LFG is just ridiculous atm. My toons are almost all dps, because that is how i roll, i am leveling up a healer, but that is just a side thing. But on my main, lvl 55 and my highest alt, lvl 51, it just takes forever to get into a HM (50/55). Last saturday, ive spend over 2 hours in a queue and decided, screw it and just went on another alt.

 

I would like to suggest to make it more rewarding for people to make tanks/healers with added loot or something and/or to make the LFG crossrealm. Cause i might be on a server that has a very "high" morning/midday population but crap in the evenings/nights and there might be a server that is the opposite. I really hope the dev's will look into this and when they are changing something, please add a LFG timer.

Quests are awesome fun on SWTOR anyway, level with them (or warzones)

 

Really I just wanted to reply to your suggestion of making LFG cross realm, if bioware did this i'm out, blizzard did it and it is so so so so so stupid. Dungeons have to be nerfed down to mouth breather level because people can't work together under anonymity.

 

Or transfer to Bastion, I have intant queues all times of day as a healer

i didnt mean LFG for the quests, they are fun to do.

I meant as in LFG for fp's.. and yes, i did mean as what blizzard did, they made it so much easier, and they didnt had to nerf them down, i believe i should meet the game standards, NOT lowering the standards to simple level. Besides, the fights arent that hard to do anyway.

Make friends with tanks and healers, all que problems disappear.

Hopefully we are not doomed to seeing flashpoints become too easy like WoW. My heart kind of sunk when I saw the recent Twitter posts from Ghostcrawler saying they had to dumb down dungeons for LFG because people just weren't making the effort to get with friends for challenging content and just stopped doing them instead. And what's worse is that he was talking about Cataclysm dungeons being hard. O...M...G.

LFG is just ridiculous atm. My toons are almost all dps, because that is how i roll, i am leveling up a healer, but that is just a side thing. But on my main, lvl 55 and my highest alt, lvl 51, it just takes forever to get into a HM (50/55). Last saturday, ive spend over 2 hours in a queue and decided, screw it and just went on another alt.

 

I would like to suggest to make it more rewarding for people to make tanks/healers with added loot or something and/or to make the LFG crossrealm. Cause i might be on a server that has a very "high" morning/midday population but crap in the evenings/nights and there might be a server that is the opposite. I really hope the dev's will look into this and when they are changing something, please add a LFG timer.

 

Part of the problem is the group size. Most MMOs have 5 or sometimes 6 per group making the needed amount of tanks/heals lower. I can;t see BW changing this any time soon though. Cross server is not the answer either. The higher the anonymity, the less chance at repercussions, the more likely people are to act like jack holes. Whoever mentioned extra rewards is on the right track, but the incentive would have to be worth the time. Also, as I saw in WoW, this is incentive for people who do not have the gear, spec, or skill to queue up and frustrate the rest of the group.

 

So what would it take for me as a healer who's capped on coms each week by just doing Ops and doesn't need the gear you can purchase with them anyway? Honestly I'm not sure. Extra coms, even Ultimate, aren't it for sure. If they want to offer credits it would have to be at least as much as i could earn in that time frame by doing dailies. 1 round on Ilum takes maybe 25 mins and nets ~70k. Given that, a FP would need to be in the neighborhood of 100k to be worth the extra aggravation. Maybe a grab bag with a chance at unbound orange armor shells that have been removed from the game (Xenotech, Tionese, Columi, Rakata, Centurion, and probably others I've forgotten), blue/purple quality crafting mats, credits, schematics, 450 crew skill missions, etc. Basically, decent normal rewards with a chance at something shiny.

 

The other challenge is how do we prevent non-tanks/healers from queuing up in that role just for the bag. By that I mean something like an assassin in DPS PvP gear and spec who throws on Dark Charge and calls himself a tank. I've already seen this type of behavior just to circumvent the wait time and it will become more prevalent as the incentive is increased. The simplest answer is to have a survey pop up at the end of the FP asking the other group members if the tank/healer deserves the reward; 2/3 "yes" votes and that person gets their bag. This, however, is subject to abuse and I wouldn't want to implement it like that. I don't really have a good answer though.

 

Hopefully we are not doomed to seeing flashpoints become too easy like WoW. My heart kind of sunk when I saw the recent Twitter posts from Ghostcrawler saying they had to dumb down dungeons for LFG because people just weren't making the effort to get with friends for challenging content and just stopped doing them instead. And what's worse is that he was talking about Cataclysm dungeons being hard. O...M...G.

 

Kind of off topic, but Cataclysm dungeons were hard when it was originally released. For the first month or so most Heroic Stonecore PUGs failed miserably on the 3rd - 4th trash pull. Most of the ones that didn't fall apart there never got past the first boss. Stonecore was the worst, but I remember more than a few wipes in LFG groups in the other dungeons as well. As the xpac matured people, of course, outgeared and roflstomped them, but for a while they required CC and coordination, and were quite challenging to complete.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Pernicia

Play your role as a DPS effectively, become active friends with tanks. Problem solved.

 

You may have been put on too many peoples ignore list if you suck as a DPS... I'm not saying that you are, I am saying that the ignore list may tend to make your queues longer. If you feel that may apply to you, please revise your gameplay in group content.

 

As a healer and a tank, I selectively put DPS on my friend list.

There is a reward for tanks and heals: they queue only some minutes =)

Beside this: Join a guild. More XP and premade groups.

Cross server queues will be the exact same.

 

Every other server is gunna have plenty of DPS and little tanks/heals. Cross-server queues wouldn't do anything.

There is a reward for tanks and heals: they queue only some minutes =)

^ that

 

I have a 55 healer, tank and dps. I don't queue with dps, unless I have either a friend or a guild tank with me, because I know I will sit in the queue forever. If I queue on my healer, I will usually sit around 15-20minutes or so, and then get a pop......

 

When I queue on my tank? I'd better be ready to go IMMEDIATELY. Because as soon as I click the "Queue" button, it's going to pop immediately.

 

I can tell you: As much as the other classes rely on the tanks to take the beating for them, the tanks (especially in 55 FPs) rely on the healers to DO THEIR JOB. Nothing bothers a tank more, than jumping into a pile of dogs in Mando Raiders, and watch the healer start DPS'ing...... Tanks take the short end of the stick. Try running a flashpoint as a tank sometime. You do your job, the healer does his job, the dps does their job... You clear the flashpoint, and no one dies. Great! The healer walks away from the flashpoint with no repair cost, the dps might have to spent a few hundred credits on weapon repairs... the tank? He's got a 5k repair bill, just because he got wailed on for 30 minutes. How about..... you're tanking a FP, and the Sentinel in the group (or other dps) keeps initiating combat either on trash or bosses, because he thinks he's uber. Sure, the healer can keep him alive, and you can jump in after him, but the amount of work you have to do, to TAKE aggro away from a dps who jumped in before you, versus the tank jumping in first and building threat is a whole different ballgame, and makes the tank work a lot harder than he has to. I have actually gotten to the point, that when a dps takes the alpha on a fight, I let him keep it. Only takes a few deaths to rack up a DPS's repair bill, before they stop doing that.

 

To the OP.... The biggest incentive that can be offered to a tank, to get him to queue for a group finder, isn't gear.... It's the promise of a quality team that won't leave him with a massive repair bill.... Tanks typically queue in the GF with the DPS from their guilds. You want to get queues to pop? Join a guild, make friends with a tank, queue with him.

 

(I am not saying that all problems are "not the tank's fault"... I have seen a lot of terrible tanks that have gotten many a team killed.)

How about..... you're tanking a FP, and the Sentinel in the group (or other dps) keeps initiating combat either on trash or bosses, because he thinks he's uber. Sure, the healer can keep him alive, and you can jump in after him, but the amount of work you have to do, to TAKE aggro away from a dps who jumped in before you, versus the tank jumping in first and building threat is a whole different ballgame, and makes the tank work a lot harder than he has to. I have actually gotten to the point, that when a dps takes the alpha on a fight, I let him keep it. Only takes a few deaths to rack up a DPS's repair bill, before they stop doing that.

 

A million times this. I roll tanks and healers mainly, I do have a gunslinger that is effectively my raiding main but if either a tank or healer is missing, I will bring whichever toon my raid leader tells me to. I can heal bad groups through content, had to do it in Cademimu HM last night with a single-target tank who never once burned his free Explosive Surges or used Energy Blast, but tanking for bad groups makes my blood boil. If a sentinel/marauder leaps in first, I'll either lay down the ultimatum immediately that the group will be waiting for a new tank if it happens again, or if I'm low on time and can see the run dragging on and on then I cut my losses and bail on the spot.

 

Accuse me of being a prima donna all you like, but it's my time and repair bills these clowns are imposing on if I let them.

I have a Healer as my main and a Tank, that at times can be confused as my main because its easier to find good healers than tanks. Anyway getting back on track as you see I don't have a DPS toon even thou I still consider it lots of fun, well I'm just not good at it (my tank has better DPS in tank spec and gear than my heals in DPS spec and gear), so I depend a lot on finding real good DPS to clear the content. The best idea I can give you is to become a good DPS (learn the tactics, your skill tree, read mechanics of battles before going into new content, if you have taunts or heals learn to use them when things are going bad, reposition a boss when tank died, off heal yourself a bit) and make friends with tanks and heals. I almost always que or join an ops with a DPS friend who I know knows the content and has great DPS, because it just plain makes things easier.

I stopped pugging my tank a couple of weeks ago, got my gear to a certain point, and now only doing raids with friends and guild. never going to do any FPs as theres nothing that I want or need from them, though I did briefly think about gearing up a companion, but Its just not worth the aggro for the rewards on offer after a certain point in your progression.

For me, I really is difficult to think of anything that would make me want to que up again on my tank. Maybe some extra rewards as mentioned by an earlier post, but I'm not really sure.

Maybe a cool title and speeder from tanking x amount FP and Ops via GF? Though it may not help as more tanks stay in closed groups and guilds.

 

The only thing I can think of that would definitely ease the problem is making it more fun and much easier to do.

Edited June 6, 2013 by Mowermanx

How about..... you're tanking a FP, and the Sentinel in the group (or other dps) keeps initiating combat either on trash or bosses, because he thinks he's uber. Sure, the healer can keep him alive, and you can jump in after him, but the amount of work you have to do, to TAKE aggro away from a dps who jumped in before you, versus the tank jumping in first and building threat is a whole different ballgame, and makes the tank work a lot harder than he has to

 

You think that makes YOU work hard. Try being the healer who knows that on some pulls, if that dumb sentinel goes down you'll wipe because there won't be enough DPS... And so she's gotta keep both his stupid self alive AND you.

 

That's stress.

Cross server queue will only make matters worse. In every server there's too many dps "because that's how they roll", making cross queues will only increase the number of those dps, and increase queue times for dps. You wanna run flashpoints? Roll a tank yourself.

I can guarantee that the vast majority of tanks that are already fully geared won't run more than 3 flashpoints per week, unless they're helping a friend to gear up.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Kawabonga

The Only Reason you are waiting 2hrs for a Q (Which is crazy) is because you a DPS i to am a DPS but i dont wait 2hrs like many people said get yourself a Good Active group of friends and Play regularly with them and you will always get invites from them when they are going to q for HM FPs. DPS are so freaking over populated on every server that a Cross Realm que is just going to make wait times 4 times as long and just like in WOW it will encourage Ninja Looting even more.

 

How ever a great idea would be to have a Chat Channel for LFG so no mater what planet your on some one can talk and find other people LFG. DCUO recently did this and it makes finding people for groups so much easier instead of just Queuing and waiting.

I do 55's on my main (a tank), but only do 3 flashpoints a week for the weekly. I HATE having to que up solo, because I never know what kind of DPS I'm going to get. Seeing as how I'm a tank, I just wait until my guildies or friends come on that I know are well-geared and run 55's with them. It's also more fun, and faster.

.

 

How ever a great idea would be to have a Chat Channel for LFG so no mater what planet your on some one can talk and find other people LFG. DCUO recently did this and it makes finding people for groups so much easier instead of just Queuing and waiting.

 

I think this is the best idea I have heard so far but I'm not entirely sure this would work either. If there is a tank on another planet looking to do a FP why would they not be queued all ready? Normally I sign in, queue for my FP and then start grinding my dailies or crafting. By the time I'm done I've found my group. Granted I do queue as a HEALER so this might be why it is easier.

 

I agree that doing cross server will only slow things down but I dont like the idea of letting the members of the group decide weather or not someone gets the grab-bag, too many trolls for that. And I also agree that the best way to solve this problem would be to join a guild, however this is tempered because even within guilds a lot of times you are low on tanks there as mine is ATM.

Why would cross-server ques solve anything? The main issue appears to be lack of tanks and healers because niether player tank and healer want to run with Derp pugs. As such Server 1 would have the same issue as server 2 as i'm almost certain the Tanks and healers dont wanna run with derp pugs regardless of what server they are on

Plenty of tanks and healers are already geared up to the waazoo and don't queue anymore. Myself included. Nothing worth buying from comms. All my companions are in full BM gear and even some with Verpine gear.

 

Why bother queueing?