Mythic Plus Toxicity is Caused by Blizzards Game Design Choices

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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We all know that mythic plus is a toxic minefield of aweful attitudes and man children. I personally belive that this is a result of Blizzards poor game design choices surrounding mythic plusses.

Why do people react poorly in sittuations? Often its because they have a large investement into that thing, and this draws out an emotional reaction. If that person truly feels powerless to alter the course of a set of actions, people tend to lash out as a way to manage the stress of the sittuation.

The current design of mythic plus is completely unforgiving. A single player regardless of role can single handledly cause a failure. If that player happens to be in one of the two support roles, their mistakes get compounded quicker.

I belive the culprit of this is entirely Blizzards poorly placed obsession with turning wow into a popular e-sport. What makes for good viewership? Crazy dps, risky pulls, and dumb wipes. You can see this with the design of many of the bosses and trash packs in SL dungeons. 1 shot mechanics everywhere, punishing interuptable spells, and extremly tight timers.

I didnt play BFA till the very end so I cant comment on season 1 BFA m+. I did grind out the legion version of KSM in a fairly timely manner. There is a stark difference in comunity engagement with mythic plusses between those two expansions. Based on my own experience and the experiences others have put out in various forums, the largest problem with mythic plusses is community toxicity. This drives people like myself away from m+ because we dont want to deal with bad players and bad attitudes. Toxicity prevents newer players from wanting to engage in mythic plus, a place they should be focusing on to learn how to do their role better.

The toxicity of mythic plus needs to be adressed quickly, as an influx of players will want to re-engage with the content come 9.0.5. If blizzard fails to adress the current toxic environement of mythic plus, the valor system will only make things worse. People will feel even more invested in their key, and will lash out worse when failures happen.

The solution to this problem does not lie at a human/social level. It arrives at a game design level. Blizzard needs to make the player feel like they loose less for a mistake, and can actually carry/adjust if they know their stuff.I personally do not have a solution to this past nerfs, and that is not necissarly the best solution as the dungeons should still have a sense of challenge. The point of this post is to see what others think are game design problems that contribute to toxicity.

I feel tight timers, and how punishing having one player miss interupts are right now are two prime examples. A possible solution is adjusting timers further so that they feel standardized across dungeons (e.g. difference between Mists and Maldrax dungeons gets smaller). Change mob/pac orders, or cast timers so that 1 melee or 2 ranged can handle all of the mega aweful spells if they are on the ball. What other aspects of the current design of mythic plus do you feel contribute to toxic attitudes? If you dont have a solution thats ok, maybe others can offer that?

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If the timer is too tight or the consequences for missing an interrupt, or some other mechanic are too high, then do a lower key. There is no reason a scaling system like this should be made easy at every conceivable level for every group regardless of how poorly they play.

This is meant to be challenging content. If you want a participation trophy you can queue random heroics. If you want M+14 loot then you have to play well enough to earn it, not get carried by one person that knows where their interrupt button is and which spells to use it on.

The “toxicity” isn’t Blizzard’s fault. It’s people who want high level rewards for low level play that are the problem, not a challenge based system and not the players who are justifiably angry when their time is wasted by people who aren’t prepared for the content they’re attempting.

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You missed my point entirely. I am not advocating for high level rewards for low quality play. I am advocating for a system that is largely reliant on random groups, to not have you punished when one of said random players doesnt perfrom perfectly.

Its absolutely ludicrous that the player base needs to rely on an external tool to guage the quality of the player to minimize the issue we are discussing. In different mythic seasons mistakes werent as key ruining. One player making one mistake didnt cost you the entire run, right now it does, and I see that as a problem.

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You say “largely reliant”, but you are aware that you can form a group with people you know, right?

And it’s not you who suffers when one person fails to do their job correctly: the entire team suffers. Zothiar is correct: this is meant to be challenging content. Once you hit M+10, you have basically experienced all you should out of a Mythic dungeon. Every level above 10 is basically a 10, but ramped-up.

That is not the problem, that is the design.

If you’re doing runs above 11, you should know the dungeons fairly well, and you shouldn’t be making those errors. The mechanics you are facing from the mobs and bosses are exactly the same as they were in M0, but much less forgiving. Every level of a M+ means you can afford to make fewer mistakes. Cast time is the same, timing is the same, area of effect is the same, results are the same, damage is much higher.

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The reality is that just isnt the case. As someone who has to rely entirely on pugs, half of the runs you get in someone doesnt know x/y/z regardless of what their experience meter score indicates they should.

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The best adjustment they can make is making key downgrades optional. This takes away a big part of the disappointment of someone leaving. You can just try again with a different group.

Really simple to do, solves a lot of people’s frustrations with the system.

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In practice this isn’t really true. There are some mechanics that you won’t even see until high tyrannical keys. An example being millhouse’s shadowfury. Most people haven’t even seen this cast until they get into a high DoS key for the first time, because he’s usually dead before that point.

Another example is most of Ingra Maloch’s mechanics.

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Interesting that you make a post saying “toxicity is caused by Blizzard” and then go on to talk about how people react poorly in situations. Notice a theme here? People reacting.

The fact is, toxicity exists in all games and, wait for it, in life. This is human nature and it does not stop beyond game design. Blaming it on Blizzard is laughable. Like “if it weren’t for their crazy dps expectations, we’d all be happy”… c’mon. You cannot escape toxicity and I’d even argue that you can’t mitigate it very well either. Your option is to not be toxic and try to keep the peace as best as you can in those situations.

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So stop relying on pugs. If you see a player who did well, get them on your friends list. Get three more people, make sure they get along, have them run on a schedule, and boom, you have a regular group.

Yes, but it exists, so guess what? Time to deal with them.

Furytractor is correct: these aren’t issues caused by Blizzard.

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Wouldnt it be great if the world worked so easily? Sadly for the majority of the playerbase it does not, and they rely on pugs during the time they do have to play the game.

Environments are a larger indication of a persons actions than who they are as a person. This would suggest that the toxicity is a result of the envornment of mytic plus (aka its design) as opposed to the people in it.

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The point is a large percentage of people have literally never seen some of these mechanics before +x level tyrannical key because they only happen when kill time gets over 1-2 minutes.

Like you’ll likely never see Glogbrog’s double stomp, Millhouse shadowfury or Ingra Maloch’s DR shield below a 12.

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He was literally responding to someone saying that people should have learned all mechanics at the lower keystones, therefore people shouldn’t be making mistakes period.

On a side note, a similar thing is true for certain trash pulls as well. If on lower levels, certain mobs die before they can even move/cast, and then you need to adjust for overlapping abilities while kiting, you’ve got an entirely different challenge.

The fact is, toxicity exists in all games and, wait for it, in life. This is human nature and it does not stop beyond game design. Blaming it on Blizzard is laughable.

I’m not going to claim that Mythic+ is toxic (I don’t think it is), or that it’s toxic because of Blizzard/design, but there’s certainly design elements that either exacerbate, or mitigate toxicity.

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I think both of you have fair points. On the one hand, you’re correct in that this is a human thing… especially when you involve a bit of anonymity :wink: On the other hand, the design of the game, the challenges we have to face, and the tools we have to build community are all in the hands of Blizzard.

What should they do about this? I have no idea… but this is Blizzard’s game after all and they have a hand in it. If you want to see an example of a game with a different design and community building tools that has significantly less toxic player base, check out FF14.

The pool of humans available to FF14 is more or less the same as WoW; however, FF14 has a generally more accepting and supportive community. Why is this? Part of it has to do with how Square Enix’s interaction policies… you can actually receive a ban for being too toxic to another player, including discussing DPS and performance in-game.

I’m not making a statement on whether or not Blizzard should follow Square’s lead on this, but I am saying that it’s kind of interesting to look at the differences between the two.

Anyway…

I agree with you in that some of the mechanics are a little too punishing. Keys are just a little too tight, even after the nerf. Still though, that’s part of the challenge of M+ and what makes it engaging. If it was too easy, everybody would get KSM in the first month and then be bored :slight_smile:

Folks are saying this already, but honestly, the best thing you can do for yourself is to start to build a community of friends who have the same goals as you do and has the same outlook as you do. As you do keys in PuGs, as you find folks who align with your views and playstyle, reach out to them. Add them to friends and do future runs with them. Not everybody will be into this, but I’d be willing to bet you that within 10 keys (at any level), you could probably find yourself a few folks who’d rather group with folks that share their ideals than continue to PuG :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s not easy, it takes some effort, but this game has always been about community and if you don’t like the people you find in PuGs (and who can blame you!?), you are the first step in the process of doing something about it.

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It does work that easily. Nobody is required to rely on pugs, they do it because there is an immediate gratification. You want a group, boom, you got one. And like so many easy solutions, there is a price.

There are millions of people playing the game, and this isn’t even a raid group, where you’re looking for 10-20 people. You need 4 other people. Out of millions. No, you are probably not going to find them the exact moment you sit down to do a dungeon. You will have to invest some time and effort. But that’s life. Generally speaking, you get back what you’re willing to put in.

If you’ve resigned yourself to playing challenging content with the lowest common denominator then that’s a choice you’ve made, and it comes with consequences, in this case, bad players, ruined keys, and frustration. Those consequences are all a result of your choices, not Blizzard.

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But these are inherent risks that shouldn’t be accounted for. Game design shouldn’t be oriented around controlling player behavior but instead around the player experience. These are two different concepts. Behavior is how they are reacting and experience is just how they’re feeling during the content. I’m not saying the system is perfect, but you’re making a point that they have a say in player behavior and that they should design around it; that’s false. Just like in life, you can’t change other people’s reaction. Especially with something like toxicity.

I’d argue that WoW has twice the active daily users than FFXIV and that FFXIV doesn’t a competitive scene, which to OP’s credit that does have an effect in how the game is experienced. It means that people are playing less casually and more competitively. So, of course, people are going to be more emotionally driven towards success/perfection and more toxic when that goal is out of reach. However, the design doesn’t need to change to make it oriented towards FFXIV. FFXIV is the same concept but a different game with different goals.

Personally, I don’t think it’s Blizzard’s responsibility to police behavior to a certain extent. Obviously we don’t want people being openly racist etc. with a “wild west” mentality of anything goes, but people getting mad and rage quitting shouldn’t be a concern to Blizzard. That’s someone’s reaction and it has nothing to do with the game design… it’s how they handle their emotions; albeit poorly.

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Just to add to the conversation a little,

I find that an important fact is often glossed over in talking about mythic+ and other similar activites: There is a sizable number of people taking part in the activities that simply don’t want to be there.

This is entirely due to how the game is designed. They feel compelled to engage in activities they don’t like merely for a reward that is tied to it, which is extremely important for doing the activities they DO want to do.

This creates negative emotions from the outset, fosters a desire to complete the task as quickly as possible, puts an emphasis on being successful in order to claim rewards, and breeds annoyance when faced with anything that prolongs having to do an activity they don’t like. All of this leads to elitism and exclusionary tactics, particularly when the game doesn’t provide any necessary information to determine which players will be successful when forming groups (thus, third-party tools like RaiderIO are born).

The game is designed in such a way that it molds player behavior, likely not intentionally (which speaks more to the skill of the designers than anything else). Psychology and human behavior are huge parts of game design, it’s naive to think otherwise. We are, after all, only human.

I think ultimately, Blizzard needs to decide on if Mythic+ and other activities are their own progression path, or if they will continue to be a required part of other progression paths.

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Ive run over 150 keys in time this season, and many more that were not in time. These were all PUGs and I am a tank, a class that many people come to the forums and complain about their experiences with others while playing. In all of these I’ve only encountered one person who was obnoxious, and I simply muted them.

1 in 600 people encountered is a .001% toxic encounter rate. Now you might say this is anecdotal but that’s an extremely large sample size and I doubt anyone who responds to this thread complaining about M+ being toxic will have more keys done than me. If M+ was truly toxic, and there was some widespread problem I would have more than a .001% encounter rate.

What’s more likely happening is you’re playing extremely poorly, don’t understand the mechanics and any sort of criticism passed to you in your moment of failure is seen as hostile to you. You’re automatically on the defensive assuming everyone is toxic, and you create the behavior you complain about. Play lower keys, get good at the mechanics, and them try pushing. If you’re good at your class, you’ll never have someone criticizing your performance.

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You could argue that, but hopefully you’d realize it’d be pointless. Blizzard doesn’t release their subscriber count anymore, so we can’t really tell who has the higher active user base. Regardless, does it matter? As soon as the active user base numbers in the hundreds of thousands it really stops mattering.

The bottom line is that both games are role-based MMO games where running dungeons is a common activity. One game has a very supportive and patient community, the other does not.

Honestly, it’s tough to say. People have a natural aversion for being told what to do, but I honestly believe that we need some social structure and expectations to follow otherwise we tend to be jerks to each other.

It’s worth pointing out that people aren’t being banned left right and centre in FF14 either, so “policing” may be a strong word. They’ve made their expectations on behaviour clear, and folks probably need to be reminded from time to time, but in general the overall attitudes are more positive.

Perhaps the problem is that people in WoW have been allowed to be continually nastier to each other and so any change now would seem fairly drastic.

I took the OP’s post about toxicity to mean how players interact with each other, not about players bailing on groups they don’t like. It’s one thing to leave a dungeon that isn’t looking so hot, it’s another to loudly proclaim that you’re doing so, and that everybody else in the group should probably uninstall because they’re such baddies.

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That’s not the bottom line. Not having a competitive scene is a pretty huge factor. Among many others. You’re comparing two MMO’s when the only factor that is similar is that they’re both an MMO. Comparatively they are very different.

In this example, I meant getting mad and ragequitting separately even though they are usually exclusive. I’d also argue that getting mad is a cause of leavers too. People try to control dungeons and people don’t like that kind of approach so they leave.

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so you want a challenge that doesn’t actually require people to play well? how does that work?

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