[Suggestion] How to speed up the LFD/LFR queues

#1 - June 27, 2013, 9:11 a.m.

When you queue up for the scenario, what do you get? 1 minute queue, maximum. I ussually get almost an instant pop. Why is that? No roles matter.

For LFD or LFR we need to wait for healers or tanks, this is what slows down the queues for most people. While me myself I have not a direct problem with this, since I am ussually tanking, but I was thinking, how to solve this for the others or even for me, when I wanna queue up as a damage dealer.

First of all, we need to answer a question. Why is there so little healer and tanks?
I am interrested in what of these two is right, or more right:
- People do not want to gather gear for this roles, because out in the world they spent majority of the time in a dd spec

- People are afraid to perform this role (healer or tank)

Solution:
- If the right answer is that people are afraid of healing or tanking, I currently have nothing to add here. My solution is aimed at people, who just cba to gather the gear.

- What if, you could queue up for a "virtual" role. This could only apply to classes, that could either tank or heal, of course. Let's say you are a warrior, right. You are Fury for PVE and Arms for PVP. There is no space nor gear for you to perform the tanking role, but you know how to tank, because you have tanked in the past. You also have a basic understanding of the tanking rotation and tanking mechanics.

When queueing up, you could check an option, that you would like to queue as a virtual tank. Upon entering the instance, you will find yourself in a predefined tanking spec, with a basic tanking gear, everything of this would be temporary and limited for the time beeing in the raid.

For developers, it will be required to set these predefined specs noob friendly, but also to satisfy skilled players. It should be easy and well organized, I think it is not that hard to find a nice solution that would fit most players and after seeing it for the first time, people wouldn't have problem working with it again.

I believe such an option would let many hybrid classes queue up as some virtual roles, to speed up queue for themselves, which would speed up the queue for another 24 people as well.

Do you think such a system, or at least the very core idea of this would help? Can we expect something like this in future?

One step for this has been done - you can receive loot for the spec you are currently not performing. Half of this system has already been implemented and I am kindly using it most of the time - queueing up as a tank, looting for dd spec.

#3 - June 27, 2013, 10:05 a.m.

Hmm.., it’s certainly an interesting idea, even if slightly strange…

27/06/2013 10:11Posted by Martenus
There is no space nor gear for you to perform the tanking role, but you know how to tank, because you have tanked in the past. You also have a basic understanding of the tanking rotation and tanking mechanics.

I guess the first problem that comes to mind is this: you’re assuming that anyone that queues for it will have tanked before and knows the rotation. I’m afraid that such an easy system dangling the “carrot” of instant queuing times would entice a lot of inexperienced players to join in and lower the success rate of those raids.

Also, they would have to set their bindings and tanking abilities every time they would enter a new instance, which would be annoying to both them and the rest of the people waiting. Of course that’s a solvable problem but still, I think this would just be too much work for something that has the potential to cause a lot of problems.
This would also kind of trivialize the roles for players where LFR is the end content. What would be the point of actually gearing up as a tank if you could click a button and get instant (even if basic) tanking gear that is good enough to complete LFR?

In the end I think the benefits wouldn’t outweigh the risks, but who knows, this is only my personal opinion and devs might think differently ;)