Unpopular opinion, the game would be just fine without M+

Community General Discussion
123

Agreed.

And mind you, I’m a ‘fractal spam runner’ over in Guild Wars 2, and I run dungeons all the time over in ESO and FFXIV.

But those games all make them more interesting rather than just ‘faster’. Yes FFXIV has a timer, but it’s been getting longer rather than shorter - it’s not meant as a speed run mechanic but a ‘get out of this if you’re AFKing so our servers aren’t strained because before we got popular our budget was smaller’.

I liked WoW dungeons back when they were a process of hours. Of course back then I was a student so I had hours…

I like these other MMOs because they may not be the amazing multi-hour runs of Mauradon I used to do, but we can take them at our pace.

And yes we do run them fast. But we don’t run them rushed. There’s a difference. I might do a tier 3 Sunqua Peak in GW2 at a quick pace because everyone knows the mechanics and we’ve all got enough gear for it. We don’t get panicked looking to find that mob we still need to clear the key - we don’t get ‘tilted’ if somebody wipes (unless its repeated or clearly bad play). We have the time to enjoy the actual content… So if we run it’s fast it’s only because that just feels natural.

I run FFXIV dungeons at a pace fitting the music. Since every dungeon there has it’s own unique music score, you actually get into a ‘vibe’ in them and are almost ‘mentally dancing’ as you run through. When not careful I even find myself timing my abilities to the soundtrack… So these end up fast if the music is fast… But again it just feels natural.

Speed running, and trying to run faster, and stressing over a timer… that’s just not fun. The reason I don’t bother ranking up in M+ here is I don’t enjoy it.

WoW dungeons are not good.

It’s been years since they had good dungeon design.

Meanwhile in GW2, they used to have all bad dungeons, now the new fractals are actually fun. FFXIV - used to have simple basic dull dungeons, now the new ones feel like being in a mosh pit or disco club. ESO - old dungeons were a little basic but very well paced. New dungeons are very challenging with a LOT of fail, but also just thrilling to be in.

WoW dungeons are just boring.

So they used a timer to get you going. And that just means you don’t get to see the place, enjoy the place.

I can tell you what’s written on plaques on walls in a GW2 fractal, I can tell you were all the ‘farm chickens’ are hidden in another. I barely even know what color the walls are in Sanguine Depths because I don’t have time to look… If a mob isn’t on the “path” of Halls of Atonement, I have no idea about it. I know they’re over there, but I don’t even know what type of creature those other ones are… Yet there are guild wars 2 fractals that take place in the middle of a warzone where I can tell you how the battle goes if you just ‘sit it out’ and watch, and I know what creatures are on floors of another that we don’t visit ‘in the path’ because sometimes we just stop and look or even go down and join a side battle because we can…

Timers… ruin game content.

Back when FFXIV was new and the timers were kinda short and the players were kinda noob… the dungeons just weren’t as fun because we didn’t get to ‘explore’. Now that the timers are long, we can enjoy all the side stuff animators and others put in there for people to see.

4 Likes
124

Good point. I too think that M+ needs big changes, or instanced PvE content for smaller groups in general.
What this game needs are bigger dungeons with set difficulties similar to raiding.
LFR -> Normal, Normal (raid) -> Mythic (dungeon), Heroic (raid) -> Mythic hardmode (dungeon), Mythic (raid) -> Mythic hardmode+ (dungeon).
WITHOUT a timer and probably also without affixes.

And with harder/bigger dungeons i mean something like a 10 boss dungeon that takes 2-3 hours to clear, similar to the old 10man raids in BC, Wotlk, etc.
Bosses should also be a bit more challenging to compensate the timer. Less gogo timer diablo esports and more RPG and thoughtful gaming.
M+ also brought the worst of the worst out of the community.
Best thing would be 10 man mega dungeons again, since you can afford to bring other classes/specs as well who arent the top, as you are not as much restricted to the amount of players.

1 Like
125

How to reduce M+ toxicity and make it more meaningful to players:

  1. Always award the same amount of loot regardless of timer
  2. Only deplete keys when the dungeon is not completed
  3. +1 keys upon completion, regardless of timer
  4. Completing within timer = +2, and set +3 and +4 boundaries (replacing the current +2 and +3)
2 Likes
126

Honestly, it’s not up to anyone to judge anyone else for what play time they can offer.

I’m 27, most the people I play with have young children… any person with young children will tell you sitting down and committing over an hour of uninterrupted play time is not possible in their life.

So.

127

ATVI is a publicly traded company. They want to attract more investor’s money with e-sports.

They are trying to be creative and to come up with something that can potentially be entertaining for the masses to watch on stream, but have ended up with the Mythic+ that might have damaged the profitability of WoW.

Unlike Warcraft 3’s Pyramid Escape minigame where progress is determined by the strongest player, in M+ the progress is determined by the weakest player. This system itself is harmful to the WoW community, giving the millions of new players a frequently unhappy experience in a picked up a group, while making the millions of experienced players wary and rejective of noobs.

Raider_io is but a symptom of this underlying problem. Experienced players don’t want their key and timer ruined by a single new player, so they use Raider_io to exclude people.

The original intent of making 5-man Mythic progress determined by the weakest player was to prevent good players from carrying new players, thus forcing the new players into a long grind. Blizz hoped that the new players would therefore pay many months of subscription for it. This was an ill intent to begin with, and now it’s bearing the bitter fruits like the M+, troubling players, employees, and investors alike.

1 Like
128

You mentioned at some point that people enjoy Mythic+ because it’s a way to get some group content done without a lot of commitment. I think that’s exactly why I play in Mythic+.

However, I also hardly do them these days because of how one person can drag the group down. It could be from their negative attitude, or it could be for inexcusably poor play.

The solution, of course, is to make your own groups with people you trust. But then, there’s the crux: is Mythic+ still considered bad for the game when you’re doing these dungeons entirely with your friends? I would argue that this cannot be the case, because unless you just hate the playstyle of Mythic+ and love raids, they’re similar avenues of content once you are playing with a full group of people you like. And then, you have people like me who are guildless and friendless, so if I want to enjoy a dungeon, I have to take the risk of playing with strangers.

I fully agree that Mythic+ attracts some awful people, but those same awful people go into raid, drag the group down, flame everyone else, and make the raid a bad time until they’re removed… or worse, they don’t get removed and kill morale. I saw it happen for years before Mythic+ was added. Removing Mythic+ doesn’t fix that attitude. Also, non-timed dungeons that are just scaled more difficultly in another way would still create the behavior you’re referencing, and I can easily prove that by just pointing to raiding environments.

Removing Mythic+ might make the game better for you and those who agree with you. I doubt it’d make the game better overall.

129

What?

Most dungeons are just wall-to-wall pulling in FF14; unless its new players. There really isnt anything intense about hallway simulator.

1 Like
130

If you completed the dungeon in 24 hours or in an hour on a rated 40 min run, you want to be rewarded with a higher key? The reason you took a lot of time to complete it is becoz YOU ARE INCAPABLE on your current lower key. Why give you access for higher key? For you to do it slower like 48 hours or 2 hours? It doesnt make any sense. If you fail on M+ timer, it means you are not good enough for that key. You have to repeat it not to go above into higher key becoz it’s gonna get worse.

That’s the reason why we dont want newcomers on high keys. They want to push and push for higher key and they cant even beat the timer on lower keys.

131

But they did and it is obvious if you look around.

132

Apparently the entire point of my post sailed clear over your head.

Here I’ll put it in plainer words: make the timer optional, don’t mess with the amount of loot, and let keys push higher more quickly if they time it.

Gatekeepers make this thing so toxic as it is.

1 Like
133

the game would be fine without a lot of things.

-pets/petbattles
-transmogs
-epic battlegrounds
-brawl
-misson tables
-barbers
-lfr
-garrisons
-timewalking
-toys
-titles
etc

can do without all of these, doesnt mean its a good idea to get rid of em :wink:

134

Being incapable or not is not measured by a timer. Stop trying to push every player into the time pressure mess, we all know how many negative aspects it brings with it. M+ timers are a fail design and is the bandaid since they are not able to produce any other proper measurement, yet there are plenty.
Maybe you should go back to Diablo rifts.

Timers alone already resulted in this toxic class/spec meta where most are not invited because they play the wrong spec in the GOGO meta. Performance > all, since blizzard cant balance properly, many classes/specs are left in the dust (see DPS DH).
There are so many more things wrong with timers, stop defending a flawed system that needs to go asap.

3 Likes
135

Flip side. This game would be fine without raiding.

If m+ is removed, you’re losing so many subs this game would not be sustainable this point. It is the only fun , modern feeling content this game has. This expansion has already been a dumpster fire. Remove M+ and you’re going to see people leave in droves.

You also seem to be completely ignorant to the fact that m+ does not in fact drop raid level gear. Even heroic gear is better than +15 gear despite the fact that raid bosses are significantly easier than mythic+ in almost every way.

136

You don’t seem to get that OP wants better dungeon/group content that replaces the toxic hell hole that M+ currently is. WoW did much better before M+, except for WoD since there wasn’t anything else. We need the return of 10m raids as a substitute to M+ or redesign M+ drastically.

1 Like
137

Layout no. It’s just as bad there as it is here.

But, after you get past the ‘ARR content’ (that was made under a super tight budget and it shows…) they have better music, better fight design, better visual layout. And you’re not rushed so you can notice it all. While FFXIV has a timer, it’s usually between 90-180 minutes… so it’s largely something to ignore.

The other MMOs I note, don’t have timers at all.

In those rare moments when I can pan my camera around in WoW, I can see that there’s some great stuff to see and enjoy… but that is pretty much ‘never’ in an M+.

138

It seems like a timer is kind of redundant when the difficulty scales, too. With difficulty scaling, you will eventually get to a point where you hit a brick wall and literally cannot go further.

Who could do the highest key in the shortest amount of time could still be a thing, but completion of scaled difficulty would be fine as a measure of success on its own.

1 Like
139

No. M+ is still better than any other content this game has. The only difference I (and a huge portion of the m+ community) would like to see is better class balance and more attention to the affixes (why are two of the new ones designed around screwing over melee specifically and the other new one a return of the wildly unpopular BFA 3rd seasonal affix? why does bolstering still exist? same with grievous?)

Yes, this game existed 10 years ago just fine without it. We’re no longer 10 years ago. It’s time to modernize. I do agree, 10 man raiding needs to come back. Forced 20 man mythic is a huge reason why I hate raiding.

1 Like
140

It’s gonna be like what’s happening on Torghast. I have to wait for my CD’s to be available again before we pull. Like we could wait for my Bloodlust… have bloodlust on every pull. And that’s how you want to beat M+?

And no timer means… UNLIMITED DEATH. Death penalize you on the timer. Without timer, means death wont penalize you for anything. Just ZERG and DIE becoz we have unlimited DEATH. And you could still beat M+ for having 1000000000 deaths.

The system is there to gate you on your current key. You cant move forward until you beat it on a given time. The timer actually is really forgiving. DEATH TIMER PENALTIES are UNFORGIVING. And that is fine.

Why do Noobs want to do higher keys they are incapable of?

141

I still think having some sort of metric that separates “the best” from “the completers” will help keep “the best” from whining too much about not having an incentive to gogogogo.

Then again those same people could just easily knock out keys and +1 quickly as well, it’d just take them longer to get to where they should be relative to their player power.

At the very least I think making the timer optional is a good place to start, but I’m not against eliminating it altogether either.

142

Hnnnnnngh, thats really debateable.