The main argument I see there is that any form of uncapped, infinitely grindable end-game power is inherently unhealthy for the game.
Put some kind of rate limit on it and I think a lot of that would go away (at least from the high end, you’d still see the people complaining that it’s too hard)
This is funny because I agreed with everything you said until the last sentence.
People flocked to M+ because of it’s approachability, the same way people are flocking to delves now. Unfortunately, blizz has gone out of their way to make M+ less approachable…and as expected, the numbers dropped a lot.
Having rewarding game modes that can be completed in short play periods by average players is important. And by “short,” I mean an hour or less but that varies from person to person.
The last sentence is still true though. If given multiple options to get the same thing, people will (by in large) take the path of least resistance.
Whether you think it’s because the content is easier, or because it’s easier to get 4 other players together than 19 (both of which are true), people chose the path of least resistance to get the gear they feel like they deserve.
I understand the argument, but disagree for a few reasons.
First, between relying on vault for max item level and layers of RNG on drops, practically speaking for anyone who doesn’t play WoW for a living, it’s still going to take many months to gear up a character. Sure the gear is technically infinitely grindable, but throw in any responsibilities or alternate interests besides WoW, and it’s still going to be slow going for reaching a gear end state.
Second, it’s hard to justify spending time significantly progging lower keys than you will be pushing by mid-season solely because you lack the gear to support the keys you will be capable of timing later. Combine that with the fact that each key is intended to be a half hour one-and-done situation, and during that gearing phase, my character progression is basically done in 4 hours every week. So now we have forced M+ logging until the limiting factor for your group becomes execution and not gear.
Third, I don’t know how such a system would even function with so many key levels. It would be criminal to disincentivize me to help a buddy on a Tuesday through lower keys if that’s ultimately going to keep me from having a chance to loot a higher item level piece in that key when my regular group is kicking it Friday night. Admittedly this is one that is easier to address than the other two, and it could probably be something where the system has the loot lockout per upgrade track. But there are many implementations I can imagine that would be completely terrible, so I would want to know those details before offering up an opinion on it.
The problem is that the decision is more nuanced for many than just “what gives me number.” Many players choose to play content with a lower item level ceiling because they value the experience. That doesn’t mean the reward at the end is totally unimportant and they’d do it for free if there was no loot, but it’s also blatantly incorrect to reduce the entire decision down to the loot for those players, both played a role.
Even when Blizzard put decent raid level rewards for alliance to use war mode in BFA, I didn’t do them; I have never liked PvP in WoW and even the chance of having my game time disrupted by another player who won’t leave me alone just wasn’t worth it to me. But that doesn’t mean I would keep running M+ if it offered zero character progression; it is an RPG after all, and progressing my character’s power is important.
This one I don’t really buy, since going up in key level is functionally the same as taking off gear to make the content harder (no actual difference between you doing 9% less damage and having 9% less HP vs mobs being 10% stronger).
That’s actually relatively easy, you do it by upgrade track. So +2-+6 share a lockout, as well as everything 7+ (with current tuning). There’s also the chance that this could allow for Myth from end of dungeon.
The strat I found for that was to join a group, try and blitz through it as quickly as possible, then just turn warmode back off.
While true, the idea behind the lockout is to allow you to get more meaningful M+ progression outside of just the vault, by stopping all your non-vault progression from being so heavily frontloaded.
What wasn’t quite what I as getting at. If I’m going to wind up pushing +12s by the end of the season, but my gear limits me to running +6s at the start of the season, what incentive do I have to bang my head against +7s and +8s once I’ve locked gear for the week? Sure I might be able to get that +8 down, but what did that buy me when I’m going to need to do it again next week, and the extra gear will likely make up for whatever execution I gained by progging that +8.
Sure, and I’m certain I could have done the same thing. My point is that despite the carrot being decent, I simply decided compromising my experience wasn’t worth that carrot. Perhaps I’m the only player in the history of WoW that would do so, but I highly doubt that.
Would it, though? I know we’re just spitballing specific elements of the system, so I certainly would be willing to hear full proposals before rendering an opinion. But usually the discussion only goes so far as adding a limit to the amount of items players can get from M+ without any mention of other changes to make the system itself better as a whole.
Really all raiding needs is a better GV system.
As it stands now, it’s basically only useful for slots that are so powerful that you don’t care if they’re Heroic or not, or when you’ve got the raid on farm and do not care about loot, because you’ve got the raid on farm. When you’re extending, you’re getting zero relevant loot from the GV because you’re extending and at best are killing 1-2 bosses a week, if that.
What would be nice is if the “power” of the slots was determined by how many bosses you’ve killed, but actually unlocking the slots was tied to a different metric. So if you were 6/8M, all three slots would be Mythic, but you could unlock the slots by doing Heroic or Normal.
Also triple crest acquisition in raids.
I’ll tell you right now all this is going to do is promote the most massively toxic system.
You’ll have people grouping queing and targeting players to kill so their rolls are severely diminished. The community will always look out for themelves and find ways to get ahead. It’s just how it is.
that would be more of a dungeon familiarity issue than a gear issue. The total sum of a season’s gear upgrades (39 ilvls) is approximately equal to 4 key levels worth of stats (a bit lower). So if you’re stuck at 6s early on in S2 using your current S1 gear, then (assuming all else equal) you’d be stuck at +10s in equivalent level S2 gear.
My full proposal for M+ would be thus:
(possibly, not entirely sold on this one yet)
5) Keys no longer deplete when completed overtime, but over timed keys no longer drop loot, apply the lockout, nor count for vault. Keys still downgrade when runs are abandoned (including when you get kicked out per 4), or when done so manually at the Panda.
I think follower raids should replace lfr, you wouldn’t need to wait at all , you can play any spec , no drama over loot, no drama around combat meters and the loot in lfr is already bad so might as well give the same loot.
Raiding needs less random stuff on the ground to avoid and more avoid this or you’re dead mechanics.
sometimes it’s just random noise everywhere on the ground it’s wild.
Ansurek was literally how much stuff can we put on the ground and how tight can we go with the timers to just arbitrarily make it more difficult.
The game can barely handle more than 25 people with a 16-core CPU. (And our graphics cards more than capable).
Such a low iq take…
The problem with your proposal is that it would upset the huge amount of people who pretend that they enjoy M+ and scream about any changes, but really they just want to get their mythic vault loot ASAP and prefer the system of spamming the easiest, shortest dungeon.
I suggest that anyone who wants to do a key should be first forced to win a celestial tournament pet battle scenario.
That’s the trade off of a Que system. You don’t get to control who joins.
There’s a reason lfrs difficulty is a joke.
Hahaha no.
Heroic and normal raids are fine as flex.
So you’re in an unorganized and poorly lead guild. That’s not how most raid guilds are.
Again no. Mythic isn’t supposed to be flex. It’s 20 people for a specific reason.
Good guilds rotate people on early bosses to maximize vaults. True mythic guilds don’t sit the same 5 people.
Because your complaints aren’t issues.
Then they wouldn’t drop any loot.
I was only using those key level as an example, I wasn’t really intending for key level where you start and key level where you end up to be part of the argument. My point is that for teams that care to push to their limits, the limiting factor early will be both gear and execution, while that shifts to nearly all execution as the team starts to get close to the max item level they will be able to access. So long as gear is the limiting factor, fishing for specific keys to work on at that key level doesn’t make much sense since gear alone will push your key level up; I suspect a lot of players would just M+ log if they only had one shot at gear per dungeon. It wouldn’t be until they reach the key levels where their gains will come down just to execution they would start to play beyond their weekly gear cap.
I have a concern for consistent teams with this one because of random keystones. If we never see a Mists key within our 5 that week, we’d have to come up with some PUG or alt combination just to fill our vault because of RNG. Like I do agree in principle, but think the key system will render it unviable since it would suck to be forced to PUG if you’re a premade.
Maybe players could use one key at level X to start any dungeon at level X for just vault credit and only if they time it? So I can use my Siege +10 key to run a Mists +10, the key will remain a Siege +10 regardless of outcome and there is no loot or crests from the end of dungeon chest; if we time it, that crosses off our Mists key for weekly vault credit.
What would be the point of this? I can understand removing loot/crests (even though I wouldn’t agree with that), but if a team wants to keep going even with no reward, why shouldn’t they be able to? Keys already make progging M+ fairly tricky, I don’t know why we would want to further restrict a team from being able to work on strategies if we remove the tangible reward.
Also, and I realize this is a fairly niche use case, I have a fond memory of my first key over a +20 where we spent over 3 hours in a +24 AD in BFA S4. We knew going in it was going to be a circus as only the tank had anything even close to the experience at this level, but we had an absolute blast. Like I said, I realize this is a niche use case, but I feel like Blizzard would be squandering the ability for players to get these kinds of moments for no real benefit if you were kicked out of the dungeon after a certain amount of time.
we don’t need to make sweeping changes to raiding because your guild failed at properly recruiting, OP
So to clarify, you had an abundance of DPS players that none of which were willing to fulfill key/necessary positions in a raid group in order for the group to be able to raid?
You’ve got, as you said, “mainstay” players who are willing to sit idly and just let it fail while none of them are willing to press N, and click “Change Specialization” in order to raid?
Time to find a different guild.