You are not, these forums just over inflate the popularity of the system.
Why is this a bad thing? This play style is exaggerated as well. A lot of people played alts, or farmed for their professions. I’d argue, the constant pressure to grind those same dungeons over and over again is causing way more burn out with players.
There should be no carrot. There should be an end. I was endgame geared eventually. Farming Black Temple but still ran heroics helping other people. I am saying the design shouldn’t be to keep dungeons relevant for the whole expansion, full stop. They should just make new ones instead.
That is the thing, Blizzard doesn’t want there to be an end. Look at D4 at the moment. So many of the design elements in that game are present in WoW now. They have been merging the 2 games now for years.
Since the end of WoD, Blizzard has been copying systems from D3 into WoW all in an effort to create endless seasonal game loops.
I didn’t sign up to play an WoW ARPG, that is exactly what the game feels like these days.
I just feel like the game is playing you, and you’re not playing the game these days. All the world content is a boring daily slog, that is devoid of any soul.
The dungeons don’t feel like dungeons, except for a few outliers. Most are just copy pasta of the world terrain. I know that they kind of always did this, but it just feels like the game is copying more world terrain for the dungeons these days.
I just think the current game feels cheaply made compared to how things were in the past. It is painfully obvious that Blizz isn’t putting resources into the game they should for a population this size.
WoW makes a ton of money still, even compared to the most popular games on the market, but the game doesn’t feel like it is getting the love anymore.
Most of the game just feels like a collection of boring systems that are there just to waste your time.
Give me fun gameplay, and unique systems, and I will waste my time gladly on your game.
Agreed. They are banking on our addiction and/or commitment. I’ve been playing since vanilla release. It would be hard for me to just up and quit. I would like changes but I feel like blizzard is just another lazy, greedy company these days.
I like having something that’s an actual challenge to do that doesn’t require a 20 man guild raid team or is something I can do after we clear mythic.
You get rid of m+ and add more dungeons, sure I’ll do them more than once because I need gear from them but they’re just a chore past the first time and they don’t get any harder than the first time either.
Not like the dungeons added as wrath continued held any sort of challenge or interest past weekly badge pinatas.
I think they are in full panic mode at the moment, since this expansion sold so poorly. I think we are going to see even more crazy monetization tactics from the company in WoW moving forward, trying to milk what is left of their remaining player base.
I have been holding out hope that the popularity of Classic has shown that you don’t need these crazy infinite game loops to keep players engaged.
The vast majority of players stop doing m+ past the point it awards gear, so 16 and earlier in the season 20. There’s no real reason besides actually enjoying the challenge for anyone to do keys past that point already.
If there’s no challenge for those people then functionally it’s the same as classic. Do easy thing weekly to get gear. And I can’t see myself wanting to do that at all if there’s no hard thing to do with the gear I get.
Blizzard and the community thinks dungeons with a timer is compelling content. I can’t blame them for making it as the community likes to zerg things down as fast as they can. I think it honestly tho made the game worse off. Not necessarily cause there is difficult time based content, but because it’s a vastly superior and easier gearing option for your main or even alts that even feels mandatory.
Sadly I don’t think they’ll ever change this. I do hear from M+ enjoyers that those that like the challenge wouldn’t care if the loot was removed cause they simply enjoy M+ as it is. I think adding in new dungeons, not having to deal with dropped keys or go go go like it is would be a nice change of pace, but I might be in the minority there.
I like m plus. Originally I wasn’t a fan of using old dungeons but it’s better than a whole expansion of the same ones over and over. I prefer m plus over raids
As far as I’m concerned m+ already doesn’t provide loot past the first few weeks when people are trying to run 20s for gear.
I’m just not sure how the rest of the playerbase will react when the game becomes raid or die again because you removed the only source of non raid gear above 424 ilvl though.
If they added in no other way to obtain gear or upgradeable gear from dungeons I think this would be correct. If they added in other compelling content to do then I do not agree.
For example what if dungeons had tiers like raids? This used to be a thing back in the day btw. You couldn’t do the new dungeons until you met a gear/power threshold. This is one idea that would add in new dungeon content to the dungeon roster, keep people farming new loot, and allow you to get new upgrades from dungeons and not just raids. Not including that gear being slowly upgradeable over time. And what if no or limited lockouts were a thing? Perhaps limited if all dungeons had a hard mode, so one per week obviously of each.
As I also said, I don’t want them to remove M+ entirely as it could be added to a challenge mode tier on its own. It would still exist just like mage tower content exists.
What would that even be though? Badge vendors so you run your weekly trivial m0s and buy some 437s? That’s the old system and I can’t see how that’s any better so it’d have to be something new.
M+ at least, at some point, offers all players a challenge to overcome even if by that point for some there’s no reward but the challenge itself. I just cannot see how that’s a bad thing.
I don’t get why dungeons, an activity that was always a casual activity in the game, had to be transformed into this sweatfest in order to keep players that need to play WoW daily engaged?
Dungeons were a stepping stone into raiding, and this is where the real challenge was always at in the game, but this wasn’t cutting it for metrics that were being pushed on the devs from the Act-Blizz. They needed more session play time and daily logins.
So, the developers were looking for content that was already in the game in order that they could exploit in order to create more content loops and pad played time. They did it with world quests, and they did it with dungeons, along with the silly tables.
They copied Greater Rifts in Diablo 3 and put them into WoW, a system that works well in an ARPG, but I’d argue is terrible for an MMO that has 39 specs and requires 5 players for the Rift (dungeon). Furthermore, they didn’t consider the social dynamics and the impact this would have on players demanding that their spec be viable in high keys. People minimize the impact this has had on class design, but I’d argue that a lot of the specs are being designed around M+ these days to appease people constantly complaining about the M+ meta. It has really transformed the game in ways that people just won’t acknowledge on these forums.
The social impact has had both positive and negative impacts on 5 man content. I think though overall, that M+ has caused more toxicity and stress in the game, than it did fostering the creation of static groups.
I get why people like it, dungeons became a snooze fest, namely because gear was being showered on players from other parts of the game. Most players outgeared heroics before they even ran them.
Anyway, I don’t think M+ has been the boon to the game that people on these forums say it was. I think it is one of the most divisive systems they ever added to game, and I think it creates unneeded friction in an activity that was always just a casual content.
Dungeons were always a snooze fest and the one time they weren’t people screamed so loudly bliz immediately nerfed them into the dirt.
The game is till raid or die in a way, they just added another layer to it with M+. Problem is, you’re not really getting new content for M+, it is just a rehashed dungeons, or recycled dungeons from the current expansion for years.
I don’t see how this content really fixes players not having anything to do in the game. Like I’ve said in the past, M+ is just another bandaid for the lack of content in the game. The post expansion content that has been added in DF is probably some of the most boring, phoned in content I have ever seen added to an MMO.
Man if you need challenge in your life, then learn an instrument, start a business, pick up a new hobby. I’m so tired of the vocal minority of WoW players constantly wanting the game to be an e-sport.
And yes, this has an effect on the entire game, so no, M+ cannot be ignored.
It gives me content that can scale to my level so it always remains a challenge.
I don’t think m+ is the reason for that. I think the reason for that is world quests and world scaling. If I think back to wrath or cata bliz added a couple dungeons as the patches went on but they weren’t a challenge and I did each one maybe a handful of times for badges back in the day. They just ended up being more chores to tick off.
I don’t get why you equate the idea of something being difficult with eSports. There’s so much space between those two ideas it begins to feel like a strawman or way to insult people.
You can remove all the loot from m+ for all I care, as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t have any to begin with. It’s a challenge that exists for the sake of being a challenge.
But that’s like, your feels bro.
I personally hated the feeling of being done with my avatar and then do that on classes I dislike.
I Like playing a dk. I would HATE if I was just done after getting all blues from dungeons since I don’t have the time to raid.
M+ ensures that even with limited play time, my main continues to grow. Yes, I will eventually hit a point where even within. M+ I cannot get stronger, but as it stands that will take a VERY long time.
I clearly remember vanilla and getting my warriors one blue trinket from UBRS. And after that there was nothing else for me. No time to raid or competitive pvp. And then I just stopped playing. I dislike ranged characters, I dislike glass cannon DPS, and can’t stand healing. So the games design actually encouraged me to just leave once I got all blues.
You like that feeling. I don’t. Why are you feelings any more valuable than mine?
It’s also, pretty much, easier than at any point before to hit max item level and “be done” if that’s your goal.
It’s not like the game is forcing Rakia to participate in the content (she knows this) or that she can’t be “done” (she can be).
I’d also say m+ has zero baring on a character being finished or not. That’s the great vault and you can absolutely have meaningful qualms with that system without scrapping the idea of a scaling dungeon challenge.