Raid finder - from the opinion of a guildmaster

[Deleted]

I have been a guildmaster of a social-pve oriented guild for 4 years now, and during this time I have managed to do encounters such as sunwell, black temple, Ulduar, BoT etc.

As an organiser of raids and owner of a guild I can tell you, from a guilds perspective my opinion about this system

In an IDEAL world, this system could be used by guilds who lack 1-2 members before a raid. Instead of calling off the raid, you could use the raid finder, get some randoms in, give them your vent info, and at the end of the day those randoms could benefit from the loot of the boss, or even better, be added to some type of "friends list" so they can be invited for the next raid as well if they performed well.

How ever we all know that this isn't how it's going to work.
The 1-2 random people you will get, will be impossible to remove from your raid regardless of how bad they prove to be. You can (and will) end up with griefers who sign in as tank only to show up as dps, who are too impacient to wait for tactics and just charge in, who constantly ninja pulls to wipe your raid and so forth.
And notice how I am not talking about a BAD player who just stands in fire, but people who wilingly and purposefuly go out of their way to grief everebody else.

Now in a 5 man thats no problem, you can get people like that, it happens. But in a raid you end up ruining the mood for 24 / 9 other people.

Even further still, as more people will start raiding, they will say that the content is too chalanging and they can't do it. More "luck of the draw" buffs would be added, making it more favorable for loot horny people to join the raid finder rather then a guild.

So at this point I don't see the purpose for guilds anymore. Why not just remove the world in warcraft entirely and just give you a server list when you log on (like in team fortress) and you double click a server to join a pug instance.

[Callypso]

Wouldn't the point of guilds be to avoid exactly the situation you're describing above?

[Deleted]

Point of a guild : human contact and creating new friends IRL as well as IG. If you aren't doing that in your guild, then you're doing it wrong.

The system will be terribad, calling it right now to be full of trolls, elitist dicks, and genuine idiots.

[Harsesis]

I see your points but has it been stated that there will be no kick feature? If so source please.

[MerinPally]

Wouldn't the point of guilds be to avoid exactly the situation you're describing above?

His point is not about that, his point is that every guild will inevitably at some point lack 1 or 2 members for a raid, due to unforseen circumstances. This is unavoidable so this is a good usage of the Raid Finder, to make sure that your raid can go, however, the possibility of finding idiots and griefers is high.

[Puri]

The raid finder will be used for previous content raids for 90%. You will hardly find reliable, competent and patient additions to any progress raid, and usually it will be difficult to include any randoms in your loot system (or probably completely impossible, since I guess looting is restricted to need-before-greed when you add a random member).

So you will use it to find members for nerfed farm raids, and I guess it will work just fine. Yes you will also get the 8k dps mage, but if you make a raid right now using trade channel chances are pretty much the same - but raid finder will help you to gather the raid faster, and probably it will be easier to get rid of slackers.

[thatguy181]

I would be really surprised if there was no vote to kick feature.

That being said, I think this will be a fairly good system. I have zero intention of using it for current tier raiding. Absolutely not going to happen. If my raid group is short one or two members, I will use the trade channel of my own realm so I can at least have some say in who is and is not welcome.


But older raids? Even the past tier we just finished? You know what, some of my guildies don't mind farming 7 troll dungeons on Tuesday and Wednesday to ensure they're VP capped. I however think I'm about to go crazy if I hear those voice scripts much more. I wouldn't mind joining a random pug raid group for BWL or BoT, especially with how nerfed they are now and getting at least some of my VP that way.

[ophion1990]

Not just the bad players joining a guild group but the guild giving all the gear to themselves and not giving the pugger that joined is possible really :x Look at the crying about ninja looting / 4 ppl from the same guild ninjaing items because 1 of them needs it... it's gonna get even worse with this.

But i'm not pessimistic and i hope the feature will be great, the vote to kick will be improved and there will be a way to fairly divide loot in the PuGs.

[Jawstrock]

The big problem is you cannot set up loot rules with the finder, if it works like the dungeon finder. Which means, need before greed for all loot. :/ Could be a real annoyence for legendary making, particular loot(Like running an instance just for that one ite, and see it drop and go to the pug, who also got half the dropped loot just because he was the one needing it :/

For previous tier, that is deamed puggable, then it will probably be great. but unlike dungeons, lack of a leader role can really make a run a nightmare. Althought technicly, to be fair, most ICC runs in late wrath was made from people who just wanted to ninja some loot and had about no leadership skill for raids, and yet still managed to get 4 boss down -_-;

Guilds needing 1-2 players could already just get them in trade chat, and then pray. Been possible since vannilla(How I found my first guild haha). This just makes it easier to find someone since it should be crossrealms. However, if you want to make it constant(e.g like a guild...) Well that would become very difficult because of the cross-realm thing.

Frankly I think it will be just like someone spamming: LFM FL, 6/10 need healers! but just filled up overly faster.

The main issue I see is: can we pick if we go with 2 or 3 healers in 10 man? or are the amount of Tank spec, Healer spec and DPS spec fixed?.

[Sackman]

Point of a guild : human contact and creating new friends IRL as well as IG. If you aren't doing that in your guild, then you're doing it wrong.

The system will be terribad, calling it right now to be full of trolls, elitist dicks, and genuine idiots.

Reason I joined my guild was not for making new friends lol :\ Go outside to do that.

I joined to be among people of equivalent skill level as I can't arena and rbg by myself.

[CrippleshoT]

The Raid Finder could work for guilds (sort of like the Guild Finder now) that you set a requirement, or more, and people that is within those lines get an invite.

This can be; iLvL req 370, guild get prio on loot, blabla.
Might take longer to find the people then, but it might bring players up to a guilds standard. (If you have to pug people to get a raid going I don't see that you're a good standard guild.)

[Deleted]

the loot isn't the problem. I would just remove all dkp from my guild and make it on a roll system.
The problem here would be with griefers. There should be a way that you can kick people for griefing. And I have a feeling that this will be like the 5 man system where kicking some one would be next to imposible, regardless of what they are doing.

Also here are some things that I understand by griefing

-Going AFK for more then 10 minutes or going afk frequently
-Ninja puling on purpose
-not listening to the tactics or ignoring the raid leader
-Not having the correct spec (beeing a healer with dps gear/dps spec)
-Wiping the raid for more then 4 consecutive times with the same mistake

[Wheeler]

The only adverse effect I can see is that this won't be really usable until they implement a 3-tiered raiding system, with a lesser item level form of bosses that are steamrollable by the massive amount of poor players in the game.

I have a feeling that the raid finder will actually end up working with a new 3rd "difficulty" option, and it will replace 5-mans after the first tier for casual players.

[Mammoth]

I see a lot of assumption that he system would work exactly like the dungeon tool. I wouldn't make that assumption. They're been saying there was a lot of issues to handle, so I think they've been working on solving these.

For instance if I was building the system I would use:
- Raid leading team must have 5 players.
- Raid leader has usual ability to remove as usual.
- Loot system is forced to be Need before Greed to stop 'guild priority' loot systems.


In any case, raids have different lockouts from dungeons. If you had a bad player you couldn't get rid of, you would disband the raid and reform it.

[KnickKnack]

This feature is gonna be a HUGE hit and miss and I am very worried on how this will turn out.

10 man raid group is formed from raid finder -----> Raid attempts Shannox ------> fails 3-4 times ---------> Go cries about it on the forums that the raids are too hard regardless of player preparation, knowledge of the fights, and player attitude -------- Blizz nerfs the raids so even a monkey can defeat Ragnaros.

I know that I may sound elitist and I understand that everyone wants to raid, but too many bad players (Yes, I didn't say casuals, what a miracle) are gonna ruin it for everyone else.

[Purple Glow]

I could really see a lot of jerks levelling alts and joining a raid finder for the specific purpose of trolling guilds and trying to ruin their fun by causing wipes.

[Smarty]

All the reasons apply to Dungeon finder too, but it works out 99% of the time for me

[Purple Glow]

All the reasons apply to Dungeon finder too, but it works out 99% of the time for me

The difference is if you get some jerk in a 5man, the worst thing that happens is your group disbands and you requeue.

If you get some jerk in a raid finder, the worst that can happen is he wipes the group on purpose and your raid disbands, and you don't get to try again for another week.

And believe me, the jerk ratio will INCREASE dramatically when players get the relative anonymity of a raid finder.

[Magisleeper]

Of course there are going to be possible problems with the raid finder but unless I am mistaken they havent released the details of it yet.

It could work if you can set up more options for raids than you would in LFD tool; Thing like:

Class/Spec - instead of just tank/healer/dps

Minimum item level - It would work because the stricter the limits you yourself place the longer/harder it will be to fill the raid. (also as people love to point out gear=/=skill)

Change the ability to kick people to the raid leader and remove any limits on how often someone can be kicked. (Cant imagine a raid where 'player cannot be kicked for 2 hours' pops up)

Allow for loot system to be set up in the raid description - IE Master Looter or Need before Greed so people that want to join can agree to a master looter (hopefully with a box to explain how loot is distributed)

Expressly forbid any LFR(looking for raid) buffs like luck of the draw from applying to raids. I am pretty sure if 1 pug gave a 5% overall dmg/healing/hp increase it would become neccesary.

Things like this would help restrict the kind of people you allow to join your raid and help cut down on the jerk ratio. Of course its not a fix, everyone knows that there is a direct parallel between anonymity and propensity towards asshatness.

[Deleted]

Surprisingly to the people who say that I am speculating, I would like to point out that all my speculations up to this point were true.

-When Ulduar came out, after 1 single run I said the instance is BT dificulty some bosses on swp level and thus it will get nerfed when people start complaining on the forums.
=When name change came out for a price i told my guildies there will be a class and faction change in the future since this is just too profitable to miss.
-When TOC was in PTR I said it's going to be the worse instance ever made and people will be bored of it after 3 runs (everebody told me its still in development and im speculating at the time)
-When Dungeon finder tool was released I said that instances will be nerfed in cata since people won't be able to pug them unless they use tactics. (Luck of the draw is a huge indirect nerf. Either you give players more damage/hp/healing or reduce the mobs hp/damage is the same thing realy)

So yeah while raid finder MIGHT come up realy polished with the intention of helping people improve and discouraging bad play and griefing, I honestly DOUBT it.
I have a feeling that it will be just like the dungeon finder, and people will cry on the forums how guilds are abusing the solo queuer and how hard and uterly imposible instances are and they need nerfs.