Should bailing on a M+ group be penalized?

[Riistov]

It won't work. Too many players want to be able to leave bad group without consequences. I agree with you, I hate leavers and I never left a group, not a single fricking time in my life. But this community is too toxic and developers have to design game around toxic players.

I feel like you just hit the nail on the head in regards to my feelings on the subject.

I know that feeling friend....I've stuck it out through many bad groups. I'm far to stubborn to leave lol

[EyeOculus]

It's true you form your own group and the people in it look good and trustful. However, it might be just a charade and someone will leave regardless.

Giving a person a straight penalty isn't a solution, but what about a simple tag/debuff that shows the person has left multiple mythic+ prematurely before finishing the dungeon in-time?
Just a message for players to see that this person left their comrades behind.
It could be applied after 3 abandoned mythics in 3 days for example.
The debuff length can be between one day or a week, depending how often the person has left one prematurely over the whole season and getting a debuff from it.

There conditions would be as follows:

• Leaving while the timer is still running = debuff
  
• Leaving after the timer ran out = no debuff
  However, this timer is the original one without the time penalty for deaths. This is to counter act exploiting the death penalty to get the timer down faster.
  In the case of someone murdering himself over and over again to leave early, he will still be penalized with the tag or debuff.
  
• And obviously, clearing the dungeon in any way = no debuff.

And to make it idiot proof. Give the same confirmation message like in LFR or Battlegrounds. Once the criterias are met to get no possible tag/debuff, you won't get a confirmation box upon leaving.

[Yayeet]

Should give them a 1 day cooldown on dungeons that stacks up the more you do it.

Completing m+ dungeons after that... slowly decays the stack(s).

[Alroxas]

Giving a person a straight penalty isn't a solution, but what about a simple tag/debuff that shows the person has left multiple mythic+ prematurely before finishing the dungeon in-time?

Again this fails the issue of preventing new bad behavior. Consider this scenario:

Bob is a douche and since he knows if he leaves the M+ first he'd get that "debuff". So instead, he goofs around for the 30+ minutes it takes for the timer to run down. Basically going AFK without really going AFK.

How does your system penalize Bob? He's not leaving early so no debuff, but he's also not contributing towards finishing the M+ and because NOBODY wants to get that debuff, they all just sit around for 30+ minutes until the original key timer runs out.

Talk about a waste of time. So now 1 player can hold up to 4 players hostage by simply joining a PuG M+ but then just be a non-contributing player.

Now if Bob (who is still a douche) also wanted to be Trollish, he could just simply pull mobs over and over again with no armor on (so no repair bill) to cause the rest of the 4 players gold lost via repair bill.

- - - Updated - - -

Should give them a 1 day cooldown on dungeons that stacks up the more you do it.

Completing m+ dungeons after that... slowly decays the stack(s).

And how would the CD be applied? To the quitter? So what happens if the only sane person is the quitter?

Here's another scenario:

You join in a +11 "Pushing" M+. After the first trash pull you notice that the TANK (non-protection warrior tank) is doing MORE damage than your other 2 DPS combined!

A quick inspection as you're pulling the next trash pack, you see that it's 2 fresh lv 120 with average ilv 380 on a +11 PUSHING key. After wiping on the first boss 3 times because of low DPS from ilv 380 DPS on a +11 PUSHING key, do you really think that most players will "stick with it"?

Hell the fuck no. You're bailing because:

• Group Leader isn't doing a Pushing key, they're asking you to CARRY them through it with way undergeared players.
• Given the current lack of DPS, you're likely to continue wiping through as low DPS kills the group over and over again.
• Your time is limited (and valuable) so why would you "waste" it with this group when you can drop and find another?

[Barzotti]

Here's another scenario:

You join in a +11 "Pushing" M+. After the first trash pull you notice that the TANK (non-protection warrior tank) is doing MORE damage than your other 2 DPS combined!

A quick inspection as you're pulling the next trash pack, you see that it's 2 fresh lv 120 with average ilv 380 on a +11 PUSHING key. After wiping on the first boss 3 times because of low DPS from ilv 380 DPS on a +11 PUSHING key, do you really think that most players will "stick with it"?

Hell the fuck no. You're bailing because:

• Group Leader isn't doing a Pushing key, they're asking you to CARRY them through it with way undergeared players.
• Given the current lack of DPS, you're likely to continue wiping through as low DPS kills the group over and over again.
• Your time is limited (and valuable) so why would you "waste" it with this group when you can drop and find another?

In your scenario, the guy joining a "push group" is equally stupid for not bailing out before the start of the dungeon. A simple glance at the hp pools is sufficient to gauge the ilvl. The first thing I do when I join a pug is to check the hp pools and I left a few groups before the start. Last time was "I won't heal this tank, GL" because a monk tank with 350k hp was invited in a +9. The guy didn't even have essences...

[EyeOculus]

Talk about a waste of time. So now 1 player can hold up to 4 players hostage by simply joining a PuG M+ but then just be a non-contributing player.


Now if Bob (who is still a douche) also wanted to be Trollish, he could just simply pull mobs over and over again with no armor on (so no repair bill) to cause the rest of the 4 players gold lost via repair bill.

And what exactly stops you from doing the same exact trolling currently? Exactly, nothing.
You talk about a possible scenario that can occur with or without a possible penalty.
It sounds more like you are one of the person that bails on other players, and wants nothing to stop it from you.

Simple solution. Vote kick. Of course you gonna spun up some random "problem" as well, so don't bother.

[Amarys]

Nah.. M+ should be redesigned.

Only 1 per day, timer removed. You get locked after killing the first boss. Leave/get kicked before - no penalty. Leave/get kicked after - you failed and have to wait till the next day. Completing it will upgrade your key by +2. Completing it faster will upgrade your key more.

[Alroxas]

And what exactly stops you from doing the same exact trolling currently? Exactly, nothing.

Nothing but the group isn't held hostage. Folks can leave without penalty.

You talk about a possible scenario that can occur with or without a possible penalty.

No I'm simply laying out a potential scenario that is common enough that will happen in any punishment system that players come up with.

The bottom line is this: M+ target audience is NOT PUGs. You can PuG M+ but without social constraints, you're at the whim of fickle anonymous players. Now you can minimize disaster by clearly communicating expectations and goals before starting the run but that is no guarantee that the other players will accept them.

Any punishment system that tries to provide a guarantee will allow abusive players to entrap/hold hostage other players.

- Voting kick systems favor groups over the solo player.
- Early leaving/quitting systems promotes negative gameplay (e.g. non-contribution AFK to trollish behavior to lead someone else to get punished instead of yourself)
- Timer based systems promotes literally wasting time for original timer to expire before players can leave (can also lead same behaviors as above)
- Positive review only systems could be manipulated to provide false positives
- Positive/Negative review systems could allow players to review bomb others (i.e. 1 star player X)

It sounds more like you are one of the person that bails on other players, and wants nothing to stop it from you.

Let's be clear here, I'm posting feedback on why punishment systems aren't working. And while folks can freely disagree, they still haven't provided an adequate defense to the feedback I've left. And I don't resort to false implications.

Simple solution. Vote kick.

What a horrible system. Let me count the ways that vote kick has been abused in settings like... LFR, LFD, Island Expeditions... and then to have the vote kick apply a penalty on top of being removed from group... a double whammy.

[Battlebeard]

Nah, no punishment.

Blame the system not the players. They need to change the whole key system. Just let the group pick difficulty on entering the dungeon. If you fail, just try again without hurting your key (cause there won't be a key).

That way not only can you chose difficulty, you can also chose dungeons! Sure some dungeons would never be played, but maybe then Blizzard will start making better dungeons instead of forcing us to play the bad ones.

[Kuja]

There should be some kind of a punishment. Perhaps show an image or a title like "Mythic+ deserter" above a player's name if they are in a dungeon and have recently bailed, letting everyone in the group see that there's someone in your group that is showing tendencies to leaving before it's over, so it's up to others to punish or not.

[Kanegasi]

Yes. When you leave an active key, you lose 500g, which means you need at least 500g on hand to join a key. You need to actually leave, being kicked would not penalize you. In order to avoid the useless players that would throw a tantrum demanding to be kicked, there could be a simple activity tracker that would render them ineligible for loot at the end. Nothing too fancy, just something that tracks how many times the group entered combat and if the healer healed most players, the tank was on most mob's threat tables, and dps hit most things during those times.

[Battlebeard]

Yes. When you leave an active key, you lose 500g, which means you need at least 500g on hand to join a key. You need to actually leave, being kicked would not penalize you. In order to avoid the useless players that would throw a tantrum demanding to be kicked, there could be a simple activity tracker that would render them ineligible for loot at the end. Nothing too fancy, just something that tracks how many times the group entered combat and if the healer healed most players, the tank was on most mob's threat tables, and dps hit most things during those times.

500? I have 3 million and I am not even considered rich in comparison to anyone.

Try 50k gold, that might be a bit effective at least.

[Alroxas]

Nothing too fancy, just something that tracks how many times the group entered combat and if the healer healed most players, the tank was on most mob's threat tables, and dps hit most things during those times.

So what about that "over-eager" DPS that pulled extra packs which lead to the group wiping over and over again.

- - - Updated - - -

There should be some kind of a punishment. Perhaps show an image or a title like "Mythic+ deserter" above a player's name if they are in a dungeon and have recently bailed, letting everyone in the group see that there's someone in your group that is showing tendencies to leaving before it's over, so it's up to others to punish or not.

And again, if you did put in such a system, the workaround is to be the "deserter" without actually leaving the group or more specifically not be the "first" person to leave the group to get the "Deserter" debuff.

A player could play poorly on purpose whether that's a non-contributing player (think AFK without really going afk) to a trollish player (think: pulling excessively, purposely standing in fire, etc) to force the group to leave but because of this deserter debuff nobody wants to be the "first" to bail.

So now instead of folks complaining about rage quiters/leavers. You're complaining about how players screw other players out of M+ when things go wrong and because you don't want to leave first (and gain the deserter debuff) you're stuck waiting for someone else to bail out first so you don't get penalized for some one else's behavior.

[Great Destiny Man]

Just yesterday actually. Tank left because one pull went poorly about 1/2 way through the dungeon, and we were on time to clear with plenty to spare.

And that's the whole point here, one shitbag can easily ruin the time investment for everyone else.

Pull went poorly in what sense? People asspulling easily avoidable mobs? People not interrupting mobs? Context matters. If I was in SotS and we wipe because people aren't properly interrupting the shadow volley adds then that sets a very dangerous precedent for not only those packs but the last boss as well, doesn't even matter if we were previously "on par for timer".

Sure one person bailing just because he won't time place is a rather irritating move (especially with freshness of current season) but equally if I'm not confident that group is good enough for mechanics then I should have freedom to abandon group rather than risk penalty just because rest of group doesn't respect my time to learn mechanics.

[Zarvel]

Simple.

1. Give the owner of a key the option to "End Run" if they so wish, depleting their key and lowering it by a level, with no loot obtained. This would mark all players in group safe from any penalties for leaving the group. This is when the group as a whole knows they cant possibly finish the key or even want to finish it in the first place. The key owner knowingly sacrifices the key in hopes of getting something better but at one lower key level.
2. If the group lead is not ending a run that 4/5 people in the group no longer wish to be a part of, just do a "Vote to End" that requires at least 3 players to agree. This will also lower the key's level by 1.
3. If a player leaves the group without the key's owner ending it themselves, they are penalized, because they're obviously the one bailing on the run. The key then stays at it's current level, so the key's owner is not penalized and can have another go at it with another group with hopefully no one who bails on it again. If the player was kicked, this penalty does not occur, unless it was a "Vote to Kick". Obviously this means "Vote to Kick" should also be introduced. Voting to kick will allow the key to stay at the same level because the key is being ended abruptly due to a bad element. The player who is vote kicked will receive a 1 hour (or something similar) penalty debuff that does not allow them to be part of a keystone run. This will avoid abuse of this vote kick feature to "reset" a key that's going wrong. Unless you're happy to take a 1+ hour break to re-try the key in which case, more power to you.

Most of these systems already exist in the game. Blizz just needs to leverage that tech and those systems into the M+ gameplay loop.

Criticism is welcome. If you refute it without facts, don't bother, you won't receive a response.

The bottom line is this: M+ target audience is NOT PUGs. You can PuG M+ but without social constraints, you're at the whim of fickle anonymous players. Now you can minimize disaster by clearly communicating expectations and goals before starting the run but that is no guarantee that the other players will accept them.

On what basis are you assuming that M+ does not include PUGs as a target audience? Have the devs ever come out to say so when they addressed feedback on the "leaver" situation or any other issues M+ is plagued by?
Yes, M+ is most effective when played in premades, but that does not mean premades are the only target audience. The premise for M+ was simple (and this is from the horse's mouth from gamescom where M+ was revealed) - give players, individuals or groups, the chance at challenging content even if they could not commit to 12+ hours a week with 19 other people (if mythic) or X number of people if flex - People who wanted dungeons to matter again. Small, compact content that isn't too time intensive, but is challenging enough to provide good fun gameplay.

Whether you wish to form a premade and do it consistently, or find other random internet strangers once or twice a week who would also like to delve into this challenge is where player agency comes in. Players being scummy can affect both premades and PUGs alike.

Everytime somebody tries to justify design decisions in WoW by basing them around premades/guilds/mythic raiders, it just reeks of holier than thou attitude.
"I can't seem to get into raids because of arbitrary systems created by players" -- Just find a guild
"I can't seem to get loot in guild raids" -- you're a trial LOL / find a new guild
"I can't finish my keystone cuz somebody accidentally hit leave group instead of setting a target marker" - play with guildies or make your own push group! (yes this is probably not the response you'll get from someone and it makes no sense, but it's just in jest to show how stupid/arrogant/ignorant certain suggestions coming from the community are)

Jesus i need a break from this game don't I , get worked up about stuff so quick these days.

[Great Destiny Man]

Simple.

1. Give the owner of a key the option to "End Run" if they so wish, depleting their key and lowering it by a level, with no loot obtained. This would mark all players in group safe from any penalties for leaving the group. This is when the group as a whole knows they cant possibly finish the key or even want to finish it in the first place. The key owner knowingly sacrifices the key in hopes of getting something better but at one lower key level.
2. If the group lead is not ending a run that 4/5 people in the group no longer wish to be a part of, just do a "Vote to End" that requires at least 3 players to agree. This will also lower the key's level by 1.
3. If a player leaves the group without the key's owner ending it themselves, they are penalized, because they're obviously the one bailing on the run. The key then stays at it's current level, so the key's owner is not penalized and can have another go at it with another group with hopefully no one who bails on it again. If the player was kicked, this penalty does not occur, unless it was a "Vote to Kick". Obviously this means "Vote to Kick" should also be introduced. Voting to kick will allow the key to stay at the same level because the key is being ended abruptly due to a bad element. The player who is vote kicked will receive a 1 hour (or something similar) penalty debuff that does not allow them to be part of a keystone run. This will avoid abuse of this vote kick feature to "reset" a key that's going wrong. Unless you're happy to take a 1+ hour break to re-try the key in which case, more power to you.

Most of these systems already exist in the game. Blizz just needs to leverage that tech and those systems into the M+ gameplay loop.

Criticism is welcome. If you refute it without facts, don't bother, you won't receive a response.

Adding a vote to kick feature that penalises is a massive invitation for griefing and trolling. No thanks to that.

[Zarvel]

Adding a vote to kick feature that penalises is a massive invitation for griefing and trolling. No thanks to that.

I have a genuine question for you. Do you ever look at things practically? Or do you just look at things from an ideal standpoint?

Tell me why, and you've really gotta convince me on this one, why would you join a group, do it halfway, then decide all of a sudden that you want to "troll" someone in your group so you initiate a vote to kick. Then, 2 other people in this group of yours also suddenly feel the urge to "troll" this random poor dude rather than get on with things and complete the dungeon. Yeah? That's the assumption you're going on yeah? Spend some time, dwell on it, and then tell me if you still feel "trolling" in a key is practical for anybody from any standpoint.

Think of it like this - anything that happens at any point in life, could've gone any one of a 10000000000000000+ ways. However, does that mean that ALL 100000000000000+ of those outcomes were actual possibilities? May 1000000 of those could be genuine possibilities, but 1000000000 others would only come to pass if all the Blue moons and Imaginary stars aligned. That is what you're suggesting - that 3 players in a group of people that joined to do a keystone dungeon would decide it was better to vote kick a random guy to "troll" them instead of making sense of their time investment and ignoring the vote kick and getting on with the dungeon.

Like.....what......
It's not just you...there's so many people who are against a vote kick system because of stupid reasons like those.

Vote kick can be trolled and abused in places like LFR / BGs / Warfronts, and players don't mind doing it there because there's not really any personal cost on the line. You still end up completing those activities and get their designated rewards.
In a M+ keystone however, the completion of the damn key on time is on the line, not to mention the time the players have already put into the key.

[Great Destiny Man]

I have a genuine question for you. Do you ever look at things practically? Or do you just look at things from an ideal standpoint?

Tell me why, and you've really gotta convince me on this one, why would you join a group, do it halfway, then decide all of a sudden that you want to "troll" someone in your group so you initiate a vote to kick. Then, 2 other people in this group of yours also suddenly feel the urge to "troll" this random poor dude rather than get on with things and complete the dungeon. Yeah? That's the assumption you're going on yeah? Spend some time, dwell on it, and then tell me if you still feel "trolling" in a key is practical for anybody from any standpoint.

Think of it like this - anything that happens at any point in life, could've gone any one of a 10000000000000000+ ways. However, does that mean that ALL 100000000000000+ of those outcomes were actual possibilities? May 1000000 of those could be genuine possibilities, but 1000000000 others would only come to pass if all the Blue moons and Imaginary stars aligned. That is what you're suggesting - that 3 players in a group of people that joined to do a keystone dungeon would decide it was better to vote kick a random guy to "troll" them instead of making sense of their time investment and ignoring the vote kick and getting on with the dungeon.

Like.....what......
It's not just you...there's so many people who are against a vote kick system because of stupid reasons like those.

Vote kick can be trolled and abused in places like LFR / BGs / Warfronts, and players don't mind doing it there because there's not really any personal cost on the line. In a M+ keystone however, the completion of the damn key is on the line, not to mention the time the players have already put into the key.

That's a rather large wall of text for the purpose of flimsy digs and ambiguous reasoning.

In the situation you describe it's very easy to just form a 4 man group with a key you don't give a shit about, invite him, start the dungeon and vote kick and lock him out for an hour. Likewise, even if they were serious about the group but they recognise they aren't good enough to complete they can proceed to vote kick a guy either for not matching their expectations or even just "for the lulz".

All the system does is rotate who gets inconvenienced and in what way, it's not the magic all solution you portray it to be.

[Jester Joe]

What a horrible system. Let me count the ways that vote kick has been abused in settings like... LFR, LFD, Island Expeditions... and then to have the vote kick apply a penalty on top of being removed from group... a double whammy.

I've played the game since Cata, and I can count on one hand how many times I was vote kicked in an "abusive" way.

And that's still far better than what current M+ has where the leader could just kick you for no reason at all, although again I've never had that happen to me before, although I did have an interesting case where someone threatened in an M+ saying "I was going to kick you as we killed the last boss anyway", as if that stops me from getting the gear. (Situation of telling someone to stop complaining basically because someone else d/c'ed, and then that caused them to go on a whole rant about how much everyone in the group was screwing up repeatedly, despite them tanking everything horribly)

[Great Destiny Man]

I've played the game since Cata, and I can count on one hand how many times I was vote kicked in an "abusive" way.

And that's still far better than what current M+ has where the leader could just kick you for no reason at all, although again I've never had that happen to me before, although I did have an interesting case where someone threatened in an M+ saying "I was going to kick you as we killed the last boss anyway", as if that stops me from getting the gear. (Situation of telling someone to stop complaining basically because someone else d/c'ed, and then that caused them to go on a whole rant about how much everyone in the group was screwing up repeatedly, despite them tanking everything horribly)

Out of all the things that annoys me in M+, being manually kicked out of the group is very, very far down my list. Like literally only happens to me before the group even starts (e.g. leader decides to bring a friend in instead of me, wants a different comp).