My Mission & Follower Feedback

#1 - Aug. 14, 2014, 8:42 a.m.

Hi,

I've been playing with the missions a lot, currently with about 5 level 100 characters and 1 character I'm leveling from 90 to 100.

I really love the garrisons and especially the missions and followers. :-)

Here's some bugs, enhancement requests, and some of my feedback from my experience so far. I might update it over time or add more in replies.

@Frimlin

Bugs

Giant Model - Status: Fixed in build 18738
When you look at completed missions, there is always half of a giant female model overlayed over the initial window. It's always the same model on every character I've tried with.

Completed Mission Freeze - Status: Open
Sometimes when viewing completed missions, it freezes and you can't click "Next." The parallax background still scrolls but everything is unresponsive. The only way to get passed it is to log out and back in again.

Follower Scaling Issues - Status: Open
Sometimes followers are scaled unusually when you see the completed mission. For example, two of the followers look normal size, but the third is scaled massively and looks twice the height of the others. It's inconsistent though.

Epic Mount not 50% - Status: Open
The Epic Mount trait suggests mission time is halved (mission time reduced by 50%), but is seems more like 25%. For example, a 16 hour mission is reduced to 12 hours. Edit: Actually, sometimes there is no time reduction applied at all.

Enhancement Requests

Length of Completed Mission
When you see the results of the missions, I missed seeing which was the result of the 3 person 16 hour mission – I had been really looking forward to seeing how it went. It'd be cool if it said "16 Hour Mission" or something in the top title bar, in case you don't recognise it from the mission's title.

Unresponsive Chest Reward
After a successful mission, when you are presented with a treasure chest, sometimes single clicking it isn't enough. This could be a timing issue with the animation that overlays the chest for a couple of seconds. Either way, the chest unlocking is a little unresponsive and could be a little more satisfying - also could use a satisfying sound.

Follower Weapons
Followers tend to have very basic looking weapons: it would be cool if these could change over time and get better. Perhaps as mission rewards.

Follower Armor
Similarly with their armor, it is always the same whether they are level 90 or 100. Not as big a concern for me as the weapons are, as I fear changing their armor over time also makes you lose visual recognition of them.

Chest after Failed Mission
After a failed mission, the reward chest sits there and looks kinda like it can be opened. Maybe it'd be useful to put a big red cross over it, fade it out, or somehow make it look less like the mission had been successful.

Unusable Counters
When choosing followers for a mission, if a follower had a threat counter for the threats in the mission but the follower was too low level, their icon for the threat counter wasn't visible next to their name. It would be cool if it was visible but crossed out, with a tooltip saying something like "Counter cannot be used for this mission as the follower is too low level."

Race of Follower
Please show the race of the follower in text, possibly alongside their class. I have some followers whose race is tricky to identify from their visual appearance. Could throw gender in there too, just in case.

Dismiss Mission
It would be handy to be able to dismiss a mission, if you didn't like it or you didn't have appropriate followers to complete it. Otherwise it kinda hangs around and is a little annoying. I have a 16 hour, 3 person, level 98 mission here, and only one level 98 follower. I can't do the mission, please let me dismiss it so I can get a new one.

Pin / Save Mission
Similarly it'd be cool to be able to "pin" or "save" a mission, to prevent it disappearing but saving it for later, for when your followers are back from an in progress mission or something like that. That's if missions can disappear... not sure if they do or not! Definitely some have disappeared between builds but not sure if they have from day to day, as I usually use them all up each day.

Kalgan

Game Designer

#10 - Aug. 15, 2014, 11:51 a.m.

We're clearly not communicating this well, but if you continue to level an uncommon follower beyond 100 they eventually become rare, and a rare eventually becomes epic.

Kalgan

Game Designer

#11 - Aug. 15, 2014, 11:52 a.m.

Also, legendary followers aren't supposed to exist yet, is a bug that they were showing up in the inn.

Kalgan

Game Designer

#32 - Sept. 5, 2014, 5:08 p.m.

08/14/2014 11:44 AMPosted by Frimlin
Off the top of my head, I'm really not sure what can be done to make the level 100 follower endgame more interesting.

Once you have followers at ilvl 615, the second tier of level 100 missions unlocks, at 630 the third tier unlocks (includes missions with ilvl 645 gear for your character), and when you have followers at ilvl 645 the fourth tier unlocks.

The fourth tier is special in that they show up rarely, but they're raid missions for your followers that reward your character with raid quality loot of a tier higher than you're currently running. If you're doing LFR, you'll get normal quality raid loot, if you're running normal raids you'll get heroic quality loot, and heroic raiders will get mythic quality loot. Mythic raiders will get mythic loot and 1k gold.

These missions show up rarely enough that you won't be able to deck out your character in these items before the next raid zone shows up, but having a handful of them will give you a nice edge.

Kalgan

Game Designer

#33 - Sept. 5, 2014, 5:13 p.m.

08/25/2014 02:43 PMPosted by Nzete
For the love of the Light, if we have a limited size army (the size limit makes no sense in the context of making a fortress in a savage world), can you soften the blow of people who have become attached to their followers by sending them to Stormwind for rest and relaxation, relocating them to an outpost (where they look pretty and don't do much), or something? "Dismiss" sounds very harsh and final (and makes the commander out to be a complete jerk for abandoning loyal followers to the savage enviroment).

Yes we can. We're removing the concept of dismissing followers and instead changing to a limit of 20 active-duty followers that can go on missions. What that means is, if you're over 20 active followers, you won't be able to start a mission until you're down to 20 active-duty followers. Your followers that are on inactive duty still show up in your UI (but marked as inactive), and don't lose any levels, progress, etc. One follower per day can be returned from inactive duty for 250g.

Watcher

Game Designer

#52 - Sept. 5, 2014, 10:22 p.m.

The nature of the tuning here is such that it's absolutely not going to impact any sort of cutting-edge progression racing during the early days/weeks of a new tier. It's more of a helping hand later on. And because the availability of these missions depends on your character's actual raiding progression, they aren't replacing or trivializing the importance of actually going into raids and killing bosses.

Without getting into exact numbers, being classified as a "Heroic raider" or "Mythic raider" or the like requires multiple weeks of experience in a given zone at a given difficulty. And if you're worried about the impact on gearing up for the next tier, an occasional chance at a random Mythic piece pales in comparison to the dozens of Mythic items your farm clears will be bringing in every week, with the ability to trade items around and target specific drops through bonus rolls. This will be a drop in the bucket by comparison.

Garrison missions (or lack thereof) aren't going to impact any sort of world-first or realm-first competitions. But this system does help keep the system relevant to a broader range of players, and as overall gear levels improve over the course of a tier.