Solution to RaiderIO discrimination

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

Anyone remember proving grounds, and having their proven level next to their name when queueing? It was by no means perfect, but it did differentiate players who know how to control burst, interupts, etc. A lot of players did complain they couldnt do higher than silver, but those players shouldnt be doing high keys anyway until they get better. It could be enhanced so we can see players that completed endless wave counts as well. Players who did endless 30 are pretty capable of doing 15s while Gold are pretty capable of doing 10s. This way players dont need to go hours of grinding just to get a few io points to join a group and players can also practice till they’re good enough to play their class.

Edit: For the people assuming that im suggesting this as a replacement to RaiderIO. no. I am not. I know a ranking system will always exist, but Proving grounds was a good implementation that gave players a change to prove themselves through solo content. In high level keys, IO is def needed, but in low-mid level keys, the skill difference between players regardless of IO is pretty massive and proving grounds can show a player can actually do 5k+ overall dps or they just got lucky and got carried.

2 Likes
2

What your asking for is raider io. But raider io dose better.

Proving grounds is a test that vary badly translated to 5 mans as the test don’t really show what a real group is like. While raider io is exactly that a score from the real world. A real world score will always be better than a score that is from content that is. It the same.

While this discrimination as you call it would be exactly the same for if proving grounds was the metric but now your forced to do some irrelevant content that is not anywhere close to the real world in order to get into real groups based getting score from those exact groups.

Raider io is not a cause of discrimination, no matter what system you use people will always look for the best they can get your system dose not change this it only adds a needless step that was removed since it did a vary bad job at teaching players while dint really releate to the content it was meant to block you out of. For example as I was around when proving grounds was a thing. People I knew and raided with that parsed in 98 plus percentage in mythic that where not able to get endless 15 and had issues with gold. As the skills needed are quite different than the skills needed to do well in raiding and m plus.

There is no better test to see if someone is ready for a 5 man key than to run a 5 man key exactly what raider io looks at. No raider io dose not show skill in keys and your proving grounds never did either. Proving grounds only showed an abilty to follow a step by step dance you could memorize and in fact in was so step by step there was even an addon I used on my tank to do endless 30 that told you exactly what to do and when req no thought at all. Raider io at least shows the player was present and has the experience to match his score if not the skill. Proving grounds showed nothing of real meaning to keys.

2 Likes
3

Not exactly. What raider io shows is experience in each specific dungeon. If I am running DoS, I care about their highest DoS run in addition to their overall experience. Proving grounds only shows me that they can practice some generic encounter. It won’t show me that they know the mechanics that are critical to timing a key.

7 Likes
4

raider io shows you can get carried. I guess you dont recall post of people complaining about not meeting requirement to run heroic dungeons, which was silver… There are plenty of people that cant even do gold but are doing 10+ keys. Proving grounds was easy for some players, but those players literally proved themselves they can do more challenging content. a lot of mechanics in wow are just reskins and has been for years. On average, it definitely helps filter out good players vs bad compared to raider io which shows they got lucky and got invited to a group with other good players.

This is just my opinion from forming heroic weekly pug raids in WOD and noticing gold players were better than players who haven’t done proving grounds or silver.

1 Like
5

if you have done any endless proving grounds, it teaches you to save burst and when to use burst etc. it has a lot of things that can translate to real world dungeons. what ive noticed 90% of the time people dont know how to manage cooldowns or dont even use it at all till the boss. Tanks dont know how to tank under pressure etc. it could be baseline for inviting players. If you’re pushing competitively IO does help, but for the other 90% of the player base, it can help determine if players can even play their class which most of the time is enough to time a 15.

Imagine a 215 ilvl player doing 3k dps , dont know how to interupt or dodge generic mechanics with 15s timed but has been luckily invited by some high io players for a quick run because of this ilvl, vs 200 ilvl player doing 5k dps that does proving ground proving he can burst down mobs, do sustained dps and interupting raid wipe cast.

Since you seem to push above average keys, you should know more than anyone else, baseline knowing how to play the game well is enough to time 15s.

6

Proving grounds is certainly better than no filtering at all. It was how I invited people at the beginning of the expansion before M+ was released.

7

You still won’t know route, won’t know what to interrupt, won’t know mechanics, won’t know when to burst, and I still won’t take you.

That’s maybe 50% of knowledge you need in a key.

Not if you know how to read it.

Like I said, that’s not nearly enough for keys.

8 Likes
8

i just think its funny/sad the groups that will decline for a 10 when you’ve done a 9; they want folks who have done like a 12 or 15 but those people arent normally gonna queue for a 10. its like the old thing about getting a job; you need experience to get the job but you can’t get any experience because you can’t get the job

4 Likes
9

Given that currently, people treat RaiderIO like you need to have done a +9 to know how to do a +9, when all of those things are learned before even +8, I don’t know that this is the best argument.

Never mind that an updated implementation of Proving Grounds could literally involve actual dungeon layout (and monsters/mechanics from the current dungeons) instead of being set in Temple of the White Tiger.

2 Likes
10

but it did differentiate players who know how to control burst, interupts

I think anyone would be able to do that. But when running Mythic + you have to know which mobs to interrupt, which mob has priority to burst on, etc. People know how to play their class, but just don’t know the dungeon due to them not wanting to read a full walkthrough on WoWhead or watch an in depth youtube video on it.

Ran a key (ToP) this morning and I (a holy priest) was the only one interrupting. It was so painful and we wiped so many times to it. With this week being Fortified, not interrupting the right enemies and bursting down priority enemies made it really tough. The 2 hunters in the group after just a poke from an enemy would drop 30% (which could have been prevented by an interrupt) and then they would walk into some mechanic taking another 15%. Their highest key was a 10 and they couldn’t even handle a 7.

This way players dont need to go hours of grinding just to get a few io points to join a group

Get the IO on your main and you can link that score to your alts so when someone is looking they can see your mains IO score. It pays off.

3 Likes
11

There are plenty of gamers for whom doing something like this literally defeats the point of gaming. And TBH, I can understand that.
As far as games in general go, it’s a fairly new phenomenon that’s limited to a small subsection of certain games.

12

There are plenty of gamers for whom doing something like this literally defeats the point of gaming. And TBH, I can understand that.

I can totally understand too. But SL has been out for 3 or so months now and that knowledge is already posted online. By not reading through it you’re not only burdening yourself, but the rest of the group. Heck, I would even say you learn 90% of the dungeon just from doing sub 5’s. But that last 10% is what you’re going to need to succeed. I think most people are just lazy and think they can get away with it which is not the case.

13

I mean, the time since release isn’t really relevant. It could be 3 years, and the spirit would still apply. And in saying that, 3 months objectively speaking is not actually a long time, plenty of people are only just starting to get into Shadowlands for srs.

By not reading through it you’re not only burdening yourself, but the rest of the group.

I think most people are just lazy and think they can get away with it which is not the case.

I mean, they can’t be burdening themselves because exploring, and learning is the point of the game (from that pov).

And the idea would be that they’re playing with players who are in the same frame of mind, and the same experience level. We’re not talking about +20s or Realm/World Firsts here, in +7s people are not being super competitive. And at this level, most of the timers are forgiving enough to allow for mistakes, it’s generally not super tight to where one mistake ruins the whole run. They’re also maybe coming up to Grievous/Necrotic for the first time ever, or only just hitting the point where certain mechanics matter. Or even only just encountering certain mechanics for the first time since mobs are living long enough to get certain casts off, or bosses have enough HP (and maybe it’s Tyrannical now and last time they did it it was Fortified) to get to the point where certain mechanics happen/overlap.

As I said, the idea that people are burdening others by not going outside the game to research what to do in-game before even doing it for the first time (effectively cheating the test) is a very limited idea, it’s fairly new, and one that many gamers would find ridiculous.

Edit: This is not to discount that there are genuinely players in the game that are … bad. But it is a bit important to understand that in a wide playerbase, not everyone plays the game the same way, and people that see the game differently aren’t just being wrong/lazy.

3 Likes
14

You are talking about 7s here while the op was about 15s from proving grounds. There’s a huge difference between the two. You don’t learn in 15s, and you better know everything you need to know. 9s and below, on the other hand, is where you pick up the xp.

3 Likes
15

I mentioned +7s in one section because I was discussing someone with someone who referenced players he found in a group that couldn’t handle a +7.

And in this season at least, I would expect people to be learning until at least +11-12. You don’t encounter Prideful until +10, and that alters how you approach the current dungeons. It’s not like people can natively learn that aspect in-game in +9 or below.

16

Fair, 9s and below for mechanics is what I meant.

17

Yeah, I mean, I personally tend to do my “learning” in Normal/Heroic before even entering Mythic, but I wouldn’t expect a new player to have that. I get to pull on near 2 decades or experience to be able to project how things are likely to scale up, or just look at mobs/spell names and intuitively know patterns (e.g. that pack has an abomination, it probably will hit hard, Stimulate Resistance is going to be annoying if it’s not interrupted, etc.). There’s some things, like certain things in the Manastorms encounter that don’t even happen until a certain key level, so that’s also anomalies that can surprise players suddenly.

There’s also transferring knowledge from quest mobs to be able to tell “Ok that one’s going to hurt, this one probably needs to be burst down, this one could be annoying if it’s not stunned”, and so on. Dragons breathe fire, cleave, and have a tail sweep was a meme a decade ago, the other coin of that meme was “This is a different dragon, because it breathes PURPLE FIRE”. I’ve literally fought 3 versions of Hakkar, you put me in front of a Hakkar, and I’m going to have a rough idea what’s up without looking at a Dungeon Journal, guide, or video. Someone whose first expansion is Shadowlands cannot be expected to know that.

There’s also things like UI to consider. Someone with base UI, or who can’t read logs/death reports properly, has a much worse ability to diagnose mistakes/errors. Some people’s UI’s break on certain vehicles/posses bars. Or sometimes sheer RNG affects learning, take Kul’tharok. When he explodes at lower levels, you may have killed him a couple of times and never been picked for Draw Soul. Or Xav, you could have always been picked to go down, and then suddenly you’re the sole player up top. It’s unlikely, but theoretically possible (and actually would be kinda funny)

Also, in theory someone really good could change how a player learns. Let’s say you’re in a dungeon run, and you’re instantly interrupting the important cast that a mob does, because you know the mob will do it after the 3rd cast of this other spell. Someone else in that run might literally never notice that spell exists, because they had a 0.25 second window to notice X spell was being cast before you interrupted it. And it’s not like seeing a brief glimpse of a spell name lets them know what the spell is, and why it’s important (unless it’s a boss and it’s in the dungeon journal)

18

You don’t really learn much in the lower difficulties unfortunately. Most of the more difficult mechanics only start to matter when the boss lives long enough for them to become an issue. There are some bosses with really obvious mechanics (eg Stradama’s Tentacles or Mistcaller’s Dodgeball) and then there are some bosses with mechanics that aren’t really impactful at all (or just plain don’t exist) until you fight that boss on a high tyrannical key (e.g. Manastorms Shadowfury, Ingra Maloch’s Embrace Darkness, Rimebinder’s shield).

3 Likes
19

Why do these threads keep using this word: discrimination?

Do they think it’s a bad word?

Discriminate: recognize a distinction

We want to be able to recognize a distinction between pugs. It is a good thing to be able to do.

3 Likes
20

Nobody is discriminating against your IO score. There’s not enough people running their own groups and easily 20-30 dps applying to most keys that are being put up.

4 Likes