Thats fair about the launcher, I still think a massive change mid expansion like this should be done better in-game, like perhaps have a splash screen when they get their first keystone or jump into a mythic+ dungeon saying “Have you read about the m+ changes we made this season?”
The progression hasn’t changed, no. It’s been roughly the same since…legion? Unless you’re counting item levels then thats been a wild west since legion. I will say I like the item level changes they made this season. Having comparable ilvl gear from an m3-5 to that of a normal raid is great, the catalyst changes in dragonflight letting m+ players get tier outside of raid is great (especially getting a new charge every week).
I just think the jump from heroic to m0 was too much, is my whole point and that you really only knew about this if you read wow news. Which most players who play m+ I’d say do, but a lot of players who only play m0’s or low m+ (last season) don’t. And believe it or not, thats a large chunk of the playerbase. Thankfully delves might fit that same bill for them next expansion and this may not be as big of a deal as it is in season 4, especially with them knowing these changes going into TWW.
So in simple terms the barrier to get into an M0 is supposed to be equivalent to what it was to do an M10.
In simple terms I think it is reasonable to assume that we are expected to do Heroics about as much as we ran Heroics, Mythic and +2 to +9 in previous seasons.
Think about all the gear progression we previously earned in getting to M10. That’s what you need to do in HEROICS now before your ready for M0.
I don’t agree with the changes, I’ve argued that it’s too big of a leap from H to M now however, yes - if you want to do 0s. Now you need to spend time gearing in heroics longer BUT heroics drop better gear now than they used to.
Yes blizzard wants people to actally learn the dungeon mechs and how to play their class in. Mythic zero. This is a fantastic change and its noce having meaningful dungeon progression in a untimed environment.
I don’t know how to address this topic of discussion because I’m pretty decent at the game’s concepts and have been able to do 11s-14s with low ilvl for multiple seasons now.
Like last season it wasn’t a problem to take my 430 characters into 11s. This season I haven’t had a problem taking my 475s-482s into 3s or 4s
I cleared all Tyrannical keys at 6-9 with ilvl range 488-492. I just fundamentally don’t understand how people are struggling because to me if you just press buttons the content is pretty easy.
The jump where S4 M0=S3 M10 is fine if the Dev Team doesn’t also claim they want to make low-key Mythics more accessible to casual players. Such a steep step from Heroics/Time Walks to M0 doesn’t make Mythics more accessible to casuals, and I’d argue l33t players don’t care about M0 and low-keys because they have BiS gear from S3 and 'll jump into S4 high-keys right the way.
If anything they made higher player power more accessible with this change. If players didn’t run M10 before, now they can and it is more accessible. But they have to play the game. Clear heroic dungeons, do world activities, maybe run LFR THEN do M0’s.
I will say, with the gear upgrade system (flightstones/crests) and now dawn of the infinite having a hard mode giving heroic raid ilvl gear, low time commitment casuals do have a lot of gearing options.
Dawn of the infinite is basically your “timerless” peak end game. Which I think is the furthest casuals with low time commitment have ever been able to get with gear without a raid or m+ ever.
I don’t think it does. There’s a few flaws with the presented goals and the results.
Even if you can get into 0s, zeros are still gated on a weekly basis. The difficulty of this dungeon previously was keyed and allowed you to run it as much as you wanted.
The Drake Crests currently are severely gated behind 0s now which are gated. So while you can earn additional crests for drake upgrades once you cap wyrm, having wyrm drop at +2 really hinders progression to get higher than 2s till you run enough 2s to cap wyrms. And with weekly caps on crests it doesn’t make sense to downgrade wyrms to drakes. You essentially work doubly hard to gear initially if your depending on gear to progress through lower ranks.
For players who actually utilized the 0-10 mythics previously for progression due to casual play or just having lower skill ceilings - their SOL. There is no in between. You go from Heroic which people ignore mechanics in to M0 which now will face plant you on tyrannical week until you know and CAN execute the mechanics. There is no grey area anymore where owe that hurts dont stand in that. It’s oh who cares… and owe I’m dead.
For players learning to play their class in challenging content its even worse. You have mechanics to learn and also muscle memory to learn to perform. You can’t learn tanking or healing in a heroic the players simply wont let you and the content isnt hard enough to force them to respect it 99% of the time in heroics so you need difficult but not overly challenging content that is a middle ground. That doesn’t exist.
Access to content you can run on demand that is both rewarding and challenging for all skill levels doesn’t exist now. You need to get over certain gating mechanics to get back to where you can run what you want as often as you want and have a chance at rewards which is the worst.
If you think that casuals can run hardmode DotI you have no idea what a casual is. The mythic 0 version is not hard mode. The hard mode is destroying people who breezed through 16s last season.
Congrats Adaia, you’re a good player. But I wonder if you’re the typical “casual” Blizzard say it wants to entice into doing low-ley Mythics, because if you are, then Blizzard never needed to entice casual players for M+.
To be fair, they also buffed Heroic, except most players already out-geared Heroics. I think we’ll see the real impact of this change in TWW Season 1. There should be a big progression from Normal to Heroic dungeon since they removed the “heroic” difficulty to be replaced by old M0.
casuals as in low time commitment, you can be casual and good at the game. I think people throw this term around a lot without defining it. I defined it.
This point will never go away honestly. And honestly they do drop raid gear now, just not at the difficult they want. Its honestly kinda crazy to me that the dungeons to give same ilvl raid gear are harder than the normal raids itself lol.