Today we previewed some changes we’re planning for Season 4.
As always, you’ll see all of the other details about Season 4 (if you want to) when we open the PTR, but please feel free to discuss the contents of the article above in this thread.
Thanks!
These changes fixes many of the issues I’ve had with dungeons overall and I’m happy to see that modern WoW also gets some “new” things. Only thing missing now is removing a raid difficulty and the affixes and we’re good to go!
Honestly tho, I hope that BGs and raids get the same “refresh” in the soon-to-be future.
I think the changes are potentially a big improvement, I’ve felt for a while and especially since the endcap reward has turned into +20 that there have been too many potential ‘levels’ to the ladder. Making progression not feel particularly meaningful as it can be difficult to really discern much of a difference between different keys and creating a number of key ranges that seem to just exist for the sake of it.
That’s not to say that the difficulty is too high, far from it, the keys seem to get easier and easier and what was once a high key is scoffed at within my circles and we’re hardly pushing for the 0.1% title or anything like it.
I’m happy that there’s going to be more content for the lower-‘middle’ of the playerbase, something which will give them a slightly more ‘old fashioned’ ‘Cataclysm Heroic’ type experience again for the people within that range and rewarding them appropriately for it.
I really hope that there will be more planned changes for keystones in the next expansion, specifically in regards to Affixes and how it can create weeks where people would rather not play your video game, but these are good changes and I’m looking forward to trying them out in the next patch.
Removing timer for the lower level keys I think it a great way to incorporate some of the feedback about m+ that’s been going on for years. It’s a good way for players to get their feet wet in lower keys without creating a toxic environment, and also isn’t incredibly punishing. It also helps bridge the gap to endgame for some players who felt it too daunting of an arena to step into. Having to do something +10 instead of +20 for maximum vault reward seems like a much better reward to work towards for new players as well.
I think restructuring can help a bit with key level bloat overall. I’m sure a niche sect of M+ players are going to disagree and not like the changes, but I think this is overall great for the players.
Good changes. Heroic dungeons had lost a lot of their value and I believe that with this change they will become more interesting.
I think the new place where M0 will land is a massive opportunity to bring back Challenge Modes in some form. I personally dont find pushing higher key levels engaging, but i would LOVE optimizing a lower difficulty for speed.
Overall, very great change in terms of difficult and reward structure. This should ensure more players are willing to step a toe into mythic+ going forward.
What I would also like to address is twink friendliness. Currently, it is a very unrewarding experience to twink, esp. in terms of time commitment. There should exist systems that make twinks a lot faster in all aspects (“crest”) of gearing once a main reached a certain bucket (ilvl and rating) so it is easier to catch up and have the freedom to swap mains without spending days/weeks to catch up to your main esp. if the season is progressed for several weeks.
I mentioned a while ago in the following thread a fairly “easy” solution how a fix to this could look like:
Also, please consider:
One of the questions that came up while talking with guildies was that of lockouts with Mplus.
“What’s the reason for keeping the M0 dungeons on a weekly lock out? Given the higher difficulty, it seems like it would restrict those looking to gear towards M+.”
Another thought that came up was on on-death affixes.
“Having the on-death affixes (Bolstering, Bursting, etc) first appear on +10 keys feels too late for them to appear. Why have them appear at a +8 instead of the key level for when the M+ rewards in?”
An issue heard from multiple healers is about the afflicted affix and how on higher key levels it becomes impossible to be able to dispel both mechanics and the dual adds that spawn. It would be helpful if this effect could be cleared my multiple people maybe have the possibility of it being dispelled as an enrage as well to include more classes at moment the people who can dispel it are quite limited and this seems to go against the mission to bring players and not classes.
What an excellent start to the last season of the expansion.
This highlighted change to a system in need of a rework shows promise for what the game can become.
Without shining the same light many have already pointed out.
The draw of the content you provide, such as mythic plus. Benefits far more for the general masses having a true interest in the content versus the competitive portion.
By providing the means to learn to grow as players. As characters, classes, and as groups. The common folk are far more likely to strive past what a current mythic means to them.
I dont have an end all system in mind. I think a daily, or weekly in game competitive ladder of sorts might give many players interest to participate.
Something as simple as completing x1 mythic at M0-5 will yield any player that week consumables, food, elixer, could be 100 different little things.
Items or currency (even old world faction currency)(players choice), as a reward that doesnt make it manditory in todays Biome of Fomo or percieved player progress.
You could have a lot of fun with a leaderboard in game for guilds to compete, weekly timed runs that reduce time available each week as the season goes on.
Smaller incentives are always welcome to players.
That’s the wrong direction. It’s M+ that needs to respect the weekly lockout, not M0 that needs to stop doing so.
These changes address a bunch of issues with entry-level M+, which is nice to see, but there’s still a lot of issues remaining. One thing that should probably be clarified is whether M0 will be available day 1 of a patch/expansion, because with the increased ilevel it’d be quite disruptive (ie we’d have too much gear going into the actual season) to have it available immediately.
This was also a great opportunity to at least start addressing other issues like the infinite farmability of M+ rewards (which absolutely torpedo any chance of gradual gear progression by deleting everything except the last 5-10 ilevels below full BiS), Crest availability between M+ and raid (M+ can always cap all Crest types, raid can’t ever hit the weekly cap on your “progress difficulty” whichever one that happens to be) and M+ just generally being unbelievably generous with all reward types (vault unlocks, gear, currencies, cosmetics like the tier set sparkles)
Overall a step in the right direction in terms of alleviating the gaps in difficulty scaling.
However I am hopeful more changes are coming, especially to the reward structure of M+… such as scaling beyond the +10 level.
Definitely agree and am hoping that in TWW they are taking a harder look at the infinite gear farm.
That would block a lot of people who require gear from bis from mplus. I’m required for bis to get 2 daggers from Fall and a trinket from Everbloom. If I was unable to farm this I’d be quite behind in dps and possibly if i were in a mythic situation at risk of losing my team spot due to lower dps.
When talking to my guild on this it was brought up that this would also make early gear farming a lot harder and also make it feel worse failing keys on the way to getting KSM/KSH because you would have less chances per week. They also feel that it goes against the mission of MPLus which was to be infinitely scalng and repeatable endgame content.
You’re “required” to do that because you can.
That’s the point yes. The early gear farming that M+ allows is incredibly toxic to raid progression, and the solution has to be changing M+ gearing.
No? It can still be infinitely repeatable, it just shouldn’t drop loot every time (just like raid difficulties below mythic). The infinitely farmable loot is the problem, including the feedback loop of infinitely farming key N in order to get gear to do key N+1 etc.
Overall, I like the changes presented and I think it’s headed in a good direction. Outside of the initial week or two in a new season, there are lots of key levels that just weren’t useful like 15’s. People were obviously running specific breakpoints for crests like 11’s and 16’s or for gear like 17’s and 18’s. I think this will streamline a lot of it as long as the scaling is on point. However, this does make getting mythic tier gear in the vault easier since it won’t have the final affix at an 8 or 9.
Moving forward, I hope there is some focus on the loot disparity between M+ and raiding. Currently it’s far easier to get aspect crests and mythic tier gear in the vault from M+ than raiding. Even discounting the mythic raid roster boss (which should be remedied somewhat in TWW due to hall of fame requirement being removed), completing 16-18s is easier than killing mythic bosses. Plus you can infinitely farm 17’s for hero gear at the start of the season which saves crests in the long run. Raiding just can’t compete with that from a gearing standpoint.
That’s obviously not an easy thing to balance but hoping to see some progress made on that front. I’m excited for a number of the changes though and hope they work out as intended.
This in my personal opinion is a very gated take, as even though you can infinitely farm M+ for gear, going off what you just said, I don’t believe you clearly realize how the current system works, there are people that spend weeks or hundreds of runs in the same key for a singular item, or for a single piece of loot. You are not gaurenteed loot every single run, there is gaurenteed 2 drops at 20, then more the higher you go up, yes. But most people farming gear, typically do it ranging from 17s-21s, in which they don’t get the bonus loot option. The problem with the M+ Loot system is the fact that its entirely RNG and you have to hope you get it this run or your next run, great example, i farmed falls for 12 hours straight very early season to get one of my raid bis items, it took me roughly 30 runs before i even saw it for myself.
So, You need to realize you’re not gaurenteed a piece of gear every run, you’re expressing exactly what we already have. What we need is a better way to actually target specific pieces from M+ rather than praying to RNGesus for a drop we need before our next raid night.
I wouldn’t call the “infinitely farmable gear option” as something to solve but, rather, as something required for the competitive part of the game. A necessary evil, even.
Why necessary?
Because otherwise you are gating the majority of players behind a huge RNG wall. It would be the problem of the legendary expanded to all gear slots of all the players.
If anything, the lockout disparity between m+ and mythic raid is the problem, on the mythic raid side of things. To solve that I would propose using the “wings” categories from LFR on lockouts rather than locking out the full raid (but thats a discussion for another topic probably)
Yes, we do. I’m well aware how many runs it can take to farm a specific item. M+ gear needs better targeting of loot, but it also needs to not be something you can grind a full set of week 1. It can’t be infinitely farmable and perfectly targetable and give the easiest access to high ilevel drops and give the easiest access to max ilevel vaults. Something has to give, and the obvious one is the infinitely farmable loot because it’s unbelievably toxic to power progression in PvE as a whole.
We need better targeting yes, but the idea that you “need X item before your next raid night” is exactly the issue. That is a terrible expectation that Blizzard is setting by making gear infinitely farmable.
I’m not going to keep repeating myself, but no, infinitely farmable loot is not the solution to anything. It’s unhealthy for the game in so many ways. M+ needs better targeting, but worse everything else.
No. Being done for the week is incredibly valuable for pacing progression. Farming the same bosses over and over until everybody has their gear once you’re done progressing that boss is not a fun experience. It’s the same mindnumbing gameplay as splits.
Gear needs to be something you improve over time. Skipping to the 2nd highest “tier” of gear immediately ruins that.
We have to agree to disagree here.
My position is that infinite farmable loot is necessary for the game and that no amount of “m+ targeting” will solve that necessity.
Have you considered why the “self found loot mode” exists as a separate version of classic and why? In the answer to that you can see why the retail version needs this “infinite farmable loot” options for fairness.
Would it be fair to say that an interval of time where it was expressly tested openly for all.
That targeted loot was given a proper go?
Instead of theorycrafting the pros and cons of a system that hasnt been introduced in practice. Seeing the results of that system for a season or two and then comparing the results.
It’d provide all parties more knowledge for their vantage points.
I’m wondering, Dreadnug.
Are you against the system completely?
Do you merely have reservations about implementation?
What system has been proposed?
All I read is that “infinite farmable loot” is terrible for the game without a consideration of what would happen without it (either w/o it as a whole or an alternative system).
What would happen to those quality healers or tanks that lack the specific trinkets, or the fury warrior that lacks a high ilvl MH? Wait on luck?