A few random thoughts on random instances

Today I resolve not to rant.

Ok, maybe a slight bit of grumpy, but no head spinning mouth frothing anger.

Not that some of what I have seen does not deserve it, but both myself and others have already talked about fail pugs and the asshats that form them.

No, today I am not going to come unglued, I am simply going to make a few observations.

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Over all I really like the new Dungeon Finder tool. To say I use it lots would be an understatement. In fact I have nearly abandoned my alts and concentrated almost exclusively on my priest. I have had both good and bad pugs, fortunately more good than bad.

I’ll remind myself again,

Today is not about level 80 Dps characters that phone it in and expect to be carried through while doing sub-1k Dps.

Today is not about prima donna tanks and/or healers that think they can be a tool because their que time is like 12 seconds.

Today is not about loot whores, ninjas, drama mammas, or smack talking 12 year olds.

Today is about the mechanics of the system and things that I think could be done to improve it.

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Why are you posting this here and not in the official suggestion forums you ask?

Simple. I don’t think what I say will have any impact at all anyway, and I would rather you good folks read it than the random trolls on the official forums.

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Issue the first, on the tradability of items. 

Having the blues and epics tradable as long as your still grouped is a fine idea actually. How about we extend it to greens and quest items (such as the rod in Uldaman) dropped in the instance? This would save a bit of grief for people.

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Issue the second, on whispers.

I can see them standing there and I can converse in party chat. I suppose I can also use /say and /yell to communicate. Why can’t I whisper people in my group? There are times when a suggestion or question is simply better received when not shouted to the damn rooftops!

Dammit, I almost let myself get started there…. gotta watch that.

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Issue the third, BoE items.

I understand the reasoning for putting in the “sort the loot by who can use it” feature. It is designed to prevent people who have no use for an item from grabbing it with a sneaky need roll. The reasoning is sound, there’s a lot of asshats out there.

Please, oh please, disable that feature on bind on equip items. I have sat and watched things that no one could use get needed by all four of the other party members “to put in the auction house”. Things that not only could I have used for one of my alts but I should have had just as much right to as a potential sale item.

We are not talking about just armor here either, I believe last night it was both a BoE epic physical Dps ring and a Boe blue tanking trinket. I could have found a home for them just as easily.

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Issue the fourth, randomness and it’s rewards.

There has been a good deal of clamoring for a way to opt out of certain instances when running random heroics. I think thats a very doable idea. You get benefits for going it random though, and those would have to suffer.

I say give folks the ability to cross off a maximum of two instances they don’t want to go to. They can get rid of the chance to do Oculus and Halls of Reflection, or whatever their personal least favorite instances are. There is a price though.

Right now you get two Emblems and about 20 gold for running completely random. For every instance you cross off you get one fewer “bonus emblem” for completion. Cross off two and you just get the cash to help with your repair bills.

Thats fair.

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Issue the fifth, getting debuffed by others.

Currently if you que for a random instance only to find yourself in an unpopular one it is not unheard of to have most, or all of your group bail on you. This leaves you with the option of standing at the entrance hoping an actual group gets backfilled or taking the deserter debuff and not getting to run for 15 minutes.

How about setting it up in such a way that if over half your group abandons the instance, say before the first boss fight, the remaining players are offered the choice of re-queing  or simply being ported bact to their starting point with no 15 minute debuff.

This would help those who que for random and plan to run what they get, preventing the cowardice of others from hurting their gameplay.

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Issue the sixth, cross server friends list.

Yes I know it’s impractical from a chat standpoint, or for monitoring who is online and when. What I am suggesting is having a the ability to tag people from a different server in such a way that the LFD tool would attempt to group you together again, assuming you are both in the que at the same time.

Not sure from a technical standpoint how difficult that would be, but there it is.

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Over all my experiences with the new grouping tools have been very positive.  Yes, I have run into a few bad apples. The again I have run into some really great folks as well.

I love the new tool, and plan to keep using it. I just thought I would offer up a few tweaks to make it even better.