Discoverer's Delight and Nightmare Incursions Adjustments Coming - Week of 8 April

Greetings,

We’ve been having a blast watching everyone enjoying themselves in Nightmare Incursions over the past few days, but we wanted to give you a little bit of advanced notice for a change we plan to make early next week and give you a bit of an explanation of our reasoning and how we decided on this adjustment.

We always intended for Nightmare Incursions to be a very valuable source of experience, but one thing we didn’t intend was that they would be so much better than most other forms of experience gain between level 40 and 50. We have become concerned that Nightmare Incursions may overshadow most other activities in the game in their current form, and while we are all having a lot of fun, we’d hate for folks to feel like they need to entirely eschew the rest of the level 40 to 50 level-up content for the entire phase.

As a result, we will be making an adjustment on Monday to increase the magnitude of Discoverer’s Delight’s XP buff. We are still working through the percentages we will adjust, but we are likely going to increase the level 40-49 buff from 50% bonus experience from all sources to around 75% or slightly more. To offset this, we will be reducing the amount of experience gained from mission quests in Nightmare Incursions.

One thing to note is that while we will reduce experience from Nightmare Incursions missions, the creatures within the Nightmare themselves are still impacted by Discoverer’s Delight. As a result they will become more lucrative as well with this adjustment and they already have a higher than normal multiplier on their XP gain. This will serve to make kill quests within the dream more lucrative compared to the other types of collection or interaction quests, which we feel also helps correct an imbalance there as well.

Ultimately we love Nightmare Incursions and think they are a flavorful, fun addition to Season of Discovery, but we totally recognize that they run the risk of “too much of a good thing” and becoming stale to players, particularly leveling multiple characters as they are currently such a strong source of experience. We feel that this is the best compromise to keep incursions rewarding while also encouraging participating in questing and dungeons without feeling like you are leaving so much efficiency on the table.

We wanted to let you know this ahead of time however, so if you are enjoying Nightmare incursions as-is, you can continue as you have been throughout the rest of the weekend before we offset some of these xp gains to other activities.

We again want to thank everyone for participating in our wild season of discovery experiment with us. We go into each phase with ambitious plans but sometimes some aspects of the game have some rough edges that require us to make adjustments on the fly to correct outliers like this. As always, we appreciate your patience as we write the story of Season of Discovery together with you.

We can’t wait for more of you to get into Sunken Temple this weekend and are eager to share more information with you on our plans for Phase 4 as we get closer to that release.

Thank you, and have a great weekend.|

-The WoW Classic Dev Team

4 Likes

Every main and their mother, sister and uncle will be 50 before monday :rofl:

Ah, a nice three-day event it was then!

Sadly enough, due to the min/maxing culture that even self-claimed “Casuals” seem to be riding on, I’m afraid that it will either still be better (even if slightly) than the alternatives (dungeons/questing), which will make it still be the choice of the majority, or it will be worse (again, even if slightly), which will make it, as you say, become a three-day event that almost no one will ever set foot on again.

The problem is that I don’t see a solution that is good to “even out” the (current) three available forms of levelling. Even if they were as balanced (xp and other rewards-wise) as they could be, many would still be choosing to min/max and then complaints would still exist.

Think of a scenario where the “average” exp/hour of a dungeon would be the same as that gained from questing or from doing incursions.

  • Dungeon groups would mostly look even more for AoE classes (such as mages) to optimize that exp/hour to make it better than the alternatives. The result of this: rogues, etc, on the forums “can’t find a group for ZF cause no one invites me”.
  • Even in groups where that min/maxing was not so evident, people would try to “minimally optimize” by potentially selecting minimum gear or level for the members of their parties, potentially causing similar situations as the one described above, albeit for different reasons.

So all in all, if incursions are still to be a thing, I think they should be slightly better, exp/hour-wise, than the alternatives. Probably at the cost of gold rewards, since that would potentially drive out some people into the other two forms of levelling, and potentially evening out the scenario a bit.

2 Likes

So all in all, if incursions are still to be a thing, I think they should be slightly better, exp/hour-wise, than the alternatives. Probably at the cost of gold rewards, since that would potentially drive out some people into the other two forms of levelling, and potentially evening out the scenario a bit.

Yeah I think it should go at the cost of gold.

3 Likes

I corrected it

1 Like

Seems very unfair for weekend workers, everyone already 50 but we have to level on monday with nerfed excursion, seems like favoritism for the world first racers, then just slow everyone else down. Really feels like a kick in the teeth for people who cant play untill monday… poor show catering to the elite few who dont work.

6 Likes

Wheres the flavor, wheres thw fun? Running in circles trying to click stuff on the ground with 100 players on top isn’t my idea of “fun”

Reminds me of some pservers “leveling path”

5 Likes

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, phase 1 was great because there were so many runes and especially rune acquisitions spread out over the world that you’d occasionally bump into something new and go “uwu, whats this?”

The reason people didn’t feel like grinding in the open world in phase 2 was partially because of the issue of questing (too many people) but also because it was the same experience that people have had for years if not decades. There wasn’t enough new stuff. 4 runes is not enough.

Add to that that every bit of new content is backended as well, meaning in order to not just get your teeth kicked in in BM you have to be lvl 40, in order to do the raid? Lvl 40. In order to acquire a bunch of the runes? Lvl 40. And gold! Gold sinks! Better save the quests so you can do them at max level for increased gold profit!

And now we have this PVE event right here that doesn’t address ANY of these issues and just gives people a new way of grinding exp because of the fear that everything will be backended again. Add to that that the reputation grind is HORRIBLY SLOW From Dreamwardens prior to 50 and Feralas (which I haven’t done yet but I’d assume that those would yield more) so in case you want to get the rewards well, gotta grind grind grind right?

ADD TO THIS that phase 2 (while crap (what makes you think the issues from P2 aren’t gonna be present in P3?)) was way too short (I never even got full BIS from Gnome, still don’t have my set piece pants) so in order to make sure you can actually experience the “real content” (which is at 50) enough times you better get to 50 sooner rather than later as if you drag your heels they’ll just move on to phase 4 in 1½ month.

This new PVE event replaced all forms of leveling because it is too efficient and because you didn’t address the issues people had with phase 2. What is there to DISCOVER in the open world? Bugger all. A handful of runes that are too sparsely placed around.

So the easiest thing is to just grind this event because you need the rep probably. Can save up all quests for later gold profit. Can get parity with others for Blood Moon. Can pursue all runes (just in case…). Can go into the raid which is the only real bit of content for difficulty PVE side of things. There isn’t any benefit to ‘not’ do this PVE event to 50 apart from the fact that it gets repetitive and boring and it feels like a cheap way to lvl to 50. “It’s about the journey, not the destination” is completely lost on this event’s exp reward.

Again, “Season Of Discovery”.
What is there to discover?
That everything is at phase caps.
Better grind quick before phase is over!
Sad game design.

It’s just SM dungeon spam again except with a rep reward (including rune at Friendly) tied to it.

As to the event itself it should have been an instanced thing where you can bring a max group of 5 people and the event basically gives you 6 quests (all get the same quests) and then you go inside and perform 5 of the randomized quests to get plot item, once you have 5 plot item you can turn in the main quest which is the 6th. Which is the only one that yields gold, exp and rep. Meaning you have to complete these other 5 quests in order to get anything.

It’s basically an instanced open world group based elite questing area that is rouge-lite-lite in its design.

That could have been a lot of fun.
The current way of things is just a joke. There’s too many people, too many quests, too much reward, too chaotic, you end up getting rewarded for not even doing anything sometimes. The event has no sense of structure or design of difficulty. It’s retail-esque with everyone just swarming in like ants and hitting everything in their vicinity then rushing back out.

I hope the Feralas one is less of a crap show than the Ashenvale one.

[edit]

It’s VERY convenient to level up.
It’s not very fun to do.

This is precisely the kind of a reason for why too much convenience can be a bad thing.

4 Likes

“We’ve been having a blast watching everyone enjoying themselves in Nightmare Incursions over the past few days”

“and while we are all having a lot of fun”

flavorful, fun addition

Are the people enjoying themselves in Nightmare Incursions in the room with us right now? Everyone in my guild hates it as content but feels obligated to do it so they have more time to get prepared for the raid.

If I wanted to run around a tiny area, that is saturated with mob spawns, spam clicking items and killing shared tag mobs, I’d play retail not classic. If anything, retail is better as you don’t have to constantly manage your inventory just to get quests organised.

Not to mention maintaining Blizzard’s long standing tradition of “exploit early, exploit often”. I thought allowing the people who abused the Wintergrasp bug at the start of Wrath Classic to keep their full set of honour gear they farmed in a day was too much, but this is even worse on your part.

I understand it’s a seasonal game so the long term ramifications of so much raw gold being injected into the economy isn’t as big of a deal as it would be elsewhere, but “play fair” is literally one of your company’s core values.

How do you reconcile that with allowing the lucky few who could play for hours at launch get close to an epic mount for something they were doing anyway before hauling the ladder up behind them?

7 Likes

Only mistake u made was giving at start so much gold from quest rewards so now AH going wild. People buy mats, pots and reseling them for insane price. So whoever grab that gold did not sleep entire night and make 700gold now is dominating AH.

When it comes to exp and sod I prefer to spam this event more than dungeons. Just because making group is very annoyng and hard , taking 1h lf tank then people force each other to buy summon from locks or get kicked from groups. It is just overall bad experience.
But that dont means no one will do dungeons lol We do dungeons at lv 50 for gear anyway to have some nice items before entering into raid.

With event everyone have chance to lv up and get some gold for upgrade spells , dual spec and to have some extra. More than any quest and dungeon will give in time spent doing it. I just spend on druid prob 60+ gold for upgrade and will spent more for profesions since you know AH is wild atm.

Nightmare incursions aren’t fun, especially if you have to do them for rep for the new runes. Please stop locking runes behind rep grinds.

5 Likes

So sad to see this adjustment come.

This version of Nightmare Incursions have been the best levelling experience I’ve ever had.
It’s effective, chill and social. Regardless of your class/spec etc.

Min/Maxing mentality is part of gaming culture nowadays. Game devs trying to correct people to play “the right way” feels tragic. Especially in a game where most people see levelling as a transport period to when the game really begin(max level) and where most spend 99% of there time.

People that with a Min/Max attitude don’t really care of what they are doing and how as lost as its the most efficient path forward. You change nothing else for them except make the game more tedious and boring.
People that don’t Min/Max ain’t affected anyways and don’t know Nightmare Incursions are the most efficient way to level.

3 Likes

Forgot to mentin that sharing quest items and envelopes r so toxic and bad game play design. I needed to abandon all quests and empty bags for this event. Is fine with abandon quests but bags is next lv of toxicity. Imagine idea… Why just dont make quests share in normal way :scream:
Magic!

3 Likes

Yes and everyone who play this game because raids prgoress pve content founds endless lv spaming dungeons, quest waste of time compare to this event. And not everyone have same opinion what founds fun in wow. Clearly min maxing people wants to get fast lv so they can faster enter in raid.

Problem is when casual player start to complaining about how some ppl lv faster and people like him r not able or dont want and demands to nerf all. Issue is there that person who complains dont have that spark same view of fun in wow as min maxing ppl.

Everyone should have right to play game how they want and with same people as themselves. But wow community itself pushing their agenda constantly what we all should see as fun and force ourselves to enjoy same fun they do lol

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Cool that you’re having a blast because we’re not.

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I think people who dont have blast is same people who cant sell summons to sm anymore :joy:

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Still waiting for that banwave of alliance players who’ve exploited all of phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3, as well as all the depressed children you’ve sold hacks to who now use it to grief even harder because they have no lives.
You’re supposed to help these depressed children when they come to you with their problems, Blizzard. Not exploit and abuse them for money and keep encouraging them that their lives are worthless. It’s so ethically wrong what you’re doing

Thanks for ruining phase 3 with this Incursions :slight_smile: Cya, maybe in phase 4.