Since I’m at work, I’ve not yet had a chance to see how hard the 5 man content was hit in Rift (that make or break is tonight), but one item I did notice in the patch notes that (on paper) sounds like it might have some promise is the LFG tool not matching you with people on your ignore list.
This (on paper) creates a nice server black ball list, with poor performers finding themselves on plenty of ignore lists, greatly increasing their average wait time, and forever keeping them out of your group after the first bad run. (On paper) that sounds pretty damn good, especially given the limited size of a themepark server.
Does the DF in WoW do this? If so, does it help?
Hardcore Casual 
The DF in WoW always did this. And no, it didn’t make any difference.
Interesting. Guess we will see if a smaller player pool makes a difference.
The dungeon finder (since its first implementation I believe) has had this feature. I doubt it has much of an effect because the pool of available players is so large (at least in WoW’s case since it is regional) that even if you happen to be on 50 people’s ignore lists, your overall wait won’t be significantly effected. Blizzard does do a lot of behind-the-scenes tweaking of things like the cooldown on vote kicking when in groups based on historical metrics that do have noticeable effects. They aren’t transparent about those exact mechanisms though for obvious reasons.
More apropos to your post title though is something fairly new for WoW’s dungeon finder system. The WoW DF now prioritizes players from the same realm over others in the queue. This should hopefully make players more cognizant of their behavior in random dungeons as it is more likely their randomly matched peers will be from their server.
My experience (maybe this changed) with the WoW DF was that you could only put people on your ignore list if they were from your server. If you got grouped with some asshat from another server you had no way to avoid getting grouped with them again save liberal application of the “kick” button.
No, that’s not correct.
The patch that introduced the Dungeon Finder also added the ability to ignore players from other servers.
As Sean said, though, with so many players out there, and therefore so many asshats out there, no matter how many you ignored, there were still others for you to get grouped with.
Obviously, the impact on community will take time to assess – but as far as making it way, way, way too easy…they have outdone themselves.
I just finished my first two and both were kind of a clusterf### as far as group make up, experience and all of the other factors that make groups “good” or “bad”. Fresh tank, slightly undergeared dps, 2 chloros – one that had checked “support” and the other that had checked “healing” as their roles. But the outcomes? Welcome to Wrath of the Rift King. Please collect your tokens from the Bosses A$$ when he generously bends over.
Really? :sadface:
One curious sidenote – the tanks (at least on my server) are reporting the longest queues by a long shot. I’ve heard people saying up to 40 minutes – and it took me almost no time getting a group as either a healer or dps.
The Rift dungeon nerf made me realize something: if you hate grinding, you should prefer difficult skill-rewarding content. Skill-rewarding content gives you the opportunity to bypass some of the grind, by completing the content at a faster rate than the devs assumed when tuning the rewards.
Consider what has occurred in Rift’s dungeon nerf:
1) Dungeons made substantially easier, there is minimal challenge to any of the T2s I’ve done thus far.
2) Dungeon currency rewards lowered (from ~30 to ~16 plaques per run)
3) Gear costs increased (Approx +20% plaques to purchase T2 gear.)
In aggregate, the grind was reduced in that dungeons became on average faster (be becoming easier), and increased in that we need to do more dungeons to get the same gear as before. Which works out to a wash… if you used to complete dungeons slowly before. If you used to complete dungeons quickly, then this has increased your grind.
If a MMO player dislikes grind (and nearly all MMO players claim to dislike grind), then they should seek games that provide high-challenge, high-reward-rate content, instead of seeking games that provide low-challenge, low-reward-rate content. (Games that provide low-challenge, high-reward content rarely exist, because that model has difficulty retaining players – everyone leaves after they’ve acquired all of the shinies) Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that low difficulty/low reward rate model is more successful at player retention, at least initially, because we psychologically prefer a steady trickle of modest shinies. Hamsterwheel away…
NEW THOUGHT
What if Rift nerfing dungeons is A BONUS???
What I mean is that maybe they want to clear the decks of the current content being experienced by the most people. (think WOTLK 10-30% buff at end or TBC nerf at end).
So this “could” mean great things coming in Rift land. This would be the opposite of Wow who tuned up difficulty to keep people paced to a slower release cycle.
Just a thought I don’t know if this is the case.