Raider IO needs to go. It's just as bad for the community as Gearscore was in WOTLK

[Frolk]

All of this argument against Rio still goes to the core. I'm fine with a better system but people aren't proposing one. They want group leaders to take a chance with minimal or no information. Why is that good for the game?

It can be summed up with.

Bad people want to be carried and are mad they arnt being being picked for high m+ groups.

Back when boosted in Legion, we had lots of ppl who openly said "i need the boost so i can join pugs" as they were too bad themself to do it, and im sure that hasnt changed.

[Stardrift]

Raider IO is strictly a tool for very low end players (that can hardly handle LFR) to look for higher end players that'll carry them through M+10.

M+10 is of the same difficulty level as LFR, even with low end gear. It's the people that are hyper dependant on being carried by their raider IO saviors that make it so damn hard to clear one in a pug.

My source? Guild runs have absolutely no problem. Even their alt runs are flawless. It's easy as hell, even without voice communications. It's those nerds that rely on IO so hard that messes everything up with their lack of experience and skill.

9 times out of 10 that person asking for a high score, denying anyone that just reached their requirements (in hopes of finding someone with an even higher score) has a piss poor score as well. In fact, their score is probably significantly lower than those that they deny. This is 100% the case with every LFG using IO.

[Alroxas]

Are grps with warriors gonna value kicks just as strongly cause of spell reflect or do I get a less score cause I let casts go through cause my tank wants to reflect them?

Does that event show up in logs? If yes, then it can be analyzed by something akin to wowanalyzer. Additionally, since that reflect increases tank DPS, it would be a positive score increase towards the performance of the tank. Since you didn't kick any spells, you wouldn't necessarily get additional points unless you kicked the spells that the tank couldn't reflect.

Also different grps need different things kicked its often a communication thing with the healer. Then you end your first point it being a just a check yes/no if kicking at all? Which do you want?

Pretty sure I covered this in the potential solution where the dungeon run is logged and parsed by something similar to wowanalyzer for individual performance score which is also combined with dungeon difficulty + time. And all of this is done on Blizzard's server side instead of by players own their own.

How will the system know when the grp wanted the stun vs useless stuns?

Did said stun mitigate damage? Aka allow a tank's necrotic stacks to fall off? Did it stop the cast of some AoE ability which would have lead to party wide damage?

[Garymorilix]

I feel like I have to repeat this every time. I have KSM. My r.io score is over 2k+.

On making your own groups: the problem still exists! Let's say I'm making my own group to go do a +15. Generally speaking, I want good experienced players that can handle a +15 and because of our reliance on r.io, I'll likely look at folks with similar r.io scores of 1.9k~2.1k. Which most people here would probably say "Yeah that's fair-ish".

But the problem is that by picking r.io threshold, I'm effectively weeding out everybody under 1.9k. Sure those sub 1.9k players did not have take the time to grind their score but that doesn't mean there aren't good players down there. And by picking somebody at or above that threshold score, that's one less chance for someone to build their score up to the threshold. Yes, I could be charitable and pick someone lower but let's be honest, we all want smooth runs preferably in time. Why take on more risk when you don't need to?


And lastly, I don't need to make my own group because I run in a guild who is active in M+ (and raiding). So I don't have the PuG problem but that doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to their cause.

What are you even talking about?

"that's one less chance for someone to build their score up to the threshold" So what?
This is not a charity. Everybody builds their own score up as they can. You literally defined boosting someones score.

I will say it again: those people can still make their own groups and increase their own score.

You literally cannot say anything that could invalidate that option ever.
Nobody is or ever should be forced to take someone with no score (or any other reason) other than they decide to do so.
This is not unfair.
Having more score than someone is not unfair.
Wanting to play with people with similar score is not unfair.

What is unfair is forcing people to play with people they don't want to.
Justifying the inclusion of such a system is way beyond idiotic.
Blizzard letting players organize groups however they want is the best approach they could ever take. That is the most fair it will ever get.
Everyone has the chance to improve on their own.

[david0925]

There's just a bunch of "what if's" (like getting carried, getting score on an easy week, etc) that yes, can happen, but are not nearly as frequently as the people actually having gotten the score legitimately.

And yes, if I use raider.io and vetted incorrectly. I as the group leader suffer. That's a risk I'm willing to take versus having nothing.

[ClassicPeon]

Raider IO is strictly a tool for very low end players (that can hardly handle LFR) to look for higher end players that'll carry them through M+10.

M+10 is of the same difficulty level as LFR, even with low end gear. It's the people that are hyper dependant on being carried by their raider IO saviors that make it so damn hard to clear one in a pug.

My source? Guild runs have absolutely no problem. Even their alt runs are flawless. It's easy as hell, even without voice communications. It's those nerds that rely on IO so hard that messes everything up with their lack of experience and skill.

9 times out of 10 that person asking for a high score, denying anyone that just reached their requirements (in hopes of finding someone with an even higher score) has a piss poor score as well. In fact, their score is probably significantly lower than those that they deny. This is 100% the case with every LFG using IO.

There is a lot of nonsense to go over here but instead of adressing each point i'l jsut counter with;

Raider.IO is for pugging. There are plenty of ppl pugging 25+ keys, 15+ keys or whatever your idea of "high end" is. RaiderIO is essential in this. Absolutely crucial.

[Twdft]

I feel like I have to repeat this every time. I have KSM. My r.io score is over 2k+.

On making your own groups: the problem still exists! Let's say I'm making my own group to go do a +15. Generally speaking, I want good experienced players that can handle a +15 and because of our reliance on r.io, I'll likely look at folks with similar r.io scores of 1.9k~2.1k. Which most people here would probably say "Yeah that's fair-ish".

But the problem is that by picking r.io threshold, I'm effectively weeding out everybody under 1.9k. Sure those sub 1.9k players did not have take the time to grind their score but that doesn't mean there aren't good players down there. And by picking somebody at or above that threshold score, that's one less chance for someone to build their score up to the threshold. Yes, I could be charitable and pick someone lower but let's be honest, we all want smooth runs preferably in time. Why take on more risk when you don't need to?

By having 2k+ you already are in the top 10% of mythic+ runners, and seeking similar players is just natural and not bad.

But 2k+ being top 10% also means that 90% of players are below 2k. By definition there can't be enough 2k+ groups to take even a fraction of below 2k players into a +15.

It would be much better if players below 2k play with each other until they themselves are 2k+ to get into the top 10% groups. R.IO is a tool to find people with the same experience, stop trying to get into groups above your experience and seek out like minded players.

[Elbob]

Does that event show up in logs? If yes, then it can be analyzed by something akin to wowanalyzer. Additionally, since that reflect increases tank DPS, it would be a positive score increase towards the performance of the tank. Since you didn't kick any spells, you wouldn't necessarily get additional points unless you kicked the spells that the tank couldn't reflect.



Pretty sure I covered this in the potential solution where the dungeon run is logged and parsed by something similar to wowanalyzer for individual performance score which is also combined with dungeon difficulty + time. And all of this is done on Blizzard's server side instead of by players own their own.



Did said stun mitigate damage? Aka allow a tank's necrotic stacks to fall off? Did it stop the cast of some AoE ability which would have lead to party wide damage?

Wowanalyzer can't properly parse top end logs, you could put in a #1 parse in there and it can find more issues than a 100 parse. It doesn't know what is being communicated in voice. And yes if the warrior spell reflecting means I miss out on points that I would have otherwise gotten if I brought another tank that cant reflect its a loss of points and punishing my pve score by not granting me points I could have gotten. Like sure the warrior gets my points instead cool? but this is a pug tool in reality so I should take the kick regardless of what the warrior wants so I look better for future pugs... sounds like it promotes great teamwork.

Whether a stun mitigates dmg is irrelevant. Stuns need to happen when the tank/grp need them. throwing a random stun out when the tank is at 0 risk is useless but will make you rpve score look great!

[Stardrift]

There is a lot of nonsense to go over here but instead of adressing each point i'l jsut counter with;

Raider.IO is for pugging. There are plenty of ppl pugging 25+ keys, 15+ keys or whatever your idea of "high end" is. RaiderIO is essential in this. Absolutely crucial.

There is absolutely no reason to do anything above +15. There is no such thing as high end M+, unless you count bigger numbers with the same old mechanics as high end.

IO is a carrying tool. People that play the game beyond LFR knows to do M+ with their guilds.

Those that pug for M+ use IO so that they may get carried. The moment Blizz adds their own IO to the game and make it so you can't ask for someone with a higher score than you, nobody would use it.

[pathebaker]

The only real problem with R.IO is that it discriminates players and the classes that they play. If that player is a sub class say feral druid or surv hunter than that's the only time when the system dosent work and that's because its much harder to be a sub optimal class and get in a group. most people who pug M+'s on a medium scale or higher will look at someones IO then look at their class and go" well this guy/gal sucks cuz if they were good they would know that this class is better and so that person who queue's up gets rejected. The fix is simple=

Make it queue-able

By making it queuable it gives everyone a chance to do it. Blizzard effectively removes any player choice from it. If you queue for your group the same way you queue for heroics then you don't get the make the choice of i don't like x class. and even if you want to kick them because you don't like the class they picked you still have to get a full vote from everyone in the group. I propose a few features to go with it.

1. they eliminate keys all together and just let you queue for your number
2. the system is completely internal same as Gearscore. You queue and after so many runs and maybe even in-timed runs you can move up to the next rank and the higher difficulties
3. if you decide to make your own group you can queue for any number and do that number but it will still take the same amount of time to rank up normally as if you were pugging( this is so that nobody just groups with their friends/guildies/ pay/ to get carried to a high rank only to start pugging hoping to get carried.
4. if you and your group fail the run then you just spend a little more time at that rank. there should also be points awarded for how fast you beat the timer/ 2 chest/1 chest etc... (maybe you need more gear or to learn the dungeon a bit more)
5.incur a penalty if you decide to leave the group, whether timed or otherwise.( only reason people leave is because they don't want to fail the run. eliminate the factor of ultimate failure and 1 chest at the end and you have less burden on the players and they will want to play more.
6.yes it should reset if you switch classes too as even if you swap classes your learning something new in the mythic+ scenario which calls for different play styles


My final idea. M+ is all about ranking its about going pushing higher and higher into the system. if blizzard decides to access the actual competitive nature that is M+ theirs no doubt in my mind that people will have a blast with the system. its a grind sure but everything is a grind in wow what i propose here is just a simple rank thing that makes people want to climb as high as they can.

[Nite92]

How so? Let's examine this:

Week 1: everybody's r.io score is 0, so if I'm a group leader outside of meta, I might pick what highest ilv?
Week 2: well according to another poster, he got 1k score by week 2, so let's say that average r.io for those doing M+ is 800. Now i'm slightly interested in folks with prior experience over those still at r.io score of 0, even for a low key.
Week X+: Group lead here with a +5 key, oh wow I got folks with 2k+ scores on their mains versus this toon with a r.io of 800, going with the 2k+ score person, they have "experience".

Sucks for that toon with r.io 800.

Now they might be lazy for not using their own key. Ok, sure but what if it's a bad key on a tough affix rotation? Like Sanguine in Waycrest Manor? Or maybe they really need a different dungeon (for score building or specific gear farming) so they are trying to branch out via PuG. Are they being lazy?

I pugged to all +15s in time twice as a dps in bfa s4. If you are good enough to do 15s you get there.

[ClassicPeon]

There is absolutely no reason to do anything above +15. There is no such thing as high end M+, unless you count bigger numbers with the same old mechanics as high end.

IO is a carrying tool. People that play the game beyond LFR knows to do M+ with their guilds.

Those that pug for M+ use IO so that they may get carried. The moment Blizz adds their own IO to the game and make it so you can't ask for someone with a higher score than you, nobody would use it.

This just isnt true. Like at all. There is a huge pugging community out there for m+ and just because you dont see a reason to do more then +15 doesnt mean its not there.

Edit:
I mean honestly how self absorbed of you have to be to dismiss the notion of high end m+ just because you dont see the point of it, knowing full well that mdi is pretty huge.

[ID811717]

There is absolutely no reason to do anything above +15. There is no such thing as high end M+, unless you count bigger numbers with the same old mechanics as high end.

Most of the mechanics can be ignored at +15 even in the first weeks of a new season. If you stopped doing dungeons at +15, it only means you are happy with playing the LFR difficulty of dungeons, oblivious to the existence of like 90% of dungeon mechanics. Speaking about the "same old mechanics" from that pedestal merely puts your ignorance on display.

Also, there is a very good reason to do keys above +15 even for people who don't care about pushing: higher keys drop more loot. More often than not, spamming +18-21 keys is the most efficient choice. You still 2-chest them even in pugs, even if you are carrying one undergeared friend, and they drop 1-2 more guaranteed pieces of loot.

IO is a carrying tool. People that play the game beyond LFR knows to do M+ with their guilds.

Let me say the unpopular and painful truth here: guilds are an equalizer for the bad. The common suggestion all over the forums is: if you struggle with M+, then just join the guild, they will help you. The truth is that this advice mostly comes from bad players and is addressed to other bad players. It's an advice how to get boosted by relying on a community, a fair strategy in an MMORPG. Relying on a community of guildies who can not afford to openly flame you for being a dead weight just because you share a guild tag. Because in their eyes you joining the guild promoted your social status from a "subhuman pug player" into a "nice guy who just sucks at the game".

But for the better players the necessity to boost half of their guild into weekly keys is a pain in the ass. Regardless of whether you want to farm +15s for gear or you want to push high keys, pulling people from friend list and inviting equally experienced pug players from the LFD tool is always an easier and faster solution than having to suffer through boosting another bad guild member (who could even be a mechanically good player, but way too far behind on M+ experience).

[arkanon]

Let me say the unpopular and painful truth here: guilds are an equalizer for the bad. The common suggestion all over the forums is: if you struggle with M+, then just join the guild, they will help you.

I would argue the common suggestion all over the forums is: If you are struggling to get into a M+ group, you can play with guildies or friends to remove that barrier. I havnt seen people claim that they should be used as a crutch for bad players. Totally different things.

[klaps_05]

Alternative idea - m+ pugs need to go. Blizzard should bring back the arena teams interface and add it for m+. You can now do m+ only if you are in that specific team.

[Tziva]

Joining a guild and making friends in an MMO is always good advice and will open doors for people in terms of group activities, but it's not the easy solution that people make it out to be. It's nice to play make-believe that everything has a magical solution that will fix a problem in one easy step, but in reality it's not that simple.

First, it presumes that you only do one activity in the game. Sure, if you only do M+ then joining a guild focused on M+ is a good plan. But if you're in a guild for RBGs, that guild might have limited interest in M+, or vice versa. Anyone who does multiple types of content like raiding, pvp, and m+ is probably not going to be able to easily find a guild that does all the things they are interested in, much less on their schedule, and will have to resort to PuGing some of those things. And some people want to be in a social guild with their friends, which may mean PuGing most other content.

I know that my Alliance guild is mostly raiders, with a smattering of old friends/ex raiders. A portion of the guild is interested in doing one obligatory m+ a week and that's it. Another portion is not interested in them at all. Those of us that actively enjoy keys and want to push or do multiples are not enough to field an entire group within the guild. Finding another guild -- not that I would leave my friends anyway -- just reverses the problem for raiding. I am going to guess that this is a very similar situation for many people; people being told to "get a guild" probably have one - it just doesn't do all the content types they want to do, or else does them at times they cannot participate in.

Second, it assumes that there's going to be the right balance of roles to make easy M+ groups. There might be eight DPS who want to run a dungeon for every tank. That means a lot of people will get stuck sitting or doing less keys than they'd like to. I do M+ Hordeside with a guild every week, but I am one of many healers in the group who wants to do keys. That means I can basically get into one run a week, maybe two or three if I'm really lucky. If I want to do more, I have to PuG, sometimes with a full PuG, sometimes with a friend or two that are still interested in doing more keys, but ultimately it still means playing with a lot of strangers.

I am in guilds and I have a lot of friends who play WoW, but I still end up PuGing Mythic Plus a fair amount. I doubt I am an outlier here. I am willing to bet that a lot of the people who PuG m+ are, in fact, already in guilds. Like anyone who PuGs, I accept the downsides and risks of playing with randoms, but that doesn't mean I am not interested in trying to increase my level of success and minimise how many painful groups I have to suffer through as part of that.

[Stardrift]

This just isnt true. Like at all. There is a huge pugging community out there for m+ and just because you dont see a reason to do more then +15 doesnt mean its not there.

Edit:
I mean honestly how self absorbed of you have to be to dismiss the notion of high end m+ just because you dont see the point of it, knowing full well that mdi is pretty huge.

There's no such thing as high end M+. Just larger numbers with more loot drops per completion and that's it. No new rewards, no higher ilvls, nothing. Same old mechanics, same old dungeons designed to keep you in longer.

MDI is not huge. Wow is barely a speck on the eSports scene. It's even a joke between players that it's fucking silly to watch people rush to skip as much content as possible against a timer. My guildies and I made fun of it when it was first introduced and I haven't heard from it since, till now I guess.

[ID811717]

First, it presumes that you only do one activity in the game. Sure, if you only do M+ then joining a guild focused on M+ is a good plan. But if you're in a guild for RBGs, that guild might have limited interest in M+, or vice versa. Anyone who does multiple types of content like raiding, pvp, and m+ is probably not going to be able to easily find a guild that does all the things they are interested in, much less on their schedule, and will have to resort to PuGing some of those things. And some people want to be in a social guild with their friends, which may mean PuGing most other content.

M+ is an especially volatile type of content, as opposed to raiding. Because M+ is a repeatable content done in small groups, and is easily puggable (certainly compared to mythic raids). So if today you are in a guild where many members mostly run +X keys (no matter if X=+5, or +10, or +15, or +20), it might just happen that next week you will have loads of free time and learn to do much higher keys in pugs, like +(X+5)s. From that point on, you will constantly have to choose between running "low" keys with the guild, or keep learning ever higher keys in pugs. That has always been the "problem" with M+. If you take a group of friends/guildies, there is always that one player who is (for whatever reason) speeding past everyone else. That naturally leads to guild/friend groups being stale and complacent (people choose to play in a 100% social/chill and non-competitive environment at the expense of slower or halted progress). And it likewise leads to pug groups being more dynamic (no social structures hold you down, you can easily pug from +15s to +25s in several weeks if you are otherwise mechanically excellent and vocal player... you can make lots of friends along the way, but you should also be ready to relegate them to "just someone I like chatting with" status, and leave them behind in terms of M+ progress if they are moving up at a slower pace).

P.S. The above also explains why M+ premade teams very rarely exist for a long time, unless they are formed by players who are already playing very high keys. Like, if you form a premade to play +17 keys, that means you have 5 motivated players who are interested to play keys... It is inevitable that some of these 5 players will pug into much higher keys within 1-2 weeks, and drop the group as the result.

[klogaroth]

While it's true that a lot more pugging does go on with M+, its worth remembering the start of tiers/expansions. If you have even one or two people to run with, especially if one of them is a tank or healer, you get to be the group in the dungeon finder that gets loads of applicants. Or you get to learn the keys with people you know, get some experience, and go pugging with a bunch of gear and a bunch of completed keys to back you up.

Having people you can rely on who don't care about score allows you to get score for when you're diving into the pug pool.

[callipygoustp]

It's really both.

No, it's not both. One person is being proactive, the person making the group, the other person is not. Significantly different. Unless of course you are going to make up edge case scenarios....

Oh, like this one!

The group leader is trying to make a group with unrealistic requirements. I mean you want 2.5k+ r.io score for just a +8? GTFO that's stupid but I suppose if it's your key, you can be as zany as you want with your group requirements. But what happens when everybody (or when it feels like everyone) wants that as a requirement?

Yes, you have successfully created an edge case scenario that shows the group leader as being a problem. But, and I don't know how often you run M+ in pugs, but I've run hundreds of them across my alts, I've never seen a group leader do something stupid like that. Hell, I would leave a group before waiting around for that expectation to filled. So, not realistic. Though, to be fair, I'm sure there is a very small percentage of people that do that; edge case.

How can a player (with a low r.io score) get the experience they need at the +8/+9 level (they already finished all keys at +7 in time) if it seems like groups are looking for players with 2.5k+ scores for just a +8? And it's not really just that either, like another poster illustrated, if I've got a good key in group finder (decent dungeon with easy affixes) my applicant list fills up immediately and assuming all things equal, the community (me included) is more likely to pick a higher r.io person than a lower r.io person even if their gear ilv is the same.

This is the whole issue: seems. For so many people feels >>>>> reals. In pugs you plug away. I've done it. Many people in this thread have stated they've done it. The issue is a percentage of the player base feels entitled to have it NOW. Too bad. Play the game or don't but stop whining.

And, of course people are going to pick the better player when filling out their group. People keep mentioning this as if its meaningful, as if its part of the issue with raider.io. It's not. People would be utterly foolish to not pick the best people for the job regardless of how they are filtering applicants. We've all been doing this since we were in kindergarten picking teams for dodge ball.

Yeah I get that people will always pull up make your own groups or play with friends/guildmates/etc. But what if it's a specific dungeon you need and you don't have the key for it? For instance, let's say out of the 12 dungeons currently in BFA, you have all 11 of them done in time at the +15 level. The only one you need is now Waycrest Manor but your key is Workshop. How do you approach trying to get that WM +15 done in time?

Same thing I did when I was in that exact same scenario way back when: When friends weren't on, or the key wasn't available in that group, I watched the LFG list for the dungeon I needed at the level I needed. I certainly didn't whine about it or blame raider.io. I played the game.
"OMG I need this group right now!!! WTF raider.io!!!! WTF community!!!! Give me what I want now!"
Pretty unrealistic imo. I can't imagine being an entitled jackass like that.

Edit:

I swear the only argument so many of you have against the way groups are being made is to make up these edge case scenarios. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, of players are successfully grouping. Many MANY of them using raider.io to help them do it. If that's not you, if you're not part of that group, you're in the minority and the problem is yours. Not the tool. Not the community. You.

- - - Updated - - -

Real life scenario just happened, not more than a minute ago:
On my disc priest that I'm running as shadow, cause, yeah, I want to dps. Anyway, got a 14 key for Waycrest. I get a healer and a dps pretty fast. Saving the last dps spot for lust class and then the final slot, of course, for a tank.

So, we've been in queue for about 5mins. Looking at the list of apps, nothing that I'm looking for. And then I get a tell from a rogue that is in the queue; ilevel 465 no raider.io score at all. One, I want a lust class. Two, no raider.io score at all. So anyway, the tell: Hey man, I know I don't have a raider.io score but my main is over 3k. Dude I know that dungeon!!!! Invite, please!. My response: what's your main's name? So he gives me the name of a demon hunter that is in fact over 3k. This demon hunter has 7 alts attached to his main all of them around 2k. I find it weird that the demon hunter would have so many alts attached to his main but not this one. So I ask the rogue: why isn't your rogue alt attached to the main?
His response, and I almost pissed myself with laughter: fuck raider.io man, fuck it.

Hahahahahhahahaha

Of course, this is another raider.io problem.

....anyway, back to my queue.