A nice, fluffy, word salad.
Legit didn’t understand it but I think I’m in agreement that I find M+ dull.
You think about it we have
follower dungeons
normal
heroic
m0
m+
Plenty of choice yet people will still whine about it.
i would personally love that.
Truly awesome changes across the board.
Keys not depleting below 12 when you have timed +12 on all dungeons is a good idea, but it would be even better if this was for all M+ levels, rather than just starting in at 12.
2 Likes
You know what also was more noticeable? depletion!
You could easy, and i certainly did have situations of m18 going all the way down to m13.
Long road ahead till m18 is reached again, if at all.
That is impossible now. If i deplete m8 to m6, m6 being significantly easier i can simply to carry rest of the group and BOOM i have m8 again.
You are like 525 ilvl when you leveled. What do you get out of heroic dungeon, on queues more than 30 minutes (tried it with tank satchel this weekend, stopped the queue after half an hour. It never popped), 560 ilvl?
A +2 is not forgiving on 560 ilvl.
593 in vault.
If this change is a success, then I can see them adding future safe spots at like 4, 7 , 10 as well
A +8 is right now an old +18. A +6 right now is an old +16. So you just downgrade to +3 right now.
10% difference in keylevels. In both systems.
Not going to wait weeks and week and weeks for 1 random heroic vault item before wanting to start with M+.
Our guild has been awarding people “Keystone Legend” for 3000 rating via our Discord M+ tracker since Dragonflight, so it’s always nice when Blizzard catches up with our guild’s policy! 
What is the difference of
And
?
I am so lost here. Before you could deplete an 18 to a 13, but now you just deplete your 8 (old 18) to a 6 (old 16) ? GZ you got better I guess.
I can see both sides to the argument but we have seen this talk before pre squish and its recovering old ground this not derail this topic with another squabble about it.
All I’m saying is that the sum of Blizzard’s changes pertain to rewards and difficulty.
What they’ve done is that they’ve added more rewards and better rewards across the board, and then they’ve lowered the difficulty scaling as a whole.
All that seeks to accomplish is to smooth out the sense of progression and reward to be more favorable to the player.
It’s Blizzard’s entire modus operandi these days. Just lower the difficulty and hand out more rewards in response to any feedback players have about difficulty and rewards.
Rather than taking a more nuanced approach to game design, they always just lower the difficulty and hand out more rewards. It’s their go-to approach in World of Warcraft and it’s their go-to approach in Diablo IV.
And I’m tired of it. It’s uninspiring, unimaginative, and…boring.
It becomes incredibly streamlined, because whilst you are indeed progressing, since everything increases in small increments – in order to ensure the smoothness of your ongoing success – it also quickly becomes completely braindead and drone-like in terms of gameplay. There’s no ebb and flow to it, and there’s no hallmarks in the experience where the game puts anything in front of you that takes you out of that smooth, streamlined and comforting progression path you’re on.
It’s the difference between Diablo IV and Path of Exile II.
Diablo IV is just super smooth from start to finish. It’s one long linear curve of progression. There are no bumps, there’s no ebb and flow to it, you just drone from start to finish.
That is in contrast to Path of Exile II that has a progression path that is more like a hiking trail. The next enemy ahead of you isn’t always the same x% harder than the previous enemy you faced. It’s a lot more adventurous in its approach to the gameplay journey you’re on.
My point being that Blizzard designs Mythic+ progression in WoW like they design Diablo IV. It’s the exact same incremental, streamlined, loot shower experience. And it’s crazy boring.
It is not engaging gameplay design in the year 2025. It just isn’t.
1 Like
they really have not done that since Legion season 3 they cut down on loot given now and have done for a long while.
They have just smoothed it out after a very hard and long season and lots of feed back from players high and low it needed to be done.
I guess you have never liked it as you have hardly touched it at all.
Nope, not really.
Difficulty being condensed makes m6 significantly easier than m8 ok. M16 was not significantly easier than m18
10% per keylevel. It is not changed.
The squish was the removal of the bottom 10 keys. They did not change the difference per keylevel. (which does seem to happen actually in next season)
Old +18 was 21% harder than a +16. Right now that is the same difference between +8 and +6.
They didnt condense anything. They just removed the bottom 10 keylevels.
4 Likes
Which is dumb.
What’s the end goal here?
It is to make every dungeon equally hard and equally rewarding.
To make every keystone equally hard in any dungeon you’re doing it on.
The result of that – if successful – is that you just have 1 gameplay experience.
It’s like in Diablo IV. Even though there are more than a hundred different dungeons, then because Blizzard have chosen a design where they want all dungeons to offer the same challenge and reward, then you actually just end up with a single dungeon experience in the game. There are different dungeons and monsters and bosses, but it’s the same gameplay experience across all of them.
And that’s also the case in World of Warcraft. Because the Mythic+ keys are random, and Blizzard don’t want players to feel like any key is worse than another, then they opt for a design philosophy where they aim to equalize all the dungeons to be the same experience. Because that’s what’s balanced and fair.
But it’s also incredibly boring and uninspiring and streamlined.
You end up with a selection of different dungeons that look different but play out the same way.
There are different monsters and different bosses, but if Blizzard does their job right, then they’re all of equal difficulty and challenge – and reward the same appropriate portion of loot.
For me, the end result of that is a game with the potential for a lot of scope to its gameplay that gets reduced to a single gameplay experience with different visuals.
Like Diablo IV, it could choose to have a hundred different dungeons with a hundred different gameplay experiences. Instead it opts for a single gameplay experience and a hundred different-looking dungeons.
Same in World of Warcraft. You have different-looking dungeons, but it’s the same gameplay experience they all offer. And Blizzard wants you to grind that out, incrementally progressing in difficulty as you incrementally progress in gear. True conveyor-belt style gameplay.
3 Likes
To get players back from all levels as this has been the hardest season ever. Everything they tried has failed in one way or another and i agree with you it is uninspiring nothing can change that i personally think its to late to save it now.
Sure, and an admirable goal that is.
I brought up the parallel to Diablo IV where they have the same design approach, because Diablo IV hasn’t had any success with that, whatsoever.
So why would it work in World of Warcraft?
The WoW team is copying the homework of the Diablo boys, but the Diablo boys have written that 2+2=5.