LFX - why remove the tool?

[Vaelorian]

The crossrealm part is that ppl are tired of having ppl join to check on a spawn of some pet or rare and then immediately dropping the group. I once went thru 14 people doing that while I was doing dailies in Tanaan. The best part was having 2 of them do it 6+ times.


You can crossrealm dungeons just fine. What blizz shud implement is a deserter like debuff for ppl who leave within the first 3 minutes or something.

While I respect your opinion, I doubt that you understand or read the thread explaining what is wrong with the crossrealm addition to the LFX-tool. You provide no other information then what you like about it. You don't go into what's been said sofar and how that could effect anything. Crossrealm isn't just about rare spawns or nodes.

[grandgato]

People have become overly dependent on it, which has broken down the need and usefulness of social bonds - we're at a stage where waiting for friends and guildmates to come online is this massive inconvenience. Most friendships developed at a result of having similar play-hours, so you'd end up in groups with the same people regularly and ultimately stop needing to spam trade. With the LF tools, especially with cross-realm, the chances of you seeing the same person twice are almost nil; and if it does happen, it's so irregular that you'd never make the connection in order to ever ask the question.

There are ample tools, rewards and incentives to encourage people to participate in organized group content. If players want to form those social bonds, they will.

What made the game bad with LFG/LFR is all of sudden people weren't held accountable for their actions. I love the idea of just making it the connected realms, that way there's still some accountability. Currently people join via queue and can be pricks and nothing can be done about it. If the group bumps them they just re-queue and continue being jerks. It used to be if you did rude things like ninja loot or leave after you downed the one boss and got the one piece of gear you needed the word spread and you eventually got blacklisted. It made people think about the group as a whole and not just themselves, LFG/LFR got rid of that.

You can resolve all of the issues above with personal loot, the vote kick and /ignore. It sounds like what you are really advocating for is giving players the ability to gate other players from participating in any form of endgame.

[Deleted]

It's about automating team formation FFS, it's about removing the personal aspect in building a group of persons. You can't get much more anti-social than that.

But the fact it builds groups automatically doesnt make it antisocial. The tool is neither very socal nor anti social, as it just builds groups of people to play the game. Gameplay is what matters most in a computer game.

The fact that the tools and the dungeon design makes communication irrelevant is conveniently ignored.

For people who dont want to communicate much in a computer game to start with. And please dont repeat the "But MMO is about organized groups" dogma, as 70-80% of the players play matchmade gameplay mainly, and only a few organize in groups.

Typical caricature of the people too antisocial to be accepted in a group. There is TONS of social raiding guilds without a military organisation.

So you build a stereotype out of my idea that it just doesnt matter if groups are "socially" built or not?

As said in my previous post : I see a pattern.

The only pattern is that you need a scapegoat because the game isnt as much fun as in the old days anymore. And your scapegoat are conveniences and game improvements.

[A dot Ham]

Honestly and this may sound rather weird... but things were a lot more interesting on your server if someone did ninjaloot. I am not saying that I like ninjalooters. I put them on ignore and if possible would have blacklisted them on our server (not talking about greens or because the guy simply is too stupid or due to miscommunication here, but genuine malintent).

But please don't respond to that above paragraph. Instead respond to this: Personal Loot while great, is also imo deeply flawed as the expectation/anticipation/lust for loot diminishes with PL. That walk that you made to the corpse in total excitement and hope.. even if you didn't get anything. Or that window that popped up to roll for an item, that great feeling when you saw your item drop even if you didn't win, made your heart flutter. Ninjalooters. I almost never experienced them anyway, in current or old WoW. I think this kind of behavior doesn't happen very often. You might have different experiences ofcourse. But as I said earlier... my experience with "ninja" incidents were mostly related to stupidity or miscommunication. Not malintent.

I used ninja looter because its one of the re-definitions of anti-social behavior. Back in vanilla when I played on draenor I remember a handful of ninja looters (not by name, but by my experiences with them) several of them were actually decent players and would still make it into PuG raids despite the fact that they had reputations for doing so. My point is that everyone feels like the old vanilla and the community that played had an effective way of dealing with said players... that's just not true. There was always an influx of new players to prey upon, and some people just weren't privy to their actions. But I would still see the name(s) pop up on occasion. "DON'T GROUP WITH P**********T, HE'S A NINJA LOOTER!" Ya we know, sorry he got you.

Its another case of rose colored glasses.

[Jessicka]

There are ample tools, rewards and incentives to encourage people to participate in organized group content. If players want to form those social bonds, they will.

There is absolutely nothing, right up to Heroic raiding, that rewards and incetivises building a consistent social network. Only Mythic raiding does, anything below that can be done 'solo' through inconsistent random groupings through the LFD tool where even though the level of success is wildly varying, for most players the convenience of it trumps the consistency and better overall game experience that a consistent group can provide. It's created habitual random puggers with low expectations of success and quality, and it's entirely self defeating.

[Deleted]

This can't be because we've been doing the same content for 10 months now. Hell mythic participation rates have pretty much stayed the same through this horrendous content lull. Blizzard can do things to foster community, so can the players. Asking for absurd requirements in the premade finder ain't it. Not to say they've been doing that shit since wrath. That one dude saying running to the dungeons was a experience. Here was the majority of the conversations that took place.

Dude: can I get a summon?
Dude2: sure.

That was it. Nostalgia and rose colored glasses are a bitch.

Well that and we kicked useless players constantly but for some reason people always overlook that..

The problem isn't with the tool but how the game is built around it.

LFD worked through most of wrath because players still had standards of tanking, healing, and damage from tbc. If people didn't perform well enough they where quickly removed and replaced it was a good system that fostered decent levels of play.

Blizzard fucked this up by adding kick timers. Encouraging people to carry trash. When that wasn't enough they added a desertion penalty so you couldn't run from trash without being punished. Finally they added kick protection so the drooling retards who people would actually go watch a tv show to be able to kick would be carried.

This stripping down of tools to destroy groups ability to police groups and enforce standards. Ultimately lead to the lfd/lfr of today. empty meaningless content you are not allowed to lose at...

The tools or at the tool of lfd is fine , however blizzard HAS to allow players the power to remove whoever they want whenever they want. It is the only way content can ever be decent rather then utter faceroll.

[melodramocracy]

I'll post what I have elsewhere on the issue. LFX tools reduce the relevancy of guilds or other forms of team building, and also speed up content consumption.... neither of which are particularly good for the game in the long term.

The group finder tools are an answer to inherent drawbacks in realm / population splitting requirements, but there are better ways to do things.

[Deleted]

LFX tools reduce the relevancy of guilds or other forms of team building

If that was true, we would have a lower % of organized raiders nowadays than ever before.

Which isnt true. So your idea is just a myth.

and also speed up content consumption

While its nonexistence would ask people to quit even earlier, as they had no content left which would fit to their playstyle.

Also a myth.

Have you actually got some useful arguments?

[djcoin]

It removed the need to go anywhere outside of the main city and shallows the overall experience of the game. Plus it doesn't do any favors to worldpvp. Lots of content and depth added by simply removing that bane of a tool from the game.

[judgementofantonidas]

Yes? Did I say anything on the contrary?

The whole LF( ) system supports such players.

[Kallisto]

The looking for Tool was a godsend for people that work nights and mornings. I don't miss the days of spamming

And for those people calling for it to be removed you have to suck up two options.

A) Somehow have a million and one friends who are suddenly going to be on at an off peak hour

or

B) Give up on MMOs because you don't have a million and one spare hours

God forbid if you have shift work, in their ideal MMO you'd have no chance of playing because you'd be on at different hours different weeks. Don't even think about raiding because god forbid someone with less than 3 spare hours a day can do any kind of progression. Their ideal MMO = second life for the unemployed.

[grandgato]

There is absolutely nothing, right up to Heroic raiding, that rewards and incetivises building a consistent social network.Only Mythic raiding does, anything below that can be done 'solo' through inconsistent random groupings through the LFD tool where even though the level of success is wildly varying, for most players the convenience of it trumps the consistency and better overall game experience that a consistent group can provide. It's created habitual random puggers with low expectations of success and quality, and it's entirely self defeating.

So, just to be clear, any guild or organized group that doesn't raid Mythic shouldn't be considered a "consistent social network"?

I'll post what I have elsewhere on the issue. LFX tools reduce the relevancy of guilds or other forms of team building, and also speed up content consumption.... neither of which are particularly good for the game in the long term.

The group finder tools are an answer to inherent drawbacks in realm / population splitting requirements, but there are better ways to do things.

They remove them from being mandatory for any meaningful endgame progression, but they don't remove their relevance. If you want to participate in organized group content guilds are still your best bet.

[Traveler Voltin]

Not really you would end up being Zanjin-Shadow council.

merges and connected servers are 2 different things.

merges make 2(or more) servers into 1 server. with that it forces name changes of people that share the same name.

connected servers connect 2(or more) servers and they act like 1 server but allow people to keep their names.

[Dezminion]

Better to remove all queues then, remove LFG and xrealms, ppl would need to walk to the dungeons to enter them and gather groups via /trade
Remove LFR, since it is wrong, that ppl who honestly do not have time to raid with a guild.
Remove Premade Group Finder, since you know xrealms is removed too, better to just spam /2
Remove Random BG queues, and remove battle groups, since server community needs to go up, ppl would need to walk to the entrances if the BG's to enter and stay at the entrance area, or they would not be called to the starting fight.
Place areenas to the world, remove arena queues, you would need to talk to a dude at the areena to que up. Then you would need to wait at the areena area for your turn to pop up.

That would be much WoW, huge immersive....

[Jessicka]

So, just to be clear, any guild or organized group that doesn't raid Mythic shouldn't be considered a "consistent social network"?

Are there all that many 'social' guilds left? And how social are they? There certainly aren't any Heroic raiding guilds on my realm; they can't recruit against a backdrop of it being easier and more convenient to find an LFG group.

[Vaelorian]

Are there all that many 'social' guilds left? And how social are they? There certainly aren't any Heroic raiding guilds on my realm; they can't recruit against a backdrop of it being easier and more convenient to find an LFG group.

Social guilds? Social guilds are social or they aren't imo. Progresswise it has nothing much in common with either mythic or normal.
But if you meant social guilds as in - guildchat being an overglorified chatroom, perhaps.

I mean when I was GM of my "hardcore guild" my guild was very much social. Atleast if you raided with us.

[Nelaphim-EX]

On a server that has a Horde population of roughly '390' at peak times this late in the expansion, cross-realm LFX is amazing.

If they combined servers to make healthier populations, it would be fine to make it server only. But until then, I like being able to play the group-required parts of the game without having to pay for a server transfer.

[Derpling]

They'll never remove it, thank goodness. The number of people that want it gone to bring back the mythical ~community~ they romanticize so hard may be very vocal, but they're very much a minority.

[TwilightAss]

LFG(LFR) must not be removed. There must be 3 difficulty levels. Automatic group assembling, flex group size. Manual group assembling(hence we have group finder now), flex group size. Manual group assembling, fixed group size + infinite difficulty adjustment. So Normal - Heroic - Mythic+ system for any instanced content. Just rename LFG(LFR) to normal dungeons(raids) already. Make some rating system for automatic assembling groups(helped some dude with group quest? Nice, +1 raiting from him. Was good in your last battlegroud? +1 raiting from some people; you are toxic retard, who is always afk in LFR? Get your -over 9000, be at the end of any queue, and fucking leave this game already, don't spoil the comunity by promoting toxic behavior). Realized that you were wrong? You can always clean your karma by helping another players in small tasks many times.

Wanna go higher level then normal? There MUST be some attunement for that, with some real requirements(kind of like gold challenges, not silver - silver may be done by anybody, who is not just auto attacking, not endless - cause they are overkill for such content as heroic; people must learn smth about movement and control abilities). You ask why the hell this is needed? Cause if people don't have some realistic attunement system(realistic, not silver challenges, or 610 IL) to separate bad and very bad players, they make such attunements themselves in form of unrealistic item level requirements. And cause of that new, but promising players who actually want to be better, suffer greatly.

Second reason why attunements are good. Less people will whine to nerf content. Look, if you have people who consistently are not able to kill boss and take loot - they start whining. Why? Cause loot is almost in their grasp, they feel like they deserved it by lots of attempts(it's like candy, wich was taken away in the last moment). Such people just must not have acess to such content. They will just wipe in challenges. Yes they will still whine, but not so often. Do you ever seen people who wine that brawlers guild must be nerfed? No? It's cause there is no loot there.

[Deleted]

Just like removing flying should have "revive the open world PVP", but it didn't
People expect removing LFD to "revive the groups where people talked", but it won't.

Some players are just stuck in the past with their rose tinted glasses. They can't understand that wow players changed in 10 years, that nothing can bring vanilla feeling back.

Playing vanilla on Nost brought that feeling back. I had that feeling and it was great. Who are you to tell me that nothing could bring that back?
I kind of hate when people pull these conclusions that they made up themselves. You don't know, nor will you ever know, how people feel when playing vanilla. saying anything else is ignorant and, frankly, stupid.

but going back on topic:
I could see the usefullness of LFR and seeing a vanilla server with a few touch-ups would be nice, but I think most people would worry that adding LFR (and other things) would just make a vanilla server with the gameplay of current, which ain't what they want. Myself I could see a LFR work if they remove the instant teleport and crossrealm features.