During BFA I did Freehold for 2 years. Except when I did Freehold in BFA. There would be 3 loot drops below +15s. All the loot during BFA also had the possibility to titanforge, which meant that after finishing Freehold I knew there was always the possibility of an upgrade after a run.
However, much worse is just the fact that playing Freehold is infinitely more boring because… Well I played Freehold 2 years with seasonal affixes. Now I play Freehold WITHOUT any seasonal affixes. So I am playing a dungeon… Which I have alrdy played for 2 years… Except now I am playing a more boring version of the dungeon for 2.5 years?
It is like eating fries with ketchup for 2 years, then suddenly being told to eat fries with nothing (no I could not come up with a better analogy).
Given that M+ numbers were already below one million weekly runs 6 weeks into Season 2 before the Augvoker patch. It is clear this season of M+ has not exactly been a success, and the downfall happened way before the Augvoker rework patch.
If M+ is going to be the de facto power progression system in WoW outside of timegated raids and we are going to make WoW an ARPG then at least it needs to be fun. Yes the S1 affix was awful, however we already complained about that on the beta. That doesnt mean you have to just stop designing affixes entirely. Bring back seasonal affixes and make them fun. I dont even care if you just shamelessly copy the best affixes from BFA / SL. Just make M+ fun again.
TLDR: M+ without seaonal affixes is boring, especially when gearing is also dull. Bring back (fun) seasonal affixes.
I agree with this. Or perhaps make it so the seasonal affix is on a rotation somehow with something else? The worst part is though if a seasonal is bad (cough Prideful cough) we will have to live with that for the rest of the season.
Or instead, add not a seasonal affix, but a third, very minorly impactful affixes that isn’t like afflicted or spiteful. No clue what that could be though.
I have no clue if i’m in the minority that really like the idea behind SL S2 Tormented or SL S4 Shrouded
I mean this season really does feel easier compared to previous ones, so there is an argument to be made about seasonable affixes.
As for the ones we got before…
Worm-thing in BfA was unfun.
Ghostly things in BfA I didn’t like, but I think overall it was well received.
Azshara images was very boring.
Awakened teleports was very good.
*I didn’t play much during SL but:
Spiteful was garbage.
Torghast anime powers was meh.
The robot things I didn’t like.
Legion TW was meh.
Storming in DF was ok imo but people seem to didn’t like it.
So far the seasonal affixes have been more miss than hits, and most of them boiled down to “dungeon has 3-5 extra mobs that do stuff”.
The numbers for Season 2 M+ of Dragonflight are terrible.
This should never happen with the fastest patch cadence™ and with the fact that there pretty much is nothing to do in WoW outside of M+. Even worse getting alts to highest level and starting to push keys is also faster than ever. Vault system also incentives running keys 4-8 times each week.
Keeping all these things in mind we have what is easily the worst numbers in M+ history.
Yeah because the gearing is way too fast. I am pretty much ilvl capping characters in less than 3 weeks of playing them. Atm I have my Warlock and Evoker at 445+ and my hunter and priest are 440 in around 2 weeks of playing them. M+ is dead for people who don’t like pushing past 20 and are don’t want to gear alts, there is no reason to do them anymore after you get the portals, and thats even at best, most people aim for KSM and are done.
This is you. A forum poster with over 10k posts, yet u did not even understand how tier sets would increase complexity.
I really dont buy the entire fast gearing excuse. Will be interesting to see the numbers in S3 when they intentionally try to slow down gearing acquisition.
To be fair this is a qualified guess. Except for the fact that S2 actually started out with an okaish amount of players / runs in the first two weeks then dropped off massively.
It would be very helpful if people started linking the data/metrics to support their claims. People keep talking about how M+/WoW/The world is dying by using some weird metrcis they heard from random Streamer/Youtuber. Last time someone linked anything was a metric by RIO that the decline in M+ started happening a few months into S2, then everyone started shouting that the sky is falling because Pet battles aren’t the main pillar of the game.
And to be fair most people would not have ´´finished`` gearing alrdy by week 3 or 4.
I also feel like Blizzard decided to bring back strong dungeons for S2, like Freehold. Imagine the numbers if they had brought back Shrine of the Storm or Kings Rest.
I think I worded that poorly, I know why people didn’t like it. It’s just that I found it interesting. I don’t judge the quality of mechanics based on the % of people failing to complete them, I just base them on if I think it was fun/interesting or not. Like I said previously most of the seasonal affixes were kill X of bonus mobs and get a buff, I liked that Awakened gave skips which made the runs more interesting because a lot of the different tanks had different routs (at least in my exp). I liked storming because it was not a “Kill mob->get buff” but was “Have buff->decide when to clear buff->decide who stays with buff”.
Even if you buy it or not, it is legit for a good number of players. Both me and most of my guilds were fed up with m+, because in 1 months we got almost everything we wanted from there and were back to spamming weeklies only.
But on the points you make:
I understand you might like the wf/tf and seasonal affixes, but your arguments have some flaws.
In bfa you were running freehold for 2 years+. Now you run it for 6 months. Blizzard has removed seasonal affixes because they though with new dungeons every season, they were not needed.
Comparing player numbers is not an argument. BFA was right after one of the most successful expansion ever, not even counting the number of grinds that were forced on you. DF is an expansion right after 2 generally disliked expansions that lost MANY players, without any type of forced content.
While seasonal affixes might be contested topic (some may dislike or like it), wf/tf is mostly disliked by the community, so I do not think many people agree on that point.
By ´´Community´´ you mean those that post on WoW twitter, r/wow and the forums who make up a non-existent part of the playerbase.
I am not even comparing with BFA. I can compare with S1 of DF. I can compare with the least successful seasons of SL s3 and S4, that followed a disastrous patch cadence.
All show a uniquely awful performance for this season.
The rationale behind the decision was irrelevant though. It is a more boring way to do the same content.
That is fair. I am also wondering the nerf of healers (again) had a lot of impact. Like playing 2 weeks, finding out it is miserable. Especially for pugs that would be a big hit on amount of runs done (?)