DESERTER DEBUFF - We need to talk about this:

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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So, because of people abusing the que system to farm the trinket from the 1st boss of City of Echoes, Blizzard implemented a seriously bad change to the deserter debuff, with the aim to punish those leaving the group right after the 1st boss…

B ut what it realy ended up happening, is that, while certainly inconvenient for those players, it ended up being a totaly unfair and brutal punishment in pretty much everyone else. Because while before, leaving after a boss have been defeated would not give you a deserter debuff, which was the issue, now not only does after that, but also if you are kicked from the group, which can happen for a wide variety of reazons that aren’t fair for you… it also means that if you end up in a bad group and you wipe, you can’t leave to try and reque for a better group, because you’ll get deserter, but where i think hurts the most is in LFR…

Here is what has been happening to me REPEATEDLY:

Step 1: Que for LFR wing 3 (you need both bosses)

Step 2: Get in a group with 1st boss dead… Now you can’t leave to reque because you’ll get deserter, and que was already 30 mins so if you leave, that means it will be at least 1 hour before you be back in, so you choose to suck it up and stick for last boss and reque for 1st boss after.

Step 3: Group is terrible, you wipe and can’t leave because if you do like i did after the wipe, you get… YES YOU GET IT : DESERTER DEBUFF… So i am being DOUBLE punished because someone left after 1st boss, and now either i leave or i stay i got screwed.

So anyway i left after wipe and got deserter so i am back to wait, now i have to wait 30 mins for debuff to que so i can wait 30 mins for group… GREAT JOB BLIZZARD, THAT’LL TEACH ME… toooooo… i dunno dare playing the game i guess?

Things have also been dreadfull in LFG… I do lots of timewalking when is up… and it just happen that sometimes i get disconnected, or my pc maybe freeze and i need to restart… and of course when i log back in, i find myself i have been kicked… or maybe the group just chose to kick me because they didn’t like my face or something… in all seriousness, i’ve been victim of so many unfair kicks ever since the LFG was implemented in Wrath that i no longer even blink, and i just resign and reque… BUT NOW I CANT… Because, i get kicked for whatever reazon, and trust me, is not because i am a bad player or being afk or anything of the sort… if anything i’ve been kicked for dared to improve the group experience, trying to show them shortcuts of whatever… but whatever the case, i got removed, now i have deserter debuff! YAY.

I am sorry but at this point this dumb change is only hurting the game. I don’t think anyone cares to farm a trinket in a heroic dungeon at this point, and i am sure the system for M+ leavers would work just fine… put a tag on them for leaving M+ so other people know to avoid them, and leave US the casuals using LFG and LFR go back to the old deserter system… P L E A S E

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this always starts the same argument between those of us who agree with you that ANY punishments for leaving groups need to go and those who think all the stuff you just named is somehow “OK” because of either the Ara Kara situation or the old Oculus situation in Wrath. Also, LFR has ZERO reasons to need any kind of deserter debuff/leaver penalty.

OP–there are those of us here that do agree with you!

for the Ara Kara situation

  1. do a better job @ balancing trinkets so that there isn’t JUST ONE that everyone is going to want each season

  2. dont put trinkets like that on the first boss

  3. Since M+ has already normalized waiting until the end to get loot–just change all dungeons to be that way. You dont get loot until the entire place is cleared so that people have no reason to leave other than not wanting to be there.

for the Oculus situation

  1. Don’t make dungeons with stupid gimmicks that dont work reliably (really what happened here was that they waited 3 seasons to make the drakes scale with gear so you could just one-shot the last boss instead of wiping again and again and again and having to reteach morons how to do the fight every time it would come up)
  2. allow people to blacklist dungeons when queuing “random” like they USED to do for battlegrounds. If people always block the same dungeon then t it was a design fail – suck it up and fix it or dont and people who need that dungeon can just do it on follower mode to get it done.
1 Like
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I think another possible solution that would prevent that behavior (droping groups because all they want is the 1st boss loot) is making sure that starting next expansion, things such as trinkets and weapons only drop from last boss. Or as you said, make sure loot isn’t handed until you kill last boss.

Tho to be fair, i think holding the loot may also lead to issues, such as, what if someone legit needs to leave or what if simply the group can’t finish. Say, for example, a server crash, or tank gets disconnected at some point and then you can’t get a replacement after waiting for 10+ minutes then people start leaving.

I’d just put those powerful items on last boss to keep people both enganged and pumped to finish the whole run.

The option to blacklist a dungeon is also a very important option that should be added.}

And is not just because of personal preferences… sometimes we get dungeons such as Dawnbreaker, which legit causes issues due to all the bugs. I remember an instance earlier in the expansion when someone bugged out and couldn’t even make it to the ship so got kicked of the group. That was not his fault and yet he got punished twice, once with the fact he had to go back to the que, but also, having to wait for deserter debuff.

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if someone gets disconnected and you were already in progress, your wait for tank or healer isn’t going to be that long tho…i dunno…holding loot til last boss then gets rid of people’s incentive to leave. If they do leave, it’s because they got disconnected or the group sucked–neither one of those reasons deserve to be punished.