Random Dungeon Finder

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
61

Re: Retail LFG interface

Reading this thread I had a realization. If Blizzard ports the LFG from retail, it will actually make things much, much worse.
Imagine a situation: it’s about a month into Wrath and most people don’t need heroics for gear on mains anymore (replaced in super easy naxx and dragon raid pugs). Most people switched to the new shiny LFG interface (it even has falling snowflake effect and a Frostmourne on the edge, wow).
Now you have, broadly speaking, 4 cathegories of users, dps+healers (i often get a healer before 3 dps, they are barely three times more scarce), dps/healer group leaders, badly geared tanks doing it for free (for gear that is) and geared tanks doing it for gold/unwanted.

As a DPS/healer you list yourself, indicate role, class/spec and gearscore (if you don’t, you will not get a whisper, ever) and pray.
As a leader (I am myself in here) you look at list, pick dps and healer that fits you - either for good spell/melee cleave or that won’t need your item most likely. Then you set out looking for tanks. No tanks are listed, obviously, so you stare intently at a list of players to insta-invite a “free” (ungeared) tank while at the same time spamming /1 and /2 in Dalaran for tank (since hardly anyone uses LookingForGroup anymore in this scenario)
The ungeared tanks can list themselves and literally get invited same second, and the dungeon will go mostly according to their skill and gear. They can remain polite or be absolute asshats, since no group will ever kick a free tank.
The enterpeneurial, geared tanks are free to whisper leaders of the 4/5 groups in the interface, offering their devil’s bargain of all unwanted items + 100g tip. Many will give in.

So as a less desirable DPS class with low gear score, what are your chances now? ZERO
You will never, ever get into a heroic group. It’s literally worse than now, at least now you have a chance if you sit with a funny message in buffer to throw at a leader who is “forming group” or “looking for all”. If you need to list yourself with class/spec and gearscore, you are forever screwed.

Oh, did I mention every suitable levelling dungeon will ONLY have groups listed for it with “boost, 5runs/h, 260 mobs per run, 30g per run, can pay in bulk with g2g balance”

So here you go, Retail LFG will be an unmitigated disaster for Wrath. At best, as a leader, you avoid the barrage of whispers and just pick your dps from a smorgasbord. Then you still spam for tank or buy one. DPS are even more screwed than now.

How’s that for a vision of the future? And by all means, please tell me where I’m incorrect or grossly exaggerating.

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62

And this is why I said nothing short than auto-queue will make things easier than now. As long as groups are manually formed, you’ll still need to endlessly refresh the interface or spam whispers to people in order to find a tank, or still spam whispers in order to find a spot as a DPS. If you think just posting your name as a DPS on the interface will do you any good, I suggest you to try writing “DPS LFG Daily hc” on your LFGchat and see how easily it finds you a group.

In many ways, as you noticed, it’ll be even worse. There’ll be even more whisper spam to face, especially if you roll a class capable of tanking (many people will just resort to /who whisper rather than waiting for somebody to show up on the LFG interface).

Sadly, from what I’ve seen on Twitter, BB has been quietly ignoring, for the most part, any kind of feedback about LFD, or giving evasive answers. Guess it would hurt their pride too much to admit they were wrong with their “Classic Andy” antics.

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Anecdotal evidence: I have a prot pally geared mostly in P1/crafted epics, rest blue (def cap, around 13.2k hp unbuffed). I got rejected multiple times from heroics after stating that I’m not t5+ and asking for the DPS to give me time to build threat. Also, I had people leaving the party after inspecting me (I whispered them after they left and was told they want a quick badge run, not a lengthy dungeon).
And I did tank some heroics and raids (Karazhan), so it’s not like I’m not geared enough for them.

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I do feel that your point with low gearscore people might come true- If not in the first patch, then definitely in the later ones, when gearscore differs much more between players. New players or alt chars will have insane waiting times to find a group with the retail tool (or even LFG-chat), if they even get a chance to join a group. The better geared players, who relist themselves in the tool after a run will be repicked again by another group, that might have chosen the low geared player, but since better geared players are available any time (at least for dps), the low end will never get invites, never get a chance to get gear, if they dont have friends/guilds inviting them, or boosters they have to pay.

It would force more players to socialize (or farm/buy gold) though, since the normal way of finding groups (LFG-chat, retail tool) wont work for them. If they dont find a fitting community in time, they will quit or at least not playing alts at all.

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That is a good point. But to counter you, as a phase BiS (not anymore lol) Mage, it truly is an exercise in pain and self restraint to run a dungeon with low threat tank. While I wouldn’t leave a group with 13.2hp pala, I would groan internally like you wouldn’t believe and I can understand a dps who would. I suppose tanks will also be listing their gear score. Then again, aoe threat is supposed to be much easier in Wrath, so who knows.

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What´s wrong with 13.2k hp? Most threat issues are caused by impatient dps/heals imo :slight_smile:

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Once you get used to a luxury of a geared, skilled tank, it is incredibly difficult to go back to playing like it’s week 1 of TBC :unamused:
It’s like asking a person who’s been driving an air conditioned sports car for a year to get back on a public transport bus. Yes, you can do it in theory, but it hurts almost physically.

68

Exactly that. I share your view on the effects of implementing retail LFD into Wotlk, and just wanted to point out that those effects also apply to low GS tanks too.
People with high end gear just want to play differently. In P1 and P2, when I played a mage most groups wanted me to sheep one mob form each pack to make pulls more manageable. Nowadays many people want the opposite: they want the tank to pull not one, but two or more packs to AoE the mobs and finish the dungeon faster. And that can’t be done without a tank equipped with high end items.
Also: AoE threat may be easier in Wrath, but You still need good equipment to survive bigger pulls.
All in all: yes, implementing retail LFD into Wotlk can (and probably will) make catching up more difficult then it already is.

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Not to sound pedantic or detract from your point, but if a dps heavily overgears you it’s pretty tough to keep the threat depending on the amount of spellpower you can muster up.

(I agree that Random Dungeon Finder should be one of the keystone features, because of all the good things it can bring. If you leave it up to the players it’s always the same one or two dungeons, with people that are fussy about who they take. Unlike Raids it’s content that’s meant to be done loads of times, in bulk so may as well facilitate that.

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70

Ah yes, the mythical social interraction… i totally wouldn’t want to miss on the fun
“inv
hi
can i need for os
rebuff plz
ty bb”

Much social interraction in 90% of groups.

What? Your luxury geared as$ isn’t already in a guild with skilled tanks to do content with so you can avoid the peasants?

How is this different from the current “LF mage/warlock for daily HC”, “WTB/WTS tank”, “LF pala tank”?
People must be really desperate/tired of looking to not go for the better option.
You are basically transferring existing issues (the boost spam in chat, the fact that some classes/specs are ignored, the undergeared people being removed or not invited to groups) to the new shiny interface. So the worst case in your scenario is less spam in chat.

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Dungeons are normally a pug activity, you know, not something you schedule with other guildies.

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I never asked a tank directly to come tank for me, since I’d hate to have it done to me. I do ask in guild chat of course before I start my groups, but even in my 3 raid team guild I rarely get volunteers. The fact I mostly play before 12am outside of raid logging doesn’t help.

That being said, most t6 tanks you buy for unwanted items and/or a fee can play decently well so I don’t have to hold back. Hence why I have a standard to compare a bad/ungeared tank to.

Well yes, the absolute best case it’s the same as now with less spam in chat, but it also can and likely will be much worse, in particular for ungeared unoptimal dps. You still stare at an interface sniping groups, listing yourself does nothing, like spamming “LFG Daily HC” does nothing now.

Like, there isn’t much functional difference in staring at a list in Bulletin or a list in new LFG interface. I don’t think many people even try to read unaugmented chat in a window.
Maybe they do, I don’t know. I’ve used bulletin since day 2 of tbc.

73

Classic andys: RDF ruins the game boohoo
Meanwhile Classic andys: afk their way with bought gold to max level and then get showered with epics while afking in GDKP raids. What a great game experience!

Also, many people seem to bring the go to retail argument still back. How about y’all classic andys go back to SoM or vanilla private servers if you hate wotlk features so much?

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I’m not buying golds nor i afk in GDKP raids.

Those players aren’t “real Classic andys” for me. They play with a modern/retail mentality to P2Skip every part of the “Classic” progression.

Wrath Classic is still a Classic experience and not having RDF from start is still a Wrath experience too.

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This is true

Classic Andy is an urban myth.

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The problem is not having it removed from start. The problem is that they removed it completely, alongside with other things that didn’t need to be removed at all (like the auto-disenchant function of group loot), all in the name of some stupid “spirit of Classic” ideal that reeks of Vanilla fanboysm.

If the devs said, I dunno, that they’re not including RDF in Wrath phase 1 because they don’t want most people to level all the way through 80 via RDF but they’re going to add it in later phases, as it was in the original game, once most people are already at max level, I’m sure a lot of people would’ve found it to be a much more reasonable and unbiased stance to have. Instead, the devs stupidly insisted on having it removed based on some tenuous ideal of “social interaction” that only shows how detatched from reality they personally are, and the backlash they got for it is nothing but an obvious consequence.

They even hinted that they might intervene on dual spec, as well as on other things that need absolutely no fix whatsoever unless you’re trapped in a Vanilla mindset that makes you see everything not Vanilla as “Retail-esque”. These devs need to stop messing with things, period.

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The devs have a “too Classic” mindset for the WOTLK enjoyers i think.

I can understand it because Wrath is appealing to a wide variety of players (Classic ones, Wrath-babies & even bored retail players) and, i guess, that some of them were seeing Wrath as their “Retail Classic” version because Vanilla/TBC were “too classic” for them.

I don’t know if Blizzard is really how of touch or not. Maybe the players who are gonna actively played the whole duration of Classic are “Classic Andys”. Maybe they have data for this like players who pay a sub to ONLY play Classic etc…

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Classic never had faithful patch progression. Even raid unlocking was only an approximation of the original. All options of adding RDF with ICC, adding it with earlier patch or having it in from the start as a core Wrath UI feature can be argued as maintaining “Classic” experience.
And in any case, like Zalanji said, if they announced it’s baing added in later patch for reason a b c, the backlash would have been much smaller. But that’s not what that Holly Longdale woman said, is it?

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Can’t deny that not having LFD at all isn’t a “Wrath experience”. But, i guess that Blizzard may also try to follow a “different path” than they did before.

Maybe they are using Classic to know “what went wrong” because most of the players agree that the “downfall” was initiated in Wrath.

Everyone know that “spamming chat” isn’t the social part and everyone know that players changed. But, gamedesign/features does play a role in players behavior.

80

If they had “data” for this they wouldn’t have been surprised by the backlash in the first place. I think it’s safer to assume that, as usual, they just read the mood wrong. At the very least it would’ve been better to first announce its removal from P1 and then, if the feedback is good, remove it completely. Doing it like this reeks of incompetence and arrogance to me.

They shouldn’t have. At least not as far as WotLK Classic goes. Beyond that (or for SoM), sure, but Classic should stay Classic.

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