Mythic+ LFG is bad. There may be a solution

[Légynia-antonidas]

Current System

There are tons of threads about the tool being just absolutely bad. It shows its age and that is just is not made for systems like Mythic+.

One could say “but it works”. To that I would answer that it works for the same reason all the slow, ugly and annoying government services work. It works because people have to use it. There is simply no alternative and there is no way for addon developers to develop an alternative because anything regarding LFG is absolutely locked down to prevent advertisements (at least I think thats the reason for it).

Filters

With a recent update new filters were added allowing to filter for multiple dungeons at the same time and restricting group comps and a hint that the search box also supports searching for keystone levels. The latter already worked before but its not very intuitive, doesn’t always work and kind of acts like a full-text search with undocumented syntax across group names and their descriptions. This allows people to open a “+5” group adding “+10” to the description and their group would show up in people looking for +10s. All of that leads me to believe that adding another field for selecting the keystone level isn’t (easily) doable.

Sign Ups

Next issue is the limited amount of groups one player can sign up for. Currently you are only able to sign up for 5 groups at the same time. Groups will become full, one might get declined or the signup times out. One constantly has to sit infront of LFG, refresh, sign up. And most of the times one is signed up for 5 groups but isn’t getting accepted/declined and the signed up groups don’t fill up. So a player is locked down on the group they’re signed up for and they have to just sit there and wait maybe gambling to cancel sign ups and try for another group. Bottom line is, that this is super annoying and it mostly prevents you from doing other things.

Declines

Signing up for groups and seeing the “Declined” over and over again isn’t really something that boosts the mood of a player. Even though the reason for rejection might not even regard the player. People just mass-decline to clear the list or because they dislike the class of a player.

Selecting players

Selecting players for your own group from LFG is the simpler part. Your group has no meaningful limit of sign-ups and neither has it got any meaningful timeout so you could just have your group listed and go afk or do something else. Trolls could use this to just annoy players and take one of their valuable signup slots. However one thing that is completely missing on this side is filters. You only have Mythic+ rating, and item level as any meaningful filters.

An approach at a solution

My idea to solve these issues is to turn around LFG for Mythic+. Have players who want to run Mythic+ sign up for the dungeons and keystone level they want to run (if you’re generous you could add additional filters [Language, Rating, etc.]). People who are looking for players can simply invite players from this region-wide pool (and of course also filter by Language, Rating, Item Level, etc.).

In my opinion this would speed up the whole way that groups form and overall boost the user experience of Mythic+. As someone who is looking for players you don’t have to wait for players to explicitly sign up for your group, and as someone who wants to find a group you no longer have to make sure that you’re staying signed up to 5 groups at all times.

And as a somewhat bonus: Because you no longer have any text-fields that can be used for advertisement, you can allow Addon Developers to develop addons for this system. Which offloads work from Blizzard Devs and allows the community to build awesome tools.

You could even make the sign-ups unique by dungeon. That way a player can sign-up multiple times allowing for even more granular filtering (for example: When I want to push Rating, I’m looking for groups that run keystones that give me rating. So a global +10 filter might not cut it since maybe I’m looking for MISTS+11 or ARAK+10 or SOB+8).

Q&A

How can advertisers be prevented from flooding the region-wide pool?
These advertiser chars are currently only fulfilling the minimum requirements to be able to create a group in LFG. If they would stay that way you could just filter for players with at least ilevel X or rating Y. Otherwise it would be way too much work for them to show up in every scenario where groups could search for players. You would also be able to report them which would remove them from your view.

Wouldn’t players with low item level or rating have a disadvantage?
This is something that is hard to say cause this is purely player based and not really anything that the system is at fault for. Group leaders will in most cases tend to pick someone with higher ilevel or rating over someone with lower. However, I think that this system would make it easier for players with low ilevel/rating to find a group because they are visible to all groups that want to run keystones at the appropriate level. That way they will also be visible to those players who know that you won’t need a 620ilevel 2.5k score player to time a +4 key.

How do you prevent AFK players from polluting the pool?
The system is designed to be able to AFK as someone who is looking for a group. Once signed up you stay in the pool for as long as you would stay logged in. If you’re getting an invite it would work the same way as getting an invite from Queued content. Your invite would have a timeout (something around 15 to 30 seconds). When neither accepting nor declining the invite you will be removed from the pool. Declining would not remove you from the pool since you simply may not be interested in the group inviting you.

Feedback

I really hope that I haven’t missed a big flaw. I thought about it for a couple of hours (all while hanging in LFG and looking for a group to run Mythic+ …) and couldn’t find any flaw that isn’t already existing in the current system too.

I hope that this post is in the correct category and that it gets seen by someone at Blizzard. I think that this would really add value to the game.

I’m happy to discuss anything about the system.

Please note that there is no system that can solve players picking meta classes, players with higher rating, itemlevel or realm-country. My approach isn’t aimed at trying to solve these issues in any way. It is meant to simplify the group-forming process mainly for players that are signing up for groups and have to play Whac-A-Mole

[Mårc-argent-dawn]

Either I missed something or your solution is no different from what we have right now. There is a pool of players who queue and you can cherrypick from, you can see their class, spec, rating and obviously the key they queue for because it’s yours.

[Légynia-antonidas]

@Mårc-argent-dawn

Either I missed something or your solution is no different from what we have right now. There is a pool of players who queue and you can cherrypick from, you can see their class, spec, rating and obviously the key they queue for because it’s yours.

It’s meant to be similar. The big difference is, that people who are queueing are in a region-wide pool and don’t have to sign up explicitly for groups like it is now. If you want to run a key you sign up for the dungeon and keystone level (range).

It allows you as someone who is looking for a group to do stuff like worldquests, farming, crafting, AH browsing or whatever you want to do. Currently you constantly have to have LFG open and re-signup for groups once the ones you were signed up for are full or have declined your signup.

Then it allows people who want to form a group to instantly invite players. Currently you have to create your group in LFG and wait for tanks, heals, dps to find your group. Often you have to re-create the group because the longer your group exists on LFG the further you go down and probably have a slimmer chance on finding rare specs like healers or tanks.

[Mårc-argent-dawn]

I understand now, it would be good if people could queue and then keep doing their stuff without having to re-make applications every minute. It’s just a quality of life change that I’d like to see impremented.

However this does absolutely nothing for people who play off-meta, have low ilvl or low rating. They would just be stuck in an infinite queue because nobody would invite them anyways.

Maybe this could get fixed if they added some bonus to encourage inviting newer or a bit undergeared players, like extra Valorstones or crests if your group has a member under X ilvl or rating.

[Légynia-antonidas]

@Mårc-argent-dawn

However this does absolutely nothing for people who play off-meta, have low ilvl or low rating. They would just be stuck in an infinite queue because nobody would invite them anyways.

Maybe this could get fixed if they added some bonus to encourage inviting newer or a bit undergeared players, like extra Valorstones or crests if your group has a member under X ilvl or rating.

I kind of went into this in the Q&A. I think that this is largely a player issue. In my opinion, my idea somewhat helps those players in terms of making them visible to all people who want to form a group thus giving them a higher chance to get invited by players who don’t care about meta, score or ilevel.

As you have already suggested, bonuses could be another way to even further incentivize inviting those players. Currently they have the Valorstone bonus if the rating of a player increases. This somewhat helps but still won’t do anything against the meta/off-meta stuff. I think this is a pretty hard topic in terms of finding a solution because the meta isn’t directly defined by Blizzard.

[Mårc-argent-dawn]

@Légynia-antonidas

I think this is a pretty hard topic in terms of finding a solution because the meta isn’t directly defined by Blizzard.

In fact it is directly defined by Blizzard, the moment they decide to leave a spec like AugVoker completely overtuned for an entire season or completely ignore dead specs like Feral Druid for 2 years, that’s their decision, not the player’s.

Same with all the balance changes (nerfing DH tank for example), the selection of mythic dungeons for the season and the changes to those dungeons (so they force you to bring curse dispells, purge, melee/short interrupts, etc)

All players can do is adapt to those changes and try to find something different that works, but in the end we are at mercy of their decisions.

[Légynia-antonidas]

@Mårc-argent-dawn

In fact it is directly defined by Blizzard, the moment they decide to leave a spec like AugVoker completely overtuned for an entire season or completely ignore dead specs like Feral Druid for 2 years, that’s their decision, not the player’s.

Thats what I tried to imply by using “directly”. It’s not that they directly say “X is meta now” it comes from the way they tune specs. So yes, in the end it is Blizzard who decide if a spec is good or bad. Most players don’t know what specs are meta until they see/hear it on guides, streams, and tierlists.

However, it is the players decision on whether they obey the meta which isn’t required for most of the groups. I don’t need a meta comp to do a +10. It gets important when pushing the highest keys possible.

On the keystone levels that most players will run you will have more success with a player that is good at an off-meta spec than a player who is bad at a meta spec. Too many FOTM rerollers who don’t even know how to play the spec.

In the end it’s still nothing that this particular LFG system can solve.

[Uda-uldum]

@Légynia-antonidas

I’m happy to discuss anything about the system.

Right. So I dislike this system. For 2 reasons :

• (A) because it dosent solve the issue : Lack of tanks and healers.

What you WANT is to wait less. “Doing WQ on the side” is just an excuse. If I offered here a tool that allowed anyone to wait 20s to get into a dungeon… Everyone would jump right in and ditch WQ. That is the truth.

Therefore, at best case scenario is that you wait the same time as you do now. Worst case scenario, you wait more. And the latter is the most probable.

• (B) The most likely scenario is that you would wait much longer. Only those with high RIO would get in. Why ?

You wrote your whole argument from the perspective of someone who ONLY quews. If you posted your own key, you would realize that right now with the limitations of LRG you have 200 DD candidates per key. If you expand that to the whole region, you would have MILLIONS of people on the quew.

Let me remind you that in DF there were 2 million timed keys per week. Not counting depletes, not counting those that dont have Raider IO addon.

Therefore, with so many candidates, you simply cannot make any meaningful choice. You take highest rio and thats it. Or you put absurd requirements only a handful of people meet to make that list more manageable.

And bonus reason : This is just a more complicated, half baked automated group tool. And I am against that by principle.

[Isthisabard-quelthalas]

The problem is two fold but it’s not with the LFG tool:
First, the class imbalance and difference that almost feels to be purposefully created to gravitate folks towards certain classes. This also leads to the “meta slave” mentality.
Second, the 2 main specs, namely Tanks and Healers are unpopular because there are more to them then just pumping out DPS. Tank has to learn routes and pay attention to cooldown management (both of his own and that of the team so pulls actually dealt with), Heals has to deal with dispels and his own cooldowns to prevent deaths/wipes.

As long as the 2 key specs are not popular and balancing is trash it doesn’t matter how good the LFG tool is.

[Légynia-antonidas]

@Uda-uldum

(A) because it dosent solve the issue : Lack of tanks and healers

There is no system that can solve this issue. Thats just the way it is because there are way more people playing DPS than tank or healer. It does however help in terms that tanks and healers looking for a key are basically visible to all people wanting to form a group. So if there is any tank in the pool for the key youre playing you are able to invite them.

@Uda-uldum

What you WANT is to wait less.

Yes, ideally. But this is still up to players whom they invite. Building an auto matching system is probably way too complex and would take control away from players. Using my approach would still help in that regard because of the same reason I mentioned before. You’re visible to everyone looking for players. You can’t have longer waiting times than now where you have 5 chances at a time for finding a group that wants you.

@Uda-uldum

“Doing WQ on the side” is just an excuse

It is an example I have provided. The system would allow players to play the game while they wait if they have to wait. Currently you will have to wait and cannot do anything else because you constantly have to re-sign up. It is meant to improve your experience by letting you actually play the game instead of having to play some frustrating Whac-A-Mole.

@Uda-uldum

If you posted your own key, you would realize that right now with the limitations of LRG you have 200 DD candidates per key

Last time (yesterday) I listed my +4 GB. It took 5 minutes to get maybe 6 DPS sign-ups and not a single tank or healer. So yes. Maybe if you list your +7 or +9 as a tank or heal you’ll get a lot of sign-ups but outside of that you’ll run dry. My approach would solve it in that regard that no matter how many low-key groups are looking for players they would all have access to all players wanting to play in that range that includes tanks and healers.

@Uda-uldum

If you expand that to the whole region

If I’m not mistaken the current LFG system is region-wide.

@Uda-uldum

you would have MILLIONS of people on the quew

I would not have millions of people. I would only have those people that want to play on my keystone level for my dungeon. You would still have hundreds or maybe thousands but this is no different from the way it is now. It would only benefit you as you have a broader choice of players to pick from.

@Uda-uldum

in DF there were 2 million timed keys per week

We are currently at ~1 million in EU-Region. ~80% of those are timed. I highly doubt that the majority of keys ran come from pugs. Its probably way more from premade groups that play keys back-to-back.

@Uda-uldum

Therefore, with so many candidates, you simply cannot make any meaningful choice.

How is that different from the current system with having 200 signups that you cannot filter in any way? Even now from your 200 signups you would take the one with the highest score. Then there are 199 people who have wasted one of their 5 signup slots for your group.

People with higher score usually want to push even higher, so they select a key-range that is above yours. People with lower score are also not invited in with the current system. This is nothing that the system can solve.

Even if we’re mid to end season and people only want to run weekly +10s the current system is not different in that regard. People with 3k will apply to +10s and will be invited over people perfectly capable but with lower score.

Again: this is nothing that the system itself can solve and thus was not my intention. My intention is to make it easier on both sides. Lets stay with the mid to end season scenario. With the current system you have to sign up over and over and over again until you get lucky. With my approach you would just have to wait. And while you’re waiting you can do actual stuff that this game has to offer. Of course you don’t want to wait but that is just the way this game works. The only system that would solve this is automated queues and that, as you already mentioned is something you’re against by principle.

@Uda-uldum

This is just a more complicated, half baked automated group tool.

I don’t see it as complicated. It’s as easy as it gets for a non-automated system.

Current System

• Group leaders have to list their group
• Group leaders may have to wait for players to sign up
• Players may have to search for a group by key range
• Players have to sign up for max up to 5 groups at a time
• You constantly have to babysit your signups because there are a ton of players wanting to play

My Approach

• Players have to sign up once for the keystones they want to play
• Group leaders have to select their keystone and invite players

@Isthisabard-quelthalas

The problem is two fold but it’s not with the LFG tool:
First, the class imbalance and difference that almost feels to be purposefully created to gravitate folks towards certain classes. This also leads to the “meta slave” mentality.
Second, the 2 main specs, namely Tanks and Healers are unpopular because there are more to them then just pumping out DPS. Tank has to learn routes and pay attention to cooldown management (both of his own and that of the team so pulls actually dealt with), Heals has to deal with dispels and his own cooldowns to prevent deaths/wipes.

As long as the 2 key specs are not popular and balancing is trash it doesn’t matter how good the LFG tool is.

It isn’t aimed at solving this problem. Yes, class imbalance and heal/tank being unpopular may be a root cause. There will always be more DPS than tanks/heals simply because DPS is the easiest type of spec in M+. This imbalance existed for addons and with more classes/specs, etc. incoming I don’t see any chance they will be able to perfectly balance it. There are simply too much variables and the content is changing way too fast for that to happen.

Since we can just complain and hope Blizzard finds a way to balance stuff, I try to provide the approach of an improved system to form M+ groups that makes stuff easier for the participants. In my opinion something like this faster to implement than any class/spec/role balancing.

[Safasgx-draenor]

@Légynia-antonidas

Sign Ups

Next issue is the limited amount of groups one player can sign up for. Currently you are only able to sign up for 5 groups at the same time. Groups will become full, one might get declined or the signup times out. One constantly has to sit infront of LFG, refresh, sign up. And most of the times one is signed up for 5 groups but isn’t getting accepted/declined and the signed up groups don’t fill up. So a player is locked down on the group they’re signed up for and they have to just sit there and wait maybe gambling to cancel sign ups and try for another group. Bottom line is, that this is super annoying and it mostly prevents you from doing other things.

Play a tank/healer and u won’t have this issue.

[Uda-uldum]

@Légynia-antonidas

There is no system that can solve this issue. Thats just the way it is because there are way more people playing DPS than tank or healer. It does however help in terms that tanks and healers looking for a key are basically visible to all people wanting to form a group. So if there is any tank in the pool for the key youre playing you are able to invite them.

Yes there is. Healing has been a “party frames minigame” and tanking has been “I cant see anything because I have a wall behind me and a massive monster in-front of me”.

Both haven’t changed since 2004. Not to mention that any and ALL tutorials and the built in UI of Blizzard is made exclusively for DPS. If you wanted to tank/heal you NEED (emphasis on needing) external addons/guides to perform properly, or to be introduced to the roll.

In addition, there is simply “wow factor” of both specs. People like to see big numbers, and blizzard has always been very restrictive on Tank and Healer DPS. And rightfully so, you dont want parties of 5 tanks or 5 healers.

However, they have not considered passive DPS done as a function of Healing and Damage taken. So if you bust your but healing, you will see your DPS meter bar go up and up with a bunch of fat yellow numbers… and that makes people feel good.

That is just a small list of things they can do to solve the real issue.

@Légynia-antonidas

Last time (yesterday) I listed my +4 GB. It took 5 minutes to get maybe 6 DPS sign-ups and not a single tank or healer. So yes.

Try that with tank + healer combo. I put my key with my tank friend and I get INSTANTLY 2000 DPS. Tanks and healers are picky. They will join a group with 3 DDs of the right comp they want… like “I want someone to help me dispel”… ect…

But DDs… they are total idiots because they too will quew only for groups with a tank+healer in them… in the hopes that they have to wait less for one…

@Légynia-antonidas

I would not have millions of people. I would only have those people that want to play on my keystone level for my dungeon. You would still have hundreds or maybe thousands but this is no different from the way it is now. It would only benefit you as you have a broader choice of players to pick from.

Yes you would. With a limitation of only 5 groups to quew, there are 40 others that DONT have you in their list.

If you include everyone in that 40 group… its just a massive list …

Sorry. Math is math.

@Légynia-antonidas

We are currently at ~1 million in EU-Region. ~80% of those are timed. I highly doubt that the majority of keys ran come from pugs. Its probably way more from premade groups that play keys back-to-back.

You assume things. Too many. In particular data interpretation that promotes your argument, with zero proof. All you know are the numbers. Thats it.

@Légynia-antonidas

How is that different from the current system with having 200 signups that you cannot filter in any way? Even now from your 200 signups you would take the one with the highest score. Then there are 199 people who have wasted one of their 5 signup slots for your group.

EXACTLY… and how would going from 200 “signups” to 20.000 “candidates” help in any way ??? Atleast with 200 I can scroll to the end of the page… with 20.000 candidates I would have at the bottom “page 1 of 63”. Literally not going through all that…

And if you do give me a list of 20.000 “candidates” what I will do is the most logical thing : start asking for more and more Rio, more and more ilvl… until the list becomes 200 and more manageable…

And then all those people that will be waiting 20 hours doing WQ with out a single invite will be back here complaining that they want an automated LFG tool… or to ban people with higher IO than necessary, ect…

@Légynia-antonidas

My Approach

• Players have to sign up once for the keystones they want to play
• Group leaders have to select their keystone and invite players

Your approach has to be better than what we have. And it isent. Its a net-zero improvement at best.

It does ZERO to reduce time in the quew. Dosent matter if you spend that time spamming LFG groups (now) or doing WQ.

[Annaconda-ragnaros]

@Uda-uldum

EXACTLY… and how would going from 200 “signups” to 20.000 “candidates” help in any way ??? Atleast with 200 I can scroll to the end of the page… with 20.000 candidates I would have at the bottom “page 1 of 63”. Literally not going through all that…

That list could be filtered and sorted by class/spec/M+ rating etc, so you’d only have to click the first entry.
But as people said, if the system is “too efficient” it might make it impossible for the less desirable players to ever get an invite since group leaders would have clairvoyance over who’s in the pool.
So maybe in this case worse is better?

[Mistjo-argent-dawn]

For now No Pressure seems to work really well.

The LFG-tool will always be the worst option over friends, guilds, communities and the last resort to find a group. And i can’t say this topic is a solution.

[Uda-uldum]

@Annaconda-ragnaros

That list could be filtered and sorted by class/spec/M+ rating etc, so you’d only have to click the first entry.
But as people said, if the system is “too efficient” it might make it impossible for the less desirable players to ever get an invite since group leaders would have clairvoyance over who’s in the pool.
So maybe in this case worse is better?

My point exactly. People dont realize how many players with 2100/2200 rio are quewing for 7+… they are farming their Hero gear. For those who dont know : 2100/2200 rio is ALL dungeons done in +8/+9 (right now)…

So anyone that has all dungeons completed on a +6 is literally bared from those groups. The ONLY saving grace is that those farmers can only quew to 5 dungeons. So it gives a chance to those needing the rio.

If my only option is to organize a massive list of candidates by class/spec… I am literally only picking FOTM specs with the biggest amount of Rio. And there are more than enough 2200 players out there to fill all available DD slots.

And FYI : When all those 2200 players are done farming their main, they will farm their Alts. And while WoW dosent show this, Raider IO addon does.

@Mistjo-argent-dawn

For now No Pressure seems to work really well.

The LFG-tool will always be the worst option over friends, guilds, communities and the last resort to find a group. And i can’t say this topic is a solution.

THIS. This will 100% guaranteed solve anyone’s problems. Who knew that talking to people in a Multiplayer game would be so advantageous…

[Lilmayo-silvermoon]

Nothing you think the solution is or will be will not change the fact that DPS will wait for a really longggg time, because nobody likes playing tank or healer or atleast a very few do and most of them just go tank or heal for fast que. The only solution for this is to remove tank and healers from the game… anyway nobody likes playing them anyway

[Annaconda-ragnaros]

@Lilmayo-silvermoon

The only solution for this is to remove tank and healers from the game… anyway nobody likes playing them anyway

Delves have shown the disparity in survivability between classes and by removing roles you’re inviting so much class homogenization that soon the only unique thing about each class would be the color of their spells.

[Uda-uldum]

@Lilmayo-silvermoon

The only solution for this is to remove tank and healers from the game… anyway nobody likes playing them anyway

I dont think so… This is the worst solution ever.

The “holy trinity” exists as a natural expression of players when they realize that division of labour is much more efficient than individual performance.

What would happen if you do such a thing ? ONE DD would become the “tankiest”… for example, the DDs that can equip a shield (like warriors). And ONE DD would become the “most healing” … for example, DDs that can off-heal (like Paladins/Priests)…

And you got your holy trinity back.

The ONLY way to effectively remove tanking/healing from the game is to reduce each class to a 4 button (attack, block, dodge, run) toon like Darksouls. So basically, remove 40 something classes and turn them all into a single one.

[Vicktor-aszune]

Blizzard also made Delve gearing too good and m+ gearing horrible, which could make the tank shortage worse.

No way I’m goofing in +7 where there is no guarantee I’ll even succeed when I can just do 8 Delves on any of my tanks and wait for nice 619 Hero gear.

The gearing is also so dragged out I’d need to make a spreadsheet that keeps track of my gearing spreadsheet and maybe go back to University. No thanks bro.

[Lilmayo-silvermoon]

I understand what you are trying to say and as much as I agree and every other wow player does i am sure but the fact will stay the same the amount of waiting for a dungeon for a dps is too damn high to the point of insanity and i experienced that even while having a friend healer which we play pvp only on retail and we wanted to try playing pve a bit more seriously, and even with him healing we waited too damn much i dunno how you pve players do it its just cant be healthy for a person to wait so much for a M+ dungeon, and that is why even tho i hate playing tank i just had to do it for the sake of us not losing our mind waiting like zombies xD, but the point is blizzard have to do something about it i feel rly sad for dps pve players that cant be good for their mental health.