For me, as somebody who’s played WoW fairly consistently (but casually) since 2005, the gameplay has become boring as heck.
I dislike logging in every day (or week) to just do the same things over and over. It feels meaningless. Sort of like watching the same TV episode every night for years on end. But obviously, I’ve grown up since Vanilla, and your priorities will change as you do. So I’m not placing it all on the game itself. I also play by myself these days, so there’s no guild keeping me invested or anything like that.
But I also don’t want to give up on WoW, because I love Azeroth, and I still enjoy playing through new content, following the story, and customising my characters with new cosmetics. When there are new expansions or major patches, it feels like things are finally moving forward, and you get to explore and discover things. Those times are great!
I had hoped the new Crafting system would change this a bit. I legitimately thought that if only I spent a lot of time in the open world, farming reagents and exploring, I’d be a world class crafter and be able to play the game that way. But nope, it’s a convoluted mess which requires that you do a bunch of other content consistently to get anywhere.
I think if there was some type of repeatable solo content, which felt like it always changed and evolved, then things would be different. So here’s what I’d like to see:
Use the tech from Torghast to create some type of endless, instanced content for solo players. Either in a cave somewhere, or perhaps by letting you pop into different realms via magical portals, or what have you.
Make sure this place doesn’t look the same all the time. Different “rooms” or “levels” should have different themes. One minute, you might be fighting yourself through a Fel-corrupted hellscape, the next you might find yourself in a tropical forest (a bit like the invasion events in Legion).
Have leaderboards over who gets the furthest, overall, per class, per spec, etc.
As you progress and reach new levels, things get harder. You come across cool treasures, giving you lore, cosmetics, etc.
It’s very important that this feels fresh and fun, with immersive environments, a bunch of random events, and cool rewards. It’s perfectly fine if you can only enter once a week (or per day)
Some levels should just be puzzles, some should be challenging fights, and some might just be events. For example, you could stumble into a small skirmish between a group of friendly explorers and some nasty critters.
What about you, got any ideas on how to improve the gameplay loop in WoW?
You’re basically suggesting to turn torghast into a D3 greater rift because it’s less repetitive than farming SBG M+ or the same 8 raid bosses?
To add my 2 cents, I think the only way to add significant replay value to end-game PvE is through alts.
If you add open end content like M+, AP grind or endless thorghast, some will complain about it being too long, others about being too short. But with alts, each player can regulate it for themselves how many times they want to see the same content.
So the real question is how many alts do people have, and why those who only have a main don’t play alts.
A Thorgast-life System is what i have in mind too, But, Upgraded:
Make different kinds of these levels: 1 Themed around exploring Caves with the Dragonscale expedition, discovering artifacts, defeating enemyes and completing puzzles! (Levers: Buttons Sequences, and so on) or 1 Themed around the Bronze dragonflight clearing the timelines, where you need to kill mobs and put objects back into place that changes each time you go in: you might experience the War of the Shifting Sands, the Invasion of the Horde during the Dark Portal… Or the Futures we might have faced if N’zoth Won in BFA, or if We wouldn’t have defeated the legion…
Or, another idea would be:
Tuskarr Fishing Sessions where you join a tuskarr boat either alone or in a group and travel around the sea. Fish Lunkers using an Harpoon, Throw Nets to Fishes and fight giant sea Monsters with unique mechanics, and at the end return home.
Bring in Torghast the way they promised at the start of Shadowlands.
Remove the timer in M+
More content, more dungeons, more timewalking, more cosmetic rewards like the trading post.
Copy Destiny 2s infusion system and let us upgrade every trinket we wish to keep using (this would increase the variety of playstyles by a lot, since you then can build around trinkets instead of patches…)
Give more drops in Raids/M+/rated PvP in general (we shouldn’t rely on the vault to get stuff with better chances)
Remove all seasonal caps for currencies like Valor and Glory. We should be able to collect as much as we want and only have our count reset every season (so we can’t upgrade instantly to max level and such when a new season starts)
Make the endgame activity music BETTER by using actual combat-timed music systems.
That means, have music that actively progresses during encounters based on Boss HP% (edit: or encounter casts)
Have those music tracks start with Tension, then Action, then High Action, then Last Stand parts in Raids.
Have those music tracks start with Tension, then Action, then High Action parts in Dungeons.
And just as a sidenote, even Skyrim managed to have MULTIPLE fitting tracks for combat encounters in the game, yet SOMEHOW WoW doesn’t have a regular combat theme at all for indication you are in a fight in general.
Even having it as optional checkbox-setting would do a lot to contribute to the game.
2s, 3s and rbgs need SEPARATED rewards. Other than that I am very happy with Solo Shuffle. This has provided more incentive for me to play this game on an endgame character than anything else in many years. Before that point I just leveled new characters.
I know a lot of people like to pretend PvP isn’t a thing in WoW that anyone cares about, but those of us who do, really do care and that’s why something small like SoloQ actually came as a big addition for us.
It’s just to say I’m pretty content with the current gameplay loop, but obviously it could use a lot of work still, especially for grouped pvp.
I was kind of hoping Island Expeditions and Torghast would have been something like this.
Islands were ruined by forced grouping. Torghast worked better here. I could solo it or if any of my friends were online I could shoose to group with how ever many there were on.
Torghast was ruined by the timer and scoring system.
Visions were ruined by needing to farm a currency and not having variable difficulty levels.
Mage Tower was ruined by being time limited and lack of difficulty levels.
Having this be for Achievements and some cosmetics is a good idea.
Some of the achievement could be like Ahead of the Curve in that they would prove you reached a certain level of difficulty during a specific patch. These achievements can be retired like the raid ones. Leave the content and the comestics to be farmed for years after like raids.
The Torghast based idea is what I have in mind as well, but used to replace M+ completely.
Endless iteration, every patch brings new “rooms”, enemies, Bosses, modifiers and affixes. Can be themed after anything in the game: Titan, Fel, void, Light, primal, dragon, beasts, trad horde, alliance, scourge, forsaken… Mix them, match them, randomize them, experiment with different affixes.
Essentially an ARPG element to the game.
As for dungeons themselves, they can return on being cool, story telling instances, with mysteries, puzzles to solves, cinematics etc.
Far wider variety of content to get relevant gear. Would make it a far more diverse’ far more accessible game for everyone.
Actual relevant solo content that compars to m+ or raids when it comes to gearing up.
I don’t understand the stigma that mmorpg = forced grouped content. WoW is the only game where forced grouped content is so heavily implemented. A shared world doesn’t mean everything has to be forced grouped content only.
I’m hoping for relevant solo content ever since i started in Cata. We got our fair share of solo content, just not relevant the slightest. I absolutely loved mage tower, visions, torghast etc, if only they would have been genuinely relevant and on par with raiding/m+. My personal idea would be specially designed dungeons/raids that scale from 1-5 players.
yeah i need to agree. ESO do endgame sooo nice its heartbreaking
they have:
whole world scaled = imagine if you would go hunt this legion trinket and be viable in current content, wouldnt that be a thing ?
3 factions (wow has 2) quests SHARED between all characters = imagine if you could go rogue in wow or swear loyality and go pump those alliance quests
24/7 cyrodil battleground = imagine if you have something like warfronts (what a joke it was) but actually BIG and fight 24/7 with current content rewards and god weapons droping ocasionaly like thunderfury
an actual solo trials that reward you of items from current content cause you prove yourself solo
yeah the list is long and the wow is empty af
its shallow and worthless game (worthless cause eso is f2p. u pay here money for dissapointment)
I’d partially revert back to MoP era of having weekly currency. When they removed that is when I stopped enjoying the endgame and it’s why I play FFXIV because I can work towards something casually each week without needing to worry about higher end content and meta tryhards.
I say partially because I think Mythic+ is fine for those who enjoy it and you don’t necessarily have remove things to add things.
