It’s funny because every day I see a new “M+ isn’t fun, the skill threshold is too high, there are no tanks or healers” content created by big streamers but then there’s always someone saying everyone’s imagining it.
Or they want the exact data you used to prove your point and then say that you are interpreting it wrong.
Interesting article with some metrics and dev comments that makes it clear that the metrics in m+ this season arent’t great and wow devs agree that perception is important.
“Compared to Dragonflight specifically, we are seeing a pretty sharp decline in Mythic Plus participation in The War Within,” Raider. io general manager Kelsey Cox told PC Gamer. "Almost every season will see a decline in participation numbers from Week 1 of that season, but in most of the Dragonflight seasons the numbers stayed pretty steady after the initial Week 1 drop-off.
“That’s not what we’ve been seeing in this current season though: TWW Week 14 had about one-fourth the Mythic Plus participation of Week 1, in terms of total dungeons done worldwide.”
From the article author:
"This season was different. We rapidly discovered that our group’s lack of key abilities to handle specific dungeon mechanics without having to swap to different characters was utterly punishing. We quit the season early after hitting a wall at +12s and getting passed easily by groups that typically didn’t reach those levels, but had the “right” classes.
Despite our early exit, our Raider. io team points—which take into account your relative ranking among others playing your specs—put us on the home page of the site, in the top three teams in the world (Number 1 in North America) for weeks. It’s not because we’re world-quality players; it’s because no one with half a brain was playing our dumpster-tier combo of specs."
From Cox (raider. io guy) again
'“Many of those changes have been great, but some have created a situation where the jump in difficulty between levels is pretty excessive,” Cox said. That difficulty compounds dramatically if you don’t have a steady group and are trying to play with a random collection of people.
“This has likely been one of the largest contributing factors in the decline in participation we’ve seen this season,” Cox said. “The first aspect is simply that there are players who would previously engage with Mythic Plus at the lower key levels that are instead just running it at the base Mythic 0 level instead, due to the dungeon tuning differences.”
Even players easily capable of running a +10 in a set group quickly found that if their friends weren’t available, pugging a +10 might be largely out of reach.
“Considering a +10 is the minimum level required to get Mythic item level loot in your [weekly reward] Great Vault, that would understandably be a target for a lot of players,” said Cox. “However, when you realize that pugging a +10 is absolutely not an easy feat—especially if you’re not one of the very few meta specs—it is pretty demoralizing.”
As a pres evoker these were the exact perceptions I was talking about.
Blizzard dev Hazzikostas said they are aware of these perceptions and while they aren’t well accounted for in the current PTR build they are in upcoming patches which will be doing more spec balancing.
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I find it genuinely interesting that both Blizzard and Raider IO are going on the record to state overall participation is down, when we’ve been shown graphs by players who support the changes that show participation is on par with other seasons.
I wonder if Blizzard/Raider IO are speaking in terms of unique accounts participating, while the graphs are showing alt participation?
Most of the graphs show number of keys run. This could mask a drop in player participation both due to alts and due to the extension of myth track requiring more runs per alt to max out.
I also believe Raider IO only displays data for players above a certain IO. If there are a large number of people who haven’t touched m+ at all or only did a single +2 and stopped, it wouldn’t be represented.
The data the public has access to is so fragmented that it’s difficult to draw firm conclusions.
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I haven’t looked very closely at it, but it seems like they are very focused on a very specific metric concerning starting season population and percentages of player retention week-over-week.
The graph and charts I shared were pure key completion numbers, which does show that this season did fairly well. Not the most participated, but kept up with the best.
I think you only need 200 score to be logged.
Correct. That is why I used only timing a single +2 as an example. Considering that 43.8% of the logged population has not managed to time all 2s (so their score would be between 200 and 1320) there is likely a non-negligible number of people less than 200. For many, first impressions matter and if their first key is an unpleasant experience, it will also be their last key.
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This is something I agree with very strongly. We only have access to RIO for the most part if we want to look at objectifiable data, but there’s still major holes in what’s needed to draw a complete picture. If Blizzard still provided Sub numbers it would be pretty huge.
With that said, I do think it is worth mentioning that we should be able to compare seasons to a degree because every season will have players that have alts or playing 1 key and stopping.
We have enough to draw some levels of correlations.
The raider IO guy said specifically that they have access to data they don’t publish.
Yes, I understand that. That’s unrelated to what I said.
Doing your own key and raising it undermines this a bit but getting into pugs have and always will be utterly brutal even if your meta.
The slots are limited and unless you want to start doing 10’s in the first two weeks of a new season it’s just irrelevant rather than demoralizing. I guess why they said that and I even agree with it to a point but it’s not taking into account all the factors.
Sorry if I missed something, what is irrelevant?
People worrying about the meta and getting rejected because of it. It’s not as relevant as they think it is for people just wanting weekly mythic vault and portals.
Group size, extreme competition for DPS slots and other factors are more problematic than being “rejected” because of the meta.
I’m pretty much done this season but for 10’s I did over the season I was far more interested in guild groups signing up, friends signing up together and/or what I believed to be best to clear the key.
I just wanted +1, anything higher was really pointless for my goals so there was zero point bothering for it. If it happened great…but if not it changed nothing.
They were specifically talking about the difficulty of completing a key, not getting in to one.
Ah, still pretty similar if you take into account what is the end goal of the player.
I think he meant getting rejected from groups repeatedly is demoralizing. Players will only search for so long until they consider other options. I have a 631 hunter at 2690 and it’s difficult for me to pug into 10s.
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Of course but a few too many people think its meta when it’s not the only reason why by far.
Ah, I see. Comp can be restrictive, even despite the meta. Having a lust and brez are pretty standard expectations which already limits the options.
Yep and when you start adding the dungeon, the key level, the layout, the class, the spec…Personal preference…DPS have it rough though healers and tank can suffer from this too albeit often much less.
I still remember the first 10 I did this season, was Week 2 and had 109 applications within 2 mins. About 75 of them were DPS.
The only reason I am still playing is commitment in the guild. However, my patience is running out. Blizz keeps piling up mechanics. Hey, Mists was M+ already. But lets add more. And then even more. This basically kills pugs. Looks like elitists are back with vengeance. I am sorry, but this some Blizz fantasy that everyone has “friends” they play with…
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