Monday, February 1, 2010

Flaws with the LFG-System (part 2)

More flaws with the new lfg-system have shown up since the last post I wrote (which can be found here --> http://jinxedthought.blogspot.com/2010/01/flaws-with-lfg-system.html <--). I hoped those flaws mentioned then would be among the lonely few, but alas. Here are three more flaws I've encountered.

Vote to Kick
Yeah, I wrote about this the last time too. Back then it was about not being able to kick two consecutive persons, or being able to get a new player if one was afk. This new flaw I've found is a sort of add on to the old flaws about Vote to Kick, which I start to think needs an overhaul to work fully as intended (as I intend that is). The new flaw mostly affects lowbie instancing, but also regular hc's. You simply can't kick a person the first 15 minutes. Now I'm not entirely sure if it's exactly 15 minutes, or if there is some other timer/limit to it, but I think a player can't be kicked while he still has the lfg-system debuff up. Why would I need to kick someone that early into the instance?
A player can turn out to be an idiot during those first 15 minutes, like someone who constantly needs on items, pulls groups and makes everything a hazzle or be afk, not doing their job. You'd want to replace a person like that asap to get the instance going. What if the healer goes afk the very first minute? Or the tank? You have to wait 15 minutes to be able to kick him/her before you can get a new one?

Like I said this is mostly a problem in lowbie instances, where the extra player actually matters and/or the instance's only 15 minute long. I did Scarlet Monastery Graveyard on my little warrior and wasn't able to kick the afk dpser the whole instance, which only took about 10 minutes, effectively boosting someone who contributed nothing. Not a major problem in that particular instance, but definitely annoying.

Difficulty Level
The lfg-tool decides which instance we get to go to. It can actually choose instance which are way too easy or way too hard for you. At 80 it decides instance based on your gear, and so far I am satisfied with most of the people I get grouped with and the instance I myself get chosen for.

But at lower levels it seems to only choose based on level, and hardly even that. I noticed (again on my little warrior) that there is an instance gap between SM and Maraudon. The highest leveled SM instance has mobs leveled up to 40 approximately, whereas the lowest level Maraudon instance has mobs of no less level than 45. And there is no instance inbetween. The system seems to favor instances slightly over the players level rather than under though, which means I ended up in Maraudon already at level 41, seemingly having "outleveled" SM (according to the lfg-tool). The bosses of Maraudon were level 46! That is five levels higher than me, in other words more than a skull raid boss is over a level 80. Try tanking that. Parry, parry, miss, block, dodge, parry... etc. Being a low level tank however is less of a problem, you can still endure most of the dmg they do and hold aggro fairly well.

But last night I ended up in a group where I, being level 43, was the highest leveled of them all. We even got a mage who was level 39. 39! In an instance with mobs being between level 45-46, 7 levels above him! What good was he going to do? This actually made things alot more difficult, because the dps had a really hard time killing the mobs off. We even wiped once because of this. One of my party members commented however that it was fun because it made the instancing more interesting when it was a little difficult. Yeah, but it should be difficult because of the right reasons.

Loot Distribution
Finally a flaw which I'm not sure if I should share with everyone since it can be used for evil. I noticed that if you leave the instance without rolling on the loot, no one gets it! I don't know if that happens all the time, or if it's that the system simply bugs out at such times and therefore doesn't work as it should some of the times. It happens rarely that people leave without rolling, but it does happen. A blue dropped which I actually needed on my druid, but someone in the group left without rolling and so the loot was never distributed, and I got no item. Now you know that if you really don't like someone in your group, this is how you can ruin it for them if they happen to need on a drop. Remember, with power comes great responsibility!

On a side note
I know the new system is called Looking for Dungeon and not Looking for Group anymore, but cba to think about it when writing :P

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