The biggest frustration I’ve had this expansion is sitting in queue for long periods of time because people are assembling M+ comps based on community perception. This happens because people are afraid to brick their key and want score; which is fine because that’s what current M+ key design incentivizes.
However, I would appreciate it if I could login and be challenged by dungeons instead of an the LFG tool which has me queued up for 10 - 30 minutes before someone decides to take a chance on my class and spec.
If you were to change how keys are acquired and/or depleted then I think a lot more groups would be open to inviting off-meta specs and classes in addition to key groups assembling and starting quicker.
You could:
Remove keys and introduce an LFG system that utilizes in-game score
Remove key depletion altogether (I mean really what’s the harm in this, if someone can’t time a key they can’t time a key and if they want to drop it to get easier keys they can).
Something else even better
I personally would prefer a change that removes the penalty of key depleting altogether. If someone has all 11s timed and wants to start doing 12s then they should be able to make groups to attempt 12s.
If someone with all 11s decides to make a group to attempt a 12 and it bricks in 1 pull and now they have an 11 again then what’s the fun in that? They want to do 12s they already have 11s completed.
The challenge of M+ should always be the dungeon, not how long it takes to get into a group or the tediousness of getting another key after one thing goes wrong. The penalty of not timing the key is enough. I shouldn’t have to run another dungeon for the privilege of harder content. Imagine if you wiped on a mythic boss and now have to go back and do a heroic kill before having another attempt.
I want to push keys because it’s fun but there is nothing but friction in my way when the friction should solely be in the dungeon.
I think key depletion is a good thing. It sets what level you, and your group, are comfortable at.
M+ pushing, is and geberally always has been, for premade groups or groups picking up 1 or 2 people.
If they were to change it, I think a good change would be to give keys “charges”. You get your key with 2 charges. If you dont finish the key, instead of depleting it consumes a charge to give you another chance. If you do finish the key overtime, it consumes both charges and drops the key level.
This way you still have your +10 key (example) if someone has to leave or decides to dip. But if you finish, you still get the rewards and the vault but a lower key if not timed.
Key Depletion is partially the punishment/balancing act of being rewarded for (technically failing) the content. Mythic Plus is unique in that fact that as long as you “finish” the key you will get GV and even loot.
You don’t see that with raiding to say the least. However I do see the frustration with bricked keys and other issues that arise like people leaving or being far worse at the game than initially thought.
Even if more people posted theirs, they would still go for higher IO/meta players.
Keys deplete for a reason and it serves a purpose.
Score =/= Skill. Using IO as a match making metric would be horrendous. Using any queued system for M+ would be a dumpster fire.
Keys deplete because it is a form of progression. If keys don’t deplete then you only fail upwards. All someone needs to do is get carried 1 time in a +10 and now they have a +10 key for the rest of the season. Failing as many times as they want while bringing in random players and wasting their time. You think this is a good idea because you can’t see past how it would benefit you personally.
Just because someone was able to get all 11s timed doesn’t mean they are ready for 12s. The same applies for lower levels.
I dont think keys should deplete. I think they just dont go “up” when you dont time them.
You’re already punished with sub-par loot and a lack of crests. That should be enough.
This is merely a tool Blizzard uses to forcefully bind players and increase their game time.
Although it doesn’t bring any profit, they still choose to do it.
Your “logic” is extremely flawned. If Blizzard wants to maximize $$$, which most people can agree on, then why would they do anything that contradicts that? Obviously if M+ wasn’t making them money they would have changed or deleted it. You act like you know their internal metrics because you are mad about being hard stuck like your other thread.
What’s wild is that there are some people who argue that kicking won’t become common. The only reason people don’t kick in M+ is because there’s zero benefit to doing it just like Mythic Raids from what I understand.
People get kicked in every other form of content for playing poorly.
So instead of having only a “leaver” problem, we will introduce a new issue to the pug community of players being kicked and still have the problem of people leaving mid-run.
Depletion is when you deplete the key after running a dungeon. The vault key is part of your vault reward. I don’t think we should normalize the vault key as part of the depletion, this system is fine as it is.
Hard to make that argument when keys from the vault used to not deplete while your argument is about making significant changes to the system as a whole. Most of the people arguing about key depletions don’t want it depleted ever including the key you get from the vault. Which I understand is different from your stance, but it would be disingenuous to ignore. Let’s not act like once someone gets a 10 key that they wouldn’t be able to drag at least 1 group to carry them to get another one the next week, while inting how many other runs to do so.
Even if we ignore the vault, removing depletions entirely would be a plague and a net-negative for the pug community. I keep saying this, but people keep going back to all or nothing arguments. If anything adding charges to keys would be good, unlimited attempts are not.
Yeah all or nothing is not a good idea, I’m 100% certain there’s a middle-ground to be found. I actually like that the vault key is your highest untimed -1 or highest timed. This way it forces you to keep it up.
Ehhh at 10’s and lower a lot of people won’t bother to go that far. It would be too tedious and as long as the group pass certain thresholds it becomes pretty easy to tell in most cases if you can time the key and/or finish.
The problem I have with key depletion, is it’s way harder to fill a +7 than a +8, and its way harder to fill a +9 than it is to fill a +10. Key depletion makes people scared to run their own keys, I get being scared is a player problem not a blizzard problem, but this has a negative impact because it leads to less groups being formed.
I get the concept of “you failed a key, therefore the content is too hard”, but this concept is flawed. You cannot improve without failing. And since groups are way harder to form at the +7 and +9 levels, once that 8 or 10 is failed, some players will shelve their key, and now even less groups are being formed.
Key depletion discourages key listings, which is bad.
While there are definite negatives of key depletion, not depleting has even more downsides. Let’s say that depletion is removed and you have 50% more keys being posted. Now we run into the problem of there being significantly more groups that are going to fail because people have keys that they are not ready for. Yes, you can manually downgrade them, but let’s be honest no one is going to downgrade a 10. They are going to constantly repost their key until they get carried in it dragging down unsuspecting pugs.
This would also negatively impact the pug community specifically because keys not depleting leads to faster score inflation which makes it that much harder to vet pugs. Yes, scores are not perfect for vetting, but it’s the best we have. Yes, we already deal with score inflation, but that doesn’t mean they should enable it from happening at a much greater rate. This change would be for short-sighted gains and massive long-term loss.
You would also now have to deal with key holders kicking players if the first few pulls don’t go perfectly. We currently have people leaving and no one being kicked. We will now have people still leaving and people being kicked. Again only impacting the pug community.
Circling back to more keys being posted, we will have a greater amount of keys with not that many more tanks or healers. Many of us get into keys fairly quickly which means we already join others instead of our own. That means people will be waiting to fill their groups longer on average again only impacting pugs negatively.
Full on removing key depletion is a net-negative even if there are some downsides as is. If we want an honest conversation about realistic changes that balances benefits and negatives then we should be advocating for keys to have 2-3 charges and for gear tracks to be upgraded via enchanted crests like crafted gear up to Hero after already being upgraded 8/8.