Mythic Raiding Feedback - Improving the player experience

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

At the risk of getting flamed, I don’t know how else to get this feedback to developers. For context, I’ve been raiding since 2005. I only ever took a break in MoP. I’ve always completed the most difficult content the game has to offer, for the most part, before the next set of content is released.

The experience of my guild and I has led me to really desire a few key changes, mainly surrounding alts, the pace at which content is adjusted (i.e nerfed) along with skips & vanity rewards.

Issue #1 - Alts. Your raiding guild has a massive advantage if you have capable and willing multi-classers. Fight benefits from 3-4 locks? Let’s stack. Some mechanic where multiple DKs death gripping is broken, have a couple of people switch.

The problem with alts is that BFA is incredibly alt unfriendly. I’d love to play my alts more. But the idea of grinding out the essences on each one, grinding the reps all over again, is enough to make me just log out. Only the most extreme can take advantage of this style of play, and that extreme play is difficult to quantify when it comes to judging how many guilds have killed content, and when content should be nerfed.

I get that engagement is a key metric Blizzard reports out to investors, and it’s only natural that this has a trickle-down effect into game-design, but I would argue that making alts more accessible would create more engagement. I’d love to play the game more on my alts. But the barrier to entry is so great, that it is overwhelming, and people opt to do something else. Simple changes around things like rep and essences would go an extremely long way. The azerite grind is the least of the issue at this point with AK catch-up mechanisms.

Imagine if each time you opened a paragon rep cache (that takes 10k rep to get) there was a 10k account bound rep token for that faction. You earned the rep, you had to do the things, but since you’re done with it you can now start getting an alt a nice rep boost. Hell, maybe bring back tabards that you can buy at exalted which are account bound, that can then increase your rep gained with that faction by some large factor.

In regards to essences, what if at Rank 3, instead of your old essence becoming a gray vendor item, it became an account bound Rank 1 essence for your alt? Or lets get crazy and say you unlock Rank 4, maybe along with the cosmetic you can now get Rank 3 automatically for your alt(s). Anything is better than having to do all the grinds over again. I want to echo that I think you’d get more people playing this way, compared to the ignoring of alts that I’m seeing a ton of from my personal experience.

Issue #2 - Content Pacing & Nerfs. Hall of Fame. It’s a cool thing. It obviously can be improved and tweaked in future iterations (see: horde vs. alliance balance) but I also think it is the perfect mechanism to establish some automatic content pacing.

Example: Hall of fame fills up with the 100 guilds. I believe we can safely say that’s kind of the top bleeding-edge / “try hard” guilds out there. Enter the ICC style optional mechanic of “talk to an NPC at the front for a flat dmg/hp/healing boost” let’s say 5%. You don’t have to, but you can choose to. Next week, you can do this again, now up to 10%. Week after than, 15%. Up to a pre-determined amount, maybe its 30%, who knows. The number crunchers can find that sweet spot. The point of this is that it becomes less of a guessing game for developers on when they need to nerf or adjust a fight. Sure there will still need to be hotfixes, bug fixes and so forth but the goal here is to slowly lessen the burden on those guilds that need the extra boost. Hall of Fame is already full at this point too - so it’s not like it matters much to the guilds who have already killed it. Logs will always show if you killed it with buffs, or without buffs as well. More people seeing, engaging and playing the content is better. This creates more raiders, creates more guilds, grows the raiding scene. Instead, that scene appears to be shrinking more and more over time.

I firmly believe Blizzard should not be trying to design “guild killers”, and they have unfortunately done that several times with G’huun, Jaina, Uu’nat, and Azshara. While the content being hard is great, it is not fun to extend a boss for weeks, in some guild’s cases months, just to secure a single kill. I’d like to use the guild Rain as an example here (not affiliated). They are the arguably the best 2-day guild in the world, raiding 8 hours a week. They’ve been on Azshara since August 3rd, and haven’t got out of Phase 3. These are some of the best players out there, on a limited schedule. Designing fights that are so meticulous that you have to pull them 300+ times and do exhausting 10+ minute pulls is not a fun experience after a certain point. What the threshold is, is hard to say.

Issue 3- Skips & Vanity Rewards. What happened here? Was the ball dropped on adding skips to raids once you cleared? Why on earth does Battle for Dazaralor not have skips at the perfectly designed “acts” of each set of bosses to make things like farming a Jaina mount more feasible? Why is there no vanity reward off every mythic end boss, to encourage re-clears? Examples:

  • G’huun - tons of guilds killed him once, then never again.
  • Uu’nat - most guilds killed it once, including the best in the world, then never again.
  • Azshara - many guilds are currently only killing it once, then never again.

Adding skips back to the game, once an instance is clear, so raiders don’t have to waste the time farming the same entry-level bosses over and over would go a long way to solving this problem. Adding rare vanity rewards (mount, transmog wep ala argus style, special enchant effect, profession patterns, etc.) would give guilds the incentive to continue doing that end content. I want a reason to continue raiding the bosses. Right now the alure of a possible WF or socket is not enough.

I hope this doesn’t fall on deaf ears, I know I’m not alone. I want Mythic raiding to succeed, to continue to be popular, and more people to get into it. Some small changes talked about here would have a profound impact.

7 Likes
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No. Rarely is a wall on mythic progression an issue of damage. Unless the buff allows you to just press hero and kill the boss inside that time frame people who don’t do mechanics will still kill your raid. Do mechanics.

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We’re not talking about bleeding edge mythic progression in this thread. Progressions is over when the raid is cleared in the first week. We’re talking Hall of Fame is filled up.

Damage, healing and HP absolutely play a factor in reducing the difficulty of encounters, otherwise gear wouldn’t matter, people wouldn’t do splits at the start of raids, blizzard wouldn’t apply hotfixes that reduce the HP of bosses and adds, effectively damage increases, and so on. Some examples from current tier. Ashvane and Orogoza made much easier with more DPS to meet checks and cut off timers. Za’qul made much easier with increased healing output and HP. Azshara made easier with all of the above due to the nature of soaking to reduced HP, damage to cut off the hard checks on timers for add spawns etc.

Appreciate your opinion, but you haven’t cleared a single Mythic tier that I can tell in BFA, so you’re not exactly the audience I’m talking to in this thread.

2 Likes
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You’re hiding on an alt. People who swing CE in the first month or 2 don’t need these buffs, and I can tell you that for my experience at least they wouldn’t have solved the issue of people needing to play cleaner.

Part of the raiding is supposed to be the prep, which involves getting the gear you need and the comp if you’re going to worry about it. I’m exactly the audience this thread is for, its strange you’re trying to pull the “you dont have CE” card while you’re making a thread about trivializing the content.

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I don’t think he cares if you have cutting edge dude, he said you don’t clear the content at all, cutting edge or not, so you’re someone that gives up, doesn’t do it, and says “get better”.

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Before he edited he opened with the fact i didn’t have CE. Attendance falls off by end of tier, there isn’t anything I can do about that. That’s something the guild has been working and improving on. Again someone saying “you give up and don’t do it” posting on an alt having no idea what the actual problem might be.

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I agree that end boss design has been problematic. The last few haven’t been particularly fun. Spending over a month progressing a tedious fight with strict spec requirements is a huge drag on average CE guilds.

I don’t know if the current system of periodic nerfing is the right way. I don’t think your proposed flat damage buff is the way either, though it would probably work in a vacuum. I think the real problem is that gearing and alts are so messed up right now. I’d absolutely choose to quit the game before I would grind all that stuff again to be able to play an alt at a mythic raid level. And raid gearing… literally the only items I care about are trinkets, weapon, and rings. Everything else comes from outside of raid.

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End boss design and attrition has destroyed a lot of guilds. I’d love to be a fly on the wall of the internal statistics around how many guilds start a tier, how many finish it, and how many stop raiding, and at what bosses this happens.

Gearing is definitely a factor, I look and think about sockets all the time and how silly it is that a 425 with a socket can be better than a 455 baseline item in certain slots. Part of the reasoning behind my suggestion of doing something optional automatically after Hall of Fame fills up is because it seems like there is very little attention (from a development perspective) on the current mythic raid after it releases and is cleared.

This might be because of other priorities , or how they’re always talking about they’re designing 2 expansions out, but having something in place that takes the edge off at a known time, vs. sitting around and wondering if the will of the devs will bring content adjustments this week, is better imo.

I can’t stress enough how badly I want to engage and play my multiple alts more. But I’ve only been able to stomach maintaining one.

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This thinking really needs to die because it is so incredibly incorrect. No, the progression is not over because the top of the top mythic guilds who no lifed the raid for one or two weeks straight cleared it. The progression is over when the avergae full clearing mythic guild has done it (ideally before any substantial end boss nerfs occur). Or at the time that the substantial end boss nerfs occur. It most certainly is not predicated around the top of the top guilds no life clearing it in the first two weeks. World first race may be over then, but not progression for 99% of the mythic guilds out there.

Edit: I do agree that essences are insanely punishing for maintaining alts. I can say with 100% truthfulness my alts died when essences were released. They are literally farming toons for mats now and will never be more than that in expansion at this point.

1 Like
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I think it helps here to define progression, as we think about it in different ways. I think about it as the content is new and undefeated. Once the content is defeated, I don’t look at it as progression anymore, as there are kill videos, logs etc, and it is no longer “new” to the collective.

While the majority of guilds who will take months to clear it after, and they individually will be progressing on it, my reference of progression there is to the content as a whole. That’s why I think its important to discuss around the “hall of fame” filling up, because I can’t think of a better “fair” judge than the top 100 horde and alliance guilds being done with the content. And even that idea only comes about because it’s what Blizzard has set the standard at. Maybe its more fair at top 200, 300 etc, but Blizzard has said, top 100 is the number that matters.

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I guess the question then becomes; if you allow this automatic stacking buff (a la ICC?) do they remove the rewards (titles/mounts/CE until after the current raid ends) for those guilds who utilize the buff? It doesn’t seem right to allow a group to clear the boss with a flat % buff/nerf and retain those rewards. Especially as this current expansion hasn’t provided near the same level of end of tier raid nerfs that previous tiers did. I also think that at one point they had stated that they don’t like adding power creeping buffs to players as it results in a skewed understanding for players and their actual output/capabilities and they preferred % reductions to boss damage/health. I may be misremembering that.

1 Like
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Makes sense on the adjustable power output vs scaling down of boss hp and damage. As far as titles / mounts etc. The hall of fame title is already removed when it fills up. That’s the “prestige” title now, . Cutting edge doesn’t really mean anything these days. Mounts I don’t see why it matters much. Take Jaina for example. Unique mount model, cool and sought after. Still available at 100% drop rate with a full additional tier of gear, pugs clear BoD in 90 minutes via group finder for mount farms on the weekend.

I’d even be cool with a recolor if you kill it with an optional power creep (or boss power reduction). So you know who’s done it without help, and who did it with help. Similar to how Gul’dan had the red hellfire core or green hellfire core depending on difficulty. Same exact mount, one said “I did this on mythic”.

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Agreed. Just thinking of hopping on an alt and trying to do stuff just sounds miserable because of the essence system, which is why I’ve only done the entry to Nazjatar on an alt to help a friend out for the intro part. But once they were caught up to my main and could do WQs and other stuff with them, I swapped pretty quickly.

How they came up with this idea is just ridiculous and beyond dumb.

2 Likes
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Given that so few people actually earn CE I’d argue that it is still very much a prestige title. You are looking at 1700 - 2000 guilds for any given tier (excluding end of expansion tiers that never end, and poorly released ones like CoS) that are earning CE out of how many thousands of guilds and players stepping foot into mythic? It’s definitely less than the Hall of Fame, but it’s still very much a prestige title given the rarity of guilds actually earning CE.

That might be a viable option.

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I agree with issues number 1 and 3 wholeheartedly. I want to play my alts but can’t be bothered to the way it is now.

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Skips need to come back. Preferably ones like the Blackrock Foundry skip, where you go to the last boss.

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At this point I’d take any skip, even if it’s just half way through the raid. It’s unbelievable to me that they just up and removed skips after two full expansions of having them, against the wishes of literally the entirety of the raiding playerbase. It’s kind of a hilarious joke that the only difficulty where skips are still a thing is LFR.

But really the problems with mythic raiding are a combination of a whole lot of individual issues aside from a lack of skips and the entire expansion being hugely alt unfriendly. Having some BiS azerite pieces come from m+ (or even PvP). The aids that is titanforging. Godawful stat design meaning an RNG socket is worth up to 30 ilvls. RNG benthic gear being BiS. There’s probably more that I’m forgetting.