Let me start by saying I like the organization of your post. Then let me follow up by breaking down how essentially every idea is bad.
Damage potential almost completely does not matter. Scaling rewards essentially cap out at 15. A group can time a 15 with all the dps barely doing above 40k each. Being able to do mechanics affectively is what matters. Unless this boss included every single mechanic AND the affixes from the dungeon, it wouldn’t show what a group can do. Additionally, even to this point, it’s incredibly easy to do good dps against a training dummy (which is essentially what you suggest). It’s much harder to do that same dps against mechanics in which you’re not prepared.
People want to get the maximum loot without being capable of doing the content. Even very high keys, particularly without Tyrannical, can be very easy if you’re doing it slowly. Pulling one pack at a time, or splitting up that one pack via CC would make any dungeon easy, in terms of ability to complete. There is near zero scaling difficulty without the timer. Removing the timer trivializes the content, at least as designed. Then again…
M+ already has a mode that doesn’t have a timer. It’s called form a group for a key for completion. You get all of the same rewards, just 1 less piece at the end.
It’d be totally fine if they want to lust on every pull, provided trash doesn’t respawn on them, which it very well might if they move too slowly.
If they want to go fast, they’ll do M+. The rewards for this could reach M+ levels, but would lose efficiency if that’s the route a group decides to go.
Yeah I see what you’re trying for and honestly it wouldn’t affect me as I would just do M+, but generally the people doing 15-18 keys aren’t nearly as toxic as the groups in the 8-12 keys. And I think this system is going to attract those types of people.
Yeah, I know. People would push themselves harder for the same reason they run keys higher than 15 – the challenge.
Yeah, I know, and this is my usual answer to those who say they hate the timer. I’m just trying to be creative and give those who don’t like the timer something that works for them. For everyone else, there’s M+, which would yield loot faster than this mode of play.
To be clear, I probably wouldn’t run this mode more than once a month, if I felt like it. I like M+ as it is.
I hate to say this, but I don’t think that bot teammates are an option right now. Blizz just hasn’t done anything to convince me that they’re capable of making NPC helpers with smart enough AI to handle the complexities of a dungeon, much less a scaled dungeon.
Yeah, this would also be a concern for me. They’d have to be worse than players by a LARGE margin, else people would kick the rest of the party at the last boss.
We would definitely only be able to do one of these two. Either the group would need to run back through the whole dungeon, or trash needs to respawn – probably the latter, to discourage groups from waiting for Lust/Hero on every pull. Waiting 2-3 minutes for individual CDs to become available would be fine, but Lusting every pull I think would need to be punished. The interval of trash respawns is certainly up for debate, though. Something like 20-30 minutes on that seems appropriate, but that’d be another detail to hash out after brainstorming.
Honestly, both are up for discussion. I’ve not settled on anything and in all honesty, I just want to put together a good idea for Blizzard, so ultimately that decision would lie with them.
I can see no trash respawns causing potential problems, and I can see trash respawning causing potential problems. Both carry with them pitfalls. I think we’ve somewhat reliably determined that trash itself would need to be a reasonable challenge to overcome, and that probably means trash should not respawn, but I also want to make sure that wipes are appropriately punished.
Do you think wipe punishment is necessary in this hypothetical model if rezzes are already limited?
Yeah, but any Blacksmith can open locked doors. My Paladin has gotten into plenty of Tol Dagor runs just by telling the leader they won’t need a Rogue for that.
I wonder if environmental things could instead be incentive or artificial timers for dungeons. Like areas where lava rises, or reinforcements arrive making it a bit more difficult.
I imagine they could actually innovate quite a bit in having dynamic dungeons that felt more realistic than just having a flat dungeon experience of placed assets.
Have conditionals or switches that can be reacted to or preempted. Obviously getting a bit off track for the whole M+ idea and more dungeons in general. But like think collecting wood and barricading off a door to increase the duration until reinforcements arrive and stuff.
Except this makes no sense. The main thing that increases challenge in a m+ is the timer. Remove the timer and increased scaling does nothing to increase the challenge it just makes it take longer. People who want the timer removed are not people who want to put super high keys for no reward difference.
But they have something that works for them. If you just took m+ and removed the timer, it would be indistinguishable (in terms of gameplay) from running m+ now and ignoring the timer. If we acknowledge that removing the timer would, in some way, reduce or nerf the loot potential, then we’re already here.
When we loot at these two points together, we realize that the people complaining about m+ timers, in almost every situation, just want easier loot. They cannot complete 15+ and want the loot anyway. Because literally every other complaint I have ever seen for m+ regarding this can be solved by running with friends.
I just look at the system as a whole and what type of player it’s going to attract. Very very few skilled and experienced players would do this over M+. So who is the audience really? Probably mediocre to low skilled players with not a lot of experience.
Which kind of brings us to the next problem, which is a lot of this audience doesn’t want to do activities outside of the matchmaking systems (LFR/LFD). So basically you have the M+ crowd, the matchmaking crowd, then how many people will actually be left over for this? And how many of these people want to take 1hr+ to do a dungeon?
