It’s simple really:
- Mythic+ is too hard and requires too much specific knowledge to be had before joining;
- Because it is too hard, average players (don’t read this as bad, but average, which means the majority) have a very high failure rate;
- Because the average group has a too high failure rate, PUGs start having requirements that try to weed out those players without the exceptional knowledge, gear and/or ability;
- Because there is a very low probability to ever meet that player again that does not already possess the specific knowledge / ability / gear, nobody will have any incentive to be patient and teach them or help them out to improve;
- Because of the weeding out, groups that do not do that have an even higher failure rate, because they’ll essentially have even lower chance to get in them the knowledgeable, above-average players, so their failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy;
- As the season progresses, the gap between those that do high enough M+ and those that don’t becomes a howling pit that cannot be crossed aside from some very specific means - a) if one has a group of friends that do the dungeons together and learn together; or b) if one has a guild that is focused on those and is willing to teach the player - both of which are essentially situations where the probability of future repeat interactions with that player are almost 100%, and thus the incentive to teach and help someone exists;
- Because of this terrible pit, the average player (which means the majority) has a godawful experience in M+.
The only way to actually make them fun to play for the average Joe and Jane is to make the maximum loot level in M+ something that average players can achieve. It doesn’t mean everyone needs to be able to, but at least 70%-75% of the player base better be able to do them consistently. Then, weeding out less knowledgeable players will be meaningless, because there will be a high success rate for PUGs that don’t screen too much or do only a very minimal amount of screening, as even the bottom 25% of players will be carriable in them as long as someone else in the group is above average. Above the level of the highest loot possible, M+ levels should indeed start to become extremely hard, just as they are now, perhaps awarding some sort of cosmetic rewards for that part of the community that is very hardcore about them in addition to M+ rating, to keep that motivation to push high up going.
This does not mean to make M+ challenge-less, because some level of challenge and failure should still be possible to make them still feel like a fun game and not a checklist item, but the current level of challenge/difficulty is absurd to say the least.
If this won’t happen soon, a lot of PvE centered players will simply abandon doing M+, and if that used to be their primary interest in the game then they’ll abandon the game altogether and quit, thus diluting the playerbase even further and this is something that hurts everyone, achievers and non-achievers alike (friends leave the game leaving people that remain to feel more lonely, AH becomes less active, servers become more ghost towns, casual PvP queues also increase, PvE guilds become dead, and so on).
Final thought on the issue: there’s no reason why, as long as an appropriate level of challenge would exist, M+ wouldn’t be able to be queued through a dungeon finder tool that matches players, with the caveat that someone would only be able to queue toan appropriate level of difficulty (if successful, the score would increase) or lower than their current score (no gain in score, but would have already proven the ability to complete that content).
This type of PvE content can be fun, and while there are some players that dedicate to it and thus have no problem being achievers in it, there are many others that would like to play it but not dedicate to it. They, however, can’t be part of it under the current system, and there’s too many of this type of player and too few of the achiever kind as things stand right now. Worse still, WoW endgame provides content only for essentially 3 ways of playing: raids, M+ or rated PvP. While both PvE and PvP casual players exist, the content made available to their appropriate skill level almost doesn’t exist. At least in PvP, casual players don’t face a gear hurdle compared to the hardcore players - they all end up having the same gear, but in PvE raids and M+ the ability / knowledge / dedication difference is doubled quickly by a gear disparity that makes the raiding and the M+ communities become little unapproachable enclaves, and this drives a lot of players away not just from them, but from the game entirely.