Is challenging content really the incentive for running Mythic +?

[ShiyoKozuki]

They want raids to still be the "sure" way to get gear. If you got 880 base ilvl from mythic 13+ many raiders would stop raiding. Mythic + lets you keep rolling the dice, while the raid it's once per week per boss. The loot gained from mythic + would be absurd and once again the raids in nighthold comes out will be hard to balance, once again.

Blizzard still wants raids to be a big thing, giving mythic + a better way to get gear will completely remove a lot of from raiding.

I run mythic + for a good time with my closest guildies and getting challenge + rewards at 15+.

Yeah, due to this mentality they ruined M+ entirely.

Need to get rid of the raid lover dev team, they don't belong in a 2016 game. Raiding is dead.

[kamuimac]

Yeah, due to this mentality they ruined M+ entirely.

Need to get rid of the raid lover dev team, they don't belong in a 2016 game. Raiding is dead.

raiding is not dead - raiding is just as unpopular as it always was - i honestly dont understand why people just cant accept alternatives. atm we have perfect system - those who farm gear have mythic + those who like raiding have raiding - what is the point in disrupting balance. we have raid modes for eveyrbody we have dungeon modes for eveyrbody the only thing we need is a bit better tuning and game is golden.

[Marrilaife]

Majority of the playerbase doesn't care for challenge, they want rewards, especially painless ones. Atm majority of m+ runs is 1) "boosting your low key for easy AP" 2) "have bazillion gear for smooth 3-chest on medium key". If not the weekly chest most people wouldn't even touch 10-12 keys.

The problem is also wipe aversion, I was doing Nelth+10 with a friend, guildie of that friend and a pug healer and 1 dps. We wiped once on trash (a pelter jumped into next pack with the green rock guy) and the pug dps drops the group with no word. The pug healer starts saying something like "I don't have the time if this is gonna take 2 hours..." I convince the healer to stay. We finish it under 1 hour but obviously way past timer because we had to 4 man it.

Generally challenge means chance of failure. Failure proof means faceroll / easy content. Problem is, big portion of the playerbase immediately seeks the way out if failure occurs. I saw that when during HFC I tried to gear an alt through pugging raids. The amount of time spend on content (killing or wiping) was doubled or tripled by amount of time replacing the leavers.

This is constant occurrence. This is the reason content like LFR gets nerfed and gets determination stacks, dungeons like Cata heroics get nerfed, world bosses are loot pinatas. The consequences of that for m+ is that the meta is atm "lfm overgeared people fast run 3-chest!" That creates the same dreadful playstyle like old CM was, namely speedruns, you have way less time to 3-chest than to barely complete, so obviously you need to know every pull, every skip, most efficient trash count clear and other shenanigans. This is awfully reminescent of Challenge Modes.

[Deleted]

You got much better gear in high mythic+ (although, IIRC, you got loot only when completed in time).

Getting 865 from m+10 is absurd, because ANY heroic boss from EN is way easier.

I don't think you can directly compare raids and dungeons tough since they are completely different.
One is a fast paced race with not that many mechanics which sometimes can be ignored (think off adds on second boss in BRH) where you have to move nonstop.
The other is more methodical and requires more on tactics. There are a lot more mechancis to deal with and a single member messing up can mean the death of the boss try (think of focused target on Ursoc).

[kamuimac]

The problem is also wipe aversion, I was doing Nelth+10 with a friend, guildie of that friend and a pug healer and 1 dps. We wiped once on trash (a pelter jumped into next pack with the green rock guy) and the pug dps drops the group with no word. The pug healer starts saying something like "I don't have the time if this is gonna take 2 hours..." I convince the healer to stay. We finish it under 1 hour but obviously way past timer because we had to 4 man it.

healers and tanks have always almost instant invites to groups - especially healers - thats why its not surprising at all that if healer see relatively "low" numbers / lack of stuns-interupts / fast wipe he knows that its indeed waste of time as he has 90% + to get instant invite to potencial 3 chest straight run after he leaves your group.

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Generally challenge means chance of failure. Failure proof means faceroll / easy content. Problem is, big portion of the playerbase immediately seeks the way out if failure occurs. I saw that when during HFC I tried to gear an alt through pugging raids. The amount of time spend on content (killing or wiping) was doubled or tripled by amount of time replacing the leavers.

This is constant occurrence. This is the reason content like LFR gets nerfed and gets determination stacks, dungeons like Cata heroics get nerfed, world bosses are loot pinatas. The consequences of that for m+ is that the meta is atm "lfm overgeared people fast run 3-chest!" That creates the same dreadful playstyle like old CM was, namely speedruns, you have way less time to 3-chest than to barely complete, so obviously you need to know every pull, every skip, most efficient trash count clear and other shenanigans. This is awfully reminescent of Challenge Modes.

then maybe its time to accept it and stop making bazilionof hardmodes only make bazzilion of easy ways to obtain gear if that what playerbase wants - just look how popular WQ are - face it people indeed do like easy gear why deny them that. there is always ton of alts farming wq gear for that tiny chance of titanforged. if thats why people want maybe thats the future of wow.

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So I hear a number of people claiming they run Mythic + for the challenge but in my experience a hefty chunk seem to only be running Mythic + they can outgear to the extent it removes the challenge aspect so I am curious, do you Mythic + for the challenge or just the rewards?

ofc they run them for gear not for chalenge - if they did it for chalenge they would be doin 12 + and higher and atm they avoid it like plague - 12 = wont be popular till mythic nighthold gear levels then those who boost atm 6-9 will be doin 10-12

[Gilgameshh]

You got much better gear in high mythic+ (although, IIRC, you got loot only when completed in time).

Getting 865 from m+10 is absurd, because ANY heroic boss from EN is way easier.

Are you implying that mythic raid bosses are more akin to a +10 mythic dungeon? Where is the balance? You have a chance for WF/TF at +10; be happy with that. I mean, you don't have to be, but I'll make an argument for why it's reasonable.

At this point, the current system of M+ makes raids more irrelevant than they've ever been... by far. Not only is there BiS loot strewn across M+ for many specs, it's easier content as a whole. It's content with no lockout. The gear and WF/TF to levels that far exceed its difficulty. The base rewards for +10 might be 865, but the cache each week rewards 880.

Most of the difficulty from mythic raids comes from the fact that it's 20 people, not 5. You can tune 5-man content so that the checks are more strict, but you only have to worry about a total of 5 people. You only have to worry about 1 tank, 1 healer, and 3 DPS. It's easier to find 5 good people than it is to find 20. It's easier to find 5 competent people online at 1 time than it is to find 20. The list goes on and on.

This entire system is flawed. You could make a solid argument for M+ rewards if there was a lockout system. You could make an argument if WF/TF didn't exist. The lack of lockout + WF/TF gear makes M+ a system that feels like more of a chore than a journey. If you don't complete a M+ dungeon to upgrade your keystone, you feel as though you've failed (unless it's the run that gives you the final weekly cache upgrade). If you don't kill a progression boss in a raid, you feel as though you've at least made progress (hopefully). To me, that is a huge problem. I shouldn't feel like I'm grinding on more difficult content (mythic raids) to get downgrades because M+ has littered me with superior/equivalent gear.

M+ is a means to an end for most people. Who, other than elite raiders, can really get to the pinnacle of M+? A very select few, if I was to guess. The means to an end is so that you're able to gear up faster/more efficiently to actually progress in raiding. The rest are simply gearing greater rift style to complete the same content for the same rewards that are slightly upgraded. We see how well that works for Diablo III seasons; how is that really supposed to translate for the long-term success of a WoW expansion? It's not as though you're grinding for unique gear sets every few months. You're not changing your playstyle. You're not getting new dungeons. Each run, regardless of difficulty, has a very limited loot table. Where's the lasting appeal for a system such as this?

Who, other than raiders, does M+ actually benefit? What rewards do you see at the end of the tunnel for progressing through M+? You get a subjectively cool looking skin for doing +15. What else is there, really? Some artifact power? The ability to power your alts to a respectable level so that you can switch mains? Are these the reasons why M+ is a system that will keep peoples' interest throughout the expansion? It's certainly not "just to challenge yourself."

You might be at a point that you outgear +10 mythics, but that does not mean the system should be more rewarding; it's already too rewarding.

[Thage]

I run it for both.

Challenging content without a decent reward is hard to motivate people (eg. challenge mode, personally I also enjoyed that however), but challenge with a reward is the best combination. My group isn't the absolute best, as in we haven't defeated 15 yet (or gotten even close), but we do certainly play towards reaching that eventually.

This. I didn't care about CMs because there wasn't really much reward in it, but Mythic+ lets me progress in dungeon content without outgearing it to the point of triviality (which was a big problem in WotLK even as I got raid-quality gear from running Heroics via emblems of Triumph and Frost). My only real issue is that the lion's share of Group Finder pugs want to overgear it to the point that it trivializes that tier of Mythic+ (like needing Heroic EN gear for +2) which defeats the purpose in favor of just turning it into another treadmill for people with poor self-control or guilds pushing bleeding-edge progression content.

[Grym]

Everything is always for reward, including challenges.

People been crying for ages for multiple difficulties, but if the reward is shit, they complain, so they really doing it for the reward.

People complain they want smaller group challenging contents, as they do not want the logistic of a raid group. Now they have it, but if the reward is not good, they complain.

It was always about the reward.

[Thage]

Where's the lasting appeal for a system such as this?

For players who enjoy dungeons, being able to continue tackling the content they like without overgearing it to the point of afk-facerolling through while the rewards scale to keep progressing (in turn letting you continually amp up the challenge until you hit your skill ceiling). It's the same incentive that keeps raiders coming back to raid every week.

Who, other than raiders, does M+ actually benefit? What rewards do you see at the end of the tunnel for progressing through M+? You get a subjectively cool looking skin for doing +15. What else is there, really? Some artifact power? The ability to power your alts to a respectable level so that you can switch mains? Are these the reasons why M+ is a system that will keep peoples' interest throughout the expansion? It's certainly not "just to challenge yourself."

Fun and progression, same as raiding. Furthermore, in 7.1 we got a new dungeon and in 7.2 we're getting another one, with odds being almost 100% we'll be getting more with 7.3 bringing Argus to the table. It's not like in WoD when Mythics were just a stopgap measure and a sloppy attempt to make year-old dungeons relevant again; this time around the dungeons remain relevant for the expansion's entire lifetime and more are brought to the table as the first batch lose their shiny new thing appeal.

This is the danger of letting yourself get drawn into an echo chamber, because there are more points of view to consider than just that of the bleeding-edge raider or raid guilds that demand min/max gameplay from their raiders despite there being at least three other avenues to gear up quickly (world quests, LFR, and PvP).

[MoanaLisa]

I never heard people complaining about the timers in the original CM dungeons. At least I never heard anyone complain about a timer on MMO-C, which is pretty much all the complaints I pay attention to.

Well, here. I'll be happy to give you one. I like challenging group content. I don't mind a bit pulling up with friends and talking a pull over and discussing assignments on who is going to cc what and how that will be passed around with cooldowns. When you're under the gun with a clock you really can't do that. Difficulty is fine; running against a clock is less so. It's a personal preference but I suspect that challenge modes would have been at least a little more popular if there had been versions that rewarded stuff without running against a time limit. I've made this post before as have others.

[Svisalith]

I overgear most of the mythic+ that i do, but pushing timers on vaguely challenging content between doing extremely challenging content is much better than rewards being gated behind completely trivial stuff.

No rewards gated behind anything is also terrible for an MMO

[Allenseiei]

Yeah, due to this mentality they ruined M+ entirely.

Need to get rid of the raid lover dev team, they don't belong in a 2016 game. Raiding is dead.

The attitude towards raiding hasn't changed ever since WoW released... The difference is that there are more alternatives and much more accesibility to it, afterall all the core elements of WoW revolve around raiding, since WoW has very limited activities unlike sandbox games where you have much more freedom in what you do.
If a 2016 game means that people in 2016 are too afraid to interact and to manage big groups of people then it will be when I finally quit playing this game. For 5 man content I prefer other MMO's, the only reason I stay in WoW is for raiding, its been like this since 2005 for me.

Mythic + isn't ruined by raiding. Raiding as a whole has taking a hit because of mythic +, at least untill tier sets come out, which is why blizzard i assume left it alone. Mythic + gear has more BiS items than EN and ToV, its quite easy to get similar or more ilvl than raiding in mythic +. In fact, i'm 7/7 EN 2/3 ToV mythic, and more than 70% of my gear is from mythic + and i'm 889 ilvl.

[Socialhealer]

2-10 is like farm.

11-15 is really fun if you're in the mood the challenge is quite insane depending on the dungeon and the affixes and you get a feeling of accomplishment.

i mean +14 arcway spider boss tyrannical, 735k ticks on 2 players, thats 1.47m per second to 2 ppl, tank being melee'd and you gotta be topped or that web just deletes you, would of =+1'd 14 but sadly wiped on spider boss like 9 times everything else 1 shot, can't really prepared for that level of damage just need to be really fast and lucky.

[SandmanActual]

Blood DK here. For me it's definitely both. I'm at 880 without ever having set foot in a Mythic Raid.

Personally, what drove me to keep pushing to higher and higher keys was the achievements. At the moment, Keystone Conqueror (+10 under time) is one of the rarer achievements right now. So when I first got it I really felt a sense of accomplishment. The only achievements that are higher in rarity and worth noting would be Mythic Xavius and Keystone Master (obviously).

I just get a thrill out of problem solving every affix and using everything in my toolkit to approach things in ways I normally wouldn't.

Additionally our guild is comprised of people who have very wonky schedules, so running M+ groups instead is essentially our alternative to Mythic Raiding. It just breeds a very productive environment that allows you to easily isolate and identify single point failures within your guild roster and then troubleshoot it.

Ultimately what is keeping me playing is getting Keystone Master. That is the biggest carrot on the stick for me at the moment.

[Darkfriend]

Personally, I like gear. But I don't raid only for gear. When raiding isn't a challenge, it gets boring.

To a point I'll do boring things for gear. To a point I'll do fun things without any tangible gain. But when fun and gain are mixed right, you have a winner.

M+ are still challenging enough, and the rewards are good enough that I enjoy them, even if I really don't need much from them on my main anymore. They aren't so faceroll I just zone out or rewards so uncommon they don't feel worthwhile.

[Deleted]

Are you attempting to present some scenario where raiders raid for anything but loot???

Remove loot from raids and nobody touches them with a ten foot pole. The sheer insanity of pretending otherwise is what makes the WoW community, in particular the raiders, so entertaining to watch trying to explain why THEY deserve gear, but YOU dont.


You didnt say it directly, but its implied and its absolutely preposterous. Let me guess, the attendance for your raids is higher on Tuesdays/Wednesdays but its low on Sundays right? Its cause raiders just happen to be more into raiding upon reset

[Darkfriend]

Are you attempting to present some scenario where raiders raid for anything but loot???

Remove loot from raids and nobody touches them with a ten foot pole. The sheer insanity of pretending otherwise is what makes the WoW community, in particular the raiders, so entertaining to watch trying to explain why THEY deserve gear, but YOU dont.


You didnt say it directly, but its implied and its absolutely preposterous. Let me guess, the attendance for your raids is higher on Tuesdays/Wednesdays but its low on Sundays right? Its cause raiders just happen to be more into raiding upon reset

Gear is part of raiding. Getting gear is fun. If there was no gear, it would make raiding less fun. Gear is not the only reason I raid.

Honestly, no one will take an argument so black and white seriously. It is far more nuanced than what you present.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Are you attempting to present some scenario where raiders raid for anything but loot???

Remove loot from raids and nobody touches them with a ten foot pole. The sheer insanity of pretending otherwise is what makes the WoW community, in particular the raiders, so entertaining to watch trying to explain why THEY deserve gear, but YOU dont.


You didnt say it directly, but its implied and its absolutely preposterous. Let me guess, the attendance for your raids is higher on Tuesdays/Wednesdays but its low on Sundays right? Its cause raiders just happen to be more into raiding upon reset

It's true. Raiding would immediately become even more niche than it already is it gave no loot.
For some reason MMO devs refuse to give up on raiding and are stuck in 1998 thinking "big large fights with more people = harder = better rewards!"

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

Hell no. M+ stopped being fun a while ago. The harder it is, the less fun it is also.
The rewards are so RNG that they're always shit so the incentive isn't really there at all.

[Deleted]

So I hear a number of people claiming they run Mythic + for the challenge but in my experience a hefty chunk seem to only be running Mythic + they can outgear to the extent it removes the challenge aspect so I am curious, do you Mythic + for the challenge or just the rewards?

I wouldnt call mythic+ challenging. The hardest I have done is like 12, and it just reminds me of doing MoP/WoD CM's (difficulty wise).