I think it’s devolved to that in a lot of cases, but it’s important for those of us who don’t want RDF to recognize that there are strong arguments in favour of it.
It absolutely makes the leveling, and indeed, dungeon process easier. You hit a button and, eventually, you your dungeon pops.
It eliminates preferential treatment to class, spec, and/or gear. You queue, you get in when it’s your turn.
The out of the box solution includes cross-realm, which is a massive boon to anybody playing on a small server.
However, it’s equally important for those who are for RDF to recognize the downsides.
There are people playing the game who value forming a group and, at least in part, traveling together to the dungeon.
With RDF, there is no opportunity to form your group around specific needs (ie, group lacks a magic dispel, or group lacks a ranged DPS).
Historically, it’s been observed that with RDF, players tend to wait out their queue in a capital city, alt-tabbed and doing other things.
Historically, it’s been observed that RDF becomes the dominant form of group formation. Manually making a group for any content offered by RDF does not survive.
This list isn’t comprehensive. It’s just some of the stronger points I’ve observed and what value you places on each of those points depends on the person reading them and what they want from the game. It doesn’t mean the other person’s views are invalid, but it does perhaps mean they are incompatible.
Before I go, I want to return to the last point I listed in the pro-RDF section… cross-realm. I’ve been making this argument a lot lately but I think cross-realm is necessary, with or without RDF. Realm-based communities simply hasn’t panned out in Classic like many people expected it to. We need to let it go. Whether or not RDF is a thing, we need to be able to match with players on other realms in order to do dungeon content, especially leveling dungeon content. There are particulars to iron out here, but this is an absolute must.
Nobody playing Classic today should have to worry about whether or not their server is populated. Just like the artificial latency they tried to incorporate with Vanilla Classic seemed like a good idea and a way to recapture some of the magic of the past, it’s not working out and we need to move forward.
There is no cost to RDF, the groups we’re forming now and were forming with chat pre the LFG tool are no different than the groups we get with RDF. The process is just worse.
The reality is if you just want to knock out a dungeon or two and don’t care who is in your group RDF is simply the better tool.
And what you ignore is that those are not the reasons why people want RDF. Your problem with RDF still exists without any of those things. People will still choose RDF over whispering you “I’ll go” and you’ll still be upset you aren’t getting your fake socialization.
Correction, there is no cost to you, because you don’t value the same things about WoW that I do. You want RDF, so it’s easy for you to downplay, or even outright ignore the fact that something is given up to have RDF. I don’t expect you to put the same value on it that I do. You want RDF for your own reasons and that is completely valid and fair. However, I do expect you to recognize the cost that you are asking other players to give up, and perhaps even why it’s important to us. Just like I recognize that, by not having RDF, you lose out on a significant QoL feature that enables you better access to what you value in the game.
Some of us value building groups, talking with our fellow player, and traveling together (at least in part) to the dungeon. What you call worse, we consider better. We feel there is a loss of community that comes with RDF because we’ve already seen it happen. You don’t care about that community, we do. To be completely honest here, I used to not care either. I was strongly in favour of RDF in its original incarnation back in OG Wrath. It took playing WoW Classic in 2019 for me to realize what I was missing and I’m not willing to give it up again.
This is absolutely true. If you don’t care about how the group is made, RDF absolutely is better. It would appear that a fair number of folks do care.
The question isn’t that they some people don’t like RDF it’s why they don’t like it.
If you like manually forming groups that’s great, RDF does not prevent you from doing so. I formed plenty of groups manually after RDF added. And lack of RDF has not in any way recreated the original experience, people still treat dungeons just like they do with RDF only the process to get into them is worse. Pugging dungeons does not create community.
It does. If it didn’t, this would all be fine, but that’s not the case. My involvement in this thread stems from addressing that very argument and I elaborated on this at length.
I don’t agree with this assessment. I actually thought the process of building groups via LFG in Phase 1 worked fairly well and was a value-add over the original method of using the LFG chat channel. I expected this to continue into Phase 2 but since Blizzard has failed to properly incorporate H+ into the LFG system, the LFG tool’s effectiveness has been diminished.
Again, I completely understand why you feel the current system is worse, because you want the game to build your group for you. I’m not here to tell you that you’re wrong to believe this, but I am here to tell you that I don’t want this for the game and I’m thankful that, as yet, it’s not a part of WoW Classic.
It absolutely does not, I formed groups manually plenty of times after RDF was added. Why? Because I wanted to do them with people I knew, guildies/friends and what not.
Now you’re right the people who just want to pug and don’t care about who they play with will choose RDF. But then why is that a problem?
The current system is worse for pugging. I get the same kind of group I would get with RDF, people I’ll never see again after the dungeon is over, but the experience of forming it is worse.
We aren’t talking about premade groups with friends/guildies. Your experience with that now is the same as it will be with RDF.
We are going in circles. I’ve already told you why this is a problem… for me. I understand that you don’t feel it’s a problem because you want different things from the game.
I would hope you can recognize that I’m taking a different approach here. I’m not telling you how to feel about RDF. I acknowledge that you have a different viewpoint and that to you, your reasons are valid. You are not affording me that same courtesy. Instead, you are trying to tell me why I’m wrong, why I should not value the things that I do, and why I should believe what you believe.
I have no interest in convincing you to not like RDF, that’s not my goal here.
Is the point you’re trying to make that if RDF were introduced, you could still form premade groups with your friends and guild mates, and that this is as good as forming groups now with people via LFG?
No my point is that forming groups with friends/guildies actually matters and RDF did not prevent it. Where as forming groups with the LFG Tool(or chat) doesn’t result in anything different than an RDF group.
Of course RDF doesn’t prevent that. Lack of RDF doesn’t prevent that now either, which is why I’m struggling to see the point you’re trying to make.
We are talking about forming groups with players who are not in your immediate social circle. Currently, the game requires a minimum level of interaction in order to achieve that. RDF eliminates that.
Your assertion is that I will continue to be able to form groups outside my immediate social circle with RDF, but this is flawed because RDF ultimately removes my way of discovering those players without actually using RDF.
You argue that forming groups with the LFG tool (or chat) results in the same experience as using RDF (though presumably, less efficient). From my perspective, group formation via RDF is not the same and, in fact, is inferior to groups formed via RDF, even if that process is less efficient.
RDF does not prevent you from using the LFG channel.
But yes you are correct you very much in the minority that wants to do that to pug dungeons. That most people would choose RDF of the LFG Tool or chat is the proof that the end result is the same, if preforming groups was resulting in a better experience people would be doing it.
So yes of course most people choose the tool that gives them the same end result with a better experience finding a group.
I’m confused, myself. Is this guy arguing against RDF? He seems to recognize that RDF doesn’t prevent players from continuing to manually form their own groups, so why be against players having another option to form a group? Or (more often the case) using RDF to completely fill out the group when you, your friends and guildies don’t comprise a full group.
