I read the forums a lot and there are always many different people coming up with ideas to fix the problem with the queue time that DPS needs to waste waiting for a dungeon. Most suggest increasing what tanks and healers get so they want to do it more. Some suggest making tanking or healing easier. I like neither of them.
I am one of those DPS. I wait for what seems like hours on end just to get my VP. 40 minute wait to get stuck with some tank that thinks he is the cats meow and refuses to pull because the healer does not have enough mana only to have him tell me that I will wait and like it. So I leave and enter another 40 minute wait for another dungeon. I walk in on the first boss of Shadowfang and wait for roughly 20 minutes before they pull because the tank and the DK are discussing interrupt duty.
When we go, we wipe, wipe, wipe and wipe again before I switch to MM and interrupt the stuff myself because they are both to freaking stupid to do it. Either way, the dungeon takes nearly 2 hours. All together my time invested to get my valor points for the day should be taken into consideration.
This is why I do no think tanks and healers should get more VP to entice them to queue up to make life easier on DPS. I think DPS should get more VP so they do not need to queue up as often.
Just using the example above I ended up wasting about 4 hours for my daily 70 VP. This is unacceptable by any standards.
Lets use some bullshit numbers for the sake of making the math so easy an Orc can do it.
Lets call the average dungeon run 1 hour and 10 minutes long for any decent group. That means 70 minutes.
70 Valor Point = 70 Minutes = 1 point per minute.
See, I think I made that really easy right?
Now a tank has an instant queue so the 1 hour and 10 minute run nets him 70 VP because he/she invested 70 minutes from the moment the entered the queue to the time the dungeon is finished.
A healer has a 5 minute wait and the dungeon took 1 hour and 10 minutes, their time invested in 75 minutes so they get 75 VP.
The DPS waited 45 minutes for the 1 hour and 10 minute run so they get 115 VP for their time invested.
See, DPS should be the one getting more VP, not the tank and the healers, the DPS invested more time and should be awarded accordingly for their investment.
This helps even more because as DPS are getting more points it means they will get everything they need quicker and will gladly skip doing the daily dungeon if they do not need the points any more making that less DPS in the queue. In turn this will shorten the queue for DPS later on because there will be less DPS in the system.
They need to up the reward for the DPS and never consider making a bonus for the tanks and healers. The tanks and healers already have their bonus, 0-5 minute wait times, they do not need anything else.
Would this be abused? Hell yeah, I would go with a guild group, clear to the last boss and then just hang out in the dungeon until someone needs to go or the raid time is coming up. We can sit there for 3 hours and then do the last boss and get 180 VP for the run. That is why a cap would need to be put on it.
I think a 150 VP cap would be fair. That is roughly two and a half hours not including wait time. Most groups, even with some wipes and learning the fights, should be able to down a dungeon within two and a half hours max. So that seems reasonable.
This would also solve the problem with tanks instance fishing. If you are not aware of what instance fishing is, it is the act of entering the queue and only joining if the dungeon is already in progress in an effort to get in on the last boss to make their run even shorter. Now the tank would have a nice quick 5 minute run, but it would result in the tank only getting 5 VP for the day as that is their daily run.
Okay, this brings up another problem. What if the previous tank DCed or gave up. No tank would join being they do not want to get only 5 VP for their daily. So we would need to put a minimum on it as well.
50 VP minimum seems fair. I would easily take 50 instead of 70 if my runs where always 5 minutes as a DPS, tank or healer. I am sure others would feel that way as well.
This is what Blizzard needs to do to fix the LFD system. Give the DPS a bonus as a thank you for putting up with the long times and dealing with the prima donna tanks and healers that all seem to think they are gods gift.
Remember, giving the DPS more VP is a good thing. It will remove them from doing the daily faster which means faster queue times for everyone and everyone getting gear faster. Tanks and healers will still be getting what they get so their numbers will not change but the DPS numbers will start to drop, drastically, making it better for everyone.
There is another option to this which someone mentioned and I both like it and hate it. Being I can not make up my mind I will mention it.
Just make the random give 70 VP all the time.
So when you do get a guild tank to help you, or rent a tank, you can power up your VP in one day and get everything you want. While I like that in a way, because I would have had all 359 gear the second day of Cataclysms release, I dislike it because it trivializes there being a daily heroic.
Either way, I do agree that something needs to be done.
One of the biggest reasons I am looking to switch to a new game is the wait time. I am sick of it and it is not like there is anything else in the game to do while waiting for it. Rep came to quick and easy, so no rep to farm. Money seems to grow on trees this expansion so playing the AH is boring as sin. Digging is fun being I still have one last achievement to get from there but after digging up nearly 2000 sites and still sitting at 18/20 rares I am about as sick of that as I can be. The fishing achievement is in the same boat. I am so sick of fishing and never catching what I am looking for.
So there is nothing to do while waiting for my dungeon. This means waiting around doing nothing. This means I am bored and being bored is not how you keep people addicted to a game. When people get bored of a game they will move along to something else that stimulates their mind.
I liked WoW because of the feeling there is always something to do. It does not have that feeling any more. The only thing WoW has to do now is sit around waiting. Waiting for my dungeon to pop. Waiting for guildies to come online. Waiting for raid time. Waiting for something to do.
At the very least Blizzard. Once I queue up on my hunter, let me switch characters so I can do something on one of my other characters that are not left with nothing to do in the game and when my dungeon pops, just switch me back over when it is accept.
Now that is another idea right there. Would give me something to do with those 45 minutes instead of wasting time. I am not fond of wasting time.
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Grumpy,
ReplyDeleteI'm curious to know what you do outside of playing WoW. The reason behind my curiosity is to gauge the amount of time you spend playing WoW versus the amount of time I spend playing. I too am a Hunter and I too intensely dislike the long queue times we experience as DPS sing LFD. I no longer *absolutely* do my random heroic every single day because I simply cannot wait that long at any given time for the queue OR I'm just not willing to wipe for 2+ hours and never get the VP anyway.
BUT, despite my hesitation to queue for random heroics, I find myself with ample opportunity to fill the wait time, should I choose. I still ahve rep I can gain from daily quests in Dragonmaw. I have only just begun to level Archaeolgy. I am FAR from being flush in gold and have spent some time maxing LW to try and sell a few items here and there, as I have with cooking. Fishing, while frustrating, can still yield some fair gains, even while I wait in vain for the various Bloated fish I need to complete the achievements. I wonder what the difference is between our two playstyles, or lifestyles as it were, that have created such a vastly contrasting situation wherein you have nothing left to do while waiting for a queue and I have a TON of relatively productive things to do.
As somewhat of a student of social studies and just plain interested in knowing about my fellow gamers, I look forward to hearing from you again on this subject.
Thanks!
Ozolin of Moon Guard
I play around 3 hours a night. Raid nights I do 4.
ReplyDeleteI'll actually make a post about it tomorrow just for the heck of it. My personal story is actually completely different from most people that play.
I would figure all you where fishing for is how many hours but I like the idea of having something different to write about that isn't just me having fun complaining.
Yes, I am not actually that grumpy. It is just more fun to write about things being bad then things being good.
I do completely agree with your first suggestion for valor points, but seeing as how you only get valor points for one random heroic run a day everybody and their mothers would be queuing for dps even if they weren't good at it at all, also that would severely cripple the dps times because there would be less and less tank/healers queuing up because who wants less VP anyway? I don't think anybody does. Overall i think it's a solid idea but the queue times would be much much worse for DPS if they did this.
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