We already had this discussion and you’re right, I disagree.
I’ll summarize my objections to your 3 points for the others:
- Key depletion prevents spamming the dungeon until you get a carry group, and hence also prevents inflated rio scores where you can’t tell apart if a person earned their score or was carried
It prevents spamming the dungeon, only to some degree. The dude can find another key for example. But I’ll comment on this at the end of this reply, because I think that, in blizzard’s viewpoint, this is the core of the issue. But not for the reason you gave here.
“Inflated RIO scores where you can’t tell apart if a person earned their score or got carried”: this one doesn’t hold. Because there’s a bound on the keystone rank where someone can be carried. At some point, everyone needs to do its best and cannot simply be a dead weight.
- Key depletion adds a consequence which motivates the key owner to make the best group possible, hence increasing the likelihood that the key will be timed, which is very important for pugs
“Make the best group possible”, how do you measure that ? I’m not asking for a scientific answer with a mathematical proof here. I’m just asking “what the average players will do ?”. They’ll follow the meta even more. Is that a thing we really want ?
Also, this consequence adds a lot of toxicity and other side problems like being forced to stop playing due to an RL issue, for example.
Some players have pretty unstable connections, keystone which does not deplete would no longer be a “oh… too bad…” moment for them.
- Key depletion reduces the chance the group will fall apart (= prevents the leader from bailing the group as soon as it doesn’t go the way he thinks should go)
This one, I must admit that I don’t see why anyone would behave like this. If the key doesn’t deplete, we can try new experiments, new routes and be chill about it. So it’s very much the opposite to me.
back to the very first argument.
- Key depletion prevents spamming the dungeon
until you get a carry group
I removed the part that has no value in Blizzard’s eye (in my opinion).
So… Why would Blizzard prefer that players not repeat the dungeons?
I’m not taking boosts or carries in account here:
If we had the possibility to immediately repeat a dungeon on the same level immediately, over and over, until we make it, the learning curve of that dungeon on that key level would be much easier on us.
Basically, what happens right now is that we fail a dungeon, and the key deplete, we can retry it lower level, but that doesn’t mean we fixed the issues we had with the higher level. In order to do that, we need to find another key for that dungeon, on that level. And that can take some time. So, we can slowly forget the small details that would help us have a smooth run.
In the end, it increases the lifetime of that dungeon from a learning point of view, you know?
Remember what Raph Koster said about learning in his essay “A Theory of Fun”. Basically, according to him, while you still have things to learn about a game, the game is fun.
You can agree or disagree with Raph Koster. I personnally only partially agree with him. But considering the weight of this dude in the mmo industry, it’s very likely that his ideas are more or less followed in every mmo, including world of warcraft.
Now, it’s also common knowledge, I think, that Blizzard is willing to extend the life expectancy of WoW and every of its expacs/patches. They are right to do so. How they do it is what can be the problem sometimes.
So, how’s a good way to increase the life expectancy of M+ ? Why players participate in M+ ? Loot and fun. So… They:
- Reduce loot.
- Reduce capacity of players to learn, or, in other words, increase the amount of time and effort required to master a M+ keystone.
It’s very likely that’s the real reason why depleted keystones are a thing.
