KSM is too easy.

[potis]

I really liked attunements and the build up of going from dungeon heroics to t4, then 5, then 6. Hell, I truly felt accomplished just getting Champion of the Naaru and sure, I never got to experience t5 or t6, but you know what that did for me? It left mystery. It left something for me to want to achieve. Something to work towards. When nothing, except the same raid you already saw on normal and heroic is left for you on, yet another difficulty, where's the intrigue? The mystery? The excitement?

It's not here, let me tell you. Frankly I wish we had something more akin to a mixture of Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK. Have a few catch-up mechanics but not too many and have some hard-modes that can be triggered on command, but only two difficulties at most, but really I'd prefer only one difficulty with more varied tiers of difficulty in different raids.

For you it left mystery, for the people that wanted to progress ahead it left a sour taste of their players getting poached from better guilds cause no one cared to waste hours to getting them attuned.

Game literally changed for this reason and they literally said this a few times to interviews, that attunements were terrible ideas.

Either way, many more people get KSM than people seem to think, but its usually the same people over and over, those that enjoy playing that aspect of WoW, keep coming back, aka the 1% (and by 1% i mean of WoW total population since its start), thats why you see something like 20% KSM taken on dataforazeroth etc.

[Steelangel]

Destiny 2 is a wildly popular game it just got bought by Sony for a mere almost 4 billion dollars. Idk what you’re talking about with tf2 the game isn’t anywhere close. Have you… actually played destiny 2 beyond hitting max light?

Nope. I haven't even reached max whatever. I logged in, determined the character creator and options were terrible and played with my son for a while (he's big into Destiny 2). I hated the worldbuilding, hated my Ghost's voice, hated the fact that character motion feels like Starseige Tribes with the jumpy jumpy double jump floatiness, found the enemies, weapons, and gear ugly and uninspired, and finally: the dungeons were nothing more than careening to the end as fast as humanly possible with a fireteam of three people whose roles are "shoot things" "stab things" and "shoot things differently", followed by an advertisement asking me to buy the new expansion. In fact, that fucking advert popped up on every loading screen---of which there are hundreds of them, since every damn thing is instanced and locked behind watching your spaceship fly against a generic starfield for 3 minutes.

I don't need to play more Destiny 2, TYVM.

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Game literally changed for this reason and they literally said this a few times to interviews, that attunements were terrible ideas.

The "Attunements are awesome!" thing reached its apotheosis and final death with Wildstar. No one who has a positive game design opinion on attunements should ever be taken seriously.

[Goatfish]

For you it left mystery, for the people that wanted to progress ahead it left a sour taste of their players getting poached from better guilds cause no one cared to waste hours to getting them attuned.

Game literally changed for this reason and they literally said this a few times to interviews, that attunements were terrible ideas.

Either way, many more people get KSM than people seem to think, but its usually the same people over and over, those that enjoy playing that aspect of WoW, keep coming back, aka the 1% (and by 1% i mean of WoW total population since its start), thats why you see something like 20% KSM taken on dataforazeroth etc.

Attunements probably weren't the best idea, even if they make sense. That said I personally really enjoyed that all raid tiers were at least reasonably relevant throughout the whole expansion. We're seeing that to a degree in this new season coming up, though I think it's implemented in a dumb way this time around. It would be one thing to start in Castle Nathria and work your way up to Zereth Mortis. It's quite another to release all 3 over time and then go back to them at the end.

It's always a battle between the people who want more content, and the people who complain that there is too much content. I lean towards having too much content since you can always pick and choose what you want to do, and you don't have to do everything. It's just like the people complaining that there is a 'meta' talent setup as if that means that everyone has to pick those talents and somehow lost the freedom to spec and play however they want to.

[potis]

Attunements probably weren't the best idea, even if they make sense. That said I personally really enjoyed that all raid tiers were at least reasonably relevant throughout the whole expansion. We're seeing that to a degree in this new season coming up, though I think it's implemented in a dumb way this time around. It would be one thing to start in Castle Nathria and work your way up to Zereth Mortis. It's quite another to release all 3 over time and then go back to them at the end.

It's always a battle between the people who want more content, and the people who complain that there is too much content. I lean towards having too much content since you can always pick and choose what you want to do, and you don't have to do everything. It's just like the people complaining that there is a 'meta' talent setup as if that means that everyone has to pick those talents and somehow lost the freedom to spec and play however they want to.

Raid tiers werent relevant, the community is not skilled enough to progress as fast, basically as Blizzard said "We expected 300k players, at best" which was averagely the MMO players in Europe/US playing said game genre (raiding gear chase) in 2004, suddenly they had 2mil by first 6 months and 7 mil at start of TBC, the game became too massive for that thing to work.

The two things happened in TBC and WoTLK, people were given free gear that literally carries them into content, and raiding participation went up a lot (for their standards), whether this raiding was Karazhan for TBC and pugging first 4 bosses for ICC, it was there, the 0.1% wasnt only raiding, but a higher %.

What was the common ground? Freebie gear.

Getting carried by gear is what works for the majority, or the 99%, call it whatever, giving them pieces of T6.5/T6 gear to go and clear T4 raids, worked, and for WoTLK for the first time creating complete full gear raid skipping (ICC dungeons).

Which is the problem WoW is facing at the moment people dont understand in terms of SL, that they were running around in 250-260 item level gear in TBC, clearing things that require 190 item level gear to clear, because the game "forces them" to keep up, or for WoTLK, running around in 250-260 ilvl, clearing the bosses that were equivalent to 190-200 ilvl difficulty wise.

This, again in one of interview by Blizzard, its more important for

a)The 1% coming back to be able to play with other 1% in 2 weeks.

b)People cant get better, forcing them into newer content is the only way to get them to progress, even if it makes expansion long gearing irrelevant.

[Goatfish]

<snip>

This is an old and tired argument, and I disagree with your verdict (and even some of your premises) for reasons that have been talked about for over a decade at this point. Neither of us have accurate data to make any argument either direction at this point (because blizzard hides or doesn't track that shit for whatever reason). At any rate, I definitely don't think that freebie gear is the sole reason that a supposedly higher percentage of people were raiding. I also don't think that just handing out gear is a good long-term solution for either the amount of currently relevant content nor for the ability to find decent reliable players.

What this shit always comes down to is what I posted previously at #90. It basically boils down to false valor because whiny little children couldn't stand the idea that there is something they lack the skill or connections to get. My guild has had plenty of people come back after long breaks and we just carried them through current content to catch up. The freebie gear is for solo players or people that can't manage to find or create a guild good enough to do what they want. You're just arguing against market forces and using a form of welfare to raise the bottom line, and thereby erasing content that would otherwise be relevant to those looking to move forward. At this point it's not even replaced with new dungeons, but rather a vendor.

[arkanon]

Actually, yes, mostly.

Most Mythic raid bosses are actually not harder than running a M+. Usually you get 1 roadblock boss somewhere in the middle of the raid and then the end boss (or second to last in rares cases).
The first 3 bosses are easily puggable the same week cross-realm mythic opens up (sometimes even earlier depending on your realm).
The only reason people don't go pugging further is because of the Mythic lock-out system.
If the Mythic lock-out worked like it does for every other difficulty you would easily see 10/11 M pugged mythic players (maybe even 11/11 M).

There is an inherent gate-keeping built into the system.

You can only enter with a 20-man group and then you can only try bosses with that group.
In my experience the vast majority of the time the reason a group is stuck on a boss is due to 1 or 2 people who just simply can't get the fight and keep doing the same mistakes. In very rare cases the roadblock is because of gear but that usually is only a thing for 1 week.

If players could infinitely join different groups to try on Mythic bosses (which should definitely be a feature that unlocks at the end of seasons) then you would see a different picture than what you see now.

Comparing the two is unfair when you have done a dungeon 10-20 times before you even attempted a +15 and freshly facing a mythic boss that you down in an hour anyway.

Edit: Also about gear. From M+ you can get 1 mythic level loot per week.
In raid you get 3 pieces per boss PLUS the weekly. That means if you go 6/X bosses on your first week (which is what I usually see) it's possible that you get 7 Mythic pieces in 1 week while the M+ player only gets one.

But.......you CAN attempt the bosses over and over again. What makes you think you can't?

[potis]

You're just arguing against market forces and using a form of welfare to raise the bottom line, and thereby erasing content that would otherwise be relevant to those looking to move forward. At this point it's not even replaced with new dungeons, but rather a vendor.

My point was they have the data and chose this design literally 12 years ago, and its why LFR exists also, as said by them, it hits 60% participation at the start of the expansion, so it definitely works for what they want.

I am not saying it would have been okay if the 99% progressed slowly, but they dont, obviously putting everyone in the same cap is wrong, but generally they probably saw that forcing them ahead and having LFR, works better than the old system.

[ablib]

I hate this thread mainly because of the title, and how kids these days have zero respect for the reader.

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to understand what the fuck KSM is.

Is it that fucking hard to title the thread: "Keystone Master is Too Easy"?

It's ironic that the author finds Keystone Master too easy, but can't write worth a shit. Perhaps it's time to put the games down, and read a book or something. Shit.

[loras]

M+ really shouldn't be giving out mythic raiding ilvl gear.

Mythic raiding is the hardest content this game has to offer, not just from a gameplay perspective, but also from the amount of time an effort it takes to manage a functioning roster.

To give out welfare gear to +15 casuals is disrespectful to the people who actually put in the time to work for their gear.

"Welfare gear", hah.
Why the obsession with itemlevel if you're genuinely good?
Why the worry about others receiving an appropriate reward if you understand it is a game?
Nothing is earned or deserved in a game, it is all "welfare" to make things a little bit easier, awarded at the game's discretion

[Ryzeth]

No, you can't accurately tune for a variable number of people, and M+ is a snoozefest where only numbers go up past 10 not mechanics.

Spoken like someone who's never run much higher than a 15, honestly. Efficiently doing 25+ keys, if you actually want to time and push them, requires effort. "Numbers going up" makes mechanics actually mean something, and not something you can just zerg through.

Is it that fucking hard to title the thread: "Keystone Master is Too Easy"?

If you've been on this site for 12 years and don't know what KSM is, that's definitely a "you" problem.

[neescher]

But.......you CAN attempt the bosses over and over again. What makes you think you can't?

He said try bosses over and over again with different groups. As far as I know, that's not possible due to how mythic raid lockouts currently work.

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I hate this thread mainly because of the title, and how kids these days have zero respect for the reader.

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to understand what the fuck KSM is.

Is it that fucking hard to title the thread: "Keystone Master is Too Easy"?

It's ironic that the author finds Keystone Master too easy, but can't write worth a shit. Perhaps it's time to put the games down, and read a book or something. Shit.

Maybe people who don't know what KSM is shouldn't be part of a discussion about the difficulty of KSM? I mean, every single one of even the most casual of my friends knows what KSM is, and that's on a non-English realm.

Pretty obnoxious to say "kids these days have zero respect for the reader" when all they did was use a term that practically everyone knows. And even if they don't, they can google it in 1 second. I have no idea how you spend "an inordinate amount of time" trying to find out what KSM is, then literally the first result on google when you search "wow ksm" tells you the answer. Not only the first, but literally the first 10 results. Talk about zero respect...

[Dacu]

I hate this thread mainly because of the title, and how kids these days have zero respect for the reader.

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to understand what the fuck KSM is.

Is it that fucking hard to title the thread: "Keystone Master is Too Easy"?

It's ironic that the author finds Keystone Master too easy, but can't write worth a shit. Perhaps it's time to put the games down, and read a book or something. Shit.

"ksm wow" on google...maybe get better at problem solving.

there's also no irony in what you suggested

[Reinaerd]

Yeah good idea, let's gatekeep gearing options as much as possible, that way we can all spam "is wow dying omg" forum topics 6 weeks into an expac instead of 3 months.

[M1r4g3]

Yeah good idea, let's gatekeep gearing options as much as possible, that way we can all spam "is wow dying omg" forum topics 6 weeks into an expac instead of 3 months.

Gatekeeping behind mechanics everyone has access to...?

[Biglog]

No casuals are being handed +15 gear, so that's a strawman argument off the bat. That's why there are 15 levels of mythic+ dungeons. Of course this late in SL when everyone is geared to the hilt they are easier than when we were all ilvl 200, that's by-design. It's the same reason raids get nerfed over time.

Raiding is great, and personally I prefer raiding to mythic dungeons. But some realms do not have the population to really support many guilds raiding mythic weekly, especially late in an expansion like we are now when people tend to fall off or no-show. That only gets worse as the next expansion approaches and people already have all the gear, or don't want to be bothered spending hours grinding for gear that won't be useful for very long.

So let people play how they want to play. If they can only get 5 people together for mythics, or they still have a group raiding, who cares. Almost all of this gear will be vendor/de trash in a few months when Dragonflight releases anyway. Come back and tell us how easy the Dragonflight +15's are in January...

[Delekii]

It is when you realise I am comparing FIRST clears. Not time per clear.

No, it isn't. Raids are longer than dungeons. Individual fights are longer, there are more bosses, and M+ is much more tiered. Is the entirety of a mythic raid harder than any specific M15+? Sure. Are specific bosses much easier than any M15+? Yes.

[Chilela]

So maybe this is just me reading the OP differently, but there seems to be a huge dissonance between the thread title and the content of the OP itself. While the title seems to revolve more around the achieving of KSM itself, the OP seems to be more focused around the carrot-to-stick ratio of M+ versus raiding, which is a perfectly legitimate discussion to have.

In their current state, Raiding and M+ are largely some flavor of timegated, with raids having their weekly lockout, and M+ rewarding one great piece of gear per week, and having pretty underwhelming gear otherwise. Over time, someone that runs +15s for weekly rewards every week will be roughly equivalent to someone decked out in Mythic raiding gear in terms of throughput, and I don't think it's that outlandish to claim that deep mythic pushes are an order of magnitudes harder than +15s, in no small part due to needing a higher number of strong players on simultaneously to run the content.

The question really boils down to how powerful M+ gear should be, in comparison to equivalent raid gear. Should the ilvl cap be awarded in higher-level keys? Should the ilvl cap as a whole be lowered (or raid loot be buffed), so Mythic raids reward the distinctive "best" gear? There's ultimately no objectively-correct answer.

[Swnem]

Considering how easy it is to take a fresh 60 from 2 to 15 in a week yeah it's pretty damn face roll I've done it multiple times without linking new character to io or getting friends to help. It's insanely faceroll for the rewards you recieve. It's like if you got max ilvl pvp gear for hitting 1600 or mythic gear for clearing heroic anduin those are about on par with a 15.

The only time it isn't facroll is the first couple weeks of the season when you are still in full last tier gear.

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No, gets rid of the entire point of raiding when you turn it into a glorified dungeon. 10 man just flat out isn't epic even 20 is smaller than I would prefer.

You'll end up doing the 20man alone. No one cares about epic. We care about fun and rewarding. People have lives. No time for "epic". That was a kind of mmo that existed almost 20 years ago. We aren't going back to it. Mmo's aren't new and exciting. There are tons of online games out there that can give fun and rewarding that compete with WoW for gamers time. Time to move into the present.

[Garymorilix]

But.......you CAN attempt the bosses over and over again. What makes you think you can't?

With the same 20 man group, yes. Which is very limiting.

Imaginr if you could only push a key from +2 on any given week with the same 4 people you started with. A lot less ppl would have ksm.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

If you are a grown a** man who worries about his status in an online rpg which is supposedly based on the ilvl of your gear, you need a break from gaming.

im 14 and this is deep