Introduction
This will be a longer post and I hope to keep your attention till the end as this topic affects the community at large. If not, TLDR at the end. It is a complicated subject and deserves a flushed out review of the current system to really understand why key deranking on failure should have been a thing of the past years ago. Firstly, lets go into the positives that key deranking has in good faith.
Benefits of Key Deranking
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Increase risk / reward. Potentially an increase in fun / dopamine.
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Incentivizes safe playstyles.
This is really all that I can find arguments for so lets deconstruct why this opinions are misplaced.
Increase risk / reward
Firstly, an increase risk / reward can sometimes make game play more meaningful. As someone who only plays D4 hardcore, leveled to 60 in hardcore wow, I understand there is something to it. However, D4 and hardcore wow are solo endeavors. In M+, I must be invited to keys to play the game. As a warrior main that will both tank and dps, it is nearly impossible to get invited to keys at 14-15+ with the current meta. And to be frank, it isn’t the communities fault. This is what risk / reward does. It incentivizes playing safe. It reinforces the meta and homogenizes the game. People won’t take chances because the consequence if they do are hours wasted of homework keys to get another chance.
I’ve spent multiple hours just sitting and applying to groups. Of course, the common streamer thing to say is “no just run your own key” or “make friends”.
Running your own key is about as impractical as finding a needle in the haystack. Keys at this level require intense levels of precision and even the slightest blip can brick the key. In one sitting, I spent 4 hours trying to push my key back to a key that would give me IO and it still didn’t work. Meanwhile, the shadowpriest in discord with me attempted a 16 uldaman 5-6 times that day. I will never be able to allocate the same amount of time to actual push keys at that rate.
I think making friends and forming a group is great, especially if you play off meta. It is about the only thing you can do to climb. However, friends have schedules and often can’t play everyday. This then incentivizes you to save your keys for your friends which is contrary to the “run your own key” advice. Today I have all day to play and I cannot run my own key cause I’m saving it for my friend who comes back tomorrow. I cannot play my warrior today. I’ve done one 16 ruby in 4 hours of trying to play the game. I just want to play.
Incentivizes safe playstyles’
Folks say that if you gave people unlimited chances, players would just do giga pulls at the beginning of the dungeon until they got it right. This maybe true for high end key pushes (<0.1%) but I strongly doubt pug groups would sit there and wipe 5-10+ times trying to perfect a initial pull. Pugs leave after one wipe these days.
As a the goblins say, time is money friend. Most folks will not sit there and waste their time doing crazy pulls if to time the dungeon doesn’t require these crazy pulls. If the dungeon does require crazy pulls, why not let them try? Let people play the game.
Negatives of Key Deranking
- Losing time to homework keys
- Incentivizing swapping to meta in order to play the game
- Discourages big / creative pulls
- Discouraging inviting non-meta classes
- Disconnects / ragequits punish players for no mistake of there own
- Decreases accessibility to the game
Losing time to homework keys
No one enjoys pushing their key back up, period. Don’t really think anyone has to argue this.
Incentivizing swapping to meta
I’m tired of always being told I’m not X class or having to swap classes just so I can play the game. I miss playing with more than the same three dps specs in a key. People shouldn’t be discouraged from playing the class they enjoy.
Discourages big / creative pulls
You know whats fun about the MDI? The crazy pulls these guys do because they can test keys and rerun them over and over. The people complaining about doing a crazy pull and resetting if it goes wrong, who cares? That is fun. I’ve never heard anyone say many that “pull was so big, i hated it”. People like big numbers.
Discouraging inviting non-meta classes
Maybe you don’t have the key that gives you IO but another person does. Pug will feel less dependent on running only meta if key deranking goes away. They will more than likely take a chance on you cause they don’t face homework-key-hell if things don’t go well.
Disconnects / ragequits
I don’t know about you but there is nothing worse then pushing up a homework key to a push key only to get hit with a disconnect on a team member. Of no fault of your own, you have no just wasted all that time pushing the key up and doing that key.
Also, I’m sure we’ve all had ragequitters on the first pull if they die. Or people gg’ing on the first wipe even though it is still timable. Why is the key holder punished for this behavior?
Decreases accessibility to the game
If keys didn’t derank, it would allow folks to just play the game more without repercussion, full stop. Have a inexperienced friend? Why not give him a go at a 16 when his highest is a 12? With no deranking, you wouldn’t have to sit in queue applying for hours. Just let people play the game
Conclusion
Overall, I enjoy keys but I cannot understand why key deranking exists in the game. The benefits are extremely shaky and I’ve really only heard streamer hold these positions. I think this is mainly because they likely don’t have issues finding the keys they need or players to push back up their homework keys. I don’t hate streamers or anything like that but I genuinely think they are out of tune with the general key population.
I think if we made this change we’d look back on it as we did the depletion change. Good riddance.
TLDR: Key deranking stifles playstyles and class picks. It punishes players for ragequits, disconnects, and other factors outside of their control. Please remove it.
