What an internet back and forth. Stop trying to dunk and just talk man. I stated my opinion, you state yours. You don’t need to invalidate someone else’s opinion by saying they stated it as fact instead of opinion. It’s a freckin forum. Nobody talks like this.
“Yep, agreed. You stated yours as fact, but I get that “my opinion” is understood.”
I mean, I kind of already said I get that. What are we disagreeing about now?
But then this runs back into one of the problems Blizzard set out to fix with updating world scaling in the first place - allowing players of different level ranges and skills enjoy world content together. If a friend returned to the game with a level 30 character while my main was level 86 working toward 90, there was no way for us to play together with those characters. I would have to level a character to around 30 so we could play together. Perhaps there could be a toggle to allow players to choose which experience they want, but just offering free boosts for the players who don’t care for leveling would get us back to that problematic situation.
Your friend could boost to max level and play with you? Might not be too bad, if you were there to teach them. It’s not ideal, but the current situation is a travesty. Leveling isn’t fun because everything goes too fast to even make sense. Mobs die when you look at them, and you rarely get to complete whole stories. Leveling dungeons are poor sad experiences that probably turn most new players off from the game. “What is this? We just run around acting crazy and nothing really fights back!” I’d rather we had a quality experience for those who want to level, while letting players skip it who wouldn’t appreciate it and only do it now as a chore.
What I don’t understand is that if M+ is so popular why is it hitting lower and lower numbers as weeks go on (to now some of the lowest numbers ever)? Did all these players hit +16 and give up? Or did they only do it for the gear and mounts and quit?
Cause I’m thinking the only reason it’s popular is cause it gives a lot of loot. That’s it.
And if they want a challenge why do they always complain about that challenge and want it nerfed?
The truth is they just want to zerg through the content with no affixes at all in record time to get loot and get out so they can be geared in record time. That’s all most even care about at all. But that feeling from increasing the Mythic + number also becomes a carrot somewhat that acts as a reward.
The teeeny tiny population that does do it for the challenge and progress into above +11 and progress gets even tinier and tinier the higher you go compared to everything else. Currently Raider.io says 24k characters in NA at all +12 so assuming repeats from multiple characters on one account that’s probably a few thousand players. This drops down to only around 5k characters a couple notches up. Imagine if only 2k players bothered with Mythic raiding, why would they continue to spend time on it?
And the reason is because that top spot is a carrot now much like the loot alone used to be. The issue is the crowd gets tired of running the obstacle course to get to it, but also thinks running faster will help. Blizzard knows this so they adjust the treadmill to keep you stimulated and hopeful long enough til the next patch ad infinitum. This is basic psychology stuff mmo devs have used for a long time.
But in truth most of us don’t want to be on that treadmill. Most of us likely hate it, but we tell ourselves we love it cause we make number higher and see increases in power which feels good. We’re heavily manipulated by this reward structure.
I see right through it which is why I don’t care.
Now Delves though, these are more respectful of the player! It says here’s a thing if you want it do it or don’t, have fun!
First, I highly doubt the players who enjoy the challenge are the ones who are begging for nerfs. Without cross-referencing every post from those who say they like the challenge and those that ask for nerfs to verify whether they are one in the same, it’s completely possible (if not likely) these are different individuals.
Second, challenge isn’t nearly as binary as you are implying it to be here. There are nearly unlimited ways to increase difficulty, but that doesn’t mean all of them will be enjoyable even for those who want a challenge. Having an affix where your screen goes black for 10 seconds at a time and you have to play by sound would increase the challenge, but that sounds absolutely miserable to play.
And then even amongst things that aren’t as egregious as this, the level of challenge might be too high to be enjoyable. I might enjoy that we have harder hitting bosses during tyrannical week at 20% more damage but feel that a 50% damage increase is too oppressive; calling for a nerf to the number doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it at a slightly lower number.
Most of this post about M+ is fair, but this statement is pretty off base. Players also can take or leave M+, I don’t know why delves are different in this regard.
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Mostly because Delves aren’t really considered by this same crowd as tryhard content, and it wasn’t designed as such. They need/want M+ because again of that manipulation that makes them feel good about themselves. Delves are a fun little thing with a more single player minded focus that you do if you want to and not cause you feel like you’re competing against your peers and trying to show off.
That competition which is built into M+ is part of that carrot chase.
Delves could even just have a horde mode or a jumping puzzle in them and be fine, or even goofy races.
If it’s a regular one I’m pulling as much as I can. But even then, there are players insisting on helping me pull more than I know I can handle. Every time it ends the same way - they are all wiping while I bubble myself at the end. Losing more time this way. But I guess we’ve tried. Each tank knows it’s pace. If you are in a rush, enroll as tank.
First, overgeneralizing a large group of people like this is rarely going to be accurate. There certainly are players who will act this way because of the competitive aspects. But to pretend like there aren’t many people who simply pick up M+ because they enjoy it and have no care in the world about competing with others is misguided.
Second, this doesn’t actually address the point I was making. With the exception of leveling (and you could even make an argument that players can disable XP gain and never level), nothing in WoW is forced. The argument that players can either choose to engage with delves or not but M+ is somehow forced is flat wrong. A player might set goals for themselves that ultimately lead to M+ being a necessary step to achieving those goals, but the same thing can be said for delves. In this respect, the two activities aren’t different from one another.
I disagree I think a vast majority do M+ for the loot and when you take that away the numbers would drop so hard they’d consider canceling it. Now you could say Delves also have loot and people felt ‘forced’ to do T8, but alas that was cause M+ wasn’t out yet.
Nowhere did I say otherwise, I’m not even sure where loot came into play within my responses. But I’m also certain you could replace M+ with any loot-offering activity in WoW and the outcome would be the same.
I also don’t know why this gets treated as some kind of taboo situation. A big part of any RPG is character progress, and WoW is no different. For better or worse, gear is basically the only form of character progression in the game. Blizzard has dabbled in alternative forms of progression like with The Box of Many Things with Torghast and Artifact weapon power in Legion, but none of those were independent of gear progression so it’s hard to isolate how well those would have done on their own.
If M+ didn’t provide gear, players would also be unable to progress in M+ very far; players simply wouldn’t be able to survive the unavoidable damage nor have the damage to beat the timer. It’s disingenuous to ignore the fact that gear is required for progression through most levels of M+ when making the statement that removing gear would result in plummeting participation.
To make sure it’s clear, however, I do agree with your assessment that most players run M+ for the gear. I’m not disputing that pushing oneself as high as they can for the enjoyment of pushing is a niche activity when compared to simple “number go up.” Just that gear serves as the end game for some and a means to an end to others, and removing it would impact both sets of players. The only way for us to isolate this would be to provide a separate form of progression distinct from gear so we can see how many still chose to play M+ even with the gear removed.
The lucrativeness of delve loot has the same impact on M+ as M+ has on raids. With the exception of players who could take questing gear into a +7 and survive, using T8 bountiful delves to gear can save dozens of hours over gearing from 2-6 keys in M+. And that’s even once M+ was released.
But that’s not even my point. My point is that you’re continuing to imply that M+ is a forced activity for players. There are a collection of players whose goals require them to farm M+, but that doesn’t apply to the vast number of players. The same thing can be said for delves and players whose goal is to push M+ as fast as possible. The group of people who feel they need to run M+ might be larger than those who feel they need to run delves, but to say the same thing can’t hold true for delves is simply cherry picking whatever scenario aligns with your own preferences.
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i prefer when the run takes 20 to 29 minutes as opposed to 45 to 60 minutes.
i say bring more timers 
I think I’m saying that ultimately M+ has become mandatory for people to progress in the game and Delves not so much as their rewards are inferior. Ever since the inclusion of M+ it has become a thing you usually have to do in raiding guilds as well, but perhaps not all to be fair. Because of this it isn’t the challenge they want but the loot.
Sure Delves can feel a bit forced as well I suppose for those that collect things but not so much for progression purposes as there are many avenues for that level of loot.
I’ve proposed this, or simply stated to make it challenge mode only thus not removing it at all. This could also solve the progress issue, but alas at some point you can’t get more power and therein lies the challenge in the real M+ endgame in which you have to find other ways to min/max and improve. Gear can’t and should not solve all issues or else it’d be too easy for this crowd anyway.
My guild has gotten AOTC every season since BFA S3. We have never required our raiders run M+ and the item level requirement we set for players to join heroic raid is very achievable from the gear they will get from normal before we start heroic. While each guild can set their own requirements for their raiding members, there is no requirement for M+ in order to complete the heroic raid, as my guild is an example of.
Further, you are using the term “progress in the game” in a very vague term, I suspect so you can define it however you want. There are players who will stop after they’ve completed normal raid, having progressed from LFR. Does that not count as progression because there were two more raid tiers above? In that respect, for a player who has no desire to run grouped content, would delves be required since that’s the natural progression path for solo players?
Yes, if you want to mythic raid, especially if you’re chasing CE placement/HoF, M+ may become mandatory. That gets into my comment about someone’s goals and their alignment with progression. If you want to mythic raid, then yeah, M+ is likely going to be a requirement to do so. But the vast majority of players will never reach that level, and they still have progression paths in the game.
And crucially for this topic, delves can fill a similar role for anyone looking to get a head start on the season for either M+ or raid. It’s simple bias to try to argue that can’t be the case.
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That’s the point. Efficiency. You guys act like the moment the next expansion comes out the same people complaining about “go go go” aren’t complaining about them Legacy tuning raids so they can “go go go” for their mogs.
Some people have posted opinions that lead me to believe that there is a huge chasm between veteran players; One faction, that is bored to tears and just want’s to get through the content as soon as possible, then unsubscribe until the next expansion. And another faction that wants the game to provide the same experience that original Wow nostalgia reminds them of. They keep hoping Wow brings back that great experience. The good old days.
Wow’s population has been in reduction since 2004. Gone from 11 million to an estimated 2 million at present. In theory. Although people in the forum argue about why this is so. My question then is: If most of the players are so reluctant to engage with the game-play without actually experiencing it, and treat it as a mobile idle afk game. And pay no attention to the lore, combat, scenery, group game-play, and progression system. They don’t care about anything other then getting it over as soon as possible. Then where is Wow going? Apparently many players don’t see Wow as an rpg any more. They see it as Mario Cart.
My point is; In theory, the diagnoses is players are suffering from massive burnout. Then what is the cure? How can Blizzard prevent Wow from becoming a redundant, boring, mushy, mess?
Efficiency? Efficiency? Really? That’s just being cheap. You want real efficiency? That’s easy.
Every time you make a new character, just put your money were you mouth is and buy a character boost for $60.00 Bang there you are! You efficiently circumvented the annoying leveling grind. And are ready for near endgame content. Imagine that!
Hey, here’s a fact. Most of the players have been in Wow for 20 years or so. These players are not little kids. They are full adults with enough money to pay for a character boost.
So EFFICIENCY is a $60.00 character boost. So you all stop being cheap and get with the program.
PS: while you are at it, why not go to the Wow cash shop and buy yourself some designer clothes and a new mount. So you can look oh-so cool while you do M+.
question of my entire WoW-career. …especially when i’d play my healers…
That’s a really sad excuse for a false equivalent argument. People were speed running before M+ was a thing and Cata was proof that players don’t want dungeon crawls. Yet, you want to ignore all of that and make up some fake RMT circular reasoning. I like how you completely gloss over me mentioning mog farmers crying for legacy tuning so they can “go go go”.
Perhaps they need to make more dungeons like Violet Hold where you donʻt have to move so much and the bosses just spawn in the room you are locked in.
fast and efficient
win win