Is RDF really ruining social aspects of the game?

[Bolanira-zandalar-tribe]

So he told us that despite his autism he interacted socially and had to overcome these issues. Which turned out to be a very rewarding experience for him.

Then your counter to this is an insult by admitting that you don’t care for this type of social experience (by extension of your argument). You claim almost everyone will quit if there’s no LFD in Wrath Classic (how you reached this conclusion I do not know), and that you don’t care about the social experience at all in comparison.

I suppose it’s settled then? The ones who want to keep that social experience you despite will benefit from no LFD, according to you.

[Krutoj-lakeshire]

@Jazem-firemaw

The fact that the playerbase dropped to 9 mill after Cata really doesn’t point to anything more then that people disliked Cata.

I wouldn’t even say that. At that point everyone who was just slightly interested in subscription MMORPGs and their mother already played WoW at some point. The game just started to get boring for the old folks so they moved on. And as new players would have to play through the base game and 2 expansions at that point there just weren’t that much new players anymore either. So in my opinion even if Cata would have been the best expansion, the player count would have started to decline a little. Maybe just not as fast as it actually did.

It’s just my assumption so I could be wrong. But I think the overall age of WoW also factors into this development. Even though a lot of people completely ignore it.

Player count is a very complex thing with a lot of factors, that work for or against it. It’s just funny how people pin the player count to one small feature. If it were as simple as that every MMORPG would have at least 20 million players.

Edit:
Maybe this was also part of the reason, why the RDF gained such a bad image. For many players the game just started to get stale, so they searched for an explanation why this happened. And as the RDF got introduced at about the same time, they found their scapegoat.

But obviously today we can’t tell for sure what all the factors here were and how important each factor was. That’s why I find it tiring, that the anti-RDF people always talk about past events. And make assumptions based on that and pretend it’s an objective truth, when it’s just an subjective opinion.

[Bolanira-zandalar-tribe]

@Krutoj-lakeshire

So in my opinion even if Cata would have been the best expansion, the player count would have started to decline a little. /…/ It’s just my assumption so I could be wrong. /…/ Player count is a very complex thing with a lot of factors, that work for or against it. It’s just funny how people pin the player count to one small feature.

You claim no LFD will make people quit, but also that the LFD is “one small feature” that can’t explain population drop in WoW. Not sure how you can be so certain that LFD is super important when you support your arguments, but at the same time irrelevant when you argue against someone else.

[Krutoj-lakeshire]

Because it’s one factor in the equation. If a person constantly logs into a game with monthly fees without getting anything done that person will eventually think: “Why am I even paying for this?”
This has nothing to do with the overall player count. That’s not what I am talking about. Because there are also other factors to consider. Like players, that didn’t play WoW Classic or TBCC but want to play WotLK Classic.

All I am saying is, that the assumption Cupid made, that people will get themselves guilds when they don’t find players to group up with, is wrong.
Most players that experience those problems are already in a guild. Sure not everyone will leave either. Some might just stop dying dungeons all together, others might just struggle through the minimum necessary amount of dungeons to get their raid equip and then never deal with dungeons anymore. But I don’t think anyone that played without a guild up to that point will suddenly join a guild.

Btw I myself quit my sub as soon as Blizzard announced the removal of the RDF from WotLK. Unfortunately I paid for a 6 month sub shortly before.

[Undúrael-celebras]

@Krutoj-lakeshire

All the examples you’ve made have one thing in common. Some people really care about that stuff and those people act according to it. A lot of people pretend to care, but actually they don’t. They just repeat what everyone is saying. That’s why they still consume that stuff. And the majority of people just doesn’t care. Which might be a problem when it’s about saving the planet or getting rid of sweat shops. But this is a game. So just let pleople, who don’t care about the things you value play the way they want to.
Becaus with the RDF there will also be a few hardliners, that avoid it by all means and you just have to connect with them and you are golden.

“Some people” don’t make the difference that is needed.
All your counter arguments are is “There are exceptions though”. Yes. Exceptions. Do you know what an exception is? It’s not the normal thing. It’s an outlier.

What I am talking about is, keeping the social way as the normal way. And only because you are so socially inept that you’re not part of any circle that is wider than your guild, doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Just because you’re not part of the inner circle, doesn’t mean there is no inner circle.

[Bolanira-zandalar-tribe]

@Krutoj-lakeshire

Because it’s one factor in the equation. /…/ Btw I myself quit my sub as soon as Blizzard announced the removal of the RDF from WotLK. Unfortunately I paid for a 6 month sub shortly before.

This is exactly what I mean though. It’s only “one factor in the equation”, yet you decided to not play Wrath Classic over it.

[Terres-ravenholdt (Terres)]

@Disintegrina-golemagg

Personally, I find it hard to even think of a proper balance to the game as it is - is making monsters scale with player power level a good thing? Simple answer is no, it is not. But, on the other hand, having the same difficulty level of a content (especially the one you have to grind), leads to rushing it or forcing it into mind-numbing experience.

I agree that “power scaling” doesn’t really create satisfying gameplay. I’ve long viewed vertical scaling as something inherently flawed when it comes to MMORPGs as the players will always continue to grow in power. WoW has reached the point many times where numbers start to feel meaningless. And numbers are kind of meaningless, they only gain value through context. I.e. if the number 20 chops of 1/4th of an enemy’s health then that is going to feel like a lot, and the number 20000 doing the exact same thing won’t make it feel like it’s more damage, if that makes sense. That is why the number squishes never felt like a “power down”, but losing your Legion Legendary Weapon or your Heart of Azeroth did.

@Disintegrina-golemagg

This, in my opinion, led Blizzard to introducing mythic+ difficulty but sadly, it made other difficulty content practically useless (apart from a one-time stop during the leveling). Which is why I really liked Ulduar with the Hard Mode options for many bosses, especially when the drop improved for players when then completed the encounter on higher difficulty.

Yep! Not only that, but since the content is so easy by default it’s common for groups to approach dungeons with a rush-mentality. Even the first time around with complete strangers at the very start of an expansion the experience tends to be rushed. You don’t really experience dungeons “for real” until you run them at mythic 0. That’s one thing I kind of dislike about Retail. Yes, there is content for everyone, but the “skill gap” for different content is so darn steep.

I was always a fan of mythics, though. It felt like a concept with lots of meaningful replayability. I hope they’ll manage to create something similar for WLK classic, but perhaps without the timed challenge (as that had a tendency to cause toxic behaviour).

[Vanillataur-nethergarde-keep]

@Disintegrina-golemagg

is making monsters scale with player power level a good thing? Simple answer is no

No, scaling is one of the main reasons I do not play Retail.
and for this reason I cannot follow you here.

@Disintegrina-golemagg

in my opinion, led Blizzard to introducing mythic+ difficulty but sadly, it made other difficulty content practically useless (apart from a one-time stop during the leveling). Which is why I really liked Ulduar with the Hard Mode options for many bosses, especially when the drop improved for players when then completed the encounter on higher difficulty.

[Vanillataur-nethergarde-keep]

@Krutoj-lakeshire

Edit:
Maybe this was also part of the reason, why the RDF gained such a bad image. For many players the game just started to get stale, so they searched for an explanation why this happened. And as the RDF got introduced at about the same time, they found their scapegoat.

But obviously today we can’t tell for sure what all the factors here were and how important each factor was. That’s why I find it tiring, that the anti-RDF people always talk about past events. And make assumptions based on that and pretend it’s an objective truth, when it’s just an subjective opinion.

We will actually have some kind of “counter test” or what you might want to call it. We’re practically getting patch 3.3.0 from launch, only without RDF. So lets see what happens. My guess is that people will get less soial beacuse of the many solo-play-promoting changes.

[Triva-theradras]

I think you should read again what I wrote. If the truth is insulting, it might not be an insult to begin with.

He stated multiple times that he would prefer if less social players, that do not want to join Guilds and play primarily with ingame friends, would quit and that the game should be forcing them to either play with guilds/friends or not play at all. He wants to play with a core of MMORPG fans and anyone else is not fit for the game he wants to play.

I dont claim that a majority will quit because of no-RDF, I simply state what he stated before, that he not only doesnt care about players problems (e.g. group finding), but would prefer seeing them quit/out of the game, if they are not social in a way he prefers. This argument was brought up, not show the effect of RDF, but his stance about other players that dont play the game how he wants it to be played.

I dont claim “almost everyone will quit if there’s no LFD in Wrath Classic”, since thats your interpretation of what I wrote only.
Its inappropriate to assume that I “don’t care about the social experience at all in comparison”, because I prefer an inclusive instead of an exclusive game.

@Bolanira-zandalar-tribe

The ones who want to keep that social experience you despite will benefit from no LFD, according to you.

Both assumptions are not correct. I neither despise social experiences, nor do I think that RDF itself would cause the game to be significantly less social, than it already is.

I dont despite social experiences and agree its good to encourage them, but anyone should play the game how they like. From a guildless persons perspective, gatekeeping and boosts as the alternative for RDF are not more social and not better. RDF has downsides, especially crossrealm, but its a tool fixing many existing problems for these players and the overall quality of the game will improve for them, which problems nearly every “anti-RDF” person is ignorant to.

The argument “that social experience […] will benefit from no LFD” is the main argument against RDF. Its not something I completely agree with, besides the problems of the crossrealm aspect. I heard the argument many times, that all players, who are less social and not guild focused, are better off playing other games and the game should only be designed for and played by hardcore MMORPG fans, that are social with a full friend list and being active in a guild.
The new tool retail-like tool on beta seems to not do more in term of social interaction than the RDF, at least more than manually sending requests. There is no need to type either. Its just that players can exclude low gearscore players or worse classes, which is irrelevant in terms of social interaction. Therefore I dont think that no RDF will make the game more social than it would be with a non-crossfaction RDF.

[Cupìd-mirage-raceway]

@Triva-theradras

He stated multiple times that he would prefer if less social players, that do not want to join Guilds and play primarily with ingame friends, would quit and that the game should be forcing them to either play with guilds/friends or not play at all. He wants to play with a core of MMORPG fans and anyone else is not fit for the game he wants to play.

You need to learn to read then, never said that in my life… You are reading into what I say other things that what is being said.

@Triva-theradras

I dont claim that a majority will quit because of no-RDF, I simply state what he stated before, that he not only doesnt care about players problems (e.g. group finding), but would prefer seeing them quit/out of the game, if they are not social in a way he prefers. This argument was brought up, not show the effect of RDF, but his stance about other players that dont play the game how he wants it to be played.

You are making things up again. I have said that I would rather have it as it was back in the day and in case that dont happen I rather have it be without a RDF at all. You are putting words in my mouth and thats not a ok thing to do. Quote me when I have said I want people to quit.

[Krutoj-lakeshire]

@Undúrael-celebras

“Some people” don’t make the difference that is needed.
All your counter arguments are is “There are exceptions though”. Yes. Exceptions. Do you know what an exception is? It’s not the normal thing. It’s an outlier.

That’s the point. You don’t have to make a difference here. It’s not a noble cause to push your values on others, that obviously enjoy different things.
It just shows, that even though most people might not care about your values and will abandon them for a new and more convenient way to form groups, there will still be hardliners, that detest the RDF or just value the same things as you, left for you to play with.

@Undúrael-celebras

What I am talking about is, keeping the social way as the normal way.

And here you fail to understand, that your social way isn’t the only one. There are as many ways to socialise as there are people in the game.

@Undúrael-celebras

And only because you are so socially inept

I can tell you this isn’t true.

@Undúrael-celebras

you’re not part of any circle that is wider than your guild, doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

I’ve never said something like this. On the contrary. What I am saying is that the majority of anti-RDF people never get out of those social circles and therefore know nothing about the community.

Who is more social, somebody that only talks with his friends at a party or somebody that actually leaves his comfort zone and talks and interacts with strangers?
And it’s also not social to say I won’t talk to those tourists at that party, because I won’t see them again anyway.

@Undúrael-celebras

ust because you’re not part of the inner circle, doesn’t mean there is no inner circle.

You mean, just because there is an inner circle, doesn’t mean it knows about everything that goes on on the server.

@Bolanira-zandalar-tribe

This is exactly what I mean though. It’s only “one factor in the equation”, yet you decided to not play Wrath Classic over it.

You are mixing up stuff here. By now you mixed 3 completely different topics into one.

1. Will people feel the need to join guilds, when there is no RDF? No because joining a guild will not solve that problem, as most people experiencing this problem are already in guilds. So if Blizzard doesn’t solve the problem they will eventually quit.
2. Nobody can tell how much people will quit over not having RDF or how many people will quit if the RDF would be included. Also nobody can tell how many new players will join. So statements about how the overall population will increase or decrease are just assumptions that people make.
3. For me as individual no RDF is a deal breaker. Because trying to build a group for hours and having to disband it in the end without even entering that dungeon is a very bad game experience.
   If it takes more time to build groups for the activity than actually doing the activity, the game design is flawed. And if most of the groups never even reach the dungeon it’s completely broken.
   Every time I’ve went through the group building I told myself: “It will get better with the RDF in WotLK.” I am not going to build any group anymore, because I am fed up. Since I won’t be able to play WotLK without building groups, I won’t play it.

@Vanillataur-nethergarde-keep

We will actually have some kind of “counter test” or what you might want to call it. We’re practically getting patch 3.3.0 from launch, only without RDF. So lets see what happens. My guess is that people will get less soial beacuse of the many solo-play-promoting changes.

Well I would have rather played the game instead of seeing this counter test. Especially as no matter how it turns out, people are so set in their ways, that they will never change their mind about RDF.

[Triva-theradras]

Did I mix you up with the Undurael guy again? Are you the guy that wants RDF later in the game or not all all? If so, sorry again, then my post is about the other guy.

[Cupìd-mirage-raceway]

I want it later in the game, we look the same I know but im not against RDF in and of it self im against having it from the beginning because once we are further along people will have already joined their guilds if they ever will.

[Terres-ravenholdt (Terres)]

@Triva-theradras

Its inappropriate to assume that I “don’t care about the social experience at all in comparison”, because I prefer an inclusive instead of an exclusive game.

I have sympathized with your desire to re-experience WLK as it was, but let’s step down from the high horse, shall we? It is easy to promote laudable concepts like “inclusivity” when it concerns your own includedness. What Unduráel is arguing for is that your version of inclusivity is excluding towards people that want to play MMORPGs for the sake of the genre’s past social qualities. We can’t find this social aspect in Retail or any other modern MMO.

The argument “you can still play the way you want” is fallacious. Because if there exists an obviously superior method of doing things then that will be what most people gravitate towards, and the “culture” will shift towards playing around this superior feature. Your agency to combat this is very limited.

Let me ask you two questions:

1. Let’s pretend the game invented a “res immediately”-button for when you die. Would you be in favour of it? Corpse running is a chore, after all, would it not be nice to just immediately get up on your feet? I’ll assume that your answer is no, so here is the real question: if Blizzard were to implement this button would you not use it?

2. The Dungeon Finder is inclusive because anyone can play Dungeons regardless of gear/skill level and there’s no need to be social. By this logic, does that mean that the Raid Finder is also a good feature?

[Nicolay-earthshaker]

@Siffredi-razorgore

Oh. and for the people that are not in the beta, here is what we have now there and will have at release…

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/vyynpn/concerns_about_the_new_lfg_tool_on_the_beta/

In this reddit post I found a high rated comment which I find almost prophetic in it’s accuracy. I’ll share it here for the benefit of those who didn’t read through the entire linked thread.

Glad to see we are already on track with what I expected to happen. Wrath will launch with this tool and have at best minor improvements. After early dungeon groups die out people will complain and Blizzard will continue to try and make it better and fall flat. Finally after a year of half baked attempts they will add RDF and pat themselves on the back for “listening to the community”.

[Triva-theradras]

What kind of high horse are you talking about. I think the argument “I dont like new features because I dont like retail” is simply prove, that players dont want to play old expansions, but new ones in vanilla style.

The main difference of opinion in this whole RDF discussion is that some people, me included, want to play wotlk and others, you included, want to play a different game, because you dont like wotlk.

Any other argument is secondary compared to that. RDF itself isnt the problem, but its blamed for future changes that turned the game into what is retail today. Wotlk itself, with RDF, was and is (on private servers) the most desired expansion with its original design. Thats not a high horse, its a fact.

Of course players will queue with RDF and not travel to the dungeons, but to be fair, only 2 players fly there while afk going to the toilet and the other 3 get ported, like with RDF. Besides crossrealm, RDF is not any more social than the new tool they implement on wotlk beta right now.
Since no players get excluded by the RDF tool, there are new and bad geared players too, so most geared players will still go premade the old fashioned way to avoid to run with these kind of players and to have faster and smoother runs.

While not using the instant resurrect button of your example would have no upside, forming premade groups still has massive advantages over solo queueing RDF. You dont have to wait as DPS, you have faster runs, you have smoother runs, you avoid class stacking, you dont risk having a ninja or someone who might leave. Therefore your comparison with the insta-res proves you havent really thought about the subject, since it its only applicable to the teleport to the dungeon, not the group forming itself, which is the main aspect of RDF.

Your second example confuses me even more. You are correct about the first part, that players regardless of gear/skill are included, but there is no difference in the social aspect if we compare RDF and beta LFG-tool. With RDF you queue up and accept your invite. With the beta LFG-tool you list yourself and get a group invite by someone making the group manually. Besides the group-leader there is literally no difference when it comes to social interaction or chat usage. Therefore I dont think the new group tool does require more social skills than the RDF, since they both dont require any. Even today on mega servers, whispering 100player “inv [class]” and getting an invite 30 min later, is comparable to RDF when it comes to social experience.

The raid finder is another thing, because guilds, as social communities, are usually focused on doing raids together, not primarily dungeons. Dungeons are entry level content that players do, to get raid ready and then look for a fitting guild to raid with. While LFR is a debatable feature because of its influence on players being able to see the raid content without the need to join guilds/organized groups, I dont really care, since I wont play cataclysm anyway, because I dont like cata class design.

[Krutoj-lakeshire]

The more I think about this, the clearer it gets for me, that the RDF is actually even more social than regular group building or the new tool.

The RDF brings people together and allows them to play together. It opens up group content for more players, so more players can engage into interactions with other players.

I am not only social if I build friendships, that last a whole life. Everytime I do smalltalk with somebody or when I interact with other people I am social.
If I refuse to talk to tourists, because I won’t be able to go out drinking with them, after they went back to their home country, I am the opposite of social.

[Jazem-firemaw]

@Bolanira-zandalar-tribe

yet you decided to not play Wrath Classic over it.

Yes, and so did I. As soon as wotlk launches (without the RDF) I’ll be making myself a new char on a pserver.
Because of this, I am already so sick and tired of this and wont go through that again in another expac:

@Krutoj-lakeshire

Because trying to build a group for hours and having to disband it in the end without even entering that dungeon is a very bad game experience.
If it takes more time to build groups for the activity than actually doing the activity, the game design is flawed.

@Krutoj-lakeshire

Especially as no matter how it turns out, people are so set in their ways, that they will never change their mind about RDF.

And yet I’m very much convinced that everyone was expecting RDF to be in wotlk at some point. Even though expectations of when it would be in might have differed, everyone was expecting it, before Blizzard said “no RDF”.

[Kekzy-golemagg]

Research articles from ppl that are against rdf, seems legit amigo.

Idk whats wrong with the ppl that are against rdf. You guys rather get (paid) boosted than leveling with other people. Dont tell me youre finding groups for rzd or uldaman.

Seems like its just yelling for #changes whenever it suits you.