I said several times that LFD on it’s own didn’t do a lot of damage, but combined with the welfare epics it crushed content. As you said, no one even bothered with 5 mans once the welfare gear started falling from the sky barring an important quest. And why? Because even alts had no reason to bother.
You never played without LFD, have you?
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I played in Vanilla…what does that have to do with me disputing the silliness that LFD (auto-group) being removed would cause a riot? No one does heroic/normal dungeons outside of the first few hours as a means of progression…Only farming augment runes/azerite power or just to fool around. LFR is even more on that level…farm and troll the fresh 120s.
Dungeons changed a lot and I don’t like any of the changes:
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became easier in LK, beatable even when ignoring mechanics, zergable, bred complacency and apathy in the playerbase - people didn’t learn how to pull properly, or interrupt because they didn’t have to, dungeons are a boring chore for boring currency.
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LFD just compounded the above with anonymity, no consequences for bad play, or trolling or leaving a group, no respect for tanks trying to control a run or healers trying to heal stupid, or dps coordinating with support roles to make a smooth run, just angry nerds who want loot, fast, and then get out
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removal of attunements, keys, rep requirements, quest chains, opening the flood gates for every unwashed scrub to spam any dungeon they want regardless of appropriate prior learning, gearing or playtime on a character.
I really miss keys and attunements, there was a special satisfaction in opening Scholo after the quest chain, or the back door of Stratholme, or a new BC heroic. More investment in the dungeon, more incentive to actually try, be a team player, get your mates attuned, etc.
QoL is a trick. It makes things easier in the short term and simultaneously removes what makes the game great: the social fabric, communication and coordination, responsibility, altruism.
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I think mechanically dungeons have become harder than they ever have in the m+ and “mythic only” dungeons and are much much more engaging.
I have been playing on and off since vanilla and while dungeons have been punishing due to tuning or too much trash at times, I would not say they have been the skill checks they are today.
Wait a few months post classic when you lose a healer on the last boss of LBRS after a 2-3 hour run then tell me how horrible LFD is.
I intend to play through all of classic but I am not a no lifer anymore that expect to be pinnacle 10 hour days.
World of Queue-craft!
Way too much quality of life and fast travel in retail, it makes me sick to the stomach.
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No, no it did not.
It is one of the most popular features ever implemented in MMOs. Almost every MMO has a variation of it.
I never felt LFD or LFR caused the issues, I fully blame the cross realm environment. Still, WoW is not doomed in retail, its just not the game we started with. If LFR was still the same people you saw in org or IF on your server all the time, it would not have been such a jarring issue.
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For me the problem with wow is it’s no longer a “world of” or a role playing game that you can immerse your self in…
It’s a tightly focused narrative (that is god awful) that degrades all other content and aspects of the game other than what is the current focus… you can’t decide “oh the main plot is boring I’m going to focus on this interesting side content” or discover some forgotten quest line or aspect of the world.
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TLDR
I posit that the random finder system, speciffically the random dungeon finder was imo the worst addition to the WoW.
For others that can bring themselves to read, a little story,
When you automate the grouping process you rob your servers community of vital building blocks. Its not just cross realm. You don’t have to communicate other than what is necessary to move on to the next gaming fix for you. This is bad, server only or cross realm.
Not to mention the pvp server factor. When you and your group have to go to the instance there’s literally hundreds of chances to run into enemy players.
For example, say maybe your group was going to run maraudon, but when you and 3 others got there and an alliance group already was there at the summoning stone. Now you have to wait to summon the healer who was too lazy to fly out from org. Uh oh no warlock. You either wait for the alliance party to move along or you fight it out.
Say you and the group decides to fight it out and you succeed and clearing the alliance party since your group caught them in the middle of summing. Now your group can summon the lazy healer. But o no, a max level alliance rogue came and took out your whole party!
So you get in guild chat and whine for assistance. And several guildees show up and a 2 hour brawl in sues for control of the maraudon summoning stone, because while you were asking for help the alliance team players asked for more help too!
This little story was true, happened to a group I formed for maraudon back in early wrath before the random dungeon finder. Other similar incidents happen at other popular dungeons like uldamon, scarlet monastery, and utgard. Not to mention the ever popular southshore vs. tarrenmill wars.
After 3.3 dropped up to battle for azeroth, I cant recall a single time of comparison.
So many people have said that flying has ruined world pvp, so yes, if you are serious about pvp, this seems like a logical solution. Or just have no-flight servers for those that hate it.
LFD and CRZ is what ruined the wow community for both pvp and pve. It made it a lobby like game where you only really know the friends you play with and everyone else became a random.
I can still rattle of dozens of names of people in Vanilla that i would run groups with and pvp with or against.
I cant name a single person since LFD or CRZ.
In vanilla if you were a decent person and player people who you had previously grouped with would be messaging you when you logged on for groups.
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Players that are in giant hardcore raiding guilds don’t understand this, or simply grossly downplay these facts.
LFD was a necessity at the time, my server was so dead and/or top-heavy that I only ran a dungeon with other leveling peeps ONCE before it was enacted. Before that my capped friends would “run” them for us, and don’t you dare cast a spell because you’ll pull aggro!
I used to be on the train of “yay more easy content” but I get bored of said content easily so just queuing isn’t an acceptable endgame to me. I’ve tried it, I get bored sitting around waiting for it to pop knowing I have no other way to get an upgrade.
Was it a good fix or the right one, no. They should have merged servers until all populations were healthy. They did “merge” some servers and people got to keep their name along with their original server name attached, I kind of don’t know why they didn’t just do a whole lot of that, consolidation, instead of keeping everyone distant on a gazillion servers EXCEPT when they queue or enter CRZ.
The fact you’ll never see the people you run with again is kind of counterintuitive for an MMO. It REALLY harms immersion. CRZ I don’t think you can even trade.
Don’t get me wrong, on retail I’m an LF hero, but that’s because I have to be. I’m in a guild but I’m not good enough to do mythics or real raids, I don’t have any interest as I know I’d be ice-skating uphill. Individuals in my guild have offered to queue with me before for heroics but that’s hardly the same as five guildies trekking to the dungeon and talking the entire time.
It’s poor because the system feeds on itself, since everyone is so diffuse LFs are the only thing that brings people together easily, but then it’s so temporary it might as well have not happened. Simple server merges way back when would have solved most of the issues LFD was put in place to resolve. I think the decision to implement it came from a good place but the unintended consequences were pretty overall terrible for any semblance of server community.
It does make the game “easy” for an asocial misfit like me, I guess, I’m that guy who says nothing but “thanks” at the end of the run, btw, if you ever see me, which none of you ever will because of what we’ve been talking about. ![:laughing:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/laughing.png?v=6" ":laughing:")
I’d much rather deal with the loss of a healer than try to get excited at my next faceroll derp fest in LFD.
It wasn’t a necessity. It was something that Blizz has become proficient in over the years. The wrong solution to the wrong problem that only ended up screwing up more things and fixing very little.
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That depends on what you mean by “doomed.” Do you mean that it killed the social etiquette that we had appreciated until shortly after the addition of the feature to the game? If so, I say hell yes. Back in the day, people spoke with one another in groups. Hell, you had to talk to one another just to get into the group to begin with. Admittedly, not everyone was a chatty Cathy, but the fact of the matter is that people were generally polite. Once the dungeon finder was added, social etiquette stuck around for a little bit, but not long.
By the time of Cataclysm, your average group was already deathly silent. When the dungeon finder was first added people still at least greeted one another, but by this point that was basically gone. In fact, by the time the vote kick feature was added, people were already much ruder than previously.
I don’t know about you guys, but I got kicked a few times following the addition of the vote kick feature, and each time I felt it was pretty unjust. The worst was when, in heroic Stonecore, I wound up with a cat druid as the tank. That SOB sucked the mana right out of me, and he didn’t stand a chance in hell against even the first boss. I told him he was specced and geared for Cat, and that I couldn’t heal him in H Stoncore. He then started berating me, calling me a bad healer, though in more colorful language. After several more wipes I just ignored him, tired of the abuse. I could tell he was trying to abuse me again shortly thereafter because he stood still, ran forward for a moment, then stopped, and immediately turned to me. Maybe ten seconds later I got a loading screen, and sure as a bear defecates in the woods, I was kicked from the group, and had a nice fat 30 minute timeout. It was not long after that incident that I stopped logging in regularly, and maybe six months later i cancelled my sub.
Was the terrible social atmosphere the only reason I quit? No, there were several. Admittedly, I had graduated high school then, and had a job. Also, my guild had died in Ulduar, so I wasn’t raiding anymore. However, the fact of the matter is that the degradation of the social aspects of the game really took away something that I enjoyed, and replaced with a hollow grind system, wherein the other players could’ve just as easily been replaced with bots.
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Honestly the LFG system for BGs, 5 mans and raids in itself never didn’t anything too wrong, it was added in as a response to an existing issue that all too ironically was created in vanilla and tbc That’s neverminding that as time moves forward people and their lives changed.
With that being said, as time move forward, as things changed, the necessity of a tool to allow those who do not have as much time as others did to still enjoy content without the hassle of elitists, the eventual gear score requirement rampancy which still happens in retail, among other things to ruin their time and enjoyment of the game.
It also helps people who want to put forth the minimum and don’t want to interact with others to do the content. It forces people into groups, with no real care for the individual. In a social game it’s the complete opposite of what a fix would be.
It’s also not entirely right to force players to interact to get their 5 man dungeons when people have less time to play the game. That’s where people fail to see the necessity in such a tool in modern times, I’m sorry but as time continues to pass, people will continue to have less time to play, your life and family takes priority over a game, but that also shouldn’t prevent you from playing it either.