Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Lady Atia]

Do people really buy Mythic boosts at a large number? I've seen the pricing for those and it is crazy. You really need to be a whale to be able to negotiate those prices.

As for Mythic raiding cosmetics . . . meh. The only worthwhile collectible is the mount. Everything else you can acquire a tier later with your raid group (it's what we do; we progress on Heroic until we get a very high ilvl and then we split days between easier current Mythic bosses and previous tier Mythic). Heck in this particular expansion even the last tier Mythic can end up on farm by heroic raiders after they get some decent Fated Heroic gear.

Mythic raid gear is just not particularly exclusive. It will never feel as impressive as gladiator gear.

Yeah but keep in mind that this is the first time we get the fated raids so it's not the norm - hence I said it will be interesting to see the numbers and what Blizzard will do with them.

It's already quite promising that they use a reward structure something similiar to m+ - normal will give you a mount, heroic a title and mythic the teleports. This, together with weapons and trinkets on a vendor (without a CN style token system so you can still have cool lore weapons from bosses) are things I would like to see getting carried over for Dragonflight Season 1.

Currently, there are no reasons to raid normal besides getting badly recoloured gear. If you want something cool, you have to raid mythic. So either they should reshuffle rewards to make raiding more appealing, or make raiding more accessible with maybe a raid+ system that's for the world first guilds and all about who can push the highest, but with any cosmetics capped at M+0 level? People who want to play the hardest bosses can do it, and people who just wanna get their mounts/transmogs can get them too. With that system you also wouldn't need any nerfs I guess.

And Hall of Fame could be for the top 100/200 pushing guilds at the end of a season.

[Nymrohd]

Yeah but keep in mind that this is the first time we get the fated raids so it's not the norm - hence I said it will be interesting to see the numbers and what Blizzard will do with them.

It's already quite promising that they use a reward structure something similiar to m+ - normal will give you a mount, heroic a title and mythic the teleports. This, together with weapons and trinkets on a vendor (without a CN style token system so you can still have cool lore weapons from bosses) are things I would like to see getting carried over for Dragonflight Season 1.

Currently, there are no reasons to raid normal besides getting badly recoloured gear. If you want something cool, you have to raid mythic. So either they should reshuffle rewards to make raiding more appealing, or make raiding more accessible with maybe a raid+ system that's for the world first guilds and all about who can push the highest, but with any cosmetics capped at M+0 level? People who want to play the hardest bosses can do it, and people who just wanna get their mounts/transmogs can get them too. With that system you also wouldn't need any nerfs I guess.

Honestly I'd go with the reverse and say that M+ should no longer award Vault gear at a higher ilvl than the difficulty you complete and instead they should just let M+ award gear all the way to +20. The only other alternative I'd find acceptable would be for Vault rewards from raiding to ALSO be a tier above the content completed.

And yeah S4 is unique but it doesn't much change that all the cosmetics except for the mount from the last raid of the expac are usually easy to do in a 10-12 man PuG with decent ilvl in the first tier of the next xpac and very easy to do with a small group by the end of the xpac. Anything further behind is usually doable solo. I know collectors who very much don't do PvE content when it is current because they know they can just get it later on.

[Lady Atia]

Honestly I'd go with the reverse and say that M+ should no longer award Vault gear at a higher ilvl than the difficulty you complete and instead they should just let M+ award gear all the way to +20. The only other alternative I'd find acceptable would be for Vault rewards from raiding to ALSO be a tier above the content completed.

But m+ currently is the better, more modern system. Raiding should be molded after it, not the other way 'round, imo.

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And yeah S4 is unique but it doesn't much change that all the cosmetics except for the mount from the last raid of the expac are usually easy to do in a 10-12 man PuG with decent ilvl in the first tier of the next xpac and very easy to do with a small group by the end of the xpac. Anything further behind is usually doable solo. I know collectors who very much don't do PvE content when it is current because they know they can just get it later on.

Yeah but wouldn't it be more healthy for the game if you could bring these players and have them actually play the raids when they are current? Imagine f.e. if they would remove LFR, but let you queue for normal and heroic - the same as it is with dungeons right now. M+0 raid would be premade and basically a little bit easier than the latest iteration of a raid in it's current mythic state, with raid+2 and upwards going all the way to current week 1 bosses.

You would get more players into Mythic raiding, while raid+ would make the pushers and world first guilds happy. The formula worked with dungeons - which are the most played content right now I think.

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Also, iirc they are using already a m+ style scaling mechanic to tune raids during a tier, so it wouldn't be hard to implement on the technical side of things.

[Nymrohd]

But m+ currently is the better, more modern system. Raiding should be molded after it, not the other way 'round, imo.

Eh I don't think M+ is in any way a better reward system. The RNG is extreme given how absolutely bloated Dungeon loot tables are. You get a random piece at a higher ilvl from the Vault lottery. The S4 proposed system for raiding IS a better system. Between the Catalyst and the bad luck protection with the three coins you get rewards proportional to the difficulty you complete and have significant built-in bad lack protection. I hope the S4 raiding reward system succeeds and then maybe they can start rethinking M+ gearing which is only really supported by the Valor grind; and even with no Cap it's still a frustrating grind.


M+ is the most played system because it is the least effort for the highest ilvl. That has always been the way this community played. Do you think people suddenly loved Arena in TBC and completely fell out of love for it with Wrath and after? People will do whatever content will get them the best gear for the least effort and that is M+15 right now. Popularity does not equal enjoyment and it is why Blizzard's metrics driven feedback process failed and they are now going back to community interaction.

As for raid+ I don't think that is needed. You just need to do what many other games have done. Add speedrunning leaderboards. It's what kept classic raiding alive for a while and in retail's case, the content cycle would let people keep optimizing. Plus speedrunning might help mediate the log whoring issue with things like PI; guilds will want to maximize raid dps instead of helping an officer get their legendary logs because then the entire raid can get a ranking. You can even end of week rewards or something similar (top X% of logs gets a gift box in their mail)

[Lady Atia]

Eh I don't think M+ is in any way a better reward system. The RNG is extreme given how absolutely bloated Dungeon loot tables are. You get a random piece at a higher ilvl from the Vault lottery. The S4 proposed system for raiding IS a better system. Between the Catalyst and the bad luck protection with the three coins you get rewards proportional to the difficulty you complete and have significant built-in bad lack protection. I hope the S4 raiding reward system succeeds and then maybe they can start rethinking M+ gearing which is only really supported by the Valor grind; and even with no Cap it's still a frustrating grind.

Well, loot is another whole issue, you are right. Fair enough, I don't really care about loot - it's a way to get cosmetics/mounts from mythic for me, nothing more.

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M+ is the most played system because it is the least effort for the highest ilvl. That has always been the way this community played. Do you think people suddenly loved Arena in TBC and completely fell out of love for it with Wrath and after? People will do whatever content will get them the best gear for the least effort and that is M+15 right now. Popularity does not equal enjoyment and it is why Blizzard's metrics driven feedback process failed and they are now going back to community interaction.

Doesn't that proof that if you would make mythic raiding (as in, killing the last boss) as accessible as mythic+15 dungeons, you would have more players play mythic raids? What is gatekeeping bringing to the game?

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As for raid+ I don't think that is needed. You just need to do what many other games have done. Add speedrunning leaderboards. It's what kept classic raiding alive for a while and in retail's case, the content cycle would let people keep optimizing. Plus speedrunning might help mediate the log whoring issue with things like PI; guilds will want to maximize raid dps instead of helping an officer get their legendary logs because then the entire raid can get a ranking. You can even end of week rewards or something similar (top X% of logs gets a gift box in their mail)

Sorry, but ranked speedrunning raids just scream toxic environment for me. And that's defo something the game doesn't need more of.

[Nymrohd]

Doesn't that proof that if you would make mythic raiding (as in, killing the last boss) as accessible as mythic+15 dungeons, you would have more players play mythic raids? What is gatekeeping bringing to the game?

Drives people to engage with more challenging content and keeps those communities alive. M+ giving higher ilvl loot is somewhat OK because it is a lottery and it is also one slot per week with an increasing chance of duplicates or downgrades so you both get progress for people who are OK with the grind lasting months at less challenging content and people who want more agency in their progression and will try to move up to Mythic raiding. Really, the high level raiding scene of WoW does not seem to be suffering. The only ones in trouble are the Race to World First guilds whose war with the devs will lead to them self-sorting out as the cost/reward ratio becomes increasingly unfavorable. There is nothing really wrong with the difficulty of Mythic raiding after the first wave of nerfs hits in the reset after the World First kill happens. Really the only restriction is that it's perhaps better to not start with Mythic raiding until week 4 (and hey, HC endbosses tend to be challenging enough to give you something to progress for at least the first 2-3 weeks; very rarely are they easy enough to be considered farm content on the second reset).

If the intent is for people not to hit a wall in their progression fast, at most what is needed is for Heroic Raiding to also award higher ilvl loot like M+ does).

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Sorry, but ranked speedrunning raids just scream toxic environment for me. And that's defo something the game doesn't need more of.

What on earth is the difference between ranked speedrunning raids and your hypothetical Raid+?

[Lady Atia]

Drives people to engage with more challenging content and keeps those communities alive. M+ giving higher ilvl loot is somewhat OK because it is a lottery and it is also one slot per week with an increasing chance of duplicates or downgrades so you both get progress for people who are OK with the grind lasting months at less challenging content and people who want more agency in their progression and will try to move up to Mythic raiding. Really, the high level raiding scene of WoW does not seem to be suffering. The only ones in trouble are the Race to World First guilds whose war with the devs will lead to them self-sorting out as the cost/reward ratio becomes increasingly unfavorable. There is nothing really wrong with the difficulty of Mythic raiding after the first wave of nerfs hits in the reset after the World First kill happens. Really the only restriction is that it's perhaps better to not start with Mythic raiding until week 4 (and hey, HC endbosses tend to be challenging enough to give you something to progress for at least the first 2-3 weeks; very rarely are they easy enough to be considered farm content on the second reset).

If the intent is for people not to hit a wall in their progression fast, at most what is needed is for Heroic Raiding to also award higher ilvl loot like M+ does).

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What on earth is the difference between ranked speedrunning raids and your hypothetical Raid+?

To paraphrase Ghostcrawler "If we thought we could make people aspire to engage in challenging content, we were wrong". You can still achieve that if you make a raid+ system where +2-15 are just for Hall of Fame, without any unique/better loot/transmog/mounts.

And the biggest difference between my raid+ system and your speedruns would be the timer. I wouldn't use one. Raid+15 would just be the unnerfed week 1 raids, while Raid+2 would be what we have at the end of a season. Instead of having super hard raids week one that get nerfed through the season which just feels shit for everyone (see Halondrus nerf QQ).

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At the end of the day, I just want a system that brings more people to raid mythic while also giving the guys who want a real challenge also a way to preserve that, with rewards that are cool to have like the teleports f.e., but nothing to worry about if you can't clear the highest difficulty. I think that would be overall far more healthy for the game than what we currently have in season 3.

[Nymrohd]

At the end of the day, I just want a system that brings more people to raid mythic while also giving the guys who want a real challenge also a way to preserve that, with rewards that are cool to have like the teleports f.e., but nothing to worry about if you can't clear the highest difficulty. I think that would be overall far more healthy for the game than what we currently have in season 3.

They can keep heaping all the incentives they want but I don't think Mythic raiding community can get much larger (unless the game population itself increases significantly). Organized raiding with a fixed group size that is fairly large is just not an easy thing to do, especially for the raid leaders and the recruitment officers who have to manage things. Heroic raiding remains more popular because it is flex

[Asaliah]

I'd kill for a LFR for mythic dungeons (with filters for +1 +2 +3... of course).

Oh and a solo activity that reward mythic stuff (on par with difficulty of course).

Oh and more bag slots on char / in bank.

[Lahis]

They can keep heaping all the incentives they want but I don't think Mythic raiding community can get much larger (unless the game population itself increases significantly). Organized raiding with a fixed group size that is fairly large is just not an easy thing to do, especially for the raid leaders and the recruitment officers who have to manage things. Heroic raiding remains more popular because it is flex

Heroic is flex and easy so anyone can jump in or out at any time.

[huth]

I'd kill for a LFR for mythic dungeons (with filters for +1 +2 +3... of course).

Oh and a solo activity that reward mythic stuff (on par with difficulty of course).

Oh and more bag slots on char / in bank.

Why do people keep acting like M+ queuing would be anything other than a total shitshow?

[Nymrohd]

I'd kill for a LFR for mythic dungeons (with filters for +1 +2 +3... of course).

Oh and a solo activity that reward mythic stuff (on par with difficulty of course).

Oh and more bag slots on char / in bank.

I think Mythic 0 should be available through Match Making.
Also think Mythic dungeons should have a second track that is not timed but keeps the weekly lockout with two difficulties that are equivalent to +9 and +18 and count like clearing +6 and +15 for the Vault.

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Heroic is flex and easy so anyone can jump in or out at any time.

I would not call it easy. Heroic is reasonably challenging. Most of it is not hard but the endboss is almost always harder than the first few Mythic bosses and you still need to pay attention to mechanics and perform reasonably well to have a decent Heroic clear. But yeah, the difficulty is more approachable and more importantly it is flex. And yes Flex is great for PuGs but it is even greater for guilds. Only reason I still lead raids is flex.

[THC BANDIT]

True! Also, I dare everyone to call a person with the stature of the Dracthyr a "wimp" in real life.

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I guess I shouldn't feed the troll, but Dracthyr don't need different bodies for males and females. Leave your gender norms at home please, we live in 2022.

Sigh.. another one infected.

[Eurhetemec]

They can keep heaping all the incentives they want but I don't think Mythic raiding community can get much larger (unless the game population itself increases significantly). Organized raiding with a fixed group size that is fairly large is just not an easy thing to do, especially for the raid leaders and the recruitment officers who have to manage things. Heroic raiding remains more popular because it is flex

Yeah this is the issue. The sheer amount of time and effort required to do Heroic raiding is extremely high, even at the lower end. We're talking part-time to full-time job levels of effort. Which might be fine for unemployed people or "pro gamers" but is is not workable for anyone with a job, or even at college and not expecting to flunk out. The only way to increase the number of people doing Mythic raiding would be to increase the playerbase.

I think there's a lot more room to expand Normal and Heroic raiding, esp. due to the flex mechanism (if they'd come up with that mechanism 15 years ago, WoW raiding would always have been a lot healthier, or really any time pre-Cataclysm), but the perception among most of the playerbase is that even Normal is "not for them". Blizzard might want to look at fighting that perception if they want more people raiding. I suspect that for most people even a PuG Normal flex raid is a much better experience than LFR, which tends to be 75% casual players (no problem there, that's intended) and 25% lunatics (that's the problem) who are there for dubious reasons and tend to drag the entire experience downhill (and it wasn't exactly far uphill to start with).

[Sondrelk]

I think Mythic 0 should be available through Match Making.
Also think Mythic dungeons should have a second track that is not timed but keeps the weekly lockout with two difficulties that are equivalent to +9 and +18 and count like clearing +6 and +15 for the Vault.

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I would not call it easy. Heroic is reasonably challenging. Most of it is not hard but the endboss is almost always harder than the first few Mythic bosses and you still need to pay attention to mechanics and perform reasonably well to have a decent Heroic clear. But yeah, the difficulty is more approachable and more importantly it is flex. And yes Flex is great for PuGs but it is even greater for guilds. Only reason I still lead raids is flex.

Mythic dungeons being available through the automatic matchmaking would just make the HC dungeons even more irrelevant.
You need that easy entry into organized groups so that players learn how to actually find a group.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

yes I drew it
no, it's shit. All of 10 minutes worth of effort for a silly joke so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For the record it’s a great joke with the picture added.

[Hitei]

Why do people keep acting like M+ queuing would be anything other than a total shitshow?

I don't see why it would be if kept to fairly low keystones and gated by ilevel. Most heroic groups, even at the start when people are undergeared and don't know the instance well, go pretty smooth and quickly. Low keystones aren't much different.

[rhorle]

I don't see why it would be if kept to fairly low keystones and gated by ilevel. Most heroic groups, even at the start when people are undergeared and don't know the instance well, go pretty smooth and quickly. Low keystones aren't much different.

Low keys can still fail horribly but there is a point in a season where a queue system could work with M+. Say up to +5. It might encourage more people to manually group if they see that the low timers really are not a big deal. With world content able to reward up to +8/9 it really makes sense to have the lower M+ content able to be queued. I think LFR should be normal loot and a little harder for the same reason.

Let the queues be a time-gated stepping stone.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

I wonder if Blizzard intends to revamp/update any older dungeons again. In MoP they did so with Scarlet Monestary and in WoD with Razorfen Kraul.


With DF being similar in feeling and theme to MoP, also being that it's been over 3 expansions since they did this, what do you guys think are the odds?

[Dracullus]

I wonder if Blizzard intends to revamp/update any older dungeons again. In MoP they did so with Scarlet Monestary and in WoD with Razorfen Kraul.


With DF being similar in feeling and theme to MoP, also being that it's been over 3 expansions since they did this, what do you guys think are the odds?

Isn't one of 8 DF dungeons revamped Uldaman?