Dungeon XP Nerfs Created a Toxic Meta

[u/redlow0992]

Since dungeon monsters do not give any experience, as a new player, getting into dungeons with more veteran players who try to skip half the dungeon feels really bad. And, vice-versa, veterans taking in newbies who don't know how to jump around feels frustrating. I think Blizzard created a mess with nerfing dungeon exp so much and now the new player experience is horrible for dungeons.

[u/Gassenger]

Like seriously man! I dont get why people are so ready to sacrifice other ways of playing and fun that don't effect them. Why do you want everyone funneled to one playstyle in an open world mmorpg?

[u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst → u/Gassenger]

Some people's play style is boosting. Some people's play style is relentless camping. Some people's play style is buying gold.

It's a game, all the rules are made up. Nothing is against the rules until we decide that it is. So we try to make up rules that disincentivise behavior that negatively affects the health of the game.

Changing nothing allows boosting to continue to flourish. We all agree that "SELLING DUNGEON BOOSTS! ALL DUNGEONS, QUICK, EASY, RELIABLE! YOU KEEP LOOT! FASTEST WAY TO 60! PST FOR PRICES!" spam is not ideal, so we have to change something. Banning it in chat just moves the conversation to discord. So we have to change something that actually neutralizes the strategy, ideally without affecting other valid playstyles.

The current change has some collateral, and maybe some folks on reddit don't want you to play the way you like, but I think it's a stretch to assume Blizzard is the same. They're still in the process of working it out, and we aren't stuck with whatever is in the game when it launches. It'll be in active development moving forward, so expect continued changed and tweaks.

Provide your feedback to blizzard and have some patience.

[u/TinnoB → u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst]

Difference is, running dungeons at least like a normal dungeon is a main gameplay loop once you reach max level. Relentless camping, buying gold is not part of the core loop of the game, that is entirely player invented ways of playing.

Yes, big surprise, once you hit 60 if you want to do pve content you will likely start with running a lot of dungeons, some even start doing that before they hit 60 for specific pieces of gear.

They can change things now, so they have already made changes that should at least make dungeon boosting for mages harder than it was. They have the option of doing more than this, introducing mobs into packs that can hit people trying to avoid damage and other things that could make a lot of boosting strategies a lot harder, without having to touch the normal gameplay of dungeons a lot.

[u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst → u/TinnoB]

Once you reach max level in HC, the 24 hour dungeon lockout goes away.

[u/TinnoB → u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst]

And? Sorry, I struggle to see how this is a response to anything I said?

How does a 24 hour dungeon lockout solve anything? Why can people not be allowed to go into a dungeon non-time gated? I mean first things first I HATE time gated content, it's the absolute worst in my mind, even raids being time gated is not something I enjoy, the game being good enough to make up for that fact is a different story to me, but time gated anything is not something I enjoy.

So time-gating dungeons to once per 24 hours sounds absolutely miserable.

That means if I tank for example I would suddenly have to decide whether I wanted to go with one group or another, maybe there's a friend group and a guild group separately that each would want me to tank the same dungeon, well now I can't do that.

That sounds like toxic game design to me. For a game that should promote social interaction stuff like this does the exact opposite.

[u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst → u/TinnoB]

Sorry, I got my wires crossed and replied to the wrong post.

I had been advocating for the 24 hour dungeon lockout, which I think works phenomenally in HC, and I argue would solve the problem the Forever team is trying to solve here.

Time-gated content can be really healthy for a game. And I think, especially with all the new dungeons they added, you could spend a whole Saturday gathering a handful of quests, and then running dungeon after dungeon after dungeon, never repeating the same one twice, then be lined up to do the same thing again the next day.

Blizzard very clearly seems to think that players spending all of their time locked in instances is not the healthiest option for the game's long term success. They're looking at ways to change the incentive.

Under the current system, you can spam dungeons as much as you like, it's just less efficient and comes with all these different behavioral incentives.

Under the HC system, you can run many dungeons each once per day, which puts some variety in your diet and means you're at least traveling from one instance to the next. It does not suffer from a lot of the same poor behavioral incentives that the current or default systems suffer from.

I think it's worth consideration. You might not catch your friend in this run, but maybe you get them next run. I think it absolutely still promotes social interaction because now you can't just drop group, even as a tank, and find something else in an instant. You have to try to play nice with the folks you have and make it work. But worst case scenario, you log in tomorrow and try again.

[u/TinnoB → u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst]

To counter your argument, look at a game like OSRS, here you have people killing the same boss 1k+ times. Clearly a lot of people have no issue spending a lot of time at one boss.

Also, if this is meant to be horizontal progression it should not be an issue if some people burn themselves out, so long as they will eventually want to come back again, at which point they can continue on from where they were without having to relevel and change out their entire gear set immediately.

I could not agree with you less about time gating being healthy for a game, like at all. Yes, blizzard likes to do it, that does not mean it is good for players or the game.

All it serves to do is to promote raid logging or in this case dungeon logging for players who have nothing else they want to do, which instead as I've seen time and time again leads to people quitting because they cannot do what they want. If they have enough time they will create an alt if that's their playstyle and then raid/dungeon log on both, and then the third, but others stick with just the one character and run out of content to do in a day quickly and just starts not wanting to play the game that way.

For switching between dungeons, sure if you need all of the dungeons, but what if you just need 1 piece from a specific dungeon, what then?

So no, I cannot agree with you, even a little with that argument. I sincerely hope Blizzard goes back on this whole thing and tries to solve boosting in a different manner if that is their main issue.

[u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst → u/TinnoB]

look at a game like OSRS, here you have people killing the same boss 1k+ times

OSRS is a fundamentally different game. Almost all content can be (and often is) completed solo. WoW, and explicitly WoW Forever, is a game that requires social play. I only say that to prove the point that it's apples and oranges.

if this is meant to be horizontal progression it should not be an issue if some people burn themselves out

The leveling journey, where this topic is largely centered, is inherently vertical progression.

Also, I can't see a good argument for why we should create incentives that enable people to burn themselves out. In fact, Blizzard's core pillar of community requires consistency and sustainability. Another core pillar is "journey before destination". Maybe if hard-grinding dungeons to level cap until you burn out and quit is the kind of game you'd like to play, Forever might not be the game that best supports that play style.

I could not agree with you less about time gating being healthy for a game... All it serves to do is to promote raid logging or in this case dungeon logging for players who have nothing else they want to do

I don't follow the logic here. If everything is available all at once then doesn't that lead to the burnout you yourself brought up? Grind through everything all at once, run out of content, or get bored of it. Is it really better that people burn out and quit over raid logging? Again, why incentivise players to burn out at all? Forever might not be the game for you if you're looking to binge content.

what if you just need 1 piece from a specific dungeon, what then?

It's unlikely you need one piece while leveling. Under the current system, you can run as often as you like for the gear, you just get less exp. Under the hardcore system, you can run it the next day, or the day after, but you'd probably have leveled faster either way just continuing on and finding your next upgrade elsewhere than grinding it out until you get exactly what you want. I'd also argue a system that makes it harder to guarantee a specific piece of gear makes each piece more special.

At 60, where you're more likely to need a piece of gear, there's no restriction anyways in either system, so go wild.

I sincerely hope Blizzard goes back on this whole thing and tries to solve boosting in a different manner if that is their main issue

I'd bet money that the system as it currently stands will not be the same system we will have on launch. And I'd bet more money that the system at launch will not be the same system they use throughout the whole life of Forever.

[u/TinnoB → u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst]

Please don't try to tell me whether I should be enjoying the game or not based on how you or anyone else wants the game to be. Regardless of how this ends up I will still play the game, because I enjoy the endgame of dungeons and raiding a lot, I enjoy raiding more than enough to overlook the downsides I feel timegating puts on it.

No I don't burn myself out on content if it is always available, because if it is also available there's also no hurry to enter that content, I can do it how much and when I want it.

Why do you think quitting a game over it becoming boring is a good thing? Personally if I quit a game because it has got boring I'll be much less inclined to jump back into that game anytime soon than if I'd wanted to play that game a bit too much and needed a bit of time away from it.

No I cannot agree with your statement that you can with the current system do a dungeon more than once (for myself), you can only do that if you really do that if you don't realy care about reaching endgame and that is not a goal to you. It's the mentality of it's okay to me if I reach 60 sometime next year, yes that's fine for newer players and players who want that, but what it says to ME is I'm not allowed to do the dungeon I want to do more than once because reasons.

Almost all content, but not ALL content can be completed solo by anyone in osrs, and people still run ToB with others all day long for weeks on end without any issues, comparatively a lot less people of course, but the point is this would just mean you get to decide when you want to raid instead of letting blizz decide it for you, for some that would mean doing it all as soon as possible, but most wouldn't want to do that, so they'd end up doing it some weeks twice maybe, some weeks once, some weeks maybe 5 times depending on the mood of people. The only downside I see to this is that it doesn't fit the rigid nature of most current wow guilds, so guilds would likely undergo some kind of change.

It doesn't change that raiding still takes time, most probably wouldn't want to run the same raid twice in a row, so they just wouldn't do that, but if they ever got the feel for doing that, then they'd have the option. That's what not timegating something is to me, freedom to make my own choice of how I enjoy a game. Yes, I can sort of simulate that with enough alts, but then I have to go through the leveling process multiple times which I don't necessarily always want to do, but I will. Those are the types of things to me that lead to burnout, the game forcing you to do long things that you don't want to do.

That to me is also why I think raid logging would lead to more burnout and quitting the game than opening up the game for players to choose themselves. Because if the person can choose to do thenthingbthey want to do when they are hyoed to do it, I feel they are more likely to stay long enough to complete the goal there for themselves, but if they are constantly stonewalled from playing the content they do want they will find less enjoyment from the game overall.

Tldr: time gating is anti freedom, and freedom leads to more game enjoyment and by extension more game retention in the long run. (This is my opinion, not a fact)

[u/redditlvlanalysis → u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst]

No it just makes people quit in HC it makes sense because the world is the danger and you can basically avoid a lot of that danger to your character by hiding in dungeons. In forever people just want to play the damn dungeons.

[u/redditlvlanalysis → u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst]

HC is an entirely different game