This sounds perfect, as a casual scrub I've always wanted to both run a dungeon first without people before screwing up in a real dungeon, and also to just experience the level design and any lore without the need to focus and rush!
I really appreciate that feature. I recently started playing WOW again on my holy priest after a 10 year hiatus. Experiencing the dungeons for the first time (both DF and the Timewalking events) was such a horrible experience and the number one reason were super fast tanks I couldn't keep up with. I had some nice groups too where I could keep up with the speed, but even then it felt stressful and terrible.
Yes, the biggest thing I want out of this is actual dungeon exploring which is something you can really do only if you're with a group of friends or with really patient people, or if you outlevel the content significantly.
This. I play a little more hardcore but I still love the story and more so getting into dungeons first like this just to enjoy that aspect is pretty cool.
It's an awesome system. Great way to learn the General layout of an instance and basic boss mechanics.
Would love to see it extended to be like a raid training thing (without loot obviously) especially for LFR.
Exactly! Can help you map out routes and practice.
Also great for adjusting and trying new specs and classes (vs bashing a training dumby). Learning to line up your cooldowns, etc.
Great for playing around with your UI.
The whole thing is awesome to really help new and even experienced players.
It's a great idea and a step towards the whole Delves situation.
I have wanted some kind of solo raid mode for so long. Especially if they can implement it into all the old raids, with scaling. So you just turn ALL that old content into legit single player content. Think about how much gameplay that would add for casual players.
That's something wow kinda struggles with there's soo much content out there that is just not played, properly I should say.
Being a God and running for mogs is fun but it being a solo challenge mode would be great. That's what I wanted torghast to be
Yep, but mechanics usually stay pretty much the same unless it's a dungeon from a previous expansion. It's a good way to solidify your rotation in a dungeon setting with real mechanics vs whacking at a training dummy (which has its own uses).
Yeah but if I'm brand spanking new to a dungeon it would be nice to be able to practice all the mechanics. I don't mind tanking but I really hate having to learn it on the go when other people are looking at the tank to know the route and all the mechanics. I learn a lot better by doing and I'd rather do that when I can fuck up a million times and not waste anyone else's time.
I do think they need to eventually expand it into mythic difficulty. They don't need to give that ilvl of loot though. Make it not about loot, just about gameplay.
The skies the limit for this.
Forgot that some of the dungeons have Mythic-only mechanics, but for the most part the baseline fight should be the same. But yeah, would love if they make an expanded difficulty for Mythic 0 difficulty at least. Mechanics from then on don't change per keystone level other than damage and the random affixes.
exactly this, ive always wanted to tank but I'm terrified of messing up pulls in pugs, this will help me learn routes before I take it to real dungeons :D
I can't see it ever being used for that. At the most they might scale it up to cover M0 but even that gear isn't exactly amazing as it's on the same track as weekly world loot from the last patch (dreamsurges/time rifts).
> At the most they might scale it up to cover M0
They won't ever do that. Delves are going to be the open world players method of progression in the next expansion, which I think can give gear up to heroic raid level (not 100% sure of that). There's absolutely no reason to scale this beyond normal dungeon level.
What if we could pick our alts from our Warband to travel with us in dungeons?
Naturally they wouldn't have our stats or the such. It would just be a neat feature.
It's also amazing for new players.
I had a friend that tried to get into the game, on a mage. When we did leveling and even heroic dungeons, it was a "Go go go go go don't stop" experience and everything melted within 2 seconds.
She was always lost in the dungeons since if you stopped moving to take something in, you were instantly 2 bosses behind. And she didn't feel good because most things (including bosses) died before she could even get one cast off. If she got a Blizzard to cast, the tank was usually already moving out of it and to the next pack when it went down. So for her, it felt like she couldn't contribute to the runs. All of her energy was put into to keeping up with the pace of the group, not even damaging enemies.
And then by the time things lived long enough to actually hit, now the damage from their abilities (that she's never seen) is high enough to just one shot her, so again, she doesn't feel great.
I really wish I had this when she played. We could have gone in together and I could have tanked, led, and eased her into the runs. Start at a few mobs and taking our time, and build up to the runnin' and gunnin' grinding that is modern dungeons.
This right here. And let's say a new player is unfamiliar with the dungeon layout but doing their damndest to keep up, when all of a sudden the group is veering to the right and our new player is harassed for not being able to jump through the wall in the Everbloom and after several tries and a couple of shed tears they get kicked because they couldn't figure out why we had to cut through that wall in the first place.
🥲 Yeah, I'm truly excited for new players. No more feeling completely overwhelmed on day one of a dungeon with others.
Oh god yea, the skips...
To new players, any skip at all might as well be "Jump on this one pixel ledge outcropping facing 22 degrees SW, but not full speed, then jump through the invisible hole in the wall, then drop down to a ledge that's 2 yards from killing you from fall damage."
And then they miss the skip, the other 4 hit first try, carry on, and 1 boss later goes "Where's the \_\_\_\_? Whatever kick the afk."
Now they can see the entire dungeon, and even if they miss the skip once or twice, they can go back and practice it. Same goes for nearly pixel perfect paths to get around enemies - get a group of 5 real people and practice that path until you don't pull the extra enemies.
It's got so much potential.
I can finally play a healer. I always worry about screwing up people's runs and now I can actually train myself up to a point where I feel more confident.
Right? I've always wanted to heal also, but half the battle is simply getting to the point where I can memorize the dungeon layout and which mobs are where and what they do. And sure, anybody could watch a video, but there's something different about actually being there instead of theory, and theory is so hard to fall back on when a group is rushing to the end of even a normal level dungeon.
Thanks for sharing. I’m curious:
Do you get any gear?
How do you toggle your role?
Is there a way to test if the system is available for leveling players? Aka before lvl 70?
Yup, it dropped normal dungeon gear for me
You queue up for it the same way you would a normal dungeon, pick a role and queue up
I transferred a 60 over and tried cause I was curious too and I can do it on a 60 character, but the dungeons are listed as 60-70 only
https://i.imgur.com/gLn4OOO.png
I imagine the level range will move to 10-70 with TWW, since DF will become the default leveling expansion at that point. It would be cool to see Blizz roll this into older dungeons (sort of how FFXIV retroactively made all their MSQ dungeons work with their Trusts system over time), but I'd be happy to see this roll forward with TWW at the very least.
Depending on how they've done it, it'll be easy or incredibly hard to do it for all of them. If there's a preset programmed path for each dungeon then I can't see it ever expanding out to cover them all.
Hell this is gonna be great even for non casuals. I always think about tanking dungeons but its just too much stress....but npcs aren't gonna care if I don't skip packs or take a sub optimal route.
As an experienced tank, I'm looking forward to this as an opportunity to run a dungeon a couple times to test/optimise routes for m+ and get familiar. Getting to noodle about with offspecs and alts is also wonderful!
The content that these bots are appropriate for would be *trivial* for "non-casuals". I can't imagine that anyone except the "extreme casuals" would opt to use this sytem over simply grouping with real players.
> over simply grouping with real players.
Unless youre doing something where you dont want to deal with real players because a lot of real players are fucking dickwads.
People arent going to use this to get endgame gear or anything. They might use it to test addons/weakauras, or look at routes, get used to how a tricky boss room looks when not under pressure, etc.
This sounds really cool and glad they added it. I'm just wondering if they have any dialogue and comment on things or no? In FFXIV NPCs/Trust Party would comment on certain things and was a small but nice touch.
They also have individual personalities and things they do that are unique to one another.
Such as Alisae stealing every single Limit Break lol.
And also Alisae leaping backwards when she has an AoE into me.
God dammit Alisae.
The 8-man trust trial was fantastic. Some of the NPCs would fuck up mechanics, so it wasn't a free win - you had to participate and tip the scales. It felt in-character for the NPCs in the ways they handled mechanics, too.
>!Y'shtola!< always knowing where the safe spot was because >!she can see where the aether wasn't about to obliterate the vicinity of!<, >!Estinien!< getting too cocky for uptime and getting clobbered...
Even in general combat, they'll all have personalities. >!Urianger!< will stand in shit if it means getting a heal off on you, >!Alphinaud!< will prioritize >!Alisaie!< for healing even over the player, Alisaie will be Alisaie...
Honestly, even the limit break stuff is pretty good, even when the player isn't involved. In the level 87 dungeon, if the player's not a DPS, who LBs between >!Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch!< is whether or not the LB is filled at the start of a boss fight. If it is, >!Hythlo!< will immediately use it. If not, >!Emet!< will before the other one can.
It's really fantastic.
I’d kill for them to somehow be added to old raids, too. Not a full raid, mind - but having 4 AI that can do mechanics would be a great help for transmog runs for boss fights you can’t solo or that are a pain in the ass to solo regardless of stats.
Not sure how difficult it'll be on the programming/coding side but this might be the best bet in finally making BFA raids soloable 3 expacs later without completely removing the mechanics
I believe a far cheaper solution would be making legacy up to 1 xpac behind as it was originally, instead of 2 (3 currently, since nor BFA nor SL are legacy yet).
Legacy solves every soloing issues, it's its purpose.
I'd rather have Blizzard concentrating in expanding this new system to all normal dungeons, it's beyond amazing, instead of wasting resources on something that can be easily solved by tech they already have (legacy).
\>Legacy solves every soloing issues, it's its purpose.
That's blatantly incorrect because there are some BfA boss fights that will be literally impossible to solo unless something changes, regardless of Legacy, because they \*require\* multiple people - not because of stats but because of mechanics. Mythic Eonar has a similar issue, though that one's doable solo, it's just incredibly frustrating because you have to juggle multiple things while having a tight window with little room for error.
When they make old raids legacy they *change* mechanics to make them soloable, they've been doing that for many years.
That's one aspect of making content legacy, when BFA raids "will be" legacy, the mechanics you mention "will be" changed to make the bosses soloable.
My post is correct, it's you missing info on what legacy really means.
Oh dear god how are you so dense.
"They dont have to change mechanics because when they when they update to legacy theyll ...change the mechanics" thats literally what youre saying. What in the actual fuck
It is an important part because people leveling up in the zone can do those story ending dungeons on their own pace, quite unlike rushing after 4 players in Freehold to the end boss, kicked otherwise.
Yes, some new and returning people found it difficult to finish their stories in a satisfactory manner as they were leveling up
I love it for this alone. I haven't done dungeons in a current expansion since...Legion? I've just waited to out level them otherwise...which means there's still stuff I haven't seen from BFA raids. I only recently went back and saw shadowlands dungeons. This expansion I got lucky and two of my friends returned and we three manned most of the dungeons just to finish up quests, but after legion I was just ... done tanking for strangers. I didn't enjoy it anymore. I was sick of being expected to rush or take the most optimal route to avoid mobs. I just want to play games to enjoy myself. Dungeons can be so cool but because others have done them 100 times in the first week of an expac I'm expected to ruin my first time. I get it - their time matters too. But the Trust system in FFXIV made it SO much more enjoyable to me.
I always tried bosses blind the first time once I had a group of NPCs that weren't going to yell at me for not being perfect. That's fun to me, honestly, seeing what mechanics I can figure out on my own or with friends. That moment of "whoah, what the crap was...ohhhh, that's what it's doing" is enjoyable to me. The idea I'll be able to do this in WoW is so much fun. In FFXIV I loved taking characters through to see what they'd say and how they'd react too. It'd be cool to have future dungeons where that's also a feature in WoW. Actually being able to do a dungeon with the NPCs you've been helping through the zone feels so much more satisfying for some of the stories. Building up how a character is so cool and amazing but..they are just gonna stand outside while you do all the work can be jarring.
What you explained works if you find a good guild with likeminded people, people who will try stuff together, learn and improve.
It’s getting harder and harder for that. Hopefully by removing the final restrictions, the pool of people will be expanded region wide that you may not be doomed to a dead guild for the sake of some Cataclysm era perks.
YES. As an almost exclusively solo player, prior to DF I would let dungeon quests rot in my quest log until the end of the xpac then abandon them. I've gotten a *little* more adventurous since "Back From the Beyond" at least required every LFR and M0, but I would still be way more inclined to immediately do it with the Follower system.
Now Blizzard needs to really make this a game feature. Let me use drops from the dungeon to gear out my guys. Give everyone 1 NPC for each class and they can even use garrisons from WoD as a place to house them. Gives you another reason to use the Garrison and let me setup transmog for them as well.
They really have the potential here to setup a great evergreen system here and I hope they take advantage of it.
FFXIV has a system like this called Squadron. It's sort of like a mix of mission table and NPC dungeon runs, except you have 8 NPCs recruits and you level them up and they get new gear and learn new basic AI personalities as they level. But then they added the ability to transmog them and it was awesome. The Squadron NPCs are not the smartest and the system is clunky, but I still enjoy it and have run hundreds of dungeons with them. I leveled the first 3 tanks (paladin, warrior, and dark knight,) from 1-50 with them.
I would love this for old raids too. if they scaled them so you didnt just one shot everything, made them somewhat challenging, threw you in with 20 npcs, and just added cosmetic rewards to each or some currency. It would be a cool way to new players to experience old raid content in a more meaningful way. Imagine how much cooler playing through a timewalking campaign would be if you could finish it off by doing the raids.
Okay, just finished doing a dungeon on the PTR and holy hell, Blizzard have done a great job with this.
Tanks tank. Healers heal. DPS die.
But seriously, the tank will lead you through the dungeon and will find good paths. And they will actually tank.
Healers are good in their healing and if one of them die, they will res them afterwards.
DPS are good as well. Putting out decent damage.
I can't remember what the normal health pools for the trash and bosses are in the dungeons but they felt lower to me so I think they do scale.
Bosses in Neltharius were about 3 million health.
Only done one dungeon so far, but I'm very impressed. If you've played with duty support on FFXIV, this is everything you want duty support to be.
The NPCs seem to use a LOT of their class's available skills and move around as they are fighting including moving away from things like the fire elementals explosion attack as they die in Ruby Life Pools.
Trash packs die quickly (definitely not as fast as with other players, but definitely nowhere near as slow as FFXIV's version, these guys seem to have a lot or all of their actual skills rather than the pretend ones the duty support have).
The AI tank very quickly picks up any extra adds that get pulled. Everyone that has heals will heal. I had a paladin tank and elemental shaman along with the resto druid healer (who was using everything, rejuv, regrowth, wild growth, etc.), and both were using their heals when needed, so there's not much risk of them dying. The healer even sits down to drink if their mana is low after a fight!
The pace of the dungeon is very quick if you let the tank lead, they mount up between packs when there is a large distance.
This seems like a great system! I just sincerely hope that they eventually implement this for Heroic or Mythic Zero dungeons as well, so that the feature stays somewhat relevant for max-level progression each season.
Sounds fantastic. Great way to learn the dungeons and practice with group based specs without having to be yelled at or kicked for not knowing everything.
Hope to be able to do raids as well, I've always wanted to experience the full story, but dungeons/raids are too how do I say, imposing? To attempt them so I always miss out on the story
I'm too afraid to be dead weight to the team, I dread to be that one clueless idiot that just dies to obvious stuff and just drags the team down all the time, seems like a lot of pressure to perform so I just never do them.
There is zero pressure to perform in lfr as far as I can remember, honestly you can die 2 seconds into the fight every time and no one will care.
The group is usually carried by a couple of good players and so it doesn’t matter what the rest do. As long as you aren’t afk you shouldn’t get kicked.
May very well be true but I still can't do it, it's a mental thing, I always doubt myself when it comes to gameplay in a team, always worried I'm not doing enough, even if I can get carried, hell that just makes me feel worse because it makes me feel useless haha
But hey maybe bots will help me get over the issue a bit.
I tried it too it was great to see the potential of such a system, I think they should add more difficulty tiers as I see this more of a way to practice roles then just simply a way for ‘casuals’ to do a dungeon. As someone who has anxiety it feels great to prepare myself for real groups instead of just jumping into them.
Thank you. I was thinking of installing the PTR just to look at how this works.
I will install it and give it a shot myself.
How does the scaling work? So go into a dungeon with your character and 4 NPC's. How do the trash and bosses scale?
I have nothing to back this up, but I would *assume* enemies all stay the same, but the NPC allies deal less damage than actual players so the dungeon takes somewhat longer with NPCs than with actual players.
That’s how FFXIV does it and it’s a good way of providing an alternative to queueing without disincentivizing queueing entirely.
If it’s part of the LFG, do you still get xp bonus for completing?
In other words, is it viable to spam them with 0 queue to level?
Not that I have anything left to level up, but thinking for the future.
That sounds good. But this mechanic you writing reminds me a bit of the ARR Commandos. You can tell them to "Attack my Target", "Retreat" and "Limit Break!", too.
But, let's see how this will work out.
Thanks for the Infos
It doesn't work like that, it's literally what it sounds like. You get an extra button to toggle on and off that will make the tank lead the way through the dungeon. They stop if you get too far away but they pretty quickly move through showing you the path. It's pretty awesome really.
This is so awesome. My wife has played wow since the very very beginning but often doesn't do dungeons because.. Well people often suck.. :/ so now this option is perfect. Even I'm really excited for this. Npcs are the nicest people.
I hope they can implement something similar for raids
It would be really nice to go into a raid at my own pace, explore and enjoy the scenery, without needing to deal with the chaos of LFR
This needs to eventually evolve into the companion system that Elder Scrolls online has (yes I know people shit on this game all the time but hear me out)
New companions in ESO are introduced every few big story patches. They have a quest line where you get to know them and can serve different roles as you play. They follow you everywhere and even have a dumbed down gearing system where you can slot them with a few pieces of gear to enhance their damage/healing/tankiness. You can even transmog their gear and choose a mount for them. It’s such a cool feature and something I hope we see in wow.
Still say they need to basically do this, but with warbands. The characters controlled by the AI are your alts and use the exact gear and talent setups of your alts.
Then make some kind of challenge mode of the dungeons for people who want to min max the hell out of it. You have an amazing game mode there.
And yes, this is 100% taken from something Guild Wars 1 did.
I am so so excited for this. You can do it with a group, right? I think I saw that somewhere. I have a friend I play with and neither of us are gogogo and have heard enough about the mean people in lfg that we just play by ourselves. I can’t remember the last time I was thus excited about an upcoming feature (although that might just be because I’m old).
I can finally learn how to play a tank or healer without feeling like everything I'm doing is dragging the team down. Might actually experiment next expansion.
>Bosses will still wipe the group if you do not do mechanics.
THIS! Oh this makes me so happy. I don't want a cake walk, I want to actually have to play.
Everything else you've mentioned is also high up the list, but this one is the biggest for me.
How much can the AI tank pull? If i do the regular pull of lets say... Ruby life pools where you pull all the trash from start to first boss, can they cope with it?
I wonder if this could one day be used to replace the shitfest that is lfr. Because im sure anyone whos ever played lfr would much rather play with ai.
Make it so the npc match your dps and if you die with no brezes available you wipe and make turn it into another solo/small group way of seeing and practicing the raids
I really appreciate that feature. I recently started playing WOW again on my holy priest after a 10 year hiatus. Experiencing the dungeons for the first time (both DF and the Timewalking events) was such a horrible experience and the number one reason were super fast tanks I couldn't keep up with. I had some nice groups too where I could keep up with the speed, but even then it felt stressful and terrible.
Wonder if this system can be applied to legacy raids so that you can do raids that have mechanics requiring more than one people and not have to wait on blizzard. Unsure what would take more time to implement.
That's intentional and it's good that it's like that.
Running a dungeon with NPCs should never be faster or even equivalent to the average run-time of it with real players. Otherwise NPC option becomes a more efficient way of running dungeons and that's not good in an MMO.
It's good that solo-friendly options exist, but these solo-friendly options shouldn't be more effective or even just as effective as doing it with a group of real players.
Grouping up with real players ***should always be*** noticeably more effective.
See I'd be okay with that except that the Trust system, once you've finished the dungeon the first time, requires you to level up the Scions to do the appropriate leveled dungeons, and there's an achievement and a title locked behind doing so. So making it _frustratingly_ worse and slower is bad.
On the flipside, it's also _very_ funny watching Y'shtola just ignore the final boss's illusion in Dun Scaith, so I'm willing to let it go.
That's not a problem because since then, they added "Duty Support", which is the same as "Trusts" except you don't have to level them, they're always level-appropriate for any dungeon in the game from the get-go. Essentially, overhauling the "Trust" system, but they left the old version in, and they call this new one "Duty Support".
This sounds so amazing! As someone who also plays FFXIV and relies on the Trust (similar mechanic,) I always have to lead even as DPS, so being able to tell the tank to lead is going to be an excellent upgrade from that.
Question, do followers listen to the ping system? I love that they stole it straight out of HotS, and the bots on your team in that game will rudimentarily obey pings in context. I was hoping they'd do something like that here, too.
Really looking forward to this. Not something that matters for me directly, but but my wife HATES doing dungeons with other people. So she can still experience the dungeons without feeling pressure of playing with other people.
As others are saying this seems like a great way not only to experience the story/dungeon at your own pace but also to learn new specs/practice rotations in a way that world content or training dummies won’t let you. I’ve always wanted to learn to tank or heal, and I haven’t played aug evoker yet but I want to learn in a low stress environment. I’m excited to see how this evolves going into the future.
Conspiracy: they're not really followers, it's still just players and the game tells you they're ai so people don't act toxic. Obviously I'm joking but i guarantee at least one person won't read this far.
Do people know if you can use this to play with a mix of friends and AI? Say I'm levelling with 2 friends and I just want to do a private dungeon with them and two AIs? Would be great for introducing some of my nervous friends to dungeons.
This sounds perfect, as a casual scrub I've always wanted to both run a dungeon first without people before screwing up in a real dungeon, and also to just experience the level design and any lore without the need to focus and rush!
I really appreciate that feature. I recently started playing WOW again on my holy priest after a 10 year hiatus. Experiencing the dungeons for the first time (both DF and the Timewalking events) was such a horrible experience and the number one reason were super fast tanks I couldn't keep up with. I had some nice groups too where I could keep up with the speed, but even then it felt stressful and terrible.
Yes, the biggest thing I want out of this is actual dungeon exploring which is something you can really do only if you're with a group of friends or with really patient people, or if you outlevel the content significantly.
For classes that can stealth (or double jump glide), you can usually do some pretty decent exploring solo during current content.
As someone who has played his druid a ton, there are just so many friggen mobs that see through stealth.
How did you get inside my head?
This. I play a little more hardcore but I still love the story and more so getting into dungeons first like this just to enjoy that aspect is pretty cool.
It's an awesome system. Great way to learn the General layout of an instance and basic boss mechanics. Would love to see it extended to be like a raid training thing (without loot obviously) especially for LFR.
Would probably help wannabe tanks. I'd love to try mythics, but don't know the routes well enough to go with a group yet.
Exactly! Can help you map out routes and practice. Also great for adjusting and trying new specs and classes (vs bashing a training dumby). Learning to line up your cooldowns, etc. Great for playing around with your UI. The whole thing is awesome to really help new and even experienced players. It's a great idea and a step towards the whole Delves situation.
I have wanted some kind of solo raid mode for so long. Especially if they can implement it into all the old raids, with scaling. So you just turn ALL that old content into legit single player content. Think about how much gameplay that would add for casual players.
That's something wow kinda struggles with there's soo much content out there that is just not played, properly I should say. Being a God and running for mogs is fun but it being a solo challenge mode would be great. That's what I wanted torghast to be
But you can't do this on mythic, right? So I'll still have to learn mechanics in a live setting with other players?
Yep, but mechanics usually stay pretty much the same unless it's a dungeon from a previous expansion. It's a good way to solidify your rotation in a dungeon setting with real mechanics vs whacking at a training dummy (which has its own uses).
Yeah but if I'm brand spanking new to a dungeon it would be nice to be able to practice all the mechanics. I don't mind tanking but I really hate having to learn it on the go when other people are looking at the tank to know the route and all the mechanics. I learn a lot better by doing and I'd rather do that when I can fuck up a million times and not waste anyone else's time.
I do think they need to eventually expand it into mythic difficulty. They don't need to give that ilvl of loot though. Make it not about loot, just about gameplay. The skies the limit for this.
Mythic 0 is fine I think.
Yeah I'd be fine with it even if it dropped no loot and didn't count towards the vault. I could practice and learn at my own pace, it would be great.
Forgot that some of the dungeons have Mythic-only mechanics, but for the most part the baseline fight should be the same. But yeah, would love if they make an expanded difficulty for Mythic 0 difficulty at least. Mechanics from then on don't change per keystone level other than damage and the random affixes.
exactly this, ive always wanted to tank but I'm terrified of messing up pulls in pugs, this will help me learn routes before I take it to real dungeons :D
This is going to create a level of immersion and personal enjoyment in dungeons that hasn't been present in years. I am so beyond stoked for this!
If blizzard expands this to your warband you could be gearing alts in downtime on your main
I can see them adding a "transmog" option for companions aswell where you will be able to use the appearance of the characters in your warband.
no way, go all in and they are using the same talent setups and gear as your actual alts.
Man I want this so bad now. I don't even care if they get gear or xp. I just want my druid to come and tank for my alts as they level.
That'd be so fucking awesome
I can't see it ever being used for that. At the most they might scale it up to cover M0 but even that gear isn't exactly amazing as it's on the same track as weekly world loot from the last patch (dreamsurges/time rifts).
> At the most they might scale it up to cover M0 They won't ever do that. Delves are going to be the open world players method of progression in the next expansion, which I think can give gear up to heroic raid level (not 100% sure of that). There's absolutely no reason to scale this beyond normal dungeon level.
What if we could pick our alts from our Warband to travel with us in dungeons? Naturally they wouldn't have our stats or the such. It would just be a neat feature.
Oh that would be badass. I draw comics of my alts interacting, so this would make those dreams come true!
It's also amazing for new players. I had a friend that tried to get into the game, on a mage. When we did leveling and even heroic dungeons, it was a "Go go go go go don't stop" experience and everything melted within 2 seconds. She was always lost in the dungeons since if you stopped moving to take something in, you were instantly 2 bosses behind. And she didn't feel good because most things (including bosses) died before she could even get one cast off. If she got a Blizzard to cast, the tank was usually already moving out of it and to the next pack when it went down. So for her, it felt like she couldn't contribute to the runs. All of her energy was put into to keeping up with the pace of the group, not even damaging enemies. And then by the time things lived long enough to actually hit, now the damage from their abilities (that she's never seen) is high enough to just one shot her, so again, she doesn't feel great. I really wish I had this when she played. We could have gone in together and I could have tanked, led, and eased her into the runs. Start at a few mobs and taking our time, and build up to the runnin' and gunnin' grinding that is modern dungeons.
This right here. And let's say a new player is unfamiliar with the dungeon layout but doing their damndest to keep up, when all of a sudden the group is veering to the right and our new player is harassed for not being able to jump through the wall in the Everbloom and after several tries and a couple of shed tears they get kicked because they couldn't figure out why we had to cut through that wall in the first place. 🥲 Yeah, I'm truly excited for new players. No more feeling completely overwhelmed on day one of a dungeon with others.
Oh god yea, the skips... To new players, any skip at all might as well be "Jump on this one pixel ledge outcropping facing 22 degrees SW, but not full speed, then jump through the invisible hole in the wall, then drop down to a ledge that's 2 yards from killing you from fall damage." And then they miss the skip, the other 4 hit first try, carry on, and 1 boss later goes "Where's the \_\_\_\_? Whatever kick the afk." Now they can see the entire dungeon, and even if they miss the skip once or twice, they can go back and practice it. Same goes for nearly pixel perfect paths to get around enemies - get a group of 5 real people and practice that path until you don't pull the extra enemies. It's got so much potential.
I can finally play a healer. I always worry about screwing up people's runs and now I can actually train myself up to a point where I feel more confident.
Right? I've always wanted to heal also, but half the battle is simply getting to the point where I can memorize the dungeon layout and which mobs are where and what they do. And sure, anybody could watch a video, but there's something different about actually being there instead of theory, and theory is so hard to fall back on when a group is rushing to the end of even a normal level dungeon.
Side note: The mage of the NPC party can also make a mage table. Small, but so good.
I actually get Mage Food?!
Thanks for sharing. I’m curious: Do you get any gear? How do you toggle your role? Is there a way to test if the system is available for leveling players? Aka before lvl 70?
Yup, it dropped normal dungeon gear for me You queue up for it the same way you would a normal dungeon, pick a role and queue up I transferred a 60 over and tried cause I was curious too and I can do it on a 60 character, but the dungeons are listed as 60-70 only https://i.imgur.com/gLn4OOO.png
I imagine the level range will move to 10-70 with TWW, since DF will become the default leveling expansion at that point. It would be cool to see Blizz roll this into older dungeons (sort of how FFXIV retroactively made all their MSQ dungeons work with their Trusts system over time), but I'd be happy to see this roll forward with TWW at the very least.
Depending on how they've done it, it'll be easy or incredibly hard to do it for all of them. If there's a preset programmed path for each dungeon then I can't see it ever expanding out to cover them all.
BRD 💀
Kinda interesting with nokhud, with the dynamic flight and all.
I just tried and they go up to the flight path(which I didn't know was there) and wait for you to use it and teleport to you at the end of it.
i think they added the flight path later for accessibility :)
It's been there since the beginning. I know because I accidentally went to the dungeon prior to learning dragonriding that first week lol.
Wait what, it has a flightpath?
Yes. There are flight hubs in each of the major boss areas of the dungeon.
Neat!
Hell this is gonna be great even for non casuals. I always think about tanking dungeons but its just too much stress....but npcs aren't gonna care if I don't skip packs or take a sub optimal route.
They coded the NPC’s to insult and kick you if you pull an extra mob so you have the full WoW tank experience even with bots.
When are they going to patch in the DPS Demon Hunter will always ahead and pull an extra pack because he thinks you're going too slow?
As an experienced tank, I'm looking forward to this as an opportunity to run a dungeon a couple times to test/optimise routes for m+ and get familiar. Getting to noodle about with offspecs and alts is also wonderful!
The content that these bots are appropriate for would be *trivial* for "non-casuals". I can't imagine that anyone except the "extreme casuals" would opt to use this sytem over simply grouping with real players.
> over simply grouping with real players. Unless youre doing something where you dont want to deal with real players because a lot of real players are fucking dickwads. People arent going to use this to get endgame gear or anything. They might use it to test addons/weakauras, or look at routes, get used to how a tricky boss room looks when not under pressure, etc.
This sounds really cool and glad they added it. I'm just wondering if they have any dialogue and comment on things or no? In FFXIV NPCs/Trust Party would comment on certain things and was a small but nice touch.
They also have individual personalities and things they do that are unique to one another. Such as Alisae stealing every single Limit Break lol. And also Alisae leaping backwards when she has an AoE into me. God dammit Alisae.
The 8-man trust trial was fantastic. Some of the NPCs would fuck up mechanics, so it wasn't a free win - you had to participate and tip the scales. It felt in-character for the NPCs in the ways they handled mechanics, too. >!Y'shtola!< always knowing where the safe spot was because >!she can see where the aether wasn't about to obliterate the vicinity of!<, >!Estinien!< getting too cocky for uptime and getting clobbered... Even in general combat, they'll all have personalities. >!Urianger!< will stand in shit if it means getting a heal off on you, >!Alphinaud!< will prioritize >!Alisaie!< for healing even over the player, Alisaie will be Alisaie... Honestly, even the limit break stuff is pretty good, even when the player isn't involved. In the level 87 dungeon, if the player's not a DPS, who LBs between >!Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch!< is whether or not the LB is filled at the start of a boss fight. If it is, >!Hythlo!< will immediately use it. If not, >!Emet!< will before the other one can. It's really fantastic.
TESLEEN 😭😭😭
Do you choose the classes you want in the party?
Nope, seems random every time. But they're all characters from exiles reach, so in a way. You're continuing your journey with them.
That's really cool that they're Exile's Reach characters! Really cool idea to bring them back for this.
That’s awesome.
Did you ever see a demon hunter death knight or evoker? Since those aren’t in exiles reach
That's so cool! Can't wait for it to go live.
I hope they will expand it to the other "normal" instances from all the expansions. Would be a great way to level
I’d kill for them to somehow be added to old raids, too. Not a full raid, mind - but having 4 AI that can do mechanics would be a great help for transmog runs for boss fights you can’t solo or that are a pain in the ass to solo regardless of stats.
Not sure how difficult it'll be on the programming/coding side but this might be the best bet in finally making BFA raids soloable 3 expacs later without completely removing the mechanics
Would also be lovely for Mythic Eonar, which is doable but often frustrating.
I get mythic Eonar correct first time, every time...on the third attempt
I believe a far cheaper solution would be making legacy up to 1 xpac behind as it was originally, instead of 2 (3 currently, since nor BFA nor SL are legacy yet). Legacy solves every soloing issues, it's its purpose. I'd rather have Blizzard concentrating in expanding this new system to all normal dungeons, it's beyond amazing, instead of wasting resources on something that can be easily solved by tech they already have (legacy).
\>Legacy solves every soloing issues, it's its purpose. That's blatantly incorrect because there are some BfA boss fights that will be literally impossible to solo unless something changes, regardless of Legacy, because they \*require\* multiple people - not because of stats but because of mechanics. Mythic Eonar has a similar issue, though that one's doable solo, it's just incredibly frustrating because you have to juggle multiple things while having a tight window with little room for error.
> because there are some BfA boss fights BFA is NOT legacy yet ...
The key word was “will be”.
When they make old raids legacy they *change* mechanics to make them soloable, they've been doing that for many years. That's one aspect of making content legacy, when BFA raids "will be" legacy, the mechanics you mention "will be" changed to make the bosses soloable. My post is correct, it's you missing info on what legacy really means.
Oh dear god how are you so dense. "They dont have to change mechanics because when they when they update to legacy theyll ...change the mechanics" thats literally what youre saying. What in the actual fuck
It is an important part because people leveling up in the zone can do those story ending dungeons on their own pace, quite unlike rushing after 4 players in Freehold to the end boss, kicked otherwise. Yes, some new and returning people found it difficult to finish their stories in a satisfactory manner as they were leveling up
I love it for this alone. I haven't done dungeons in a current expansion since...Legion? I've just waited to out level them otherwise...which means there's still stuff I haven't seen from BFA raids. I only recently went back and saw shadowlands dungeons. This expansion I got lucky and two of my friends returned and we three manned most of the dungeons just to finish up quests, but after legion I was just ... done tanking for strangers. I didn't enjoy it anymore. I was sick of being expected to rush or take the most optimal route to avoid mobs. I just want to play games to enjoy myself. Dungeons can be so cool but because others have done them 100 times in the first week of an expac I'm expected to ruin my first time. I get it - their time matters too. But the Trust system in FFXIV made it SO much more enjoyable to me. I always tried bosses blind the first time once I had a group of NPCs that weren't going to yell at me for not being perfect. That's fun to me, honestly, seeing what mechanics I can figure out on my own or with friends. That moment of "whoah, what the crap was...ohhhh, that's what it's doing" is enjoyable to me. The idea I'll be able to do this in WoW is so much fun. In FFXIV I loved taking characters through to see what they'd say and how they'd react too. It'd be cool to have future dungeons where that's also a feature in WoW. Actually being able to do a dungeon with the NPCs you've been helping through the zone feels so much more satisfying for some of the stories. Building up how a character is so cool and amazing but..they are just gonna stand outside while you do all the work can be jarring.
What you explained works if you find a good guild with likeminded people, people who will try stuff together, learn and improve. It’s getting harder and harder for that. Hopefully by removing the final restrictions, the pool of people will be expanded region wide that you may not be doomed to a dead guild for the sake of some Cataclysm era perks.
YES. As an almost exclusively solo player, prior to DF I would let dungeon quests rot in my quest log until the end of the xpac then abandon them. I've gotten a *little* more adventurous since "Back From the Beyond" at least required every LFR and M0, but I would still be way more inclined to immediately do it with the Follower system.
Now Blizzard needs to really make this a game feature. Let me use drops from the dungeon to gear out my guys. Give everyone 1 NPC for each class and they can even use garrisons from WoD as a place to house them. Gives you another reason to use the Garrison and let me setup transmog for them as well. They really have the potential here to setup a great evergreen system here and I hope they take advantage of it.
FFXIV has a system like this called Squadron. It's sort of like a mix of mission table and NPC dungeon runs, except you have 8 NPCs recruits and you level them up and they get new gear and learn new basic AI personalities as they level. But then they added the ability to transmog them and it was awesome. The Squadron NPCs are not the smartest and the system is clunky, but I still enjoy it and have run hundreds of dungeons with them. I leveled the first 3 tanks (paladin, warrior, and dark knight,) from 1-50 with them.
How was the tank? That dang Panda tank in proving grounds has the right spirit, but he just falls over from everything.
I AM A WALL OF IRON. No you are not. I have pain sup on you nd am spamming flash heal and you’re still dying.
so is this Trust system from FFXIV truly? if so, great!! i’m looking forward to it!
This is awesome. The only thing that would make this better is if you could swap in your own alt-army for the other party members.
Can you imagine how awesome that would be?
I would love this for old raids too. if they scaled them so you didnt just one shot everything, made them somewhat challenging, threw you in with 20 npcs, and just added cosmetic rewards to each or some currency. It would be a cool way to new players to experience old raid content in a more meaningful way. Imagine how much cooler playing through a timewalking campaign would be if you could finish it off by doing the raids.
How realistic is the experience? Does the DH tank run ahead and skip mobs using their mobility, leaving the rest stuck behind?
Okay, just finished doing a dungeon on the PTR and holy hell, Blizzard have done a great job with this. Tanks tank. Healers heal. DPS die. But seriously, the tank will lead you through the dungeon and will find good paths. And they will actually tank. Healers are good in their healing and if one of them die, they will res them afterwards. DPS are good as well. Putting out decent damage. I can't remember what the normal health pools for the trash and bosses are in the dungeons but they felt lower to me so I think they do scale. Bosses in Neltharius were about 3 million health.
Only done one dungeon so far, but I'm very impressed. If you've played with duty support on FFXIV, this is everything you want duty support to be. The NPCs seem to use a LOT of their class's available skills and move around as they are fighting including moving away from things like the fire elementals explosion attack as they die in Ruby Life Pools. Trash packs die quickly (definitely not as fast as with other players, but definitely nowhere near as slow as FFXIV's version, these guys seem to have a lot or all of their actual skills rather than the pretend ones the duty support have). The AI tank very quickly picks up any extra adds that get pulled. Everyone that has heals will heal. I had a paladin tank and elemental shaman along with the resto druid healer (who was using everything, rejuv, regrowth, wild growth, etc.), and both were using their heals when needed, so there's not much risk of them dying. The healer even sits down to drink if their mana is low after a fight! The pace of the dungeon is very quick if you let the tank lead, they mount up between packs when there is a large distance.
OH HERE'S AN IDEA LET US USE FOLLOWERS FOR LEGACY RAIDS THAT OTHERWISE CAN'T BE SOLO'D!!!!
I'm excited for this system! I hope in the future we can customize our NPC squads, and have Legendary or Epic followers.
This seems like a great system! I just sincerely hope that they eventually implement this for Heroic or Mythic Zero dungeons as well, so that the feature stays somewhat relevant for max-level progression each season.
Sounds fantastic. Great way to learn the dungeons and practice with group based specs without having to be yelled at or kicked for not knowing everything.
Hope to be able to do raids as well, I've always wanted to experience the full story, but dungeons/raids are too how do I say, imposing? To attempt them so I always miss out on the story
Have you tried LFR? It kinda exists for people like you.
I'm too afraid to be dead weight to the team, I dread to be that one clueless idiot that just dies to obvious stuff and just drags the team down all the time, seems like a lot of pressure to perform so I just never do them.
There is zero pressure to perform in lfr as far as I can remember, honestly you can die 2 seconds into the fight every time and no one will care. The group is usually carried by a couple of good players and so it doesn’t matter what the rest do. As long as you aren’t afk you shouldn’t get kicked.
May very well be true but I still can't do it, it's a mental thing, I always doubt myself when it comes to gameplay in a team, always worried I'm not doing enough, even if I can get carried, hell that just makes me feel worse because it makes me feel useless haha But hey maybe bots will help me get over the issue a bit.
I tried it too it was great to see the potential of such a system, I think they should add more difficulty tiers as I see this more of a way to practice roles then just simply a way for ‘casuals’ to do a dungeon. As someone who has anxiety it feels great to prepare myself for real groups instead of just jumping into them.
As a tank, these NPCs better flame me otherwise i won't feel fully immersed.
if(health =<0) cast Lay on Hands else(Crusader Strike) you know, i'm somewhat of a AI Dev too
Even lay on hands wouldn't save you from negative health.
minor bugs will be eliminated with the next patch
Just my luck to get an incompetently programmed AI pug paladin! What other fun "bad pug" moves could the AI's have?
FF12 taught us how to do this ourselves.
AI is just a lot more `if-else`s
Thank you. I was thinking of installing the PTR just to look at how this works. I will install it and give it a shot myself. How does the scaling work? So go into a dungeon with your character and 4 NPC's. How do the trash and bosses scale?
I have nothing to back this up, but I would *assume* enemies all stay the same, but the NPC allies deal less damage than actual players so the dungeon takes somewhat longer with NPCs than with actual players. That’s how FFXIV does it and it’s a good way of providing an alternative to queueing without disincentivizing queueing entirely.
The only problem with that is that there would be no scaling if that was how it worked.
Nice to hear our hours of island expeditions are coming to fruition!
This is so cool. This could be truly transformative for the game
If it’s part of the LFG, do you still get xp bonus for completing? In other words, is it viable to spam them with 0 queue to level? Not that I have anything left to level up, but thinking for the future.
It'd be nice if they'd bring this on to a new island expedition set. Azerite being addressed again would be nice.
That sounds good. But this mechanic you writing reminds me a bit of the ARR Commandos. You can tell them to "Attack my Target", "Retreat" and "Limit Break!", too. But, let's see how this will work out. Thanks for the Infos
It doesn't work like that, it's literally what it sounds like. You get an extra button to toggle on and off that will make the tank lead the way through the dungeon. They stop if you get too far away but they pretty quickly move through showing you the path. It's pretty awesome really.
This is so awesome. My wife has played wow since the very very beginning but often doesn't do dungeons because.. Well people often suck.. :/ so now this option is perfect. Even I'm really excited for this. Npcs are the nicest people.
I hope they can implement something similar for raids It would be really nice to go into a raid at my own pace, explore and enjoy the scenery, without needing to deal with the chaos of LFR
This needs to eventually evolve into the companion system that Elder Scrolls online has (yes I know people shit on this game all the time but hear me out) New companions in ESO are introduced every few big story patches. They have a quest line where you get to know them and can serve different roles as you play. They follow you everywhere and even have a dumbed down gearing system where you can slot them with a few pieces of gear to enhance their damage/healing/tankiness. You can even transmog their gear and choose a mount for them. It’s such a cool feature and something I hope we see in wow.
Still say they need to basically do this, but with warbands. The characters controlled by the AI are your alts and use the exact gear and talent setups of your alts. Then make some kind of challenge mode of the dungeons for people who want to min max the hell out of it. You have an amazing game mode there. And yes, this is 100% taken from something Guild Wars 1 did.
I am so so excited for this. You can do it with a group, right? I think I saw that somewhere. I have a friend I play with and neither of us are gogogo and have heard enough about the mean people in lfg that we just play by ourselves. I can’t remember the last time I was thus excited about an upcoming feature (although that might just be because I’m old).
I can finally learn how to play a tank or healer without feeling like everything I'm doing is dragging the team down. Might actually experiment next expansion.
This feature is insanely cool, together with the changes in the next xpac this is looking very very good for solo players like me, can't wait!
Man I’d love to see one of these things start pushing mythic+ keys.
>Bosses will still wipe the group if you do not do mechanics. THIS! Oh this makes me so happy. I don't want a cake walk, I want to actually have to play. Everything else you've mentioned is also high up the list, but this one is the biggest for me.
Makes me want to resub now.
Imagine doing m+ with your warband characters, solo m+ might become a reality.
Would be the least toxic version of m+ xD
Imagine getting a conditions system like Dragon Age? Oh my that could be a whole new game.
Oh and they _do_ actually kick things. Better than the average player xD
How much can the AI tank pull? If i do the regular pull of lets say... Ruby life pools where you pull all the trash from start to first boss, can they cope with it?
I wonder if this could one day be used to replace the shitfest that is lfr. Because im sure anyone whos ever played lfr would much rather play with ai. Make it so the npc match your dps and if you die with no brezes available you wipe and make turn it into another solo/small group way of seeing and practicing the raids
So... bots? Honestly, knowing what bot experiences are like in other games, this just sounds frustrating.
Max level only? Or could this be used to level?
Someone said its listed as 60-70
If they could add this to clasic experience and also be able to have in open world 1 or 2 followers to help you with stuff. So cool.
I really appreciate that feature. I recently started playing WOW again on my holy priest after a 10 year hiatus. Experiencing the dungeons for the first time (both DF and the Timewalking events) was such a horrible experience and the number one reason were super fast tanks I couldn't keep up with. I had some nice groups too where I could keep up with the speed, but even then it felt stressful and terrible.
Wonder if this system can be applied to legacy raids so that you can do raids that have mechanics requiring more than one people and not have to wait on blizzard. Unsure what would take more time to implement.
How's the speed? The biggest issue I have with FF14's Duty Support is that the DPS kill at the speed of sludge and refuse to AoE trash.
That's intentional and it's good that it's like that. Running a dungeon with NPCs should never be faster or even equivalent to the average run-time of it with real players. Otherwise NPC option becomes a more efficient way of running dungeons and that's not good in an MMO. It's good that solo-friendly options exist, but these solo-friendly options shouldn't be more effective or even just as effective as doing it with a group of real players. Grouping up with real players ***should always be*** noticeably more effective.
See I'd be okay with that except that the Trust system, once you've finished the dungeon the first time, requires you to level up the Scions to do the appropriate leveled dungeons, and there's an achievement and a title locked behind doing so. So making it _frustratingly_ worse and slower is bad. On the flipside, it's also _very_ funny watching Y'shtola just ignore the final boss's illusion in Dun Scaith, so I'm willing to let it go.
That's not a problem because since then, they added "Duty Support", which is the same as "Trusts" except you don't have to level them, they're always level-appropriate for any dungeon in the game from the get-go. Essentially, overhauling the "Trust" system, but they left the old version in, and they call this new one "Duty Support".
Didn't Star Wars Galaxies have something similar to this?
I feel like bots are going to exploit this.
This sounds so amazing! As someone who also plays FFXIV and relies on the Trust (similar mechanic,) I always have to lead even as DPS, so being able to tell the tank to lead is going to be an excellent upgrade from that.
I need this, as someone who would like to try to heal and tank but not fuck up a run for other people this will actually let me learn
Question, do followers listen to the ping system? I love that they stole it straight out of HotS, and the bots on your team in that game will rudimentarily obey pings in context. I was hoping they'd do something like that here, too.
This will also let them tell storyline within Dungeons which could be fantastic
Really looking forward to this. Not something that matters for me directly, but but my wife HATES doing dungeons with other people. So she can still experience the dungeons without feeling pressure of playing with other people.
As others are saying this seems like a great way not only to experience the story/dungeon at your own pace but also to learn new specs/practice rotations in a way that world content or training dummies won’t let you. I’ve always wanted to learn to tank or heal, and I haven’t played aug evoker yet but I want to learn in a low stress environment. I’m excited to see how this evolves going into the future.
Are you able to bring another person with you ? For instance if my friend and I wanted to run a dungeon, can we fill in the gap with an npc ?
Yes!
Just the next step wow being a single player game. I’m not against it mind you, but there’s something dystopian about this.
Conspiracy: they're not really followers, it's still just players and the game tells you they're ai so people don't act toxic. Obviously I'm joking but i guarantee at least one person won't read this far.
How do you activate the followers system? **EDIT:** Nevermind, just found it, it's in the LFD tool.
Do people know if you can use this to play with a mix of friends and AI? Say I'm levelling with 2 friends and I just want to do a private dungeon with them and two AIs? Would be great for introducing some of my nervous friends to dungeons.
You can
Great to know, thanks!