The Changes to Mythic Plus will destroy player retention

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
21

This has been my favorite season of M+ since SL S1. One thing of note, the issues you’ve outlined are also only issues at higher levels of play BUT with weaker players; that’s almost always an indication of a person/group trying content they aren’t ready for

For example, they did make it so that we have less uptime on AoE stops, but they also made it such that we don’t need to commit the full group’s interrupts on CD to every pull. And that latter part is FAR nicer than that former part is negative.

Sure, you can’t be a potato anymore and expect to roll into higher content on week 3 of the content, but that’s also not a bad thing

One can time 10s in as low as the 606-608 range of ilvl with tight play, and for those who can’t hang, they’ve got nearly an entire item level tier of power from just hero crests alone, and you don’t even have to go above a 4 to farm that gap to cover one’s weaknesses/misplays!

But let’s also point out that even with the changes to stops, those changes don’t actually do much for anyone outside of coordinated groups at high levels of play. The changes basically keep groups from stacking comps to chain lock everything for ages, forcing them to have to play the pulls a little more often, which is healthier for the format.

For everyone else, however, they weren’t chaining stops well enough for the changes to actually impact them! Typically, groups outside of the top used stops as pseudo interrupts, overlapped them, and generally wastes the majority of their stops in the first place!

And this brings us to what the real issue is here, the heart of your post: people who play M+ as the content understand that personal accountability is what makes the content engaging and what keeps it alive! And you’re blaming other things for your lack of accountability, and that won’t ever make M+ fun as long as you hold that mindset

Pointing back to S2 of DF demonstrates that as well. We DID have a mass exodus of healers, but only because the changes made it so the weight of a given slot in a group was more evenly proportional to the role. DPS players were more important to success, which makes sense when they make up 60% of the group. Instead, those that didn’t hold themselves accountable got frustrated and quite, and those that did often found that season to be one of the best M+ seasons we had seen in nearly two years!

And yet, here we are, on the other side of that with the average community level higher than before, with M+ continuing to show growing numbers. Every time they’ve made changes for M+ to be a more proper end game lane, we haven’t seen declines relative to the other content lanes, but growth!

What does this mean for you? It may mean that M+, as content, just wasn’t for you. Maybe you played M+ to chase the gear carrot instead, but you can also still do that to near Myth levels in just 2s and 4s, and those are both super free

22

Ahhh, yeah see this is a good point if discussion!

Rather, this is a season where M+ has a higher personal accountability and one of the easiest raids we’ve seen in the past decade. You mention chasing the carrot, but that’s not really what makes M+ what it is

For raids, the carrot nerfs the content over time, allowing you to see more of it and to blow past the stuff you’ve seen faster. There’s nothing wrong with this, gear always becomes a bottleneck for groups where they will EVENTUALLY see the end game content once they have enough gear to compensate for their group’s skill gaps. In order to do harder raid content, you do not need the current difficulty of content in the majority of cases. You can fill clear heroic raid without a drop of hero gear, and you can generally PUG enough Mythic raid bosses without ever needing a piece of raid gear. In fact, the RWF teams showed that you could take down everything with nothing more than hero gear capable ilvls, given you have the skill to utilize your gear, and you can achieve 619/624 mark without ever doing anything above an M+4, leaving you to only be able to do a handful or two of +9 keys to be at the same gear levels. Obviously not everyone is gonna play at this level, but the point is that the gear NERFS the content over time and isn’t REQUIRED, thus the gear from raid is a carrot that you chase because the content gets easier as you do. Raiding as an endgame activity starts with lower gear and gets progressively easier with gear, thus gear becomes a means of reducing the challenge.

M+, on the other hand, is infinitely scaling. The end game of M+ doesn’t start at low gear, but when gearing is done. Anything before that point, in M+ land, is effectively LFR in raid terms. If you’re doing M+ as content then that content doesn’t really start until you have little to no gear left to farm. Gear does not nerf the M+ end game because the M+ end game starts when gear becomes static, by virtue of being an infinitely scaling system. If you play M+ just to grab gear then call it a day, you’re effectively saying “I am not here for the content, just here to sight see a light view of the content”, hence why it’s akin to LFR.

It is perfectly fine to meet a player who goes “LFR is too hard for me, I wish it were easier and gave better rewards”, just as it is to recognize that for people who raid, doing that would ruin the content scaling and permit worse players into content they’re not ready for, earlier than normal. That design pivot would be bad for EVERYONE involved.

In that same capacity, M+ follows suit in that if you’re just there for the sightseeing and some gear, you can get 90% of the power without ever touching a key beyond the middle part of the low key range. You don’t NEED more gear for M+ if you’re not intending to PLAY M+ as content, thus there isn’t really much need to cater towards such things.

It is fine to make a goal of “attain highest item level”, but it helps to define WHY that goal matters. If it’s because the number is as big as you can get it, then it doesn’t ever matter where that line is drawn, you’re always going to achieve that goal either way

If it’s for the prestige of it, then one must consider whether the gear is the prestige, or the content the gear is from. But the moment you care about that, if youre not doing the content for the content’s sake…that prestige is hollow and meaningless in the first place, which again brings us to “why even care?”

If you’re grabbing the gear to engage in your chosen content, however, one must still consider why they do. If your goal is to clear AOTC with your guild and then call it for the season, that’s quite a different goal than “I want to PLAY M+” which is different than “I want to just vibe”

And where this is going is that content, as content, should always be designed around those that enjoy it as content, or those who could enjoy it as such, first, and then for the rest second. When they DONT do that, we end up with fully stale content tiers that are dead within 4-6 weeks of existing, and that makes everyone bored of it and step away.

In the case of M+, this means that in order to have more engaging content for those who are here for it, you NEED greater personal accountability.

For everyone else, you will ALWAYS have a “I can shut my brain off” level of content to play within M+, and that level will grow higher as the season progresses. A 7 that’s challenging for you today on week 3 is going to be a 7 that’s getting hard carried by strong and geared players in a few weeks, and even 10s become more casual as that happens

But we see this issue with EVERY content lane, where the people who enjoy content as content want innovation and/or more challenge, and the people chasing the carrots don’t. And it’s always a dance between the two groups, where catering to the casual crowd has historically ruined it for all, and catering to the core groups have historically slimmed down to those groups. Thus, it makes sense that the “healthiest blend” is going to lean towards the latter, but permit the former

It just happens that THAT also doesn’t sit well with the former, because…they chase the carrot

23

Any of the changes independently probably would have been fine.

But aoe stop nerfs, tank nerfs, aoe heal nerfs, dungeon count changes, and death timer increases-- ridiculous to do it all in one fell swoop.

5 Likes
24

I’m playing a Preservation Evoker this season, and I saw my key drop from +8 to +4.
I want to quit now. It’s not enjoyable. Why am I being punished for others’ failures?

1 Like
25

I personally think you should have to there kill every trash mob in there for it to count takes away the whole pathing problem thing. They had people going to insanely high keys. Of course they want to squish it a little. I personally don’t think it’s enough

26

M+ is not showing growing numbers lol

1 Like
27

Why would high keys matter in scaling content? The excuses people are making here is wild.

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28

Chocobot-Barthilas, this shaman isn’t my main.

Certainly not getting carried :slight_smile:

29

1st season in years I have 0 desire to log in and run keys. It just feels awful atm. Its not fun at all.

4 Likes
30

It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to mythic+ over the years

3 Likes
31

If you think that’s really fun.
Why not punish group leaders in raids and delves the same way as in M+?
Why not prevent players from entering the same or higher-level delves and rais boss after they fail?
Why not just do the same in PvP and only deduct points from the team leader?

The keystone penalty system is ruining the environment and making it difficult for new players to enjoy the game.

1 Like
32

There are dozens of threads about how much people hate the M+ and I can literally name all 3 people defending them on every thread. I just spent 40 minutes talking to a dps in my group about how bad this season is, and then when we finally got a tank we (once again) didn’t get past Stitchflesh. 99% of people don’t like this, and you and two other people are the vocal minority defending this on every thread.

2 Likes
34

Could not agree more. 12 keys in a row absolutely bricked not even very high keys just 6s and 7s but people are getting hit for half their hp from a regular mob casting and the changes to stops has made pugging unplayable. No fun to be had here anymore

35

Dozens of threads because each and every person feels as if they need to fill the forums with the same issue of “I can’t fight these mobs anymore because they now fight back and I have to use my toolkit to win”

While the stop change was terrible, the large issue here is people are finally realizing that they’re getting skill checked after multiple seasons of what could be considered welfare Mythic gear since it was just that easy to obtain, which SHOULD NOT be possible when it comes to the best items available.

Blizzard shot themselves in the foot in Legion when it came to Titanforging, it gave crappy players a taste of Mythic Ilvl and they’ve never been satiated since. They want max reward for minimum effort, to enter content that should reward player skill and smack it like it’s a training dummy.

Doing keys on my alt is horrendous purely because of how poor the player quality is now, not how difficult they’ve made the content.

2 Likes