Hey guys Mezzy here!
So a couple of weeks back on WoW Weekly we talked about the posibility of Mythic Dungeons and I tried to shortly explain how I would like to see the nonraid pve instanced content be set up next expansion. It became quite obvious from LJ’s and Viv’s reactions that quickly explaining it within a few minutes wasn’t going to work. So as I said I’d do a Mezzy Talks episode on it, and here we are. You can watch the video version or read the blog down below.
So first the background again. It started on the mmo-champion forums where someone posted a post about adding mythic dungeons to the types of 5man dungeons you can do. These would be for those who like challenging 5man content like in TBC and the start of cata but don’t like the time trial hasty challenge modes.
A few days later someone reposted the idea on the official WoW EU forums and surprisingly it actually got a response from a customer support blue poster called Taepsilum. The surprising thing about it that he was actually quite sympathetic about it. That they understand not everyone likes the time trial challenge modes but still want challenging 5man dungeon content and they do intend making heroics harder next expansion but not as hard as the TBC and some of the start of cataclysm ones. He also asked for everyone to give feedback on how they would like challenge modes to see changed in Warlords. So naturally I responded to it as you’ll know if you watch WoW Weekly, it’s something I’m quite passionate about and I like to think game design wise how I’d want to add or change something.
So first of all, I do think they should add mythic mode dungeons. And here’s how they should be designed. Have Mythic dungeons be:
- The hardest 5man content, parallel with challenge modes, each giving a different type of gameplay.
- Mythic dungeons should be in line of the hardest dungeons in TBC, requiring teamwork, strategizing, CC and all that good stuff to complete succesfully.
- These, just like challenge modes, need premade groups.
- Mythic dungeons should give actual gear that progresses your character, which is on a lower ilvl than raiding gear, but still an upgrade over heroic 5man gear to be useful.
- They should have mechanics that won’t be as easy even if you do have raid gear.
If blizzard truely does not wish to add yet another difficulty to balance out then I’d want to see them replace challenge modes completely. Hence why I would rather see it as a new mode so that the challenge modes as they are now don’t get taken away from those that do like that type of gameplay.
So with these mythic modes designed, how do we add them into the already big mix of different difficulties in both dungeons, scenarios and raiding? Well we’ll start by looking at what the progression path of item levels was at the start of MoP, then convert it over to how it would look if SoO had been the start out patch, and then we add mythic dungeons to the mix. I realise this does mean a big gear item level inflation quite quickly and that’s something I don’t have a definitive answer to straight away, and certainly will continue to think about but i will leave the problem of it out of this video to atleast explain the concept.
This is how the item level curve started out in MoP with dungeons, scenarios and the first raid instance.
Normal max dungeon 450 (13 ilvls lower than hc dungeon)
Hc dungeon / normal Scenario (chance) 463 (13 ilvls lower than LFR)
LFR 476
normal raid 489
hc raid 502
The main thing to note from these numbers are how the hc dungeon and normal dungeon rewards compare to the raid rewards.
After this, heroic scenarios and flex raiding were eventually added in MoP, leaving dungeons and normal scenarios behind. So let’s convert these values to all the current raid tier as if it was the first raid tier and it had the newly added difficulties to go along with it. So pretend these are the item level values you’d have started out on in MoP.
Normal max dungeon 502 (13 ilvls lower than hc dungeon)
Hc dungeon 515 (13 ilvls lower than LFR)
LFR 528
Flex 540
normal raid 553
hc raid 566
As you’ll see I’ve now left the scenario’s out, because it becomes quite awkward at this point. So let’s add these to the same level as normal and heroic dungeons respectively to add this as content that can be done without needing the 1 tank 1 healer 3 dps group, which was the intent of scenarios outside the story telling perspective.
Normal max dungeon / Normal Scenario 502
Hc dungeon / Hc scenario 515
LFR 528
Flex 540
normal raid 553
hc raid 566
So right now we have all the current content added, updated to how the distribution of item levels would be as if it was the first tier of content in an expansion. Now let’s add mythic dungeons into the mix, we want it to be a higher item level than heroic dungeons.
It could either be lower to LFR and create an even bigger difference between the lowest gear possible and highest possible, or give the same ilvl gear as LFR to reward those who go through the challenging content and keep differences between dungeon and raid difficulties the same as they would be without mythic dungeons. Let’s look at both scenario’s starting with lower than LFR gear.
Normal max dungeon / Normal Scenario 502
Hc dungeon / Hc scenario 515
Mythic Dungeon 521
LFR 528
Flex 540
normal raid 553
hc raid 566
or
Normal max dungeon / Normal Scenario 502
Hc dungeon / Hc scenario 515
Mythic Dungeon 528
LFR 540
Flex 553
normal raid 566
hc raid 579
As you can see I’ve given 2 possibilities. The first one actually keeps the difference between worst and best gear the same. In this scenario I feel the rewards would have to be more rewarding in another way than just a stat increase of 6 item levels. I do have an idea for this and I’ll talk about it when I get to the actual loot.
The second one describes what I said before putting these numbers on the field, it makes mythic a full tier of new difficulty increasing the difference between the worst and best gear the same in this one single tier. This certainly wouldn’t help the item inflation over the course of an expansion.
So let’s look at making it the same item level as LFR gear and why that could be a viable alternative.
Normal max dungeon / Normal Scenario 502
Hc dungeon / Hc scenario 515
LFR / Mythic Dungeon 528
Flex 540
normal raid 553
hc raid 566
In this scenario the item level distribution stays the same as it is now but it adds mythic raiding. So why would it be viable to give mythic dungeons, the what would be hardest level dungeons the same level gear as LFR, the lowest dificulty of raids?
- Item level inflation doesn’t go any quicker than it is already going
- Players will be rewarded for completing hard content on 5man level, after all if it’s an upgrade for them they’ll be doing it in gear lower than LFR raid gear. So if designed correctly these mythic dungeons will genuinely be a tough challenge to overcome as a 5man group.
- The previous point means that players are rewarded for putting a lot of effort into difficult content while LFR is indeed the way to view the raid content you could not otherwise if you don’t want to raid flex or higher difficulty raids.
Now there’s one last thing wrong with this list, and that’s that it’s still in the current difficulty raid wordings and not the Warlords one, so let’s change that.
Normal max dungeon / Normal Scenario 502
Hc dungeon / Hc scenario 515
LFR / Mythic Dungeon 528
Normal raid 540
Heroic raid 553
Mythic raid 566
Now as you can see challenge modes haven’t really been covered here. Well they’d be seperate of mythic dungeons and in this chart player’s item levels would be lower to 515. At the end I’ll explain why I think they should be seperate dungeon types. But let’s first talk about what type of gear rewards you should get from mythic dungeons.
Mythic dungeons would be a good progression type content for players who don’t want to raid but still want to do some PvE oriented content. So other than higher item level than hc dungeon gear I think it would be a good opportunity to reintroduce dungeon sets that give set bonuses. To reward players for doing difficult 5man content. These sets should be rare and their bonuses should not be as powerful as raiding tier set bonuses. However it will give players something to strive for and keep players interested in doing mythic dungeons longer.
Other than this, you could add
- Weekly mythic dungeon quests, upon completing a certain mythic dungeon you get 200 VP. Like there is the epoch stone weekly now, but instead of mindlessly grinding mobs for an item you have to team up in a premade group and overcome challenging content.
- Achievements and a meta achievement for just mythic mode dungeons
- Pets
- Loot with a small chance to get tertiary stats, so that even if you have an item from mythic dungeons you still want to go back for the possible bonus
When it comes to rewards and getting it viably in the progression curve there are plenty of options.
So as a final major part, let’s talk challenge modes. Why I feel they should be seperate from mythic dungeons.
Let’s start very simple, not everyone likes time trial and I’m certainly one of them. But I still like challenging content outside of raiding, so mythic dungeons would be a great alternative for me.I myself am one of those players, I can’t stand time trials no matter in which game it is. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for such mechanics.
A good example of where it was done right, right here in WoW was in Zul’Aman in TBC. It was 1 10man raid instance, which had the time trial for the war bear. Why did this work and at the same time why don’t challenge modes work to provide sufficient challenging content outside of raiding? Because it was in just 1 instance, and it was for just 1 piece of reward.
- You didn’t have to race the clock in every instance on this difficulty
- If you wanted to do this difficulty raid instance and you didn’t want to go for the time trial, when you defeated the bosses in the instance, you still got rewarded for it
- If you did try for it but you didn’t get it, you would lose out on just 1 thing, yes it was an awesome mount, but it wasn’t a complete transmog set for example
Challenge modes do the exact opposite of this, which is why it doesn’t work for those that like challenging content but don’t like time trials. By having the separation of mythic and challenge mode you’ll have content for those that don’t like time trials but still like difficult content on a 5man level and those that do like the time trial CM’s don’t get their content removed.
As you can see I’ve thought about how it could be done a lot and it really comes down to whether Blizzard is willing to implement this and make their statement about wanting to offer more challenging content true. I certainly hope that you’ll share this video with others, as the more attention it gets in the community, the more likely it’ll get picked up by someone at blizzard. And who knows they might do something with it.
That’s all I have to say on the subject right now, keep checking back on the website to see new content come out!