Leaked Survey
A survey image has been leaked across various Discords and Reddit which indicates that the World of Warcraft team is looking into changes for LFG to improve the experience of creating dungeon groups.
The World of Warcraft team is exploring potential changes to the PRemade Group Finder feature to improve the experience of creating Dungeon groups.
Based on your experiences with Premade Group Finder Dungeon groups, how interested would you be in each of the following changes to Premade Group Finder.
Group Finder can automatically form a group for you based on criteria you set as a group leader.
Group leaders' key is "Resilient" (i.e. protected from depletion) for the first group they lead each week.
Group leaders received additional Crests after completion of the dungeon.
Group leaders receive additional Valorstones after completion of the dungeon.
Group Finder will recommend players with a similar skill level to you as a group leader.
Group Finder will recommend players with similar playstyles or goals to you as a group leader.
Many players have interpreted some, or all of these as an indication that solo queue is being looked at. I believe this is quite the opposite, as Blizzard has historically never been fond of a solo queue-like system, pushing for improvements to LFG instead. This survey is asking questions on what would cause more people to create groups in LFG. With more groups active in LFG, there will be more groups for others to join, or at least that's the idea.
The Tank and Healer Problem
Many players have speculated for a while that the actual problem with LFG group is the number of Tanks and Healers. These roles are highly in demand due to the number of additional responsibilities on the player and can much more easily find a group because they are higher in demand.
While Blizzard's idea of increasing the total number of groups is a great idea, I think that the impact of this change will continue to be limited by the scarce number of Tanks and Healers as these are what the majority of groups are waiting on already. Increasing the total number of DPS only groups, won't necessarily help the problem.
When asked directly about the Tank and Healer shortage in an interview with MarcelianOnline, Paul Kubit responds first about talking about the general changes to LFG that they think will help everyone.
Paul KubitA big part of this is we see challenges that folks have in queueing in particular. Finding groups has been a challenge. And this affects tanks and healers for sure, groups are looking for tanks and healers, but it also affects everyone who is trying to find the right group for them. One of the things we're focusing on in Midnight is making easier to find the group that you are looking for. We're taking some efforts and I think we'll learn more about this in the future as we share more information about it, but allow someone who is posting a group to share what my group's intent is. Am i looking for the most efficient players because we're only expecting the most efficient players to clear this difficult content or am I looking for someone who is a bit more chill, I'm here for fun, I just want to clear, I don't necessarily want to time it? And then give players who are looking for a group, the ability to filter by that: I am looking for a chill group, I am not looking for this exclusivity. Or I am looking for this exclusive group because I expect the same level of performance. Giving players the better tools to find the better tools will make it easier for every, including healers and tanks.
The quote from this interview seems to match with what this survey indicates -- Blizzard seems to be pushing LFG improvements, although they acknowledge there are some plans for tank and healer changes.
Not Solo Queue
Players have made the conclusion that this survey indicates that Blizzard may be looking into Solo Queue. I believe this survey indicates the opposite as even the first bullet shows that Blizzard wants delineation in having a group leader and players who are choosing to join a group. Solo Queue which is just pure random matchmaking along a skill ranking does not have a dedicated "leader" still.
Solo Queue would likely run into the issue where Tanks and Healers wouldn't use it at all. Since these roles are the ones in demand, they would have the ability to choose their exact group. Why would they rely on random matchmaking? This would make the only people incentivized to use solo queue would be DPS and queue times would take a long time.
