[speculation] Blizzard is planning to remove the auto-matchmaking system

[bufferunderrun]

In the recent xpacks is becoming pretty obvious that blizzard don't like the auto-matchmaking system and take any chance they have to push peoples outside it, they first purged it for any kind of reward beside gear, they then proceeded into making that gear inferior to what can be obtained in outside world (upgraded timeless, baleful, and now WQ gear), right now in every thread someone rise an argument the preferred answer is "us the group finder".

The last major attemp to drive peoples outside it is to create dungeon without this option, Arcway, CoS and Karazhan i'm pretty much sure that if not in a future legion patch next xpack they will make a raid without it.

Let's face it the auto-matchmaking as been invented by Blizzard and right now there is no mmo of a certain quality that don't have it, i remember peoples crying in swtor chat and forum asking for it, i see FFXIV has it for all the difficulties except the equivalent of wow mythic, but seem that it's own inventor is now trying to kill it.

what did you think?

note: i'm not talking about the difficulties, i'm specifically talking about the auto-matchmaking tool, FFXIV has proved that you can put normal and heroic in an automated system and peoples still kill the bosses with the same success rate of the manual looking for a group, the choice to make lfr and lfg extremely easy is from Blizzard alone.

[fled]

Thats how a lot of us grown ups with families and professions are able to still enjoy this game to a certain degree. If they ever removed it id fuck off back to Battlefield 1 and the likes. Casuals would exodus.

[Makorus]

How?

Because there are Mythic Only dungeons?

How is that them trying to kill it?

[skitzy129]

Dumb thread. Horribly stupid assumptions.

[Galbrei]

Thats how a lot of us grown ups with families and professions are able to still enjoy this game to a certain degree. If they ever removed it id fuck off back to Battlefield 1 and the likes. Casuals would exodus.

I don't buy this argument at all. It takes the same amount of time (less if you're a DPS) to just form a group on Group Finder. Your "grown up life with families and professions" isn't stopping you from doing mythic dungeons, your lack of basic social skills is.

[Jewsco]

I don't buy this argument at all. It takes the same amount of time (less if you're a DPS) to just form a group on Group Finder. Your "grown up life with families and professions" isn't stopping you from doing mythic dungeons, your lack of basic social skills is.

Does it? Is it exactly the same as joining a que and being able to do other things like world quests waiting for the que. or to stare at the group finder waiting for people to join doing nothing else. Also when forming ones own group it is more or less assumed you know said dungeon pretty well versus in lfd where it could be your first time ever.
Also some people just don't want to or like to lead and the thought of it makes them nervous and upset.
My answer to them is join a guild or make in game friends to play with it makes ones life a lot easier.
I pug or use any form of looking for as little as humanly possible.

[Deleted]

Excellent Deduction.

Really hope they remove all auto-queue-able content, the Looking for Group Search Tool is excellent. All the recent Expansions have proven over and over again, that if you make content accessible vial LFR/LFG, Blizz has to remove any challenge that might be in those Dungeons.

Normals and HC are a complete Joke, there is zero point in doing them. Just having normal (what is now called mythic), and mythic + with keystones would be enough. LFR is the same, I walked through it in 15 mins, no challenge in it whatsoever. Yawn.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Meh, I find it hard to believe and honestly feels like reaching for straws. Especially considering the fact that we've had the matchmaking system longer than not, and we see how it went when they tried to remove something else which had that same status.

I think they'll keep hiding better rewards behind content which requires manual grouping, as they should. Want challenge in dungeons? Mythic+ is your game. Want challenge in raiding content? HC+ is your game. No one concerned with being challenged by the game should be afraid of the matchmaking systems when they're so damned optional.

[Golden]

I don't buy this argument at all. It takes the same amount of time (less if you're a DPS) to just form a group on Group Finder. Your "grown up life with families and professions" isn't stopping you from doing mythic dungeons, your lack of basic social skills is.

People on the internet aren't very nice. I don't think a lot of people are going to appreciate being forced to hang out with a bunch of internet bullies in order to play the game. IMO, that's what makes the auto-queuing popular. If people are misbehaving in a group, it's very easy with auto-queuing to just leave and catch the next group. Furthermore, with group finder, people expect you to be standing outside the entrance to the instance while the group forms, so you can't really keep questing, etc. while waiting.

[mysticx]

The only thing as constant as Blizzard's attempts to push people out of queueable content is the failure of each of those attempts, they backpedalled on the "Crap sets from LfR"-scheme, i think that trying mythic-only dungeons is borne from desperation rather than confidence, if mythic did so very well in WoD Blizz wouldn't have resorted to "Do this in mythic or not at all!", like the two Suramar 5-mans and the upcoming neo-Karazhan, i wonder what the actual participation-stats are for mythic dungeons, not that Blizz is going to tell us of course...

[Sansnom]

I don't buy this argument at all. It takes the same amount of time (less if you're a DPS) to just form a group on Group Finder. Your "grown up life with families and professions" isn't stopping you from doing mythic dungeons, your lack of basic social skills is.

When everyone are more courteous and helpful and requires sensible requirement for entry, then maybe the queue can be removed. Your jumping on the "lack of social skill" rebuttal is evident to the reason why the automatic queue is required.

Forming your own group is not always an option. If I was a 810 DPS trying to form a group looking for tanks and healers and there were other groups with 820+ DPS, which would people pick? The highest one.

The "lack of social skill" is a common remark from people against the automatic remark. It has nothing to do with social skill. Judging from the posts on this forum from various people, many of us suffers from "lack of social skills".

[Pull My Finger]

No, they're not planning to remove it. But they're trying to establish a climate where players are more encouraged and more comfortable with engaging in content without relying on matchmaking.

It's gonna backfire. It's already noticeable that this is being interpreted as the wrong kind of signal by the wrong part of the community. What I'm seeing right now is that some people are taking this as encouragement to impose arbitrary, overblown and often nonsensical expectations on their fellow players. It creates a kind of segregation that's ultimately detrimental to the community and the game - humorously, an antisocial kind of approach hiding behind a judgemental and patronizing stance of preaching the "community spirit". What we are seeing is the paradox of holier-than-thou, antisocial people (and frankly, in some cases outright jerks) berating everyone else as being "antisocial".

Ironically, in time, this will all highlight (and perhaps even refresh Blizzard's own memory) why matchmaking even became necessary back in the day when it was implemented. Historically, it was needed because of the unreasonable and segregating behavior of players. The biggest asset of matchmaking is the fact that it's impartial and inclusive. It may be a shame that the game needs it, but the community has time and again proven its immaturity and inability to regulate and organize itself in a constructive way without it.

[Otimus]

I sincerely doubt it. I wish we could see actual participating numbers.

I'd be willing to bet even if mythics were easier than heroics, yet awarded 860's by default, they still wouldn't approach the participation numbers of heroics by like... even close to half.


What Blizzard is ACTUALLY doing is trying to make connected-group content for smaller player sizes, and they just haven't really found a way to put longer and harder versions of these in a finder format yet. (Like, arcway, I could, for example, seeing that scaling down easily enough, but the instance is decently sized, and decently long, so they'd basically have to split something like that in half... and with the new Kara? They'd probably have to split it into even more slices.)

What's more likely to come of this is the flex system in raids scaling down to even less than 10 people. Possibly 8! Maybe less. It's pretty easy to see that this is the entire goal they've been trying to aim for, in making "personal" group content for smaller and smaller groups. It's basically been what they've started since BC and worked towards shrinking ever since (Since that's one of the biggest hurdles for raiding.)

Outside of that, the auto-finders have a great purpose and a reason for existing, and that's being able to do content without prejudice without basically running the show yourself. Auto-finders are a forward system, they're not going to go backwards on that. Especially not when the one they have for finding manual groups is so lousy.

[oldgeezer]

i wonder what the actual participation-stats are for mythic dungeons, not that Blizz is going to tell us of course...

I'd be very interested to know this too. I assume that Chaud can dig the stats out at some point.

[skitzy129]

Why is this still open? Such baseless retarded shit.

[Galbrei]

People on the internet aren't very nice. I don't think a lot of people are going to appreciate being forced to hang out with a bunch of internet bullies in order to play the game. IMO, that's what makes the auto-queuing popular. If people are misbehaving in a group, it's very easy with auto-queuing to just leave and catch the next group. Furthermore, with group finder, people expect you to be standing outside the entrance to the instance while the group forms, so you can't really keep questing, etc. while waiting.

That doesn't make any sense. You're not playing alone when you use auto queue, you have the same people, the same bullies there as in group finder, the only difference is that with auto queuing they're just randoms picked by a machine, more inclined to look at you as another number, another cog, than another person trying to achieve a similar goal. And if push comes to shove, leaving a group finder party is no different, except you don't get a deserter debuff from doing that, making group finder even more appealing to people with little patience for toxic behavior. You do have to fly to the portal (or at least 2 people have to) but that's a small price to pay imo.

[4dahorde]

Thats how a lot of us grown ups with families and professions are able to still enjoy this game to a certain degree. If they ever removed it id fuck off back to Battlefield 1 and the likes. Casuals would exodus.

I am an adult (40 years old), have a family (wife and 2 kids), and work a 40-50hr/week job. Yet I STILL find time to play this game, even organized raiding and mythic+s without using ANY form of group finder. This entire "I have a life, wife, job outside of wow, I need things to be quick and easy" is the most asanine arguement ever, and one of the MAJOR reasons things in this game have become so retardedly easy. IF YOU DON"T HAVE THE TIME TO PLAY AN MMO STYLE GAME, then go somewhere else. Stop expecting a game company to design their game around YOUR lifestyle..if you want to play their game, then find a way to move YOUR lifestyle to their game.

[Count Zero]

The bonus satchel gives you like 1k worth of stuff. If they wanted to kill auto grouping they'd get rid of that. Queues would be unbearable and it'd die.

Also giving tier back to LFR ... if they wanted to kill it they wouldn't have done that.

[Sorrior]

One thing about ffxiv is that they add their equivalent if mythic after 3 months during what is termed a "catch up patch(no Ilv increase but gear equivalent or damn near equivalent to raiders becomes easier with their own version of lfr 24 man random que only raids)

About wow the issue I have is the community I am playing to relax and rest mostly I have the time but GIDDAMN if wows community isn't the second most toxic next to LoL. It was actually the community that had me leave originally and probably one reason ffxiv does so well(both commercially and with DF) essentially people their are often more willing to WORK on a fight. I mean he'll you cannot solo some raid fights even with full power(ffxiv has timewalking baseline so if I que for a 50 raid as a 60 I WILL be downleveled skills gear and all to about Ilv 130 2.0 cap and with all level 50 skills) but I can choose to enter with a pre-made at full power. Even full power some fights either hot that hard Orchard that mechanic heavy. I do not see alot of Wow players being up for that kind of thing.

All in all I feel removal of lfr/lfd as a mistake a very big one and possibly unsubworthy by many players myself included.

[4dahorde]

I'd be very interested to know this too. I assume that Chaud can dig the stats out at some point.

Why does it matter?? So you have more bullshit ammo to say "WTF Blizzard, only 40% of your players are doing mythics, see how fucking stupid it was to make them hard and require a group" then if they did make the auto finder available, I WOULD LOVE to see the stats on how many posts are created saying "OMG, mythics are too hard, nerf these" or the stats on how many were actually completed with the original group that entered., if completed at all before people gave up.