I’d like to invite y’all to a special game I’m playing every time I log in WoW:
“How would I design the things that make me want to alt-F4?”
In this first episode of what I call “Community Redesigns the Game”, I’d like to open up a discussion about Mythic Plus, that is not about hating or flaming or expressing unconditional love for the current systems, but rather, I’d like us to answer the question “how should this look like for me to love it?”
Let me start with my 2 cents (which will be delightfully presented in three bullet points).
Timers are evil and need to go
The timer in M+ adds a certain aspect to the game, that noone really loves - zooming through the dungeon like it’s more important to be OPTIMAL and FAST than to enjoy your time in the game, take a breath, think about how to beat a certain mechanic. My best experience from this expansion was during Season 1, a +20 run on Halls of Valor that noone in the group was ready for. It was a premade group of 5, with gear fit for no more than a timed +15-16 run, and we all died like flies when we did a mechanic wrong. We ended up beating it eventually (in about 2 hours), and rather than the frustration from having Odyn’s weird DoT kill our rogue if he took 1 second more to reach his colored spot, I remember the joy we all felt when we figured out how to help the aforementioned rogue survive and eventually beat this boss.
Timers serve no real purpose, they are merely a tool for the leaderboard climbers to measure their success in. And Leaderboards are for the elite few that like being OPTIMAL and FAST. So, for everyone else, that is just fine in doing no more than the dungeon that grants the largest vault slot, timers are just a thing that stresses you out.
Timers could remain for the leaderboard race - do them as they are now, but only for dungeons >10. Leaderboards do not contain <10 keys anyway, so why force us this stressy-stress?
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Manual Looking for Group interface is just the old automatic Random Dungeon Finder, but it’s manual.
Ever been like “Hey I’d like to do some keys” and then logged in the game and then saw that you really need to do (cough) Brackenhide (cough) , and went in the LFG interface and filtered for BH and saw groups and then queued for an hour for all of them and then they all declined you?
Then have you ever been like “Hey I’d like to do my own key” and then created a group for your own key and then waited for 30 minutes because you don’t play tank or healer and it doesn’t really rain tanks and healers lately?
Then, have you ever been like “What am I doing with my free time, I could’ve played something while I was clicking in an interface to apply for groups for an hour”?
Then my proposition is just for you!
Put M+ <10 in the dungeon finder. Make it so you need to beat every level of a dungeon in order to progress to the next level. Example - “You’re an Assassination rogue that has done Algethar Academy on +3. In the interface, you can queue up for Algethar Academy +1,2,3,4, or for a random +X dungeon that you havent done yet.”
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Mythic Plus Gear does not compare to Raid gear
It is not news to anyone, that the capability of a character with gear only obtainable from raids is far greater than one geared from M+. But when you think about it, it’s weird that the two endgame PVE modes are mixed in players but not mixed in gear drops. Raiders often do M+, but a lot less M±ers do raids. And it’s weird that the raiders outperform the dungeoneers in ‘their own game’. The game really wants you to play raids, it seems, but what do you do not to feel weaker than raiders if you don’t want to play raids?
Solution - Dinars, Bullions and weird oldie coin types in every season, not just the last one!
It’s deterministic, it’s not farmable, it ensures a slow road to obtain your desired piece of gear eventually , without having you pray to the weekly quest Champion boxes to drop you your BIS trinket (yes, the ones that consistently drops you the same bracer week after week.)
With those three bullet points I’d like to open up the discussion and perhaps flare up the spark of revolution in this game that I love from the bottom of my heart and, hate with pure passion.
How will you monitor progress then for everyone?
The whole point is that it gets harder and harder because the time constraint becomes harder and mobs get more health and damage.
Making the mobs pure HP sponges alone is boring cause it will turn every dungeon in a pure slug-fest and battle of attrition
There’s a reason people use manual groups.
You want your runs to succeed, so you compose your group to your style and needs.
Throwing a bunch of randoms together will not work for Mythic.
It shouldnt.
Raiding is on a whole different level of difficulty, the two can’t be compared nor should be equal.
Raiding has the difficulty of having 10-20 people on the same page while m+ has the timer and spiky output damage.
I understand your point, but if M+ is to be a separate way to play the game, then it doesn’t make sense for raid gear to be useful in M+ (Just as PVP gear isnt). If raiding is a whole different level of difficulty, then why is M+ actually an easier way to obtain Mythic gear?
We’re living in a weird mix-up. I would rather ask the question ‘why’ should there be a difficulty difference? Why should the game offer a “better” PVE game mode that is locked out for the guildless? Why isn’t the game offering an endgame game mode for small groups of people? Some would argue that M+ is that game mode, but then again, it is not offering comparable rewards for some slots, only for others? Like, the game wants you to play both, but both are not designed to be played by the same people.
Don’t you mean, “So you compose your group to fit the current meta”?
Not randoms, people who have done the previous level and are eligible for the one you’re queue-ing for.
I am not talking about removing mechanics from the mobs, rather - the opposite. “Time” is a lazy way to introduce difficulty, when it could be done with mechanics. The challenge should be “to defeat this enemy”, not “to defeat this enemy quickly”. Aka. make mobs harder and remove the timer.
Funny enough, with a timer. But not a timer that says “if you don’t do this in time, you lose one level of your key”. Instead - “If you do this quicker, you get more points for the leaderboard”.
Because Wow is a social game. You are rewarded for building guilds and making a massiv collective effort towards completing a raid.
The main reason why there is a difference is because some just dont have the time, and that is why m+ exist. The reason why the loot is not equal is because its a social game again.
Making a raid group takes time and effort, while m+ takes less, leading to the lesser rewards.
And a note on the whole remove timer.
If blizzard would do that then the highest level keys wouldnt be about min maxing with limited resources, if you remove the timer every single pack and boss could have lust if needed without any sort of degration of the key/score.
This would undervalue m+ score even more and making the game worse!
You can retry with timer you can’t at lest on how it is rn, you can keep the time as long the key stops dropping , if you try to retry you need to lower the key…
No he means what he says. Wanting a bdk/guardian/pala tank for CR is optimization. The most optimized groups are the ones considered meta.
So introduce the same mechanics they found in raids to address this problem? enrage mechanics?
Generally 2 out of 3 points you bring up is the same tired complaints have in the forums about problems from their own PoV. I see both timers and the premade group necessary evils, because I have not heard of a better alternative (including your “fixes”).
On the one point I will agree with you is gear from m+.
It is kind of dissatisfying having game mode that offers you so much loot at the start of the patch, and so little at the end (m+), but this needs work to be implemented.
Dinnars/Bullions could work in a regular season with WAY LESS acquisition rate. But they still do not fix the problem that people feel the need to spam m+ at the start of the patch, and at the end they just do their runs and pray for rng vault.
Having done the previous level at all. And if that is not enough of a criteria, base stats could be used, like “Overall DPS for the previous level” or “Amount of Deaths in your best run”.
As mentioned in my original post, the timer is only really useful for leaderboards (measuring how well you did in order to compare you to someone else at the current key level). Currently it serves as a mechanic to push you down one level if you don’t do it in time. Which is pointless, considering you’ve done the previous level and need to practice the one you just failed to do in time. But that’s another topic…
My point is - don’t use the timer to let me to the next level.
Again, my proposition is to remove it for keys under level 10. Leaderboard runs can only rely on it in order to measure ‘who did it better’.
I’ve barely touched Mythic+, but random queues would be more than welcome. You can still create a premade group, but random queues would make them so much more accessible for new players. That’s the main update I would have.
I’d like to remind that slamming down an opinion is counterproductive to the topic. Try to ask yourself the question “If I don’t like spending one of my two hours of daily game time applying for groups, then what would I like to see in the game?” It doesn’t have to be perfect. Let your imagination fly.
I remember the fiasco of queue-able Zul’Gurub in Cataclysm, but I don’t remember it getting particularly nerfed. I was there, having four people leave and four new people coming in for Jin’do the Godbreaker, only to leave and four others to join after them.
Elevating the current group finder to filter out people that haven’t done the previous level of the thing they’re queue-ing for should be the way to go. Also, the same criteria a person uses to manually pick four players for a certain M+ run could be automated and baked into the system.
The thing I’m going for is meant to allow both the group leader and the people applying for spots do something else while the group is formed, rather than sit in front of an interface for half an hour, jumping around the Valdrakken fountain.
just put a wall there that people can’t pass 
I guess ?!
, if you try to retry you need to lower the key… 