My push group and I were talking earlier today about M+ gearing, and we hit on something that I think could normalize the gearing incentives and structure of M+:
I would like to see the weekly keys to disappear, and instead we could choose the dungeon and key level we wanted to run at the entrance. You could increase the maximum key you could run by completing keys of a lower level (similar to diablo 3). Timing a 15 means your max key increases to a 16. Two chest-ing means it would go to a 17.
The trade-off would be that each dungeon has a weekly loot lock-out for all key levels. When you finish a key, you can select whether you’d like to loot or not. That way you can start out with warm-ups and only loot when you’re running the level you want to.
Having a weekly lock-out would let the ilvl be more normalized between raid and m+ (outside of the vault) without running into spamming issues.
Personally, I think this would be a lot more fun and deterministic than the current system, but I’m open to feedback on it.
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Nice post. A couple of counterpoints, what would this do to people pugging keys? No one wants to be brought in for a practice key with no gear. Would the loot be per person or per group?
If loot is per person would it allow loot showering in weekly no-leaver keys? Say all five people agree to slog through a tyrannical workshop key, can they all roll at the end and would each person get a piece of gear? If yes, that’s a lot of loot for one key and could make a single weekly key a more attractive proposition. If no, it would be unsatisfying to use your roll for the dungeon and end up with nothing, knowing you were locked out until next week. At least in (mythic) raid once you kill the boss you can’t kill it again until reset.
The proposed system would turn live into a deterministic system like tournament realms. This presents players with two options, run an easy key at the highest level or run the same dungeon multiple times in a row so they can push their max up. Without raiderIO score (a third party add on) why would anyone ever do Kings Rest? Is the game more fun for players when the optimal choice is to always run Freehold for your weekly chest? Your proposal is definitely the most time efficient process if the goal is the allow the highest level dungeons to be completed.
But is completing the highest keys the most fun player experience? Infinite scaling is at the core of M+ gameplay, but it also leads to issues, example: Freehold 1st boss, sorrids without snapping, or mech-jockey grease gun etc. When keys get to a certain level some abilities will kill players with little to no counter-play. This is part of the high end M+ meta currently, and by making it easier (through practice keys) for more players to time high keys these issues would be seen earlier each season and by a higher number of players.
I was thinking that each person would get to choose to roll individually and then be locked out from loot on that dungeon individually as well. Loot wouldn’t be guaranteed either. Finishing a dungeon would be like killing a raid boss. It would be a bummer to get no loot, but loot isn’t exactly guaranteed for you in raid either. And by weekly lock-out I meant until the next reset (I should have been more clear).
I also was imagining that raider IO exists because it’s been so widely adopted, but I think leaderboards for each dungeon would be a cool alternative. If you could select the level then you could have leaderboards for both the highest completed key and the fastest at each key level. That would let people get intrinsic rewards whether they like pushing high or going fast. You’d still want to run a high KR for score or because you haven’t had your Geti drop yet, but if it’s a terrible week for KR then you’re really only missing out on a single loot roll for that reset.
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Raider IO exists for the same reason that raid progress in the armory existed before M+ was even a thing, to have some tracking of progress and experience. Whether this implies competence in that experienced content is not guaranteed of course, but it’s better than nothing.
Another big reason why raider IO exists is that high ilvl is way too easy to get for…poor skilled (for lack of more colorful terms that will get me banned) players, such that there is no correlation between general player competence and high ilvl. By general transferrable competence I mean things like:
- doing above 50% of theoretical DPS parse on a given fight
- not dying to every obvious avoidable mechanic
- using utility like interrupts, stuns, offheals, etc.
All of this is true and was never being disputed haha I was just answering Holyschimts ideas and saying that I think this system would work with raider io in mind.
It sounds good on paper but it leads to boring gameplay. They need to invest more time into M+ balancing and allow gear to scale up to Mythic level in high enough keys, then limit the amount of that level gear you can attempt to attain each week.
The key system is fine, but they should bring back the ability to delete and re-roll your key given their lack of balacing affixes on certain dungeons on certain weeks. The answer is not, “bring someone else with a different key.”
The reality is, M+ has much more longevity then Mythic Raiding and it allows a much higher ceiling of play. Same goes for PvP. Yet raiding remains the gatekeeper for the best gear.
Also, do away with the stupid weekly chest, what the hell kinda stupid gearing up avenue is a weekly chest? The criteria for mythic gear from the chest is faceroll… mythic gear for doing a +15 that can be done by virtually rolling your face around on your keyboard? How does this fly yet higher gear isn’t awarded for doing +20 keys or above?
Mythic raids go on farm mode and become faceroll so easy, those players then go to high M+ for a challenge. Yet the gear for high M+ comes from raiding… how a*s backwards is this?
Blizzard needs to get their S together.