Feedback: Island Expeditions

Community General Discussion
1

Tides of Vengeance brought a number of changes to Island Expeditions. Now that these changes have been live for several weeks, we’re interested in hearing your thoughts.

  • How have the changes felt?

  • Have things improved?

  • Has anything gotten worse?

  • What rewards have you been getting?

Any general feedback about Island Expeditions is also welcome, but if you haven’t tried Islands since the update please go ahead and try out a few before commenting.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts!

5 Likes
3

The increased variety of mob types and events is nice. Not really noticed much other than that. Islands being the most efficient repeatable source by far of AP is still stupid as hell and should be changed.

6 Likes
4

I noticed the mobs were a little less annoying and I was more free to pursue whatever goal I wanted without consequence to my reward (which is now even more random - quite hilarious actually when the stated goal was to make it less random).

Also, we stopped entirely buying the items sold on the ship at the start - that honestly feels like a trap now. All it’s going to do is prevent you from buying the real rewards.

I would consider this an overall improvement, but a very minor one. The big problems are still very, very big. Island expeditions don’t feel like a part of Azeroth, let alone part of an MMORPG world. The time of day is changed in real time, as I’m watching, for no reason. It’s completely instances. I get teleported to it and from it - there is no feeling of persistency as far as where I am or where I go. I don’t even see ships arrive or leave, similar to Strand of the Ancients. Perfect opportunity right there just going to complete waste in favour of a simple timer.

This is going to be quite harsh, but I stand by it 100%: Island expeditions are fundamentally a stupid idea invented by minds who have no conception of what makes World of Warcraft a good product. It doesn’t feel like an MMO or RPG experience, let alone an MMORPG experience, at all.

It tries to feel random, but due to the static nature of the terrain, it really can’t. All it does it feel like the same island with different inhabitants, leading to a feeling that either the world contains remarkably similar clones of the same island OR the islands don’t actually exist and we’re dealing with some contrived dream scenario. It does, however, feel random in the sense that control has been taken away from me as to where I wish to go and what rewards I want to pursue - the worst kind of random.

Maybe it would’ve been fun in Diablo as an alternative to rifts, but in WoW it’s no fun at all.

15 Likes
5

I’ve made a topic about this but overall things got worse.

It seems to me the dev team doesn’t understand why people dislike islands (i realize there are many reasons) but their go-to solution is always “add more rewards”.

In this particular situation adding more rewards made things worse, because the currency used to buy those rewards competes with the only thing that imo makes islands fun, the power-ups.

Now instead of using a siege tank and have fun, i have to save my doubloons to buy pets and mounts. I know that people ranted about random drops and wanted a vendor, but these people are not developers and following their suggestions is only making things worse.

The proper solution imo was to add more interesting power-ups, replace the “20% parry” ones, maybe some unique class power-ups, similar to what we had in Ashran and let us go wild.

Also that Azerite Extractor doesn’t work very well, because it incentivizes playing defense and holding ground, which imo goes against the point of the islands which is to go out and explore.

It’s not all bad though, i like the increased diversity and that invasions come faster now.

5 Likes
6

after 8.1 the dubloons drop rate has been nerfed significantly i d’ont know if its a bug or intended ( even with the extra dub from ship research).

the reward system of having to pass multiple layer of rng to get a reward is not fun no one wants to farm 5000 islands to get a specific mount or reward.

in general mounts drop rate need a very big increase or put on vendor for sale.

13 Likes
7

As someone who did few thousand islands since start of bfa in hope for mounts and pets this is how i see them atm.

Only good part of island changes in 8.1 is no need to kill specific mobs to get chance of loot drop. This should have been since start but hey, better late than never.

For bad changes and stuff that still need massive fixes are-
1.Drop chances on mounts, pets and transmog items are way too low. After doing few thousand of islands i got 2 mounts to drop and third to pop from treasure map weekly.
2.Mob hp and damage has been scaled insanly high compared to 8.0 patch. On mythic difficulty elite and rare mobs have around 1-2mil hp. Casters punish groups with no interupts and 2-3 shot people.
3.Dubs vendor was fine idea but made stupidly grindy considering you get 2-4 dubs per island and sometimes you dont even get bag. Yes you can get lucky and get 10+ but most of time it is just 2-4 dubs per run.
4.Biggest problem wich i still cant believe you didnt learn lesson from legion legendaries…put every single bloody item reward from islands being buyable for dubs and increase dub drops chances. Having to farm thousands and thousands of islands to complete transmog set or get some nice looking weapon or mount or pet is just not acceptable. There is no need to wait for last patch of expansion again to get vendor to sell all stuff and to have simple way to grind currency for them. Please don’t make waste so much time on this for no reason just to get full fix year too late.

Hopefuly you will actualy read and understand what i am trying to say because i know thousands of people want same and kept yelling for same since start of expansion. Dont drag it out till 8.2 or 8.3. Do it now and make islands fun thing to do.

17 Likes
8

Overall I think the changes have been good.

However, since you now have a change of the same loot, no matter what you do, it does feel abit pointless.

Back when you had to look for specific rares for specific pieces of loot, I felt like I had a goal for the expedition, but not anymore.

Island expeditions should be about exploring new placces and finding interesting stuff. But it doesn’t really feel like you are finding anything yourself, since the reward is completly random and only require you to participate.

9

I like the changes to mob density.
I love the treasure map reward system, it makes doing it on alts I don’t care about AP-wise feel like it has some merit since you might get a mount etc.

I really dislike the choice to de-link kills from rewards. I can understand WHY you did it, having to afk and wait for an invasion was awkward gameplay, but when you found a pack of pirates or had a Mogu invasion you cared and the islands tended to have some thematic.
Now the islands feel like a swamp of random mobs and there’s zero player agency or merit to killing one mob over another, invasions are just meaningless sound since the dragons coming in doesn’t actually matter.

I might be in a minority with my like of the old system, but I genuinely thought it was one of the more innovative things you’ve attempted in terms of loot acquisition lately, even if it had it’s flaws. The semi-mystery of what dropped what and the ability to hunt down what you needed (mob spawns allowing) was a sad novelty in a game where things have become depressingly systematic and formulaic over the years.

tldr; I like most of the changes, but I dislike the change in loot acquisition being removed from what you killed and based on what could spawn. It’s convenient, but I’d argue convenience has eaten away at a lot of what made MMOs fun and different compared to other genres.

3 Likes
10

actualy loot can only be from mobs that are currently up on islands, so lets say if pirates never spawn on island you are doing, you have no chance of getting bird mount and any pirate mogs or pets

2 Likes
11

In order for islands to be fun, make world quests in them and have the rewards drop from those quests. Quests include repelling invasion, doing the event, using the portal to kill boss, protecting the extractor, etc. This way, there is a cap as well on the amount of azerite you can get from islands per week.

4 Likes
12

Honestly, I haven’t noticed the changes much. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten more rewards from the expeditions, and any changes to the spawns are drowned by the base gameplay of the islands - run around, pull as many groups as you can and AoE everything down.

That’s the biggest problem of island expeditions to me; there’s no exploration involved in an activity that was advertised as being all about exploration. It doesn’t matter that the new islands are beautifully designed because there’s no time to enjoy them. You rush rush rush to kill kill kill and that’s the gameplay. What’s the difference between islands and any other part of the game?

If you’d added other ways to earn azerite on the islands, minigames, puzzles, maybe even the Tortollan shell game… I don’t know, things that would encourage different strategies… then the expeditions would’ve been interesting. Right now it’s the same thing over and over again.

Oh, and artifact power will always be the least interesting reward, by far. It’s filling a bar towards getting a small increase in power that you will not notice once the bar is filled.

Edit: I just thought of this, but the islands could’ve had a “best of” selection of the minigames from all of WoW’s history. Simon from Blade’s Edge, Joust from Hyjal, Katamari from Uldum, things like that with the added pressure of attacks from the other faction. Even the Timewalker lore quizzes! Just anything to make expeditions feel more like expeditions and less like invasions.

5 Likes
13

They are perfect right now , the only thing i would want to see is more stuff on the vendor and more streamlined progression with the dubloon system like every heroic one dropping 5 and etc.

2 Likes
14

Since the release of the patch I’ve been running enough of them to get 4-5 treasure maps, GIMME ME MAH PARROT BOIS, but seriously, there’s some cases that have really annoyed me.

How have the changes felt?
I like them being able to target anything instead of specifics means I can usually plough through them quicker than I could in the past since we spent so much time waiting and straight out avoiding things that didn’t give what we wanted.

The big drawback however is it simply added more RNG layers since you can no longer target specific things and everything is now thrown into a big pot.

Have things improved?
Point one answered this, yes some things have improved but there are drawbacks.

Has anything gotten worse?
There’s so much CC now I could probably kick back and watch the lord of the rings trilogy before I’m finally able to move again, not literally, but you get the point.

The dark iron dwarf trio is possibly the most annoying thing added to Islands, being mass CC’d isn’t fun you’re, gripped, slowed, stunned, rooted, you name it, they can do it, was this the intention?

The azerite spiders are extremely annoying as well, I go out of my way to avoid them if I can.

What rewards have you been getting?
The rewards feel lesser, if you want to improve them, you could start by removing random elements that are involved in obtaining doubloons. For example winning normal, heroic and mythic could award a set amount after each victory.

It’s very hard for me to rope my friends into mythic because they dismiss it straight out and prefer the easier path of heroic, which has a lower drop chance of items than heroic.

In terms of drops, all I’ve really got since the patch released was duplicates, there needs to be some sort of system in place to prevent duplicates until you’ve obtained all the pets, getting the same pet time and time again isn’t a fun experience.

7 Likes
15

gave it a shot…

  1. it was boring
  2. i spent don’t know, 20ish minutes…and i got 2 doubloons - not worth the time. it’s like that in entire game btw, i spend 3h playing and i earn 200gold…you know what i’m going to do? log out and not play.
  3. why did you ignore alot of feedback during alpha about it? it’s kinda too late to ask for feedback now
3 Likes
16

ive said it on these forums before, and ill say it again, you could have something really great with islands, if you understood your playerbase, but you ended up with something mandatory that barely anybody likes to do.

are islands supposed to be challenging “race to the finish” pve content, in line with m+?
then why do they have absolutely 0 mechanical challenges?

are islands supposed to be where we go for ap farms?
then why are the island ap rewards so blooody abysmal compared to time spent?

are islands supposed to be for pvp’ers?
then why dont islands reward something relevant for pvp’ers, have leaderboards, ratings, etc?

are islands made for cosmetic farmers?
then why the hell cant they target what they wanna farm at all?

i could keep going with these dumb questions, but thats kind of enough to illustrate my point.
its quite obvious that someone is trying to push the idea that islands need to be for everybody, and in trying to not alienate anyone, while having something that appeals to everyone, they end up being uninteresting hollow shells of what they could have been.

9 Likes
17

I have been trying the “new” Island expedition.
The new system allows faster pace to complete the azerite required, and thus, you don’t need to explore much, it’s just a grind feast.
Once on an island the Azerite Extractor spawned too close to the horde ship, so all we could do is killing the horde getting the extractor before the horde came back from their ship and then all over again for the whole duration of the expedition. It’s been tedious and boring (was on mythic difficulty).
I didn’t see any difference in the loot I got, and by that I mean “not much” maybe a pet at best, and probably one I already had.
The doublons rewards feel too low, and as someone pointed at, we now have to save them for rewards instead of spending them for fun perks.
At least when we had to target mobs to get the linked reward, we had the feeling to have a grasp on something, the “new” island expeditions feel even more random. As someone said in my guild: “you may kill a bear, but get a goat as reward”.

It is not much improvement to me, and it feels that we’re just lost in RNG, as many of other content in BfA.

5 Likes
18

How have the changes felt
Changes felt right, now we’re not racing for the rare we need and avoiding everything else to tailor our rewards and if you’re not in a premade it was uneasy for the PUG player.

Have things improved?
The overall experience has improved, I now feel motivated to go into Mythic and clear as before I’d just zerg normal and cherry pick the packs but now (while you still have to cherry pick) it feels more uniform within the group.

Has anything gotten worse?
I feel the vendor at the ship is now wasted, you’re now focused on holding onto your coins for the rewards outside, you’re less likely going to use them on the vendor. It feels like a punishment for using the vendor when you never know how much coins you’re going to net when you leave. Looking at the replies here I see I’m not the only one who feels this way.

What rewards have you been getting?
Pets… so many pets! and a lot of mogable gear

Personal feedback
The only few things I don’t like about the island is:

  • the insane CC combo’s the mobs have (rooted into huge cleave much?)
  • The other faction AI feels like it doesnt sacle on mythic and feels the same as heroic. give them a buff or make them more aggressive on mythic.
  • The shrines don’t feel worthwhile, remove the negative affect, make them shorter.
  • Find another currency or motivation to buy from the vendor within the island expedition.
  • Buff the coin drop rate
  • Add a quest to your mission table or the quests you get within that reward coins and not just AP
5 Likes
19

Doubloons drop arate is too low now (compared to targetting rares pre-patch)
Too often, there’s no reward at all - not even a single doubloon. Imo, I think there should be guaranteed reward for a win - 1 doubloon on N, 2 on HC and 3 on M/PvP.

Loot is mostly green mogs, sometimes pets. Blue mogs and/or mounts - not seen yet.

Also, I’d prefer if the weekly mission was limited to cosmetic stuff - the main point of islands - and the titan residuum and AP options were removed. The bonus roll would then give a chance for random rare+ reward (preferably the weapon mogs) instead of AP.

The new Azerite events (drills) and some of the mobs are extremely annoying with the countless knockbacks (CC in islands is too much on some types in general) and some hit too hard, even on tanks. Combining high amount of CC with high amount of abilities that hit for half a tank’s HP is bad. The fact you “can” move out of it means nothing if you are chain-stunned (or rooted).

I’d still welcome some more clarity on the rewards. I’d also like to see that “better victory” (larger gap) would give better chances for (more) rewards. Getting the same from 9000:8000 as with 9000:3000 feels weird.

Overall, the gameplay has improved a bit (more fluid, usually more rares with some exceptions) but the drop in doubloon drops is a disappointment.

4 Likes
20

So i’ve been spamming them for the past few days with guildie’s. thing’s I’ve noticed

  1. Mobs can chain CC you infinitely if you do really big pulls, While this is a danger of it there should be some DR so i can atleast have a chance of surviving depending on the map and spawns (Mainly spiders that web + void mobs)
  2. Some spells have bigger hit areas than their actual indicators, Mainly void mobs hysteria cast is way bigger than the indicator
  3. Alliance seem to constantly pester you now instead of doing their own thing mainly the Gnomes, Worgen and Dwarf’s (Their CC also has low cooldowns and no DR meaning they can chain stun you constantly as well)
  4. Mobs randomly decide to reset? not sure what causing this, I tried tagging them and running gathering up more but this didn’t help
  5. I should always get something other than just AP for winning an island, even if its just dubloons, its annoying just going for 5 islands in a row not getting anything
7 Likes