This is my comment from another part of the internet. It’s my simple solution to the raging Mythic+ debate. For the record, I’m pretty okay with how things are. I don’t take the game terribly seriously, although I do try to play my best. But instead of convoluted things like Dungeon Finder for Mythic+ or whatever, just do this instead:
The community mindset is a reaction to the game mode. If the game mode didn’t exist, or wasn’t explicitly competitive with an in-game ranking system to directly compare your “skill” to others, there would a lot less pressure — and pressure is what brings out the worst in people in a relatively anonymous video game. The real-life incentives to conduct yourself in a civilized manner don’t exist without real-life consequences. Mix that with a game mode that offers the perceived fastest route to character progression where most players are relying on four other random people to make a number go up, and the Mythic+ “community” is what you end up with. It has nothing to do with entitlement or bad players. This is why the timer and ranking system needs to be separated out and made optional, so players can engage with it when they feel they need to progress their character. Players that want a challenge in addition to progression can run timed dungeons exclusively. Blizz is forcing people who likely wouldn’t run timed Mythic dungeons to run them, creating a pressure point that causes problems. This is why it’s a design problem.
Its kinda like league of legends where the competitiveness of the game format is the root of the toxicity. It pisses people off and there’s zero consequences to acting that way.
That’s why you’ll see a bunch of threads of people talking about other players being rude little unreasonable goblins and the very same idiot wretches fill the thread with smug “well you’re simply bad at the game and don’t have the right grindset jimbo” replies
And those goobers act like this cuz they know the people they’re mouthing off to aren’t able to smack them for their detestable attitude. Its actually been getting worse the more they push the boundaries of what they can get away with.
You can straight up cheat and exploit bugs in this game and blizzard doesn’t do anything about it because the world first muuuuuust go on! Oh my god, oh my GOD what if the game isn’t hard or complicated enough! Anything but that! Look, a four day timeout and a rollback oughta teach them even though that’s not an actual penalty and even if they were banned they’d totally just buy a new account and get fed the items from their guildies to come right back. That type of player is that degenerate. They will 100% do it again at the next opportunity.
Its happening to a lot of MMO’s nowadays. I used to absolutely no life black desert now the only people left are the pay to winners and people that have the free time to grind for 8+ hours a day telling you with a straight face that a year long goal in an mmo isn’t that long of a thing to strive for.
Its not gonna get solved unless blizzard makes a hard line in the sand and either makes a lot of sweeping changes to dry out the sweatiness or gives the problem gremlin players actual consequences for their behavior and remotely forces them to log off and go outside.
Design also include effort and reward, progression systems are part of design. The dungeons being harder when limited by time implies they have to be more rewarding.
Your suggestion is only valid if timed M+ gives mor reward than the non-timed version you are suggesting. But this puts us in a never ending cycle of people complaining again because the reality is not that people want to experience dungeon without a timer or score, the reality is people want the best gear possible as fast as possible and many of these people are not ready to accept that they are not good enough at video games to deserve what they wish they already had.
The M+ debate is mostly rooted in jealousy because good players are farming 10+ while bad players are stuck depleting 7s. Said bad players believe they put in as much time and effort as said 10+ farmers, this is delusion and/or ignorance. The difficulty curve is steeper in M+ and this makes the skill gap between players more obvious but many either wont accept it, will blame the game, or just live in the past where the game gave them everything almost for free like DF S4.
A change in mentality/attitude is necessary from the players, or a big overhaul of the M+ system needs to be made by blizzard but like I previously said, it would still need to reward better players more. It’s very important that weaker players realize their place in the game instead of being gifted free stuff. They need to learn that it’s okay to not get everything for free and keep playing to practice and get better so they can reach these goals. We don’t all have the same path.
Yes, this is why they added delves to help make that divided with the design. The line isn’t perfect but its a start.
I’m not sure what your simple solution is? Create M+ without a timer? I don’t see that much different from a delve.
I think a big point you missed, is this is mainly solo players trying to advocate for group play that delves currently doesn’t offer well. Those players (for the most part) are looking to play the game at a non competitive but rewarding level (8-9-10)
A solo quo might help, but with the convenance to join also creates a convenance to leave. Its really up to blizz to determine if the risk is worth the reward.
I saw an idea that they should remove the timer on sub-X keys, let players run them without the timer, and keep the timer for the keys that matter (ie probably levels that reward myth track gear and highest crests). Give casual players a non-timed progression path, assist in removing the toxicity of bricked low keys, and still keep the professional players happy.
There’s no 5-person, untimed, dungeons that are actually challenging and therefore the players seeking that have no where to go. Delves could have been this (and I thought that’s what they were going to be) but they’re missing the mark ATM imo.
The timer absolutely messes with people though. Imagine if raids were timed. People would go ballistic.
Raids. M+. HM untimed dungeons (aka what delves should be). Then you have 3 solid pillars.
Edit: solo queues and queues in general aren’t going to fix anything imo. Queues remove accountability and that’s what got the community to its current state of not caring about anyone else. How often you do actually queue into the same people? Not often enough their attitude matters.
Spitballing here, but maybe they could condense lower keys into a new dungeon type that makes mechanics matter, but is untimed with no affixes to help these players out.
In addition, maybe they could add in another end game progression path with untimed content, maybe even make it flex 1-5 for accessibility.
That seems like it would really help those stuck in lower keys have alternative paths to try.
They need to go back to the way it was in season 3 of DF. So people who can’t do high lvl keys still have multi lvls to play at. You don’t always want to do the highest lvl key possible because its a lot of effort so you drop down a few lvls for a min and come back later but they took that option out for a lot of people. The “just do delves” will also take a lot of people out of M+ and you will be left with people who have full groups and people who cant solo delves.
People already don’t care about anyone else. I don’t see how solo queues would be any different to cross realm LFG. People already leave without any fear of repurcussions.
A bunch of people who are struggling with M+ already don’t care about the timer that much. The problem that they are having is that groups tend to just disband if the timer isn’t achievable, so the people who wanted to stay (for loot/vault slots etc) can’t be satisfied with depleting.
The issue is that there is a lack of incentive to finish the dungeon for people who don’t need the loot/vault rewards. The crest penalty is the biggest offender.
I think you need a better reason than semantics to oppose a change that would be a massive quality of life improvement for 50% of the player base.
Trying to pug M+ as a DPS class is more of a decline simulator than ever before. Not everyone has several hours to waste every day looking at LFG. A queue is the only real solution to this, short of Blizzard magically finding a way to make tanking/healing more popular.