Boring early levels (Dungeon run/Rumble/Heist)

While I greatly enjoy the dungeon run style of single player content, it always annoys me how boring and repetitive the first few levels are.

I think allowing the player to draft a treasure and/or 3 cards *before* the first encounter would create a lot more variety in that first game, not to mention allowing the first boss(es) to be buffed a little to actually make the fight interesting. Rhastakhan's Rumble took a step in the right direction by allowing the player to draft a loa at the outset, but even there the fact that each loa has one starting deck means that after a while the first encounters become boring and predictable. And of course with Dalaran Heist we went back to picking a passive treasure and cards after the first encounter, which IMO is a clear regression (that said, being given a choice of hero powers and starting decks is a definite improvement).

Now I don't expect the existing adventures to be substantively changed, but it'd be nice if the devs could front-load a bit more choice/variance at the beginning of the run in future adventures. It'd make the first few levels more exciting, greatly improve the replay value and make it easier to fish for certain treasures/comboes once you're at the point where you've already beat the bosses and you just want to try wacky stuff.

Hi Ali,

Overall your argument is sound, and I do feel that sometimes the start of a new run can feel samey and boring - especially before you get that special "umpf" for the run in the form of a treasure or special card. I do feel however that you forgot to mention that, while indeed regressing in terms of getting the bonus after the first encounter - the developers did a great step forward in my opinion - in the form of the Anomaly mode.

While Anomaly mode doesn't really let you outright choose the bonus you start with - a lot of the time it REALLY mixes things up, to the point of making the first encounters really challenging and worthwhile sometimes. I feel this mode is a better compromise to just outright choosing the treasure or whatever right at the start, since it is always random and it forces you to deal with it and adjust your playstyle to the anomaly. Ultimately - I fear that simply front-loading the treasure would make the overall feeling of the heist duller, as people would immediately know what they are getting themselves into - and it would be easier to reroll into a preferred treasure, overall making people get bored of the adventure faster.

Basically - I'm advertising Anomaly mode ^_^

That's a fair point, and I have to admit I haven't played anomaly mode that much, but that said, I don't see why it can't be both. The point you raise about a front loaded treasure making the adventure duller applies to the Rumble Run, where you had 3 variants per class for a total of 27 decks/treasures, but with the dungeon run/heist system all classes have access to any treasure, there are more treasures, not to mention multiple decks and hero powers, so you'd still have orders of magnitude more variation. I think with RR the railroading was the issue, not the front-loading.

That's fair. But I always feel like the structure of the dungeon-style adventures is good the way it is - for the first few runs. Maybe a good compromise would be to unlock the choice of treasure at the start after some conditions have been met, i.e. beating the wing once \ a few times or completing certain objectives or whatever. It might even be fine on its own, I really don't know - and would actually like to play-test the feature you are describing.

Another point that just came to me is the spacing between meaningful progression - since these dungeon-styled adventures seem to be based around the 8 boss system (and this seems to just be a blueprint they have used since it was first introduced - thus less likely to change) - it means that if we choose a treasure earlier, the time between each "special" deck altering event (i.e. treasures, special cards, taverns) is increased. It may be fine, but I fear that it may cause certain portions of the run to feel like they lack meaningful deck-altering progression, and just feel dull with only card buckets available in between fights.

At the end of the day - I don't feel like we have enough info to go on. It would of course always be nice to have more features - these allow for greater customization and increase replayability exponentially, but on the other hand - I think that the current form of the heist is ultimately very enjoyable as is, and I'm a bit too afraid to temper with it (especially since it can be way WAY worse than it is now).

From a lore/flavour perspective it absolutely makes more sense to get your first treasure after your first encounter. However, a choice of cards or minion-treasures prior to the first boss could be presented as recruiting a party. Heck, I think you could take that concept even further and have the player draft some or all of their starting deck from themed buckets (EG "Pick a healer" and you choose one of three minions with a healing ability. "Pick a tank" 3 taunts, etc.).

Regarding pacing, you're not wrong, but I think moving all the picks forward by one boss also has an advantage: oftentimes you'll never get to use your second active treasure because you draft it after the 7th encounter, meaning you have only one match to draw it. By moving it forward you get an extra shot at actually enjoying your hard-earned treasure. It's another minor thing that's always bugged me about the current format.

The party recruiting idea could be really nice - might actually be a viable alternative to just flat out starting the run with a pre-made deck - really like it! But since they announced that they are doing a connected storyline throughout the year - something like this might not get implemented until later on - unless the story progresses into people taking up arms against Rafaam, and recruiting parties or whatever. I kind of doubt they would go for something like this, since they also claimed that the reason we're getting more lackeys with every expansion this year is due to "the growing presence of the league of E.V.I.L", so unless we're getting some sort of bad-guy team-up \ raid sort of thing against the good dudes - it probably won't happen.

Regarding the pacing - now that you mention it, it kinda bugs me as well - it is actually really rare to get anything out of your last treasure. Good point.