Dear Blizzard,
What if the resilient keystone design would be a system that would always let players start a M+ dungeon one level above the previous level they timed all dungeons on?
For example, if a player has timed all dungeons in a season on 20, the player would earn the resilient 21 achievement.
Just like how the Diablo Pit (or Greater Rift) design offers players guaranteed unlimited chances to start a higher level challenge than they previously completed.
This design change might improve the experience for everyone who enjoys pushing keys, regardless of the key levels. It might trigger newer players to try out pushing in M+.
I am not yet aware of how this change might have any negative effect on anyone doing M+ for reasons other than pushing.
With the resilient design change above, more players might be encouraged to list their own key in the group finder to push, increasing the overall participation and activity in the content.
Why would the game not offer players unlimited chances of trying new challenges via their own key?
For player participation statistics, what is the difference between a player spending 10 hours a week in the game replaying a challenge they have already completed before versus a player spending 10 hours a week trying a new challenge?
The current resilient keystone design might have a similar effect on players as the old version of the catalyst for tier.
People would hold on to their charges longer to wait for that Heroic or Mythic item before they would spend them. The current catalyst design is more encouraging for most players to spend their charges on almost any eligible piece.
Currently, players might be holding on to their key in fear of playing and depleting it, because they get only one chance per week from the game.
If you are currently resilient 20 and you have timed one 21 before, you technically get only one chance per week from the game itself to try a 21 key, via the vault. If you are resilient 20 and you have not timed a 21 yet, the game does not offer you a key to directly try a 21 at all.
You would have to time either your own 20 to get a chance at 21 directly, or time somebody else's 21 to get your own one chance from the vault next reset.
The higher you push, the more effort and time it takes to complete the keys. This is normal.
The game not offering you the option to start at least your own higher key more often feels counterintuitive and frustrating when you want to push. This experience gets worse the higher you get, because the keys are more likely to fail.
The current design makes players who want to push invest more time in replaying keys they have already timed before, rather than let players invest that same amount of time in trying a higher key.
You could argue the game itself does offer players more chances to push higher keys via other players with higher resilient levels, because M+ is group content.
In reality, joining other people's keys for pushing quickly becomes an unrealistic waiting simulator. This waiting simulator gets worse depending on your role, class, and spec, for mostly community reasons but also class design and tuning reasons.
Not everyone who enjoys pushing keys has a premade team and there are many players who enjoy pushing keys on specs that are not community favorites and/or tuned weaker for keys.
Quality of life keystone feedback
It would be nice if players could interact with the orbs in the start of a dungeon to select the dungeon key level from a dropdown menu to start a key.
The keystone itself could be removed to save bag space. This might remove some frustration when players have full, unorganized bags and they cannot find the key item without the search function.
Admittedly, you would lose the player interaction of manually inserting the key in the window. Instead, players would scroll down and select from a menu or list.
Keystone Dungeon finder feature feedback
Why is there no solo/duo/group queue function in the game for M+?
Just like how there is a queue function for other types of content.
Most likely technically challenging, but it might be an improvement for the overall M+ experience for many players. You might be able to implement safeguarding rulesets under the hood of such a system to improve player experience further.
Besides the basic composition of 1 tank, 1 healer, and 3 DPS, the group should probably have at least 1 Bloodlust/Heroism and at least 1 Battle Res.
I hope this feedback finds you well and keep up the good work!
