Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #305 - For Azeroth!: “The Adventure Club”

Transcript

#305 - For Azeroth!: “The Adventure Club” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:00
  I take it back. Delves don't listen.
• 0:02
  Delves are way too easy for mythic living.
• 0:04
  Loot. We can't be given these little
• 0:06
  baby delvers mythic gear. That's not right.
• 0:12
  There's your sound bite. For Lauderon, for the Karen
• 0:16
  Tour, for Pandaria, for Calendar to the Burning region, for
• 0:26
  Gilnaeus but has not died, for the Lich King, for the.
• 0:33
  Sindora for the Alliance for the.
• 0:37
  Horn for Azeroth. Hello and welcome back to
• 0:44
  another episode of For Azeroth. I am one of your hosts, Manny,
• 0:48
  AKA The True Manny. Lex is away this week and we're
• 0:52
  recording the show late this week.
• 0:55
  But luckily, Sean, the pillar of World of Warcraft that he is, is
• 1:00
  here to help hold down the Fort. Sean, thank you for joining us,
• 1:05
  joining me today. I know we're coming right off of
• 1:08
  you doing some casting. So tell us, what's what's been
• 1:12
  going on in the World of Warcraft for you.
• 1:15
  Well, Manny, in game we're working on mythic queen Anstreck
• 1:20
  Prague. We are into P2.
• 1:24
  Our goal we write tonight as a recording.
• 1:28
  Our goals for tonight I think is to get to the third platform in
• 1:32
  P2 and then maybe, maybe see P3. We've been our Prague, our
• 1:38
  team's pretty good. Our Prague like jumps, huge
• 1:42
  leaps every day that we go in. So we were getting pretty
• 1:46
  consistently into P2 and like fine tuning that platform 1 to
• 1:51
  platform 2 transition. I think we're going to have a
• 1:54
  big night tonight. So I'm excited for that.
• 1:57
  And then on the EU side and NA side, I've just been doing vault
• 2:02
  E fill in my vault every week. 8 ends for my guardian Druid, I
• 2:09
  blood DK and my proud warrior and they're all missed.
• 2:13
  I basically if it's if, if it's not a full group of friends who
• 2:16
  then we have to run whatever keys we have, then it's just
• 2:19
  mists. I plug into those mists a tear
• 2:20
  in a scythe like it's my job. But outside of that, outside of
• 2:25
  game, obviously we're getting ready for break the meta, which
• 2:28
  is starting on Tuesday and that's a big event and then
• 2:32
  we'll have a stream for that next weekend which I'll be
• 2:37
  involved in. But at this weekend, I was doing
• 2:39
  the Armed Forces Dungeon League Winter Clash event.
• 2:45
  I got reached out to by mutual friend of the show ease from
• 2:49
  Bonus Roll Productions and Realm maintenance.
• 2:52
  Although I think but yeah, he reached out and they said, hey,
• 2:57
  I'm in the AFDL, we're casting, we have an open slot.
• 3:00
  Are you available? I was and cast Creative, I think
• 3:05
  is the production team that does their events and Mariella.
• 3:08
  Yeah. Mariella and Chaos creative.
• 3:10
  Yeah. So she reached out to me and
• 3:13
  said, hey, you want to cast this for us?
• 3:15
  And I ended up doing a shift every day, Friday, Saturday and
• 3:18
  Sunday. I think it was the only one who
• 3:20
  went every day. So it was pretty cool and had a
• 3:25
  lot of fun. Really enjoyed the event.
• 3:26
  They have a really crisp, clean production team.
• 3:30
  They're very impressed with how smooth it was and how well it
• 3:34
  was run. And I had a good time.
• 3:35
  It's just wrapping as we're recording.
• 3:38
  The last day is wrapping up and there's it's a seating
• 3:40
  tournament for 2025 and yeah, all the armed forces teams that
• 3:44
  are in that are are having fun pushing keys on the tournament
• 3:47
  realm. And I think a lot of people are
• 3:50
  kind of in that same situation that you were talking about in
• 3:53
  raid. And then like generally the
• 3:56
  World Warcraft community, we're sort of doing that.
• 3:59
  We're seeing like you said, break the meta.
• 4:01
  That's something that comes at the end of season.
• 4:03
  Last week we were like, oh, we still got a lot of season left,
• 4:06
  yes, timeline wise. But in terms of like organizing
• 4:09
  and getting these events going, we've got, we just came off of
• 4:12
  the US Thanksgiving holiday. We're going into the big end of
• 4:17
  year holiday, New Year's and everything.
• 4:19
  So that time's a lot disrupted. So you're seeing these end of
• 4:23
  season events already come up. The teams that are going at it
• 4:28
  in game in terms of raid, they're either as your team is
• 4:32
  going, doing like getting that power through the use of
• 4:36
  refining strategies, or they're using the Nairobian finery and
• 4:41
  increasing their power that way. So Hall of Fame is done.
• 4:45
  People are trying to push to get their CE or or AOTC if they
• 4:50
  haven't got that yet. And a lot of teams are now
• 4:53
  starting to go on break. The big thing though, is that I
• 4:57
  want to talk about today is outside of raiding and the two
• 5:03
  Pve pillars that have found themselves in a lot of conflict
• 5:07
  for like their place in that world really.
• 5:11
  So that's Delves, which a lot of people push through quite
• 5:15
  quickly and Mythic Plus, which I'm finding a lot of people
• 5:21
  abandoned quite quickly. Yeah, it's sort of wild.
• 5:27
  I so I want to start this off by saying I have had an amazing
• 5:32
  time in Mythic Plus this season. It rivals season 4 of BFA for me
• 5:40
  for the most fun I've had in Mythic Plus season 4.
• 5:43
  BFA, historically one of the best seasonal live fixes with
• 5:47
  Awakened where you could use those pillars, come up with some
• 5:49
  really creative skips for the dungeons.
• 5:51
  That for me was also my first season back.
• 5:53
  So it's sort of like has that rose tinted glasses a little
• 5:56
  bit. But this season I have really,
• 6:00
  really enjoyed this season and the changes that were made to
• 6:03
  it. I do recognize that there are
• 6:06
  some pain points that could make things a bit smoother for
• 6:10
  everyone. Yeah.
• 6:13
  And Delves, obviously, if you are a long time listener to the
• 6:16
  show, you probably have some idea on my feelings about
• 6:18
  Delves. If it's your first time here, I
• 6:21
  want to prepare you and you're like, you're like a Delve lover.
• 6:24
  You're a big Delve enjoyer. I'm going to say a lot of things
• 6:28
  that I hope will make your life better in Season 2.
• 6:30
  But I did not enjoy Delves as much in Season 1 as some people.
• 6:35
  But yeah, you're right, Manny, there was people dropped Delves
• 6:39
  early and it feels like people are dropping.
• 6:44
  We say this, but see, if you go on Twitter or you go on Blue
• 6:48
  Sky, you know Reddit, there are tons and tons of posts.
• 6:52
  If you look at YouTube, it's page after page of post saying
• 6:55
  what's wrong with M + M plus is dead.
• 6:57
  We got to fix M plus. But this is a thing that people
• 7:01
  do. This is what people are saying.
• 7:04
  But when you go and look at the actual numbers, the numbers of
• 7:07
  keys run this season, I mean it, it's declining in the in the
• 7:12
  season because they all, they always decline.
• 7:14
  But it's still above what season 4 was in Dragonflight.
• 7:17
  And it's a boat on par with what season 1 was in Dragonflight.
• 7:21
  So it's yeah. We're, I would say shenanigans
• 7:25
  on comparing anything to the victory lap season of any of the
• 7:30
  last two ones. But I think you then you said
• 7:34
  Season 1 Dragonflight, and that to me is is compelling.
• 7:38
  Yeah, so season 1 Dragonfly did have a like it's slightly ahead
• 7:42
  in keys completed at this point in the season.
• 7:44
  But it's like if you look at the graphs, you can go to comp wow,
• 7:48
  competitive wow on on Reddit or go to right, right, right
• 7:51
  yourself and generate the graphs.
• 7:53
  You can see where it's almost step for step.
• 7:54
  They're like roughly the same. So people are saying, oh man,
• 7:59
  Mythic Plus is dead. I can't find groups.
• 8:01
  This is the worst time I've ever had.
• 8:03
  But the numbers aren't reflecting that.
• 8:05
  And that's, I think it's a thing.
• 8:07
  People are really bad at hyperbole.
• 8:09
  We tend to exaggerate things and in this case, it's no different.
• 8:15
  But that being said, a lot of people are saying similar things
• 8:21
  in we're unhappy. We need to find a way to fix
• 8:24
  this and everybody and their dog is doing a YouTube video with an
• 8:29
  AI thumbnail or a surprise face thumbnail saying how to fix
• 8:33
  Mythic Plus. Is that what we're going to do,
• 8:35
  man? Are we going to fix Mythic Plus
• 8:37
  today here on For Azeroth? I mean, we can definitely talk
• 8:41
  about where we feel the problems are and offers us some
• 8:45
  solutions. Obviously there are number
• 8:47
  different ways that you could approach this, this issue.
• 8:51
  And I find that the best use of our time is sort of talking
• 8:55
  about like what exactly the problem is.
• 8:58
  And then let people who are, you know, the natural designers
• 9:03
  figure out how to to approach that because obviously they're
• 9:08
  going to be different perspectives.
• 9:10
  There's the perspective of the people who are just trying to
• 9:14
  get in and are struggling at keys that like, you know, used
• 9:19
  to be roughly eights or 10s and such where they are trying to
• 9:23
  get their KSM. There are people who got their
• 9:26
  KSMA while ago and they're pushing to try and get portals
• 9:29
  and they're having their struggle.
• 9:30
  There are people who blew past that or are now trying to hit
• 9:35
  thirteens, fifteens, sixteens, whatever, and their struggles
• 9:39
  are going to be completely different.
• 9:40
  The entire implementation of this season was all about
• 9:44
  recognizing that the mythic plus audience is actually varied.
• 9:48
  And so the problems that I might say are struggles for me are
• 9:53
  going to be different than the struggles that you're having
• 9:56
  because you're not pugging into it as much.
• 10:00
  You have a select group of people who know their roles are
• 10:05
  pulling off what they they need to do.
• 10:08
  And so you're not struggling or at least languishing as much in
• 10:12
  that group Finder stuff. And so those are two different
• 10:16
  perspectives. And that doesn't reflect the
• 10:18
  perspectives of somebody who's like they might be terrified to
• 10:22
  even step into it right now. And I kind of want to address
• 10:25
  that first viewpoint because neither you or I are strictly
• 10:31
  holding that that viewpoint. So I think that is just the best
• 10:35
  for us to start on where it's I, I guess the common ground is
• 10:39
  that we neither of us can lay our flag there.
• 10:41
  And I want to actually go to comments that we have received
• 10:46
  for the show. So we had a comment from unknown
• 10:50
  actually, that's their username. They've got an accent over that
• 10:53
  U and they were talking about that their person who doesn't
• 11:00
  raid because they don't have the time, they don't do mythic plus
• 11:04
  because of the bad experiences and how sweaty they feel the the
• 11:09
  mythic plus community is. And so like, they're completely
• 11:13
  banking on delves and hoping that they don't go away as a
• 11:18
  solo process. So I'm going to talk about the
• 11:20
  mythic plus of this and then unknown.
• 11:22
  I'm going to come back to to your comment and we'll talk
• 11:25
  about the the delve part. But I also have a friend who
• 11:30
  stepped away from the game who echoed the same sentiment, who
• 11:34
  came in and was just messaging me and saying like, wow, it
• 11:38
  really feels horrible to pug right now.
• 11:41
  They got in, they levelled, leveled up their character.
• 11:44
  They wanted to heal. And so they're healing on a
• 11:48
  shaman. They are loving the loving the
• 11:49
  shaman. They they went and did elemental
• 11:52
  shaman because they wanted to give that a taste.
• 11:54
  And they're saying it feels like if I don't have a static group,
• 12:00
  that I don't have a place. And so Sean, what do you feel is
• 12:04
  really the like big scare in terms of just group finding in
• 12:10
  particular? I I feel like a lot of people
• 12:14
  will struggle with group finding.
• 12:15
  They feel like they have to be a medic comp, They have to be a
• 12:17
  medic class to get invited because people are building a
• 12:22
  team. They don't want the key to fail
• 12:23
  because when keys deplete, it's like a punishment.
• 12:26
  There's a lot of systems things that I you could go in and make
• 12:31
  adjustments, you can work on class balancing, you can punish
• 12:34
  people who leave. You can do all kinds of these
• 12:38
  little things officially these little knobs.
• 12:40
  I actually watched a video this weekend on a YouTube channel
• 12:42
  that I did not expect to see this content on and it was by
• 12:47
  Bellular Gaming And Bellular is a game is a game dev.
• 12:52
  And a lot of the times when he comes at problems, he comes at
• 12:56
  it from a dev perspective as opposed from a player
• 12:58
  perspective, which is what the rest of us do.
• 13:00
  And he points out that none of the fixes suggested by the big
• 13:07
  names, the big E people, you know what I mean?
• 13:09
  The the high end players, none of those fixes are going to work
• 13:11
  long term and a lot of them won't even work in the short
• 13:14
  term. And that we have to address
• 13:16
  systematic issues that are built in to Warcraft.
• 13:20
  And he mentions, there's a speaker that I, I love watching
• 13:24
  videos of Rory Sutherland. He's a psychological behavioral
• 13:26
  analysis, a behavioral psychologist is what he is.
• 13:30
  And he always talks about this study they did in the UK where
• 13:34
  they wanted to improve the train ride from London to Paris
• 13:38
  because they wanted it to be better for people.
• 13:40
  And they brought in all these engineers.
• 13:41
  These engineers talked about ways to improve the speed of the
• 13:45
  trains and, you know, adjust the tracks.
• 13:48
  And it was this billion dollar plus, billion dollar plus
• 13:51
  solution that would have shaved 40 minutes off of a three and a
• 13:54
  half hour, I think it is, or three hour or 20 minute train
• 13:57
  ride. And that was their solution to,
• 13:58
  hey, here's how we can improve the train ride from London to
• 14:01
  Paris. And as a behavioral
• 14:04
  psychologist, Roy Southern's suggestion was why don't you
• 14:06
  just hire a bunch of beautiful people to walk up and down the
• 14:09
  train cars and offer free drinks.
• 14:13
  And by improving the ride, by making people more comfortable,
• 14:17
  you're improving that train ride without taking any time off at
• 14:20
  all. Why did he mention that?
• 14:23
  Why am I bringing it up now? Because the problems that we
• 14:27
  have with Mythic Plus are the majority of them are created by
• 14:31
  us, the players. And I think to fix it, it's not
• 14:34
  on Blizzard to come up with system fixes.
• 14:38
  It's on us to come up with fixes.
• 14:39
  I mean, Blizzard would obviously have to implement these other
• 14:41
  things, but it's not like tweak this knob or tweak that knob and
• 14:44
  fixes it. And one of the biggest things
• 14:48
  is, is that group Finder. People don't want to sit in
• 14:50
  queue. They feel like nobody likes
• 14:52
  being rejected, right? Man?
• 14:53
  If you came to me and asked me for something and I said no,
• 14:55
  that feels bad for you. No matter what it is, being
• 14:57
  rejected sucks. You go into that group Finder if
• 15:00
  you're Adps and you queue. Even if you're a meta class DPS
• 15:05
  and you queue, you're looking at more Nos than yeses.
• 15:08
  Flex, who is a mage in one of the top guilds in the world and
• 15:12
  by all accounts is an incredible player, said that he was
• 15:15
  queuing. He filled his vault this weekend
• 15:18
  and it was 28 dungeons that he queued for for everyone that he
• 15:23
  got invited to and he's one of the best mages in the world.
• 15:26
  He plays a class that's typically well regarded and he's
• 15:28
  a player who you would recognize his name because all of his
• 15:31
  characters are flex 1234 because they have to have 28 and even
• 15:35
  he's struggling with this. How can you fix that other than
• 15:39
  convincing people that you don't have to pick meta classes?
• 15:42
  The best way I think is have a cube, have mythic plus be queue
• 15:46
  able, have it be a solo queue where you queue in and then it
• 15:51
  pulls together a group and before anybody comes in and says
• 15:54
  oh but what happens if you get 3 shadow priests?
• 15:57
  Games for decades have been building solo queue algorithms
• 16:02
  that can put together groups that aren't cursed like that.
• 16:05
  You know it could easily set a tank, a healer, minimum one
• 16:10
  melee DPS, minimum 1 range DPS, no duplicated classes.
• 16:14
  That in and of itself fixes a lot of those issues.
• 16:17
  And if you have it set based on scoring, based on the the in
• 16:21
  game build score, you know you're going to get people
• 16:23
  around the same match, the same same skill level as you.
• 16:27
  So it eliminates that whole aspect of I'm being rejected or
• 16:32
  having to choose somebody. I myself whenever I queue my
• 16:34
  key, if I haven't selected people in the 1st 30 seconds ID
• 16:39
  list and re queue because the list is so overwhelmingly long
• 16:43
  that I just can't, I can't parse it.
• 16:45
  I'm just like, I got to no, I need 3 choices please.
• 16:49
  This is too many. So I think, I don't think
• 16:52
  there's a fix for us as people. We could sit here all day long
• 16:54
  and tell people the meta doesn't matter, just take people.
• 16:57
  But as long as keys deplete, no one's ever going to take a 1900
• 17:02
  IO off meta class when they can take a 2700 IO meta class.
• 17:06
  You're going to take that meta class every single time because
• 17:10
  your brain is hardwired to think that equals success.
• 17:14
  And I want my key to succeed. Yeah, but I think make it cue
• 17:18
  able still look you. Yeah, I was going to suggest
• 17:22
  something similar. I think that the game of the
• 17:28
  gamification of of World of Warcraft needs to be less about
• 17:32
  the menus, the waiting lobbies and such.
• 17:34
  And we've gotten a there is no place quite like Mythic Plus
• 17:40
  where you are sitting there looking at options, names and
• 17:44
  numbers, like when you are trying to put together a group
• 17:47
  for Mythic Plus. And I think that the key system
• 17:51
  itself might need some sort of change.
• 17:55
  Whereas players, all five members would put their key in
• 18:02
  and the five members putting their key in would change the
• 18:05
  way that the key would be, and then people would all benefit
• 18:09
  from it. So it would create this
• 18:14
  permutation where the key would be that what somebody was
• 18:19
  throwing into the key would be important.
• 18:22
  And that extra level, right, would then start decentivizing
• 18:27
  the class meta. And I think that's what I was
• 18:31
  trying to do was in some way or some fashion de incentivize this
• 18:37
  perfect, this perfect comp that has become so ingrained with the
• 18:44
  culture. Because you're right.
• 18:45
  I am playing an enhanced shaman week after week.
• 18:49
  Blizzard is like, oh man, shamans, we got to tune them
• 18:53
  down. My goodness.
• 18:56
  Let's post an entire article, Wowhead.
• 18:59
  Post an entire article about how this thing that's not broken
• 19:01
  right now in the future will be broken.
• 19:04
  And I think that there's always going to be some class that is
• 19:07
  like that. There's always going to be some
• 19:11
  key that is the easiest key that somebody is going to run at
• 19:16
  nauseam whenever they are not limited to the five keys that
• 19:20
  their group goes with. And we need a system that
• 19:25
  changes that. It should that still lets you
• 19:30
  group together. I think you should still be able
• 19:33
  to target a key. People want to target dungeons
• 19:35
  for specific drops. I don't think you should be.
• 19:37
  I don't think we should remove that.
• 19:39
  I I'm wondering about targeting dungeons for specific drops.
• 19:43
  I think that when you do rating. You could target bosses for
• 19:48
  specific drops. If you target bosses, yes.
• 19:50
  When you do delves, you can't target at all, right?
• 19:55
  No, but delve gear is kind of shit.
• 19:59
  Delve gear is a smaller pool and built more towards like I think
• 20:06
  like the I'm going in alone so my caster shield has a defensive
• 20:12
  thing and so that doesn't make any sense outside of a delve.
• 20:15
  But I think delve gear is actually geared toward delves
• 20:18
  and because delves are unique. A lot of those things don't work
• 20:22
  outside of that environment. OK, I'll take.
• 20:25
  PvP gear I'll. Accept it.
• 20:27
  Yeah, targeted. You buy it.
• 20:28
  Incredibly targeted, so you can have different levels of
• 20:31
  targeting. And I think that because Mythic
• 20:37
  Plus has a higher acquisition rate of gear, or at least a
• 20:43
  higher ceiling of how much gear you can get in the week than a
• 20:46
  raid. I think that they could do
• 20:51
  something where it's like, hey, I don't want.
• 20:54
  I don't have to target X dungeon AY dungeon because a particular
• 20:59
  drop. Because I think when people run
• 21:01
  dungeons at nauseam outside of the fastest, easiest dungeon
• 21:04
  that can be done, they're doing it because they're targeting
• 21:07
  drops. And so I wouldn't mind breaking
• 21:11
  that that habit as well. We'll have to disagree on that.
• 21:16
  Being able to target those specific drops, I think is
• 21:19
  integral. That's been something you've
• 21:21
  been able to do since back to the beginning and can even still
• 21:23
  do like in Heroic and stuff. Yeah, well, we'll disagree.
• 21:27
  On that, I I agree with every statement you you make.
• 21:31
  I think it's a matter of does that need to continue?
• 21:34
  Can we move into a world where that isn't needed?
• 21:37
  I I'm not so stuck on it, but I definitely know that players
• 21:44
  it's a change and there's cons and and pros to go with that as
• 21:49
  well. You could change it so that
• 21:51
  every key you do drops, drops some sort of currency and that
• 21:57
  currency allows you to buy something directly and then it's
• 22:00
  immediately targetable. And now I've solved your
• 22:02
  solution, your issue with it, while still continuing with what
• 22:06
  I was saying. Yeah.
• 22:08
  Yeah, I'm a fan of currency, but I think they're yeah, I'm, I'm a
• 22:12
  fan of currency to buy specific items.
• 22:16
  But I think we would need to be careful about that, that, I
• 22:19
  don't know, I would have to see like the logistics of it.
• 22:22
  I don't think we should be able to buy every piece really
• 22:25
  quickly. And I think maybe it's even
• 22:27
  something that you would delay until the .5 patch and then that
• 22:30
  currency kicks in to sort of give you bad luck protection
• 22:34
  halfway through the season maybe.
• 22:37
  But again, that's one of those. I think that's another one of
• 22:39
  those things. It's like that fixes a symptom,
• 22:42
  doesn't fix the problem. Well, that's, that's why it was
• 22:47
  an entire side of yeah, I was trying to speak towards people
• 22:52
  who are incentivizing class compositions and how do we do
• 22:57
  that? And that's why putting the
• 22:59
  incentives on something else. So in your example with the
• 23:04
  matchmaking, I think you were trying to create a system where
• 23:10
  people are not selecting in amongst themselves that they can
• 23:15
  blame Blizzard for the comp that they didn't want or oh, I got
• 23:19
  this guy. It's Blizzard's issue.
• 23:21
  They they signed me up with this.
• 23:23
  I've been ELO mythic plus hell because I keep getting signed up
• 23:27
  with these laggards or whatever it is.
• 23:29
  Like obviously the psychology would shift and and stuff but
• 23:33
  like at least you wouldn't be sitting there being declined
• 23:37
  over and over again. You would get into a group, it
• 23:40
  would succeed and or fail. I would suggest that once you
• 23:45
  are put into the key you have an immediate deserter buff.
• 23:52
  That is 30 minutes if you complete a key deserter buff
• 23:56
  wiped out. Yep, soon as you complete it,
• 23:58
  you do that key in 8 minutes, clear your debuff, go into the
• 24:02
  next. One Yep, I also we would have to
• 24:04
  either get rid of key depletion, which I think we can get rid of
• 24:08
  anyway, I think it's time or you would it would have to be either
• 24:11
  key depletion is gone or if you do a custom like if you're doing
• 24:15
  a custom built group, you and five friends, key depletion
• 24:18
  exists. If you're doing group Finder E
• 24:21
  depletion doesn't exist. Like one of those things I think
• 24:24
  would have to be how that would work because you wouldn't want
• 24:27
  somebody's key to deplete after being randomly grouped with
• 24:30
  people because that would feel terrible.
• 24:32
  You would you would definitely feel bad about that.
• 24:35
  Yeah, I think in both our examples I would want pre
• 24:38
  depletion to be a thing of the past.
• 24:41
  I actually think that if we did a group Finder like you're
• 24:46
  talking about, I don't think you get keys anymore.
• 24:49
  I think you would queue in as a five person group and you would
• 24:51
  just go through the system as a five person pre made group.
• 24:55
  Yeah, You know what? I'm down with that too.
• 24:57
  You have to time a key to get a key that works for me.
• 25:01
  And then another thing, this wasn't mentioned in the video,
• 25:03
  but this is something that we have a problem where people just
• 25:07
  decide they want to treat other people like garbage, you know?
• 25:10
  Oh, why are you in my 10 and you don't know how this mechanic
• 25:13
  works? Well, because maybe it's the
• 25:15
  first time I've done A10. You don't know.
• 25:16
  I haven't been playing the season since the beginning of
• 25:20
  the season. Maybe there's all kinds of
• 25:21
  reasons people can be learning at all the different key levels,
• 25:24
  not just we assign like these quote UN quote, low keys to
• 25:27
  people. And it's like, oh, these are
• 25:29
  your learner keys. But at every level, if you're
• 25:31
  somebody who only does fours and fives, you expect that anybody
• 25:35
  else coming into a four or five knows those keys.
• 25:37
  Why should I have to teach you how to do them at this key level
• 25:39
  that I find difficult? And then if you're somebody who
• 25:41
  does 10s, why should I have to teach you how to do that?
• 25:44
  And it's I saw it on Twitter the other day.
• 25:45
  Somebody complained that a tank that noted a thing in A10 and
• 25:48
  it's like. I've seen it in our very own
• 25:50
  discord. Yeah.
• 25:51
  So it's like every key level is a learning key level.
• 25:54
  But to eliminate that, that aspect that that, that, that
• 25:59
  need that humanity has to be better than someone else or to
• 26:03
  point a finger and have someone to blame.
• 26:05
  I think we institute something that they already use in
• 26:08
  Overwatch and it's you you give points, you give bonus points,
• 26:12
  you pick a player for doing something like it's called like
• 26:15
  highlight the player or player of the game or whatever you vote
• 26:17
  for somebody commendation system.
• 26:19
  Yeah, exactly accommodation. So we we do a key together.
• 26:22
  We group up at the end of the dungeon.
• 26:23
  I can't choose my B net friends, but I any other stranger that's
• 26:26
  in that group, I can give a plus one to two of them and they get
• 26:30
  a plus one, maybe on a score on a personal score that helps with
• 26:33
  the matchmaking, but it also maybe give them an incentive
• 26:37
  bonus like extra crests, extra valor stones, you know what I
• 26:40
  mean? And then all of a sudden people,
• 26:41
  instead of going out of their way to be miserable to one
• 26:44
  another, now they're going out of their way to be nice.
• 26:47
  Like, oh, if I'm maybe, if I'm just nice today, if I just say,
• 26:50
  hey, thanks for the key, a great healing.
• 26:53
  I've started ending every key with lovely healing, amazing
• 26:56
  DPS. Thanks for the run, whether
• 26:57
  that's true or not, because the key finished and we didn't kill
• 27:01
  each other. So in my mind, both of those
• 27:03
  things count. Lovely healing, amazing DPS,
• 27:06
  Thanks for the key. But if we put an incentive
• 27:10
  system in that says hey reward people, score them for doing
• 27:14
  good. At first I was like, we could
• 27:16
  have one the other way too, but people are instantly going to
• 27:19
  use that as a weapon to downvote people.
• 27:22
  So just an upvote. You can upvote people for being
• 27:24
  good, not being our friends. And I think that is a way to
• 27:30
  pull some of that toxicity out of Mythic Plus, yeah.
• 27:37
  I would encourage that. I think the commendation system
• 27:39
  would be really strong. I think that that's something
• 27:42
  that immediately like I would put in the great vault.
• 27:46
  It's like at the end of the week you open up and it's like,
• 27:49
  congratulations, you've you've received X amount of
• 27:52
  commendation. Here's your prize.
• 27:53
  And then somebody starts the week right when they're about to
• 27:56
  go back into system being like, oh, wow, like this is my reward
• 28:00
  for being a good egg for being part of the solution.
• 28:03
  And that would rein, that would reinforce that same behavior.
• 28:06
  And again, I'm not saying Blizzard should be hand holding,
• 28:12
  but there should be positive reinforcements.
• 28:15
  The entire part of key to P, the depleting the entire point of
• 28:21
  the Challenger's peril affix. These are negative
• 28:25
  reinforcements. It's like be more careful about
• 28:28
  your your group because if your group fails, your key will
• 28:33
  deplete. Be more careful about your
• 28:35
  deaths because if you die you will lose time.
• 28:38
  So now I think both of us are saying let's start using some
• 28:42
  positive reinforcements. And I love that commendation.
• 28:46
  Overwatch uses it like you were saying.
• 28:49
  I would say that in order for you to benefit from the system,
• 28:53
  you need to engage in the system.
• 28:54
  So if you go through the entire week and you haven't provided
• 28:58
  any commendations to anybody like you, you can skip through
• 29:01
  it. I'm not going to force anybody
• 29:02
  go ahead and skip through it. But if you don't provide any
• 29:04
  common accommodations, any commendations that you got in
• 29:07
  that key don't count for you. Yeah, that's interesting.
• 29:15
  I I really like the put it at the great vault idea, because
• 29:19
  then it's not like you don't leave a key going.
• 29:20
  Oh, I didn't nobody. I was great.
• 29:22
  Nike, I talked them through that.
• 29:23
  They didn't give me a commendation.
• 29:24
  You just you don't know, it's anonymous.
• 29:26
  It's like you get to the end of the great Vault.
• 29:27
  OK Oh, I got this many combinations.
• 29:29
  Hey, great. I was a good person last week.
• 29:31
  I feel good about this now. I'm going to say I like that a
• 29:34
  lot. I think, I think that helps.
• 29:36
  And it works in a system where we're randomly queued together,
• 29:40
  which, and I know there's somebody listening to this right
• 29:43
  now screaming at their car radio.
• 29:45
  You can't put us in a queue. I'm going to get queued with
• 29:47
  people that are bad. And the way those systems work
• 29:50
  is you get matched with people you're supposed to be matched
• 29:52
  with. They do it in PvP.
• 29:54
  There was like this famous example where these PvP players
• 29:57
  were complaining that the matchmaking was broken, so they
• 29:59
  turned it off so that they weren't matching the highest
• 30:01
  against the highest or whatever. And it was it made the people
• 30:04
  that weren't. Anyway, we went completely the
• 30:06
  opposite way that all of the complainers thought it was going
• 30:08
  to go. And it turns out they love the
• 30:09
  matchmaking system. So yeah, I think that those two
• 30:15
  things, remove key depletion or get rid of keys completely and
• 30:18
  just have us queue for them like we do for heroics.
• 30:21
  That would be so lovely. And yeah, you can queue with any
• 30:25
  number of people in a group and send to accommodations those
• 30:28
  things alone. And then you want to.
• 30:30
  Another issue you're going to have to address is lack of
• 30:33
  tanks, lack of healers. But you can do that because
• 30:35
  you're queueing. You can do it the exact same way
• 30:36
  they're already doing it with heroic and normal dungeon queues
• 30:39
  and give those incentive bags. If you're a tank or a healer
• 30:43
  right now, log on. The first thing you should do
• 30:45
  when you log on, if you don't have like a plan for the day,
• 30:48
  check those cues because they come with three augment runes
• 30:51
  that sell for like 2 to 2.5 KA piece.
• 30:54
  Right now you can make 7 grand. You can make 8 grand just by
• 31:00
  running a 10 minute heroic dungeon.
• 31:04
  If you do not need the gold immediately, hold on to those.
• 31:09
  As. Soon as we're getting close to a
• 31:11
  new raid then start selling them.
• 31:14
  Yes you can get like 7 grand right now, but you wait until
• 31:19
  just before the raid comes out and you will make a lot more.
• 31:24
  Yeah, but I honestly, so Manny, as far as Mythic Plus goes,
• 31:29
  those are the things, I think those things alone make the
• 31:32
  system, they they help fix the community perception.
• 31:35
  They help make us, they force us to be good to each other.
• 31:40
  And I think those things alone, you're getting rejected less.
• 31:43
  And you know, if you're looking for reasons to say good things
• 31:46
  about other people, you start to focus on that more than focus on
• 31:50
  the bad things. Those things work.
• 31:52
  We could talk about gearing and how you know you should drop
• 31:55
  mythic track down to plus 8 instead of plus 10 and your
• 31:57
  vault and how you know don't give 5.
• 32:01
  Wait, wait, sorry. I know you're just running
• 32:03
  through various things to say that they don't matter, but we
• 32:05
  will hit that. But I, I, I, I shouldn't cut you
• 32:10
  off. You're about to explain where
• 32:12
  the focus is. Please continue.
• 32:15
  Yeah, so that's the people people issues people have is is
• 32:20
  oh, it's too hard to get gilded crests.
• 32:22
  You have to run a + 8 or higher to get them, which and it was a
• 32:24
  + 9 up until a couple of weeks ago.
• 32:27
  Oh, you can only get mythic track O to your vault out of a +
• 32:29
  10 that she needs to be lower dungeons are too hard, but
• 32:32
  classes aren't balanced. All of these things are people
• 32:36
  complaining about you know and it's your mileage is going to
• 32:40
  vary on those. I personally don't find this
• 32:42
  this season very hard, but I literally play this game for a
• 32:46
  living so that needs to be factored in when we discuss the
• 32:50
  difficulty of these dungeons. Should gearing be easier?
• 32:53
  I think so. Is this season seem as hard as
• 32:56
  it does just because our gearing is so much further back than it
• 32:59
  was? I also think so.
• 33:01
  If you look at right now doing a + 10 which rewards a portal and
• 33:05
  mythic track in your vault, and you're comparing that to
• 33:07
  Dragonflight season one, 2-3 or four, and you're saying, oh man,
• 33:11
  these are way harder. Well, they're not, but at this
• 33:15
  same point in those seasons, you were Max item level for the
• 33:18
  tier. Right now, if you're not 639,
• 33:22
  and you're probably not, if you're saying the dungeons are
• 33:24
  too hard, you're not Max item level.
• 33:27
  If you're 626, which is Max heroic track, there's 13 item
• 33:30
  levels left on the board to do these dungeons and that's why
• 33:33
  you're finding them harder. You used to be able to over gear
• 33:36
  them. Now you can't because they
• 33:37
  shifted the gearing deeper into it.
• 33:39
  And they did that because the community quote UN quote
• 33:44
  amorphous form claimed that Mythic Plus needed to give
• 33:47
  rewards. It was too easy to get rewards
• 33:50
  from Mythic Plus. Oh, it's too easy to gear up.
• 33:52
  We're too generous. We got to.
• 33:53
  And all they did is listen. All they do is listen to us.
• 33:56
  And every time they do, we're cutting off our nose to spite
• 33:59
  our face. I, I I think that if we focus on
• 34:07
  the group finding, putting together that group, getting
• 34:12
  into the keys, that will fix I think the overwhelming majority
• 34:18
  of the issues that players are having with the keys this
• 34:23
  season. And if one thing could be taken
• 34:26
  away from this, this episode, Faz death def it's it's that
• 34:32
  like, let's, let's get people into this.
• 34:35
  Let's help them, help them find groups.
• 34:37
  A a more structured matchmaking system that lets them progress
• 34:42
  based on what they have done. And not necessarily be like, I'm
• 34:46
  going to get the seven plus key and jump right into that.
• 34:48
  I think would generally help because at this point, it feels
• 34:53
  like the community has learned a lot of the wrong lessons and is
• 34:56
  causing its own issues. I would.
• 34:59
  I'd say that we're agreeing on that.
• 35:01
  Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think at this point when
• 35:07
  the community was saying like, hey, yeah, Mythic Plus was
• 35:11
  giving too much gear, it was carrying out gear too quickly.
• 35:18
  That's when we start getting into situation where I sort of
• 35:23
  agree. I think that the difficulty of
• 35:29
  mythic plus in the past where I was getting mythic track gear
• 35:33
  compared to the difficulty of a mythic dungeon, sorry rather a
• 35:37
  mythic raid. Whereas getting mythic track
• 35:39
  gear was not equivalent with taking that as like the
• 35:45
  barometer first boss in mythic raid.
• 35:49
  First two. I'd say the first 3 bosses are
• 35:54
  kind of there before you hit a wall in a neuberar palace.
• 35:59
  So as of today, right now you can easily pug first four.
• 36:04
  Yeah, but the the 4th, the 4th boss was a was sort of a step up
• 36:08
  though, right? No ration on was kind of a
• 36:10
  pushover. Oh OK, so first four bosses in
• 36:14
  the raid of a raid that has 8 bosses?
• 36:18
  Yeah. That's that's really solid.
• 36:21
  That's going to get you something in your vault, plus
• 36:24
  all of the bosses that you down, you can get a chance at loot.
• 36:28
  Obviously you're not guaranteed loot because out of a team of
• 36:32
  let's say it's a full PUG and they're going to bring in 30
• 36:34
  people, right? You're only getting 6 pieces per
• 36:37
  boss. Yeah, it's 20 people in mid
• 36:39
  grade though. Oh, yeah, right.
• 36:41
  Sorry. I apologize.
• 36:43
  Yeah. So 20 people, 4 pieces of loot.
• 36:46
  The the the fraction still holds up that it's one out of five.
• 36:49
  OK, so you and then like the guaranteed piece if you down at
• 36:54
  least two bosses, right? Yeah, I think 4 bosses.
• 36:57
  Actually I think 4 bosses is 2 slots.
• 37:00
  Oh really? I thought it was five.
• 37:01
  OK, so it's 24 and and 6:00. Six, Yeah.
• 37:05
  Yeah, so 2 two pieces guaranteed, plus one out of five
• 37:10
  on four bosses to get lewd. If you were to say what the
• 37:15
  equivalent difficulty is in Mythic Plus, what would you say
• 37:20
  that breaking point is? To put those bosses on par, and
• 37:25
  I mean, I don't, I would say 10s.
• 37:27
  I don't find 10s if you know, just and I'm also also saying
• 37:31
  this is from mythic raid perspective, like I'm on a
• 37:34
  mythic grading team. So it's if you know, if you do
• 37:39
  the homework and you take the time to learn the dungeons ahead
• 37:41
  of time and you use your full toolkit.
• 37:43
  I've actually been seeing that a lot lately as people are going
• 37:45
  in and they're not, you know, they're on a monk, but they're
• 37:47
  not leg sweeping, they're not using ring a piece.
• 37:48
  They're not they don't know what to kick and it's like and then
• 37:51
  they're saying how hard the dungeons are.
• 37:52
  Well, of course are you don't. You're not using your.
• 37:54
  Toolkit you're you're creating your own disadvantages.
• 37:56
  It's super hard, but you don't push buttons.
• 37:59
  It's so I would say like, I don't think I, I think ends are
• 38:05
  easier than. They'll then start moving it
• 38:08
  elevens. Yeah, I would say probably 11 is
• 38:13
  where you're on par with Bulgrax blood bound Sikran, maybe 12 for
• 38:20
  rationale. Yeah.
• 38:23
  So the difference being you only need five people to do those.
• 38:27
  But and and really you don't have to look at like 11 and 12
• 38:30
  and like everything caps A10 loop and and portals are at 10.
• 38:35
  But anything above a 10, it's basically.
• 38:42
  It's still the reward you're saying hey, 10 is actually too
• 38:48
  low and you're getting mythic rewards and you have a two out
• 38:52
  of five chance at the end of every dungeon.
• 38:54
  Oh, sorry, I apologize, I'm wrong on that.
• 38:55
  You're. Going to have everything until.
• 38:57
  We get to the thing, but like the the rewards, right?
• 39:02
  Cap out at 10 and two out of five you're getting I think 6
• 39:07
  out of 6 heroic gear. No.
• 39:11
  What's the truth? Sorry for mythic plus.
• 39:14
  Mythic Plus. If you do 10 end of dungeons,
• 39:17
  it's one out of 60 end of dungeon.
• 39:19
  Yeah, it's like 2 of 6 heroic. Two out of six heroic, right?
• 39:24
  So two out of five chance. 2 out of 6 heroic you are getting the
• 39:30
  the Crest in order to push that into the mythic level.
• 39:33
  But as I almost slipped up, the mythic gear you get is from the
• 39:38
  vault. You do 1 mythic, you get a
• 39:42
  mythic slot in your in your vault.
• 39:44
  You have to do another three on top of that in order to get your
• 39:47
  second slot, right? Yeah, OK.
• 39:50
  And it's already lesser difficulty.
• 39:53
  I think so. Yeah, From what you're saying,
• 39:56
  from my perspective, I agree with you, right.
• 40:00
  Unfortunately, we don't have another person.
• 40:03
  Lex would agree. I'm certain certain Lex would
• 40:06
  agree with us. I, I mean, I'm not sure how many
• 40:10
  10s Lex has gone through at this point and I'm not sure how much
• 40:16
  mythic rating Lex has gone through at this point.
• 40:18
  So it's, again, it's like the, the perception that we would be
• 40:22
  looking at what Lex's perception on not as much her experience
• 40:26
  with that. People who have experience doing
• 40:29
  these 10s and doing mythic and say, hey, this is different.
• 40:33
  Let us know. We're, we have a bunch of
• 40:35
  conversations in the Discord or you can comment on Spotify or
• 40:41
  Apple. We, I do see those comments just
• 40:43
  like unknowns comment as well. I think that when people are
• 40:49
  saying it was too profitable, we'll say profitable for this
• 40:54
  profitable to do Mythic Plus, that is something that was
• 40:57
  universally being recognized. Lex was saying she felt that it
• 41:01
  was mandatory for her to go and do Mythic Pluses and she was
• 41:05
  looking for Delves to be the supplanted, almost become the
• 41:10
  new alternative. I talked about in one episode
• 41:13
  that, hey, you know what, you could do the entirety of the
• 41:17
  raid and just do the raid. And Sean, you took umbrage with
• 41:22
  me. You're like, you are smoking
• 41:24
  something, Manny. I don't know any team that could
• 41:27
  do it without also doing Mythic Plus and outside gear.
• 41:32
  And the conversation that we had there, I had to cut short.
• 41:37
  But I'm going to bring it back because I think you put in a big
• 41:42
  qualifier there and your qualifier was that the team
• 41:46
  getting AOTC, the team getting cutting edge, right would need
• 41:52
  that outside gear in order to get it within the within this
• 41:55
  season, right, because of the speed that the seasons are
• 41:59
  going. And I hadn't put that qualifier
• 42:01
  in. And I think that when you put
• 42:04
  that qualifier in Sean, you are 110% correct, right, But.
• 42:10
  I would hug you right now if we were in the same room, Manny.
• 42:15
  But without that qualifier, if you are not looking to get
• 42:20
  cutting edge, if you are just looking or sorry, if you're not
• 42:23
  looking to get cutting edge, if you're not looking to get AOTC,
• 42:26
  if you are a group that is trying to complete this before
• 42:33
  going on to the next rate, even after the next rate comes out.
• 42:37
  Because this is something that did exist back in the day,
• 42:40
  right? That there would be teams that
• 42:42
  are like, yeah, we've got to get through this.
• 42:44
  Raiden completed and then we'll start.
• 42:46
  There are teams today that do that.
• 42:49
  Big shout out to Silky Raven and EJ.
• 42:53
  They just in Dragonflight wanted to complete Vault of the Tiny
• 42:59
  Hands, as they called it, before going in and doing the Crucible.
• 43:05
  So they completed that even though the next raid had come
• 43:09
  out. Now, how much of their group had
• 43:11
  gotten some gear bonuses from the pretty stuff?
• 43:15
  I can't say. I'm just saying that there are
• 43:17
  teams that will go and go and complete it.
• 43:20
  But separately from that, it is something that you can do in a
• 43:25
  bubble right in this, but you have to like purposely delve
• 43:30
  into that bubble and that that's what kind of makes it this
• 43:32
  thought exercise and not a practicality.
• 43:34
  And I think Sean, you are 100% talking about the practicality
• 43:38
  of the current environment, right?
• 43:41
  And there is no argument against that because the seasons are
• 43:45
  faster than they've ever been before.
• 43:47
  The gear, the gearing that we have is based on the speed of
• 43:52
  the seasons, the cadence that we are getting, getting stuff.
• 43:55
  Even if the newer bar finery caps out, let's say next week,
• 44:01
  well, guess what? Teams that didn't touch any
• 44:05
  Mythic are going to have access to 639 Ring and all of those.
• 44:10
  The stuff that comes through with the patch that is coming
• 44:13
  out soon. So there's a lot of systems that
• 44:15
  will allow for additional power creep.
• 44:18
  I think that Season 2 of Dragonflight was huge for the
• 44:24
  power creep of gear because that was the first tier that we had
• 44:28
  the upgrade system and it was the fastest that the upgrade
• 44:32
  system has been in its entire information thus far.
• 44:37
  And we had teams just bulldozing bosses because they were able to
• 44:40
  just completely out gear stuff and Blizzard had said after the
• 44:46
  fact. So I think gearing is huge in
• 44:49
  terms of like how quickly these these fights can be defeated,
• 44:54
  how quickly these teams can get power.
• 44:58
  You know from top to bottom you. Know what we didn't hear in
• 45:01
  Season 2 of Dragon Fight? A mythic plus is too hard.
• 45:05
  This ray is too hard. Oh, my God.
• 45:08
  Why is it so difficult to do a 10?
• 45:11
  We didn't hear any of that. Do you know why we didn't hear
• 45:12
  that, Manny? Because we were able.
• 45:16
  Yeah, 'cause we were able to Max gear so fast.
• 45:20
  I like, I'm a, I'm a Max gear fan.
• 45:22
  I for the record, mythic plussers out there who are like,
• 45:26
  we need to, we need it needs to be easier to gear up.
• 45:28
  I'm with you. I'm one of you.
• 45:30
  I am the loudest among us. Faster gearing is better.
• 45:35
  But yeah, we that's something we didn't hear in Dragonfly season
• 45:38
  2. Nobody said, oh man.
• 45:40
  I mean, they complained about some of the dungeons just
• 45:42
  because they weren't great, but nobody said this is too hard,
• 45:46
  this is unplayable, this is broken and plus is dead.
• 45:49
  They didn't say any of that. Instead, they argued about
• 45:51
  augmentation. I I think we did the complaints
• 45:59
  about season 2 Mythic plus were, Oh my goodness, I'm getting one
• 46:04
  shot like the, the damage is too spiky and that was a dragon
• 46:07
  flight from the get go. They knew that they were heading
• 46:09
  there and they wish that they could have solved in terms of
• 46:13
  this season. We're not seeing stuff happen
• 46:16
  because of spiky damage. We're seeing it become an issue
• 46:20
  of mechanical issues. It's a, it's a matter of like,
• 46:23
  oh, I don't have a million hard stops anymore because you pruned
• 46:28
  away hard stops. I don't have as much in terms of
• 46:34
  immunity because because like immunities aren't, aren't the
• 46:40
  the deal anymore. And I think people have to
• 46:46
  understand that in an infinitely scaling system, there are
• 46:51
  basically 3 inevitable things that will happen and it's which
• 46:56
  one you hit against first. Either your damage can't keep up
• 47:01
  and the and you can't kill enemies fast enough and so the
• 47:05
  timer is going to be what restrains you.
• 47:09
  The enemy's damage scales too far and then they start killing
• 47:13
  you too fast, which is what we saw in season 2.
• 47:18
  Or the third thing, which is too much is coming at me and I can't
• 47:23
  handle it all. Do you?
• 47:27
  Is there another way that this could go?
• 47:29
  No, no. And you could even lump the
• 47:32
  third one in with the first one. Too much is coming at me.
• 47:35
  Therefore they're doing too much damage because they're you're
• 47:38
  having more come at you because you're pulling bigger, because
• 47:41
  you want to hit those timers because you have to kill the
• 47:43
  mobs fast. So it's sort of those are sort
• 47:44
  of tied together. But yeah, that's it's just those
• 47:47
  like that's it was wondering. This is a holy tricky thing.
• 47:51
  Do you? Know what I mean by that?
• 47:53
  No, I'm not very religious. Sorry, I'm talking about the
• 48:00
  Holy Trinity of enemy design. OK, there are in pretty much
• 48:06
  every game, there are, there are three, three points to any
• 48:10
  enemy. The enemy can do a lot of
• 48:12
  damage. The enemy can take a lot of
• 48:15
  damage, right? Or the enemy can be really fast.
• 48:20
  If something does a lot of damage and takes a lot of
• 48:25
  damage, it should be slow so that you can avoid it, right?
• 48:29
  It does like a big wind up hit and smashes and you dodge that
• 48:32
  hit and you keep chipping away at it.
• 48:33
  A lot of bosses work like that in in things it could be really
• 48:39
  fast and do a lot of damage, at which point you should be able
• 48:43
  to kill it fast. Think like zerglings in
• 48:44
  StarCraft 2, right? You're like they, they, they
• 48:47
  come at you, they're fast and stuff, but you can wipe them
• 48:49
  out. Or it could be slow.
• 48:52
  Sorry, rather it could be fast and take a lot of damage, but it
• 48:56
  doesn't do that much damage so you just have to like kind of
• 49:00
  overwhelm it before it gets to you.
• 49:03
  Yep. I'm with you.
• 49:04
  OK, I understand now. Now in terms of Mythic plus,
• 49:09
  enemies have two high health pulls, so you can't, right?
• 49:14
  And they do a lot of damage. So you can't do big pulls
• 49:17
  because if you bring too many things together that do a lot of
• 49:19
  damage, you will be overwhelmed. So you avoid it.
• 49:22
  You it's the speed at which you can go through the dungeon that
• 49:25
  is that you you have to use or enemies dive really fast, do a
• 49:30
  lot of damage. So you go I'm going to observe
• 49:33
  through them. You kill them quickly, you do a
• 49:35
  big pull, you make sure you can survive that initial onslaught,
• 49:37
  but you kill them all to get through it or you do the big
• 49:42
  pools, but you can weather through it all.
• 49:45
  And I think that that's kind of the trifecta we're looking at
• 49:48
  here. Something has to give and for a
• 49:52
  lot of the time when Blizzard was evolving Mythic Plus, I
• 49:56
  think it's been a lot of, hey, these groups have stuff that
• 50:01
  overlaps and if you bring them together, it's going to
• 50:03
  overwhelm you in terms of damage or in terms of interrupting and
• 50:09
  stopping them, which I think is the speed.
• 50:11
  The speed at which the damage is coming in is more expressed in,
• 50:15
  Oh, I can do all these stuns and stops and interrupts to hold off
• 50:20
  that damage, to avoid that damage.
• 50:21
  But when the damage comes in, it's bad.
• 50:24
  And I'd say in the war Within, there's been a lot of passive
• 50:27
  damage. We can no longer avoid it.
• 50:30
  So now we have to worry about the the.
• 50:33
  The problem is that since the beginning, Blizzard has been
• 50:38
  training us that Mythic Plus is meant to be done with giant
• 50:42
  poles. Like from the very beginning.
• 50:45
  That's what they've taught us. Hey, pull more.
• 50:48
  We see it in all the MD is. We see it in the Great Bush
• 50:51
  through every Legion, BFA, Shadow Lands, Dragonflight.
• 50:56
  It was all pull more. You know, it's that that mean
• 51:01
  from Leon, the professional professional with Gary Oldman
• 51:05
  when he's on the phone and he's like they Leon's killing all of
• 51:08
  his men and he looks at his guy. He says bring me everyone.
• 51:11
  He says everyone boss and he just screams everyone.
• 51:15
  That's that's what it is. That's how we pull them and
• 51:17
  they've Blizzard taught us that. Blizzard trained us to do that.
• 51:20
  Blizzard though all those examples is.
• 51:22
  And then this season, Blizzard said not like that.
• 51:26
  And they put in every pack has seven or eight casters.
• 51:29
  But we're dumb, Manny. We're dumb.
• 51:32
  And we were trained to do it one way.
• 51:34
  This is like when you ask anybody in the Navy to do
• 51:36
  anything slightly different from how they've done it for 30
• 51:38
  years, They're going to have. Friends who are ex Navy and
• 51:41
  they're smart people. You just leave the Navy alone.
• 51:46
  Yeah, they're going to do it wrong.
• 51:51
  We're dumb. Yeah, Yeah.
• 51:54
  I think it's it's that paradigm shift that we're not used to
• 51:59
  doing it this way. It's just painful to.
• 52:02
  It's not fun. It's boring to go pack.
• 52:04
  For pack, I like to go fast. I like Mythic Plus because it's
• 52:09
  timed and because it's fast. I like to go fast.
• 52:14
  I think it's unintuitive for sure to say go a go more
• 52:19
  deliberately in in this, but that makes the the timer more
• 52:24
  important. I don't think it's unintuitive
• 52:30
  per SE to in the nature of the entire game.
• 52:35
  It's just so radically different from what we're doing before
• 52:38
  that. Yeah, people are brushing
• 52:41
  against it and being like, oh wait, I can't just negate these
• 52:47
  packs for the 1st 20 seconds because I that's how long my
• 52:49
  stops are going to roll for, right?
• 52:51
  There's just too much avoidable damage.
• 52:54
  Yeah, what do we do? We bring a disc priest who can
• 52:58
  prevent the damage and the meta gets locked.
• 53:00
  Oh, we, we need more interrupts. Bring me a prop paladin.
• 53:03
  The meta gets locked. We took away such little
• 53:06
  silence. OK, that's fine.
• 53:08
  This guy's got 1000 Shields. I will say one thing I would I
• 53:15
  really need Blizzard to do, and this is not just a this season
• 53:20
  thing, this is all season thing. If we're going to continue with
• 53:23
  this, these are the casters in the pack.
• 53:26
  And it's not 7 or 8, it's three or four.
• 53:28
  Who cares? Whatever number you you want to
• 53:30
  put when those casters do a dangerous spell.
• 53:35
  I don't want players relying on a week or a pack to recognize
• 53:39
  that I need that spell to look dangerous, that thing to have
• 53:44
  the wind up of all wind UPS. I need that catcher to be like,
• 53:49
  I'm bringing in the meteor and everybody and all the other mobs
• 53:53
  turn around and go like, oh, crap.
• 53:56
  So you know that you got to stop that.
• 53:59
  Like it's, I think that part of the issue that the war within,
• 54:05
  because it's caused these particular spells that can be
• 54:10
  interrupted to be dangerous, they need to absolutely
• 54:17
  Telegraph those punches. They can't just look like normal
• 54:20
  Caspers. They got to have spiraling
• 54:22
  graphics all around them, gathering energy sort of stuff.
• 54:27
  And I think that would help because too many players who are
• 54:35
  like you and I who research this stuff when it's on PTR, go
• 54:40
  through and and run it, understand this stuff, download
• 54:43
  our our mod pack to be like that one's interruptible and stuff.
• 54:48
  Have a break where they don't understand that not everybody
• 54:52
  has done that and somebody will come into the group and they'll
• 54:56
  be fighting and they'll be like, oh, that big rock man, he looks
• 54:58
  dangerous. Not knowing that that totem that
• 55:01
  that guy put down, That's the thing that needs to die.
• 55:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that disconnect, right.
• 55:09
  We got a we could all do a little bit better at recognizing
• 55:12
  that not everybody plays this game 10 hours a day, seven days
• 55:18
  a week. And I think that's another thing
• 55:21
  too, that we need to listen less to professional Warcraft
• 55:24
  players. Not this specific podcast, but
• 55:27
  in general, we need to stop listening less to.
• 55:30
  When I see professional Warcraft players on Twitter saying, oh
• 55:32
  man, I'm so bored, there's nothing to do.
• 55:34
  It was like, of course there's nothing to do.
• 55:35
  You play 12 hours a day and you have since September, you're
• 55:39
  bored 'cause you did it all. I get it.
• 55:44
  You shouldn't be bored at this point.
• 55:49
  Yeah, anyway, man, I think that's what it was.
• 55:50
  I want to talk about Delves. I want to touch on Delves
• 55:52
  because we did mention them. Unknown put that nice comment in
• 55:55
  and I have some spicy Delve takes that I think are going to
• 55:58
  shock you. OK?
• 56:01
  They're not going to shock you. You're not going to be shocked
• 56:02
  at all. All.
• 56:03
  Right. Well, I've I've been going back
• 56:05
  into Delves. Joss has been pushing through
• 56:09
  Delves. She's done 11.
• 56:11
  She needs to do Zekvir double question mark.
• 56:14
  I still need to do Zekvir double question mark.
• 56:16
  I was so sorely disappointed with Zek Vera one question mark
• 56:20
  and that I didn't do it right away when it when it was like
• 56:25
  under geared and stuff. So I I've been trying to get
• 56:29
  back into Dells in terms of like where I find it fun.
• 56:34
  So I'm trying to get all the stories through.
• 56:36
  I'm trying to get that mount because that's a nice carrot at
• 56:41
  the end of that stick to keep me going through it.
• 56:43
  But how are Dells going for you? I am helping, I have two DPS
• 56:52
  friends, one on EU, one on NA who want that.
• 56:56
  I've completed all the delves and 11 achievement and I have
• 56:59
  agreed to help both of them on their respective regions because
• 57:05
  as just a DPS those are very difficult.
• 57:07
  And these are both players who are both very good at the game,
• 57:12
  really good with their classes, but they just the plus elevens.
• 57:14
  If you're just a DPS class, you don't have a tank in there.
• 57:17
  It's a real hard time. So I'm going in, I'm going to
• 57:19
  tank it for them. I've been going through those.
• 57:22
  I still find them to be an absolute snooze fest.
• 57:26
  Yeah, tanking. Because I'm yeah, because I'm
• 57:28
  tanking. Well if I was if I wasn't
• 57:30
  tanking I would be DPS ING and be getting killed and being
• 57:32
  miserable. No, you don't have to get killed
• 57:35
  as a DPS. I'm going through as a DPS.
• 57:37
  I'm not dying. I'm not miserable.
• 57:38
  I don't know man I got 2 DPS friends who both said hey these
• 57:41
  elevens suck everything one shots me.
• 57:45
  TD with the anecdotes. Keep going.
• 57:49
  But I've been doing that and I have other friends who are like,
• 57:54
  I don't like Mythic Plus. I don't care if they make it
• 57:56
  easier. I don't really want to do it.
• 57:59
  I wish I could just do delves to, you know, I wanted to and
• 58:03
  like Lex, I want to augment my raid time and my raid gear for
• 58:07
  myself and to help my team, and I was hoping to do it by doing
• 58:10
  delves. And I got to tell you Manny, I'm
• 58:13
  I agree with them. You shouldn't have to do mythic
• 58:16
  plus to be a contributing member of your raid team.
• 58:19
  It's bad design that we feel like we have to, and for all
• 58:23
  intents and purposes you do if you want to complete the content
• 58:26
  in season. I'm going to double down.
• 58:31
  And I know that as soon as I say this.
• 58:33
  The degenerates who ruin everything by being degenerate
• 58:38
  would ruin this. But I think you make delves drop
• 58:43
  mythic track gear in the vault. Now hear me out +8 delves you
• 58:49
  get your six O 3 champion track gear at the end of the vault
• 58:55
  with the current upgrade system that is essentially the same as
• 58:59
  a heroic piece because anybody who's min maxing their Crest
• 59:02
  upgrades isn't upgrading a heroic piece beyond they are
• 59:05
  now. But they weren't up until now
• 59:07
  because of the Crest cap. You weren't upgrading a heroic
• 59:09
  piece above 619 but upgrading a champ track piece to 619 was
• 59:13
  basically like having a heroic track piece.
• 59:15
  And because you get a drop at the end of every delve, I think
• 59:18
  you have to make it champion track and not hero track.
• 59:22
  Otherwise you have to strip back getting it.
• 59:23
  And it feels nice to get a piece of gear at the end of the delve.
• 59:25
  But I think if you're doing 9/10/11, maybe say Elevens.
• 59:33
  If you're doing elevens and delves, it should drop a myth
• 59:36
  track piece in the vault. Those are not easy.
• 59:39
  Even now they're not easy. They're definitely not any
• 59:44
  easier than doing a mythic plus 10.
• 59:47
  Maybe a little because you could do it alone and you there's no
• 59:50
  timer on it. But you know, you're still if,
• 59:53
  if, if you're crawling through, that's still an hour, hour and a
• 59:55
  half spent. You know what I mean?
• 59:56
  If you're taking your time and crawling through, I think delves
• 59:59
  should be able to reward people the same as Mythic plus.
• 1:00:03
  And I think if they do that, we've, we've built up this straw
• 1:00:07
  man, the community's built up the straw man of Delve players
• 1:00:10
  that are coming in and ruining our keys.
• 1:00:13
  I don't think that I don't think that those people, I don't think
• 1:00:16
  that exists. There's no world where people
• 1:00:18
  were, you know, delvers only. What?
• 1:00:22
  I don't consider them Delve players.
• 1:00:23
  Yeah, they're not. Those are.
• 1:00:25
  Yeah, they're if they're going into Mythic plus, they're
• 1:00:27
  they're generic overall, you know what I mean?
• 1:00:30
  They're going in because they want to do for raid or whatever.
• 1:00:32
  Those aren't just Delve players. So this argument of all these
• 1:00:35
  delvers are coming in, ruin my keys.
• 1:00:36
  No, they're not, because those people don't exist.
• 1:00:38
  If they're going into keys, they're Mythic plus players.
• 1:00:40
  If they're going into raid, they're Raiders.
• 1:00:44
  Yeah, but I think, I think we let delves drop higher gear.
• 1:00:47
  Who does it hurt? And again, I'm a big fan of
• 1:00:49
  gear. Just give us more gear.
• 1:00:53
  But who does it hurt? Who does it hurt if delves at a
• 1:00:56
  + 11 give you a myth track piece in your vault?
• 1:00:59
  I mean, I feel like your argument sort of falls apart
• 1:01:04
  because there's no logical limit to it.
• 1:01:07
  It's the same as saying who does it hurt if when you log in you
• 1:01:10
  get a mythic piece of gear in your mailbox.
• 1:01:13
  Well you still have to complete difficult content that's on par
• 1:01:16
  with other content of the same difficulty.
• 1:01:19
  I think on 11 delve it was as hard as a + 10 mythic plus I
• 1:01:24
  would. Disagree with that, but like
• 1:01:27
  it's also a matter of variance. Like this was, again, we're
• 1:01:31
  going back to the conversation we had.
• 1:01:32
  So guys, make sure you do check back.
• 1:01:35
  I think it was Episode 3 O3 where we had this conversation a
• 1:01:38
  bit. But the difficulty of a Mythic
• 1:01:42
  10 is going to be varied based on your composition.
• 1:01:46
  Of course. You can have like a, oh, we got
• 1:01:48
  3 Shadow Breeze sort of craziness that you were talking
• 1:01:51
  about before, or you could be like, Oh my goodness, we got the
• 1:01:53
  metacomp sort of thing. The difference in how difficult
• 1:01:58
  a delve is is drastically wider because you can have five
• 1:02:04
  people, four people, one person, that one person could be a tank,
• 1:02:08
  a healer, a shadow priest by themselves.
• 1:02:12
  And so the, the wide difficulty curve is huge.
• 1:02:17
  That's why they they were saying, hey, like, yeah, we
• 1:02:19
  can't lock this in. We're just going to have it at a
• 1:02:24
  lower difficulty because genuine, genuinely, it is such a
• 1:02:29
  huge variance. And so is the lowest difficulty
• 1:02:33
  of a eleven equivalent to what difficulty?
• 1:02:37
  I cannot tell you. It's the highest difficulty of
• 1:02:40
  11. Equivalent to what difficulty?
• 1:02:42
  I can't tell you because I have not played all specs into an 11
• 1:02:47
  to sell you. Yeah, roughly this averages out
• 1:02:49
  to to this. And so I'm not, I'm not even
• 1:02:51
  going to fight you on that argument.
• 1:02:54
  I just, I'm, I'm, I'd be arguing from pure ignorance.
• 1:02:57
  OK. That said, I don't believe that
• 1:03:05
  it's harming anyone for anybody to get loot of any level outside
• 1:03:13
  of the people who will take it to its logical extreme.
• 1:03:17
  I don't think it's helping anyone except for those who wish
• 1:03:23
  to win through raw power, which has a huge overlap with who I
• 1:03:29
  just spoke about, but not entirely.
• 1:03:33
  And therefore when I weigh the two, I'm looking at the sliver
• 1:03:38
  of people who it helps them but they aren't doing.
• 1:03:47
  But they aren't going to go into some degeneracy to get that.
• 1:03:52
  And in my mind, I don't think that that player segment is so
• 1:03:58
  large that you would try and get the tuning to the point where it
• 1:04:03
  could be validated. And that's my that's where I'm
• 1:04:06
  going to have that, that argument.
• 1:04:08
  It's not that people won't benefit from getting the gear
• 1:04:12
  out of it. It's not that I'm completely
• 1:04:17
  discounting the people who genuinely don't want a PvP and
• 1:04:23
  so Mythic plus is an option for them, but don't want a Mythic
• 1:04:26
  plus. And so delves becomes the option
• 1:04:29
  for them and they're in a team where they feel enough pressure
• 1:04:34
  because it's not necessarily from the team itself, but it can
• 1:04:37
  be just generally, hey, I really want to help out this team
• 1:04:40
  because these are good guys. I don't want to be lagging
• 1:04:43
  behind sort of thing that happens that happens to to me.
• 1:04:47
  And so for those players, Mythic plus not being an option, Delves
• 1:04:51
  giving them that, yeah, I think it could be good.
• 1:04:55
  But are those players mythic players that would need mythic
• 1:05:01
  loot? Are those players the players
• 1:05:04
  that would be pushing into 8 pluses in order to get the
• 1:05:08
  mythic loot? I think that's a very fine, fine
• 1:05:11
  cross section there. Like, I think the people who are
• 1:05:14
  pushing and killing out Dells at 8 and getting that cap loot and
• 1:05:18
  therefore getting loot that is relatively on par with
• 1:05:22
  everything that you can get in AOTC are being helped in an
• 1:05:25
  adequate level. Yeah.
• 1:05:28
  And like, that's where you'd have to convince me, man.
• 1:05:30
  I'm just trying to find a way for mythic Raiders that hate
• 1:05:33
  mythic plus to augment their gear outside of the raid, which
• 1:05:38
  I think is a fair ask. You know?
• 1:05:39
  If they don't want to do dungeons they shouldn't feel
• 1:05:42
  forced to. Currently right now if you're on
• 1:05:44
  a mythic raid team, I guarantee at some point in the last 11
• 1:05:48
  weeks, 12 weeks since the season started, your raid leader has
• 1:05:50
  said make sure you get your keys done.
• 1:05:55
  It would be nice if they could say hey make sure you get your
• 1:05:57
  keys or your delves done. Whatever you prefer.
• 1:06:00
  You go out there and be your best self and enjoy it.
• 1:06:04
  Man, the problem is that as soon as you introduce the you can get
• 1:06:08
  mythic into another slot on the vault.
• 1:06:12
  Then it's yeah, make sure you get your mythic plus and your
• 1:06:15
  delves done. Not removing mythic plus one
• 1:06:17
  there. You're right.
• 1:06:18
  You're right. You're right.
• 1:06:19
  You're right. I'm.
• 1:06:19
  Sorry, no. That's 'cause now you've.
• 1:06:22
  Fallen into the people who will as.
• 1:06:25
  Soon as you said it, I was like, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna
• 1:06:28
  have to do a lot of delves. Yeah, right, 'cause like when
• 1:06:32
  we're at the point where? Take it back, Manny.
• 1:06:34
  I think we should. There should be no Luton delves.
• 1:06:41
  You're rid of the delve loot entirely.
• 1:06:43
  Yeah, yeah, we're, we're talking about a very thin cross section
• 1:06:45
  where you're above this point, but below this point.
• 1:06:48
  And that's, that's where this argument has to like pin its
• 1:06:52
  hat, right? Like that's the problem.
• 1:06:56
  Yeah, that just, I can't believe I missed that.
• 1:06:57
  I believe I didn't see that that's how that was going to
• 1:07:01
  play out for me. I take it back.
• 1:07:03
  Delves don't listen. Delves are way too easy for
• 1:07:05
  Mythic. We can't be given these little
• 1:07:08
  baby delvers mythic gear. That's not right.
• 1:07:14
  There's your sound bite. No, I I do want to say for the
• 1:07:18
  people who are listening, I love this moment because this is
• 1:07:23
  where you've taken, you've taken the arguments, you've bounced it
• 1:07:26
  in your head and you've come to a conclusion.
• 1:07:28
  There's so many people, so many hot takes that I've seen out
• 1:07:31
  there where it doesn't matter what you say to them, they are
• 1:07:34
  so stuck in the position. And so guys, at least you know
• 1:07:38
  that you could reason with shot that's.
• 1:07:39
  Right. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:07:42
  The other part that I want to talk about Delves is in terms of
• 1:07:47
  the solo player versus the group player.
• 1:07:49
  Like that was a big issue at the beginning of the season in terms
• 1:07:53
  of tuning and stuff. And I would love to see Delves
• 1:07:58
  kind of push more towards platforming or towards puzzles,
• 1:08:06
  because in my mind there's being like, you know, the puzzles that
• 1:08:11
  we had in Zarath Mortis or in less Mechagon, more in dash
• 1:08:18
  guitar where they had those like those puzzles and that.
• 1:08:21
  And I love those. And I think those are great for
• 1:08:24
  for single player. I think Dells have a little bit
• 1:08:27
  of them, but they can't have them in in multiplayer because
• 1:08:32
  you will have like, or at least they maybe they can't.
• 1:08:36
  It's very hard. Like it would have become like
• 1:08:39
  two or three or five puzzles spawn and then you all have to
• 1:08:42
  complete them within the same period of time to do it.
• 1:08:45
  And but then that then it becomes like a drawback to have
• 1:08:48
  the team where it's like, I could just do it myself.
• 1:08:50
  It's just, it's weird. It's weird.
• 1:08:52
  I'd love to see that more. But I think it fights against
• 1:08:56
  the flex group and I think Delves having flex group is what
• 1:09:00
  prevents it from being tuned. Does that need to be adjusted?
• 1:09:06
  And if it is adjusted, where would you take it?
• 1:09:11
  I you know what this is going to be, this will probably surprise
• 1:09:14
  you. I only did it twice because
• 1:09:16
  that's all it took to Max out my ring, my aunt, my Onyx saying of
• 1:09:19
  it. But I enjoyed the matchmaking
• 1:09:21
  puzzle system in that tower of doors that we did on the
• 1:09:25
  Forbidden Reach. Oh, the vaults.
• 1:09:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where you opened up a door and
• 1:09:31
  it was like, here's a chest, but it's got fire everywhere, Find a
• 1:09:35
  solution. And then you had to find a door
• 1:09:37
  that had water in it to put the fire out.
• 1:09:39
  Or you had to find an ice shield so you could stand in the fire.
• 1:09:42
  Like it had multiple solutions within there that you had to
• 1:09:46
  find. I liked that.
• 1:09:47
  I wouldn't mind. I think I would hate Delves less
• 1:09:50
  if there was more puzzles like that, if it was more figure out
• 1:09:54
  a way to solve this as opposed to this boss has a lot of health
• 1:09:57
  move when he charges. This boss has a lot of health
• 1:10:00
  move when he breathes fire. Like that's I mean, that's all
• 1:10:03
  they are right now. It's what is the mechanic?
• 1:10:06
  OK, dodge the mechanic. OK, wait for it to be dead.
• 1:10:08
  That's what delves are now. But if that like that and like
• 1:10:12
  there was all kinds of little puzzles in there where one where
• 1:10:14
  you had to like find a fish in another room and bring it to a
• 1:10:17
  room with a fish tank and throw it in those types of like
• 1:10:20
  intricate puzzles. And the ones you were talking
• 1:10:23
  about, the ones where it's like match three or make the straight
• 1:10:25
  lines. I like those two in foregast.
• 1:10:31
  Short trigger warning for anybody who just had to hear me
• 1:10:33
  say Torgast. But in Torgast, they had those,
• 1:10:36
  those chests we had to like, no, OK, if I turn this one, it turns
• 1:10:40
  off this one. And if I turn this one turns off
• 1:10:41
  this one. And you had to like, like those
• 1:10:43
  types of things. You put that in delves and make
• 1:10:46
  me think and not just mindlessly do my rotation on a target
• 1:10:49
  dummy, which is what it feels like now.
• 1:10:52
  And then maybe they're a lot more fun as a solo player.
• 1:10:55
  Does that work in a group? Probably not.
• 1:10:57
  The four people want to watch me stand still while I do a puzzle
• 1:11:01
  on my screen. No, they don't.
• 1:11:04
  But maybe. Yeah, I don't know that I really
• 1:11:08
  liked that tower. I can't remember what it was
• 1:11:10
  called now. Zelera.
• 1:11:11
  Zelera Caverns. Zelera.
• 1:11:13
  Anyway, yeah, whatever that tower was called, everybody
• 1:11:16
  knows the one. I mean, the big tower doors.
• 1:11:18
  And even figuring out how to get level to level was a puzzle
• 1:11:23
  because you had to get like the wand and use the bubble machine
• 1:11:25
  to go up for some of them. And another one you get a rocket
• 1:11:27
  jump and another one you could teleport and.
• 1:11:30
  Yeah. And if they had these puzzles in
• 1:11:32
  there, they wouldn't need to be like even the the number of
• 1:11:36
  puzzles could go up in difficulty or based on like what
• 1:11:42
  scenario you're doing, right? I like those a lot that that I
• 1:11:47
  mean, I only did that tower twice because that's all it took
• 1:11:49
  to Max out my amulet, my ring of power.
• 1:11:54
  But I I enjoyed both times through it.
• 1:11:58
  So yeah, I would like to see more.
• 1:12:02
  I don't know. We create delves as a as a
• 1:12:05
  pillar for solo players, but I think a lot of players who are
• 1:12:08
  solo players aren't like, what really gets them excited to log
• 1:12:12
  into the game. Isn't the thought of doing their
• 1:12:14
  rotation consistently for 45 seconds while they fight one
• 1:12:17
  mob. You know what I mean?
• 1:12:19
  That's not what what sparks joy does that bring you joy?
• 1:12:22
  Doesn't bring me joy. Yeah, I want puzzles.
• 1:12:27
  I that's why I look at what is there and what I enjoy when I'm
• 1:12:33
  doing delves and I like those puzzles because that is
• 1:12:37
  something that would be uniquely delve.
• 1:12:39
  But as soon as I thought about it, my immediate thought was
• 1:12:42
  like, oh, wait a second. Yeah, nobody wants to sit there
• 1:12:46
  while their friend solves the puzzle so that they can move
• 1:12:49
  forward. They want to contribute.
• 1:12:51
  And and that's why I had that like, oh, is it that like, Hey,
• 1:12:56
  I have to stand over here and you have to stand over here.
• 1:12:59
  And then we get through this puzzle within a certain period
• 1:13:03
  of time so that we can move forward.
• 1:13:05
  But that's again, that becomes like a OK, that's cool for like
• 1:13:11
  this is a three player thing and you need three players to do it,
• 1:13:13
  but becomes harder at five players or four players easier
• 1:13:17
  at one player, right. That's that's the annoying part
• 1:13:20
  of it. It's again this thing where I
• 1:13:23
  guess you're throwing, tuning out the window just to do it.
• 1:13:25
  And like, maybe it's like, OK, if you have three players and
• 1:13:30
  only two of them have to do it. If you have 5 players and only
• 1:13:32
  three of them have to do it sort of thing to allow you to be
• 1:13:35
  like, hey man, I'm not good at puzzles.
• 1:13:37
  You handle the puzzles, you be the like.
• 1:13:40
  Puzzle Master. Yeah, like you be the puzzle
• 1:13:42
  master, you be the rogue and pick his pocket and then we
• 1:13:44
  don't have to do the puzzles and get through.
• 1:13:45
  There's like a lot of cool things that they could do in
• 1:13:47
  Delves where it's like you're not a tank.
• 1:13:51
  So mage you can stealth through here, Rogue you can stealth
• 1:13:55
  through here, Druid, you can stealth through here and you can
• 1:13:59
  get around there and then you can press this button and it
• 1:14:01
  flattens the guy and you don't have to get through here or you
• 1:14:04
  have a snare, keep him in in position, freeze, freezing over
• 1:14:09
  or something and then lay down the trap.
• 1:14:11
  Just something that's more mechanical and not using my
• 1:14:13
  rotation to burn through, or if I just want to like burn through
• 1:14:16
  something short, go ahead. What if you take Thunderstorm
• 1:14:20
  and merge it with delves When you go into a delve, you don't
• 1:14:23
  go in on your character. You go in on another one of
• 1:14:26
  those explorers, Reno or the fish guy or the lady that I give
• 1:14:31
  all the quests to and they play alongside Bran.
• 1:14:34
  What if you and they you know, they have each one of them has
• 1:14:36
  four abilities. You can give them all different
• 1:14:39
  abilities or the same ability, whatever you want to do and
• 1:14:41
  you're not playing your character.
• 1:14:42
  So then you don't even have to balance it for classes.
• 1:14:45
  You just have to balance it for those those explore.
• 1:14:48
  What is it? Explorers League, is that out
• 1:14:49
  there or the adventurers, whatever.
• 1:14:53
  Brandon Explorers League, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Brandon is homies,
• 1:14:56
  the reading rainbow of delvers there.
• 1:14:58
  That's what if that's what they do for.
• 1:15:02
  That's not going to obviously not going to happen next season,
• 1:15:04
  probably never ever. But instead of balancing for
• 1:15:07
  different classes, now you're just balancing.
• 1:15:10
  OK, we only have 4 possible combinations here, up to a group
• 1:15:13
  of five. And yeah, the scare of vaults.
• 1:15:19
  Oh, you looked it up. Thank you so much.
• 1:15:21
  Yeah, and it was getting to me. For the person who was furiously
• 1:15:26
  typing a comment on Spotify, sorry we figured it out, but
• 1:15:30
  thank you for your comment. It was getting to me too.
• 1:15:33
  I am that person, just like I know it.
• 1:15:35
  It's on the tip of my hat tongue.
• 1:15:36
  No dude, I'm I'm hard shifted now.
• 1:15:38
  I want the elves to be puzzle based and I don't want to do a
• 1:15:41
  delve on my character. I want to play one of those.
• 1:15:45
  I don't man. They have a name doesn't matter.
• 1:15:47
  That group of delvers, the Delve team, Delve team 6.
• 1:15:50
  I want to play one of them with their own, so now they're.
• 1:15:53
  Getting upset because we can't remember to Explorers league.
• 1:15:55
  Yeah, they'll figure it out. Let us know in the comments.
• 1:15:59
  Yeah, give them five abilities. Like I think it was 5 abilities
• 1:16:02
  we had in Plunder Storm 1's in one attack 1, you know, and just
• 1:16:06
  shit, just RIP the Plunder Storm abilities and give each one of
• 1:16:09
  the different one. This guy does the whirly fire.
• 1:16:10
  This guy does the the throwy whip thing.
• 1:16:14
  Yeah. And then that fixes balancing
• 1:16:16
  because you just have the balance for those.
• 1:16:19
  Yep. It you don't have to worry about
• 1:16:21
  is it harder for a shadow priest than it is for a prot warrior.
• 1:16:25
  And then you can still let Brand swap between his roles.
• 1:16:29
  I mean, at that point, like Brand just becomes like just
• 1:16:33
  another one as your pick, 1 as your avatar and one is your
• 1:16:36
  companion. And you can be like I'll bleed a
• 1:16:38
  tank as Bran or I'll be the caster as Reno, or I'll be like
• 1:16:43
  rogue or whatever and just just one is your partner and you just
• 1:16:46
  work through it like that. That's what I want for delves.
• 1:16:48
  I'm locking that in. That's what I want.
• 1:16:50
  Until that happens, I'm not going in another delve.
• 1:16:52
  I think we've destroyed Dells for people who like delves as
• 1:16:54
  is. I want the puzzles I want, I
• 1:16:58
  want the balance. I would want them to do stuff
• 1:17:02
  where it is less about me going through my rotation.
• 1:17:06
  But like, I think I want to put a big caveat on this guys and
• 1:17:10
  circle back to what we started at the beginning of the episode
• 1:17:13
  is Sean and I play rating, Sean and I play mythic.
• 1:17:18
  Plus Sean and I have a lot of outlets to do our rotation.
• 1:17:22
  And so this push to have Myth, to have Dells be something else
• 1:17:26
  is based on we already have an environment to express ourselves
• 1:17:29
  that way. And I can understand if somebody
• 1:17:32
  who is saying like, no, I want to play my character in Dells,
• 1:17:35
  that might be the way. Why Sean and I are not on the
• 1:17:38
  same page as you. Yeah, I don't understand that.
• 1:17:41
  Get on board with us. We need this.
• 1:17:44
  I want to. I don't want to play my
• 1:17:48
  character. No.
• 1:17:50
  Now you must. Oh, be an explorer with the rest
• 1:17:53
  of us, Adventure League. Oh.
• 1:17:55
  Adventure League, but we have the return of Visions of Nazaf
• 1:18:01
  coming back. I think that was a fantastic
• 1:18:04
  way, again, somewhat timer based quasi between Delves and Mythic
• 1:18:09
  Plus. Sean, I know you're a big fan of
• 1:18:12
  that. Yeah, I was a big fan of that.
• 1:18:15
  I also would love if Blizzard brings back challenge modes.
• 1:18:21
  I think that if Blizzard were to say here your gear level is
• 1:18:26
  capped, it is all the dungeons that are for this expansion and
• 1:18:31
  you have the entire expansion to try and get your gold in here
• 1:18:36
  and then we'll give you whatever transmog, blah, blah, blah,
• 1:18:38
  blah, blah. That to me, I think would be a
• 1:18:41
  fantastic way of Blizzard finding like this entirely
• 1:18:46
  specific precision way of getting tuning for for dungeons.
• 1:18:53
  Allow people who want to enjoy the war within dungeons in the
• 1:18:58
  war within instead of half the war within dungeons now and half
• 1:19:01
  the war within dungeons later. And also maybe give Blizzard an
• 1:19:05
  excuse for like making the tuning in Mythic plus a little
• 1:19:09
  bit more forgiving. Because then once again, I'm
• 1:19:12
  going to funnel the people who want that like hardcore, very
• 1:19:15
  structured way to go into the challenge mode version.
• 1:19:20
  And for the people who are thinking, Oh well, that would
• 1:19:22
  get boring. Actually, every season when we
• 1:19:26
  get new gear and we get new tier sets and stuff, it would change
• 1:19:32
  how far particular specs or classes could get in terms of
• 1:19:37
  bringing that time down. They could keep their set from
• 1:19:40
  last time if they're like, well, this set performs better in
• 1:19:43
  challenge mode because item level is not there.
• 1:19:47
  And we're in a world where leaderboards could be a thing.
• 1:19:52
  I could imagine radar IO puts like, this is the best time.
• 1:19:55
  And then people come back in in season 2 with a new gear sets
• 1:19:59
  and new items and they're like, we're going to destroy Season 1.
• 1:20:02
  I would love it. Sean, am I smoking again or does
• 1:20:06
  this sound like something that you you would like?
• 1:20:08
  Don't weigh in. I love speed challenge modes.
• 1:20:10
  Give me those. Give me more of those.
• 1:20:12
  Except dragon racing, I hate those.
• 1:20:14
  Those give me you mean? Yeah I wish I had.
• 1:20:17
  I didn't play Mop when it was out so I wish I had because
• 1:20:20
  challenge mode sound like they are right up my alley.
• 1:20:24
  And did Warlords have them as well?
• 1:20:26
  Yes. So challenge modes would be kind
• 1:20:28
  of the precursor to Mythic Plus introduced in Mr. Panda area,
• 1:20:32
  done again in Warlords. And then when Mythic Plus came
• 1:20:37
  in, it'd be pretty much what went out.
• 1:20:39
  Yeah, yeah, Challenge mode sounds great.
• 1:20:41
  I love it. Let's have that and we'll change
• 1:20:44
  Delves to what we described and everybody's happy.
• 1:20:49
  We fixed many, we fixed it. We fixed Warcraft.
• 1:20:53
  I again, we're just throwing out ideas.
• 1:20:55
  I think that the Mythic Plus community is trying to find its
• 1:21:01
  footing. I think that Delves is trying to
• 1:21:03
  find its footing. I think that they have a lot of
• 1:21:06
  good ideas from the past that they can use to satisfy
• 1:21:10
  different people who aren't getting exactly what they want
• 1:21:14
  out of Delves and Mythic. Plus.
• 1:21:16
  I think the fact that nobody's talking about Rating in the same
• 1:21:20
  way kind of shows that Rating has hit a pretty good spot right
• 1:21:25
  now in. I don't want to say it's the
• 1:21:28
  best it's ever been, but when you are not the focus of
• 1:21:34
  everybody's ire, it means that people are stretching to find
• 1:21:37
  stuff to complain about. Yeah, yeah, oh, OK.
• 1:21:44
  Well, where the show's running along so we're not going to talk
• 1:21:46
  about mid raid difficulty spikes, but yeah, yeah, OK,
• 1:21:52
  ratings in a decent spot right now.
• 1:21:54
  Normal and Heroic rating probably the best it's ever
• 1:21:56
  been, and Anserack might be my favorite fight of all time.
• 1:22:01
  But yeah, that ratings got some warts.
• 1:22:05
  Well, we'll hear more from you and your rating hopefully soon,
• 1:22:10
  but until next time guys, may all your hits be crits.