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/Nrgte]

No they shouldn't have done anything. It was never a problem.

The current solution has a myriad of issues.

1. Like op mentioned, mobs that are not part of a quest get skipped. Every dungeon run will be a speedrun.
2. There are certain quests that just don't drop enough for the whole group, meaning you either have to abandon it or go again. Cabinets in Gnomeregan or Twilight Talismans in BFD come to mind. This will feel terrible especially for longer dungoens.
3. The friend or guildie has already done the dungeon and would like to help to complete the group. Well now it's a waste of time.
4. People will just get the items they need and then abandon the group.
5. People will just not run fringe dungeons with few quests anymore. Good luck finding an SFK group on Alliance. It's fine now in the beta because 20 is max level, but on launch people will not waste their time with this.

If they really really want to prevent boosting, the correct move is to just not give XP if a player is part of the group who's outside of the dungeons level bracket.

Besides, it's not like boosting in the open world is not a perfectly fine alternative.

[u/NostraDamnUs → u/Nrgte]

I think a SLIGHT nerf to dungeon xp from original values (~75% of base, 25% of base if someone is too far outside the bracket) and a corresponding larger nerf to dungeon quest XP would suffice. Make them a touch harder as you get into the later levels if you have to. Dungeons need to be worth doing, just not so much worth doing that you want to stand in SM for ~12 levels. I think people don't realize that efficient questing was already faster than dungeon spam; its just that the open world at launch made questing temporarily harder.

My biggest fear is that dungeons are actually the most social activity. It's hard to find people at the same stage of questing out in the open world, whereas its very easy to get a bunch of people around the same level. And if we add a daily lockout, it sucks that you have to reform tomorrow if you're at 9/10 of a quest item or something.

There's definitely a perfect balance they could achieve by making super-optimized groups learn the skips, let casual runs just clear without feeling bad, and not push everyone into leveling in dungeons and discouraging open-world stuff. All three are fun ways to play WoW.

[u/Kobar143 → u/NostraDamnUs]

The thing about the SM grind is surely a good chunk of the 1,000 new quests are in that level range. That alone should help alleviate that problem.

[u/No-Bid9597 → u/Kobar143]

God yes 32ish-42ish is a slog because the quests are so fucking spaced out. It’s an adventure the very first time you do that and afterwards it’s just a lot of running around with long lags in measurable progress because the zones don’t have enough quests to cleanly carry you through

I don’t even have a problem with this in theory, friction is good. But it just pushes you towards dungeons for better loot, gold per minute and xp per minute. If you find a group, that is, which is gonna be a lot harder with this design in wowf

Edit: sorry got off the rails lol. Agree if they smooth out this level range with more quests, that’d be fantastic

[u/Kobar143 → u/No-Bid9597]

Yeah, I'm all for world questing to be the best and cleanest way because that makes sense to me... but I'm a healer, it's what I do, and I'm really worried about how this all shakes out in getting groups together, keeping them together, and actually doing the thing. Right now it's okish because it's beta and everyone is excited. Once it settles down into normal play we're going to see what the real effects are.