Close to my thoughts, random forum spot of the day :

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In yesterday's Raids/Dungeons stream, there were a couple of questions which highlighted the irrelevance of dungeons in WoD. Aside from the fact that they've devolved into something which most players burn through in a few hours when they first hit L100, for a few items of underwhelming Blue gear and for the initial stages of the Legendary chain; it's the fact that players outgear the heroics so quickly that even if they had worthwhile rewards, the gameplay is trivialised for players very quickly; who rapidly hit a point where they're decked out in LFR-level gear within just a couple of weeks of hitting L100 The state of dungeons at the moment is a far cry from 2007 when Blizzard first introduced Heroics - at that point in time they became the real 'meat' of the endgame for the majority of players; even those who dabbled in the entry-level raids such as Karazhan had dungeons at an appropriate difficulty; places like Arcatraz and Shattered Halls were arguably tougher than half of the Karazhan bosses. Regardless of how the rest of the game may have been designed at that time, TBC's greatest success was hitting the "sweet spot" for dungeons both in terms of gameplay and in terms of longevity/replayability. This was the point in time when heroic dungeons were first-class in terms of endgame for the majority of max level players, before the game became heavily focused on raiding. This comes down to several things: 1) Most importantly, the dungeons were tuned to be equal to the first tier raid difficulty, not below it. It's hard to over-stress this point; but a lot of players managed to kill 4-5 bosses in Karazhan in patch 2.0 wearing greens and blues; but those same players with that same gear struggled like crazy with CoTurnholde and Arcatraz (Both dungeons were later nerfed); although they were fine with Ramparts or Slave Pens. 2) The slow-paced gameplay still existed and stopped dungeons being a 20-minute zergfest; also the need for co-operation was roughly equal between raids and dungeons. The Dungeon content wasn't designed for rapid completion in mind, and most of the mechanics would make chain-pulling into a generally unreliable and non-viable tactic until players overgeared the content. 3) The sense of progression in dungeons - i.e. heroic dungeons weren't just something you would spam for a weekend and then forget; they would complement the entry level-raids for a couple of months 4) The game generally had different mechanics which made everything in the game more threatening and dangerous Blizzard have hinted at the idea of Mythic dungeons several times, although most recently they've hinted that these 'could' just be an uptuned version of the existing heroics, which would add nothing particularly new into the game, and would be unlikely to actually bring back real longevity, (Which is really needed having had several consecutive expansions where dungeons rapidly degenerate into 'fast food' content). . Challenge Mode Dungeons Challenge Modes in WoD are brilliantly well done from a pure gameplay point of view - but they are better suited to competitive gameplay rather than general progression - Downscaling means that despite having an overall average item level some way higher than 630, the common perception is that you're undergeared for them if you have even a single equipped item which is below 630. This is fine for competitive timed runs, but it's bad when you're just trying to get the daily CM box. - Being unable to replace a player who leaves halfway through the run is just frustrating and unnecessary for a daily CM box quest. The restrictions on talent/glyph changes aren't really needed for the daily box either. - Players enjoy that "feel" of playing their character based on their own progress - when you reach 650 iLevel, you notice the buffs from haste; your increased health pool, your extra crits/multistrikes, your set bonuses, etc. Then you walk back into a CM and everything slows down. Again, downscaling gear makes a whole tonne of sense for putting players on a level competitive playing field, but for progress and gearing-up, it's more satisfying to have content which matches your gear, rather than temporarily nerfing your gear to match the content. - Downscaled gear can also make some awkward social situations too; a lot of guilds tend to have a wide range of players; when the gear is fixed to a downscaled number it doesn't feel "good" bringing along an undergeared friend or a friend who isn't so great at playing their class. at least in a Normal or Heroic raid there's a bit of slack so that the weaker players can either help themselves with their own gear, or go along with someone who can compensate. It's easy to dismiss this sort of thing as a 'social problem', but with WoW being primarily a social game, it's still important. . Mythic Dungeons With a lot of players having fairly easy access to gear around 650, and with the normal-mode of BRF being tuned around 650-ish, it would be great to have dungeons which actually match the tuning of the first tier of raid content too. A lot of players would appreciate having some other content to progress through, which is appropriate to their current power once they hit that 650 mark. It would be great to have 5-mans whose difficulty feels a bit like Challenge Modes upscaled by 20-25 item levels (i.e. not just tuned for 650 players but tightly tuned so that they still feel good at 660-665). Obviously the random matchmaker puts a major limit on difficulty and tuning, so the only way to avoid having mythic dungeons which feel like an 'upscaled' version of heroics is to split them away from the matchmaker and encourage premade groups instead. The increased difficulty is needed to add longevity, and it puts the focus on 'fun with friends' when the best way to do them is with friends or guildmembers (But without the "rushed" competitive environment of CMs). Mechanical Differences Mythic dungeons could do with some mechanical changes (which are specific to Mythic dungeons) with the purpose of ramping up the danger levels and keeping players on their toes. - Re-enable the threat caused by CC spells (i.e. casting Polymorph/trap/etc should pull and put you in combat, then having CC break should put the caster on high threat) - basically how things were pre-Cata - Increase the threat radius for all mobs and bosses to 30+ yards - again, how things were pre-WotLK-ish - Trash groups in dungeons to have additional mobs compared with their Heroic or CM counterparts. - 5-man boss fights designed to last longer - nothing as long as a raid boss but somewhere around 3-4 minutes to make sure that resources actually matter (healer mana, cooldowns, etc.) - Additional mechanics on particular bosses would also be interesting . Progression Put a content/difficulty progression structure in-place so that the Mythic dungeons have several tuning steps akin to mini-tiers - e.g. with the current set of 8 dungeons, difficulty could be 'staggered' so that 3 of them might be tuned at 650, another 3 tuned at 655, and the last 2 tuned for 660. . Rewards There are a lot of problems to juggle and lessons learned from past expacs: * They can't just be spammable for a weekend to grab everything and leave them behind, because that would kill longevity * They can't be a super-efficient or easy way to a full set of raid-quality gear because that will kill other content * The rewards need to be worthwhile and worthy of their difficulty otherwise noone will bother doing them * The reward system needs to reinforce longevity and make sure that dungeons are relevant to a character for at least a month or two * The reward system shouldn't grant power-upgrades for players who are already vastly overgeared (i.e. no repeat of Valor Points) * The reward system shouldn't feel like yet-another-daily-chore, or a timesink because players will just resent them or feel irritated by them * The reward system should complement raid gear progression for players who choose to do it, not be a replacement for it, and not feel mandatory - they should be a worthwhile bonus for people who bother to do them * Ideally it should feel rewarding to do 2-3 mythic dungeons per week on an appropriately geared character (Not a character already decked out in full Mythic raid gear), in the same way that it feels rewarding to run through your suited raid difficulty once per week. So to that end, there needs to be a 'headline' reward to hook players, similar to other similar gear systems already in the game: - The dungeons could be supported by a system similar to crafted items with upgrades and slot limits. The slots should be upgradable over a period several weeks; e.g. initially starting around 660, then 670 a couple of weeks later, and finally hitting 680 at the end. This could tie into staggered difficulty levels, but also sit on top of a dungeon-specific system similar to the Abrogator stones/Elemental runes. Then there could be other minor rewards which are less of an incentive but still make the dungeons feel interesting and useful - With tuning being much higher than the heroics they could also be used to drop Apexis Crystals from trash and bosses without feeling like a MoP-style "zerg" through trivial content (e.g. 3-5 crystals from each mob and 300-500 from each boss) - Bosses each drop a Savage Blood (similar to bosses dropping Primal Nether in TBC) - Chance for BoE 665 Purple drops equivalent to Normal BRF trash (because players are already creating small groups to farm BRF trash for the same thing, so if it's the same tuning/difficulty there's not much difference within a dungeon)