I imagine this won’t be a terribly popular opinion, but because this is something I’ve been seeing more of recently, I’m getting tired of simply “accepting” it and I’m going to start pro-actively trying to address is.
Here’s the TL;DR / situation:
Tanks or Over-Geared players using the Auto-Queueing and Reward (satchels) functionality of Heroic / Normal Dungeons should be flagged as Cheating as it’s using the system in an Unintended manner that makes the game unfriendly to most players.
And the details:
During my lunch break today, I decided to hop into the game, tend to some chores, and auto-queue in a Heroic Dungeon as a Healer. I like proffering the help, offering advice to new players I see, etc., and the satchels are nice.
Get into the dungeon and a seriously over-geared tank goes running off without the rest of the group, proceeding to grab literally every mob they can and head to the boss.
Aside from this being immediately obvious, the tank posts what I can see is a macro’d message (it appeared twice back to back with exactly the same wording just as they were taking off) that effectively declares:
“Greetings People, as you can see I’m already taking off and I won’t be stopping for anything. If you have the equipment to keep up and survive then feel free otherwise wait at the start of the instance. I can complete this on my own and don’t need anyone else.”
In my own experience, there’s primarily only 1 reason why someone so super-geared (they had a mix of Heroic-Mythic raid gear) would deign to play a Heroic Dungeon: The Satchel
So, after leaving the dungeon because I have no interest in playing the game like that, I flagged them for Cheating. First time I’ve ever done it but it’ll be something I do more of in the future as I see it.
Now why am I flagging them for Cheating? I see this being the controversial part as I’ve seen folks both discourage as well as support this mindset in the past, so here’s my reasoning:
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It’s taking advantage of an automated system so as to garner a faster reward and transportation that’s NOT INTENDED
1a. Untintended Reward - The point of joining a Heroic Dungeon for a satchel is to assist a group of players with the run, NOT run it for them and/or force them to not participate and/or force them to leave with a Dungeon Deserter Debuff
1b. Unintended Transportation - Auto-queueing for Heroic Dungeons means you get to be transported to and from, allowing the player to do whatever they please in the meantime -
It’s forcing other players to concede to the singular players will or risk multiple different forms of unintended punishment
2a. Unintended punishment #1 - If you vote-kick the Tank (or offending player in general) that’s taken control of the group, then you have to wait for a replacement and many times, that can kill a run
2b. Unintended punishment #2 - If a player doesn’t want to deal with that kind of mess and decides to leave, they get a Dungeon Deserter debuff and have to wait; in my above example, I wanted to help some players out and get a satchel during my limited lunch break, but couldn’t due to this other player deciding to ruin the run for everyone without a group concensus
2c. Unintended punishment #3 - Players without gear to “keep up” having to literally sit around for 15-20min because this over-geared player decided to do things their own way
Now for the caveats:
Would I have flagged this individual if they had asked the entire group at the start of the map if they could speed run it?
Nope, I wouldn’t, because then they’re getting a group consensus and agreement, and I’ll always go with the flow in that regard. Even if it’s not something I like, I’ll roll with it for the sake of the group. However, the individual I flagged didn’t even ask. They just took off and used a macro’d message to tell everyone how to deal with it.
And why did I feel the need to flag it?
Because this kind of attitude is a huge part of what’s making this game so incredibly off-putting to a lot of long-time players, especially new ones.
Do I recognize that this could adversely affect the option of satchels being rewarded in the first place?
Sadly, I do. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy getting the satchels and do 1-2 Heroic runs daily doing either Tanking or Healing. However, the biggest reason why I do it is because I recognize that those satchels appear because there’s a backlog of players waiting to do dungeons, and I legitimately enjoy helping players.
For example: If I see a group of actual “new” players struggling during a Heroic Dungeon, I’ll take a few minutes at the end of the run to get a conversation going to provide insights to folks, as well as answer any questions. After all, I pug all of my M+ runs so having more folks interested in running the content is always a good thing, especially if they’re inspired to learn and grow.
Lastly, I will concede that if Blizz in any way provides feedback that this isn’t something that constitutes Cheating, then I’ll let it go and stop flagging people that I see do this.
I hope, however, that it becomes something they support. It seems dirty to see anyone try to abuse a system like this, but it just makes the experience all the more unpleasant for new players or players who aren’t into high-end group content. We need more positive, supportive systems to build up good experiences, not systems that create scenarios that players seek to exploit purely for their own personal gain.