RDF Confusion

[Nyseine-whitemane]

@Bloodythorns-whitemane

They’re fun. I have more fun spamming dungeons than sitting around in Shat/Dal searching for people to group with.

So you should go back and watch the interveiw with zeirhut. he said specifically if they valued running dungeons per capita they would have implemented rdf in the first place, and they dont.

[Bloodythorns-whitemane]

@Nyseine-whitemane

So you should go back and watch the interveiw with zeirhut.

I will eventually I’ve just been focused on other things.

[Woddisc-sargeras]

It’s a great interview and really shows they care about Wotlk Classic and want what’s best for it.

[Kellandriya-mankrik]

@Aurumai-grobbulus

You call it vague, but there’s hundreds of pages of people explaining themselves on these forums. Just because you don’t see merit in the issues people have, it doesn’t mean that they’re being vague, or that they’re not being up front.

Same could be said FOR RDF. Which is why there should be a compromise, meet in the middle. But somehow it’s turned into a NOPE.

@Aurumai-grobbulus

For me, there’s a handful of problems:

• It removes the necessity for interactions to run dungeons

Some people enjoy not being forced to talk to people they don’t know for a variety of reasons that also don’t prevent them from enjoying the game to their fullest.

@Aurumai-grobbulus

t groups you with players who you can’t play with again unless someone hops onto another server

Could easily make it server only, like successful pservers have.

@Aurumai-grobbulus

It opens the door for new avenues of exploitation and toxicity

Subjective, because from my viewpoint, the game is already gatekeeping, exploitative, and toxic af

@Aurumai-grobbulus

It effectively trivializes distances to be traveled in the physical game world (dungeon finder teleport is the ONLY gap closer of its kind, though an argument could be made for BG teleports), which completely goes against WoW’s world design

Actually, the original game devs wanted the system in at launch, so, I don’t know, maybe I trust the game devs to know what WoW’s core game design was meant to be over the opinions on the forums.

@Aurumai-grobbulus

It becomes the default method of group forming, so it effectively removes the option of manually forming groups in a lot of use cases

Subjective again. My guild used to manually form groups to…wait for it…queue up in the RDF. I used to hit my friends up in other guilds to…wait for it…queue up in RDF. And if that didn’t work and I was determined to get whatever I needed, or just kill some time, I’d queue up on my own. You can do both and use both forms of grouping.

The problem for me is this all or nothing approach, specifically it seems only to RDF. PvP, no problem, retail features for dungeons? Let’s see what we come up with. RDF? Hard line in the sand and eff anyone who dislikes it. It would have been nice if Blizz had actually tried to make a compromise, or voice that they were trying. They didn’t and now…it’s just disappointing.

Anyways, good response, and I hope my response isn’t taken any more serious than just engagement in the convo.

[Kellandriya-mankrik]

@Nyseine-whitemane

So you should go back and watch the interveiw with zeirhut. he said specifically if they valued running dungeons per capita they would have implemented rdf in the first place, and they dont.

Yet, in the same interview, he also said they have no problem if people want to overgear and run dungeons solo? Me thinks Zeirhut doth protest too much. If running dungeons is for the “social pillar” then I would think dung solo runs at or near level would be counter to that.

[Woddisc-sargeras]

Interviewers asked him if they had plans to nerf people who are getting tbc BiS and solo running dungeons to level…

[Aurumai-grobbulus]

@Bloodythorns-whitemane

@Aurumai-grobbulus

It removes the necessity for interactions to run dungeons

Why is that valuable? Clearly from the way people behave in groups inside the dungeons no intense interaction is necessary so why should forming the group require a greater level of interaction than actually completing the dungeon?

The game was purpose-built to be a social experience where players would interact with one another and work together to accomplish common goals. Trivializing and effectively removing the process of finding people to play with completely goes against this idea. There should be as little automation that trivializes social interactions as possible.

@Bloodythorns-whitemane

@Aurumai-grobbulus

It groups you with players who you can’t play with again unless someone hops onto another server

I don’t see how this is a problem in and of itself.

There are multiple reasons why.

If you’re primarily playing with people on other realms, there’s really no point in having realms to begin with. Realms were meant to give a sense of permanence to the community – You can make friends you’ll interact with in the future, guilds will be familiar to you, there can be PvP rivalries, each realm has its own culture and quirks.

Many people scoff at the idea of community permanence, but it’s one of the primary things that set games like WoW (at least before Activision) apart from lobby games where there’s absolutely no sense of community permanence at all. This idea is why MMOs were so special to begin with. They were basically the first highly-populated games where you could interact with the same people just by happenstance and not because they were a part of your personal circle.

@Bloodythorns-whitemane

If it’s positive then it’s unfortunate that you can’t group with them again on purpose. If it’s negative, we’ll, /ignore them and move on.

Both of those are awful. You should be able to stick with the friends you make in WoW. That’s kind of the cornerstone of WoW’s social environment.

Ignoring toxic people in dungeon finder groups almost doesn’t even make sense because you’re already incredibly unlikely to group with the same people again and there’s nowhere near enough space in the ignore list to tangibly affect the frequency of toxic players when you have access to the entire playerbase of the game. The whole point of the ignore feature is to squelch interactions with specific people in the future, but in dungeon finder, there are usually no future interactions whether you liked the person or not.

@Bloodythorns-whitemane

@Aurumai-grobbulus

It opens the door for new avenues of exploitation and toxicity

I don’t see how. It’s the same stuff that already happens. Ninja-loot, griefing, etc.

• There’s the obvious argument that peoples’ reputations can be ruined on their realms, which is a huge win because others can actively avoid the toxicity.
• Without the aspect of reputation to encourage goodwill between players, many people won’t think twice about ninja looting, even if they get kicked for it.
• “Executive decisions” no longer belong to a group leader, so not only are players’ abilities to actually lead hampered but those executive decisions can be abused, like unfairly vote-kicking.
• It’s not uncommon for groups in dungeon finder to fall apart because some people will just ditch the group because they didn’t like the random dungeon they were put in.
• It was extremely common for people to queue for roles that they weren’t geared or even specced for, often because a DPS just didn’t want to wait for 40 minutes for a DPS queue.
• Mixing different players together and giving them no say in who they group with increases the frequency of toxic experiences the average player will have. Many people’s toxicity comes from a place of having high expectations of others, and they tend to flock together when they can manually form their groups. When they have no say over the matter, their horrible attitude doesn’t suddenly disappear. It flares up even worse because they’re grouped up with the average player who they normally never played with in the first place.

These issues share similarities with problems that already existed, but these ones specifically are unique to the dungeon finder experience.

@Bloodythorns-whitemane

@Aurumai-grobbulus

(dungeon finder teleport is the ONLY gap closer of its kind, though an

If that’s the hair you want to split between warlock summons, summoning stones, and RDF teleport - fine. But you need to recognize as such. I can live without the teleport.

It’s not really a split hair. Warlock summons require soul shards and multiple people to help summon, as well as playing a Warlock. Summoning stones require multiple people to have traveled to them, and they don’t teleport you exactly where you want to be. Mage portals require the runes, don’t teleport you exactly where you want to be, and they require playing a Mage.

Dungeon finder’s teleport is 100% free, can be used infinitely, requires no help from other players, and teleports you from anywhere in the universe to exactly the place you want to be.

Other methods of fast travel significantly close the distance gap, but they do so imperfectly, and/or they have costs. Dungeon finder’s teleport literally deletes the aspect of traveling to the dungeon, which breaks the world’s scale design and cheapens the perks of investments in faster travel and leveling classes with shortcut utilities. That’s a pretty huge deal.

@Bloodythorns-whitemane

@Aurumai-grobbulus

It becomes the default method of group forming, so it effectively removes the option of manually forming groups in a lot of use cases

So during these last couple months of discussions have you never seen talks of compromise and things to take away from RDF.

I’ve seen talks of compromise and changes, but I can’t say I’ve seen mention of a single compromise where both sides would actually be happy, because both sides have entirely different goals. Many of the things that pro-dungeon finder people want are precisely what we want to avoid, and vice-versa.

Unless you’re aware of some truly fair compromise that I’m not aware of? Even if you removed the “extra” incentives from dungeon finder, it’s still the path of least resistance, and therefore the primary path of the average player.

@Bloodythorns-whitemane

What I don’t get is that if RDF is so awful and toxic and horrible for the game - and you anti-RDF folks are so clearly in the vast majority - why would you all be unable to resist using it? There’s nothing about it that is addictive.

1. I never said that we’re in the vast majority. Anyone who claims to actually know the exact proportions, or thinks that this issue has a “vast majority” is an idiot and/or a liar.
2. Clicking a button to have an algorithm slap together a group and teleport you to the content you want to clear is the path of least resistance, which means the average player will default to it. When those players are no longer joining manually-formed groups, the pool of players available for manually-formed groups shrinks significantly. This in turn causes many of the people who used to manually form groups to simply give up and “join them if you can’t beat them”. It’s actually very similar to the way factions die on specific realms.

[Aurumai-grobbulus]

@Kellandriya-mankrik

@Aurumai-grobbulus

You call it vague, but there’s hundreds of pages of people explaining themselves on these forums. Just because you don’t see merit in the issues people have, it doesn’t mean that they’re being vague, or that they’re not being up front.

Same could be said FOR RDF.

I think you’re kinda missing the point here. He was saying that our reasoning for disliking dungeon finder is vague, which I totally disagree with. I think both sides of this argument have quite thoroughly articulated why they do or don’t want the feature in the game.

@Kellandriya-mankrik

Which is why there should be a compromise, meet in the middle. But somehow it’s turned into a NOPE.

I don’t think a true compromise is possible. Players who do and don’t like dungeon finder want entirely different things. I don’t think there’s a solution that will satisfy both types of players.

I’d love to hear any ideas you might have though – there could be some compromise that I’m just not seeing or haven’t heard of.

@Kellandriya-mankrik

Some people enjoy not being forced to talk to people they don’t know for a variety of reasons that also don’t prevent them from enjoying the game to their fullest.

See, this is an area where compromise just might not be possible. In my mind, it’s completely backward to want to do group content but also have the expectation that group interaction isn’t mandatory for it. Because at that point, the other players may as well just be NPCs, and you could just be playing some offline single-player game. The game was designed to require and encourage player interactions. You may not like that aspect of it, but it’s something you just kinda have to deal with if you want to do group content because that’s one of the cornerstones of the design philosophy.

@Kellandriya-mankrik

Could easily make it server only, like successful pservers have.

But then dungeon finder would be useless for people on dead realms. And dead realms are justifiably one of the biggest arguing points for people who want to see dungeon finder implemented.

This solution tends to work for private servers because there isn’t a huge list of them to choose from. Their populations are extremely condensed and usually have queues for peak hours as well.

@Kellandriya-mankrik

@Aurumai-grobbulus

It opens the door for new avenues of exploitation and toxicity

Subjective, because from my viewpoint, the game is already gatekeeping, exploitative, and toxic af

You’re not wrong about that, but those are all problems that people can easily avoid without being forced to use a non-standard method of grouping. When you form your own groups (the current standard), you can allow everyone to join your group regardless of gear/skill levels, guarantee proper and fair loot, and remove people who are toxic. Anyone who is unhappy with the current state of groups can simply be the change they want to see and forms groups with their own vision.

If dungeon finder is implemented, it becomes the standard, and you lose access to these tools unless you use a non-standard method. One way, the problems can be dealt with outright. Another way, there will be problems no matter what.

@Kellandriya-mankrik

Actually, the original game devs wanted the system in at launch

Would you happen to have a link to that? Was it at the launch of Wrath you’re talking about or Vanilla? And wasn’t it only one of the devs who wanted it? I feel very strongly there isn’t a good case for dungeon finder based on what the devs think/thought.

@Kellandriya-mankrik

maybe I trust the game devs to know what WoW’s core game design was meant to be over the opinions on the forums.

I don’t remember if you’ve specifically stated that you’re pro-dungeon finder or not, but if you are, I’d like to point out the glaring irony here…

@Kellandriya-mankrik

@Aurumai-grobbulus

It becomes the default method of group forming, so it effectively removes the option of manually forming groups in a lot of use cases

Subjective again. My guild used to manually form groups to…wait for it…queue up in the RDF. I used to hit my friends up in other guilds to…wait for it…queue up in RDF. And if that didn’t work and I was determined to get whatever I needed, or just kill some time, I’d queue up on my own. You can do both and use both forms of grouping.

Between playing with a guild/friend group and just PUGing, which method would you guess is most common? I’d just like to point out that dungeon finder certainly was not made for people who already had consistent groups to play with.

@Kellandriya-mankrik

The problem for me is this all or nothing approach, specifically it seems only to RDF. PvP, no problem

What do you mean? Like, PvP gets to have cross-realm, matchmaking and teleportation and PvE doesn’t? Because there’s a handful of reasons why they’re totally different.

@Kellandriya-mankrik

It would have been nice if Blizz had actually tried to make a compromise, or voice that they were trying. They didn’t and now…it’s just disappointing.

It’s funny actually, this kind of illustrates the point I was making earlier. The new LFG tool is a compromise, and they did voice what they were trying. People who wanted dungeon finder didn’t get what they wanted, but we have been given a tool with more functionality than the one that was originally in Wrath.

This is why I say that a true compromise probably isn’t possible. People who want dungeon finder are NOT going to be happy until they get automatically formed groups and cross-realm play. And the people who don’t want dungeon finder won’t be happy unless these things are Retail-only.

The new LFG tool is a compromise that I’m perfectly happy with, but you hate it because you want dungeon finder, right? Removing the teleport, for example, might be a compromise that you’re perfectly happy with, but I’d be unhappy because it wouldn’t fix the crux of the issue, which is automatic, cross-realm group formation. I see no real “middle-ground” in this situation.

@Kellandriya-mankrik

Yet, in the same interview, he also said they have no problem if people want to overgear and run dungeons solo? Me thinks Zeirhut doth protest too much. If running dungeons is for the “social pillar” then I would think dung solo runs at or near level would be counter to that.

I totally see what you mean, but to be fair, he not only stated that it wasn’t really on their radar, but he also didn’t think that it would be as fast as leveling normally.

On paper, it doesn’t sound so bad. It doesn’t sound very unfair for a full Sunwell BiS-geared player to be able to slowly clear an entry-level normal mode dungeon. I’m guessing that’s the only perspective he actually had on it. From the way he talked about it, it seemed like the idea of leveling that way was actually kind of funny/dumb to him. Like someone in Retail saying “I’m going to level ONLY with experience gains from mining ore”.

I don’t think he actually knows how much this is going to be exploited.

@Kellandriya-mankrik

Anyways, good response, and I hope my response isn’t taken any more serious than just engagement in the convo.

I appreciate your post; You’ve been quite reasonable and polite so far, which is far more than can be said of most people who are having this discussion right now.

[Luuni-area-52]

@Aurumai-grobbulus

I don’t think there’s a solution that will satisfy both types of players.

May I ask why the current shadowlands M+ system won’t satisfy both players.

It’s exactly like we have now, but just shows cross-realm players.

If you want want cross realm players, don’t invite them. Lots of folks do this with certain realms that have a bad reputation.

That would add more players to the dungeon pools and make it so you don’t get teleported to dungeons.

It still gives players agency over who is in their groups.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Aurumai-grobbulus

I don’t think a true compromise is possible. Players who do and don’t like dungeon finder want entirely different things. I don’t think there’s a solution that will satisfy both types of players.

That’s because there aren’t actually valid reason why RDF is bad. The anti RDF crowd just dislikes the idea not the actuality of the end result.

There have been plenty of compromises proposed that cover the actual reason the anti RDF crowd lies about why RDF is bad. If those aren’t acceptable to you the issue is you.

[Sethyl-faerlina]

@Ziryus-pagle

the anti RDF crowd lies about why RDF is bad

Cmon Ziryus, you and I debated a lot here, you are better than that.

We’re not lying, we’re speaking our opinion and perspective.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Sethyl-faerlina

@Ziryus-pagle

the anti RDF crowd lies about why RDF is bad

Cmon Ziryus, you and I debated a lot here, you are better than that.

We’re not lyi ng, we’re speaking our opinion and perspective.

That wasn’t targeted at people who are fine with reasonable compromises

It was targeted at people like the one I quoted who refuse to acknowledge the very real reasons people want RDF.

[Sethyl-faerlina]

alright haha

I’m still on for the compromise we discussed a few weeks ago. That seemed fair to me.

[Luuni-area-52]

@Ziryus-pagle

The anti RDF crowd just dislikes the idea not the actuality of the end result.

Not one person who is against RDF had offered a solution to folks on dead factions.

Spending money to transfer isn’t a solution. Folks shouldn’t have to spend money to fix blizzards mistake.

Why did we get 6+ hour queues? Lack of RDF, no one wants to be on a dead realm.

Blizzard said realms aren’t dead, but the perception is hard to change.

[Sethyl-faerlina]

@Luuni-area-52

Not one person who is against RDF had offered a solution to folks on dead factions.

We did, you just won’t listen to it.

Transfer. Blizzard often offers free transfers. If you invested hundreds of hours in a toon, well i guess paying 25$ is your solution… a LOT of people resigned to doing this in TBC. It kind of sucks, but your solution is right there.

I will say that I wish Blizzard were doing A LOT MORE to keep servers healthy and balanced, but I think they gave up on that a long time ago.

[Woddisc-sargeras]

@Luuni-area-52

Not one person who is against RDF had offered a solution to folks on dead factions.

Spending money to transfer isn’t a solution. Folks shouldn’t have to spend money to fix blizzards mistake.

I’ve explained in my thread that RDF being a solution for dead realms and factions is a solution for the sympotoms and not the disease. Blizzard needs to monitor and take care of their servers and not let a tool “fix” it. They’ve shown that there is in fact changes they want to implement that would potentially fix these issues: One being the culling of dead realms going into Wotlk (which did happen) and I’ll just quote the blue post for the faction balance solution:

Josh Greenfield said, "Instead of trying to twist players arms and force them to move to certain servers, we’d like to try a design solution to this. Essentially, the idea is that if you are the underdog faction, you have a massive bonus. Something like 50% increased honor, 20% increased experience, 10% bonus reputation, loot bags from quests, or whatever.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Sethyl-faerlina

@Luuni-area-52

Not one person who is against RDF had offered a solution to folks on dead factions.

We did, you just won’t listen to it.

Transfer. Blizzard often offers free transfers. If you invested hundreds of hours in a toon, well i guess paying 25$ is your solution… a LOT of people resigned to doing this in TBC. It kind of sucks, but your solution is right there.

I will say that I wish Blizzard were doing A LOT MORE to keep servers healthy and balanced, but I think they gave up on that a long time ago.

Transfers and servers mergers are at best only temporary solutions that don’t even cover all the problems. They only help with what is currently the dungeons being spammed. So they don’t help low level dungeons, they don’t help when most people have gone back to raid logging.

[Sethyl-faerlina]

Dead server have several other issues that CANT be solved with RDF, like a dead open world.

Blizzard need to be better at managing server health and population balance.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Woddisc-sargeras

@Luuni-area-52

Not one person who is against RDF had offered a solution to folks on dead factions.

Spending money to transfer isn’t a solution. Folks shouldn’t have to spend money to fix blizzards mistake.

I’ve explained in my thread that RDF being a solution for dead realms and factions is a solution for the sympotoms and not the disease. Blizzard needs to monitor and take care of their servers and not let a tool “fix” it. They’ve shown that there is in fact changes they want to implement that would potentially fix these issues: One being the culling of dead realms going into Wotlk (which did happen) and I’ll just quote the blue post for the faction balance solution:

Josh Greenfield said, "Instead of trying to twist players arms and force them to move to certain servers, we’d like to try a design solution to this. Essentially, the idea is that if you are the underdog faction, you have a massive bonus. Something like 50% increased honor, 20% increased experience, 10% bonus reputation, loot bags from quests, or whatever.

So instead of trying to twist players arms to force them to certain servers twist their arms to force them to certain servers.

Yeah that sounds about inline with the current dev’s level of competence…

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Sethyl-faerlina

Dead server have several other issues that CANT be solved with RDF, like a dead open world.

Blizzard ne ed to be better at managing server health and population balance.

They do but the problems RDF solves are not solely related to dead realms and exist on mega servers as well. As such RDF while not solving all the problems low pop realms have do solve some of them and those solutions also apply to healthy realms.