The problem is that not enough players will choose to do so when they get in over their head. Most people really struggle in honestly assessing their own capabilities. Depletion is a game-managed self-regulating difficulty modifier to provide the best experience for the most players. Groups don’t have to put any thought into whether they are ready for the next level; they just run the key they have and see where it goes. If they’re ready for the next level, they’ll time it. If not, it depletes and they have an easier key for next time.
What do you think the PUG experience will be when few players actively choose to lower their key even in times when they should? Even ignoring the players who intentionally get carried at the start of a season and then list essentially full carry keys the rest of the season, players will wind up being leader of groups that have at least them as a weak link to success. If I am looking to join a PUG key, how am I going to discern between a key where the entire group will pull its own weight and a key where the group leader is over their head?
I’m sure you’ll just tell me I’m being some elitist gatekeeper here, but that really isn’t the intent. Team games are most fun when everyone on the team is challenged by the difficulty but not so far out of their league that it becomes frustrating. A full premade might recognize when they have a key too large for their capabilities and choose to drop the key level; PUGs have no real incentive to do so as eventually they’re likely to get a group that is capable of completing (and possibly even timing) the key despite their shortcomings.
And then there is the group of players that will happily keep relisting their key that’s far above their abilities knowing that with enough bites of the apple, eventually they’ll get 4 other players that can carry them. It can already be difficult to spot keys where the leader was carried to that level; how many more groups in LFG will be in that situation when it’s easier to maintain a key at a level they aren’t ready to succeed in without depletion?
If we did that for every piece of content then WoW as a game would be dead. There’s nothing unique about M+ that necessitates forcing lower difficulty. “Too tough don’t retry” is not a good enough argument, especially mechanism for lowering your key already exists anyways. Entire video game models are built on people trying to accomplish and retrying content.
In fact, we already have non degradable content that’s far more time consuming, more team oriented, higher risk/reward, has people in it who have it go well over their heads (to the point it ruins guilds), and it’s still not considered a problem.
What m+ needs is better tools for analysis (put more focus on (IO eg) and better training methods (and we’re heading in that direction with upcoming dungeon changes + recent heroic changes).
Which is why I’m not suggesting other forms of content have this structure. M+ is built to be a singular bite-sized chunk of 30 - 45 minutes where a 5-player team either succeeds or decides not to continue. The cost to push a key back up after failing to time is another 30 minute chunk if your team is good enough to do so. You don’t have weeks of progressing a single raid boss before enough of your team is able to routinely execute at a level to kill the boss in raid. Your don’t have hours (if not days or weeks) of grinding a rating back up after it dropped due to a losing streak like in organized PVP.
This structure makes it a much more suitable vessel for PUGing compared to other forms of endgame content. That’s why dedicated enough PUG groups are able to push into title range of keys most (if not all) seasons. You aren’t seeing many PUG groups clearing mythic raids or achieving a high rating in arena (discounting the modes that force solo participation like shuffle). This PUGability makes it more detrimental to have players listing keys they don’t have the skill to succeed in. Players looking for those groups will have to be far more diligent in vetting the keys they join to prevent their time being wasted by having a carry they were unaware was part of the group.
And there is a bit of saving people from themselves baked in here as well. From the perspective of the player that doesn’t know they should be running +5 not the +10 they wound up with after getting a carry from a Twitch streamer they watch, it may not be obvious that they should even pursue lowering their key much less know how to go about doing it. It might be discouraging to never have a successful key run when listing their own key because the game doesn’t clearly communicate the problem is that they need more gear or polish before being ready for that level.
I’m not sure if I would agree that this isn’t considered a problem. There are certainly posts about guilds breaking up over the difficulty of mythic raids from time to time. It’s not as popular as complaints about M+, but part of that can be attributed to how many more people engage with M+ (and/or are envious of the M+ system).
I don’t really fancy changing M+ to match a system in a way that’s objectively worse than how M+ has it. Consistency isn’t always a good thing if the alignment offers worse form or function than what exists for one or more of the different things. If we do want consistency in this regard, wouldn’t it make more sense to bring the other modes up to the standard M+ which already has some built-in handling for players to hone in on an appropriate difficulty level?
Absolutely, I’m with you 100%. But the reason key depletion is good is not because of a lack of information. Sure, being able to vet whether a key is going to be a dud more efficiently would help reduce the impact on players joining likely disaster of a key that gets listed, but keeping those disaster keys to a minimum is still a pretty big positive even if we have the tools. I’m still not understanding how it isn’t better for everyone, save for the players who intentionally want to con unsuspecting players into carrying them, to have the game help place players into the difficulty level most appropriate for them.
If keys don’t deplete then you get people who are carried, intentionally or not, into +10 (previous +20) and now they have it for the rest of the season.
a) This means that they are now able to spam that key level and continuously drag down unsuspecting pug groups.
b) This also means that score inflation will be exponentially worse than it is now. Score is one of the major vetting tools that pugs use and will become even more diluted.
Keys not depleting will continue to have players leaving when keys don’t go well. If anything, more players will leave because there’s less of a consequence for doing so.
Keys not depleting will add a new issue to the pugging community because now keyholders are able to kick group members without penalty.
This is something that does not currently take place in M+.
Once keys don’t deplete, there’s a positive benefit to kick someone early in the run if they die, don’t like the route, or for any other reason they deem fit.
There’s plenty of reasons keys deplete. You not liking them doesn’t mean they aren’t useful and serving a purpose. If you were being authentic and actually wanting to make M+ better and not worse you would see these point and stop this all or nothing argumentation. Keys never depleting adds more exploitation and toxicity.
It would make more sense to advocate for keys to have 2 or 3 charges so they don’t deplete after 1 bad run, but still depletes if they key holder isn’t ready for it.
I think it should be the opposite. It should stop depleting after +15 (previous +25) because at that point they arn’t going for progression within tangible rewards. After that point, they are just going for score and maybe the .1 title.
We don’t know where the cap for keys is going to be next season, especially with the radical changes to affixes that are happening. May I remind you that 25-26s (Currently 15s due to scaling changes) were title in S1.
It’s also not “just” about title. It’s more about recognising the level of difficulty at which realistic expectations of the keyholder become relevant.
Yeah I mean ultimately I’m against removing depletions. I would be okay with added 2 or 3 charges before it depletes. Seems most people would be for it from both sides of the table, but every one wants to argue for extremes which gets them no where.
I haven’t read this entire thread so maybe it was discussed previously, but removing depleted keys at the high end dramatically changes the approach to keys.
When you have 1 shot, there is a lot more attention on the planning and understanding and focus of that single run.
When you have infinite shots, you can slow grind the troublesome parts of the dungeon until you get it.
Not commenting on which is better, but it’s a large difference in approach.
Most would based on my interactions with people suggesting this in multiple threads over the years, but the threads that want absolute removal get more traction. The thread I created with thoughful suggestions just gets burried because there’s not much to argue about in it.
I’m still uncertain about 6 and 7 and I’ve played both of them up to Prinny Baal. Like they’re good and stuff, but the systems aren’t in depth as 3, 4, or 5, and also where is the PC port of 3?