Dragonflight Season 1 Could Have Been Planned Better. Here's How - Feedback

Now that we have an idea of how Blizzard and the WoW team loosens restrictions after the early season rush, it's time for some feedback on how it can be done better. With a focus on gradual, consistent and reliable unlocks, I have an idea to share.

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#warcraft #dragonflight

[jccouture]

I honestly prefer the pacing of dragonflight more than any other expansion. There is a ton to do, I don't feel forced to grind 24/7 to feel like I'm progressing or that my time is well spent. The one thing that made me quit in previous expansions is the content that feels like it's mandatory just to keep pace. The drip method of keeping everyone at least relatively close no matter how they choose to enjoy the game has been an amazing improvement. I still have great pieces from raid, but I can fill missing spots with awesome crafted stuff or upgraded dungeon pieces. My alts can get decked out quickly through LFR and crafted gear. But I'm not getting that feeling of "I need to spend 3 hours a day grinding x mob for shards to upgrade some item / rep or end up forever behind." That's an incredibly important feeling to eliminate from the game for far more people than the super sweats that want all BiS week one.

[michaelr]

I Love that they actually make things take time. There are a lot of no-life andy's who want everything to be available at the start because they play 7 days a week. However, for people like me who can play 2-3 times a week, I was able to maintain keeping competitive with those players because they outgear me to the moon. I prefer having weekly quests vs daily quests and I prefer them staggering things to prevent spikes in hardcore players powers so that casual people don't get hit with 400 GS Requirements to do Normal Raids second week in.

[ArtiHS]

The capped portion of the season seems to be a guardrail for burnout that works pretty well.

I just hit 415 today and have always felt like each piece of content that I'm doing helps me get a step closer to my complete toon.

If I had been able to blast through week 1, then I would have, but I would have been bored pretty soon after.

The unlocking of caps feels like when a game goes from seasonal (competitive) to more of an off-season free for all.

You get to gear alts at any pace you want, it doesn't disrupt anything and you are really just getting ready for season/raid 2.

[ShadowsOfThePast]

All I want is profession knowledge catch-up..!! So I can grind a profession on alts the whole weekend if I feel like I wanna make up for all the lost progress during week.

[Zwow]

Honestly I think the cadence was fine for the most part sparks should have probably rolled out a bit faster maybe weekly or having tradable primal chaos at the start of week 2 for a 1 to 1 ratio. Then have the spark detection unlock after week 5 for main and alts where you are able to earn one spark a week from the weekly activities, one m+, or raid boss kill and have it store stacks so that even missing a week you are still able to earn multiple in a single week. The sparks rolling out slowly caused major problems with the professions and heavily punished people in the first few weeks of the new crafting system being a detriment to leveling their professions and causing crazy amounts of degeneracy where people were paying others to have people send them work orders to level professions.

The catalyst probably also should have released week 3 after the start of the season 1 (week 6 of expac) would have been very helpful to people who have been sitting on 1 piece of tier or 3 piece of tier after grinding raid for 3 weeks or have been very unlucky in vault. It wouldn't interfere with the race as by week 3 the race is almost done or is done. It would also still be early enough where many open world casuals to try out their tier even just the 2 piece. Would act like a better bad luck protection for players but also organized groups trying to push/clear content who are more casual.

For valor cap I understand the notion of wanting to cap it in the early weeks so there is a relative closeness between those who no life the game and those who casually play it but I feel as though people don't really consider the players in between who have more time to play than the average person but not enough time to no life the content. For those kinds of players the valor cap just hurts them mainly, since they want to play the game but feel like its useless to play. Since they can't upgrade their gear to push higher content since its very expensive on valor and every little upgrade helps them. So they would rather just do like a weekly key or try to pug early bosses to get lucky on the vault instead of engaging with the valor system since it feels like crap to upgrade your gear and then replace it with the vault 3 days later. It also feels especially bad for players that play classes that use 2 handers where the required amount to upgrade is 1000 valor where if they upgrade more than one item a week they would have to wait 2 weeks to upgrade a weapon. The upgrades are also locked behind score mainly so if players are already gate kept for upgrading to a certain point why just make it worse feeling for more casual people. They could just increase the cap by 1500 per week until week 9 meaning people would be able to have 9k valor stored up which is a lot and then uncap at 10.0.5 . At least this way people wouldn't be as scared to spend their valor on minor upgrades for them and then proceed to as much degeneracy as they want.

[justanother]

I like how it was limited and uncapped now (from a casual raider up to heroic and mythic + up to 15+)

[kingoglow]

I do not see the point of delaying the full opening of LFR. LFR should be fully available at the same time as other difficulties. Delaying casuals for the sake of (the lower population of) normal+ raiders just doesn't make sense. Let the players (all of them) play.

If a player wants to go full sweaty and run all the difficulties, then let them. Players already run normal, some heroic and some mythic difficulty already. Why is that that more casual players can't run LFR and normal?

[Drager]

Tradable chaos probably should have been introduced with spark 3 imo. I agree with rest of the calendar changes you thought of.
The overall pacing for dragonflight has felt better than prior expansions which is a definite plus.

[luckyskaven]

Here's a brainstorming idea: what if valor worked a bit like conquest does now.

Imagine the cap was way lower, and you spent a flat cost to convert an item to a "valor" version of itself, and that piece scaled up to the max ilvl your m+ rating allowed, and increases when your rating increases.

It would feel less bad to spend valor on pieces early in the season, and still allow a bit of gear targeting in ways that pvp and raid currently do.

But would also keep value in crafted gear and vault slots, since that gear scales higher.

[Dazerdude]

I like the proposed schedule a lot. I'd probably suggest moving catalyst charges up a week to offset them with spark acquisition. Alternating them would probably feel good to players and a slightly more even power progression.

I do wonder if there was some underlying technical problem to enabling the catalyst ahead of 10.0.5 which is why it arrived so late.

I'd also really like them to combine the M+ and Crafted upgrade currencies. It feels awkward to have enough Primal Focus for an upgrade, but not Valor (and vice versa). If we're just wishing for things, I really don't see why we can't also have an upgrade path for raid gear too (again, hopefully with a combined system).

[rythology]

I don't mind the Valor cap all the much if only they made all items cost the same amount of valor to upgrade. As a fury warrior i need to spend 1k valor to upgrade one of my 2 2handed weapons yet the weekly cap of valor is not even 1k. Meanwhile I can upgrade my wrists 3 times a week because they only cost 250 valor. So often I am just upgrade 2-3 different pieces of gear instead of waiting 2 weeks to upgrade one of my 2 2handed weapons.

[GamingNormaly]

I think the caps should had been higher early on and the increase of 750(?) per week is kinda weak imo. Start at 5k, increased 2k every week, uncapped after 8 weeks? If you wanna frisk you can grind but there is a cap...but it's high.

Catalyst could had been locked behind the mythic world first kill to make that event a bit "cooler".

Buy sparks+chaos for the vault currency or Valor/Conquest?

Would love some account wide Valor.

[Shishakind]

The valor cap at 750 does not fit with how many dungeons you'll run for the vault because I always reach the cap after the first 2-3 dungeons I do after the weekly reset. It's like getting your valor points almost instant and then continue to grind a lot more dungeons for vault, pushing, etc. I feel like at least raising the cap significantly (dunno, to around 2000?) would suit it much better.

[voodoo]

I personally think tier should start being craftable after a month this leaves time for it to be more meaningful as a raid drop and not mess with the race to much but by 2 months in you should be able to reliably get/have 4 set on any character even you farm items and uses to make it.

Crafter gear I don't know I barely engaged with it and still barely understand it. I wasn't to interest in this expansion so I basically just did 1 m+ and raid logged since the start. I did start using it on my new main tho and really love the idea that you can get mythic items with stats you care about instead of being fucked by what blizzard decides are the right stats this season on gear.

I really think valor needs to be completely revamped because it should be part of your item progression after you gain score and not be punished if you don't understand you should basically hoard your valor until you get something from something over a 14 or you are blowing a limited resource. If you drop your bis item in your first key of the season you shouldn't be punished for wanting to level that up a long your during and not refarm one every 5 key levels. Also feels pretty bad helping people out in low keys to have an item drop you need but it is so far down the ilvl path you can't even consider valoring it. Lastly think getting a hard cut off on your resource gathering after 4-5 instances is pretty lame. I think either keep valor cap (kind of) but make it so you get x amount super quick each week then get a heavy DR for the more you grind after that or a better system I think would be to make it so valor allows you to target an item for upgrade but justice drops each instance and allows you to upgrade it from a 1 to cap. Think of it like the crafting this where we get say 1 item a week we can hit as upgradable and you build up 1 charge each week for catch up. Remove the cap after 2-3 months.

[arlannotness]

Soul something I think Blizzard is attempting to balance factual negative player behavior. I’m not referring to players willing to grind it out asap vs those that play less and take in the content at a moderate pace. The in game impact being one equally skilled player not being what is essentially over geared for the content vs a player being properly geared but other players declining them from said participation leaving them in a unchallenging level of content because of their present low raising. Hopefully that made since. Really enjoyed the video and agree with your ideas. There certainly is nothing wrong with attempting and encouraging Bliz to attempt different approaches. They undoubtedly got a few releases during this season wrong. Hope you keep driving healthy discussions about the game I know I’d love to chat with you sometime if that was ever a possibility.

[mikeoldes]

Bonus valor for helping noobs should not count toward cap. Give high end players a carrot to help the lower io folks

[brosirs]

I'm the kind of person that would like characters to be done in 4-8 weeks, and then play a lot of alts, so speeding things up like this does appeal to me. I don't want it all immediately, or to have everything for nothing, but a faster curve to completion is a positive thing.

A big barrier for me in DF has been the crafting, or more specifically the work order system. I don't like it, so I won't use it, even if it hinders me to avoid it. I'd rather send Blizz the metrics that it's convoluted and unappealing, than I would to just put up with it. Let crafters put items straight on the AH, have sparks make them usable.

[nighttraintv]

From my experience and what I have observed from my more casual friends, group loot might be a failed experiment. Pugs/LFR/any group that doesn't have consistent attendance are hurt by group loot. In personal loot people would at least consistently get some loot from a raid clear, due to the bad luck protections, and have a chance to get traded something if others didn't need. With group loot people are going weeks without real upgrades or tier due to there being no protection from having bad luck in your rolls. I think personal loot with some sort of relaxed trading rules, from what was in place during SL would do wonders and possibly reduce the need to bring the catalyst out much earlier. In general I think your proposal makes a lot of sense, the larger scaling of valor would be nice especially for two handed weapon users. I think the catalyst should come out week 4 of a season and then every week after. Everything being max 6-8 weeks sounds great and I can't wait for cross faction guilds so there is no argument in my mind to not have cross faction from the start.

[rvrbsul]

As someone who has only done LFR for the last few tiers now, it really sucks waiting 8 weeks to know the story. I either have to accept it being spoiled or just not watch anything for that time period. Shadowlands made that worse by giving storyline that happened AFTER Anduin's fight in the raid but BEFORE LFR released the Anduin fight. So for a player like me, Anduin just showed up in town one day being unpossessed all of the sudden. It just doesn't make sense to be locked back when it contains main story elements. No Mythic or Heroic raider is going to be wasting time in an LFR group doing split-runs.

[mark]

Honestly the only changes that I feel like should have happened is LFR all opening it once. And the creation catalyst opening two weeks earlier. Everyone's panicking about their item level without realizing that we still have months left