while the attitude has pulled back from GOGOGO after Legion, it went even more complicated when it came to memorizing routes, especially with some affixes in BfA. Personally I'll only do 15s with friends and won't bother with anything else. I don't enjoy getting screamed at.

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Early M+ was weirdly okay despite the timer, I think because the timer was pretty generous. But then BfA/SL had much tighter timers (imho) and that seems to have lead to people getting much more antsy about it, and it eventually becoming normalized, and back-bleeding into virtually all dungeons.

It's the e-sport design.

[Sondrelk]

I remember TBC and Cata heroics. At the proper gear level if you did not CC and if you overpulled, you were toast. Problem with M+ was that tanks in Legion were probably the strongest they have been since MoP (tbh probably stronger than MoP even) and AoE stuns and CCs were ubiquitous which allowed the kite meta. It just made sense to speedrun because the design depended on it. And while the attitude has pulled back from GOGOGO after Legion, it went even more complicated when it came to memorizing routes, especially with some affixes in BfA. Personally I'll only do 15s with friends and won't bother with anything else. I don't enjoy getting screamed at.

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It's the e-sport design.

I think the trash is the problem. If you make them even remotely challenging then players will always attempt to skip them or otherwise make that part faster.
You don't really see this mentality in raids for instance because the bosses are so much more difficult than the preceding trash, so chances are that you will die to them and have to execute the skip again.

Unless you fundamentally change dungeons to always have bosses that are significantly more challenging and time consuming than the surrounding trash then a speed running mentality would be inevitable.

[Nymrohd]

I think the trash is the problem. If you make them even remotely challenging then players will always attempt to skip them or otherwise make that part faster.
You don't really see this mentality in raids for instance because the bosses are so much more difficult than the preceding trash, so chances are that you will die to them and have to execute the skip again.

Unless you fundamentally change dungeons to always have bosses that are significantly more challenging and time consuming than the surrounding trash then a speed running mentality would be inevitable.

This is what I have suggested before.

Dungeons should have a clear linear path through the bosses. The trash across that path should largely be designed to not be skippable. The linear clear of the dungeon should not award a full clear though, not by a decent margin.
Beyond the linear path, dungeons should look organic, like proper spaces of whatever type they are (Temples, cities, cave systems) with a multitude of side rooms. Side rooms can contain more trash packs or even mini bosses. To get 100% you inevitably have to clear at least some side rooms. What you clear would depend on your group and the affixes for the week.

Second, they really need to remove fortified and tyrannical imo. Just make a weaker version of Tyrannical an affix.

Beyond that, the biggest concern over the speed is repeated cooldown usage. If the timer was not tight, people would wait for cooldowns. That is the argument used and it absolutely makes sense.

So what if cooldowns functioned different in M+? What if cooldowns over 1min did not reset automatically but rather reset on a system that worked with dungeon progress?

[Izalla]

Scholomance just got made smaller, walling off a whole bunch of areas.

I still do not forgive them for this.

[Sondrelk]

I still do not forgive them for this.

It's really dumb.

Maybe we could get lucky and get revamped Scholomance as a mega-dungeon or even raid once.
Dragonflight does have more focus on older content being reused, so maybe it could reuse Scholomance, especially if we eventually move towards Northern EK for the later patches.

[huth]

It's really dumb.

Maybe we could get lucky and get revamped Scholomance as a mega-dungeon or even raid once.
Dragonflight does have more focus on older content being reused, so maybe it could reuse Scholomance, especially if we eventually move towards Northern EK for the later patches.

I think it's a bit to tight for a proper raid, but it could easily be a megadungeon. They'd have to pretty much rebuild the entire place, though. It's rather dated at this point.

[Nymrohd]

I think it's a bit to tight for a proper raid, but it could easily be a megadungeon. They'd have to pretty much rebuild the entire place, though. It's rather dated at this point.

I'd wonder exactly what story they would want to tell there though. If they'd go to the trouble of revamping something old to that extent, you'd expect them to try and tell a new story.

They should have kept the old scholomance available somewhere though.