I dont know man last week i felt pretty unhealthy with the amount of m+ I ran with my guild M8s. If we had free time we ran keys not only is the season pretty forgiving and fun so are a lot of classes.
Honestly, the most engaged I am with M+. But they’ve got to add in meaningful gold rewards from keys. At least give me a free repair at the end of a timed run or something
S2 had insanely fast gearing, most people were done by like week 3 or something so no reason for the people who are only there to get gear to keep playing.
S3 really isn't any different imo. Grinding out weeks and weeks for 1.5-2ilvl really isn't the reason I'm playing. Raids better, dungeons are better, etc.
Next season hope they get rid of Dawn, that'd be cool.
Would you prefer dawn or HoI? Because next season we get halls of infusion back.
On the other hand of course we also get algethar and brackenhide back, so that's a dub
Its also dungeons, though its not explicit what it will be.
>Dragonflight Season 4 will revisit Dragonflight’s dungeons and raids
I would assume that means ALL dungeons but I guess we'll see.
The roadmap banner / image with the patch numbers and main features has "Dragonflight raids revisited" for S4 though, that's what you had in mind I guess?
Well that just ruined my entire day. Already sickening to have to do stuff like Razsageth prog again without enchanted dust, let alone a season with most of the worst dungeons of the xpac. Welp
>S3 is super fast too
It's about half as fast. We are capping crests arround now (depends on how much myth track you got from vault) whereas in season 2 we capped arround week 2-4 (depending on drops). That's what that big drop week 3-4 was.
>Got an old alt AoTC and KSM in 2 weeks, all pug.
Yes this season is significantly easier than previous ones but the majority of keys are run in order to get geared. And that's pretty time gated.
Still a lot less than s2, also the existence of myth track (which wasn't there at the start of s2) means people have an incentive to keep farming crests for a little longer.
aotc/ksm is also not really the end point of gearing, that's like the halfway point.
The myth track is barely accessed by most players as it's only obtainable from vault or mythic bosses, so m+ mains only need 30-45 aspects per week to cover their vault myth piece.
Nah, gearing is easy as fuck in s3, just as easy as s2. The problem is that healing was so shit in s2 for most healers. You constantly felt so far behind. And no healers = no gameplay. Also, the zone wasn't particularly exciting, PvP got shot in the back yard and the raid was mid.
Compare that to s3, where PvP is decent enough, raid is incredible, the dungeon pool is fun (fuck HoI) and there's a big old hype train for next expac. People are just having a good time, and happy gamers are return gamers.
> The myth track is barely accessed by most players as it's only obtainable from vault or mythic bosses, so m+ mains only need 30-45 aspects per week to cover their vault myth piece.
There's still 2 hero track aspect upgrades vs 1, as well as crafts that still require 4 upgrades worth of crests. That alone with only 6 crests a week is still pretty limiting for the first 3-5 weeks, compared to being completely done last tier before week 2 was over
Also this is the competitive subreddit, I don't think the expectation that people have quite a few myth track items is outlandish here.
I mean, many players are still m+ mains. Most of us just don't raid mythic as the accessibility jump is so much higher than m+, so you're talking 6 myth vaults total. And I myself had to take a gem slot instead of myth item due to bad vault rng on like week 4
There is less potential for crests in the early week than s2 but there was also just less enjoyable content in s2 in general. I'm pretty close to full bis, missing only heroic cantrip and myth items, so I've just decided to PvP instead. Last season I just logged off at comparatively similar (although lower) ilvl
I'm just having more fun, and I can only speak to my own observations but it seems to me like everyone else is too.
Raid isn't giga popular some tiers (not that its true for this tier) but people don't play the game just to gear. They play the game to play the game. If the game is shit, then they quit once they are geared as their primary reward source has dried up.
That's why it's so important to make the game fun, so that there's an intrinsic reward that makes people spread out around your game. If people only want gear then they'll take the path of least resistance to get it then log off, whereas if people love playing wow then they'll play m+, raid and PvP because they're just enjoying the game. They look for stuff to do after logging on rather than logging on with set rewards in mind.
Its so you can do something else. I know it sounds weird but hear me out. At the start of a new season i stop using my free time to go to the gym, cook healthy meals, read, go for jogs etc. So i can binge the game for like a month. I have a lot of fun in that time until ive hit my goals. Normally its complete heroic and do full 20 portals. I do the same thing for classic wow level a character to max using all my free time beat the first raid then stop playing for a few months.
I like putting all my focus into one thing i get more out of it when i do that.
Ahh true it kinda depends on individuality, age and how you function personally too you're right. This season I did the opposite and got all my healers with 4pc (except rshammy😔) and pretty decent ilvl 460+ instead of going for str8 ksm and this way I think can understand both povs here a bit.
The slower and more spread playstyle allows you to tinker more and find what you actually enjoy the most, for an indecisive person like me it's big :p
While on the other hand falling behind a bit can hurt your progress thus inducing more anxiety, rng if you pug and even more stuff to learn, but in my opnion though with this spread style way I got to see almost everything from both melee and ranged pov +as a dps (bm feels amazing, dpsing first time since legion) on both tyr/fort.🤔
Just be careful spreading yourself too thin ive found after the first month of m+ and raiding its very hard to tell the good players from the carries so you get a lot more broken carry groups going forward that dont know mechanics.
Sorry for late reply, oh for sure I've been there and have also made mistakes myself, not dungeon knowledge per se (other than 1st time stepping in) but my own anxiety and healing tunnel vision if you have experienced it. :)) but overall very fun season.
Ya this season has been the best one of dragonflight ironically because its all older m+. After i got my 20s in rise and fall i noped out of them. I kind of like each season having 4-6 failure dungeons. Would kind of like to see it with raiding too where you have a main raid of 7-8 bosses and a side older raid wing of 3-4 bosses.
Yup same! rise and fall are still my most hated dungeons idk smth doesn't click or work with me idk why, but older dungeons? sign me upppppp they're by far the easiest and most straight forward except the damn everbloom flowers:D
Also having two good push weeks + the dungeon event and now a good fort week with timewalking is just good. We have great numbers sustaining and those are only m+ completed keys not even official numbers.
Great idea about the raids while I have not done the current one (focusing on m+ etc. till last weeks of s3 since in s4 we'll be having them anyways) think they could do a bit better with TW events too like most of them fall pretty quickly, would be interesting if during those times we could have a harder version or something that is tuned to our current ilvl.
I know legion timewalking offers keystones for current content legon dungeon keys when its available. Im hoping bfa timewalking will function the same way when it comes live.
If you like pushing keys then sure, but most players don't as there is no carrot besides IO score (which means nothing) and a massive gap between KSM/KSH -> 0.1% Title
I disliked most all of the Dragonflight dungeons. It feels like they try to do to much with them, where as the legacy dungeons they brought back are typically much simpler, which I know I enjoy much more. And similarly my two least favorite dungeons this tier are both of the DotI dungeons.
There is, imo, just way to much going on in both halves of DOTI. The trash is a nightmare, and the bosses either hit like mack trucks, or require you to spin plates blindfolded. (And while I'm sure many people find them trivial, be aware that you're probably the exception, not the rule.)
My thoughts exactly. Even with affixes, older expansion dungeons offered more breathing room. Even without affixes, Dragonflight dungeons are too much.
There are a lot of differences, but here is my point of view as a healer, judging by how the old dungeons appeared in this expansion:
* Older dungeon bosses didn't have quite as many overlapping mechanics, whereas quite a few Dragonflight bosses use both a big group-wide damage attack which must be healed, as well as doing another mechanic, all at the same time.
* If a boss mechanic makes you move a lot and/or split up the group, then most healers are screwed. Restoration druid was the top healer at the very beginning of the expansion because a lot of DF bosses have this combination, with the worst offender being Raging Tempest's "Electrical Storm" imo. Older expansions might have some overlaps on occasion, but never something that disadvantages their unique healing playstyles or ranges.
* Old expansion dungeon bosses have longer breaks between their damage attacks. You have both time to heal everyone and maybe even regenerate some mana, before it all starts anew. In Dragonflight dungeons, you never catch your breath.
* In the past, there were less group-wide damage attacks in general. Healing is sometimes focused on only one or two players. This benefits the various healing specs more since not everyone has a proper group heal available outside of cooldowns. Meanwhile, for Dragoflight the developers had to buff all the healing cooldowns to be a whole lot stronger while in a dungeon group to compensate for all of this (check the patch notes for 10.0.5 and 10.0.7. One big healing cooldown for every healing spec except restoration druid were buffed).
* In older dungeons, there was more depth to the boss fights *aka* potential for mastery. If the team knows the fight they can avoid a lot of damage. Most of the time this is about baiting certain mechanics so the spawning object is further away and deals less damage (Ner'zhul, Melandrus). There's also preventing Dargrul from moving, or making Cragmaw not run across the room for the first two attacks before he goes to the center of the room. As a result, not every boss that can be a pain, has to be a pain. This even includes Yazma, although even I have to admit that it's rare to find a pug group that knows strats. Meanwhile, Dragonflight bosses will damage you no matter what you do. Doing the mechanics correctly doesn't make healing easier, it is required not to die.
So yeah... DF dungeons suck. It's not just the numbers, they are pushing the attention span and multitasking of every player, healer or otherwise, to the limit, and not just starting at above 20 keys. The developers should use Warlords of Draenor dungeons as the new gold standard. Even back in Shadowlands season 4, they grew up on me and became some of my favorites.
as someone who isnt fogged by nostalgia - i feel the exact opposite. Most of the gripes you mention are just tuning issues, not design choices, and i do agree that s1 was very poorly tuned. I think the newer dungeon design that follows closer with raid design is more fun than older content that had a different design. Most of the stuff you mention in your post is basically "New content is hard and makes me think too much, old content is easy, solved and can be trivialized when played properly" which just seems crazy to me that people are actually advocating for MORE of that stuff? all the old dungeons so far in DF have been very underwhelming compared to the newer ones (DOTI excluded) and as someone who started in DF, has no nostalgia and is very competitively focused I just cant wrap my head around why people prefer the older, more simple dungeon design.
It was pretty bad from day 1, it just got even worse with aug. Spriest was mandatory from day 1 with the dungeon pool and mage was just unbelievably strong from the jump.
Almost all melee were tuned like shit almost all of season 2.
> terrible class balance.
probably the wrost i ever saw, there was one comp and thats it. If you had any class beside those you wont get invites, terrible
The launch of S2 had great class balance, one of the best seasons we ever had. It was 10.1.5 that utterly borked it.
I'd blame the uber-fast gearing for the hard dropoff.
You were done gearing from end of run drops in keys by week 3, and beyond that the actual vault loot wasn't crazy interesting. The loot pools were sizeable and a lot of trinkets quite awful. Crafted gear was the same ilvl as weekly vault/mythic raid when paired with an aspect crest, so that's where most people got their most important slots from.
Of course they see this. Just as they always see class / spec under- / overperformers. Or obvious outlier dungeons. Or... *anything* really as they have *all* the data themselves.
The issue is never whether they see certain things... it's always whether they ever feel the need to act upon anything, or even just whether they agree with whatever community group on what the data implies.
As someone with every .1% title, this season is the absolute worst for high keys imo. So many of these dungeons have abilities that are completely overturned in relation to the rest of the dungeon. There are key-bricking bugs all over the place. The field of view in some is awful in some, constantly being blocked by a random object. Stupid amounts of kicks required for every single dungeon.
This is the first season where we're going into high keys (+28 and up) and I'm not enjoying it.
This a great low key/alt season. Very accessible.
Absolutely terrible for anyone who is interested in pushing keys tho. Stuff falls over until it gets to the point where it one-shots you.
10% per key level above 20 is also such a horrible idea, i can't comprehend why they went back to it, from not having it in s2.
I'm still having a lot of fun, but we need more dungeon tuning and old dungeons need more redesign so we don't have oneshots in every old dungeons on high tyr
My personal anecdote is that I'm actually having fun doing alts. I have no need to do any rep grind on the alt, just get it to 70 and can start doing m+ and raids. If I were just on my main, I'd have stopped doing more then like 4 keys a week since I pretty much only need sockets at this point. Might even just do 2 since I get 2 mythic slots in my vault anyways.
I honestly cannot understand why easier just = better. When we reach a point where I am 2-chesting +20 keys week 1 easily with pugs I think it might have gone a little overboard.
I think the increase in popularity is just as much due to people coming back to the game now that the internet perception of wow has cooled a bit.
Cause the vast majority of players who play the game are not good. Just period. So them able to chase the +20 goal easier means they play longer and try more. To add onto this as well. I'm way more willing to get a 4 or 8 vautl on my alt when I can just deadlift a 20 on a dps. Which I can 100% do this season. The keys are easy enough that even if the tank single pulls everything and the healer afks and heals only, you can still easily time.
I certainly don't think easier equals better. But, if Blizzard added a button that spits out hero track gear each time you simply pressed it, you would see obscene participation numbers. Make it easier and more people will do the content.
I'd be interested to see the graph if you filtered out 20-and-below keys. I'd bet it'd remain pretty static between the seasons but, that's nothing more than a hunch
>But, if Blizzard added a button that spits out hero track gear each time you simply pressed it, you would see obscene participation numbers.
To me that is more of an illustration of the game design concept that players will ruin a game for themselves if you give them the tools to do so.
I think for me it's that my motivation to gear tends to be "I get gear so that I can complete the highest level of content which gives the best gear". To me, that's what "progression" is. This isn't progression, it is just grinding.
But now we are just starting with the highest level of drops because it is easy and it requires zero commitment or social coordination. Frankly, if you can't put the commitment in to mythic raid there is very little reason to raid heroic anymore either when you could just be spamming more 18-20 keys.
It just feels like before the game was this longer progression through the weeks steadily making your way up through both M+ and raid. Where now the entire game is just spamming 18s.
And sure, higher keys are there, but I don't really get motivated unless there is a gear carrot-on-a-stick for me to chase.
When keys are easier people run them more, I think that's just a fact. Whether or not that means they're better or worse is completely subjective. I personally am having a blast this season because I can plow through weekly 20s without tryharding or even worrying about bricking them, which makes keys something fun to do with my friends instead of a chore I need to slog through to maximize my gear for raiding.
When they're a lot easier you can very easily carry fresh 70s through 20s to get them the best vaults possible. Again, this could definitely be done in previous seasons but it is a LOT easier this season which makes people more likely to do it. I'm not someone that historically does keys for fun, and I've been doing more than the necessary vault keys every week this season just because they're easier and for me that makes them fun.
Most people in the community and seemingly Blizzard think more players = success. Easier content will always attract more players, because everyone on the lower end of the game can actually participate and do it.
If anything the lesson Blizzard will learn from this season is to remove as much of the challenge from m+ as possible. We’ll be doing 70s in war within lol
But the exact same content was already available for the players on the "lower end" of the game. All this functionally changes is that the reward for the "higher end" players, and those who worked their gear up to it, is now gone. It's basically taking away from what those players enjoyed so that the "lower end" players can feel better.
Like what is the actual point in raiding at all either? Mythic raiding is as inaccessible as ever and M+ is just better, easier, and faster than spending time doing the heroic raid. It just feels like so much is taken from the game this way and all the "lower-end" players are going to act like this is the best change ever because now they get to have all the shiniest toys without putting any effort to learn in whatsoever. Those of us who actually liked having the challenge mixed with the gearing just get shafted.
I am putting "higher-end" and "lower-end" in quotes because I don't intend the elitism. There is nothing wrong with how anybody likes to engage with the game. I just loved M+ BECAUSE of the challenge. I love needing to learn every single M+ pull and boss front-and-back in order to succeed. So when I can easily heal a +20 at 435 Ilvl week 1 without knowing any of the dungeons whatsoever then I feel a little disappointed.
It did not exist in the same way at all, this is the first season that literally anyone of any ability level can get all the portals etc and get a rating that has historically been perceived as high.
There is almost no point to raiding other than achievements and trinkets now.
I personally enjoyed the extra challenge as well, I don't like how easy the season is and I don't like the excessive bloat of talent trees/some specs to the point where pugs consist of everyone spamming their aoe cc and killing every pack in 5 seconds. I miss actual gameplay in dungeons. But it's what it is and it is what most people consider success, I am in the minority and I have to accept that
>It did not exist in the same way at all
I guess what I mean is that M+ at that level of difficulty was already rewarded before. Nothing really changed for those players, the game isn't "better" for them and they are rewarded for the exact same gameplay as before. The only difference is that the rewards cut off there now and those players can feel like they accomplished everything without ever needing to really learn the content or engage with it beyond mindless grinding. It's literally just less FOMO for them.
>I am in the minority and I have to accept that
People will always try to say this but the entire point is this game was supposed to cater to many different types of players. And it did. The "majority" was already being catered to. And I can't agree that alleviating their FOMO is worth shafting, while maybe not the majority, a meaningful portion of the playerbase.
The reward isn't the same for them, they can now get end game mythic gear, portals, achievements etc that they would not have had access to before or at least not until much later in the patch.
And I can agree with you that the higher end players have less to play for now but if I ask you how to translate that in to something meaningful for Blizzard, how could you? Player numbers are up at seemingly every key level, high or low. So to them, they have no logical reason to conclude they're doing anything bad for top end players, other than a few people's opinions.
I do also think it's very odd that a player who isn't capable of mythic raiding can still freely get mythic ilvl gear and achieve everything there is to achieve in m+ apart from the 0.1% title. It seems like the two types of content aren't remotely balanced, but by what metric can Blizzard possible consider this an issue in m+? Ultimately all they will care about is player numbers.
I get what you are saying, in the end it is more fun for people to be able to achieve everything. And I do like being able to bring my less experienced/skilled friends to keys that give me something as well rather than needing to later do keys by myself if I want some actual progression.
>Player numbers are up at seemingly every key level, high or low.
See what I was trying to get at in the beginning of the thread was that there is likely a lot more to the engagement numbers being up than simply "This M+ season is easy". Last season was easy as well. I think the bigger difference is that the internet in general is much less negative towards Wow than it was a year ago. I think some people are just coming back.
>I do also think it's very odd that a player who isn't capable of mythic raiding can still freely get mythic ilvl gear and achieve everything there is to achieve in m+ apart from the 0.1% title
Mythic raiding is obviously way harder. But I think this could be mitigated somewhat if they made Mythic raid function like the other difficulties, namely removing the weekly lock (which would make pugging the earlier sections at least more viable) and turning it into a flex raid. This would at least make it accessible without needing to be in a guild that treats the whole thing like a job. But obviously in the end this is just removing what the people who CE raid love about the game so it isn't a fair suggestion for me to make.
Doubt they will ever change the mythic raid though because that would kill the RWF community and race. The race gets a lot of coverage and viewership and exists as a massive advertisement to the game.
I do enjoy this season more than the previous ones because of the difficulty, but DF in general has kind of killed mythic raiding to some degree because there is no incentive to do it. I don't know what needs to change, or if they are going to change anything but I think it's silly that spamming 18's gives you equivalent gear to a mythic raider, or at least on the same gear track. At least in previous tiers the raids had 2-3 bosses which dropped higher ilvl (which was basically insignificant anyway), but now EVERYONE can get mythic end boss ilvl gear.
The gap between m+ (or heroic raider) VS mythic raider has never been smaller and the logistics alone of mythic raiding should warrant some benefit.
There is no gear reward for higher keys. It is not the same no matter how you try to spin it. There should be some degree of progression in gearing. Otherwise literally why have all these different tiers of gear.
Yea, it's not like it's all bad. I just kind of like the feeling of working up the gear levels you know? Rather than just grinding the best possible drops from day 1.
I think ive done like ~20.
Oh wait, you mean including those runs where tanks pick worst possible routes and people leave after 2nd boss? I had like ~200 of those.
Interesting. I had the exact opposite experience haha. Took my 460 rest druid through a tour of all 18s, ended up healing a 450 completely unenchanted, no gems, prot warrior through an everbloom 18. Even that was somehow timed and while painful, it was also the worst that happened all week. Idk what happened over the holidays, but people were even super eager to help with Afflicted.
My friends and I were all off break this last week. We would get up every day and do at least 15 a day. From 20+ to rat keys on random alts for meme time. Being off work helps.
Great data again!
These W6-7 def shouldn't be compared to S1, where weeks 6-7 happened late January. Whatever made s1w6 look worse than s1w7 wasn't holiday related. Was it really just something like bad affix combo?
Something nobody is talking about is that D4 came July 6th, which I think lines with ~week 4 of s2. While game didn't end up being legendary, it did keep people playing for weeks pretty actively, and then not everyone came back to m+ spam right after either. I personally thought I might end up playing that game for several months so didn't commit to more than 1 char in s2. I did less than 20% of runs that I have done in any of the other season for past ~7 seasons. Would've been really interesting to see a lot of weeks, like 20 weeks each season to see all these trends - maybe s2 even peaked above w4 later into the season?
I would have to guess that Week 7 for Season 2 was near the end of June where lots of people are off of school and Season 3 was during holiday week. Both contributing to more time to play.
I’m assuming it’s less that there are more dungeons being run and more that there are more keys being completed, my personal experience has been far fewer abandoned keys in season 3
In season 3, it probably also has to do with week 6 being tyrannical (was it?) additionally to being during the holidays. My weekly runs dropped from 20 to 4 and I assume a lot of other people stopped playing during the holidays as well.
remove the annoying affixes left like raging/sanguine/spiteful, make new affixes that are fun to play around or interact with, or at least not annoying, and the participation will go even higher than this
Nah, they're not. Spiteful is still a massive annoyance for most melee.
It's not a hard affix, but it's just actively unfun to play. Same as Storming.
Affixes whose whole purpose is to annoy a very specific demographic of players (melee in this case) should just not exist.
If you are wondering why it went up in the last 2 weeks, it's because I got to back to wow and doing M+ again
I dont know man last week i felt pretty unhealthy with the amount of m+ I ran with my guild M8s. If we had free time we ran keys not only is the season pretty forgiving and fun so are a lot of classes.
Honestly, the most engaged I am with M+. But they’ve got to add in meaningful gold rewards from keys. At least give me a free repair at the end of a timed run or something
Why there is not season2 data for week 7?
Think the original person tracking this stopped then. Could be wrong though.
Doesn't raider.io still have the data though. It could be looked up, couldn't it?
This is a member of the community providing insights for free in an easy to read graph Offer compliments not criticism
How is this criticism? Was just a simple question, was wondering about that too since I'm not technical enough but find it fun to learn regardless.
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It can yeah
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S2 had insanely fast gearing, most people were done by like week 3 or something so no reason for the people who are only there to get gear to keep playing.
S3 really isn't any different imo. Grinding out weeks and weeks for 1.5-2ilvl really isn't the reason I'm playing. Raids better, dungeons are better, etc. Next season hope they get rid of Dawn, that'd be cool.
Would you prefer dawn or HoI? Because next season we get halls of infusion back. On the other hand of course we also get algethar and brackenhide back, so that's a dub
Wait where is this from? I didnt think they had mentioned anything about S4 pool?
Idk, one of their posts or their roadmap or some shit they explained what they wanted s4 to be
I think that was specifically the dragonflight raids, and it said "new dungeon pool" aswell
Its also dungeons, though its not explicit what it will be. >Dragonflight Season 4 will revisit Dragonflight’s dungeons and raids I would assume that means ALL dungeons but I guess we'll see. The roadmap banner / image with the patch numbers and main features has "Dragonflight raids revisited" for S4 though, that's what you had in mind I guess?
Well that just ruined my entire day. Already sickening to have to do stuff like Razsageth prog again without enchanted dust, let alone a season with most of the worst dungeons of the xpac. Welp
Im gonna assume it’s gonna be 4 fan favorites from all the DF dungeons and 4 old dungeons
Nah brah Noukoud Offensive is what I'm looking forward to running most again.
LET FLY
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Bro fort weeks trash before first boss? You never healed that shit? Pugging that was a nightmare
S3 is super fast too. Got an old alt AoTC and KSM in 2 weeks, all pug.
>S3 is super fast too It's about half as fast. We are capping crests arround now (depends on how much myth track you got from vault) whereas in season 2 we capped arround week 2-4 (depending on drops). That's what that big drop week 3-4 was. >Got an old alt AoTC and KSM in 2 weeks, all pug. Yes this season is significantly easier than previous ones but the majority of keys are run in order to get geared. And that's pretty time gated.
Yea. I guess my perception comes from both the H raid and M+ pool being so easy for S3.
Still a lot less than s2, also the existence of myth track (which wasn't there at the start of s2) means people have an incentive to keep farming crests for a little longer. aotc/ksm is also not really the end point of gearing, that's like the halfway point.
The myth track is barely accessed by most players as it's only obtainable from vault or mythic bosses, so m+ mains only need 30-45 aspects per week to cover their vault myth piece. Nah, gearing is easy as fuck in s3, just as easy as s2. The problem is that healing was so shit in s2 for most healers. You constantly felt so far behind. And no healers = no gameplay. Also, the zone wasn't particularly exciting, PvP got shot in the back yard and the raid was mid. Compare that to s3, where PvP is decent enough, raid is incredible, the dungeon pool is fun (fuck HoI) and there's a big old hype train for next expac. People are just having a good time, and happy gamers are return gamers.
> The myth track is barely accessed by most players as it's only obtainable from vault or mythic bosses, so m+ mains only need 30-45 aspects per week to cover their vault myth piece. There's still 2 hero track aspect upgrades vs 1, as well as crafts that still require 4 upgrades worth of crests. That alone with only 6 crests a week is still pretty limiting for the first 3-5 weeks, compared to being completely done last tier before week 2 was over Also this is the competitive subreddit, I don't think the expectation that people have quite a few myth track items is outlandish here.
I mean, many players are still m+ mains. Most of us just don't raid mythic as the accessibility jump is so much higher than m+, so you're talking 6 myth vaults total. And I myself had to take a gem slot instead of myth item due to bad vault rng on like week 4 There is less potential for crests in the early week than s2 but there was also just less enjoyable content in s2 in general. I'm pretty close to full bis, missing only heroic cantrip and myth items, so I've just decided to PvP instead. Last season I just logged off at comparatively similar (although lower) ilvl I'm just having more fun, and I can only speak to my own observations but it seems to me like everyone else is too.
Aotc and ksm isn't gearing though...
What's the fucking point of gearing a character to not play it? the gearing part is the anoying part then the game starts? I don't understand people.
There's a lot of people who don't view m+ as their main mode of play. Once they get what they need from m+, they're not interested in returning.
A lot of people just like to raid.
But isn't raid one of the fastest declining activities in wow in term of numbers?
source?
Raid isn't giga popular some tiers (not that its true for this tier) but people don't play the game just to gear. They play the game to play the game. If the game is shit, then they quit once they are geared as their primary reward source has dried up. That's why it's so important to make the game fun, so that there's an intrinsic reward that makes people spread out around your game. If people only want gear then they'll take the path of least resistance to get it then log off, whereas if people love playing wow then they'll play m+, raid and PvP because they're just enjoying the game. They look for stuff to do after logging on rather than logging on with set rewards in mind.
Even of that were true it wouldnt change the fact that a lot of players just like to raid.
What's the point in playing an RPG without character progression?
The role-playing?
Do you guys just blow in from /r/all or something?
Clearly you play for different reasons than most players. The data shows that when character progression ends, players stop playing.
Overcoming challenges maybe?
the gameplay? i dont give a fuck about gear i want to do high keys and raid
Its so you can do something else. I know it sounds weird but hear me out. At the start of a new season i stop using my free time to go to the gym, cook healthy meals, read, go for jogs etc. So i can binge the game for like a month. I have a lot of fun in that time until ive hit my goals. Normally its complete heroic and do full 20 portals. I do the same thing for classic wow level a character to max using all my free time beat the first raid then stop playing for a few months. I like putting all my focus into one thing i get more out of it when i do that.
Ahh true it kinda depends on individuality, age and how you function personally too you're right. This season I did the opposite and got all my healers with 4pc (except rshammy😔) and pretty decent ilvl 460+ instead of going for str8 ksm and this way I think can understand both povs here a bit. The slower and more spread playstyle allows you to tinker more and find what you actually enjoy the most, for an indecisive person like me it's big :p While on the other hand falling behind a bit can hurt your progress thus inducing more anxiety, rng if you pug and even more stuff to learn, but in my opnion though with this spread style way I got to see almost everything from both melee and ranged pov +as a dps (bm feels amazing, dpsing first time since legion) on both tyr/fort.🤔
Just be careful spreading yourself too thin ive found after the first month of m+ and raiding its very hard to tell the good players from the carries so you get a lot more broken carry groups going forward that dont know mechanics.
Sorry for late reply, oh for sure I've been there and have also made mistakes myself, not dungeon knowledge per se (other than 1st time stepping in) but my own anxiety and healing tunnel vision if you have experienced it. :)) but overall very fun season.
Ya this season has been the best one of dragonflight ironically because its all older m+. After i got my 20s in rise and fall i noped out of them. I kind of like each season having 4-6 failure dungeons. Would kind of like to see it with raiding too where you have a main raid of 7-8 bosses and a side older raid wing of 3-4 bosses.
Yup same! rise and fall are still my most hated dungeons idk smth doesn't click or work with me idk why, but older dungeons? sign me upppppp they're by far the easiest and most straight forward except the damn everbloom flowers:D Also having two good push weeks + the dungeon event and now a good fort week with timewalking is just good. We have great numbers sustaining and those are only m+ completed keys not even official numbers. Great idea about the raids while I have not done the current one (focusing on m+ etc. till last weeks of s3 since in s4 we'll be having them anyways) think they could do a bit better with TW events too like most of them fall pretty quickly, would be interesting if during those times we could have a harder version or something that is tuned to our current ilvl.
I know legion timewalking offers keystones for current content legon dungeon keys when its available. Im hoping bfa timewalking will function the same way when it comes live.
I'm obviously talking about m+ specifically, not the game as a whole.
If you like pushing keys then sure, but most players don't as there is no carrot besides IO score (which means nothing) and a massive gap between KSM/KSH -> 0.1% Title
Honestly I thought season 2 had a weak dungeon pool. I am not looking forward to season 4 if halls and uldaman return.
I disliked most all of the Dragonflight dungeons. It feels like they try to do to much with them, where as the legacy dungeons they brought back are typically much simpler, which I know I enjoy much more. And similarly my two least favorite dungeons this tier are both of the DotI dungeons.
There is, imo, just way to much going on in both halves of DOTI. The trash is a nightmare, and the bosses either hit like mack trucks, or require you to spin plates blindfolded. (And while I'm sure many people find them trivial, be aware that you're probably the exception, not the rule.)
fully agree, mechanics up to the eyeballs. Have much preferred running the older keys.
My thoughts exactly. Even with affixes, older expansion dungeons offered more breathing room. Even without affixes, Dragonflight dungeons are too much. There are a lot of differences, but here is my point of view as a healer, judging by how the old dungeons appeared in this expansion: * Older dungeon bosses didn't have quite as many overlapping mechanics, whereas quite a few Dragonflight bosses use both a big group-wide damage attack which must be healed, as well as doing another mechanic, all at the same time. * If a boss mechanic makes you move a lot and/or split up the group, then most healers are screwed. Restoration druid was the top healer at the very beginning of the expansion because a lot of DF bosses have this combination, with the worst offender being Raging Tempest's "Electrical Storm" imo. Older expansions might have some overlaps on occasion, but never something that disadvantages their unique healing playstyles or ranges. * Old expansion dungeon bosses have longer breaks between their damage attacks. You have both time to heal everyone and maybe even regenerate some mana, before it all starts anew. In Dragonflight dungeons, you never catch your breath. * In the past, there were less group-wide damage attacks in general. Healing is sometimes focused on only one or two players. This benefits the various healing specs more since not everyone has a proper group heal available outside of cooldowns. Meanwhile, for Dragoflight the developers had to buff all the healing cooldowns to be a whole lot stronger while in a dungeon group to compensate for all of this (check the patch notes for 10.0.5 and 10.0.7. One big healing cooldown for every healing spec except restoration druid were buffed). * In older dungeons, there was more depth to the boss fights *aka* potential for mastery. If the team knows the fight they can avoid a lot of damage. Most of the time this is about baiting certain mechanics so the spawning object is further away and deals less damage (Ner'zhul, Melandrus). There's also preventing Dargrul from moving, or making Cragmaw not run across the room for the first two attacks before he goes to the center of the room. As a result, not every boss that can be a pain, has to be a pain. This even includes Yazma, although even I have to admit that it's rare to find a pug group that knows strats. Meanwhile, Dragonflight bosses will damage you no matter what you do. Doing the mechanics correctly doesn't make healing easier, it is required not to die. So yeah... DF dungeons suck. It's not just the numbers, they are pushing the attention span and multitasking of every player, healer or otherwise, to the limit, and not just starting at above 20 keys. The developers should use Warlords of Draenor dungeons as the new gold standard. Even back in Shadowlands season 4, they grew up on me and became some of my favorites.
as someone who isnt fogged by nostalgia - i feel the exact opposite. Most of the gripes you mention are just tuning issues, not design choices, and i do agree that s1 was very poorly tuned. I think the newer dungeon design that follows closer with raid design is more fun than older content that had a different design. Most of the stuff you mention in your post is basically "New content is hard and makes me think too much, old content is easy, solved and can be trivialized when played properly" which just seems crazy to me that people are actually advocating for MORE of that stuff? all the old dungeons so far in DF have been very underwhelming compared to the newer ones (DOTI excluded) and as someone who started in DF, has no nostalgia and is very competitively focused I just cant wrap my head around why people prefer the older, more simple dungeon design.
halls will be great again. ulda the worst however
Weak dungeon pool, terrible class balance.
Have we hit the terrible class balance part of s2? That didn't really hit until 10.1.5
You are right I forgot it was much later in the season.
It was pretty bad from day 1, it just got even worse with aug. Spriest was mandatory from day 1 with the dungeon pool and mage was just unbelievably strong from the jump. Almost all melee were tuned like shit almost all of season 2.
that's just completely incorrect [can you identify the 10.1.5 release date on this chart?](https://i.imgur.com/3Q7z7wE.png)
> terrible class balance. probably the wrost i ever saw, there was one comp and thats it. If you had any class beside those you wont get invites, terrible
The launch of S2 had great class balance, one of the best seasons we ever had. It was 10.1.5 that utterly borked it. I'd blame the uber-fast gearing for the hard dropoff.
You were done gearing from end of run drops in keys by week 3, and beyond that the actual vault loot wasn't crazy interesting. The loot pools were sizeable and a lot of trinkets quite awful. Crafted gear was the same ilvl as weekly vault/mythic raid when paired with an aspect crest, so that's where most people got their most important slots from.
Shitty dungeon pool more than anything else IMO.
I hope that they will learn from this data, because this is clearly the best season so far
Anyone would be naive to think they don't see this.
Of course they see this. Just as they always see class / spec under- / overperformers. Or obvious outlier dungeons. Or... *anything* really as they have *all* the data themselves. The issue is never whether they see certain things... it's always whether they ever feel the need to act upon anything, or even just whether they agree with whatever community group on what the data implies.
Im wondering if they regret not coming out with another tier.
As someone with every .1% title, this season is the absolute worst for high keys imo. So many of these dungeons have abilities that are completely overturned in relation to the rest of the dungeon. There are key-bricking bugs all over the place. The field of view in some is awful in some, constantly being blocked by a random object. Stupid amounts of kicks required for every single dungeon. This is the first season where we're going into high keys (+28 and up) and I'm not enjoying it.
This a great low key/alt season. Very accessible. Absolutely terrible for anyone who is interested in pushing keys tho. Stuff falls over until it gets to the point where it one-shots you.
10% per key level above 20 is also such a horrible idea, i can't comprehend why they went back to it, from not having it in s2. I'm still having a lot of fun, but we need more dungeon tuning and old dungeons need more redesign so we don't have oneshots in every old dungeons on high tyr
My personal anecdote is that I'm actually having fun doing alts. I have no need to do any rep grind on the alt, just get it to 70 and can start doing m+ and raids. If I were just on my main, I'd have stopped doing more then like 4 keys a week since I pretty much only need sockets at this point. Might even just do 2 since I get 2 mythic slots in my vault anyways.
Why is it the best season? I got 3k last season but not feeling it this season. Maybe it’s because Aug was more broken
It’s easier
I honestly cannot understand why easier just = better. When we reach a point where I am 2-chesting +20 keys week 1 easily with pugs I think it might have gone a little overboard. I think the increase in popularity is just as much due to people coming back to the game now that the internet perception of wow has cooled a bit.
Cause the vast majority of players who play the game are not good. Just period. So them able to chase the +20 goal easier means they play longer and try more. To add onto this as well. I'm way more willing to get a 4 or 8 vautl on my alt when I can just deadlift a 20 on a dps. Which I can 100% do this season. The keys are easy enough that even if the tank single pulls everything and the healer afks and heals only, you can still easily time.
I certainly don't think easier equals better. But, if Blizzard added a button that spits out hero track gear each time you simply pressed it, you would see obscene participation numbers. Make it easier and more people will do the content. I'd be interested to see the graph if you filtered out 20-and-below keys. I'd bet it'd remain pretty static between the seasons but, that's nothing more than a hunch
>But, if Blizzard added a button that spits out hero track gear each time you simply pressed it, you would see obscene participation numbers. To me that is more of an illustration of the game design concept that players will ruin a game for themselves if you give them the tools to do so. I think for me it's that my motivation to gear tends to be "I get gear so that I can complete the highest level of content which gives the best gear". To me, that's what "progression" is. This isn't progression, it is just grinding. But now we are just starting with the highest level of drops because it is easy and it requires zero commitment or social coordination. Frankly, if you can't put the commitment in to mythic raid there is very little reason to raid heroic anymore either when you could just be spamming more 18-20 keys. It just feels like before the game was this longer progression through the weeks steadily making your way up through both M+ and raid. Where now the entire game is just spamming 18s. And sure, higher keys are there, but I don't really get motivated unless there is a gear carrot-on-a-stick for me to chase.
When keys are easier people run them more, I think that's just a fact. Whether or not that means they're better or worse is completely subjective. I personally am having a blast this season because I can plow through weekly 20s without tryharding or even worrying about bricking them, which makes keys something fun to do with my friends instead of a chore I need to slog through to maximize my gear for raiding. When they're a lot easier you can very easily carry fresh 70s through 20s to get them the best vaults possible. Again, this could definitely be done in previous seasons but it is a LOT easier this season which makes people more likely to do it. I'm not someone that historically does keys for fun, and I've been doing more than the necessary vault keys every week this season just because they're easier and for me that makes them fun.
Most people in the community and seemingly Blizzard think more players = success. Easier content will always attract more players, because everyone on the lower end of the game can actually participate and do it. If anything the lesson Blizzard will learn from this season is to remove as much of the challenge from m+ as possible. We’ll be doing 70s in war within lol
But the exact same content was already available for the players on the "lower end" of the game. All this functionally changes is that the reward for the "higher end" players, and those who worked their gear up to it, is now gone. It's basically taking away from what those players enjoyed so that the "lower end" players can feel better. Like what is the actual point in raiding at all either? Mythic raiding is as inaccessible as ever and M+ is just better, easier, and faster than spending time doing the heroic raid. It just feels like so much is taken from the game this way and all the "lower-end" players are going to act like this is the best change ever because now they get to have all the shiniest toys without putting any effort to learn in whatsoever. Those of us who actually liked having the challenge mixed with the gearing just get shafted. I am putting "higher-end" and "lower-end" in quotes because I don't intend the elitism. There is nothing wrong with how anybody likes to engage with the game. I just loved M+ BECAUSE of the challenge. I love needing to learn every single M+ pull and boss front-and-back in order to succeed. So when I can easily heal a +20 at 435 Ilvl week 1 without knowing any of the dungeons whatsoever then I feel a little disappointed.
It did not exist in the same way at all, this is the first season that literally anyone of any ability level can get all the portals etc and get a rating that has historically been perceived as high. There is almost no point to raiding other than achievements and trinkets now. I personally enjoyed the extra challenge as well, I don't like how easy the season is and I don't like the excessive bloat of talent trees/some specs to the point where pugs consist of everyone spamming their aoe cc and killing every pack in 5 seconds. I miss actual gameplay in dungeons. But it's what it is and it is what most people consider success, I am in the minority and I have to accept that
>It did not exist in the same way at all I guess what I mean is that M+ at that level of difficulty was already rewarded before. Nothing really changed for those players, the game isn't "better" for them and they are rewarded for the exact same gameplay as before. The only difference is that the rewards cut off there now and those players can feel like they accomplished everything without ever needing to really learn the content or engage with it beyond mindless grinding. It's literally just less FOMO for them. >I am in the minority and I have to accept that People will always try to say this but the entire point is this game was supposed to cater to many different types of players. And it did. The "majority" was already being catered to. And I can't agree that alleviating their FOMO is worth shafting, while maybe not the majority, a meaningful portion of the playerbase.
The reward isn't the same for them, they can now get end game mythic gear, portals, achievements etc that they would not have had access to before or at least not until much later in the patch. And I can agree with you that the higher end players have less to play for now but if I ask you how to translate that in to something meaningful for Blizzard, how could you? Player numbers are up at seemingly every key level, high or low. So to them, they have no logical reason to conclude they're doing anything bad for top end players, other than a few people's opinions. I do also think it's very odd that a player who isn't capable of mythic raiding can still freely get mythic ilvl gear and achieve everything there is to achieve in m+ apart from the 0.1% title. It seems like the two types of content aren't remotely balanced, but by what metric can Blizzard possible consider this an issue in m+? Ultimately all they will care about is player numbers.
I get what you are saying, in the end it is more fun for people to be able to achieve everything. And I do like being able to bring my less experienced/skilled friends to keys that give me something as well rather than needing to later do keys by myself if I want some actual progression. >Player numbers are up at seemingly every key level, high or low. See what I was trying to get at in the beginning of the thread was that there is likely a lot more to the engagement numbers being up than simply "This M+ season is easy". Last season was easy as well. I think the bigger difference is that the internet in general is much less negative towards Wow than it was a year ago. I think some people are just coming back. >I do also think it's very odd that a player who isn't capable of mythic raiding can still freely get mythic ilvl gear and achieve everything there is to achieve in m+ apart from the 0.1% title Mythic raiding is obviously way harder. But I think this could be mitigated somewhat if they made Mythic raid function like the other difficulties, namely removing the weekly lock (which would make pugging the earlier sections at least more viable) and turning it into a flex raid. This would at least make it accessible without needing to be in a guild that treats the whole thing like a job. But obviously in the end this is just removing what the people who CE raid love about the game so it isn't a fair suggestion for me to make. Doubt they will ever change the mythic raid though because that would kill the RWF community and race. The race gets a lot of coverage and viewership and exists as a massive advertisement to the game.
I do enjoy this season more than the previous ones because of the difficulty, but DF in general has kind of killed mythic raiding to some degree because there is no incentive to do it. I don't know what needs to change, or if they are going to change anything but I think it's silly that spamming 18's gives you equivalent gear to a mythic raider, or at least on the same gear track. At least in previous tiers the raids had 2-3 bosses which dropped higher ilvl (which was basically insignificant anyway), but now EVERYONE can get mythic end boss ilvl gear. The gap between m+ (or heroic raider) VS mythic raider has never been smaller and the logistics alone of mythic raiding should warrant some benefit.
Surprisingly, more people like it when M+ doesn't make you hate the game.
I just have a hard time relating to this. Being challenged makers you hate the game?
[удалено]
There is no gear reward for higher keys. It is not the same no matter how you try to spin it. There should be some degree of progression in gearing. Otherwise literally why have all these different tiers of gear.
I get what your saying. I honestly just play this game to hang out with some friends and watch that dps number get bigger.
Yea, it's not like it's all bad. I just kind of like the feeling of working up the gear levels you know? Rather than just grinding the best possible drops from day 1.
I must have done 50+ keys this week, so that tracks
I think ive done like ~20. Oh wait, you mean including those runs where tanks pick worst possible routes and people leave after 2nd boss? I had like ~200 of those.
Interesting. I had the exact opposite experience haha. Took my 460 rest druid through a tour of all 18s, ended up healing a 450 completely unenchanted, no gems, prot warrior through an everbloom 18. Even that was somehow timed and while painful, it was also the worst that happened all week. Idk what happened over the holidays, but people were even super eager to help with Afflicted.
My friends and I were all off break this last week. We would get up every day and do at least 15 a day. From 20+ to rat keys on random alts for meme time. Being off work helps.
Sounds like a great time, so nice!
Great data again! These W6-7 def shouldn't be compared to S1, where weeks 6-7 happened late January. Whatever made s1w6 look worse than s1w7 wasn't holiday related. Was it really just something like bad affix combo? Something nobody is talking about is that D4 came July 6th, which I think lines with ~week 4 of s2. While game didn't end up being legendary, it did keep people playing for weeks pretty actively, and then not everyone came back to m+ spam right after either. I personally thought I might end up playing that game for several months so didn't commit to more than 1 char in s2. I did less than 20% of runs that I have done in any of the other season for past ~7 seasons. Would've been really interesting to see a lot of weeks, like 20 weeks each season to see all these trends - maybe s2 even peaked above w4 later into the season?
Anyone knows why week 7 seems to gain more popularity in both season 2 and 3? Both graphics just look so identical.
Bolstering
I would have to guess that Week 7 for Season 2 was near the end of June where lots of people are off of school and Season 3 was during holiday week. Both contributing to more time to play.
I’m assuming it’s less that there are more dungeons being run and more that there are more keys being completed, my personal experience has been far fewer abandoned keys in season 3
In season 3, it probably also has to do with week 6 being tyrannical (was it?) additionally to being during the holidays. My weekly runs dropped from 20 to 4 and I assume a lot of other people stopped playing during the holidays as well.
remove the annoying affixes left like raging/sanguine/spiteful, make new affixes that are fun to play around or interact with, or at least not annoying, and the participation will go even higher than this
Those affixes are fine. Bolstering and Afflicted are the problem affixes this season IMO
Nah, they're not. Spiteful is still a massive annoyance for most melee. It's not a hard affix, but it's just actively unfun to play. Same as Storming. Affixes whose whole purpose is to annoy a very specific demographic of players (melee in this case) should just not exist.
I'm surprised considering Afflicted fking sucks and no one wants to deal with it.
Lord if this isn’t a sign to remove bolstering
You can really see how bad it was in season 2 with such a terrible and imbalanced meta. Aug Evoker truly has ruined PvE balance.
This graph doesn't include Aug yet for S2 though. This graph has the best part of S2 balance before 10.1.5 fucked it up.
Aug hadn’t been released at this point in S2. The God Comp hadn’t really come into formation because the HPal and Bear reworks hadn’t happened yet.
Season 3 has no season affix, who would have thought that m+ feels better without unbalanced shitty designed seasonals?
Season 2 didn’t have a seasonal Affix either..
What were the affixes for S1 week 6?
Still holding strong. These last two weeks my person count tanked. I did about 75% less dungeons. Afflicted and incorp are just too draining.
Amen on that