First of all - we are so beyond #nochanges that it doesn’t even matter.
Now on topic:
new players are really screwed, almost no one ever runs regular HC (which is main gearing hub for fresh 80’s until ~3.4k-3.5k gs)
realistically you need ~3.5k to start doing naxx25/H+ to further gear up to 4k (to join Ulduar10/25)
yes you can do H+ on 2.7k characters (I did it in the past), but it is slow and miserable experience.
H+, H++, (H+++, H++++) should be left as a content which requires manual group forming (as m+ is in retail)
heroic/normal dungeons (including vanilla/tbc) should be included into RDF
Fresh players and players that are still leveling are really struggling to get dungeons groups. While I leveled by alt1-80, I only did like 10 dungeons, which is very low considering how many there are. Dungeons are one of the main selling points of wow pve, yet the very entry level is very gated.
I have a friend who just started playing wow and he asked should I play classic or regular, and I told him go retail (and the sole reason was no rdf for fresh players).
If Blizz wants to avoid dungeon spamming leveling - add a hourly or daily cap of how many 10-79lvl RDF dungeons can one run.
Then the real problem is not RDF not existing, but the fact people Gatekeep stupid easy content behind a gear requirement much too high for this content. You could have 4 kind-off geared characters and an ungeared fresh 80 dinger and still do the content.
Adding RDF would only make the groups asking for a liitle bit higher gear score so those players are not included, because the reality of Gearscore is it’s an ‘‘experience gatekeeping’’, like not taking anyone under 440 ilevel in retail right now. You know that if they get this ilevel/Gearscore, that’s because they at least done most of the resarches they needed, know how to optimize their time and have a minimal experience on their class. Result, they should not be dead weights.
Most people under that requirements tend to think that’s only that group leaders want to get carried, but really, most of the time, it’s unassumed pure elitism.
I am not suggesting RDF for H+/++/++++++. It’s only for regular entry level heroic. These are very rare now. I just checked, at this time (Sunday afternoon), total groups in Mirrage:
1 group for regular HC (Utgrade keep) / 3 listed lone dps’ers
0 for H+ (2 listed persons)
5 groups for H++ (4 of them has “5k+”), ~40 people listed as solo
Total groups in Earthshaker:
1 for regular HC (10 listed solo players)
0 groups for H+ (1 listed solo player)
10 groups for H++ (7 of them with gs req) / ~30 solo players
What harm does it do, to give fresh 80’s easier way to catch up via faster dungeon grouping to get ilvl200 gear / emblems?
It doesn’t force them to find a guild until they get to the raid wall. Then, not finding any group aside GDKP becomes a hard Quit Moment.
Needing people to do dungeons in leveling/early 80 make you be more social and actively searching for groups that could become permanent, while RFD make you stay in your corner until you really need a group on raid content.
This season I did ~80 m+ runs (all manually gathered), guess how many new “social” friends I made? zero. It’s always “hi; gg nice run, bye”
Same was in H+ - I ran that thing on 2 characters for a very long time, and 98% of runs only had “HI” “YOU NEED THAT?” “GG TY BYE”.
Most of my new friend list friends came either from discord or forums, where people actually look to expand their friend list. No one cares in H+ or H++ or regular heroic. Maybe you play in RP realm and it’s different, but in mainstream ones - no one cares. Even if you write in party “hey let’s run one more?” - 5s later - everyone is already left the group.
Times has changed a lot since - we are no longer in 2008, when socializing via games was something new and BIG. We didn’t really had such a big communicating platforms (like Discord now), and we didn’t have smartphones with free internet, free calls, etc. So being able to chat in game was BIG (I remember in my old mmorpg Lineage2 we were chatting so much in guild/party chats). Now? I can sit in my work, grab a phone and just communicate with my guild via discord (actually discord chat is like 20x more active than in-game guild chat).
Even my raiding in wrath was via discord - I just found a group there, I sign-up there for the raid and when the time comes - I whisper raid leader and he just invites me. I don’t need guild to raid.
You are very right with that. Now the social groups aren’t made in the game anymore. But it doesn’t change the fact that if you don’t question yourself about ever needing a group for 50+hours of leveling and Dungeon gearing, you’ll probably hit a wall once you are geared and no one want you because you are a new player, and people want you to have experience you don’t have.
Your best bet is to find a group before getting to this point where you are not appealing at all. This way the social bound will help you get over the hoops of the elitism wall.
Retail is more forgiving about this due to the shear number of loot sources, while Classic and Wrath are pretty Straight forward in their approach.
Why would I bring along a 3.2k GS char I don’t know about to a dungeon that’s tuned for 4k+? Especially with the relative ease we have now to find non-tank roles. Ofc it’d be a different story if it was regular hcs, since mobs would die so fast that a 3.2k GS in any role (Except maybe tank because of threat) wouldn’t even matter. But in beta hc++ it still makes quite the difference.
RDF, at least for regular hc, would let all these 3k GS players gear up for beta++ and raids much more easily, especially if cross-realm. There’s no reason not to add it other than Blizzard being lazy and/or wanting to profit from WoW tokens.
Well that’s what happens when one implements retail systems into a game not designed around it. What could possibly have gone wrong?
That’s kinda BS, considering you can pretty much leveling solo either way. Whether the jump to “needing groups” happens at the level of heroic dungeons or raids is irrelevant. At some point you’ll need to seek out other players to progress in content, that’s how MMORPGs have always been.
The difference is that, with RDF and without hc+/hc++, there wouldn’t have been anywhere close to the “gear rift” we see now. For example, on a regular 3.3.5 server, you can easily spam RDF (and maybe a ToC pug or w/e) until you are 5.2-5.5k GS, depending on your spec. At that point, most guilds doing ICC, except maybe the most high-end ones, will be willing to invite you into their fold and do ICC10 runs with you - for them, it’s mostly an EoF farm plus the occasional reserved trinket like Whispering Fanged Skull or Moradin’s Spyglass. For the newbie, it’s a way to finally get ready for ICC 25.
Unfortunately, hc+ and hc++ broke this system down completely. Since now once you reach lvl 80 you’re pretty much screwed - nobody wants you in dungeons, and you’re still too fresh for most raids (except Naxx ofc but that’s still only 1 raid per week). Guilds might be willing to take you in, but they won’t bring you to current raids, and most people don’t really schedule dungeons the same way they schedule raids - for most guilds, doing dungeons is a matter of logging in and asking “who’s up for X?”. If, say, you mostly log on evenings, and half your guild is already saved for the daily hc, you’re still kinda screwed as pugs still won’t take you - I’ve started doing Beta dungeons 4 days ago and I’ve yet to manage to do one with guildies because I’m always up sooner or later than most ppl, and that’s in a guild that regularly does 25m raids and alt raids as well.
So no, adding RDF (even cross-realm) wouldn’t change social dynamics fundamentally compared to what we have now. NOT adding it, however, will make things harder and harder for new players until nobody’s left. Heck, I’ve seen more new players coming by on pservers than throughout WotLK C tenure, despite the former’s “static progression status” and questionable reputation.
Though I still would like to mention that, at this point, I believe we’re approaching “too late to matter” territory with WotLK C. The game is thoroughly screwed by the multiple negative changes implemented, population took a nosedive over the last few months, and I doubt the trend can be reversed at this point. Guess Blizzard will never learn, in typical Blizzard fashion.
Well, the issue persists. There is no way for a new fresh 80 to gear up (and catch-up) unless they spend about 10k gold to buy boe at the AH plus enhancements.
So either buy a token (and sell it for gold) or RMT.
That`s the state of the game nowadays.
Euh… If there’s one thing, having HM+ and HM++, gave another avenue to gearing, so it became even more forgiving than if it wasn’t there at all. Really, i think this was a good thing. But let’s face it, the problem is still a community issue, not a design one.
It is a design one, first and foremost. Without Alpha and Beta protocol dungeons, everybody would still be doing regular heroics for the daily. And those heroics are so easy and quick (compared to Alpha/Beta dungeons) that most players would just need warm bodies and wouldn’t pay a passing glance to their gearscore, at least as long as the tank and maybe one of the DPS look decent. This would make life for newer players much easier, as they could collect emblems every day with relative ease and use them to gear themselves up alongside the occasional Naxx pug raid and such. That’s how it worked on 3.3.5 private servers, and any fresh char could easily go from dinging lvl 80 to being ready for ICC within a matters of 4-8 weeks at most.
The problem is that they tuned these Alpha/Beta dungeons to the point that bringing low-geared chars for the ride DOES have a significant downside now, and thus most players simply won’t. This creates an unneccessary barrier to entry for new players that just wouldn’t be there if Alpha/Beta didn’t exist. Heck, most parties don’t even CARE about the gear dropping there, and only focus on last boss for daily and Sidereal Essence.
If Blizzard only really cared about providing an alternative avenue for gear, then they could’ve simply added the loot WITHOUT retuning dungeons like they did - just like they did with Naxx 10 (that received 25m gear without getting any harder in the process) and such. Instead, by upscaling HP/dmg, they created a strong incentive for players not to invite the ppl who need that gear the most.
If that’s not a design issue, then I dunno what is.
OK, let’s remove HC+ and HC++ and revert the gear tables to how they were before these changes, so 10man naxx gear only drops in 10man naxx, only 10man ulduar gear in 10man ulduar, etc.
Down for it really. And that’s as a person that can run HC++ since 4.5k GS tank is more or less enough (even if the much better geared DPS can occasionally steal aggro).
Or at least Blizzard should figure out that having three distinct difficulties sharing lockouts is a bad idea. I really wouldn’t mind doing an extra heroic each day filling up for a group that lacks a tank/healer but since now doing so means missing on EoTs and Sidereals it’s just not worth it.
This isn’t a problem RDF is going to solve, with the way the system works people are going to zone into the instance and will have the choice to do either Heroic, H+ or H++.
Adding the RDF element means that either you will have a group of pumpers or a group with undergeared DPS that are in full deadly gear, just like the problem was in original Wrath after they introduced it. The other part of the problem is people gatekeeping heroic dungeons, the H++ dungeons can be blazed through with 4.5K GS but people are keeping the requirement at 5.2K which is insane.
You’re in a guild, right? Why don’t you just boost him through a world tour so he can get Ulduar 10-man tokens and gear.
That’s what we are doing with friends and new players in the guild. It is so incredibly easy to gear someone in one day it is insane with the current system, but you need to socialize with people.
Dumbest thing I heard, the entire point of doing RDF is leveling your chars optimally.
Honestly I do partially agree. I didn’t play during ulduar phase at all and came back at the end and lvled an enh shammy up. I want to run hc++ but they all ask for 5k gearscore which is fcking dumb.
Oh but you know… Spamming random dungeons over and over ain’t really best way to get exp. Best way is actually mixing things up using dungeon quests and questing in the world while the tool queues you up for chosen dungeon.
They ask it because they wanna be done with the mode and get 2-3 items they were unlucky getting for 4+ months. You are free to make your own group of 4,2-4,5 players or alts and have a 40 minutes runs.