There are blatant issues with the current iteration of M+. These manifest themselves as:
Declining pug population, which is a direct observation of the decline in casual/non-organized player-base that participates in this content over time.
The community within the M+ pug scene has become more and more toxic, because small mistakes and deaths can easily ruin the timer on a key.
A high reliance on RaiderIO leading to toxic IO requirements.
Why does this happen? Steps:
You produce challenging and complex content then add a timer.
You throw gear at the player base so they can just outgear it/cheese instead of learning how to do it.
Make the gear reward irrelevent by making other sources of AFK gear better, and make the timer goal more of a priority than it should be.
Thatâs it, itâs really quite simple. The two key things are the timer and gear, I could write an essay on why I think itâs bad but hopefully those points give a simple summary.
Whatâs the solution?
Make the timer completely optional
Make non-timed version the baseline for granting gear.
Make timer runs reward cosmetics in addition to granting the same gear for non-timed difficulties. (mounts/transmog/toys/titles)
Make gear from other sources that are not M+/Raiding/PvP (of comparability difficult content) start at the baseline mythic level.
Make the weekly quests that give caches equivalent to the baseline ilvl of the content they are for.
Why are these the solutions? The timer promotes toxicity, because small mistakes (deaths) can easily cause you to fail a key. You become scared to make mistakes in fear of someone blaming you for wasting their time. Failing a key detracts from the accomplishment of completing what could be relatively difficult content because youâve now downgraded your key. The gear reward isnât enough of an incentive because it comes from so many other sources that are nowhere near as punishing. Because youâre trying to rush through the content to meet the timer, you donât spend the time thatâs needed to learn how to address the specific mechanics.
If the timer was optional, so much of this would be solved. Not running with a timer would remove the feeling of competitive content, but leader boards could still be done for those who want that type of challenge. Wiping wouldnât feel like youâve wasted 45 minutes of your time only to have your key downgrade. Instead you only have to deal with a downgrade when you donât finish the dungeon. Being more forgiving on wipes would reduce toxicity and fear of making mistakes, so pugs would be more common. Players would take more time to learn mechanics because theyâre not punished for not trying to cheese content and would be less likely to quit because they arnât faced with a failed timer.
The gearing scheme is related. By making the gear from the dungeon more relevant for character progression, you add an extra incentive and a cherry on top for completing the content when you get a piece of gear thatâs an actual upgrade instead of a side-grade.
Make timers optional. Give those who like leader boards their cake and let the pugs eat it too. Make dungeons relevant content that are enjoyable to play. Letâs make the next expansion great.
I found a real easy fix. I donât do them and never will, Have never been in one that was remotely fun. Why would i want to do something that is not fun and full of elitists?
As someone who has 99% of my progression through pugs (all my 10âs were from pugs), Iâm not seeing any of the decline or toxicity, unless you count the toxicity of players who were rejected raging in the forum.
Complex, Challenging content with timer is what makes it fun.
Outgearing the content does happen because people need to do low level keys to prove they qualify for high level keys. The way of the world: start at the bottom and work your way up. There is an intrinsic reward for working your way up, but no real gear rewards until you get to a higher level.
Get people in voice chat and they become way less toxic.
Denying someone for having a low io score is no more toxic than denying a prospective employee with little to no experience when you know there are more experienced applicants waiting.
M+ used to be really fun in Legion. Affixes were decently spaced out, and youâd only get your third affix for a 10+. Trash mobs and mechanics were not in overabundance, and the overall aesthetics were great - every dungeon had its own unique flavor that allowed for storyline and rp immersion if you appreciated that kind of content.
Youâd get your friends together and run a key and try to beat a timer. It was doable.
In BFA, they ramped up everything. A 6+ key has 3 affixes, and there is trash mobs for lightyears until you get to the next boss. On top of that, every mob has a ton of mechanics and knockback that make it impossible to enjoy content. Moreover, with the addition of raider io for vetting, the pool for m+ has shrunk over time.
I used to run 15+ keys with friends all the time in Legion. I donât do m+ anymore in BFA. M+ was one of the fun endgame things to do in wow, but the devs decided to âfixâ something that wasnât broken at all.
I liked M+ better in Legion. It was just the right amount of faceroll easy to challenging.
BFA M+ feels too tuned to âcompetitiveâ type play. Iâm not an MDI player and never will be, nor do I have any interest in watching people do scripted PvE content unless Iâm watching a raid boss tutorial or something.
I went from running multiple M+ pretty much every single week in Legion to now in BFA where I havenât really done anything in like 2 months. The trash with the affixes and pretty much everything having 1 shot kill casts that MUST be interrupted in time just isnât fun for me.
I like challenging bosses. Trash, in my opinion, should just be trash. The affixes are what makes pulling the trash interesting. The constant casts/interrupt requirements on top of the affixes is just stressful.
This wouldnt be removed, thus is optional. If you like it that way, play it that way.
This is a bit disjointed and I dont get what the inference here is. So Iâm going to counter it by saying this would still be the case but without the added toxicity behind a timer.
This isnât a realistic expectation for players that would rather not.
Aside from the fact that youâre paying to do this rather than getting paid. Itâs completely different and this is an asinine argument. Wanting to play with others of the same skill/knowledge level is understandble if thereâs something you can lose (aka the timer) but if you donât have the timer then itâs much less of an issue.
If you sink an hour or more into slamming your face against the mechanics to a point where you eventually figure out how to do it, you deserve the loot. You either CC and pull slower or continue cheesing. The timer becomes entirely option as a challenge version of the respective levels but doesnât act as the sole method of progression through the content.
Yeah, I guess thatâs why pug raids take anyone who appliesâŠoh wait, they donât do that at all. Peopleâs time is valuable, even without an in-game timer counting down.
If re-read the post youâll see how that point doesnât hold, but Iâll reword it.
Failing the timer inherently tells you that youâve failed, regardless of the âgearâ at the end (which is obtainable through non-equally difficult content). Youâve failed 1/2 the objectives which is bad psychologically. It also creates an environment where everyone in the group up can have different expectations. * Example: Everyone joins and the leader expects to time it but 2 people are there just for completion. The key fails, leader feels like theyâre wasting time and bails. Dungeons over.
If youâre pushing a key to the next level to progress you shouldnât be forced into being burdened by the timer.
I agree this is an issue, but I donât understand why itâs an issue. Just talk to each other. Just say âhey, these are our expectationsâ, get everyone on the same page. Instead itâs this weird culture of âI better not talk to the strange people on the internet lest they think badly of meâ.
This alone makes every aspect of M+ and its affixes trivial. You could wait on your CDs for every single pull if you wanted
Doesnt change that. It may alleviate some of the stress between teammates, but it removes the challenge along with it. Players are more than welcome to do lesser keys if they find the higher level ones too stressful. But in no way does it deserve anywhere near the same reward as a timed run
Timer is here to stay, possible options that I see helping is maybe a redo consumable and a pause consumable to make things easier for pugs. Say someone gets DCed you could freeze the instance and players inside until they reconnect. I would also like a reward for finishing the key versus it being deprecated regardless. Right now if I am trying to push a key and we fail I get a different key one level lower. In some cases where i have an easy key I would rather just reset the instance and lower it a level with another group than take it to completion. This creates toxicity where a pug might want to finish the run for the loot.
This defeats the purpose. The timer is meant for you to prove youâre skilled enough to do the next level up. If your goal is to finish and get the gear and you want to pug, list the key that way. As you said, there are plenty of other ways to get 370+ gear, so 90% of people doing m+ are doing it to beat the timer.