New Solution to Long Queues in 4.1Follow

Update to this issue has been posted on MMO-Champ...



Does this change anyone's opinion? I'm headed off to school, will pipe in when I get home :D

Really, anyone that's ******* enough to subject 4 other people to his crappy tank gear just so he can roll Need on DPS gear and get an insta-queue is already doing that right now. Anyone who takes advantage of Call to Arms for a chance at hard-to-grind mounts without bothering to gear up for it - that's just like your crappy tank-that-really-wants-to-DPS. But there's no point in resenting a crappy tank just because you think he just wants something special - he might actually be new.

This probably won't have much of an effect on me because most of the time when I'm willing to tank I have at least one guildy. It will, however, motivate me to run on slow days when I usually just write off the valor points. So while I'll be tanking more often it isn't going to turn me into a "must get pony" machine.

The question I have about them making the sack account-bound, do we get to see what's *in* the sack before we pass it over? Are the objects inside account-bound?

While I quite like Rhodekylle's idea of separate talent trees for PvP/PvE I don't think that enabling more classes to tank actually changes the problem.

The problem is the mentality of people in DungeonFinder groups (or perhaps in the game generally) that makes it not much fun to be tanking/healing.

The healer someone mentioned who insta-quit as soon as they joined would probably have done so even sooner if told he was healing a rogue-tank. I mean he'd have to stop watching TV and pay attention for a start!

Personally I don't think this change will benefit the game or make queuing much better but I also don't quite understand the venom

I mean I've played WoW since Ironforge was uphill in the snow and seen so many thing changed to simplify the game or make it easier but there is no point in getting upset because I did the paladin "epic" mount quest and now you get the same mount at 40 from your trainer. (Probably more reason when you did it and then find your charger has turned into an elephant but that is another gripe - must talk to equine spirit about it next time I'm in Dire Maul).

Of course there are jerks already queuing as tanks in bad gear, with bad attitudes, and with gear-greed.

This "solution" doesn't reduce that tendency, it rewards it.

I think that it was more looking at the dungeon than the makeup of the group that motivated this particular individual - HoO really is a very long one, and even I'm starting to get a little annoyed with it seeming to always be the instance I get 2-3 times a night.

No matter how much loot they throw at people, it's not going to make them want to do the dungeons that can take thirty minutes to an hour depending on your group and their skill.

The answer is to ease up the difficulty or reverse the nerfs and bad ideas on the tank and healer classes. The game should be challenging, but 5 mans with strangers isn't the place to punish players for learning. I thought that 5 mans were designed to be "bite size raids" where you start to learn how to do things in a group even if you don't have a raiding guild yet. Get a little geared, get a little experience, and then hopefully start to run the bigger raids when you get a guild. Or not do them at all if you are casual - but still have an opportunity to experience the "raiding" environment.

I'm a holy paladin, and we were hit especially hard. I used to be able to carry mediocre tanks while they were gearing up and learning, but we took major hits to our signature spells and abilities and my skill can no longer cover people who are starting out. I know other healers have been having similar difficulties, and a couple of our formerly "go-to" bear tanks are now saying they feel completely useless and they have all switched to DPSing - there is something wrong with the approach. It's not the players lacking skill or not adapting to the new playstyle (which is a little ridiculous getting changed every expansion). The dungeons aren't tuned to what the players can do.

This isn't addressing the underlying problem.

I spent weeks/months on various rep pets, and months really getting stuff like the White Chickadee from MT. When I go back, I'll probably start on Raven Lord again. What percentage of people playing WoW actually put forth the effort to do this stuff anymore? People asked me all the time, wtf am I doing in Outlands every day and when I told them, the reaction was usually an /eyeroll and complete bafflement as to why I'd even want this stuff.
I'm a collector and achievement *****, it's a vanity thing. I put forth the time and effort to get them, but because I'm DPS, that means my time and effort aren't worth spit and some tank or healer can get it just for queue'ing a random?
No.

Plenty of puggers show up unprepared (in every role) and hope to get carried through. Dangling a carrot adds incentive to tanks and healers to do exactly that, regardless of if they actually can finish or not. Hell, most unprepared players don't necessarily know they are unprepared when they queue.

And, still, everytime someone asks Blizzard why they dont do different talents for pvp/pve, wich is a request since they invented the arena, they say it would become "too hard" for new gamers.
Well...they dont have new gamers anymore. Just old gamers leaving for a game (rift) that actually has a spec just for pvp. yay.

I honestly wish they would just get rid of the Tank/healer/DPS combo that has been holding MMORPGs back for years. I think it should be a 100% DPS model, and you are given abilities to take care of yourself and sometimes others. Not enough that you could dedicate yourself to healing though. It would be nice for each class to have their on threat generating ability so they could toss threat all around the group and each person would be able to soak up some of the damage while the other ones heal up. Obviously this isn't a well thought out idea, but it's a concept that could be built upon.

Second, I love the PvP/PvE difference discussed earlier. I agree that Blizzard needs to start making abilities do different things depending on the PvP/PvE scenario and tweak each class so it's balanced in both. I'm not sure why they believe it would make things too difficult to new players, as long as the tooltip reflected what it did then I don't see the issue. They don't feel it's confusing to new players when they use a 30 second fear only to have it last 10 seconds on an enemy player?

What I don't see is how this would help balance out the number of tanks/DPS there are in the game. Like I said in my previous post, there are a lot of reasons why people don't like to tank and it's generally all the attitudes of your fellow party members. Sure everything would be just peachy if everything was a guild based group. But sadly, it's just not that simple to find a bunch of people you trust who want to play the exact same amount that you do. So at some point you're going to have to use the dungeon finder and go with random people.

A lot of people have mentioned that you need to think of whats FUN for people, and this is absolutely correct. Make it FUN and people will be all over it.

This changes it for me. My main has been and always will be my mage. I love magey character types and I always play a mage first. As such, I care about achievements only on my mage. That said, I'm not tied to DPS. I actually like DPS, healing, tanking roughly evenly. If Blizzard would finally give me some mage plate and make frost a tanking tree I would happily play as a tank (at least for randoms :D).

Anyways... the fact that I can queue on my paladin as a tank (or my druid as a healer) and then transfer the reward to the character I care about is awesome. And I have spammed dungeons for those mounts for a long time with nothing to show for it =/. Including Sethekk with druid friends daily...

It's not hard to farm those mounts, it's just time consuming. The drop rate is atrocious, and most people didn't get them even when the content was current. Most people won't get them now. What's more, everyone who is willing to play the needed role can get the chance on their main. What's more, because it is a low % chance, you're likely to get people running for longer periods of time.

If a tank wants to "farm" for these mounts, it's going to be more time consumptive and expensive than if he just farmed the original instances, and he'll be lowering the queue time for DPS.

There's really a very small segment of the population that this "harms," and that's people who are willing to spend months doing very boring (and safe) farming for exotic mounts to distinguish them from the rest of the population.

In return for this harm, there's a very large segment of the population who this has the chance to help. And I know (anecdotally) of three good tanks in my guild who have said it'd be worth it for them to start doing randoms again if this goes through.

IMO, if it lowers queue times for DPS to even semi-reasonable levels, it's totally worth it.

This whole bribe thing, which I will take advantage of on my tank and healer, is entirely unneeded. The reason LFG is bad now has a lot to do with the fact that people aren't over gearing heroics like they were WHEN THE LFG WAS FIRST INTRODUCED.

Shit, really. Like really. Really. Seriously, when LFG first came out heroics were cake, 80% of the non-alt/new player population over geared them. So everyone had a OS tank/heal spec that had gear to out gear heroics. That is what made queues fast. When Cata first came queues were slightly faster because every tank/healer needed gear fast. So they would random a lot to gear up, they now have gear and don't want to deal with the hassle.

Now dedicated tanks/heals only want the VP. They do one a day, preferably with friend/guildies. When that DPS warrior/shadow priest/moonkin/retadin/etc has the time to have a mostly epic tank/healer set they to will queue for heroics as a tank/healer. Then this whole long queue time will go away.

By the end of Wrath I could heal a Fury warrior in a heroic with no problem. That is no longer the case, things are harder. They will get easier. This is entirely an issue of having LFD early in an x-pac, which is something we have never had before.

Seriously, this whole LFD non-sense will be a non-issue by the time Cata hits the 1/2 way point. Then everyone will forget until the next x-pac when it comes up again. As tanks and healers will use LFD to get the gold and JPs they can turn into gold as a revenue source once most heroics become a cake walk. Which they will with in time.

So will then Blizz take away my extra sack of gold or not? When everyone has easy loot, epics and 90% of heroics are cake, will I still get my extra tank bag?

Not that I want it but when that is the case, what happens then?