I don’t think there’s anything wrong with either viewpoint, they’re both valid but apply to people with differing goals/motivations.
Someone who is after a specific drop from the dungeon you’re doing is going to heavily desire finishing, as is the person for whom this is their only weekly run (and they just want weekly credit).
Someone who is looking to up his RIO score, or trying to get his achievement credit, may not care about the run anymore once the timer has ended.
The Problem(atic mindset)
The problem is, as with many things Mythic+ related, that it has become commonplace to pug, and that people expect great/good results, without doing any preparation/screening, basically taking no responsibility. They just walk into the casino put all their chips on number 12 and spin the wheel. And when the wheel doesn’t end up being 12 they’ll curse and blame others, but on their next visit…, they’ll do the very same thing again. new shooter, coming out!
Guilds (or communities)
When you’re doing Mythic+ with a (traditional) guild group, you often have a number of advantages that mitigate or even prevent this type of problem.
More likeminded of a demographic
First, many guilds (or communities) have a certain demographic. I don’t mean age/gender-wise, i mean it’s not likely that half your guild’s Mythic+ players are worldfirst contenders, while the other half has just installed the game last week. There’s likely a much slimmer grouping of skillsets and/or gearlevel and/or personality than among the pool of random puggers. This dampens the likelyhood of issues tremendously already.
Longterm investment
When you play with other members of a certain guild (or community), you expect you’ll see these same people again in future runs. Being a little more helpful than comes naturally to you, may be in your self-interest. Sharing loot, or finishing that run that ran overtime just before boss 3 of 4. Meh, if you help Georgey get his Shrine run done then he’ll likely help you out with that crappy key that you still need done tomorrow.
More communication
More communication. I’m not talking Discord, though that’s mega helpful for other reasons of course. I mean you have (way) more information to go on when deciding to join a run, than you do when pugging. You likely know (some) of these guildies that want to do this run, you know how good or bad they are, so you can better predict if it’s a longshot or a breeze or a likely trainwreck, and if that doesn’t sound like what you feel like at this moment, then you can pass pre-emptively. Sometimes you know their motivation,
(Tuesday) “hey guys, wanna help me do this Shrine +8, i still haven’t done a key this week”
=> that dude wants to finish the run, regardless of timer. Or,
“Anyone wanna try to push Motherlode +15 this week, it’s decent affixes for getting that one done”
=> he cares about the timer, if it fails then he may want to ditch.
It’s not complicated, what can reasonably be expected of everyone
If everyone in the group is (for example) after upgrading their RIO score, then it’s very sensible to all bail on the run once it becomes clear the timer isn’t going to work out. Bail and go do another run.
If people have differing goals, then it should be made clear what the expectation is. If the leader (or consensus) makes it clear he want’s to finish the run regardless of timer, then those who aren’t willing to stick around a reasonable bit longer (should the need even arise), should bail ahead of time.
And if it’s a run that’s all about the timer, then those who don’t want to risk a abandoned run should not start one. But if, like in 95% of the runs i see, no-one bothered to say anything, then it’s hard to pin the blame on one side.
Either the guy who left is a doink for leaving, but the others are stupid for not making their desire known ahead of time. Or vice-versa, generally no one really comes out any more innocent than the other.
of course there are extremes, if the timer runs out on the final pull before the final boss then leaving when that wasn’t pre-agreed is a lame move. Likewise if you ask people to see the run through post-timer, but it ends up being a 2 hour long run, then leaving should be an option.
Pugging could be fine
Now, i don’t mean to gatekeep Mythic+. I don’t think it should be limited to guilds or anything like that, infact many of my former Mythic+ guildies have retired and since then i’ve personally only been pugging. And of course the situation also isn’t this cut and dry, in some guilds none of the above apply, and then the results are likely not all that different than when pugging.
Crazy expectations
But the expectations and procedures that have become the norm in pugging (since in Legion), are straight-up bonkers. The average pug leader lists his key, only naming the dungeon and the level, like “Atal +12”, and sets a minimum ilvl (which is likely the exact ilvl he or she is wearing). Then wait for sign-ups to magically appear, look for the highest ilvls, ideally from flavor-of-the-month classes, and see if their RIO score is about the same or preferably higher.
Now, this proces basically involves near zero useful information. Both parties know it’s Atal Dazar and that it’s at +12 (and the affixes), but that’s it.
Why are people there ? What do they care about ? What is their experience or dps like.
Old school group building
Back in earlier expansions, before we had the dungeon finder, we’d make pugs for dungeons using trade/general chat. You’d shout
“LF healer and ranged dps for Arcatraz, 68+”
Once you received whispers from people saying they wanted in, you might ask them if they had ever been there before, if they have flying (kinda required to get there), perhaps if they knew the mechanics or if they meet certain gear requirements. Now besides the fact that you then have answers to those questions, you’ve opened a dialog, and since you had to travel to the dungeon, you’d probably spend another 10 minutes talking in party chat while people made their way over there.
Now even though this is a total pug and you just met, you already have a little of that guild-like investment feeling. Or if you were expecting a pro-level zerg run, and the other dude in the group is asking where the entrance is, you can bail during the formation phase. People would discuss possible drops (unless there was a Hunter in the group), by the time you’re all inside, you largely know what sort of run you’re in for.
Modern day (Mythic+) group building
We’re not doing anything remotely like that nowadays with Mythic+, even though the tools we have are 10x better, and clearly steer towards it. The fact that:
- there’s little to no prepwork done by both the leader, and those queuing up, means runs become rapid-fire routine, which means little to no value is placed in individual runs (who even remembers the names of the people they did their last pug run with ? no, don’t look at details you cheater!),
- leader’s don’t present any info on their desires/expectations,
- signup’s don’t ask either,
- people just blindly assume that everyone else there has the exact same goal going in, and then rage or act surprised when it becomes clear that wasn’t the case (but they don’t change the formula on their next run).
- poorly designed and thereby inevitably harmful systems like RIO just turn it even more into a race to the bottom.
Also, not directly related to your question, but still very much overlapping and feeding into the same problems with Mythic+ in general:
Useful vs Dime-a-dozen (roles)
Everyone knows the balance between tanks/healers vs dps is not ideal at the moment. It’s never been perfect, but right now this imbalance combined with the Mythic+system driving people to do many dungeon runs, means DPS players are so “dime a dozen” that unless you’re wearing your Shadowlands-ilvl BiS raidgear already, you’ll likely be passed over 50 times before you’re getting into a group.
The Bandaid for this is right on the table
There are soooo many players out there, doing mid-level keys or better (say +7 to +15), on priests, druids, paladins, and the like, who would be totally capable, and would likely totally enjoy healing and/or tanking the occasional run. But they never take that leap to try, because they’re afraid they get yelled at or blamed if something goes wrong (which isnt an irrational fear). People are so averse to taking a few minutes being nice or taking a chance, that they’d rather end up standing around, likely waiting twice as long for a random unknown dude to pop up in the queue.
I guarantee, if you’re a healer+3dps group, waiting for ages for a tank, it literally only takes like 5 minutes of encouraging smallchat to talk some ret pally you’ve never met, who regularly pugs +8 keys as dps, into trying to tank a +6 key. Slap on a cookie-cutter build, don’t even read the spells, he’s done the dungeon as dps, you’ll be fine. Now you no longer have to wait, and after you finish that +6 key (which you’ll likely double/triple), he’ll be up for tanking the next key, and you all skip the wait. Plus the dude will likely add you to friends and be up for tanking future runs.
Salt
I swear the whole community for years now has been structured to form some massive negative feedback loop, complaining crops won’t grow while salting the fields. 90% of the problems/disappointments in the game are caused by us (shortsighted) players, not Blizzard. /rant
Your Guild drama
It doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong. And i think their argument isn’t necessarily wrong either, pre-namecalling anyway. Both groups just had competing interests/expectations, and neither thought to share that ahead of time, unfortunately very common.
You guys all heard “We won a free holiday?” Hell yea! and showed up at the airport. You brought a snowboard, and they brought bikini’s and beach towels. Neither a bad idea, but a little more communication could’ve likely prevented the issue.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. No refunds.
i always leave keys if they are not in time, i guess im part of the problem