My Rant on Ion's Response to Mythic+ Affix Changes on TWW Beta...

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[@rokman5000]

In the interview he mentions bolstering and raging vs the success rate of the average m+ runner doing plus 8's to fill their vault. Bolstering and Raging don't show up until level 10 currently. People are purposely doing 8's and 9's so they don't have to do the shitty affixes while still getting myth track vault loot.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Does he? don't remember exactly what's said word for word. But ya, I think its pretty clear that the affixes don't have much of an impact on low keys, and to me its also clear that you shouldnt be able to get max rewards without doing all affixes. That's just me though.

[@kaliyvga1426]

​@@heythereguysitsMetro yes he did, you agreed with him on it 😂

[@TheDailySnack]

For me how Mythic+ was back in Shadowlands was the pinnacle so far. Could have ran 100s of runs monthly without getting tired of the system. Didn't really feel the same in Dragonflight.

[@schmidth]

The dungeons were also just more fun

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Dungeons were way better and the seasonal affixes were amazing, but I don't feel any differently in Dragonflight past that. What would you change?

[@TheDailySnack]

@@heythereguysitsMetro If I was designing M+ to my tastes, I'd bring back seasonal affixes (perhaps they can re-use the best from time to time by just changing the theme like for Tormented instead of the Shadowlands creatures they could've been dragons or smth), make it so the dungeon rotation doesn't change from season to season like it was back in SL season 1-3. Also I think if keys had 3/3 durability would make M+ more enjoyable for everyone.

[@Rockforce80]

I agree, I did those dungeons for 3 seasons and didn't get tired of them, and season 4 felt like a nice little mixup. Okay-to-good seasonal affixes for the last 3 seasons certainly helped. One thing that I didn't like about dragonflight and that might be resolved with them making more of the trash mechanics a "guarantee" in war within. More spells that are instant cast and cannot be kicked that also ignore line of site for example. The damage will be more consistent from group to group and they can balance around it. One thing that I liked the feeling of at first but started to wear me down doing keys is the amount of control that I felt over a pack. Being able to stun, grip, kick, mass grip, knockback etc made you feel like you were dominating a pack. In reality though it was required to be done and it wasnt a bonus, it was more of a minimum threshold you had to meet. If you didn't have your stop rotation workout the packs could often own you with the amount of double and triple pulls you were doing. The stops that we needed to do and it's part of that arms race they talked about where you can stop everything so they need to have 50 different things in a pack so that some damage happens because you cant stop literally everything at that point. Additionally as a tank I became more and more responsible for performing many of these stops to the point where the amount of globals in a pull that I spent stopping things felt oppressive, and I felt like rather than trying to fit in some clutch stops, I was trying to fit in my rotation.

[@moncho8467]

@@heythereguysitsMetro they should get rid of all affixes and just bring back seasonal affixes

[@Neurotik51]

I'm of the opinion that all affixes should be based around positive reinforcement; we manage them to gain power or agency, not avoid pain. That's why the Slands seasonal affixes were so good, they worked that way. Dungeons would be much more fun if all the affixes had some type of significant (not 10% damage for certain damage types, that's dogshit) reward instead of the reward just being you don't die. It's been shown time and time again that humans (and any lifeform) don't respond to negative reinforcement; it just makes us unhappy. They should adjust the system to account for this and raise the base difficulty of the dungeons to compensate so that managing the affixes is still required, but it feels good to do so as you're gaining power. It's tiring thinking of the affixes as limiters instead of enhancers.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

That would invite intense imbalance, in a world where people obsess about the smallest of it already. Not a good idea or solution to this at all, in my eyes. Although I agree it would be more fun that way.

[@vearheart42]

I have said it before I will say it again: The way you make affix difficulty a FEATURE rather than feel unnecessary is to get score each week. OR you get score for doing a key with weighted multipliers on those affixes. A good example of this idea is the Heat system in Hades where you pick to add additional difficulty for higher rewards. I would love a system where we could just craft a keystone and go and get score based on that but I understand why they wouldn't make that system. Saving that I think score on each week of a rotation would be a good compromise and they could weight certain affixes so that certain weeks don't feel just dead. If you want score you have to log on during hard weeks, you have to complete keys. Ideally I'd also like them to give us something for a completed key as you mentioned in a previous video about a currency that could do various things like reroll a key I thought that was a fantastic idea.

[@vearheart42]

I wrote this before you mentioned it! It's the only logical solution in my opinion!\

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Great minds think alike! I agree, its the only logical conclusion. A lot of people push back on it too which is wild.

[@vearheart42]

@@heythereguysitsMetro You identified why most people wouldn't want score on each week. Not everyone wants to push all weeks of a season AND it multiplies the dungeons top players have to do in order to stay on top. Right now they plan meticulously for two weeks of a season and only really push for those which is a perverse way of achieving score imo this is definately "Meta" or "Game 2" type beat. You can make it so KSM and KSH are achievable with the same number of dungeons done but then also allow for much higher pushing with this one change. It widens the gap between your average player and your top player but that's not a problem in my opinion because as a top player you should want to be unequivocally the top.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@vearheart42 Well ya, all I would want is an additional score on top of it. Like that data is already collected, and I doubt anyone disagrees that a guy who has upgraded 20 15s on 10 different weeks is more valuable than a guy who has done it a single time. So just turn it into a score, and pugging immediately becomes easier!

[@BenJonesart]

I consider myself a "casual" m+ runner meaning that I never really push keys pass my vault options, gear and crests. thats it. Now i take the Key itself serious because failing doesn't really help me, and i think im the target they are talking about. Many of my friends do push keys because they consider it "fun" to push and see how high they can get.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Do you feel like there are more people like you or more people like your friends?

[@BenJonesart]

@@heythereguysitsMetro I want to say yes, but i have no proof of it what so ever, what ive seen in guild and friends, is that most do 10s (20s) for vault early in the week to save time for later in the week for pushing.

[@merenwen_gaming]

The easier the affixes the happier people are? 😮😮 whaaaat? Who would have thought of that? M+ is so convoluted and in a bad state, packs of mobs doing 30000 different things, no much room for routes, meta game, class imbalance, depletions, high healing requirements, stupid affixes, etc… I mean, the purpose of a game is to have fun and challenge yourself without people making the game also making your life a living hell. I don’t think things are going to change for the better, developers have a very closed mentality.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Honestly I would say, after reading your comment, it sound like you have the "closed" mentality. Ion perfectly lays out all the goals of the system and you are acting like they aren't living up to their end of the situation? I get your point about convoluted stuff, but you are really overstating it. There are CONSTANTLY players who do nothing but DPS and are higher score than me. It might LOOK like there are a lot of things to worry about, but in reality, there isn't.

[@Mduffy-yo6rb]

30,000 different things? There’s like 1 mob per pack that does major threat damage. If you pull 3 packs that’s basically 3 things to track. There’s 5 people in your group usually equipped with kicks, interrupts, stuns, and knockbacks. If you’re looking for something more brain dead there’s plenty of games you can play. But if you don’t have some actual engaging difficulty you’ll have people play for about… 2-3 weeks, get bored, and then move on to whatever popular game is out anyways.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@Mduffy-yo6rb well said. This mentality you are describing with other games is what I believe I am observing here. People basically asking the game to be changed and nerfed so that they can put less and less effort in instead of just getting better.

[@Hadesxo027]

I think there are several big issues. 1. RIO provides significantly more information than "Blizzard Armory". 2. RIO (which is used by most higher M+ players) only shows the highest key of a specific dungeon, so in case you timed a +17 AV on fortified but you have +12 AV on tyr, it will show you that your highest / dungeon is 17. 3. If all your main score comes from push weeks does it really matter? 3.5-3.6k players who nailed big score on push weeks are coming to a sanguine ending up with 400 million HP (2.5 boss on 17) healing which is essentially 7-8 minutes wasted time. Personally I would 1. Show the weekly score, so tyrannical vs fortified is shown by default, not only when you hover your mouse or shift click (if you have the desktop addon) 2. I think due to having multiple affix combination the weekly score wouldn't make that much difference, but I could imagine it "grouped" or "filtered by" 2nd grade affixes. So for instance your score per Bursting. Then at least you can compare if a person has 3500 on Bursting weeks vs 2800 on Sanguine --> that person is clearly not a good choice. But of course - just as you showed - there is essentially something wrong with people. What I noticed is that people cannot just focus on more difficult bosses - therefore I think Tyrannical should be erased. I have seen countless healers who timed 17-19 keys on fortified and all their tyr scores are aound 15-16. It's a player skill issue don't get me wrong, you should be able to expect players to know their button on tyr, but apparently they dont

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Well said all around!

[@jonathanmawson6867]

Clearly Blizzard needs to hire a logician as there are a number of statements that are either unsubstantiated or unrelated to the data they quote. However, their cognitive / perspective bias prevents them from seeing this. Well that or they're outright cherry picking / maniplualting it to erroneously make their point. Notably - "if you're running a Mythic 8 or whatever, we're seeing consistent participation and success rates, week over week. For that audience, affixes continue to serve a valuable purpose in varying that experience week over week, slightly changing the puzzle that the group needs to solve." (1) The reason that people do +8s consistently week after week is thats its the most efficient aspect farm that also gives mythic vault slots. (2) This level doesn't have on death affixes, which add the greatest level of difficulty, so its no wonder that success is consistent (3) At this point in the expansion there is a large group of players who could do higher difficulties, but see no point as (a) not after the title and (b) already have portals. So why make life harder. Anyway (climbing back down of soapbox)... I don't understand why they don't just split the new affixes. Add the "kiss" at +4 and then the "curse" at +9. That way spec / class variation is incentivised at lower levels to give an initial "leg up" to those that are non-meta. It might also help with lessening the fear of players to try tanking mythic plus, as they can learn the dungeons difficulty without the extra stress of penalising affixes.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

I like your idea of the kiss and curse being separate a lot! I imagine they have a more unique solution but I would support that for sure if they wanted to commit to not having affixes at all and this be the compromise.

[@kel1770]

You may need to reevaluate your own logic there. They are not talking at all about the raw participation or success rates, they are comparing them between affixes in the same row. If some affixes were significantly less fun or more difficult for the majority of players than their alternatives, we would expect to see a measurable decrease in participation or success on those weeks. Points 1, 2, and 3 in your post are all assertions with no supporting data: exactly the type of claim you are criticizing.

[@jonathanmawson6867]

@@kel1770 They specifically mentioned the +8 level, so that is what they were thinking about when making the statement. In addition, if you look at the participation data... (1) +8 has the highest participation rate of any level that provides aspect crests, (2) there is a significant drop in participation from +8 to +9 that has on death affixes. So yes, one can infer that both crests and mythic slots are important. Furthermore that a significant number of players aren't interested in adding difficulty for no benefit.

[@kel1770]

@jonathanmawson6867 1. If the main reason to do 8s is aspects crests, why did you have to caveat that it is only the most popular level that drops aspect crests? If this is such an important point, why isnt it the most popular key level overall, as 2-7 do not drop aspects crests. 2. On death affixes are added to 10s, not 9s. The decline from 8 to 9 cannot have anything to do with affixes as they do not change. It feels like you have already made up your mind and try to find data to fit it.

[@jonathanmawson6867]

@@kel1770 Ok that's my mistake. I was reading patch notes beforehand so I got the position of those affixes confused. They're +10 now but will be +9. However, the point still stands as participation significantly drops between 8s and 10s. More so than would be attributable to difficulty alone. As for the first point aspect crests drop from 6-8 so the fact that 8 is the most popular of these means the mythic vault slot is important. So... optimising for rewards and not adding difficulty for no benefit.

[@DietcokeHD1]

Read the article , it seems reasonable , damage taken and damage given goes up and down based on attack source , or mob type. Nothing gearing up won't fix. As long as they don't plan on making any crazy affixes where you have to say kill a mini boss for a short term stealth then run around like mad man doing a crazy new route before the stealth wears off ( BFA ) , im good with simple damage buffs and nerfs , i like gearing up and overcoming it.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

That's wow in a nutshell afterall!

[@ThunderScoot94]

Apologies for the rambling on this one. Just have lots of thoughts on them that are hard to put together concisely. It's hard for me to seperate my main issues into the two different interviews since they go together in my mind for M+. I don't mind affixes minus a few Prideful (Personal bias due to it being tied to %) Quaking (Blizz not accounting for forced mechanic stacking overlap) and Incorp,Afflict (Not every class/spec could do them so you have to purely rely on others or not play that week due to not getting invited). I personally never minded Sanguine or anything since I could always Death Grip them or just try to dps them better so it doesn't line up with the hard cast. Maybe making it a X amount of damage reduction instead of healing on the mob would make it more palatable for the community. And the other issue to me is the wide defensive disparity between classes, leading into a never ending damage arms race between the devs and healers. Where you either get one shot or barely live with a defensive and no in between. And for classes with less defensives it's either never invited/rarely played or needs a full team work around which the average pug doesn't have. And I guess the CC/Interupt amount leads to the same battle with so many stops required constantly leading to high pass/fail checks. And I guess one more thing, since I've rambled enough, I would have liked Season 4 to experiment more with these design ideas they have kicking around and not trying to squeeze it in before TWW or constant trying throughout the expansion.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Agreed for sure that them trying to do this before season one is very bad. I really hope they either are far along or they have tons of resources to work on this. Seems to me that it will be like dragonflight. Failed experiment with thundering then just outright removal of the idea for the rest of the seasons.

[@AnxxyTV]

I enjoy watching TGP a lot more than the MDI. Just a lot more relatable. You can apply what they do to whatever key level you're struggling at. Defensives wise, pulls, etc. Just makes more sense to me. Just a little thing that was briefly mentioned.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Absolutely. The MDI is really not Mythic+ at all. NO ONE plays the game the way they do in the MDI.

[@kopitarrules]

I have been thinking a lot about this since I first watched it because, honestly I didn't know how to react. So first let me say I do not disagree with you about any of your takes here. That being said I try really hard not to form opinions of a system that is obviously unfinished. We saw that last week. Honestly, it makes me kind of excited to see where they go from here what changes they institute and how they will affect the dungeons. At the end of the day I trust Blizzard to make a great product, as you say, the product THEY want to make and to the maw with players who have a problem with that. One thing I am intrigued by, though, is your idea of expanding the score system to be more diverse than just fort and tyran. I think there are probably a TON of back end issues and UI centric problems with the idea, but it could definitely work and would alleviate a lot of the problems in trying to develop for two groups of dedicated players (heroics delves and m0s are definitely where they need to focus casual development). I think the way around this is to remove that side pop out that manifests in the group forming window and instead expand it into another tab using that space to identify the 8-12 different affix combinations that will be present in a season, and a key level completed/upgraded beneath each combination. Say three rows of four boxes with the 8 dungeons of the season in each. Obviously not a perfect design but it's off the top of my head, I am sure Blizzard could come up with something far more elegant and useful.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

I think they could pull it off for sure. But ya we will see what they come up with. Gonna be interesting.

[@Ghost-cd5kx]

I think something Blizzard and the M+ team would really benefit from is having a definition of done for a season. As a semi-casual M+ player, I go for Keystone Master for the season since that feels to me like a reasonable goal. Anything beyond the difficulty of what I need to do to get there feels like extra, since I've already created a milestone in my mind that I have to get to, and anything that stands in the way is a problem. With that thinking, things like Fortified weeks suck for me as a healer this season, since if a party doesn't do enough damage then we're going to take to long. I highly prefer Tyrannical where the challenge is in the boss fight and needing to know the mechanics. This causes me to be highly selective when I pug groups in Fortified weeks, as I don't want a key to disband because they can't out DPS a trash mob in Uldaman for the 5th time this week, but much more forgiving in a Tyrannical week, since the fight is more isolated in the boss itself. This is the mindset that I go into with M+ because to me, that's how M+ has been designed. There's a number/shiny to reach, so I am going to get it. My scores are significantly better on Tyrannical weeks because I prefer that week and am more comfortable doing content that way, but I still do Fortified because it benefits the score I'm working towards. While I agree with you that removing M+ score may be good for M+ by making it more of a fun activity in itself, I think it would highly disincentivize people like myself who do progression for the sake of reaching a goal. As a runner I'm training for a marathon. I don't need to be able to run 30 miles, I need to be able to hit 26. Going beyond that doesn't fit the scope of my goal. I don't know if completely removing affixes is the answer, since my whole issue revolves around the idea of there being a "done" point in the first place. What I think would make since is a more streamlined difficulty curve or seasonal focus. The affixes should synergize, like if it's a Fortified week the fortified buff can be nullified if a tank moved the mobs into a certain AOE area, at a higher level it can be leached by using a dispel, and at the highest level a unique dungeon mechanic can be used for a unique effect like the chains in Neltharus being more effective the more enemies you stack into the stun.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Well the whole purpose of mythic plus has always been the infinite progression of it all so I don't think they will ever add a reason to stop doing it. The title and how that works alone kills that idea right?

[@saenct]

i heard too many people demand it so i think the swing will be: solo q for up to and including +10s. this game mode has affixes. this game mode is kind of only for gearing. if you want to you can do +11 or above which is then considered "pushing content" aka no rewards, choose your affixes, no key depletion. do i want that? not really but that's my wild guess

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

That's basically what I predicted in season 2, but I don't see it going that way now. Its too close to launch for something like that surely.

[@saenct]

if they can ship s4 dungeons with bugs from s1 they can ship anything :D

[@xzalean]

there are a lot of people who just do M+ for fun. I would say you have a VERY non conventional way of playing m+ where every key is potentially for score. I actually think its crazy that you dont believe most people do keys with friends or to fill vaults when everything else in the game works that way. Same reason most people dont do progression mythic raiding. Turns out more people do LFR or some weekend thing with friends

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

I just see no evidence of it happening, is all. Filling vaults is one thing, but just doing low keys "for fun" is another entirely. Those people would be in the minority of the playerbase, even at that level, I'd imagine.

[@quintit]

Instead of a weekly score maybe a monthly score would be better for the style of m+. They could make the affix rotation last a month, just to give everyone enough time to do all the keys a few times for as much score as they are able to since a week seems too short for that. Obviously that would have some issues with affixes ppl don't like, but idk I think that would be interesting.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

It could work. I don't see any reason anything would need to change personally though.

[@Aegea291]

I think it’s possible to have challenging content that is fun. No one wants to play games and be miserable doing it, you get enough difficulty in real life and you play the game to escape that and have some fun at the same time. Some weeks M+ has less groups than other because of the affix combos, which maybe blizzard can fix. Also we should be playing the dungeon and not the affix, so replacing the annoying ones like incorporeal and afflicted (which are more annoying than challenging) will help i think/

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

In this system, they want you "playing" both the dungeon and the affix.

[@woopig4419]

Good content as always. Btw we play your Yankees today. We aren’t on a slump anymore so should be a good one

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Yankees are! Gonna be a rough one, but looking forward to it either way.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Told ya!

[@woopig4419]

@@heythereguysitsMetro Chris Sale is cooking man

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@woopig4419 braves looked good. But yankees are just sliding right now. Offense is way down and suddenly our pitching is horrendous. Idk about your other starters but if they are solid you will sweep this series. And hopefully that will wake the Yankees up.

[@woopig4419]

@@heythereguysitsMetro we got one shaky starter and our bullpen, I still don’t know if I can trust them yet but if our offense keeps playing like they are then yeah we’ll pass Philly soon. One can hope. And yeah yall got the orioles next right? Good luck they are good lol

[@NeedsMorePants]

From a portal-aspirant healer POV, I just want damage and healing to both be less spiky. Right now, it feels like healing = medium strength and damage = insane. IMO, knock each of those down 1 tier of intensity and it should be fun again

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

You feel like its the same way from a 2 to a 20, or is this just a product of how easy timers have been that you are running higher keys than you used to and seeing the damage inputs at levels you aren't used to?

[@NeedsMorePants]

@@heythereguysitsMetro It's just a binary pass/fail starting at the +8 from what I've seen. X mechanic/s happens and either the team counterplays or someone gets oneshot, with the sole exception being 3rd boss HoI with the rot damage.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@NeedsMorePants You are saying you are seeing people get one shot in 8s!?

[@NeedsMorePants]

@@heythereguysitsMetro Yessir. Even worse, it's not even consistent within the key, 25% of the time they'll survive one hit with a sliver of health and it's a crapshoot whether another mob has an ability queued and casting to die to afterwards.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@NeedsMorePants Okay, well what's happening there is either NOT a "ONE"shot or they are super undergeared. No real way to fix the later.

[@her0268]

In Path of Exile they have a thing called delve, and basically you push higher and higher with infinite scalling, just like M+, in that game mode every single mob gets an affix, which obviously the further you go the harder it gets. But at a certain point where only 0.1% of the player base can get affixes from mobs just disappear, but the game mode does not get easier at all, it is the same difficulty but, it removes the randomness of your character dying to an affix. I'm giving all of this context because I think Blizzard can manage a way to remove affixes from M+ at a certain level of keys without compromising the difficulty in place, but it will remove the randomness that sometimes occurs due to affixes being there. Should this be done? Well, we have had the same system for 8 years now, maybe a fresh coat of paint will spice things up.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Maybe. I worry that the people complaining will never be happy though. They are complaining because they are not reaching their goals in game and they are blaming it on affixes when in reality it has nothing to do with them. But idk how it works in other games, but I just mean like if you remove bolstering and fortified the key OBVIOUSLY gets way easier. So not sure how you compensate for that so a 16 isn't way easier than a 15

[@her0268]

@@heythereguysitsMetro People will always complain about something, that cannot be fixed. Asmongold said it best like 5-6 years ago, you can give people gold bars and they will complain that they are too heavy. As I said in my previous post, at this point players just want to see something new, and now is the time to experiment, and just to see what works and what doesn't.

[@iamme625]

@@heythereguysitsMetro Fort/tyran are pretty easy to remove without making it easier, you just buff the mobs or bosses respectively. The on death or other random affixes are a bit harder though.

[@morningglory2129]

It does feel like for some reason they playerbase has gotten atleast somewhat better at rotations (except for healers) for the basic junk but worse at timing cds usung ints and doing the overal mechanics in dungeons. To me people cared about dungeons more in sl and bfa when it came too playing the dungeon properly.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Ya, it has only gotten worse in terms of actually CARING about the key. The players have "gotten better at rotations" because they only care about their own gameplay, and that's the easiest way to feel engaged with it.

[@whippingstar]

[Author's Note: I just realized I got autocorrected on Ion's name] WoW has become a living version of the old Elitist Jerks forum because that's who Ian is and what Ian wants. The idea that he's ever said anything particularly insightful is questionable, because his insight comes in terms of a game he's directly in control of and is making the way he thinks it should be made. I'm not saying that's good or bad or that Ian isn't a sharp guy. But I've never heard him say anything particularly brilliant. WoW was a rudderless ship for a long time under Ian. Didn't forget that.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

I mean compared to the other guys who do these interviews. They usually have generic vapid statements to give. Ion actually understands the problems and can articulate them perfectly. You must not have spent much time on the ej forums back in the day though. The thing they were most famous for is, you weren't allowed to type unless you were authorized as a theorycrafter or otherwise skilled player. Now they let anyone give their wild opinions even if it's in direct contradiction to stated goals and actually listen to it, causing these half baked ideas they keep having to remake every few patches.

[@kaliyvga1426]

​@@heythereguysitsMetro find a single person who runs low keys and likes the affixes

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@kaliyvga1426 there aren't even affixes in low keys

[@kaliyvga1426]

@@heythereguysitsMetro exactly, so what did Ion talk about lol?

[@whippingstar]

@@heythereguysitsMetro You are aware that you could read the EJ forums even without being an approved theorycrafter, right? I spent hundreds of hours reading there, like any good MT did between late vanilla or so and Cata, which is when I bowed out of hardcore raiding.

[@Sniprep]

I love M+ and have no issues with literally all affixes apart from Tyrannical. It literally brings nothing to the table apart from making every boss fight drag on for soo long, the higher the key the worse it becomes. At least for Fortified ( in a best scenario ) you are able to change the route a bit, pick different fights and risky trash fights feel more rewarding. Tyrannical just translates into manage deff cds for longer fights and repeat the same mechanic without screwing up in the latter part of the encounter or just don't get bored. Just my take, but doubling the damage buff and removing the health buff from the affix would be healthier for me. It would perhaps increase difficulty but it will be healthier for the playerbase. I play all roles but mostly tank. The worst thing when trying to gear my tank alts is when it's Tyrannical and you get into a group with people who are not that good at the game and boss fights take ages to be downed. I have no problem with these people and I love spending time helping people out. But the incentive for me isn't that good when I'm trying to complete a +5 for crests to upgrade a piece of gear and sitting into 3-5 minute fights.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Well that's more an issue with your grouping than the affix. The health has already been nerfed like crazy many times. Tyrannical sucks because it exposes how bad people are at actual boss encounters and I think that only gets more true as less and less people raid. But obviously if you actually raid a "3-5" minute boss encounter is nothing. You are expected to execute fights near perfectly for some times over 10 minutes.

[@Sniprep]

​@@heythereguysitsMetro Might have worded it a bit wrong, but my main gripe is that Tyrannical is just not fun. Whilst I agree with your point. I am mostly focusing on issues people I play with and I have. Tyrannical is like finishing your job in 6 hours but you still have to idly sit for 2 more hours for your shift to end and pray for nothing bad to happen in those 2 hours so you don't have to stay overtime. The thing I don't actually want is that one week I am having a blast, and after the reset happens I am dreading to enter those same dungeons because I will spend nearly double time for some bosses and pray that players don't die from a spell one shot just because the fight took longer and the group is out of utilities. I'm in the minority here but let the encounters be mechanically more difficult. I'd rather fail because I messed up a mechanic or didn't move out of stuff in time than because I am out of options what to do. Let the fight last 2-3 minutes on both weeks for Tyrannical and Fortified. But during Tyrannical try to optimise utility and defensive usage. Combine multiple cds to survive deadly spells instead of spreading them over the long fight. Maybe keep the same % increase for unavoidable damage but double it for avoidable. Not the best solution, maybe not even a good one perhaps. But that's what would make me enjoy Tyrannical weeks. Having said allat, thanks for the replay mate, I appreciate it!

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@Sniprep No problem, I love hearing people's thoughts on these topics. Its why I make videos in the first place! Thanks for leaving your thoughts!

[@CraCeDAddiXx]

As an affli lock main, i agree. Tyran is always the worse week 😁 as some specs are tuned like 100% aoe and 10% ST , if you want to put that ST to above 70% range you need to take ur Aor to 0% 😁 luckily in ww that should be fixed for affli.

[@Opposegaming]

The rewards for high versus low keys kinda bad. Also I liked MOP with class sets and then weapons

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

The rewards are just different. I think most people actively engaged with the progression of the system agrees that the long term of the progression is attractive. otherwise you wouldn't see this conversation in the first place. But too many try to shortcut it. Thats how I view this "remove affix" conversation. Players wanting the progression to be easier. Less work for more progression is NOT valid feedback in my eyes.

[@captmarvel1967]

I believe you are severely underestimating the amount of players that don't even go higher than mythic 0's. There are a ton of players that only play the solo world content. There are also a ton of players that just play in the lower end of m+. I think Ion is spot on with his judgement of what the average m+ player is doing. Afterall he has access to the statistics that show it so I would definitely take him at his word on that.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Well first of all not going above zero is what I expect a lot of players do for sure. He is saying the average player is farming keys but we know that to be incorrect just by looking at the numbers. I know I didn't get my point across well with this sentiment though in the video so all good. I'll work on that for next time. I feel like I have a compelling point here but it's hard to articulate.

[@captmarvel1967]

@@heythereguysitsMetro Ah I think I get what you mean now. I think Ion was specifically talking about the m+ players only when he said “the "average" Mythic+ player” and was saying they run it for gear and vault for the most part not for competitive esports type gameplay. I think this is true of the “average m+ player”. (i thought you were trying to say the average player plays high end m+ content in the video) I dont agree with the average m+ player wanting bolstering or raging as their “variety” each week though. I wish they would just go wider on dungeons instead and use the damage/health % modifier to capture the difficulty (especially since they just stated the affixes are supposed to be about variety not difficulty). 16 dungeons on a 2 or 4 week cycle would be alot more interesting than affixes imho. Theres so many dungeons in the game now, why not use that as variety vice these affixes.

[@icswack6015]

From my point of view its not very hard to balance affixes. I think affixes should be balanced around people pushing very high keys as there are some affixes that can feel unfair or that you cannot counter in any way if they are combined with some very deadly pulls/bosses on high keys. I do not see a reason to balance affixes for players doing 10 or even 14-15 keys. Nobody ever depleted their 10 because storming or blostering or whatever affix is too hard, they depleted it because they suck at the game. But on high keys even the best players sometimes deplete keys because an affix was too much to deal with in a specific situation.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

That's effectively what they are saying here right? Problem is, it is hard to balance them at that level AND keep them relevant elsewhere. Eager to see how they approach that issue.

[@GrappIer]

There's enough dungeons to get rid of Affixes and rotate dungeons every single reset. They could do a lot of unique and interesting shit with M+ but they dont, and it makes my eyes roll back in my head.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Well that may be because you have not considered it further than your own interests. Rotating dungeons every single reset would be utter chaos and likely ABSURDLY imbalanced. Simply a non-starter. Need to consider changes that work for pugs, pushing, high keys, low keys, competitive tournaments etc.

[@GrappIer]

​@@heythereguysitsMetrothat's why things will always be a mess, everyone thinks about perfect balance to min/max everything. The idea is variety and fun and mostly that things don't get stale. The system is too small and controlled there needs to be some chaos.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@GrappIer I don't think Blizzard agrees with that, but even if they did, the people asking for the changes we are discussing in this video CERTAINLY don't, right?

[@normannseils3936]

I don’t get my m+ with changing dungeons each season needs affixes at all? At least „hard“ affixes. The system is scaling. Each keylevel is a new „affix“ without changing the entire feel of the dungeon. I personally don’t mind tyran and fort in a world without any other affixes to give each week a different flavour and priorities. But most of the lvl 7 affixes make the dungeon go from unplayable to requiring very specific specs and classes. With raging in the rotation people either need to include a evoker or at least a Druid in their team or skip 1/4 of the season if they are trying to push seriously. Same goes for bursting to a lesser extend. If m+ is about perfecting strategies and execution all weeks with bolstering would completely change that. That might be interesting in a pug, but if you are playing with a coordinated team that CAN learn routes and strategies for those dungeons bolstering is a skip week, especially with fortified.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Everything is listed is why they have them in the first place. It offers some new difficulty each week, and that is the exact reason why there needs to be a weekly score. Everyone seems to agree that some affixes are way harder than others, so I see no reason why the harder set of affixes should not be giving something extra.

[@normannseils3936]

@@heythereguysitsMetro the thing is the difficulty of especially bolstering and sanguine come from how antithetical they are to how m+ is played and the dungeons are designed. In my opinion it would be easier and better if you are not limited in trashdesign by those affixes existing. Everblood would be a perfectly fine dungeon without bolstering and sanguine (and raging to some extend). But with these affixes and blizzard not liking to change the mobtyped appropriately there will always be examples of dungeons that suffer from on death affixes especially for no reason other than those. Also a lot of mobs (Minibosses) that are most heavily affected by these affixes don’t allow any real counterplay other than not pressing your buttons, which is doesn’t really add any difficulty.

[@normannseils3936]

@@heythereguysitsMetro as an additional point. You said yourself, that you don’t like people logging in only during. „Good“ affix-sets. Removing them would make this problem it better or? I personally would like for everything to be removed except tyran and fort because that adds depth to talents and trinkets etc. Bolstering and sanguine doesn’t do anything except adding time to the dungeon and make some specs arguably worse to include (havoc DH, windwalker, unholy DK to name a few) and makes classes like firemage or shadowpriest who can almost entirely funnel or focus their dmg into single mobs. Bolstering also emphasizes the value of AOE CC. When you can kill the small mobs because of bolstering you need more cc when they live longer now. While that is more difficult technically it creates even more unbalance in terms of class variety.

[@normannseils3936]

@@heythereguysitsMetro as a last part of MY rant: I personally love making routes and iterating/improving on them but hate to change them every week because of on death affixes making certain pulls almost unplayable. I see it the same way as you, I hate when people expect a certain route and complain when it’s not cookie cutter (that’s why I hate pugging in seasons like these). Most of the time, even if I post the routes thy either leave because it’s not „Standard“ or don’t read them anyways and wonder about skips or pulls (or the lack there of). Outside of weekly 8s I almost never pug at this point, because being forced to communicate over text is just terrible, especially as a tank. Not having to consider affixes here would make it much more enjoyable for me to pug at a higher level.

[@Wubadubs]

How would you feel if the level 2 affix was Fort or Tyrannical, The other affixes in between, and then the 10 Affix was the other? This way all 10 keys are both Fort and Tyrannical. This adds variety at low levels, but its consistent at 10+. IE a 10 key "At this point" would be something like... Fortified Attuned Bolstering Tyrannical.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Very interesting idea!

[@Wubadubs]

​@@heythereguysitsMetroEyyy I was kinda right.

[@CharlieVictor212]

Why not just let us craft our own keys with whatever affixes we want. Let me select the 4 affixes I want including the seasonal one. If I want prideful let me put it on. If grom wants some hard af key to flex let him. Have a bunch of leaderboards or let raiderio take that task. At this point the community is going to complain about any solution. Give them a wide open solution. The great vault is just a fomo faucet anyways, let people max their vault out with easy keys it doesn’t matter anymore. I personally don’t care about anyone else’s ilvl or how they obtained it.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

That's not a solution at all. Gotta remember how much the progression element is in flux here.

[@thechartech]

I'd push back on the idea that blizzard has catered this game to what the player base asks for. Look at azerite power, legendaries, covenants, conduit energy. All things that are widely seen as bad, and made known well before their launch and blizz did not react to, or doubled down against, feedback for months to a year on some of those things. Players do have awful takes for sure and sometimes blizz does implement those but I would definitely say the game on average is not made around player desires.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Those are all examples of systems heavily impacted in the way I am describing! Covenants are the clearest example honestly. They wanted to develop an extra "class level" decision for you. So you would be say a Night Fae Blood Death Knight. Something to define you. From the literal start, players refused to accept this, and constantly complained about the inability to switch freely. By the end, Blizzard caved, compromising their own vision and design, and allowed you to switch freely. This is what I mean by letting the community design the game. When you do this, you have ultra watered down systems. They had a plan to make Covenants, and they had to halt that plan and redesign a new one because players are unable to just sit back and play the game.

[@thechartech]

@@heythereguysitsMetro fair enough. As someone who is more casual and just plays with my friends up to a little above portal levels till some stop playing for the season, I wanted to try new different covenants sometimes when people figured out oh there's this cool thing you can do as x or we would be missing a specific covenant for some dungeons because of what we were basically locked into, the ones we had chosen based on theme or power (everyone is different) which just felt bad my group. Some RPGs give you more freedom to try new things with your characters and builds and others don't. I tend to prefer being able to try things but I do understand people who want that choice to feel impactful. Honestly if they disagreed, they should've stuck to it, and I'd accept that tbh, I'm just here to play with my friends till they get burnt out. I don't think people shouldn't give feedback when they are unhappy though. It's blizzards responsibility to figure out why lots of people are unhappy and address it, either through explanation of why they think they are making the right choice or by adjusting it. Still 100% agree blizz shouldn't fix literally everything players complain about cause there do be bad takes haha

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@thechartech ya sadly everyone is always unhappy anymore so the "feedback" tends to get louder each time and eventually turns into more of a riot than a discussion. There was a thread with hundreds of thousands of posts about "pulling the ripcord" from the day those words were said and everyone on that side took it personal, like something was being stolen from them. Game is basically comprised of a bunch of whiners who would rather complain than progress. Sad to say but that's where we are at.

[@bojnebojnebojne]

I used to be someone that pushed keys because i liked seeing my arbitrary score go up. I don't do that anymore coz it doesn't tic my wiener anymore. Nowadays i just aim to gear my current main to gear cap and then i just sit around what ever the weekly most efficient key level happen to be. Do some keys ever few days with some friends because i can and it's not even remotely hard, but i find the combat is fun for like 2 to 3 runs then i logout again and do something else or maybe pickup some random person in general chat that need a key done and help out with that. That's how i do m+ nowadays coz im burned out on WoW completely for the most part. DF has gotten a lot of praise it seems, but to me it's been an insanely boring expansion and it's probably not because of the expansion but more so me playing WoW non stop since TBC.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

No harm in taking some time off! Forcing yourself to keep gearing is only making it worse right? No point in gearing if you don't plan on doing anything with the gear.

[@bojnebojnebojne]

@@heythereguysitsMetro Yup, that is very true, which is what i'm doin. :P But i mainly log in and do M+ because it's the only game mode in WoW i kind of enjoy and since it is an mmo i have a bunch of friends accumulated over the years that i play with, which is the main reason i log in at all, not the actual game. XD So gearing is kind of just something that happen organically as i play, not something i collect in order to do anything with later. I just gear the char because it's my main. Things just becomes easier with gear, so whatever it is i potentially wanna do within the game i then have the gear set if the urge comes :P.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@bojnebojnebojne good to hear, sounds like it's still fun for you if that's the case!

[@stuff4812]

Shadowlands was not the community's fault, i think they started ignoring the community for legion. but they only kind of ignored them in legion which is why it was great. but they went heavier and heavier into ignoring them until shadowlands was just straight up them telling everyone that they are right. its true you cant just completely do everything the community wants but shadowlands is the reversal of that. DF was a good balance, hopefully they continue doing well in TWW. also bolstering is definitely heavily nerfed, but its also easily one tier harder than the other affixes depending on the dungeons. like everbloom or WM

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

See I view shadow lands the opposite. Great ideas that were compromised by being forced to listen to the community half way.

[@WritesFantasy]

A soft easy world creates weak men. A soft eazy game creates lazy, weak players. I miss the affixes. I dont like them taking away so many of them. I enjoyed the change. The variety. I miss prideful. Making me as tank plan my route out by count. That was the best M+ has ever been for me. Prideful season in SL.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Ya sadly everyone wants things as easy as possible. I fear in this case though, it's particularly disruptive because it likely is coming from a place of entitlement. These players don't actually care about affixes they just think the game will be easier for them if they are removed. So what will they use as a scapegoat when they are removed and they still suck?

[@MrCattlehunter]

if you could control the weather when people play golf, you would do so. you can do so in wow. affixes are shit and they always have been. if you want to add variety for variety's sake, you should add variety that people want to engage with, not variety they want to avoid. people don't dislike bursting because they get less score during bursting weeks, they dislike bursting because bursting sucks. that it gives you less score is just a consequence of the same thing that makes it suck. if you made bursting weeks give more/unique/whatever score then THAT would be awful game design as well, encouraging people to do something they think sucks just for the sake of the score, i.e., exactly what is here lambasted as bad design. the only (hypothetical) conversation that WOULD be even remotely interesting when it comes to affixes, is the disparity between hardcores and normies. right now, everyone agrees that affixes suck. but if you made affixes people like but also make some of those affixes radically mess with e.g., routing etc., then the hardcores would like those while normies wouldn't (because they don't like anything that messes with routing for all the obvious reasons) but that conversation is purely hypothetical as long as affixes are just a universal downside also, re "fun", what's "fun" isn't what's TOO EASY. nor is it what's TOO HARD. it's what's "just right". that's why people do 'timed content' for fun and why m+ is a great system, because it lets you find that "just right" spot for you to have fun instead of being bored or frustrated. but affixes fuck with that by transforming what WOULD be "just right" for you into "too hard" by arbitrarily adding affixes at certain key levels, or indeed by adding affixes at all since affixes are, again, shit and always have been. was there a single human being who enjoyed thundering? sure a couple of months in it had become second nature and I didn't even notice that I was automatically predicting who would get what polarities and positioning myself to insta-cleanse it. but it was never fun, it always sucked ass. challenge modes gearscale locked you so they were boring and sucked ass, that's why nobody did them. well, nobody did them because they didn't reward anything (except cosmetics, i.e., "nothing"). but nobody bothered pushing them because they were boring. getting more gear so your character gets stronger and plays differently and then pushing that new character further by going into similar-but-harder content is fun. having nothing change and just doing the exact same content over and over again for some pure time trial shit is for autists. blaming these emergent behaviours on gearscore or whatever is retarded. the score comes AFTER the behaviour, to help facilitate it. they didn't create the score and then people started pursuing it for its own sake. people were pursing goals, and then they added scores to measure those goals so that they could play this GROUP GAME with people of a similar level to themselves instead of completely rolling dice on every new group. yeah some people pursue the score for its own sake now but those people are abnormal and not the cause of any of this. the only "normie" objection to the score is that it labels them as shit so they don't get invited to groups. which is exactly what it's intended to do, that's just shitters complaining that people won't put up with them and demanding that they be anonymized so that their digital reputation can't be tracked. MDI is indeed crappy and stupid, and it's also basically what challenge modes would've been if people cared about them.

[@kaliyvga1426]

They could add variety by adding some interesting additions to the dungeon. They could add something like those souls in maw and you could get some unique currency that you could use to get a mount later. And every week they could add something else, like if you want to release souls while doing dungeons - it's your choice. No one likes affixed and metro acts very close minded thinking that everyone who has negative opinion on it are noob or something.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@kaliyvga1426 not noob, just entitled. Most people complaining about them will go on to complain about something else after they get what they want here. Because the problem isn't affixes or fun. It's because they are not happy with their progression within the system and they want to blame something else. The golf example was really perfect. I know so many people who complain about literally anything other than their own skill on the golf course. Too windy, then the wind dies down and now it's the greens are too firm. Affixes are working well, and I see no legitimate reason to remove them outright. Only thing I hear is whining.

[@kaliyvga1426]

@@heythereguysitsMetro I feel like it's literally not fun, it's not about progression. I agree with his take on it.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@kaliyvga1426 Its not there for fun. That's what the whole discussion from Ion is about. Not sure how so many people don't get this. If everything was "fun" there would be no challenge at all.

[@DaveStarfire]

The thing about affixes going away at certain key levels, sort of already happens on live to a degree organically, where you would find really bad groups at certain levels until you hit the Weekly Vault level, then you get a bunch of competent players trying to fill their vault, and it's like a completely different experience and is easier and less frustrating.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

That would still happen, but on top of that the theoretical difficulty of the dungeon would also change, so the thing you described would be like 10x more noticeable. But I'll wait to discuss that more until they have revealed what they actually plan to do.

[@HeIIaAverage]

so a couple things. first, the bit about the average player. you are way off on that part lol. average is actually a word that is verifiable. someone who even gets to 3kio is dramatically above average. close to top 1pct. but i agree wholeheartedly about what you brought up in regards to the game 1, game 2 analogy Ion spoke of a year or so ago. I agreed with it then. He said "this is a cooperative mmo" and it is. which is why i despise when they nerf things like theyre nerfing vdh. this is a pve game lol. the second thing i noticed you say is something ive heard many people say before, which is what you said in regards to affixes needing to add difficulty to the dungeons. that is a perspective, not a fact. that is an experience, not a truth. i am of the mind that we can definitely afford to experiment with affixes. we had some seasonals in shadowlands that were straight buffs. they dont even have to have mobs to kill attached to them like they did then. its all just openmindedness through a bunch of opinions we all have. the truth is, we have no idea what the game would feel like without affixes. i would also challenge what you said about leveling, the world, etc and listening to players. i dont know a single player that honestly cares about open world content or the leveling experience. we boost our alts. instanced combat is what differentiates wow from other games. again, though, these are just out opinions

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Exactly and that's the problem. This game is supposed to be about the world. That's why it's named what it's named. People don't like the game they chose to play, and they forced it to change. I liked the game as it was and am unhappy that is has to keep changing to please people who are not ever going to be happy. Not sure why that feedback isn't heard but it's whatever. Game will always be great for me. But not a lot of people approach it like I do so I feel bad for them.

[@HeIIaAverage]

@@heythereguysitsMetro i mean you say that, but your content is mythic+ and you play high keys lol. anway, i always love bickering over the finer points of wow with you. keep up the content

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@HeIIaAverage I do it all! I have a second channel totally dedicated to leveling challenges and exploring the game from the ground up. Glad you enjoy the chats!

[@ryansobol]

I am a player who runs season 4 +8-10s consistently with my buddies to fill my weekly vault, and to me, affixes are more frustrating due to their difficulty then fun due to their variety. Personally, I believe the devs have become blind to how little fun affixes actually provide to players like me. I’m never like, “Oh awesome, it’s fortified bolstering!” Maybe some people disagree, but affixes as they are currently designed just aren’t a fun game mechanic in my mind. And IMHO they have blinded the encounter devs from coming up with creative ways to add variety to each dungeon through better mythic+ enemy and pack design that naturally scale in difficulty with infinitely increasing health and damage multipliers. Think about all the time that has been wasted iterating on affixes over the years. That time could have just gone into making individual mythic+ encounters more fun and varying on their own. It’s really a shame that the devs and the community are still stuck in this iterating and debating loop for 3 expansions now. Classic sunk cost fallacy at play here.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

I think they explained the goals of affixes pretty well. They aren't there to be fun they are there to be challenging and provide a rotating challenge to keep you on your toes. It sounds like you are saying they are wasting time with these goals and that is frankly the entitlement I am pushing back against with this video here. If the game developers tell you the goals of a system and you disagree with it, that's a concern you need to wrestle with, not one they need to change.

[@RinaldoCieri]

absoluty agree with you, games should be both fun and challanging, affix are NOT FUN, they should go away, or make them positive buffs, where done correctly u get a BUFF that help speed the key and have fun

[@ryansobol]

You are correct. Ion and Morgan explained their goals for mythic+ affixes very well. However, they were specifically asked, “What changes would you feel like affixes need to make in order to be more fun for players?” And then Ion essentially said that players like me enjoy the rotating challenge to keep us on our toes. Ion is a very intelligent person, but in this case, he is fundamentally misunderstanding what is fun for people like me. Being challenged by infinitely scaling content is fun, for me. Affixes as they exist today are more frustrating than fun, for me. You’re right, I do need to wrestle with a games design when its system’s goals diverge from my own. Though I think we’re all “entitled” to have an opinion on what is fun for each of us. Isn’t now, when a system is being actively iterated on, the right time share what makes things fun for me personally? I would think so, especially when the lead game designer is claiming that I’m the target audience for design goals, and those goals don’t align with fun, for me.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@ryansobol I'm not seeing the "infinitely challenging content" comment and how that relates to people who stop at the 8 affix or whatever. By default, if you artificially limit your progression, you basically resign to the camp of "the only challenge here can be affixes." That's why I was saying that this is all working as intended. Whether its fun for you or not, is something that worries me as feedback. Because if you are, right now, playing the game this way actively, I don't know what you having more fun would change here, from a player output thing. Would it encourage you to do more than just low keys?

[@ThomasBachler01]

@@heythereguysitsMetro"They aren't there to be fun they are there to be challenging and provide a rotating challenge to keep you on your toes" I think that the interview did not say that. It said that the main purpose of affixes was to add variety and not difficulty. Its not that difficult to come up with new affixes or change existing affixes in a way that retain the original variety (encouraging certain gameplay) goal of the affix without having the same multiplicative difficulty.

[@voodoo1069]

Sounds like some unfun takes to me but everyone can like what they like

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Unfun, what do you mean?

[@jere_____]

On the topic of the average player. I do think you really do underestimate the breadth of the playerbase that plays wow, even in M+. You can kind of even see it on raider IO where on average 80-90% of the keys done each week are +10 or lower. That doesn't count disbands, but at that high a difference, I don't really see that changing who the average represents. Like imaging you had a 50% disband rate (for easy math, but close to your own disband rate on the spread sheet). That means at best, that moves the mark to 70% of the runs each week are +10 or less. There would still be more runs not moving towards doing higher keys but instead only going for portal or fill the vault group. In my own guild, only 3 people usually ever go above +10 (or +20 in the past). One person does it on multiple alts, while myself and the other person usually stick to one toon. There are a lot of people that just get their weekly vault filled and move on to another toon or another game for a week. I think for them, often times it is the gear progression that is fun for them. They want to feel more powerful in the content that they do and seem less interested in pushing themselves in more challenging content. I think maybe people just want to feel overpowered.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

I just look at the stats on raiderio honestly. You see that 33 percent of the player base of mythic plus has keystone master. That's 185k characters on US. So 260k characters are below the level of farming max ilvl from the vault, basically. The problem with the stats is, how many of those people actively do keys at all vs just did one key at some point? I'd be willing to say at least half of those. So when you start breaking that down you realize that there are actually likely very little players that do keys actively but not pushing for some type of progression. And that's understandable, because the system encourages it from the ground up. The people exist, obviously. But not enough to be designing around imo, especially knowing how the system encourages them to continue.

[@kaliyvga1426]

​@@heythereguysitsMetro it counts with alts. 0.1% is less than 0.1%, since many of them have alts. Same with other levels, anyways, none of the players like affixes. I only like incomp affix when I do the lowest keys on my alt for laughs. That's it

[@jere_____]

@@kaliyvga1426 If it helps, I was using the setting that explicitly only counts accounts (avoids alts). I don't know which Metro was using though.

[@jere_____]

@@heythereguysitsMetro That kind of goes back to what I was saying. If only 33% of the m+ population has done KSM or higher (+5s on average), then that means the folks that push higher keys are a much lower percent than that and the majority of players that do m+ don't even get KSM (67%). So I think that the majority of people who engage with m+ aren't people who even do high heys. It's way more likely that more people only fill their vaults each week than go for higher score. Note: I'm not disagreeing with your feelings on the system, I was just commenting on your surprise (in your video) that there potentially people who only do m+ to fill vault and that their number was significant. I think it is much higher than you might believe. I mean, my entire guild besides 3 people only do m+ to fill vault and maybe get portals at some point. And some of my friends guilds are the same. I think it is a much larger group than you might be considering.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@jere_____ Ya idk how best to articulate my thoughts on it. My point with bringing the stats up was that the people who do fill their vaults with 8s are all going to have KSM right? That's the regular low key activity most people would do right? I suppose there are some who are satisfied filling their vault with like 4s or something, but I'm just going to discount them because there is no reason to stop at that level designed by Blizzard. So if the people considered not progressing but still playing regularly are still only 30 percent of the characters doing it, we must assume that the rest of the characters accounted for it are simply not playing regularly, or else they would be into the 8 range by now. Basically, the keys are too easy to be playing weekly AND not making progress. No one is doing that, so its not worth designing around.

[@saenct]

they are misinterpreting the data... data shows that alot of people do +8s and see success there? yeah well guess waht thats 25 players from echo running their 7 chars to get acceptable vault gear...

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

I think what they are saying is that the affixes are not causing disruption at that level. Like no matter what the week is, it's similar. But at the top level they are. That's what this is about.

[@saenct]

after a second read my interpretation might have been wrong here

[@AlicenW0nd3rland]

I still enjoy the idea of once you have successfully cleared 10s for all seasonal dungeons for both fortified and tyrannical weeks, then you can customize your key with any affix. Than add a leaderboard to track fastest times for any key above a 10. Have separate leaderboards for all key affix variations. In addition, bring back ALL affixes in the game that the player can select when creating their custom key. (the last part here would just be for fun but not necessarily needed).

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Hmm ya sadly everyone would just do the easiest combo if there wasn't a weekly score haha. Leaderboards aren't enough, as we illustrated with challenge modes.

[@AlicenW0nd3rland]

@@heythereguysitsMetro The main idea behind this though is you could get clout for actually doing the hardest affix combinations because of the separate leaderboards

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

@@AlicenW0nd3rland you could, but the best players wouldn't engage with it unless you force it into the mdi etc

[@Azari_D]

To be honest if you look at my account as a whole "just filling out the vault" is what I do like 9/10x across my characters. Only really spam the heck out of them on one character, i wonder if their data is per account or per characters.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

I think they are talking about per human being playing the game haha. Clearly people do it on alts and stuff, but does anyone actually do keys because they are fun just to mess around with? I'm sure there are SOME, but not enough to be worried about designing around. Especially not after they made Zeros such a big part of the experience.

[@itstheyok]

I can see launch being pushed back till October.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Oh god, I can't. They JUST announced the date haha

[@SpliffProductions]

Dude I hate seeing videos titled "How augmentation ruined M+" or "How augementation ruined WoW" it's like ???? Nah bro, you think it's been ruined because you're a 1% never see daylight virgin player.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Haha

[@johnwalker7744]

straight cooked takes

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

what's that even mean

[@dalaransadoringfan5267]

They want to design the game around the actual player base, not The 1% who play 10s and 15s and such. Their design doesn't seem that bad.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Might want to have a look at the actual stats before you try to use that for your arguement haha... You can see them here raider.io/mythic-plus/cutoffs/season-df-4/us As you see, an enormous amount of players do 10s and above. The difference between a 10 and a 15 is huge too.

[@ThrallsHammer]

At some point Dragonflight fanboys will have to accept that the DF dungeons were bad. Is it a coincidence that S3, the season with fewest DF dungeons was by far the biggest success? Doubtful. Looks like Blizzard are insisting on repeating the same mistakes in Warthin judging by their affixes and dungeon design. Sad.

[@heythereguysitsMetro]

Success by what metric? I would be careful assuming you know what Blizzard consider a success. But no matter what metric, its impossible to compare them now that they changed the Mythic+ key levels. But either way, obviously I will disagree that a dungeon like Throne of Tides or Everbloom are a better Mythic+ experience than AV or Algethar.