the M+ systems could easily be tweaked to greatly reduce toxicity, increase overall activity enjoyment, and increase positive feedback on the activity substantially
unfortunately this doesn’t gel with bliz’s cash shop metrics design that cares about /timeplayed over almost anything so lots of negative feedback loops are built in to waste your time
It’s the M+ design that’s broken. They don’t have a big enough player base to support 17 levels of play of 8 different dungeons, so you have people who can’t find enough people to form groups at their level or who join groups for keys that are too high for them.
I pugged my way from +2 to +16 (so far) this tier and this has been my experience as well. 10-14s are the most toxic, by far. I have a few pet theories for this:
Just my 2c.
The toxicity exists up and down the scale. I won’t pug anything over a +10 because I don’t get paid to do this, thus it’s not a job, and because I don’t like feeling terrible if it was my screw-up that cost someone their key, or four other someones their success during what should be fun time, I don’t want that on my conscience. So keys 10-15 or higher, I only do with a guild group.
Having said that, the system is set up for failure, especially for tanks (and thus, I quit tanking a long time ago and will never go back). I have said for years that there is no system to adequately train healers and especially tanks to do the work expected of them. The Proving Grounds are a joke in that regard. The worst idea M+ ever had was putting in new mechanics at the 10+ level that forced tanks to be route masters on top of being tanks. For that matter, I think affixes in general are cheese, and we could have a better system if we got rid of all of them and just let mobs and/or the boss hit harder or have larger health pools the further up the key goes. Affixes is a lazy solution for not having all DPS classes equally viable at doing the content, so they’re used as a way to handicap certain specs each week.
But toxicity is unfortunately just a reflection of who people are in real life. If you can’t take responsibility for something in real life, you probably won’t in a video game, either. If you’re a jerk out there, you’ll be a jerk in here, too. If you let your sense of self-worth be tied to what tasks you can accomplish better than your peers, you’ll bring that into the virtual world as well.
And unfortunately, Blizzard has made M+ such an important part of the game, especially for gearing, that people who aren’t properly trained, or who at least don’t understand the expectations, show up in places they really aren’t ready for, and things go south. Then throw in the ones who botch something up and blame others. And to top it off, the game itself doesn’t really have a way to show people HOW they’re coming up short – you have to download add-ons for that.
Many things can factor into your ‘truth’ vs GD ‘truth’. Class, spec, etc all factor into how toxic players are towards other players. Healers, tanks, and DPS all have varied strengths and weaknesses based on class. Yet all runs are supposed to be ran the same way? It makes no sense and obviously any higher level M+ runners know that you tailor the run to the group comp. That is not how a lot of pugs do things however and as soon as one person is perceived (key word there) to be sub par the ‘stuff’ starts flying and runs can break apart very quickly.
Part of the problem is that some people are queuing above their level because there aren’t enough low-level groups forming. There’s just no interest in it. They don’t really have a chance to get better.
I agree with the first part of your statement that people are joining groups above their skill level, but it isn’t because of missed opportunity. I have been in many pug groups this week running +20s and encountered dps who could not do more than 6.5k-7.5k overall dps with 245+ ilvl. Now, I am a tank and don’t kite so it’s not even that mobs are being pulled out of aoe. I even had a druid who did sub 5k dps on Echelon with lust meanwhile I did 6.5k as the tank. It’s a matter of personal awareness of what you are capable of. Unfortunately many people lack that basic skill regardless of key level.
Aside from this expansion and season 4 of BFA I am not accustomed to playing in the key ranges where I have experiences like you do where people struggle to play Guardian Druid.
Well, I don’t want to do M+ and am forced into M+ because I need the gear and vaults. I don’t know the fights really or best paths because why would I know about something I hate. Then people get mad when I ask a question or am upfront with them and sometimes kick me. So now I don’t say a thing, if we wipe or fail the key so be it. I just am there for the gear and hate M+ and would prefer to never do a M+ again.
No I won’t study the fights or best paths because I hate M+. I just want the gear. This is why it’s toxic because almost everyone is the same way. We need the gear from there but we hate it so the experience will be ruined for everyone.
Solution - Remove gear rewards from M+ and have it only reward Titles, Mounts and Cosmetics then players like me aren’t forced in there to get gear. We can just take Valor to a vendor and buy BiS gear.
M+ and the great vault are the most toxic systems in game which have ruined WoW.
You guys won’t stop until you take the last little bit of challenge out of M+, will you?
Once again, go play Streetfighter or any other game where you select a character and they are as good as they will ever be right off the hop. This game isn’t for you, you just don’t know it yet.
Low-keys are the absolute worst. See, as you go higher in key people know their class for the most part and respect the effort others put in for the most part and there’s a shared understanding mistakes happen even to good players and provides some allowance. Not saying I’ve had 100% positive groups of course, but the level of toxicity in 20+ keys has felt so much lower. Honestly, I would say in large part that is because everyone who is there wants to be there. Low-keys are a mix of terrible players, people gearing alts, people newer to WoW, and so forth with vastly different sets of expectations. Also, bad players in WoW never seem to understand how bad they are. The biggest egos I’ve seen have 9/10 been from terrible players .
Yeah, some of the worst M+ players are those who raid more heavily and only use M+ for the Vault. They deem the content easy, don’t take it seriously, get clapped, and then start projecting. I’ve seen it happen way too much, it’s crazy.
First season really pushing beyond the bare minimum for gear and my experience is the higher you go the less toxic people are.
Most just want to get the job done and being toxic is a detriment to that, had a great example of that just last week.
I was in a PF18 and i made a pretty big mistake, hit Bloodlust by accident when wanting to drink a mana pot (keybinds next to each other) shortly before the first boss. Mage in the group start cussing me and looked like he was ready to throw. I apologized but decided to keep playing the rest of the run as normal, so did the rest of the group without hardly saying anything (had to play my eyes out cause healing the first boss without BL isn’t exactly easy).
Fast forward through the rest of the run, we played nearly flawlessly and timed it despite my major f-up (Mage eventually got over it and decided to try too). All because everyone else in the group just decided to play it along anyway instead of joining the mage on dogpiling me or just being pissy about it. Don’t think they did it out of playing nice either. Good players just know that being toxic is a detriment to their own success.
To be fair, that’s a MASSIVE throw. At least it was Fortified and you could play it out though.
I guarantee you - no one is forcing you to do M+. In fact, 9.1 made raid loot even more valuable, decreasing the value of M+ gear.
Your vendetta against M+ is tiring. Just because you don’t like a form of content doesn’t mean you need to call for its removal. I’d love to see what content you’re doing that “requires” M+.
Nah it was on Tyrannical (keep forgetting WoW “weeks” start on tuesdays). I mean it when i said i had to tryhard that run lol.
I 100% agree it was really bad. I don’t do that often, but stuff happens sometimes.
Failed a 19 PF (i hate that hellhole) to 3 2300 IO DPS letting the bomb blow on the second boss yesterday for example lol.
I figured when you said “last week” you mean “Last keystone week”. Yikes, on Tyrannical that’s a major throw. Good on em to play it out though.
Ahh yes the voice of reason coming in to try and make sense of the forums.
There’s always at least one a week.
There is gear in there and this is a gear based game. Players will go where the gear is and have 2 options go in there or quit. As long as M+ has gear, players that don’t want to be in there are forced to do it. As long as toxic weekly chores like the great vault exist this game will have problems.
I don’t think so and I also don’t raid. Unless someone wants to carry me because I hate raiding.
Your defending of a bad game riddled with toxic systems is equally as tiring. Don’t like constructive feed back then hit ignore as this game continues to hemorrhage subs at a staggering rate.
I’ve never scene this. I don’t have perfect routes, but I do have my routes. And even then I’ve flubbed them up sometimes.
to the OP, I think part of it is to acknowledge mistakes. I found a few simple hellos in the beginning help. Even if no one says hello back, I know the type of group I’ve got into. If I mess up a pull, I’ll admit it with a simple “sorry guys, that’s on me”. Its amazing how far that goes.
Maybe I’ve been lucky.