The existence of some kind of in-game vetting system is a necessity for group content, particularly when high ilvl gear grows on trees and makes higher tiers of content appear to be more accessible than they are. Really, this is entirely why raiderio exists – the game has no reliable way to indicate player competence, so the players have outsourced that. It’s clunky as all fel, but it’s the best there is so it gets used.
Proving Grounds could’ve been this, but Blizz didn’t really take the feature far enough to be useful.
Issues with proving grounds:
They didn’t resemble actual content closely enough. Instead of simulating dungeons or raids, they stopped at simulating elements of combat.
They had no mode for group play. Solo practice only goes so far in the context of group content.
Proposed changes:
Make Proving Grounds more like real dungeons. Players would be able to activate:
Trash mode, spawning waves of trash using random sets of abilities pulled from real instanced content. This is basically original PG except with much more realistic trash behavior. It would also test spatial awareness with extra packs spawned in random locations around the arena.
Boss mode, giving the player access to 5 or so types of bosses, all of which use real boss mechanics.
Add group modes. In addition to being a being able to practice with AI party members, players would be able to either queue as a group or queue to be matched with other players to practice with. Accordingly, everybody would have two Proving Grounds ratings: solo and group.
Add M+ difficulty and affix settings. Once a player has beaten Proving Grounds in normal mode, they’d gain the ability to turn on configurable M+ difficulty scaling and affix simulation. These would always be enabled if queueing with a group.
If Blizz is feeling particularly adventurous, they could add Torghast-like map randomization on top of all this to better reproduce the dungeon experience.
I think these changes would make Proving Grounds a huge hit and a pillar of instanced content community because they add low-investment no-risk ways to practice higher end stuff, which is notably absent right now. RaiderIO would likely still be used in higher keys, but at low-mid keys it would likely be sufficient to look at a player’s ilvl, solo rating, and group rating.
Well I mean, if you look at my armory I’m technically the one who’d be getting excluded lol. I don’t take it as a bad thing though, PUGs suck and people want some level assurance that they’re queuing up with a decent player.
I just think there should be better in-game systems for this rather than it being some external thing. External tools have taken over which points to major deficiencies in game design.
They don’t, which is part of my point. I’d like them to be useful.
I agree PG were badly received simply because they didn’t help you to understand the fights you were actually being groomed for
they were basically a series of memorization and had no realistic impact on he actual content
basically you were told go whale on some generic npcs that didn’t even have the fight mechanics even remotely close to what you will be facing
say you wanna learn to handle the fights in freehold then that’s what you should be qued into a practice run with actual boss mechanics and trash mobs that are in that instance
after all in the actual instance NOTHING can be 100% guaranteed you still have the random elements which can occur you learn to anticipate and adapt to the chaos factor which can strike at any time without warning
let players get a feel for the actual fights that you will be encountering and not some preprogrammed mock battle that can simply be defeated by practicing and remembering the sequence they come at you
No i have it on my main, I just was not doing it over and over. I had tanks, heals and a few dps. I just didn’t care enough to do it over and over, But you think what you want, i really don’t care.
Exactly. Some might say to just do the dungeon, but the low investment no risk part is super super key. Just imagine being able to jump straight into practicing a +7 tyrannical bursting boss without having to risk a key or drag down somebody else’s group.
Honestly, it’s a lot of why I stopped trying on Healer Mage Tower.
Very rarely as a healer is the healer doing the kicking, or using other members of the group to block line of fire. Pillars to block LOS would have been a better feature but nah.
But that’s a different topic. Proving Grounds would only stop you from queueing random so… pre-made? Meh?
do you know how many players could steamroll the endless PG with ease yet they wiped on the first trash mob in MoP? the answer would make your hair stand on end lmao
That’s still risking a key though, and you tie up time farming your keys. It feels bad to burn keys on practice. Farming keys would feel much nicer if you could practice beforehand and have some level of confidence that you won’t end up tanking your own key.
keys should persist thru death until you actually clear the instance say they have the weekly lockout and until you clear it or the reset happens you don’t lose the key however you also cant gain a new one until you actually succeed which would ensure people cant simply cheese the run in order to try and get a higher or more favorable suffix for it
The original purpose of proving grounds was an optional vanity achievement.
It did no such thing. There were constant complaints about bad players in heroic dungeons during wod, despite the requirement that players had to pass silver proving grounds in order to queue for heroic dungeons.
They did remove it, toward the end of the expansion. It had never served any purpose except maybe at the beginning, when everyone was undergeared and only skilled players could complete dungeons. After people got gear it was meaningless.
And why did they remove the requirement? Because there was so little to do in the game that lots of people who don’t pay a videogame company to take dumb tests before being permitted to play ended up quitting.
On this you’re right. Players should not be permitted to get carries from their guildmates to help them gear up. They should wait until they gear up on their own, entirely without help from anyone.
No one should be permitted to help anyone in the game.
Am I doing this right?
This is not about players excluding players. What is proposed is an in game mechanic that will prevent many players from playing content. Any content.
And it does appear that, just as with the new zone that will successfully block anyone who does not have a leveled cloak from doing end content there, in Shadowlands this will also apply. If you’re a casual you’ll be expected to be able to solo hard content to prove you deserve to be permitted to play the game.
Can’t do it? No refunds for you. Just keep paying even though you won’t be permitted to play.
I’m not sure where you got that in what I wrote. Players helping each other is always cool and would continue to happen as it always has. What I meant to express was a personal desire (which I suspect is shared by others) to practice without any potential of negative impact on others and without the time sink required to farm a key.
In fact, my proposal would make it easier for players to help each other. Proving Grounds 2.0 would be the perfect environment for a veteran to bring in a couple of novices and point out places where improvements could be had.
If it’s anything like the Wod copy and paste of MoP proving grounds, there will be zero learning component. Here, try and fail. We’ll stun you and prevent you from asking to try again, just to make you feel bad.
Proving grounds is like if your town closed the high school to save money, then gave all the school age kids a pass fail exam at the end of the year on each subject.
“You failed calculus? Go teach it to yourself and then come back and try again next year.”
A pass fail test designed to block players from accessing end game is anything but a friendly learning environment.