blizzard builds a game that emphasizes repetition, customers play the same content until their eyes bleed for pixels.
time played metrics lead to this behavior, all to justify the expense of creating every more repetitive content…
Qualification: I’m talking about leveling dungeons. At this point in Wow’s history the game has become for many of it’s community what is tantamount to a online single player experience.
This. The speed racers are a product of Wow mishandling the original design and fostering redundant repetitive gameplay. Originally Wow was developed as a mmorpg.
Now it has devolved into an mmo. With the rpg very basic, trivial rpg elements. Also the longevity of the game 20 years. Has produced a large population of Wow addicts that continue to run in circles doing exactly the same thing on a repetition loop. This game is what it is and will ever be; a digital mouse wheel. The players on a subliminal level hate doing the same thing perpetually. So they devise ways to “get the grind over with faster.” So they can speed run another dungeon. This psychological loop is induced by the addiction to the game. They hate playing Wow but can’t stop. So they rush through the experience.
All rpg games are built this way. Single player games as well as mmorpgs. But single player games are basically one-shot deals. Even when the player plays a single player game several times. They eventually stop and file the game away.
Mmorpgs are more longer lasting since the company will add expacs for it on a regular bases. But even these mmorpgs become obsolete when the player base gets tired of the redundant gameplay. And fall by the wayside with only a ghost of the player population of people playing. Wow has always been a good game. But with the entrance of new corporate ownership, as well as a complete turnover of staff. The game is being lead by people that have changed the game from what it was. Hence the enabling of the speed runners. One basic truth about any addict including game addicts is that they will never admit to being addicted. Instead they will continue to do the same thing over and over and over. Even though it’s meaningless and counter productive. A complete waste of time.
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What are you missing in the dungeon if you’re going fast compared to slow? You’re still clearing the same content.
It’s not fun for YOU. Most people probably don’t feel that way. I know I personally enjoy faster dungeon dungeon runs and pushing myself to whatever limits that I have. Not because I dislike the dungeon, just because it’s FUN to go fast.
Are you implying that WoW, at some point in the past, was not based on a repetitive content end game loop?
You’re still saving time by running fast even with the longer Q times to get into the dungeon. Let’s say dungeon Q times are 15 minutes. A fast group can clear a dungeons in 10 minutes, the slow group takes 20.
Now let’s assume a person plays for 4 hours. They do nothing but run dungeons in those 4 hours.
To do this we set up the following definitions:
Wait time: W = 15 minutes
Clear Time for Fast Group: Cf= 10
Clear Time for Slow Group: Cs= 20
Total Available time: T = 240 minutes
Fast group: Cycle Time (f) = W+Cf=15+10=25 minutes
Slow group: Cycle Time (s) = W+Cs=15+20=35 minutes
We then calculate the number of dungeons each group can run in 240 minutes as well as leftover time (assuming there is a hard stop at the 4 hour mark)
Fast group = 10 dungeons in 4 hours
Slow Group = 6 dungeons in 4 hours
The fast group runs 66.67% MORE dungeons than the slow group in the same amount of time.
For close to the first 6 years of Wow there wasn’t even a dungeon finder.
Blizzard introduced the Dungeon Finder, also known as the “Looking for Dungeon” (LFD) system, in World of Warcraft in patch 3.3.0 late 2009.
The Dungeon Finder was designed to form parties for 5-man dungeons by selecting players from all servers in the battlegroup of the current realm. It was integrated with the Raid Finder and Scenario Finder in patch 5.0.4.
The Dungeon Finder is only available in modern World of Warcraft and Cataclysm Classic, not in WoW Classic Era.
Before dungeon finder players had to talk to each other and travel to Dungeon location meeting stones. Gathering at the meeting stone then, enter the dungeon itself where they would proceed with caution, pull single packs of mobs and use cc etc. Also they would talk about best route to navigate through the dungeon and best strategies to kill bosses . That’s how the game was originally designed to be played.
Because of changes in the leveling system people exploit it to create twinks. Which can run through the dungeon killing all enemies and reach the last boss and kill it within 5 minutes. But for these exploits people would have to do dungeons slower. As designed
Ok, fine, now redo the equation factoring in a wait time of 1 minute per dungeon. See the result.
Cool.
You still do this with m+
This also had nothing to do with anything I said. You spoke earlier with the implication that repeating content was a “corporate” blizzard thing or something. And therefore WoW is no longer a MMORPG
I disagree based on the fact classic WoW had repeating content. Along with every MMORPG ever.
It had everything to do with what you said.
Ok . I will ask again.
Are you saying that early WoW did not have repeating content for its end game loop?
Any way you shake a stick at this, the faster group is going to get more runs in. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. But here is a breakdown with different Q times.
0 min: Fast -24 dungeons Slow - 12 dungeons
1 min: Fast - 21 dungeons Slow - 11 dungeons
5 min: Fast - 16 dungeons Slow - 9 dungeons
10 min: Fast - 12 dungeons Slow - 7 dungeons
15 min: Fast - 10 dungeons Slow - 6 dungeons
20 min: Fast - 8 dungeons Slow - 5 dungeons
Edit: No matter what, the faster dungeon is always getting in more runs. So the time to reward ratio is simply better. For both groups to get the same number of runs in (1) the Queue timer would have to be 111 minutes. Otherwise the fast group is going to get more runs in within a 4 hour window. (again assuming there is a hard stop at 4 hours so partial runs are not counted).
I see there has been a miscommunication. My point is this; take a dungeon group that can clear a dungeon in 5 minutes. Then reduce the waiting time for the next dungeon from what it is on average now 30 minutes. To only 1 minute. This combination of a fast dungeon clear time as well as vastly reduced wait time will make the dungeon runs exponentially faster. Regardless of how many runs this group make per day. Those runs will be way more faster with only a wait time of 1 minute than if it was a 30 minute wait time between runs.
Example 1: A person runs a dungeon in 5 minutes, than waits 30 minutes till the next dungeon pops = 35 minutes total.
Example 2: A person runs a dungeon in 5 minutes, than waits 1 minute till the next dungeon pops = 6 minutes total
Well, yes, that much is obvious. I think you’re right, there may have been some miscommunication here. The way I interpreted your original message was that running faster didn’t matter since you’d still face long wait times no matter how quickly you clear the dungeon.
If your argument is simply that shorter wait times are better, then we’re on the same page. I just don’t see how that could be achieved (shorter wait times), unless we start adding bots to the queue, and I doubt anyone wants that.
You just said the solution. If Blizzard wants to continue to support the speed racers abilities to speed not only through dungeons, but also jump into the next dungeons faster they can use the same system they already have in place for follower dungeons. And it would work like this: When a player joins a dungeon finder. A timer counts down. When it reaches 1 minute in queue the system notices how many real players are in the queue then adds NPC bots to fill out the party as per the rpg trinity requirements.
Example: Bob joins dungeon finder queue as a Mage dps character. Ted joins the queue as a Healer character. Alice joins the queue as a Hunter dps character. The system then adds two npc bots; a tank bot, and a dps bot. And then the group spawns into the dungeon. The bots will move at the same rate of speed as the human players are moving. A player can choose to be part of a human / bot mix. Or they can choose to join a private solo group filled-out with npc bots. And they can choose to wait for all human players as they do now. This gives all players the freedom of choice.
So then, this solves the problem. A person that wants to speed race through the dungeon can. And people that want to proceed through the dungeon at a moderate or slower speed can.
This would effectively do away with long waiting queue times for all the players. A quality of life improvement.
Pros: long dungeon finder wait times completely removed from the game. You can join a group as a public or private game. You can run the dungeon any way you want.
Cons: None.
Everybody wins.
Time is valuable, so I can kind of see the point, even if it seems rude since being too far behind cheats you out of the boss kill/loot. As someone who’s mostly tanking, I control the speed of the dungeon’s progression. I’ll try to go as fast as the healer and myself is able to keep up with, while still allowing anyone who fell behind to catch up for boss credit.
If Mr Zippy the level 10 windwalker monk wants to blast through as fast as he possibly can because he doesn’t need me or the healer…I’ll step back and just let him carry me. Faster levels for me. If Mr Zippy is just an impatient dps, I’ll let him tank the extras he pulls if I think it’s beyond my ability. If he can, great. If not and he dies, great. If not and we wipe because of him, it’s big boot time. 
Otherwise, grabbing extra things to kill might even just speed up the run a bit, so rock on.
I enjoyed reading your opinion. And I would like to ask you this. What would you recommend to players that don’t want to speed-run a dungeon. Since most dungeons seem to be run by twinks now. What alternative is there for players who don’t want to run dungeons at speed. So lets see. They can leave the group and suffer a penalty. They can try to kick the twink, then have to wait for a new tank that might be another twink. Or they can stay and be unhappy. That’s all I can think of right now. So what do you suggest?
Every “speedy” player is going to be different. If I get the vibe the group wants to slow down, I do. Some won’t, though. Ultimately though, it’s just how a lot of people run dungeons because of Blizzard’s trashy scaling, so it’s worth it for players to try adapting.
Ideals and reality don’t always align, unfortunately.
I have one thing to add to this from a Blood DK point of view.
There is very little I’ve experienced so far in the game that matches the dopamine I get from crashing a fed-Blood Beast on a Sanlayn DK into a double or triple pack pull. It was very likely designed with the idea of Casino in mind but even doing it in a LFD just feels so satisfying. It’s risky, it’s time sensitive but the payoff is chefs kiss and is partly why I certainly like big, speedy pulls on my DK.
While it can vary by the response, I tend to be very receptive to also doing things nice and slow. Often it can just be a matter of communication.
vanilla was based on a different model, leveling thru stories involved running zones and dungeons that involved storey progression and when complete after a week of runs, were no longer necessary to complete the game. PVP involved randomness as driven by the players themselves.
now it’s just multiple dungeon runs for currency until the joy is gone…
it just sorta happened…