Fancy Theatre? “The Rivales” perhaps or “The Wanderer” (or however those plays are called in the English client)? No? Did I hit a nerve? If so, keep on reading and feel free to leave otherwise—you may not be the target audience.
I’ve been running Delves extensively across multiple characters and initially found them to be a very rewarding experience, a boon keeping me, a solo player, engaged for far longer than usual. This is my first Season 2, and I have been playing since the open beta. However, my motivation has dropped significantly due to how coffer keys are obtained.
We run certain weeklies to obtain reward chests. The first four of these also contain a coffer key, and the first two additionally grant Veteran-level BoP gear. At first, this gave the grind an additional incentive beyond just farming keys. However, the Veteran gear becomes completely irrelevant as you quickly outgear it. At that point, the first two world quests of the week are no better than the others, and looking at the useless gear makes you painfully aware that you are forced to run outgeared content. If those Veteran pieces were at least warbound, they could still be useful for alts, but as it stands, they just become vendor trash.
The real issue is that Delves are treated as an extension of world content rather than an independent progression path for solo players. Unlike M+ or raiding, where you can just jump into the content and earn gear, solo players must first go through an entirely separate activity (world quests) just to unlock the ability to progress in Delves (admittedly, particularly raiding has a large organizational overhead). And for those of us who play multiple characters, this means repeating the same world quests over and over again, making the grind exponentially worse.
I wonder if the system was designed simply to extend playtime for solo players. I already abandoned crafting on multiple alts after months of effort because I realized the time investment wasn’t worth the reward, and now I’m about to do the same with Delves. The grind doesn’t justify the effort, and the loot will be invalidated in five months anyway. Instead of playing more, I feel inclined to play less—or not at all.
A better solution could be to completely decouple Delves from world quests, allowing players to earn coffer keys (or an equivalent loot mechanism) directly through Delves themselves. Alternatively, Blizzard could simply offer free access to Bountiful Chest loot but limit it to four per week per character to prevent progression from being too fast.
Another solution could be to create an incentive to invest more in a single character. Right now, there is still little to do for solo players outside of Delves—at least in terms of gear progression. This is probably why coffer key farming feels more frustrating for solo players than for raiders or M+ players. Those players don’t tend to have as many alts, meaning they don’t have to run world quests as often. Plus, once they outgear Tier 8, they likely only continue running Tier 11 for gilded crests—which doesn’t require a key at all. (Though I’m not entirely sure if this is an efficient way for them to farm crests, or if they abandon Delves entirely after gearing up.)
Finally, the best solution I could think of, particularly in terms of varied and entertaining, would be to somehow link Delves with pimped-up follower dungeons, which I really enjoyed—actually more than Delves (particularly when tanking). That is, let us earn keys for Delves in follower dungeons (again, pimped-up) and vice versa. But admittedly, that is already something that warrants a separate thread.