Do you think Dungeon/Raid Finder was a good addition?

[JFrombaugh]

Dungeon Finder, and later Raid Finder, were added to the game to make experiencing group content easier for casual players like myself. The disadvantage, obviously, is that it places you in a pickup group unless you queue as a group.

Overall I've found it pretty useful since I have never been very social or hardcore myself, it was often annoying to have to keep typing in LFG in the olden days. That, and it can be handy to quickly get replacement party members (compared to in he past where you pretty much had to disband if someone left halfway through). Also, the Need before Greed default loot rules makes ninja looting a thing of the past.

That being said, I know there are MANY players (particularly Tanks and Healers) who, even in today's world of severely nerfed dungeon difficulty, just flat-out refuse to use Dungeon/Raid Finder because the odds of you having a "bad experience", or even just a "semi-annoying" run, are just too high. And I completely understand - anyone who's been using group finder tools for long enough has had at least a couple (or a couple dozen) traumatizing PuG experiences.

Because the single biggest problem with Dungeon Finder PuGs, as countless others before me have stated, is that you're rolling the dice on whether or not the people you end up grouped with will know what they're doing, will be understanding of you if you're new to the dungeon, etc. The analogy I would draw is that it's like other drivers on the road in a way - more often than not, the rest of your group will have no vested interest in making you happy, so depending on their level of jerk-ness, they might have no problems with being downright rude to you or just plain ditching you in the middle of the run.

Like I said though, I don't know if it's really a WHOLE lot better in guilds (the 50 DKP Minus Onyxia guy comes to mind) since I'm not very social in-game to begin with, and the guilds I'm in are by and large social ones rather than raiding guilds. Plus, I don't always have the open schedule that being in a Raiding guild requires. So overall I'd say that Dungeon & Raid Finder are useful, but I can certainly see why many people avoid them like the plague.

I'll always remember Stormwind chat from way back when I was levelling my first ever character, in the good old days of BC. Half the time the people would be like "LF non-failboat heals for daily H" or "LFM Kara, must be at least T5, PST"

[Deleted]

Personally, I believe they went too far, but. I would've prefered a system similar to that of how the CMs work - completing them unlocks perks like being able to teleport outside of the instance.

As for auto-grouping, etc. I wasn't a huge fan of it. I believe that the best solution, instead of adding LFD would have been to scale the dungeons by player participation, or adjust mechanics to fit solo, 2p, 3p, 4p versions of the dungeons, allowing people to run them alone if they wanted to, or run with guildies, or to PUG them on the local realm. You could incentivize the 5-man model still by limiting the meta-progression of the dungeon achievements to the 5-person only, but allowing for currency gain and dungeon/gear progression still, if you wanted to run them solo.

I understand that it would be a tad strenuous to scale boss mechanics to work for these, but I think had there been a system in place like that, people would've been a lot happier on the whole.

[Gimlix]

Just look at it like this way.
They got invented because there was request towards it.

[clevin]

Overall? Bad. But with SIGNIFICANT upside too. That's why there's so much argument around this. If you played before LFG you know that it was hard to get a straight PUG. Even if you had a relatively active guild, etc you might be stuck not running something because you couldn't find a tank or a healer in guild or off a friends' list.

This was NOT as big of an issue if you played on a decent realm at prime time. But for people who played on smaller servers or at off peak times, it could be a real problem. It was even noticeable for me, playing on a central time server (US) but living on the west coast (2 hours behind server time). The upside was that you didn't burn out on 5 mans as fast because you didn't run them a lot and you tended to run with people whom you knew. Getting LFG removed all of the community aspect as it was super easy to get runs. The problem was that Blizzard then added dailies and people started view 5 mans as a thing that they checked off, a chore, versus something you did with a few friends for fun. That meant a low tolerance for wipes or for long runs. People wanted to get the daily heroic quest, get a run, do it fast, then check off the next thing.

So, to me, this was when WoW started to move even group play into the chore, thing you did to get it done bucket and that was a bad thing.

LFR wasn't as big of a hit to me since it had more upside - people who never saw the end bosses and the story in raids got to see that and this came at a time when raiding was still a reasonable commitment of time and effort. IN truth, though, you couldn't have done LFR without LFD.

[MoanaLisa]

Some bad but enough good that every MMO that has tried to open without it has quickly decided it would be to their advantage to include a matchmaking system. At this point players expect one to be there so, good or bad, it's a reality. Matchmaking for LFR has certainly worked well enough to make raids a primary resource sink for the modern game. It's unlikely that it would be so without it.

[melodramocracy]

It was necessary, given the number of servers they had that were very low population. The better solution would have been more along the lines of a dynamic form of CRZ, but that either wasn't considered or the tech to do so wasn't a priority.

[ryanmahaffe]

Dungeon finder was a great addition to tthe game imo

Lfr is awful and ruining the game imo

[MoanaLisa]

It was necessary, given the number of servers they had that were very low population. The better solution would have been more along the lines of a dynamic form of CRZ, but that either wasn't considered or the tech to do so wasn't a priority.

I don't think they were even close to having it in Wrath.

Dungeon finder was a great addition to tthe game imo

Lfr is awful and ruining the game imo

Before LFR came along Dungeon Finder was a primary thing that was ruining the game according to many. Many, many threads about it.

[mysticx]

Yes, they were good additions to the game, getting into PuGs was a royal pain, most groups demanded gear beyond what dropped in BC, and added the achievement when Wrath hit (How do i get that achievement again if no group will let me in?), the pre-LfD/LfR times put group forming in the hands of players, and the "Easiest possible way or GTFO!"-attitude of said players makes them phenomenally unsuited for that task.

[Lava Bucket]

It's convenient, sure, but it also allows players to be rude and obnoxious without consequences. The old way where you had to spend hours just assembling a group was also no good, though. What the game needs is a rating system for players. You'd have to be very careful that the ratings aren't exploitable, but attempts to game the rating system should eventually be drowned out by fair and honest ratings if the system is properly designed.

[Deleted]

I dont see any real downside from the dungeon finder.

If people want to play with friends, they should play with friends.

[Sergas]

I currently play a "alt" Tank (retired from raiding and I wait until the next expansion, before I decide if I ever raid again)

Anyways, Dungeon/Raid Finder Is a blessing, also a terrible thing at the same time.
Back in BC, took you at least 30mins to find a group and add another Hour or two on top of that. You spend all that time with your group and you chatted and maybe even joined mumble/teamspeak. That was great and terrible at the same time.
Nowadays I barely talk in groups, if you just take 5secs to long, to pull one group of mobs, the Huntard goes crazy and thinks he has to pull for you. And if you don't pick up the paste you usually get comments like this "Dude... are you just that stupid" or "Hurry up asshole". Worst part about that, whoever does that usually just pulls and expects the rest of the group to kill the stuff, that he pulled, and does absolutely nothing. End result, it takes longer overall.
I just wait one or two pulls and just leave the group, hope the next one is better.

It made it easier, but made terrible at the same time.

[Deleted]

Yes it was good.

I cant see me look for a group for 2 hours before i can run it in these days.

[taliey]

It's a net benefit and a industry standard now, so the jury is out on that verdict.

Accessibility is a good thing overall.

[Deleted]

It's a net benefit and a industry standard now, so the jury is out on that verdict.

Accessibility is a good thing overall.

Read: 'Industry' = WoW did it, so we'll copy them.

It is very possible to create a fair system that is far less disengaging from the game world. All that you would lose from being rid of LFD/LFR with a better alternative system would be time getting to the instance.

It isn't a matter of accessibility, it's a matter of pure laziness.

[tj119]

I think all forms of Cross realm play is unhealthy for the game. It kills communities, guilds and they are just flat out pointless features. Convenience is not healthy for MMOs, not in this case. So yes they were bad additions to the game.

[Tyrgannus]

Here are my two cents.

I'm glad dungeon finder exists, but wouldn't mind seeing a bit of incentive on making your own group. Better ilvl loot is far too large of an incentive, but increased gold drop or some other thing would be nice. This way, everyone can go to dungeons quickly and efficiently and get the same loot, but a group of friends can get a slight bonus for engaging in the social aspect of an MMO.

LFR is a much stickier option due to the nature of raid complexity. Pugging raids is risky enough, but having your group be auto generated from multiple servers? No wonder LFR needs to be massively dumbed down. My contention is probably ilvl disparity, but I'm not positive how best to fix this problem. Dungeons require more effort from the player than many LFR bosses yet have worse loot. However, I recognize that having LFR give the same ilvl would essentially make LFR go extinct as it is admittedly much slower and has less boss variety. I'm not sure what the best response is for now, but I do know that LFR has effectively murdered the 5 man dungeon. Time will tell whether Mythic dungeons can be a long term solution or a short term bandage

[time0ut]

In my opinion, dungeon finder has done more to damage the game than any other feature. Cross realm match making has destroyed the server communities, instant teleportation has removed any point to having a rich world outside of leveling, and it has driven the developers to make five man dungeons simpler and simpler and simpler.

LFR is just a continuation of this.

[Deleted]

Dungeon finder is great. LFR is beyond awful.

[Jester Joe]

Dungeon Finder I love. Raid Finder I have mixed feelings about.

Granted, I don't hate it on the level of "It gives everyone loot!" or "It lets everyone do the raid, that's not right!", or heck even how easy it is.

I dislike it because it seems to have replaced dungeons completely. There hasn't been new dungeons introduced mid-expansion since it's become staple, the last time was with its introduction in Cata.