Alternative Content to Mythic

[Elestia]

So in light of the many discussions seeming to disapprove of high end raiding, what enhancements to end game play would make the game enjoyable? If you're pro mythic, what changes would you want to see?

Personally I like mythic as a difficulty, however I still believe the Ulduar model was best - where 'hard-mode' is activated through some encounter mechanic which inherently alters the fight difficulty. This approach might also sidestep some of the major re-tuning /design requirements of the fights themselves enabling resources in other areas. This also keeps things integrated into one instance and makes things more accessible. (Most guilds imo don't want to do multiple runs, or don't have the time and must dedicate to one difficulty or another per week.)

Also, the different gear models for mythic is odd. Why put in subjective 'incentives'. For the most part, my raiders hate the current tier sets. This in my opinion is the worst 'waste' of resources in this regard. Most raiders are content to raid, knowing gear gets replaced anyways, at the difficulty they're comfortable at. Perhaps a more realistic reward for hard-mode would be guaranteed war-forged?

One area I truly miss are additional dungeons which expand upon the story. Cata was the last expansion to offer additional dungeon content. For MoP's strengths the failure to introduce additional dungeons was a problem people overlook. As a result WoD will likely not see new dungeon content beyond the mythic mode refresh and time-walking, which is at least more than what MoP offered.

[Deleted]

Hold your breath, now read:

Drain Thousand Needles
Open the race track!
Build your own goblin or gnome racecar with weapons and all
Race your friends and foes
Win titles, special paints, etc.

Yeah, you read that right.
Best. Idea. Ever.

[TheWindWalker]

At this point Mythic raids just feels like they went back to the Wrath system for dungeons they just shot themselves in the foot by pretending that "normal max level is different! New heroic dungeons are actually heroic!" when in truth they're barely removed from Mists dungeons and the new "Mythic Dungeons" are basically just the real heroic max level ones.

I'd gladly pay $60 an expansion every year for two raids and a massive amount of cycling outdoor content.

[cFortyfive]

Most raiders are content to raid, knowing gear gets replaced anyways, at the difficulty they're comfortable at. Perhaps a more realistic reward for hard-mode would be guaranteed war-forged?

Aside from being a really bad idea - isn't that a contradiction ? Not that anyone gives a fuck in the first place for those 6 ilvls.

[melodramocracy]

That part of the game isn't broken, so should be left as is.

[Elestia]

Aside from being a really bad idea - isn't that a contradiction ? Not that anyone gives a fuck in the first place for those 6 ilvls.

I probably did skip a step there. To clarify gear is what makes a certain difficulty more manageable and obtainable outside of skill. Having hard-mode available within progression that for instance rewarded higher than usual items would in effect reward marginal faster pacing of boss kills.

So say you were attempting to kill heroic blackhand at average ilvl 680. If a guild had say an extra hour or so they could risk doing mythic Darmac during that week's clear and be assured of relevant upgrades ilvl boost for their progression.

It would be similar to the ramp we will see in 6.2, but would forego mythic as a distinct exclusive category to progress.

[Marhault]

Why does it have to be an either or? Outside of the tier pieces themselves looking different (And I'll be honest, couldn't care less if it were simply a recolour or not), Mythic doesn't seem to take that many extra resources as the fights are already designed for Heroic. At the same time, it would make sense to stop spending extra resources and to create LFR gear that looks so bland. Again with it being a recolour should save resources spent from the art department so they could have more time freed up for whatever else.

Activating the Hard Mode for a fight is, to me, the equivalent to having a Mythic mode and devising unique ways to start them seems like it would waste more time and resources than simply toggling a difficulty.

[Baconeggcheese]

Raiding: I'd like to either see shared loot lockouts across the board so that people don't feel obligated to run the raid 2-4 times a week which accelerates burnout like crazy... or what I'd really like to see is them actually make the raid difficulties proper stepping stones.

At the moment people have this impression that you're supposed to progress from normal all the way through mythic doing the same raid 3 times, which is not how they're designed. They're designed to be 4 different target difficulties for different audiences, which I think is a problem because so many people think that they're supposed to be stepping stones or that you're expected to run through all 4 of them to progress.

I feel like how monster hunter treats monsters across difficulties and sub-species is a good example of how to breathe life into the same fight. The monsters AI's change to become more aggressive and punishing the higher difficulty you go as well as adding some unique mechanics, and then the sub-species of monsters have slightly altered aesthetics while retaining the core idea, and then further change up the ai and having their own move set.

Fighting a normal tigrex is extremely different from fighting a brute tigrex where one loves to jump all over the map and charge a lot and the other loves to spout its supersonic roars to blast you away which makes them very different fights.

I'd like to see things of that nature in wows raiding, where the difficulties of the same raid progress aesthetically and mechanically in ways that make it feel like a totally different fight with the same core ideas. Monster hunter 4 ultimate does a really good job using these tools to create an extremely smooth and engaging difficulty curve, I'd like to see those ideas adopted into wow.

This leads me to:

Cd's: It seems like as time goes on classes keep having their damage / healing moved from sustained sources into bursty cds. This makes encounter design very rigid (as well as shaping pvp), because a boss can't do its ultimate super move more than once every X minutes because if there isn't the cds to respond to it everyone dies. In a lot of action rpgs mobs can do a lot of different moves seemingly at random or even react to what you're doing more frequently because you have buttons to respond to them. That seemingly RNG fighting makes things a lot more replayable and allows the devs more freedom to do things like I mentioned about MH to make fights less stale the 20th time you're doing them, and makes the base combat less stale.

Cds can also make it a lot harder for new players who don't understand how to maximize them. So much of mythic raiding is spreadsheets with healing cooldowns etc that pull you out of the game and are very unintuitive for newer players or up and coming guilds who don't understand that more than half of "hardcore" raiding is spent preparing outside of the game.

***To be honest most mmorpgs these days are so insanely unintuitive that people have to invest a significant amount of time learning about the game online instead of actually playing it. that's a huge problem.

Questing / the world: For this I think they need to take a few lessons from other mmorpgs that have fantastic leveling experiences but tend to fall flat at endgame. The cut scenes etc that we got in wod were a nice first step, I'd like to see far far more of that in regards to emphasizing story in the world during questing. Blizzard could write the best story in the world but if its in text I'll never get to experience it because I want to play the game.

There's a lot of things the "failed wow killers" did right, every time I pick up a new one to dabble in during content droughts in wow I have a lot of fun in certain areas while the game falls flat in others. I always end up seeing small QoL or game design bits that I feel would be amazing to take back and add to wow. I feel like there's a lot of opportunity there for blizzard to learn from and adopt certain things other games did right and fuse them with their current recipe. A lot of times I feel blizzard tends to copy the bad other games do instead of the good.

Anyway yeah... ramble ramble...

[Elestia]

At the moment people have this impression that you're supposed to progress from normal all the way through mythic doing the same raid 3 times, which is not how they're designed. They're designed to be 4 different target difficulties for different audiences, which I think is a problem because so many people think that they're supposed to be stepping stones or that you're expected to run through all 4 of them to progress.

From my experience guilds starting mythic attempts have used heroic to 'gear up' in order to access mythic. Often time is split between gearing recruits off of heroic farm and doing mythic attempts - which takes considerable time. Accessibility seems to me at least to be a major stumbling block.

I've been arguing that players should play at the difficulty they're comfortable with... Part of the current frustration with Mythic could just be people have reached as far as they'd like to with heroic and pushing into something 'new' just isn't accessible for various reasons - group size, group ilvl, difficulty/skill, varying personal goals etc.

- - - Updated - - -

Why does it have to be an either or? Outside of the tier pieces themselves looking different (And I'll be honest, couldn't care less if it were simply a recolour or not), Mythic doesn't seem to take that many extra resources as the fights are already designed for Heroic. At the same time, it would make sense to stop spending extra resources and to create LFR gear that looks so bland. Again with it being a recolour should save resources spent from the art department so they could have more time freed up for whatever else.

Activating the Hard Mode for a fight is, to me, the equivalent to having a Mythic mode and devising unique ways to start them seems like it would waste more time and resources than simply toggling a difficulty.

It's impossible for us to know optimal resource allocation... but the point is more to discuss possible trade offs. Of course the irony with current tier is that all sets outside of maybe cloth and some leather pieces, the gear looks terrible. Doesn't matter if LFR has plain gear if even the current tier or mythic pieces get transmogged anyway. But sure, by the same token of mythic pieces being redesigned being wasteful, so is LFR piece redesign could be considered wasteful.