So as I’ve said before, you hold this position purely out of spite towards lower skilled players. You never do this content yourself, but you still want to make it too hard for a certain segment of the population because they can suck it.
The dungeon content starts scaling at normal for several dungeons, then heroic and then Mythic (several of which are mythic only). Then mythic two and onwards. When the content gets too hard, you get better or stop.
The idea that you have to make content easier when it gets too hard for people is ludicrous, not that you have any measure for content actually being quantifiably harder outside of anecdotal evidence. There is easier content to do if +2 is actually too difficult and you don’t want to get better or feel that it’s impossible.
If you want to argue that there isn’t a viable progression path outside of mythic plus and raid that isn’t just begging titanforges off of WQs, you’re correct and I agree, but that void should be filled with better and more varied systems rather than nerfing content you can’t beat because you feel like you should be allowed to beat it.
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Of course there is a measure. It’s the percentage of low keys that are +3 chested, +2 chested etc compared to legion. That number is significantly lower across the board. It’s very rare to +3 any key in BFA. It was the norm at all levels below 10 in Legion.
In BFA season 1 the completed in time rate for some 7-9 dungeons was as low as 12% (for dungeons like fortified King’s Rest). Significantly easier dungeons like Freehold had completed in time around 45%. In Legion it was basically unheard of to not complete a +7 in time. About the only time I can ever remember it happening was if you had a tank who didn’t know what bolstering did.
As I said though a fair part of this is due to increased DPS requirements. Fortified means that dungeon you just +1ed, you would have +2ed without Fortified. (because 20% less HP to burn through means 20% less time taken). And that’s before you even consider the additional difficulty of trash mobs hitting harder as well.
I was gonna say essentially this and didn’t have to. There is content for lower skilled people. Dungeon content goes Normal > Heroic > Mythic > Mythic+… hey look at that, 4 levels of difficulty… just like raiding!
End game is something in people’s head. The title says “casual players have no endgame,” however, end game is just wherever you land. Literally. If you can’t get past heroic dungeons, THAT is your end game. If you think it should be something that WoW players have determined to be harder or better content, then you work towards it. But literally end game is the end of the game for you and that is different depending on the person. People need to stop comparing themselves with other people, we all have different skills and abilities and we won’t all be mythic raiders or masters of m15.
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You’re drawing the conclusion that it’s happening less because the content is harder, but there’s an alternate explanation:
People aren’t doing content that’s too easy for them nearly as often as in Legion.
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The difference between M+ and all the others is that M+ isn’t a single level of difficulty. It’s an endlessly scaling set of difficulties M2,3,6,9,15 are all different difficulty levels. There’s no reason that M2 needs be such a drastic step up from M0 given that there are literally infinite additional difficulty levels possible above M2.
And in mythic raiding, isn’t the last boss supposed to be the hardest? You don’t get there on week 1.
I don’t agree that 0 and 2 are drastic, so we will just have to disagree. Even less so now with the absurd amount of high level gear being thrown at players from all directions. Even bad players with 370ish ilvl from doing other content should be able to faceroll a 2 without knowing what they are even doing.
I’d be in favour of 3 introductory levels of dungeons below the first key (M+2), and you can choose the dungeon you want, with no affix. They obviously couldn’t award super high loot, but would help people learn the dungeon and get basic gear.
They’d have to be named something that doesn’t confuse them with regular mythic plus though. I was thinking something like”Normal”, “Heroic” and “Mythic”.
Just a crazy idea I had…
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Oh my god, best idea ever, I wonder why Blizzard didn’t put that in the game…oh wait…
Except when it’s a guess based on a pre-existing notion. Then it’s just confirmation bias. Which is 75% of the forums.
“Wow is dying because islands aren’t fun.” for example.
Or
“Casual content doesn’t exist” when it actually does, but OP just doesn’t like it or want to do it.
Casuals unquestionably had it better in Legion, but for the games entire life so far casuals have it easier “now” in the relative sense, relative being the last 2 expansions have been more casual friendly then the first 5.
I realize this is sarcasm but it emphasizes something important. It suggests that Normal/Heroic are actually a place people spend time learning mechanics or earn rewards relevant to their respective “endgame”. It would be great if this were true, but it really isn’t at all (though it was for a couple weeks in BFA S1).
I remember one of the last few Q&As, Ion mentioned the motivations for adding fortified/tyrannical being around forcing players to get difficulty out of the basic mechanics of the dungeon rather than having it being more related to the “flavor” affixes.
I personally think it’s kind of messed up that “Mythic” and M+ are even supposed to be considered where people are expected to be doing this type of learning.
Right now, Normal is the “leveling” difficulty, Heroic is the “nearly fresh 120” difficulty. M+0s are in a really weird spot at this point because it’s fairly normal to have 1-2 overgeared people in a pug randomly hoping for titanforged gear or doing a world quest.
Right now it seems like M+ is the first place some people are having to really deal with dungeon mechanics. I don’t have a good idea of what the solution to this is. I personally think the difficulty of M+ is tuned pretty well, but I wish the base-level difficulties+rewards were tuned a bit differently to ease players into these basics and give them a reason to do so.
That this isn’t true for “bad players” is the premise of the OP’s post.
Try making a new character and put together a group of appropriately geared people who apply through group finder with no/low raider IO score, no voice and see how much fun you have in a few +2s.
I know that’s probably not how you play, but it’s the audience having trouble with this content.
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Yeah, that’s a recipe for disaster haha.
My friends and I wanted to smash out a lower key last night after doing ours - to relieve the stress of necrotic/sanguine from the past week. We joined a solo shadow priest in TD+6 who was reasonably geared for it. He died repeatedly to sanguine and bugs that he pulled trying to get through the tunnel after the first boss. All his gear was broken and we had to go back to get him. His comment “well so much for getting my key to a 10”.
All of the deaths were his, and he didn’t follow any mechanics. Afterwards he wanted to continue with the +8… so we left.
Although it was funny to watch, it was kind of sad too. We tried to show him the basics but he wasn’t interested. Just wanted his key done and to get loot.
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This is always going to have to happen at SOME POINT. Just because you don’t like where it is currently does not mean it needs to change. Not everyone is going to agree and there is no logical reason as to why M+ can’t be the starting point to abide by mechanics. I think it’s a great place.
If they are truly THAT bad they don’t belong there. /end
Not all content is for everyone.
Also, no or low IO score and no voice does not mean bad player.
Really curious to know what you consider to be the point of difficulties below M+ if mechanics have no role? I guess loot piñatas that allow you to start playing the game?
If they are truly THAT bad they don’t belong there. /end
Not all content is for everyone.
I made no argument to change the difficulty of M+, but you know we’re talking about low key M+ right? The issue is that this is literally the end game content designed for a subset of players and they feel there is no point for them in participating because the difficulty jump is too high for them and the loot is not worth it. The perceived difficulty very likely more related to them not being encouraged through the game to obtain the right fundamentals.
There are three other difficulties of dungeons that they 1. have no incentive to participate in due to the loot quality relative to what is available through easier means and 2. are not meaningfully difficult so as to provide any type of venue to learn (probably because they are over-geared through world quest rewards+warfronts).
I personally learned the BFA dungeons on normal, heroic, and mythic 0 because I took part (in PUGs) while many people were still leveling and were fresh 120s all gearing up together. This was “safe” because it was outside of the M+ timer and IO rankings so people took the time to learn and were more forgiving to mistakes. We cared about completing the dungeons because almost everything that dropped was an upgrade.
For a lot of other people, they run with more skilled or geared groups of friends or guildies and have a safe environment to learn even within M+ while the rewards are relevant and they’re able to keep pace with the content so the rewards stay relevant.
This environment does not exist for more casual players like those described by the OP in any controlled format in S2 of the expansion.
Also, no or low IO score and no voice does not mean bad player.
I mean on average that exercise will be mind-numbing. Did that really require an explanation?
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Cause learning the layout of the dungeon isn’t important? facepalm
Right. And not all content is for everyone and everyone’s end game is different for them. What I said was correct.
No because what you are saying is still inaccurate/irrelevant.
I have this crazy, insane, absolutely bonkers thought…
How about, and stop me if this sounds too out of left field, but…like…what if we had a rational progression where gear is awarded commensurate to the difficulty of the content being completed?
This way players won’t already out-gear the content that they are learning, and are capable of, and won’t feel compelled to attempt, and fail, at content they aren’t ready for as they try to chase the gear dragon.
I mean…it may even lead to less of a playerbase reliance on addons such as RIO…et al as well as lead to more groups doing the lower difficulty content because not everyone outgears everything and we’d return to linear progression.
I know it sounds silly…
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Very radical, that’s way out there man.
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Yeah… Right now the carrot for most people is likely hitting a certain key for a particular weekly chest level. For another subset of people it’s purely a raider IO score (in other words just playing for the challenge). It’s rarely going to be the base-level loot from the dungeon (ignoring for a second a fresh season where rewards get boosted).
I could see the dev team feeling like most people should be motivated to run dungeons they can handle with the prospect of gear warforging or titanforging, which would be the rational reason to run a moderately challenging dungeon where one can learn. If you looked back to previous iterations of dungeons (BC heroics come to mind) we’d run them for something like the possibility of the one epic off the last boss being something we need. But the potential reward was very tangible even if it was comparably rare to what we deal with now (plus we got badges regardless of that loot cough cough).
Outside of normal + heroic which are a bit too faceroll right now I think the main issue is the lack of incentives to progress through the existing difficulties between weekly chest rewards. This is probably more due to external factors (WQs, warfronts) than the dungeon loot itself.
Higher participation in dungeons from people who develop a base-level of competence would be good for everyone and could bubble up to creating new serious players as well.