I want to preface this by saying that I don’t personally know to which extent Blizzard is already aware of these issues.
A lot of this is going to be incredibly obvious or beating a dead horse, most people are in agreeance that we need fixes, but very polarized on what the fixes look like.
1. RDF can be incredibly toxic and is often abused by bad actors.
As it stands, the current RDF experience “usually” works fine, but gives bad actors too much power to abuse other players.
Group loot, for example, basically incentivizes premades to need on loot that their peers need, or forcing a votekick to prevent a solo player from competing for the loot.
Personal loot can obviously mitigate these to an extent but either leaves a bad taste or comes with other issues (I’m not very educated on this)
You could also prevent trading items that were needed on, which I’m pretty sure is how it works in lower level dungeons, thereby reducing the incentive of premade ninja-ing.
I love group loot, but it requires a level of virtue that in rare cases isn’t there.
2. The votekick argument is stuck between a rock and hard place.
You either have a system where players abuse the system to dodge undesirable dungeons or a system that opens up the possibility for innocent players to be harshly punished for doing nothing wrong.
As someone who has regularly used the RDF system since 2010-ish, i prefer the old one more, but i personally have experienced extremely little of this “dodging” so i could be biased.
One solution could be to use the old system, but instead make an attempt at remedying dungeons that often are dodged, such as adding an NPC or interactable object to deadmines that lets players skip the pre-vanessa RP if they wish, or allowing players to filter out a dungeon that is particularly egregious with the downside of increased queue times.
(Imo, the protocol dungeons gives a lot of incentive to play dungeons which may not have the loot you need by the way of shards, which seems to work quite well.)
Others have suggested a “stacking timer” that punishes players who overuse the system.
3. Telling people to “just join premade groups” is NOT a solution.
I’ve seen this one over and over, “Just join a premade and all your problems are solved”, a common phrase for the snarky, holier-than-thou forum personalities that don’t understand casual players.
It ignores the fact that many players may not feel experienced or confident enough to host their own group or that many premade groups set unrealistic requirements and expectations on who can join.
385 or 390 ILVL required, as often seen in LFG chat, is way more than enough for Twilight Protocol dungeons for example, gear is rarely an issue unless the player is in full auction house PvP gear AND doing very low damage, in which case a vote kick is justified and not malicious.
Of course, these groups have every right to put whatever requirements they like, but I’m just adding another reason that joining a premade is hard for some, it can also put a lot of pressure on players who may not be comfortable in their ability to perform up to the groups standards, they may need to experience the dungeons in a more casual, low pressure environment first.
Regardless of what is done to remedy these issues, even if nothing, i struggle to believe it could get worse, and i especially urge a lot of the more skilled and hardcore players to look at the game through the lens of yourself back when you were a casual.
At the risk of sounding cheesy, this era of WoW holds a special place in my heart and my only incentive for writing this is that i just want it to be as good of an experience as can be.