Lol you’d think this game wasn’t for him really, if the game has been so devastating changed.
Hmmm I wonder … was it because they introduced RDF and 0 changes to dungeons … or because people were 4 tiers of gear above what 5man dungeons were intended for …
Nah must be because of RDF …
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Of course. I can appreciate Nicolay’s honesty, and I think we’re very different as players. I don’t think Nicolay would be a person that I would add on my friendlist or someone I would whisper to run with again, and I don’t mean to be rude when I say that. He simply approaches the game in a very different way than I do.
The Dungeon Finder would have zero impact on his preferred way to play. It might even be beneficial. So of course it behooves him to speak for the Dungeon Finder. But for me and my preferred way to play, the Dungeon Finder would have a significant impact, and that is why I am opposed to it.
Not at all. But if you want to see what a game that tries to cater to everyone looks like then look at retail – WoW has been on that path for a very long time. You cannot please everyone. I can’t speak for everyone who is against the Dungeon Finder, but if I had to generalize I believe we desire to protect an aspect of the game that you insist does not exist – and your main method of argumentation is to simply deny our individual experiences, denouncing them as “never happening”.
You say we’re full of ourselves, and then you post this:
You haven’t even tried their changes and you already denounce them. I thought you liked this expansion – and you also suggested that the Dungeon Finder was not a “core feature” of the game by dismissing my analogy earlier in this thread. Source: Is RDF really ruining social aspects of the game? - #389 by Krutoj-lakeshire
But let me just reiterate what I just said: you denounce changes you have not even tried. And yet when people like myself refer to lived history to explain our disdain for the Dungeon Finder you dismiss it as “you remember things wrong”. Even when presented with actual research you still make zero attempts to actually understand why people might dislike the Dungeon Finder. You try to sell some sort of narrative where you are the good guy and in the right (and everyone who is for the Dungeon Finder you’ll upvote even though they may say things that actually prove the other side’s point), and everyone who is against the Dungeon Finder is some sort of selfish villain.
Get some perspective.
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The Dungeon Finder certainly didn’t help. I said this earlier:
This is what I was talking about: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/2053469/wow-dungeons-are-hard
Give it a solid read, please. Blizzard tried to go back on the negative trends that developed throughout Wrath of the Lich King, yet not long after that blog post they made a 180 (in patch 4.0.6 I believe) and nerfed pretty much all existing content in Cataclysm.
Ultimately, we don’t want to give undergeared or unorganized groups a near guaranteed chance of success, because then the content will feel absolutely trivial for players in appropriate gear who communicate, cooperate, and strategize.
We didn’t like that the Heroic dungeons in Lich King and early Naxxramas had become zerg-fests. It made the rewards feel like they weren’t earned.
Running a hard dungeon with friends tends to be a much better experience. Communication feels less awkward, and everyone is generally more supportive of mistakes. You learn the strengths and weaknesses and nuances of players that you run with regularly. There tend to be fewer loot arguments as well. PUGs have their place – don’t get me wrong. But we don’t want to sacrifice dungeons being fun and challenging for organized groups in order to have everything be conquered by any possible group. Make sense?
[Edit] Throwing this quote in for fun as it feels very relevant to this discussion:
Both sides need to spend a little less effort trying to drown out the other side claiming that everyone they know – and by extension, “the majority of players” – agree with their point. You shouldn’t need to invoke a silent majority if you can make an articulate and salient point.
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I am not saying your experiences never happened. Well not in general, there definitely have been a few people that were making stuff up.
I am just saying that you pull the wrong conclusions out of your experiences. Because if you don’t run PUG runs, you don’t know anything about PUG dungeons period.
If you run with your friends and guildies, your social interactions only stay in this social cycle. You can’t just go and assume the whole server or the whole community is like you and your friends or interacts like you and your friends.
Well the removal of the RDF alone is a deal breaker for me. True it’s not a core feature, but I’ve been playing TBCC and I hated the group building in this game. Every time I was trying to form a group and had to disband it after hours of searching I was so looking forward to being able to play with RDF in WotLK. Without it it will just be the same bad experience all over again. And I don’t want to start to hate WotLK like I hate TBC now.
The other changes aren’t actually that bad on their own. If the RDF ordeal wouldn’t have happened, I probably would have played with those chages, even though I don’t like them. It’s just right now my motivation to play WotLK is sunken in a bottomless pit and at this point I don’t think just bringing the RDF would suffice to make me want to play WotLK Classic again.
And it’s true I didn’t test those chages, but I’ve ran hard raids before and I don’t like it. I am not seeking for a challeng. I want to have a good time in the game. I loved, that the content in WotLK was much more accessible than in TBC. Making raids harder is a step in the opposite direction.
The changes to make dungeons interesting for longer could actually turn out a good thing. I just don’t trust blizzard anymore so I would rather like them to leave the dungeons as they were.
Memory is not reliable especially not if it’s 12 years old. THIS IS A FACT! And the “research” you provided earlier, is largely based on board posts. This might not be the best way to collect data.
Plus I think if you would conduct a research like this today, with games like FF XIV around, that had matchmaking included into all the content from the beginning and still having a great community, the result would be completely different. I mean this alone is proof that matchmaking in MMORPGs isn’t what destroys a community.
Maybe I would understand if somebody for once would make a valid argument against it. What I have seen so far is just irrational hate, that ignores facts and makes wrong assumptions.
And the funny thing is, that everything you’ve wrote about me actually goes for yourself. Well I don’t know about the upvoting posts part, since I don’t pay attention to that.
But you are definitely not reflecting on your opinion. And it never crossed your mind, that you could be in the wrong here.
A lot of people made a lot of logical arguments, that are based on the state of the community in TBCC and backed by the experience of actually running PUG dungeons. Yet you just meet them with arguments of vague memories and experiences you’ve had with a tiny fraction of the community on your server.
If you didn’t run PUGs on a regular basis, you should stay out of this discussion. The RDF is for people that run PUGs. People that run with guild and friends anyway of course won’t need the RDF and therefore it’s easy to argument against it. You don’t lose anything with it’s removal. But we do. You also don’t gain anything through it’s removal. You have your guilds and friends to run dungeons with. The RDF doesn’t take this away. The game works for you now, it still will with the RDF, because you won’t even have to use it, except for maybe filling one spare spot.
It’s frustrating to argue with somebody, who wants a feature removed, that doesn’t influence that person’s game experience in any way, but that is vital for you.
It’s as if I would go to the PvP boards and argue to remove Arena for some weird reason, even though I never play PvP.
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It’s a good blogpost. I liked Cata heroics, did them mostly with my raiding guild in between the heroic raids and we had a blast. It was a well known fact at the start of Cata that you don’t really RDF a heroic.
I didn’t really like how they homogenized the classes in Cata, they gave Mages heroism and combat res to DKs for Elune’s sake. I also disliked how they chose to implement the difficulty of heroic raids, specifically the idea that a single mistake by a single raider out of 25 over a course of 10 min fight would guarantee a wipe. Like the Sindragosa or Al’Akir fights. That was mostly what I quit over, I couldn’t cope with doing a mistake myself, and I could not stop expressing undue toxicity towards others who made a mistake, so I no longer found raids fun, just tedious and streassful. A trend which I understand continues and is even more amplified in mythic raiding in retail, which I never regarded as something I want to try for that very reason. And my pride just won’t let me run a raid on normal and be satisfied.
Anyway, all that is completely off topic. We aren’t going into Cata now, that would be another can of worms entirely and I doubt I even want to take part in that. We are going into Wrath, which has a specific dungeon difficulty (basically trivial in T8 gear and onward) and is thus well fit for RDF.
I absolutely do not trust current year Blizzatd to buff the heroics without completely breaking them, same with Naxx25.
And regardless, I am absolutely open to compromises here. Why not add RDF for normal modes only at start. With the changes to boosting, the only way to level an alt is either buy a 70 boost for money, or to solo level in an empty world. I think that’s by design to milk more money out of the player base. Adding RDF for low level dungeons 15-70 right in prepatch would be an unambiguously good change imo. You want people to level “normally” in Wrath? FINE, add it for normal dungeons 70-80 only a month in, or 3 months in. You want heroics to be hard? Fine, butcher them with your 2022 changes and withold RDF until ICC phase. I can live with that, at least I could level an alt via dungeons.
But no, Blizz just announces they cut it completely, for everyone, forever.
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The problem with the guy with the weird name that “debunks” others’ arguments is that he cannot understand that either with or without any kind of lfg tool, community has changed. A lot. It is not as it used to be and it will never be.
People that have realized that want the rdf for the convinience (I am in beta now and lfg is not good enough) and people analyze analogies just to prove their point,even though it is irrelevant. Because once more ; you will not bring back the social aspect from back then. Never. Wow community has leaned to destroy the game itself with the min maxing that dictate their behavior , the need to find ways to cheat on bgs, the need to amass wealth with gdkp. It is the typical human bahavior. So, the least we can do is have some convinience.
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I don’t think it is off-topic since it is a developer (lead designer at the time, I believe) commenting on what they deemed to be mistakes in WLK. Considering that the playerbase today is more skilled I don’t really know who “easier content” is going to target. Triva argues that WLK targeted casual players, but retail is already doing that. Blizzard has expressed a desire to keep retail and classic separate and fixing the mistakes from past WLK might be a way to do such.
I share your skepticism whether they can pull it off or not but I do believe it to be the correct course of action regardless. I certainly don’t want grindfest content.
I would actually be okay with this compromise myself. I don’t level many alts – in fact, throughout TBCC I’ve only had one character at max level. I prefer to sink all my available time into one character. But I have friends who levelled many alts and they often expressed a frustration of not being able to find groups whilst levelling. The Dungeon Finder would fix this, no doubt. And while it would do some damage to the social aspect of the game I think it would be negligible, were it to be limited to levelling and maybe normals (though the latter would not be needed in the first month or so, in my view). Especially on a smaller server that I used to play on (and still play on even in its dead state).
I just don’t want it at the end game where the relevant content is. I loved levelling through the old world, but only when there were many other players there levelling with me. It’s kind of a one-time thing (unless you count Season of Mastery but I did not see the appeal of that).
Or you could, you know, not participate in the meta or with GDKP. It’s like everyone is complaining about those things but everyone is also participating. Or maybe you’re not complaining about it, maybe you actually like it? If so, good for you. I personally hate it. I don’t care much about the meta and I have never participated in a GDKP-run. I managed to find players who are not toxic elitists seeking convenience in everything they do (two times around; once in 2019 and once in 2021).
I found people who actually like to play the game as a game. I’d wager the reason you don’t find such people is because you want to run on the same treadmill as everyone else. The treadmill of “getting the rewards as soon as possible with as little effort as possible” or the “me-me-me”-grind. The last thing you should get is convenience, find another MMORPG for that.
is that the same Brian B. that I watched sit in an interview and say that he once had a great conversation during making a dungeon group and that is the reason he don’t want RDF in the game because he wants to keep that kind of groupmaking conversations?
Yea, he can absolutely be trusted to know what he’s talking about…
It still is what you’re gonna get (well, maybe, just maybe, apart from what they’re doing with “keeping dungeons relevant”).
And 2 times in 3 years is what you would consider much? Or even resonable?
No, it was Ghostcrawler; Greg Street. I don’t agree with everything that he has said about game design – I mean he was the one who said “bring the player not the class” which sounds noble but it was also what began the homogenisation of classes.
Still, out of all the game’s lead designers I don’t think he’s got the worst reputation. In fact I think he was quite liked but I don’t have a source on that, just a guesstimation.
Exactly. My hope is that they’ll maintain a challenge in heroics to keep things fun. There will always be grinds in the game, of course. I levelled fishing to max and that wasn’t a very challenging grind, but then I don’t think fishing is meant to be challenging. Going into an instance with 4 others is supposed to be challenging, or else what is the point?
The narrative you’re pushing is that “no one is social anymore” and in both my times levelling in Classic I significantly expanded my network of friends*. Could it happen again? I think it could. I stopped playing in November last year and returned in May this year and even though (or perhaps because of) I play on a dead server I’ve managed to expand my social network yet again. That is the reason I play Classic. If I wanted easy grindfest dungeons with strangers who will never, ever be relevant to me I would be playing retail (or any other modern MMO).
*And to reiterate since I don’t believe you’ll remember everything I post on these boards, but I did level from scratch in retail in 2017 and on my way to max level I made 0 friends.
Isn’t telling people not to participate in the meta very similar to telling anti-RDF players to just not use RDF? You don’t like GDKP? Join a LC or EPGP guild. You dont like boosting? Join a levelling guild. Your don’t like RDF? Join a dungeon running guild!
I am not saying those are good arguments, it’s just my point is people can’t really NOT participate in the meta if it’s widespread enough. If guilds exist now that run “joke specs” in current content and roll on loot, surely there will be guilds that do premade heroic dungeons.
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Perhaps, but let’s not overlook one very important distinction: the GDKP is a player created issue and if Blizzard is in any way responsible for it it is because of #nochanges. The RDF is a feature that Blizzard created and we have historical evidence of the damage it caused.
You argue that it is too late so we might as well just implement the Duneon Finder. Myself and others argue that it is not too late; if you want to have a social experience in an MMORPG you can find that in Classic. It is much harder in retail or other modern MMOs – I have tried.
This is what you are getting wrong imo. We have no evidence that rdf did harm. You have the opinion that it did this. For me, community did the harm,as I said, with their behavior against the game.
By trying to find the optimum way to play and then build a whole culture of elitism and cancelling any form of creativity. I already read things like “zero elementals in raids after demo guys reach the sp to cover totem with buff”.
By trying to find any possible way to cheat in order to win at BGs or by using bots.
By finding shortcuts in the worse possible way ; buying boosts and afk leveling, paying with gold to achieve titles, paying for loot. By buying gold to pay for all these. Do you know the meta for naxx? Guild giving members gold (from their tbc gdkp runs ofc) financing them to join others wotlk gdkp runs, to buy the trinkets. So that they have more chance for more raiders to get these trinkets.
Yeah ofc you can choose not to participate in these atrocities. The point is though but rdf was not to blame for the state of the game especially if you compare it to the rest above. What blizzard does, is removing a useful tool. And you know what? If they did something to prevent all the above, I would accept removing rdf.
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But we do. I’ve posted a number of research articles on it but they keep getting dismissed because randoms on the forums know better.
I suppose it’s somewhat of a “chicken or the egg” dilemma. Did the community change first and the Dungeon Finder a consequence of it? Or did the Dungeon Finder change the community? And I think the answer falls somewhere inbetween. No doubt the community changed as Blizzard created a reason to keep running Heroic dungeons even long after players had outgeared them. I.e. people got used to rush unchallenging content to get their rewards, but the Dungeon Finder facilitated this playstyle/behaviour.
Really? Research articles on the social impact of RDF on the wow community? In what peer-reviewed science journal were they published lmao?
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I think it is oversimplification blaming RDF for direct or indirect making community that way. RDF both created and solved problems. Wow community did ALL the rest. And I think they did not need the help from RDF.
There is no need to complain though now. It is what it is. Still I think we should focus our effort as a community to more pressing matters ie refuse to participate on gdkps, refuse to buy gold, level the toons ourselves and if we are bored, well we should not do it anyway etc.
Anyway, I digress. I doubt this huge thread will change blizzard’s decision. And I think their reasoning for scrapping RDF but still including LFG has more to do with code/infrastructure reuse and ease of support rather than their concern for the social aspect of the game. And we spend our time here writing and writing for nothing.
The idea is comical to you? Research on social behaviour in online environments have been on-going since the first multi-user dungeons, there’s nothing mind-boggling about it. “Ludology” (the study of games) has sort of become its own field since the early 2000’s and considering the impact World of Warcraft had on the industry and on western culture as a whole, is it unthinkable that it would become an interesting subject for research?
If you truly want an answer to your question then go and browse my history, I won’t do you the courtesy of digging up the information. If you want you can report back the findings. I encourage you to, in fact.
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Of course not, but that you have on the RDF changes in wow, from the 2009 era, that is somehow applicable to the 2022’s community, and still can be deemed valid. Would suprise me.
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I agree that wow took severe damage at the time RDF was implemented, but …
how can ANY article prove that it was specificly RDF and not all the other changes of patch 3.3.0 that did the damage?
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Can I somehow ignore users in the forum? I don’t want to read Terres nonsense anymore. It just makes me mad when I do. Because she ignores facts and tells us we are dismissing points. And then she always drags the conversation into the past.
Today it’s IRRELEVANT if the RDF did destroy the community in the past or not. The research articles she’s posted are biased and only based on hearsay. Because they used board posts, to prove that the RDF changed the social aspect in the game. They completely ignored the fact, that humans have selective perception. Anyone that went into the RDF with the mindest, that it destroys the social aspect will have seen just that. Not because it’s what happened, but because their mindset looked for proofs for their theory and dismissed everything that didn’t fit this theory.
At least they should have compared the findings from that research with other games but they didn’t even do this.
FFXIV alone refuted the whole research you’ve posted.
Seriously when Terres starts with this research it looks to me like a flat earther, that wants to prove the theory with research from 1400. When the question is, if Chile should sign a free-trade agreement with Nicaragua.
Every single point she’s made got refuted multiple times already, but she just dismisses everything. Because she’s made different experiences. Of course she made different experiences, because she was only playing in her bubble with guildies and friends. How can somebody know the community if that person never knows the community?
The RDF actually allows you to go and play with a bunch of new players, you would never have met without it. How can this be anti social? You still can communicate with the people inside the dungeons. You can exchange battle tag and discord and stay in contact after the dungeon too. And who knows, maybe you end up finding yourself a new guild on another server.
Just because a person chooses not to do any of this, it doesn’t mean those possibilities don’t exist.
The anti-RDF people just don’t want the RDF, because of spite. That’s why they make up all those nonsense reasons against it. Because there aren’t any solid reasons against it.
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