The sheer number of keys runs above where gear stops but well below title basically disproves this as being the sole reason those people play M+. There certainly will be some portion of players who play M+ because of how easy it is to get gear compared to other endgame pillars. But we both know you can’t possibly know what percentage of players fall into what camp, beyond the data point I referenced.
It “plummets” to hundreds of thousands of keys run per week, literally orders of magnitude higher than any other endgame mode.
Ppl run keys above 10 below title contention levels not to play endgame “because they like it”, but to remain viable in the m+pug scene.
Pugging m+ as anything other than a tank and MAYBE a healer requires you to take part in the raiderio rating rat race. Fall out of a certain score/gear range and the “good” groups no longer consider you over more qualified applicants. This pushes you into grouping with the terrible players that fail keys repeatedly, don’t know what they’re doing, etc etc.
The goal for ppl who don’t like to m+ and want to just get their 8 keys a week in to fish the vault is that you need to maintain a high enough rating to not have to deal with the majority of terribad mouthbreathers that pug this game… and to keep up with the “good” player group, we end up progressively doing higher and higher keys as the season progresses. Basically… that group of players that could barely do 6’s when the season started…. They’re doing 10’s now. Which means if you don’t want to be stuck playing with them, you better be doing 12-14’s now.
We’re not doing mid -high keys because we like m+… it’s precisely the opposite. We do mid high keys because we loathe m+ and we’d much rather run 4-8 +13/14 keys and call it a week than get stuck all day in +10 keys that fail and disband.
Why would I want to bother creating a group when I can just maintain a high enough score/gear level to get chosen for the groups I want? Sounds like a whole lot of effort I don’t currently have to deal with.
Not really, just don’t fail keys and keep ahead of the baddies right? You don’t have to be getting top 1% or anything… just need to be 1-2 key levels higher than what the majority are doing.
This is just not true. I have PUGed to KSM every season as a feral druid since SL S1. I have PUGed to KSH in a few of those seasons as a feral druid as well, and even the seasons where I didn’t make it to KSH I did unlock every portal in the season. I have never pushed much further than what it takes to get all portals. For players who only care about getting the max gear available from M+, there is nothing that would stop them from doing so without having some pristine rating that’s several hundred points beyond what you would get from those ranges where gear caps out.
You may not be, and I won’t try to tell you what your motivation is. But you are speaking for a large swath of the population that you can’t possibly speak for. And for myself and some people I know, you are dead wrong in your assessment.
I don’t think mythic+ is that bad of an addition to WoW. WOW is a theme park and it’s fun to have a variety of rides to choose from.
HOWEVER
The mindset that it perpetuates in some of the players most definitely is damaging.
It one thing if a group of players gets to have fun with their preferred mode of play. It’s an entirely another that they get to dominate all discussions about the game and worse drive game design decisions.
Wow is not a a game that functions well as an infinite progression of speed run challenges. as time has shown, it tends to break the fundamentals of the game. That’s not acceptable.
Not to mention the completely unnecessary animosity it seems to breed in the player base as everyone takes a side.
That’s my point… doing a 14 with competent players is much shorter and less painful than slumming it through an 8 or 10… especially if ot goes poorly enough that said 8-10 actually disbands and you have to do it again.
My statement was originally a counterpoint to the other guy who said that the fact that a ton of people do keys significantly higher than it takes to get ksh or maxed vaults but lower than what would be competitive for seasonal title indicates that ppl love m+, as opposed to my claim that we don’t love it we just do it because it’s the low hanging fruit of gear progression.
The fact that you do lower keys and generally aren’t motivated to go beyond ksh both proves my point and also indicates that you aren’t the demographic of player we’re talking about.
I’m just kind of curious, what would happen if they siloed off m+ like they did PVP? What I mean is that PVP has it’s own currency to purchase it’s own gear/upgrades (honor/conquest).
But…
What if they did that for all three main end-game modes? You want to raid, you get raid specific gear and means to upgrade it. You love m+? Own gear and upgrades too. Love both? Do both.
I like m+ so I never have to step into raid if I don’t want to raid that tier, all the tier pieces and m+ gear you can easily get, plus all the upgrade currency so I literally never have to step foot in raid if I don’t want to. I like to raid too, but in order to do the difficulty I want (I’ve been doing mythic raiding for awhile), I have to ensure I do m+ for, well, tier pieces and upgrade currency. So even if the m+ dungeon pool sucks and I want to stay away from it, well too bad I don’t really have a choice to do so. You only get 10 crests per boss, and those bosses are once weekly. M+ has upgrade caps much much higher than you can get from raid each week.
I don’t know, there’s probably stuff I’m not thinking about, but surely everything can exist together.
We used to have a raid and dungeon currency. It was Justice and the original valor points. Blizzard removed it from the game in WoD for who knows the reason…
Yes, and my point is you can’t possibly know this to be true. This can be true for you and whoever you play WoW with, and like I said, I won’t try to dispute your motivations. But it’s unequivocally not true for me, nor many of the people I play WoW with.
I find M+ fun, so do the people I play WoW with. I could not care less about the gear it gives save for the necessity to have gear to push further into M+. If I gained a form of XP that I could put toward improving my character’s effectiveness in M+ through some new kind of talent system to progress up the M+ ladder (up to the point where I’ve decided to shoot for that season), I would play just as much M+. It has nothing to do with being the easiest form of gear that I can acquire.
But the point remains that among the little data we have on the subject, how many keys are run above reward level and below title is one that calls into question the position that gear is the motivating factor for running M+ for those players. Because if those players only cared about the path of least resistance to max gear, there is no reason for them to run any key above the level where gear rewards no longer improve.
You are right, this data does not prove that these players are running those keys simply because they love M+. Perhaps there is a yet undiscussed reason why those players choose to run those levels of keys. And it says nothing of the people who run keys strictly within the tangible-reward-bearing levels. But it does suggest that gear is not the motivating factor for going above the level where gear rewards cap out, contrary to your claim that “it’s the low hanging fruit of gear progression.”
Mythic+ saved this game. WoW had no hope of keeping itself the casual-friendly MMO with it’s ancient engine and limitations when you had juggernauts like FFXIV who easily usurp it on every front. Breaking the stranglehold of raids (and especially guilds) being the sole way to get power at max level allowed huge amounts of players left unsatisfied and unfulfilled from quitting for a superior MMO alternative.
Now you can argue the esport/MMO hybrid gameplay experience is worse overall for the game and aging and just general left of bell curve players who can’t handle the rising skill floor and the massive erosion of worthwhile solo/casual endgame content, but that has little to do with mythic+ specifically.
Delves may prove to be a great thing. I suspect they’ll quickly fizzle out if their rewards aren’t max item level like raiding and mythic+ gives simply because this community, no matter what, will always default to demanding the tippy top gear levels for anything beyond world boss that they can get away with and Blizzard, catering primarily to no life mythic tryhard raiders, will try and minimize any and all “necessary” lower levels of content so those loggers and proggers don’t have to sully themselves with riff raff plebs.
So for the person who aspires to go beyond solo content, raiding and mythic+ will be necessary and for left of bell curve solo casuals, delves will fizzle out once there is minimal chance to get anything worthwhile from it.
Look, if PvP and Raiding is dropping, it’s not because of M+ it’s because Blizzard needs to give PvP and Raiding more love. A successful implementation of a system that causes other aspects to drop doesn’t mean it has damaged the product, it means the other aspects need attention.
M+ doesn’t require a schedule, yet provides great loot and difficult but rewarding content, it’s a win/win… some of us can’t commit to ‘raid schedules’ because of jobs, kids, and just adult life in general, whereas m+ I can jump online, ask if any guildies are keen or use the dungeon finder to join a quick group, or make my own.