These literally are not made up scenarios. You even admitted that they would happen, but wasn’t sure how often it would.
People will 100% start to get kicked before the first boss if key can’t degrade. Something that doesn’t happen now because there’s no benefit to kicking. We already went over how Mythic Raids don’t kick for the same reason due to how lockouts function.
Any content that benefits from kicking players already do kick. LFD dungeons, M0, LFR, Normal Raids, and Heroic Raids all have underperformers being kicked. This isn’t a made up scenario.
- Score inflation at a much higher rate than now. You even recognize that score isn’t a great indicator currently and will be even worse if keys don’t deplete.
- Flooding of groups in LFG for key levels they are not ready for because the large majority will not choose to drop their key levels down because why would they if they can just keep posting their key over and over.
- Your argument of these things already happening again doesn’t make it okay for them to enable it further.