How did RDF ruined the social aspect??.

[saintminya]

Queuing instead of engaging in trade or general chat doesn't negate communication though. It delays it sure, but if you don't talk upon being added to the party, then that's a choice. That's on you. Not anyone else also electing to not talk, but you for not breaking the ice either. Once in the instance, any lack of communication from the lead is lame and discouraging, but its not like you can't strike up a conversation whether pertinent to the run or not.

[Sanguinerd]

I'm reading about people being removed from leveling dungeons for not having sunwell gear.. lmao

Yeah its MUCH better this way

Inb4 "just make your own group"

[StrawberryZebra]

Cool. Kick the problem player, find a replacement.

As others have pointed out repeatedly, this isn't an option with the Heroic model TBC and WotLK used. Thats what allowed them to get away with it - You needed them more than they needed you. It was a very one-sided power dynamic and people would use that to blackmail groups into doing what they wanted.

There were quite a lot of trolls who would, knowingly or otherwise, get people saved to cleared HC dungeons and locked them out of loot and badges for the day. It was actually quite a serious problem.

You call it form cliques, I call it literally how civilization works. So I'm really perplexed as to how you're saying it's a *bad* thing.

Did you even read what I quoted? Forming a small core group of good players and excluding all the "bads" is quite literally a clique. Guilds built around such cliques are highly unstable and rarely last long.

And in dungeons, it has literally always been "need if it's an upgrade for main spec, greed otherwise," and I have yet to encounter any group that doesn't obey this basic unspoken rule.

My experience in Classic has been totally the opposite - Quite literally every single BRD run I saw had the group leader reserving Hand of Justice and/Or Savage Gladiator Chain. Every single Magisters Terrace has had the Mount reserved. People even reserve the Brewfest mounts. I can pretty much guarantee that almost every Forge of Souls run is going to have the Needle Encrusted Scorpion reserved.

And I doubt I'm in the minority here. It's highly dismissive of the other 4 people in the group.

That's valid, but seriously - how common is this actually? People that are *so* neurodivergent or whatever that they're utterly incapable of joining groups on their own power. Because in my experience, you just put yourself into the LFG tool with what specs you are interested in playing, maybe add comments about specific specs or items you're after, and then let others take the wheel if you can't or won't do it yourself for whatever reason.

It's not just neurodivergence I was getting at. Instances of mental illness have been increasing globally. Some common ones like Anxiety and Depression can make social experiences very difficult and avoidance is a common adaption strategy. For some, even taking the step to press the button to list themselves on LFG is a stressful and anxiety inducing experience, in part because it may lead to unwanted social interactions.

Additionally, I play on an EU server and not all European Languages have their own dedicated servers, so they instead tend to default to English. Communication barriers are a very real issue players have to deal with.

Finally, the LFG tool can easilly lead to situations like we see with M+, where certain classes and specs are unwanted and are all but excluded from doing content.

Dungeons are very easy and don't require anything more than *actual* average players (which are always a *LOT* worse than what people believe "average" means.) So it's fine.

Seriously, what shithole are you playing on that everyone you've met is an asocial loot goblining asshole?

Those asocial loot goblins *are* the average WoW player!

After all, there have been people that have completed savage and even ultimates in XIV without ever using VC and only using chat macros for diagrams, and those are *far* harder than non-hardmode Ulduar/ICC content.

Which only require you to pick a marker and watch a video to understand how to resolve certain mechanics - All I ever say in them is calling my role in chat. I show up, I do my job and I leave. That's it. It's understood that these aren't a social event though, those happen... Elsewhere in FF14.

It's almost like comparing me pinging a team mate in LoL. It's an interaction but it's not socialising.

But, again, that's just how socializing works, dude. Eventually you have a group of players that usually play together... you call it a 'clique', but we usually call them guilds or clans... and maybe they decide to make a Discord server (or IRC server, back in 2009 - which regularly happened!) so they can organize things a bit easier. They meet more people, they invite them to the server, and so on.

Except you have it backwards. It worked that way in 2008, sure. Now you have a Discord first, then use it to organise. I've got about 40 different ones from playing WoW classic saved and they're pretty much all used for raid signups.

[Grinning Serpent]

There were quite a lot of trolls who would, knowingly or otherwise, get people saved to cleared HC dungeons and locked them out of loot and badges for the day. It was actually quite a serious problem.

So don't play with them. If you're worried about a power tripping tank or healer, play one yourself. It's been a hot minute but I distinctly remember tanking heroics in WotLK in *DPS gear* because the monsters did so little damage, and tank DPS became so nutty when you had DPS substats that it was the way go. In light of that, I don't think it would be an issue for a Retadin or whatever to put on a shield to tank for the group, though I'm not sure if DPS specs could heal heroics (maybe if they had a tank spec in tank gear?)

Did you even read what I quoted? Forming a small core group of good players and excluding all the "bads" is quite literally a clique. Guilds built around such cliques are highly unstable and rarely last long.

That isn't the definition of a clique, though. That's the subjective use of it you're using it for, but that's not what it means. Yeah, toxic players being toxic is a recipe for instability. No shit, Sherlock.

My experience in Classic has been totally the opposite - Quite literally every single BRD run I saw had the group leader reserving Hand of Justice and/Or Savage Gladiator Chain. Every single Magisters Terrace has had the Mount reserved. People even reserve the Brewfest mounts. I can pretty much guarantee that almost every Forge of Souls run is going to have the Needle Encrusted Scorpion reserved.

And I doubt I'm in the minority here. It's highly dismissive of the other 4 people in the group.

So make your own groups.

It's not just neurodivergence I was getting at. Instances of mental illness have been increasing globally. Some common ones like Anxiety and Depression can make social experiences very difficult and avoidance is a common adaption strategy. For some, even taking the step to press the button to list themselves on LFG is a stressful and anxiety inducing experience, in part because it may lead to unwanted social interactions.

If your disabilities or illnesses are substantial enough that pushing a button to list yourself on a largely anonymous "want board," then I don't know if playing a game where the developers have explicitly stated "we want players to socialize and interact with each other to get stuff done" is a wise use of your time. Those people may just have to accept that WotLK Classic ain't for them, if that's going to be a deal-breaker.

Additionally, I play on an EU server and not all European Languages have their own dedicated servers, so they instead tend to default to English. Communication barriers are a very real issue players have to deal with.

Very valid point. It's another reason why I keep saying "bruh just copy XIV Party Finder." XIV allows you to specify which language(s) your group is willing to speak and will filter groups accordingly. It's really kind of ridiculous how barebones LFG is when there's another game indirectly competing with WoW that is doing that concept about a thousand times better.

Those asocial loot goblins *are* the average WoW player!

Not in my experience, dude. But then again, with a friends list a mile long from chatting with people in dungeons, I almost never have to join someone else's party and can just grab 1-2 people and fill the empty spots with randoms... who might end up being cool and getting added to The List.

Which only require you to pick a marker and watch a video to understand how to resolve certain mechanics - All I ever say in them is calling my role in chat. I show up, I do my job and I leave. That's it. It's understood that these aren't a social event though, those happen... Elsewhere in FF14.

It's almost like comparing me pinging a team mate in LoL. It's an interaction but it's not socialising.

You're aware I'm referring to savage/ultimates, not normals right? It's a bit more involved than "lol just go stand on this marker."

Except you have it backwards. It worked that way in 2008, sure. Now you have a Discord first, then use it to organise. I've got about 40 different ones from playing WoW classic saved and they're pretty much all used for raid signups.

Maybe in your experience? I don't just join random ass Discords. And you don't start the Discord in the first place without having a core group of players to inhabit it, first. I mean, I guess you could do the zerg recruitment strategy of "JOIN THIS SERVER FOR COOL RAIDS AND STUFF" shouting in public channels, but I was under the impression we're talking about a curated environment where we can grab people and know they're not going to be racist pricks or trolls or loot goblins.

And, like I said - we were doing this shit with IRC servers back in 2009, man. Discord is nothing new to the scene.

[perera]

Risky opinion, but I don't think group finder per se killed the social aspect. What killed it was that the group finder was cross server. At first it was limited to your battle group (which was composed of a handful of servers that were on the same geographical location), and then they opened it up to your whole region. It was still kind of cool to me when it was limited to your battle group, over time I had built up these ideas of players from server X or Y, but making friends was already much less important. When they opened it up to all servers I completely stopped looking at player names and party chat went completely dead in 1 - 3 months from what I remember.
They could probably add automated grouping if it was limited to your own server, you'd still have social dynamics like not needing everything, or becoming well known if you are a good player, and so on.

[DazManianDevil]

Risky opinion, but I don't think group finder per se killed the social aspect. What killed it was that the group finder was cross server. At first it was limited to your battle group (which was composed of a handful of servers that were on the same geographical location), and then they opened it up to your whole region. It was still kind of cool to me when it was limited to your battle group, over time I had built up these ideas of players from server X or Y, but making friends was already much less important. When they opened it up to all servers I completely stopped looking at player names and party chat went completely dead in 1 - 3 months from what I remember.
They could probably add automated grouping if it was limited to your own server, you'd still have social dynamics like not needing everything, or becoming well known if you are a good player, and so on.

Quite agree, I played on US Alexstrasza, a backwater PvE server. Any time I queued up with a player from Spinebreaker I was mocked for being a carebear. Good times.
I'm more than happy with RDF coming during the appropriate phase, along with ICC and Ruby sanctum. Not sure why that's not just accepted at this point.

[Grinning Serpent]

Risky opinion, but I don't think group finder per se killed the social aspect. What killed it was that the group finder was cross server. At first it was limited to your battle group (which was composed of a handful of servers that were on the same geographical location), and then they opened it up to your whole region. It was still kind of cool to me when it was limited to your battle group, over time I had built up these ideas of players from server X or Y, but making friends was already much less important. When they opened it up to all servers I completely stopped looking at player names and party chat went completely dead in 1 - 3 months from what I remember.
They could probably add automated grouping if it was limited to your own server, you'd still have social dynamics like not needing everything, or becoming well known if you are a good player, and so on.

This would be the middle ground solution. I wouldn't mind having it, though you'd still have the nochanges people freaking out because it's not completely identical to the original (and probably getting even more pissed off that they had the temerity to put RFD in, but alter it from the original holy vision), and it would not address potential issues of lopsided servers that battlegroup/regional RFD would eliminate.

[Schintus]

I don't understand why we can't have both... i.e. both the LFG Tool from the original WOLTK and the custom group finder. Retail has both.

[StrawberryZebra]

So don't play with them. If you're worried about a power tripping tank or healer, play one yourself.

Which doesn't solve the problem when you're already in a group with them before they started pulling that shit! Unless you have some crystal ball and can tell beforehand who is already saved or who is going to leave part way through a group it's a problem you're going to have to deal with sooner or later. It's been pointed out to you that you're very unlikely to find replacements if someone leaves and you're screwed if you join a group with someone who is already saved.

You know what protects people from both of these problems? RDF.

And before you resort to "Just go with friends!" remember that the people who would be using RDF were doing so because they didn't have any friends to play with in the first place. It's a bad faith argument against RDF. It's always been a bad faith argument and it's always going to be one. It completely disregards the section of the playerbase RDF was aimed at.

That isn't the definition of a clique, though.

I think you'll find that it is; https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionari...english/clique.

Please explain how forming a small group of players with the intention of deliberately avoiding bad players doesn't fit that definition.

So make your own groups.

Which absolutely doesn't address the problem I was pointing out, but thanks for trying. I guess?

You know what does stop people reserving items? RDF. Do you know gives players more chances to get the loot drops they want? RDF. Do you know what stops people switching to Master Loot and ninjaing anything they want? RDF.

I think I've hammered the point enough. RDF helps protect players from some questionable looting practices that are very common in Classic - Which is in part why I think there has been so much resistance to the idea.

It's another reason why I keep saying "bruh just copy XIV Party Finder." XIV allows you to specify which language(s) your group is willing to speak and will filter groups accordingly.

It filters for a choice of 4 languages, English, French, German and Japanese. It doesn't solve anything for people who aren't comfortable with at least one of those 4.

It also allows you to outright join a group, no invite needed. You pick your role, press join and thats it, you're straight in. WoW players have a habit of vetting anyone they invite so theres no way something like this would be suitable.

Before you even try to pretend that's not the case, GearScore was a thing for a reason. Linking Achivements was a thing for a reason. RIO is a thing for a reason.

The key point you're missing in this comparison is that you don't get saved to a failed run in FF14. So if you spend 2 hours wiping on P8S then you've lost nothing but time. Even if you complete the content there's nothing stopping you from going again if you want to. WoW saves you to content, so you'll only get one shot at a raid per lock out and one shot at a Heroic per day. That's why WoW players check who they're letting into their group, because there's a much more significant penalty for failure.

You're aware I'm referring to savage/ultimates, not normals right? It's a bit more involved than "lol just go stand on this marker."

Firstly, who uses FF14's party finder for anything other than either Blue Mage content and Ex/Savage?

Secondly, I won't pretend to speak for everyone, but I know my roles well enough to only need to call which one I'm doing. It might need a little more discussion in a practice run, but on a farm run people expect that you know the content well enough to just get on with it with minimal discussion.

And you don't start the Discord in the first place without having a core group of players to inhabit it, first.

You are aware that there's a raid signup bot for Discord right? And that the easiest way to organise things like gDKP runs and pug raids is through said Discord bot? When you can just link your Discord in chat and let people sign up for it themselves? Yes? No?

Don't answer that, it's pretty clear you don't know the answer. It's been the new normal since Classic launched.

[Oneirophobia]

that is another side effect of dungeon finder.

Which is weird, considering we just had vanilla and TBC classic demonstrate that their dungeons required very little, if any, communication (or even coordination) to kill the bosses. Stranger still that post-RDF in Cata, the difficulty went way up.

I suppose you could say it's because everyone playing classic already knew the dungeons. Personal anecdote, but I was able to figure out the dungeons pre-RDF without communication because somehow the internet existed back then and thottbot et al was easy to access - that and the dungeons were, oh I don't know, piss easy but you and others in the thread seem to have had wildly different experiences.

[Mysterymask]

Which is weird, considering we just had vanilla and TBC classic demonstrate that their dungeons required very little, if any, communication (or even coordination) to kill the bosses. Stranger still that post-RDF in Cata, the difficulty went way up.

Different audiances different worlds

Actually vanilla and TBC since you could cherry pick who you go with made a huge difference. RDF came into wrath at the tail end and the fact that level 80 was so top heavy at that point everything was tuned so if there were halfway decent players in there the dungeon fell over no matter who was in the group.

Catas dungeons weren't bad with coordination but with 5 randos who just got out of wrath style dungeons cata was a huge culture shock

[Dioporco]

RDF never ruined the social aspect.


In 2010 the community was entirely on server, there was no wowhead like now (thootbot wasnt like wowhead) there wasnt a huge influx of knowledge outside the server/guild forums or EJ, no discord servers etc

in 2022 people are on Discord, we have guide for everthing, nobody needs to talk with people no more.


Wasnt RDF, it was the players all along.

------------------


funny how WOTLK has 2 days life and people are already crying because they are getting declined from dungeon levelling, same people that bitched about RDF LOL

[Bogdand131980]

Did you play WoW prior to the implementation of the dungeon finder and cross server? In TBC, I had a huge friends list which were all people I met doing dungeons and arenas. After RFD implementation in Wrath, I cannot recall having added a single person to my friends list that I met in a dungeon since then. While it was inconvenient to find people manually to run dungeons, the fact is, when you had good experiences with people, you would add them to your friends list and coordinate doing future dungeons with them. After doing a few dungeons together you build a relationship. Dungeon finder you just leave and the game matches you with random people you aren't likely to run into again.

The last friends I made in retail WoW was in Cataclysm. A decade and I have not made any new connections. Want to know what's funny? I have people on my battle.net I met in classic. The vanilla version of the game was engineered in a way that put the world and social connections at the forefront and ultimately those things will make for a better MMO. If you want something fast paced and a lobby game there are games out there better designed for that.

Now that's plain useless argument just because when joining LFD there is nothing forcing you to do it solo. Choosing not to organise or include friends is 100% on you.

- - - Updated - - -

We had the exact same arguments used at the time when RDF was implemented.
And we already know the actual, real-life results that it had, and how Classic was a massive success bringing back the original vision.

So all the bullshit rationalization you can throw has been disproved by experience. Just shut up and go back playing retail if you want automated grouping.

Classic release proved exactly nothing. Everyone enjoyed vanilla classic but almost nobody stayed, not even the "hardcore" private servers clients, contrary to the initial statements like "we will play forever".

[Relapses]

funny how WOTLK has 2 days life and people are already crying because they are getting declined from dungeon levelling, same people that bitched about RDF LOL

Because that's what the RDF represents to players: A way to get into groups where they aren't judged or (worse) possibly rejected.

[Skylarking]

I don't wanna spend all that time waiting for the group to be finally ready and in the dungeon to pull only to find out that the tank is clearly clicking his abilities and unable to hold aggro.

[Jowany]

I'm reading about people being removed from leveling dungeons for not having sunwell gear.. lmao

Yeah its MUCH better this way

Inb4 "just make your own group"

My guildmate got removed even from ZD arena group for not being full sunwell geared..

I did 2 days full HC run, with 3 friends on discord and 2 randoms.. there is no social aspect ingame, social ascpect is playing with friends and that RDF cant change. I would play with them using LFG or RDF.. just LFG tool is thrash, I am getting group join requests without saying anything, sometimes even without saying "Hi" or "Thanks, bb"..

[Deferionus]

Now that's plain useless argument just because when joining LFD there is nothing forcing you to do it solo. Choosing not to organise or include friends is 100% on you.

- - - Updated - - -



Classic release proved exactly nothing. Everyone enjoyed vanilla classic but almost nobody stayed, not even the "hardcore" private servers clients, contrary to the initial statements like "we will play forever".

Because you don't agree with or understand an argument doesn't make it useless. My argument is that when you work with people to overcome challenges or accomplish something and you spend a length of time doing this, the longer the experience lasts, the more likely you are to become friends. With RDF, you have two problems:

1) The experience is short.
2) The experience cannot be sufficiently challenging.

In TBC heroics were sufficiently challenging that you needed to work together. Please bear in mind that the challenge of these dungeons in TBC classic was no where near the retail TBC challenge for the player base at the time. WOTLK dungeons by comparison were face roll. In Wrath when the dungeon tool was added, you would just pull groups, AoE tank them, and do it fast as possible, and then leave the group and queue for the next.

In Cataclysm, when harder dungeons were added, you saw a few things happen. The dungeons were too difficult for random pick up groups, which led to people quickly leaving groups soon as something went wrong. With random people you were more likely to encounter toxic behavior. Players complained about the difficulty. You had Blizzard within two weeks nerf the hell out of the Cata 5 mans to make RFD work. I ran these with players I knew and never had difficulty with them, and unfortunately the nerfs just made them boring to do.

And this argument does not even touch on the aspect of RFD minimizing the open world. WoW is at its best when open world continent is relevant and important. A vanilla dev said that the main character of WoW was the open world. I don't think it is healthy for the game when you stand in a city and just teleport to the dungeon and then back to the city. Many of the most memorable WoW experiences people have had were from the organic nature of open world content, whether that is from Tarren Mill vs South Shore, skirmishes at Blackrock Mountain, a hunter kiting a world boss to a capital city, etc. I think the game needs to be designed in a way to foster these type of experiences and RFD does not support that.

Now, the player base does need a better way to form groups than just spamming chat. I think the tool needs to be designated so it is isolated to a pool of players you are likely to encounter again and to not minimize the open world. The dungeon finder tool in Wrath classic right now feels pretty good. My group of friends has interacted with a few other small groups of players and we are going to be raiding together this week since we did not have enough to form a full 25 man raid on our own. If it goes well we might form a guild together. They seem like cool people. This is the social interaction that the modern retail game does not foster, and these are the reason why the LFG tool is bad for WoW.

[Phob]

It didn't, The players ruined the social aspect of the game. I mean If people actually cared about a social aspect there wouldn't be GDKPs going on. No one cares about anyone but themselves these days, everyone does their dungeons for themselves. Everyone does their raids for themselves, No one cares what you want, they only care about what they get out of it. The game used to be about getting together and killing dragons and other shit, Today its about let me see how much gear I can get and "let me get dat".

[alexs]

RDF needs to come back. You can argue how you want, whatever you want.
This isn't early 2000's anymore and people _needs_ automated grouping.

[Shink]

RDF needs to come back. You can argue how you want, whatever you want.
This isn't early 2000's anymore and people _needs_ automated grouping.

it doesn't, you can argue how you want, whatever you want
Classic isn't for EVERYONE


my god just go back to retail if you need that QOL