Mythic plus and keys - an outdated concept

[Jujudrood]

So there's quite a few threads about people raging over their key being wasted, etc etc.
I get it, you wanted a run and it fell apart and now you're mad online.
It happens.

Lots of people have thrown out ideas like "give them deserter for burning the key" and the like, but really, the problem isn't so much the people leaving as it is the fact that keys, as a concept, are just, well, kinda dumb.

The best way to implement this system, to appease as many as possible (IMO, ofc), would be to do it like grifts in diablo.
I know, I know, I said the no-no word, but in all honesty, it would be the best system.
The concept is sound; you unlock higher M+ levels by doing the lower ones.

Every season, everyone starts at +2, can do any dungeon available in rotation, then by clearing it, +3 unlocks (or higher, if you 2key it and such).
You don't need a key to start the run, you just simply get a menu on the podium that says "choose your difficulty".
The difficulty unlocks are dungeon-agnostic; clear a +10 in RLP, open +11 for all 8 dungeons.

In terms of what difficulties are available on the podium depends on the group, as it will show the highest common unlock.
If 4 players have +18 unlocked but one of them only have +16, then +16 is the highest open to that group because it's the highest common difficulty available for all party members.

Gone are the days where you need RNG key to do the place you want to target, nor do you need to look through LFG to find someone with that key.
You can simply make a group for the dungeon of your choice and the difficulty of your choice, up to the max level you have unlocked.
If you post a +15 Temple, then someone who has only opened +13 on their toon at their highest just can't apply, so you now you are only getting people who have cleared at least one +14.

The M+ rating can still stay; you still want to time each dungeon at the highest level you can, and everything else around M+ can remain the same, this just removes the requirement of a key in someone's bags.
If you clear a difficulty level, you are the key. That toon can do it for the rest of the season, no worries.
It only applies to the toon you are playing, so you can't just ding fresh 70 and get carried through high keys; you have to work your way up.
This may be a downside to some who play shitloads of alts and such, but the good news is, you only have to open difficulties once per toon per season and you can choose the dungeon you do it in, so if it really bothers you, have people carry you through the quickest one, clear the timer with ease, rank up your difficulty to your target in an afternoon of play.

Sure, there would be kinks to iron out, but overall, it gives everyone access to any dungeon they choose at the difficulty that suits them.
It also prevents the whole key burning stuff that results in downgraded keys and frustration.
If a run goes tits up, and it will happen from time to time, people lose their time, they get angry, then they also have to rebuild their key.
Let's remove the "rebuild your key" aspect to relieve one layer of stress.

[klaps_05]

If you can pick your keys and level, you effectively kill all dungeons except the easiest one. Why would you ever bother to do anything but Shadowmoon, if you had the choice?

You could say that then only people who really want to push will play. But that means you just removed probably 90%+ of the m+ population.

I am all for that kind of system, unfortunately Blizzard has been pretty clear they want ppl to play more dungeons and one way to soft-force this is the current key system.

[Davryn]

If you can pick your keys and level, you effectively kill all dungeons except the easiest one. Why would you ever bother to do anything but Shadowmoon, if you had the choice?

You could say that then only people who really want to push will play. But that means you just removed probably 90%+ of the m+ population.

I am all for that kind of system, unfortunately Blizzard has been pretty clear they want ppl to play more dungeons and one way to soft-force this is the current key system.

That already is the case to a large extent. People will run CoS and SBG way more than the others. But people will still want to run other dungeons because they want gear that drops from the other dungeons, or they want to increase their score. I don't see a problem with giving players more choice.

[erifwodahs]

If you can pick your keys and level, you effectively kill all dungeons except the easiest one. Why would you ever bother to do anything but Shadowmoon, if you had the choice?

Yes, dungeon is fucking horrible. We literally reroll every SBG unless it's score upgrade because it's boring ass dungeon and 2nd+3boss shouldn't exist in this day and age. Literal mobs have more mechanics than that shit.

[SoundOfGuns]

Yes, dungeon is fucking horrible. We literally reroll every SBG unless it's score upgrade because it's boring ass dungeon and 2nd+3boss shouldn't exist in this day and age. Literal mobs have more mechanics than that shit.

Meanwhile i got my dungeons between 15 and 20 but i have not found a pug yet for JSS because nobody does that and by now it became too funny to funny to not have any rating for it between the higher keys, that i don't want to ask people for it anymore.

[Relapses]

That already is the case to a large extent. People will run CoS and SBG way more than the others. But people will still want to run other dungeons because they want gear that drops from the other dungeons, or they want to increase their score. I don't see a problem with giving players more choice.

Except they'll just run SBG and CoS 8 times a week for their boxes and call it a day. You'd see like 80% participation in the two "easy" keys and literally zero participation in anything that's considered remotely difficult. Gear will not motivate people to run these keys, I can promise you that.

[erifwodahs]

Gear will not motivate people to run these keys, I can promise you that.

Why make "a promise" which is clearly false? People will run other keys for gear as they do now and for score as they do now. Would easy dungeons have overrepresentation? Sure. Would it void other dungeons? Not a chance.

[Jester Joe]

Yes, dungeon is fucking horrible. We literally reroll every SBG unless it's score upgrade because it's boring ass dungeon and 2nd+3boss shouldn't exist in this day and age. Literal mobs have more mechanics than that shit.

The third boss is my major issue. It's the only fight that I feel is pretty consistently buggy or behaves weirdly.

One pull he did nothing but spit out puddles for half of his life despite the fact that on pull usually he goes spit into suck.

Other times the puddles seem to just not affect some people and they'll get pulled right through it.

Not even including the amount of downtime when he goes down. Personally, I pick any other key to do but SBG at this point, I'm so tired of seeing it.


Also I had this entire post almost done before I realized the worm is, in fact, not the 2nd boss and the void elemental is. Which I think is pretty telling how forgettable the boss is.

[Relapses]

Why make "a promise" which is clearly false? People will run other keys for gear as they do now and for score as they do now. Would easy dungeons have overrepresentation? Sure. Would it void other dungeons? Not a chance.

...it would though. You'd literally have to wait 30 fucking years or find a premade group of players to do anything else. It's a phenomenally dogshit suggestion because this community doesn't actually want choice. They want easy fucking dungeons. It'd force Blizzard to nerf every dungeon into the ground.

[callipygoustp]

Easiest solution to the problem: remove the ability to pug.

[Alroxas]

That already is the case to a large extent. People will run CoS and SBG way more than the others. But people will still want to run other dungeons because they want gear that drops from the other dungeons, or they want to increase their score. I don't see a problem with giving players more choice.

Why would you want End of Dungeon gear drops from those dungeons when the GV could reward better? Especially if you can completely fill out the 3 slots (by doing 8 M+ dungeons) via doing the easiest dungeons at the highest levels each week?

[Elbob]

That already is the case to a large extent. People will run CoS and SBG way more than the others. But people will still want to run other dungeons because they want gear that drops from the other dungeons, or they want to increase their score. I don't see a problem with giving players more choice.

because once people have the pieces they want from everything thats not cos and sbg they will never run anything else. So the players that want dungeons for either rating or drops will have a near impossible time to form a group.

They key system is fine, most the people that complain about failed keys or groups take no personal responsibility about the groups they are in. They don't vet the players they grab(if they form the group at all) often aren't responsible for mechanics they can interact with, and provide little to no in dungeon leadership. If you want your pugs to stop sucking put on your big boy pants and do something about it. Asking blizzard to let you only run the easiest dungeon over and over is just sad.

[Rageonit]

If you can pick your keys and level, you effectively kill all dungeons except the easiest one. Why would you ever bother to do anything but Shadowmoon, if you had the choice?

There are ways to prevent this. Simplest that comes to my mind: make each dungeon count only once towards the vault. So if you want a full vault, you need to do all 8 DIFFERENT dungeons.

[Alroxas]

The third boss is my major issue. It's the only fight that I feel is pretty consistently buggy or behaves weirdly.

It is incredibly buggy. The animation for descending/ascending from one place to another is gone. It just "teleports" over and if you have a class that puts a DoT effect on it (with combat scrolling text), you can see where the new spot is before it shows up.

Other times the puddles seem to just not affect some people and they'll get pulled right through it.

What's worse is that some affixes can seriously mess with the puddle mechanic. Quaking (before they fixed it) was horrible. Volcanic's (TMK) can knock you up (and out) of a puddle.

And there's some melee range issues on whether you're consumed or not during inhale if the puddle is too close to the boss.

[Rageonit]

They key system is fine

Even if it is (debatable), why stop on "fine" and not make it "better"? Being able to choose any key at any level has many pros, and there are ways to prevent the cons.

[Jester Joe]

Why would you want End of Dungeon gear drops from those dungeons when the GV could reward better? Especially if you can completely fill out the 3 slots (by doing 8 M+ dungeons) via doing the easiest dungeons at the highest levels each week?

For the same reason they do now

I mean, I dunno about you, but in a group of like 5-7 people, we're usually pretty consistent to get a CoS or SBG, which everyone else just rerolls their more annoying keys after to attempt to get CoS/SBG, which just repeats the process.

I still went out of my way to do RLP though because I needed my trinket from there, because I'm not going to sit there and pray that the vault decides to be kind and give me exactly what I need with, what, 3 chances out of the like, 50+ pieces of loot that can drop from across all dungeons?

There's already enough in game for people to completely avoid dungeons in all fairness. And I'm not going to deny this would make it a bit tougher but it's not like everyone's going to magically stop doing any other keys.

- - - Updated - - -

It is incredibly buggy. The animation for descending/ascending from one place to another is gone. It just "teleports" over and if you have a class that puts a DoT effect on it (with combat scrolling text), you can see where the new spot is before it shows up.




What's worse is that some affixes can seriously mess with the puddle mechanic. Quaking (before they fixed it) was horrible. Volcanic's (TMK) can knock you up (and out) of a puddle.

And there's some melee range issues on whether you're consumed or not during inhale if the puddle is too close to the boss.

Yep.

It confuses me why they made the effort to shake up ToJS enough but it feels like that boss was completely ignored

[Rageonit]

Why would you want End of Dungeon gear drops from those dungeons when the GV could reward better? Especially if you can completely fill out the 3 slots (by doing 8 M+ dungeons) via doing the easiest dungeons at the highest levels each week?

Read above. You can work around the problem by making the dungeon count once towards the vault. It actually makes sence from a wider standpoint; look at raids: you need to kill 8 different bosses in a raid to get full vault choice, not 8 times the first one, which is the easiest (compare to doing SBG 8x for full vault). And since you could choose and pick any dung & key level (provided you unlocked it), doing 8 different dungeons wouldn't be a problem, at all (but maybe not all of them on the same level). Right now it is allowed to do 8x the same dungeon for vault, simply because players CAN'T choose and pick keys, so forcing them to do 8 different would result in frustration over key RNG. But if you can choose & pick, the problem disappears.

[Relapses]

For the same reason they do now

I mean, I dunno about you, but in a group of like 5-7 people, we're usually pretty consistent to get a CoS or SBG, which everyone else just rerolls their more annoying keys after to attempt to get CoS/SBG, which just repeats the process.

I still went out of my way to do RLP though because I needed my trinket from there, because I'm not going to sit there and pray that the vault decides to be kind and give me exactly what I need with, what, 3 chances out of the like, 50+ pieces of loot that can drop from across all dungeons?

There's already enough in game for people to completely avoid dungeons in all fairness. And I'm not going to deny this would make it a bit tougher but it's not like everyone's going to magically stop doing any other keys.

No, it just means that the wait for key roles like tank and healer will take 90% longer for the "non-easy" keys. Like I said before, choice is an illusion. Players really just want easy keys and something like this would require a much heavier hand to eliminate community perceptions of difficult keys.

A system like this would be a Godsend for raiders, though, so I can see why so many people are in support of it.

[Elbob]

Even if it is (debatable), why stop on "fine" and not make it "better"? Being able to choose any key at any level has many pros, and there are ways to prevent the cons.

ive yet to see a suggested "improvement" that doesn't come with cons. They all keep it best on par or make it worse.

Choosing any key would make (guessing here)90%+ of run 20's either cos or smbg. Thats a HUGE problem. How would you stop people from farming only the easiest dungeons? leaving players who need gear from other places out to have a near impossible time forming grps.

[Rageonit]

ive yet to see a suggested "improvement" that doesn't come with cons. They all keep it best on par or make it worse.

Choosing any key would make (guessing here)90%+ of run 20's either cos or smbg. Thats a HUGE problem. How would you stop people from farming only the easiest dungeons? leaving players who need gear from other places out to have a near impossible time forming grps.

There are solutions to running same keys over and over, solutions that make perfect sence in the game we play today. Read my posts above.