Should LFD have ever been implemented?

[SamR]

Several upcoming next-gen MMOs intentionally will be avoiding the use of an LFD system, mostly because they're steering away from the concept of instanced dungeons and other anti-immersion gameplay elements.

The MMO developers have seemingly only just started to realize that copying WoW isn't a good idea and that they need to be more innovative and creative instead. So, no, with the MMO market finally becoming more niche oriented and less casual-focused again, having an LFD system is definately not the best of ideas for the new upcoming AAA MMOs.

Well yeah, if you don't have dungeons you won't need a dungeon finder.

[Katchii]

Best thing ever. Anyone who says otherwise never tried to PuG without it.

Remember in TBC and early Wrath where shouting for specific dungeons and ONLY those dungeons was done. If you needed something from a specific dungeon...good luck finding 4 other people that also needed something from that dungeon and were willing to group with you and finish the dungeon. Also, as luck would have it they'd roll and win on the only item you needed (physical DPS Hourglass from Black Morass anyone?) thereby removing another person from the pool of possible group mates....

[Jester Joe]

Yes, BUT I think the way Heroic Scenario queue works is also nice, and even how Flex raiding is going to work so far.

It's nice to be able to queue into rather trivial difficulty things like normal/heroic dungeons, yet have the harder things need a pre-determined group so you can enter them, since that alone promotes more interaction with other players on your server.

[Hotsforyou]

No.

The only thing i have seen since the implementation of LFD/R is the death of a good community.

Best thing ever. Anyone who says otherwise never tried to PuG without it.

Remember in TBC and early Wrath where shouting for specific dungeons and ONLY those dungeons was done. If you needed something from a specific dungeon...good luck finding 4 other people that also needed something from that dungeon and were willing to group with you and finish the dungeon. Also, as luck would have it they'd roll and win on the only item you needed (physical DPS Hourglass from Black Morass anyone?) thereby removing another person from the pool of possible group mates....

I have played since Mid Vanilla. I never had an issue getting groups on my warlock or my Tank.

[Mormolyce]

Resounding yes.

What I really want to stress is that getting a group together manually is STILL IN THE GAME. It's not like they removed trade. If you'd prefer to get groups together YOU STILL CAN. And yet almost nobody does, not even the people who complain on the forums to this very day about LFD. Why is that? Oh yeah, because it's infinitely faster and easier to just queue for it.

The social interaction (at least in leveling) into getting a group was one of my favorite times in WoW

You liked sitting in trade for an hour spamming for a healer? And then you finally get one, fly to the dungeon, and your tank DCs, go back to town, spam for another hour, meanwhile your healer gets sick of waiting and leaves...

And that's assuming you were doing current content. If you wanted to do lower dungeons that people usually avoided, god help you.

- - - Updated - - -

No.

The only thing i have seen since the implementation of LFD/R is the death of a good community.

Fiction. People have been complaining about the death of the community since TBC at least.

[skwizna]

Ah, the good old days of vanilla grouping. Standing in IF for hours spamming your role, then finding one, spending 20min RIDING (no flying mounts btw) to the instance. Considering that many people couldnt afford the price of epic riding, that usually meant another 15-30min of waiting at the summon stone for another person. Then, once you got into the instance, group would disband after 1 or 2 wipes, or the tank would chime in something like "Shit my AV que just popped...gotta go!"

The only thing LFD did was take away the difficulty of having to run instance. If you decided you wanted to do a 5man, you damn well better be ready to spend the next 2hours at your keyboard. Some people LOVE punishing difficulty like that, and I can get that, but to say the LFD wasn't a brilliant way to solve a frustration felt by the majority of the community? Well that's just crazy talk.

[Mormolyce]

Several upcoming next-gen MMOs intentionally will be avoiding the use of an LFD system, mostly because they're steering away from the concept of instanced dungeons and other anti-immersion gameplay elements.

The MMO developers have seemingly only just started to realize that copying WoW isn't a good idea and that they need to be more innovative and creative instead. So, no, with the MMO market finally becoming more niche oriented and less casual-focused again, having an LFD system is definately not the best of ideas for the new upcoming AAA MMOs. An LFD system is only purposeful in very specific types of MMO (casual, theme park, etc.).

Well we'll see how well they do when they're not upcoming, won't we? SWTOR launched without an LFD feature and that fact had... a mixed response to say the least.

Also find it amusing that by rejecting an improvement WoW made in Wrath and going back to the way WoW was 4-8 years ago is somehow being innovative and revolutionary and not copying WoW.

Also, not that I have a problem with non-instanced MMOs either, it's a fine concept if you can get it to work... but remember, removing instances from MMOs just means regressing back to where they were in like, the early Ultima Online era.

I just really scratch my head over the way so many people on forums think progress in MMOs means going backwards and removing features (in this case, fundamental features that defined the genre even), instead of going forward and adding them.

[Esandarius]

Played release through cata. Some of my favorite memories were adventuring with other players. It was an adventure. You had to find the people and you had to travel to the zone. And it wasn't always safe to do so. Especially going to SM. You could often get some good world pvp around the entrances too. But it was hard. You had to find good reliable people of the appropriate level and often that just didn't happen. Tanks and healers were hard to come by and any distruptions to the group could spell its death because of the investment made. Once halfway through a dungeon if you lose a member and don't have a solid guild to rely on you just wasted a lot of time. I played a paladin and we were very popular at that time. We also were a great choice for healing, tanking, or dps. At lower levels we could work in desperation, and we did have good buffs, but usually it was off tank and off heal. Personally I loved that role. You would be wipe saver. Everyone's dead and you're left soloing that last elite for a few minutes while your group cheers you on. But I digress. Overall, it facilitated actually playing the game. In that way it was very much a positive. On the other hand it destroyed the nature of the game and I never enjoyed it as much in later expansions. Personally though, I felt that no experience would ever compare again to leveling the first time to 60 with everyone doing the same. End game didn't really exist and it took players a solid 15 days game time to reach 60.

[Dormie]

Not cross server. LFD should work exactly like it does now, except it only looks on your server, and it doesn't port you to the dungeon.

[ipaq]

The social interaction (at least in leveling) into getting a group was one of my favorite times in WoW, but was removed for convenience when LFD came in. So, if you could travel back in time, and stop LFD from ever being implemented, would you?

Cleaned up the thread title to stop any more grammar nonsense [ML]

Look at that our daily LFR/LFD QQ thread...

[damz2969]

LFD is great, LFR on the other hand...

[Durandro]

Not cross server. LFD should work exactly like it does now, except it only looks on your server, and it doesn't port you to the dungeon.

So you want the queue times to be much longer, and punish people on small unpopulated servers even more?

...right...

[Golden]

The social interaction (at least in leveling) into getting a group was one of my favorite times in WoW, but was removed for convenience when LFD came in. So, if you could travel back in time, and stop LFD from ever being implemented, would you?

You can level up all the way in WoW without ever stepping into a 5man and you can farm all the heroic 5man gear in about 2 weeks. How is it possible that LFD is responsible for WoW's bad community when 5man content has become almost irrelevant? If LFD had been released in vanilla WoW, I might have blamed it for WoW's bad community. Back then, people actually spent time in 5mans.

I personally think the loss of 40man raids effected the social behavior in WoW more. Back in those days, it wasn't unusual for guilds to have 120+ active members. That's what it took unless you had mandatory raid attendance. You could log in just about any night of the week and there would be 30 guildies online chatting. Also, you could bring about 5 new people to non-progression bosses to show them the raiding ropes without them wiping the raid all night. This allowed people to be a lot more tolerant of new players than now.

Back in the 40man days, when you looked around your server, a lot of times you knew what interests a player had because of what guild they were in. You knew the progression guilds, the casual raid guilds, the PvP guilds, the nice people guilds, the evil people guilds, etc. When a new person came to the server, you knew where to direct them based on their tastes. Now, in the days of 10man raids, the server has so many guilds, how does anyone keep track of them all? Plus, the only time you are likely to see a fellow guildie in a 10man raid guild is on raid night.

[taheen74]

The social interaction (at least in leveling) into getting a group was one of my favorite times in WoW, but was removed for convenience when LFD came in. So, if you could travel back in time, and stop LFD from ever being implemented, would you?

Cleaned up the thread title to stop any more grammar nonsense [ML]

Well then you must hate BG's also- since those required a queue when they first came out. And yes, while they were same server, if they had stayed that way into BC, BG's would have died out eventually when people started getting bored with them.

The LF systems make it possible to help newer players or players that may have come into the expac late find a dungeon more than once a day.

[Airwaves]

Yes. I tanked since launch to Firelands and even as a tank it was a prick to get groups for 5mans before lfd. LFD and LFR are the best things that have ever happened to wow.

[Dormie]

So you want the queue times to be much longer, and punish people on small unpopulated servers even more?

...right...

Yes that's exactly the premise of my idea. *facepalm*

Queue times would be fine. And if your on an unpopulated server that's a whole separate issue. There's a problem when you design the game around broken parts of the game.

[KCguy]

Yes, I do. People who were already raiding prior to LFR should have no problems with it. If they do, it makes no sense. It doesn't affect you or your guild group when raiding normal or heroic. You get better gear. Pretty simple.

EDIT: Woops. I thought that said LFR not LFD. As for LFD, I think it's fine. Easier to get people together and you don't have to trek all the way there. Also, what if people left? It was lame.

[Deleted]

You did the Cata heroics at the start, right? Those were only mildly challenging, and the community practically flipped their shit over them. Did you see them in an LFD pug? It was brutal.

I can handle challenging things. I cannot, under any circumstances, lead a bunch of sheep through something challenging. I have no patience for idiots, of which there is an abundance within the WoW community. Challenging content should remain as it is for H Scenarios (which aren't challenging at all) and challenge modes. Bring your own group. GC says it a lot and it's 100% true: challenging content and PuGs do not mix.

The early Cata Heroics are my all-time favorites in terms of difficulty. Yes, they were hard, but I'd rather wipe on tough encounters then snooze my way through piss-easy tank and spank bosses. I don't mind having to explain bossfights or having to wait for an explanation.

I wish they'd keep the Normal and Heroic distinction at max level. In my ideal world, it would look like this (using MoP as an example):
Pre-90 Dungeon: 2 new dungeons. Bosses give a small amount of JP.
90 Normal Dungeons: 5 new dungeons. Bosses give JP. Final boss gives VP. Difficulty similar to current day Heroics. Drops 463 gear.
90 Heroic Dungeons: 9 dungeons - 7 of them new MoP dungeons, 2 revamped old dungeons. Bosses give x% more JP/VP (say 25%). Difficulty similar to Cataclysm Heroics. Drops 463 gear, has an x% chance per boss to drop an additional item.

Everybody can get VP like this. If you queue up with a well-oiled guild group, doing Heroics might earn you more VP/hour. If you're queuing on your own, it might prove more efficient to race through the easier Normal dungeons. If you're up for a real challenge, queue up on your own for a Heroic and take them on with 4 strangers. There's something in it for everyone.

[Teriz]

I'd forgotten how awful life was before LFD came out. Then I played SWOTR, which didn't have LFD because people told the devs that LFD killed WoW's community and would kill the SWOTR community too. So the devs didn't put it in.

What happened? People spending several minutes to an hour trying to pull groups of FOUR people together. And this was when the game first came out, so there were tons of people playing at the time. The issue continued as people leveled, and still had to wait hours for groups to form to do operations and flashpoints. Eventually the community that was supposed to be helped by the lack of LFD ended up getting killed by it. People started to demand LFD get put into the game, but the devs continued to listened to a few vocal people on web forums, and left it out for months after release. Players started dropping left and right, mostly because they couldn't participate in dungeons, and for other reasons as well. The game went F2P a few months later.

Now SWOTR has LFD.

[chrisisvacant]

My god I wish these pointless threads would stop. No matter how many times you ask - LFD and LFR have high participation and people like it. If you don't, move on.