Hello all,
I’m not exactly top 0.1% and honestly I don’t know how to check which character this forum post will be under, but I’m just under 2900 on my VDH and feel like I’ve at least got a decent handle on how M+ ends up working out for the supermajority of the player base that will never get to the point of pushing record breaking high keys.
As far as affixes go that I can see, there are two directions to go to improve the health and stability of the game.
Option one: Give a benefit for players successfully performing the actions that lead them to clearing the mechanic that they just had to deal with. Example: If a player successfully dispels or heals to full the new Afflicted monster that comes out, this could (1) Expunge all of its debuffs onto the enemies within 8/10 yards or (2) Radiate life, becoming a strong ground-based healing circle for players to stand inside of."
Why give bonuses for doing mechanics? This is a classic game format of kiss/curse. You give your players a reward for doing something successfully. Eventually, as they get higher and higher in key levels, as they start struggling with the key level that they are performing at, execution of these mechanics starts to become a noticeable source of why that player’s keys are or are not getting timed.
It’s a clear cut way of saying “If we got the Afflicted mob healed up on that mega pull at the start of the dungeon, they would have all had the debuffs and would have died a minute faster, and we would have timed the key.” It’s an identifiable way of rewarding a player for performing an action correctly. In this example, you probably don’t even need a negative associated with the positive if the positive is as good as my anecdote states.
Option Two: Honestly, this argument is a bit less creative, and has been tossed around in the community a lot, but has a compelling reason not a lot of people are talking about: Get rid of all affixes except seasonal.
The “Why?” As WoW ages, so too do the gamers who end up remaining a part of the community. Completing 16 dungeons to get a locked in score only to have your tyrannical ruby life pools score drop your io enough that people don’t invite you to any keys on a fortified week that are upgrades for your io is frustrating. What’s more frustrating are weeks where almost no healers are playing because it’s a week where there are two healer affixes and everyone blames them for anything going wrong. These affixes get hard to manage, and for any new players coming into the game, it can be daunting to learn a system that most people have already had a shot at learning, memorizing, and perfecting over the years. Simply having scaling health and one affix to deal with may dumb down the game a bit too much for my own personal taste, but can help with acquisition of newer players into the fold of getting that competitive itch.
Option Three Three? I thought you said two! Think again! Why not have a mixture of both? Picture this. You have a blank keystone for a dungeon every week. It just has a level on it, and you go up to a reagent vendor who sells affixes. You can complete the dungeon with no affixes and it will count for weekly vault, so the people who are just raid logging can get on with their lives after their weekly dungeons, or you can add affixes to it to increase how much io it gives, and potentially even what it ends up rewarding at the end of dungeons. This way, it gives more players access to the tournament/beta realm feel of being able to select your own affixes without the pressure of some weeks just feeling genuinely bad to play during.
Imagine this, a certain set of affixes becomes the meta for easiest to complete a dungeon. Cool! It’s going to be the lowest io gain you can get automatically because more and more people will be completing that key with that affix setup than any other affix combination, so it will end up being more lucrative for those pushing io to pursue other combinations if they really want to stay on top. Or maybe they don’t, and they just want to push that affix combination the whole season as high as they can go! The point is, the player has the ability to choose in this case, but I firmly believe that this option would still only work if the kiss/curse system for affixes is properly implemented, and feedback is genuinely listened to about these systems in the coming weeks as we get ready for a 10.1 date.
Thanks for coming to my wow ted talk