🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:41:35 -0700 (PDT), bob wrote:
>  On Apr 11, 1:53pm, Urbin <ur...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> > On Mon, 11 Apr 2011 04:05:50 -0700 (PDT), bob wrote:
> > > On Apr 8, 5:13=3DA0pm, Neil Cerutti <ne...@norwich.edu> wrote:
> > > > Dungeons that don't depend on there being damage, healers and
> > > > tanks are possible. Portions of Wrath dungeons provide models.
> >
> > > I would extend this to say that most dungeons don't actually require a
> > > tank, a healer and 3 dps in the way way the LFG system currently
> > > works. Back in the old days, there were lots of times when (usually in
> > > a guild group) going with a high dodge rogue or a Voidwalker or hunter
> > > pet as "tank" when we couldn't be bothered to get a "proper" one. I
> > > was in an instance the other day where the healer DCed, and we decided
> > > to keep clearing trash until we could get a replacement, I was tanking
> > > as a protadin (using the holy power heal spell whose name I can't
> > > bring to mind and the moonkin druid was sending the odd heal my way),
> > > and we were doing fine 4 manning it like that. With an automated LFG
> > > system, you can't chose to have a go like that, it's "standard group
> > > nothing".
> >
> > I, too, remember the vanilla days of improvising for dungeon runs and I
> > have also 4 manned dungeons with one of the two roles missing recently.
> > While that is certainly a possibility, it depdens on having a character
> > that can serve as "off-tank" or "off-healer" and a group that is willing
> > to try this. I think dumping this on people enlisted in the /lfg queue
> > might not be appreciated by everyone or in all setups. And if you are
> > willing to do this, you are still free to form your own non-standard
> > group outside the /lfg tool.
> 
>  Agreed, I see no way of implementing it within the /lfg system, but I
>  can't help but feel that there was more flexibility in the old days

But they haven't removed anything that was used in the old days. You can
still try to hand-pick a group if you are willing to take the time.
Admittedly, it will probably take longer because people enrolled in an /lfg
queue are unlikely to pay attention to LF1M LBRS in /trade or /general.

> (and perhaps the odd reluctant tank/healer who discovere the fun of
>  healing/tanking due to being cajoled into it).

I still see that happening with a tank or healer dropping group and the
group deciding to go on while waiting for a replacement only to find out
they can easily finish the instance in this setup.

>  On the other hand the "good old days" did mean spending half an hour
>  sitting in Ironforge spamming "LF1M LBRS - need tank" in the LFG channel,
>  which was no fun to anyone.

Exaclty. A lot of people seem to forget (or have never experienced) this. In
the old days I'd often spend an hour waiting for a group to form being
unable to do anything because I had to wait in a capital city looking for
more members.

Nowadays I can trigger /lfg and go quest or do some dailies or farm
herbs/archeology or whatnot. The fact that it takes longer for DPS today
than it did in early WotLK seems to overshadow that even a 50 min DPS queue
spent doing TB dailies and picking herbs is much better spent than sitting
in IF for an hour spamming city chat.

>  On the other hand, I did occasionally used to receive whispers from
>  random people asking if I fancied coming on a dungeon run with them,
>  which was always good for the ego.

Or stressful for me, because my shadow priest would constantly be spammed to
heal and would often get heat for declining.

> > > Personally I rate vehicle quests as only slightly less bad than old
> > > style escort quests
> >
> > I love vehicle quests, provided they are not bugged (I'm thinking of those
> > Howling Fjord dailies) or really hard to understand/see (I'm thinking of
> > riding that damn giant in Zul Drak).
> 
>  I definitely noticed that the Cata vehcile quests are way better than
>  the WotLK ones

I agree, they learnt from their mistakes with that mechanism.

>  and I got the distinct impression that vehciles were "flavour of the
>  month" and somewhat overused in WotLK.  That fad seems to have passed,
>  and vehciles are now used much more selectively.

They were a new feature. In a way it was understandable they wanted to try
them out and offer the players the chance to get to know, love or hate the
mechanism.

>  Of course without the vehicle mechanic, we would have no chucking baby
>  bears out of trees, which would be a shame to all involved.

Absolutely.

> > > I only actually did occulus twice
> >
> > My problem with Occulus wasn't really the vehicle interface but fighting in
> > 3 dimensions and finding it really hard to grok whether a mob was in front
> > or behind me and losing orientation and my system of reference all the time.
> 
>  Definitely agree on that one.  There are a number of other air-to-air
>  combat quests that suffered from that problem.
> 
> > > > In short, the vehicle system is robust enough to create any kind
> > > > of non-role-based scenario the designers can dream up. However,
> > > > it would not be a huge improvement for masses of damage role
> > > > queuers to get shafted to a small handful of entirely vehicle
> > > > based dungeons. Some people already everything to do with
> > > > vehicles, in addition to that concern.
> >
> > > The problem with most vehicle mechanics is that every one is slightly
> > > different, and because the mechanics are new, they use intrusive aids
> > > to help you understand what you're supposed to do, making them feel
> > > really dumbed down (but they aren't acutally easy).
> >
> > If they went this way, they would need to give players a chance to practise
> > the controls beforehand, like they did with the argent tournament. You could
> > learn how to joust doing the dailies before entering ToC. So, unlike
> > Occulus, people already knew (or could have known) how to work the vehicle.
> 
>  If I had a vehicle I knew, that had fighting techniques that actually
>  resembled the class I chose to play (if I'm playing a paladin, I don't
>  expect to have a "glass cannon" type weapon to work with, if I play a
>  mage, a tanking vehicle just feels wrong), I might be happier with
>  it.

Actually, I like vehicles for exactly that aspect. They give me some
variation to my usual play style.

>  If they wanted to revisit the Occulus type instance, perhaps one
>  way to do it would be to have a set of pre-quests for each of the
>  vehicle types.  Not only would there be a better chanec that players
>  would know what they were doing, they would also be able to introduce
>  more complexity and subtlety into the vehcile mechanics to make them
>  more fun, without just confusing people.

I absolutely agree, that would be a Good Thing (tm).

>  Of course then people would whine that "I did all the prequests on my
>  main, and I can't be bothered to on my nth alt, why can't I just use them
>  all automatically?"

Someone will always whinge and whine. If the prequests weren't endless (5-10
ten seem reasonable) that shouldn't be too bad. Also, they could make it so
that there is a small, independent chain for each vehicle type, so once you
have learnt them all on your main you'd only need to do the tank-prequest on
your alt and could skip the healer- and dps-prequests (of course, you could
then also only select the corresponding vehicle in the instance).

Or they could somehow introduce an account wide tally of which quests you
have completed and require that one character on your account needs to have
done all quests and then make the quests voluntary on your alts.

Cheers
Urbin
-- 
Dun Morogh-EU (PvE)                               | Juran  (65), Druid
Urbin  (85), Hunter  | Surana   (70), Mage        | Greeta (64), Rogue
Mymule (83), Warlock | Kordosch (75), Deathknight | Gera   (26), Paladin
Sunh   (80), Priest  | Taalas   (80), Shaman      | Vargal (35), Warrior