You shot yourself in the foot there by bringing up world buffs.
I guess its easy to forget that RDF is incentivized with bonus rewards and super convenient.
So my proposed solution would be, since Brian is so keen on preserving socialization, is to incentivize manually formed groups instead of RDF groups. That way, everybody wins.
If the only dungeons you intend to run are with friends and guildies, then yes it has no effect whatsoever.
If, on the other hand, you choose to run dungeons with arbitrary members of your server, then yes, it might have an effect. However. One of the most common retorts from the anti-LFD crowd is “just get a guild or make some friends”. Sadly, this logic can be turned right back on you guys. If you don’t want to be impacted by the existence of LFD, then simply get a guild or make some friends. Then you can go about your game as if the tool never existed.
How is this a bad thing? Skip the traveling, the social interaction is still intact. If my mates want to use a car instead of public transport, I would just follow.
??? I didn’t get to use LFD, how am I winning. I want both options to be viable.
Those that want LFD can use LFD, those that want to form manually should have the tool to do so.
Supposedly we need RDF because of low pop realms and single parents who work two jobs. If thats the case then its ease of use and guaranteed groups is its own reward. What’s not incentivized is manual grouping so take the RDF rewards and apply them to manually formed groups instead.
That way the people who benefit from convenient grouping and people who favor socializing are on equal footing.
To start out with I will say I’m not anti-LFD. I think the tool is necessary in today’s classic wow atmosphere. I do see the downsides but I think in this day and age, the advantages probably outweigh the disadvantages.
What will resolve my reservations about LFD is what I will say below:
This is only a fair measurement of the merits of the two tools in and of themselves, if one tool doesn’t grant any extra rewards over the other. LFD does. It gives you 2 emblems of triumph per dungeon and it is spammable.
In that case you would get people who use LFD not because they like the tool itself, but because they like the extra rewards it gave.
Same-faction BGs is a good comparison so stick with me a second. It does break my sense of immersion. I just feel weird if I’m fighting other alliance. If I encounter one I usually AFK out. I PvP mostly on my alliance because same-faction is much less likely to happen.
If, say, same-faction BGs for some reason gave you 5 marks for winning, instead of the 3 that HvA BGs gave, then when I encounter one I might not be as ready to AFK out. In this case, I would not be doing same-faction BGs because I liked it, I would be doing it because of the extra rewards.
If doing dungeons using LFD granted the same rewards as doing dungeons without using LFD, then I would have no problem. Heroic dungeons themselves still drop emblems of triumph. I just don’t think the LFD tool needs to grant any additional ones.
So what? You just proved my point that a group of 5 people can get together to do dungeons instead of using the random group finder. People are being teleported to the dungeon instead of traveling there? Oh no! Better ban mages and all in game portals then! 
the horror 
This evaluation of the situation is so barren & devoid of any considerations for game design and desired player behavior.
Yeah, adding RDF makes people use RDF. This =| the RDF is a great feature for the game. It just means that it is exceptionally useful for it’s purpose and players see no reason why they should ignore using it.
Take the infamous “loot cave” back when Destiny first came out. For those unfamiliar, this was a cave with infinitely spawning enemies that had a high rare drop rate in one of the drop zone areas.
Due to the fortuitous level of rewards per/ hour, this led to large swaths of players just sitting in this cave, point down sight at the spawn point and murdering all enemies as they appeared for hours on end every day.
Was this amazing for farming loot/items? Yes. Did tons of players do it? Absolutely. Does this mean it was a great feature that didn’t need to get nerf-batted? It wasn’t a bug or an exploit. It just turned out exceptionally useful for what it did but it did something to the dev’s vision of the game that was not intended in terms of player behavior.
Players whined about the loot cave too, it didn’t mean that they didn’t feel forced to be there, shooting at the blackhole all day to get the easy items.
Same thing in Monster Hunter Rise’s first patch phase, when running the final boss was the best way to accrue materials for crafting talismans, but the final boss is not considered very fun and is a very untraditional Monster Hunter boss fight.
Could players have run anything else to get materials for talismans? Sure. Would it be nearly as fruitful? No. Does it mean that the final boss was the most fun content in the game. No. Players complained about this because they felt forced to run it.
Yes, and additionally, the ease of manually forming a group should also not be heavily impacted by the RDF tool. As originally implemented, this happens, it’s a historical truth.
So no, “if you don’t like it, don’t use it” is still a trash dumpster argument that makes no sense.
That would mean no bonuses or incentives for anyone.
I’m okay with that.
Further on this, Shadowlands doesn’t use the same badge/emblem or reward systems in Wrath, and even fewer people use it. The end game content is all mythic/mythic+/raids, which can only be done in premade groups, which people use the LFG tool for.
Retail numbers are still down, so can they still blame it on Dungeon Finder? When can we say that the content of the game is the problem?
You can always form a group and do specific dungeons/heroics. Achievement groups were a popular thing, and don’t require the use of dungeon finder. The most compelling uses for dungeon finder is farming badges(no heroic lockout), grinding xp, and dungeon questing.
Does me not using the RDF cause other people to stop using the RDF?
No?
Okay then, still a failed argument.
Incorrect. It would then mean that RDF has an inherent benefit simply because of teleportation and being more efficient in terms of time.
So if anything, manual group formers should get extra rewards, while RDF users do not. Only then is it relatively even.
Who cares if other people use RDF? Sit in town and shout in LFG chat like everyone already does. Why does it bother you that other people are out doing content while you sit in a main city shouting to form a group? Should everyone have to sit around for hours because you think it’s better?
Anyone who cares about finding players for groups without using RDF.
“Everyone” won’t be doing that if RDF exists.
The existence of RDF makes manual grouping harder if not nearly impossible outside of niche situations.
This isn’t exactly a profound revelation, most people by now accept the obvious historical truth that RDF killed the need for traditional group formation methods.
What data is available to measure the desires of the community?
I think the most stubborn ones replying to you are conflating two questions:
It boils down to them just thinking Thing A is a dumb thing to do. Therefore it’s not a problem that Thing A is more difficult to do, as long as Thing A is still theoretically possible to do.
I’ll just bring up the same-faction BG thing again. I prefer opposing-faction BGs, HvA. Prior to same-faction BG implementation, 100% of the BGs are HvA, and I was happy. After implementation of same-faction BG, a percentage of BGs are still HvA, but a lot less than 100%. I think the majority is HvH. But anyway the exact percentage is not important. HvA BGs are now much less than 100% of the BGs, when they were 100% before, is the point.
"If you don’t like same-faction BG then don’t do it." Yes and I don’t. I stick to my alliance where that is much less likely to happen. I usually AFK out when I load in the few games that are AvA because of Benediction queue-syncing.
However, I am still impacted by the implementation of same-faction BGs because there are factually, mathematically, fewer HvA BGs than there are same-faction BGs.
And this is with me recognizing that NOT having same-faction BGs is NOT sustainable in today’s classic wow atmosphere. That means the advantages of same-faction BGs (allowing more horde players to access PvP content in a reasonable timeframe) outweigh the disadvantages (some players like me not enjoying same-faction BGs).
All this thread is saying is that, that doesn’t mean there AREN’T disadvantages. Or am I wrong?
I think ultimately they don’t see any downsides, so the usage of “if you don’t like it don’t use it” is actually just a bad faith argument, because they actually know the person they are saying it to will end up pretty much having to use it anyway, they just don’t care because they’re only looking out for their own best interest and not the game as a whole.
We are looking out for the games best interest.
Doing something as easy as dungeons shouldn’t take hours.
Forming the group shouldn’t be harder than doing the dungeon.
Yes, it happened, because most people think the traditional group formation methods suck. Even with all it’s flaws people rushed to use the lfd like a drowning man gasps for air. Those few people who like the traditional methods get left behind and their solution is to force everyone to use the traditional method by eliminating the method the vast majority likes better, the RDF
I’m confused.
If the anti-LFD community is the majority, why would y’all be “forced” to use it if it was implemented?