Bring back Challenge Mode and Mage Tower trials

[LDancer]

Hi all,

Long time reader, first time poster...
Have played this game for MANY years, as most of us have. Have dabbled in high end raiding, and low end. Have levelled alts and collected achievements.

There are many of us, that think mythic+ and mythic raiding is not worth the effort, stress or toxicity that comes with it, nor do we play enough as we enjoy having a real life outside of the game from time to time.
Warfronts are something to visit once every few weeks for 1 free piece of gear and to be avoided like the plague afterwards
Islands and invasions are rather tedious once you've unlocked all levels of your azurite armor.
Even dailies rarely are worth the effort past your main, especially once you've exalted all factions.

Raider IO has made keystones for me a waste of time, it's turned the process into a toxic cesspool...
Mythic raiding is not worth the effort, the unbalanced classes / titan/warforging on LFR-normal-heroic gear to mythic levels makes it pointless. I'll come back in 2 expansions and get those achieves without the ulcers and grey hair.

I want to see Challenge mode and something akin to the Mage tower return to game.... these 2 things along made levelling alts exciting. I remember dragging all my toons to max level and farming gear to complete these, they were insanely fun... And something you could work on all expansion.
I want to get a group together of friends and try puzzle our way through challenge mode golds.

[Tziva]

I think a new "mage tower"esque incarnation would be a good idea, provided they could fix some of the flaws that existed with it in Legion. But as a concept of an individual challenge, I think it was a good one and I'd like to see it return.

I disagree personally on bringing back CMs. I don't think there is enough to strongly differentiate the gameplay of Challenge Modes from Mythic +, and I think the things that are different are better in the M+ incarnation. CMs your gear scaled down but that caused some funky weightings with gems, enchants, trinket procs, etc. Instead of gear scaling, you have difficulty scaling with M+. This gives flexibility for different groups to find the level that challenges them at their specific skill levels, and allows the best teams to keep reaching for harder and harder goals.

It's also less punishing for your time than CMs were. I remember spending hours running and running the same first half of the same dungeon to refine our time on certain trash packs which was tedious at best and painfully grueling at its worst, even if the ultimate feeling of accomplishment when we finally succeeded was great. If you're going to push high mythic keys you might end up doing the same, but at least you get some consolation rewards for the failures.

Another point in favour of m+ is that they have repeatability for the goal of better gear, and can function as an alternative path of progression for good players who just don't want or can't raid competitively. In contrast, I don't know anyone that did CMs more than once on the same class except maybe to help friends; you were successful once, got the reward, and then you stopped or switched to a different class.

For all those reasons, I think mythic+ is probably a better inclusion in content going forward than the CMs. The scaling over the content rather than the gear, the alternative path of progression, the repeatability, and the improved carrot all make the current style of 5man challenges superior to how they were in the past.

That's not to say M+ couldn't use some improvements both on an individual and systemic level (a fact I've spent a lot of time complaining about them in R&D). They are not perfect by any means, plenty of justified criticism and lots of room for improvement. It would also be nice if they brought back special cosmetic rewards for completing the feats each season similar to the CM transmog and mounts.

But ultimately? I'd rather see m+ improved than reverted to CM style for timed five man content.

[yetgdhfgh]

I enjoyed MT alot and it was the only thing that got me playing towards the end and i managed to pick up about 24 skins.

I certainly would love to see it come back but for the love of god dont time gate it like last time and perhaps they should scale the challenges so gear is not the only way to beat it.

As for Chally mode well i think with Mythic+ i doubt it will come back anytime soon.

[hulkgor]

I'd like another iteration of the individual spec challenges. Be it a new Mage Tower, or something similar.

As for Challenge Modes, i think Mythic+ is a phenomenal feature and definitely an upgrade over the original CMs, with vastly more replayability. I just wish we would get more affixes, they could just take ideas straight out of Path of Exile, like mobs having procs, the area having random voidzones\lightning patches all through it (even boss rooms), dual bosses (yea, this one is far fetched, but hey), or stuff like that. They've removed or nerfed some affixes to the ground (Overflowing was removed, Volcanic is laughable, etc) that i feel they should add some more. They should just steer away from artificial damage increases in regard of trash which aren't really fun or engaging (ex: Teeming, Bolstering and Fortified).

My ideal scenario for Mythic+ would be having each obtained key roll 3 random affixes (separated by tiers as they are now, ex: Can't have Fortified AND Tyrannical at once) and the dungeon. That way every key would be different, and there wouldn't be better weeks, or worst weeks. And with Bwomsandi's 20% dmg\heal buff on out of timer keys, you would have incentive to complete them for a 'reroll'. Geez, i'd love that... but i guess it won't happen.

[Minikin]

I'd like it back too. Gives you something to work towards. Though I do think it's fairly early in the game to bring it out. MT came out Midway through legion.

[MrExcelion]

I think it'll be apart of 8.2.5 or 8.3, but they're spreading stuff out. They're probably satisfied with Mechagon/unlocking flying for 8.2

My other theory on this was maybe it's actually apart of 8.2, but announcing something so far off would give people more reason to stay unsubbed until the content they want (flying already has this effect for some people, mage tower would further compound)

[trapmaster]

I would love challenge mode being brought back (doubtful, but we can hope).

[Cyraxe]

I can see them adding a challenging thing like the Mage Tower once again but, this expansion? Who knows, next? Who knows. As for the Challenge Mode stuff, nope. They have m+ which is challenge modes and a whole lot more so no point in adding it back into the game.

[TriHard]

I can see it returning, seems like a good idea tbh. Just keep the cosmetic rewards they gave you in Legion in there and you'll see a lot of people doing it, honestly, it would serve as a great time killer if they just scaled it up to 120, I know I would do it.

I know a lot of people missed out on some of the skins (honestly, wouldn't expect anyone to have actually managed to grab all of them)
so I think it'd be fairly popular

[Great Destiny Man]

Agree on Mage Tower or something close to.

[Deleted]

You forgot an important point.

What do you want for it? What will be the rewards?

[Naiattavain]

the majority of the players don't like how impossible you have made the game. we just want to log into the game spend around 2-4 hours playing having fun this includes bgs that are casual or maybe some type of normal raiding. making the game harder to play is bad decision for the game because only a small amount of players will get to that point. by making the game harder your also decreasing your profit margins. making the game harder to play decrease profit generation. not to mention all the less and less people you see because the game is getting harder to play. we don't play Warcraft to lift the harder difficulties. i myself could care less about how hard a game gets is because my number one decision is that i want to play to have fun. making the game appease the fun aspect is what we like about Warcraft because its an easy fun game to play.

this post carries the weight of the argument against making the game harder to play. making the game harder to play clashes with the design philosophy of blizzard game design. mythic raiding has had a very bad rep and we are mostly going to unlock the goods to normal raids so that this way it doesn't matter that your forced to compete in mythic difficulties to get raid titles. we don't like forcing players do something they don't want to do or making things impossible to achieve. again this is all bad game design. we are interested in making the game accessible to a big audience of players instead of making you the only player able to get passed the challenge.

so far I'm the only rogue with the legendary daggers for subtlety i have not seen another rogue with these daggers as designing the game for only me to get passed the challenge was bad design philosophy. i want to see more rogues with these daggers to effect that most rogues are effective in combat, not rendered useless. the class numbers should be better to see players playing and achieving success. not reaching failure most the time. we are changing the rogue to where we see rogues success seem more prevalent.