[PVE] [Dungeons] Improvements and Concepts for Mythic+ going forward Pre 10.2 announcement thoughts

Community WoW Community Council
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Greetings everyone,

With 10.2 announcement around the corner today, I want to take some time to speak about Mythic Plus, and its future.

For the context, I’m part of a CE Mythic Guild, doing mythic+ mostly on the beginning of a season if it still provides gear. Have done roughly 160 Mythic Plus this season. Have played every iteration of mythic plus. This should give you some context why I may have the following takes coming up.

Mythic Plus and affixes get boring as a season progresses

A big reason why I have only done 160 mythic plus this season (which is much for the average player) is that for me, mythic plus gets to a stall experience that is quickly solved. Affixes haven’t really evolved in the last years besides adding or removing some, and this is for me a big reason why ppl may feel bored by it.

From my experience and what I observed when playing with other people is that they are mostly annoyed by certain affixes and that may not be the affixes fault entirely. It often comes down to what trash has a dungeon. Affixes are there to give a twist to a dungeon. The problem with affixes is the requirement of handling them. While some of them are easy to handle for any class - some shine to certain classes. This is not necessary a bad thing. It becomes a problem when it’s only a beneficial outcome for eight classes. Going forward, we should think about what could affixes do for class variety going forward. Given that every week, we will have two affixes (besides tyrannical/forti) - this could open some potential to add some twist to every affix.

I will give a quick example:

Let’s say we have bolstering / bursting this week. Both affixes will still do their well-known mechanics, but also have a beneficial outcome when handling them well. For bursting this could be f.e. a healer healing a big amount of stacks away at once providing a buff to the group. Bolstering in this case could improve also some classes f.e. when willing to take risks. In my mind this could mean that if bolstering gets triggered, pet classes / classes with summon will have their pets / summons also be bolstered for a certain time frame making them very strong in those weeks and searched after. This is just a sheer example of possible kiss / curse mechanics attached to affixes.

This will give any class a week they may, can shine in it. I’m aware this isn’t 100% thought through, but may could be a point going forward. This could also be replicated to fortified and tyrannical affixes, with them providing buffs to certain classes.

Following this, I will share a concept.

Concept: Time influenced Keys

In the following chapter I’ll share an idea that’s been in my mind since mid BFA, with the growing pool of mythic plus instances and the fact people may get bored playing the whole season eight dungeons i came up with the following idea.

To keep Mythic Plus the whole season a refreshing experience, some of the mythic plus pool rotates every week. Of the eight Dungeons a season contains - two will be disabled per week to roll as any of the other six keys. You will receive a key from the vault matching one of those six dungeons.

If you complete a mythic plus of one of the six enabled keys, you have the chance (f.e. 25% Chance) to influence your key. An influenced key still contains a regular dungeon (f.e. in this season we have Ruby Life Pools) on its tag but can also turn into a random time influenced challenge key when brought to a certain area. This way, you can choose if you’re willing to face the unknown or go a safe route. Keys of the vault can’t be influenced; influenced keys can’t be influenced.

Time influenced Keys contain the stream of time in it and are inflicted by the infinite Dragonflight. A time influenced key can turn to any dungeon of the past seasons (or any mythic+ in general that was already a mythic+ (Writer’s Note: this comes down to tech limitations ofc.). They may also contain special bosses or mobs that are not native to this area.

To purge (play) the influenced key, you must bring the key to a cavern and activate the key device there. If you interact with the device, your group will be requested if they are willing to start the key - once they accept → the key starts, and your group will be ported to an unknown past mythic plus dungeon.

Concept: Time influenced key loot

With the massive amount of available loot from past dungeons, it would be a frustrating experience to target farm something out of a past dungeon. This means the loot pool needs to be more deterministic. To achieve this, every season will contain special featured “time influenced items”. Those loot pieces can drop from any influenced dungeon this season. Besides the influenced items, the dungeons will contain loot from the current eight season dungeons, replacing the loot pool of the influenced dungeon. Additional, for every influenced key you played this week you unlock the potential of getting one of the influenced items as an additional option in your vault (this means you will get f.e. three options from the regular dungeons but have for every unlocked option also an influenced item to choose from).

This way, players will have more agency about loot. Also, influenced keys have a higher chance to roll tertiary stats for taking the challenge.

Time influenced keys and score

You may wonder how the score will then be handled if every past mythic plus dungeon is in the pool? Your six (or eight if you only did the season specific ones) best season dungeon will be counted additional to your two best influenced keys (those can be any key).

Closing thought

Mythic Plus is far from its potential it could have going forward. Changes should happen more drastic and risk taking. The evolution of a system that sparked the joy of so many in legion has become for many a torture experience. This needs to change with new impulses and overthinking the whole concept of mythic plus. Bring back the enjoyment to mythic plus is the quint essence of this post, and I hope some of the ideas I wrote here may be the stone that gets the ball rolling.

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Firstly, feedback on your Time Influenced idea: I do find it interesting. However, I see major balancing issues with this such as retuning all previous m+ dungeons each new season, with an ever increasing dungeon pool. A shared loot pool is something I would approve, even without the above concept. Having to do Mists over and over again for a good Unbound Changeling or De Other Side for Quantum Device was a really bad experience.

And my thoughts regarding mythic+ in general, based on some of the areas you touched:

I personally stopped playing Mythic Plus (and in turn retail) because I don’t enjoy the affix system at all. I’d rather have the dungeon, its bosses and its trash tuned for level of key my group is doing. I’m playing a dungeon, not some weird extra layer on top of it. As an example, there are dungeons where Quaking worked fine. But there were also tons of dungeons where it was a horrible experience.

As an additional comment regarding above, having weeks where classes shine is pretty bad game design in my eyes (mainly because it will turn the other way around and be viewed as other specs being bad). The main issue with affixes is that it’s a system that actively makes me not want to play the content I want to do during some weeks.

I actively avoided m+ during the Necrotic weeks because I did not enjoy that mechanic (speaking as a tank main). I don’t play the game to kite for 30mins, I play the game to tank. I’m sure other players have similar feelings towards other affixes (looking at you Skittish and Volcanic)

I’d also like to suggest some ideas going forward (some might seem radical).

  • While I don’t like the Fortified and Tyrannical system, it’s a necessary evil in order to have some balance for specs doing heavy AoE or single target damage.
  • Remove all other affixes and retune dungeons for it. If this makes the dungeons trivial, add more mechanics to the dungeons themselves, instead of affixes.
  • Add a seasonal affix to all key levels that don’t have a negative effect but instead a positive one based on how well you utilize it (I liked Thundering and Prideful even though they don’t fit this 100%)
  • Removing the affix system would also lower the entry barrier some players face when going into m+ (moving affixes from level 4 to level 7 already have many more of my friends heading into m+).
  • Some type of shared drop. Either make all dungeon loot available from all dungeons (which could be boring) or have that you at least have a small chance of getting every item from every dungeon. This is less of an issue now since we actually have rotating dungeon pools.

Changes in DF that did improve Mythic Plus according to me:

  • Using old dungeons in the dungeon pool
  • New dungeon pool each season
  • Moving affixes to higher key levels
  • Removal of the worst affixes (Grievous, Quaking, Necrotic, Explosive)
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