Well I played WoW and I can tell you how WoW's LFD has damaged the community slowly over time. As many expressed their feeling in the needs of LFD in this game, WoW once had this argument aswell. Not enough time, not enough class to do XYZ dungeons or their dailies except with guildies. Yes I have been there, sitting in major cities looking for group calls in general chat (well more like LFG chat but not server wide).

The LFD was introduced 2 patches after they implemented the Dual Spec system. Don't get me wrong it was a very nice tool and it did just what people were asking. However by the time has passed, people gradually started to change. Since each LFD rewarded badges, later on to points in SW probably are commendations. People will start to ask for efficiency, speed, to get more loot / points per hour. And with this people will start acting rude, tank or healer threatening to leave, dps queue being long etc. The whole reason they made the LFD system cross server is due to compensate the lack of tanks and healers.

Now you can see the LFD tool wow has, and its a total chaos. You will be very lucky to find a good friendly group on LFD. Sure there are some options on using the general chat to find people, but how many will come? Many posters has already stated that once people will get used to the LFD tool's convenience they will not go back. So the "don't use it if you don't like it" will not work. Not unless you got a bunch of friends around your level around your play time and playing similar pace as you are available.

The convenience tool has now turned into instant gratification tool, where people seeks flawless efficiency and speed for their needs. For a reason the term "Wrath Babies" or "Wotlk Genre" was born in wow after LFD tool was introduced. Now its a mess, the chance of grouping with the same people again with LFD are very very slim. People will not be responsible for their actions due to this. Ninjas will start to rise. I mean... just look at the WoW forums and their topics.

Some said that LFD tool but non cross-server. Which is also what I had in mind too. But the queue time will be long for those classes that are abundant vs the key classes that are required. Basically tanks and healers will have a fast queue time, and dps will have much longer queues. Even with cross server, depending on your level of course but lets say at 85? I had a queue varying from 20-45minuits while as a tank its almost instant, and healer was like 5minuit tops. Thats not much different from what we have now without LFD tool isn't it? And I can already see people asking for Dual Spec because of this. And then there will be issues on looting, of course it will not be as exagerating as WoW but there will be I am sure, in conjunction with wanting loot for their companions. I am pretty sure those who are against LFD tool already have this experience in WoW or other game with this system.

For those who haven't used the LFG tool we currently got, I advise to try and use it. The times I open the who list and I usually only see like 1-2 people with the tag.

TL;DR version. LFD tool was a wonderful addition in wow, but in the end it turned the community into a tool seeking Perfect efficiency, speed, and reward and kick those who doesn't meet their criteria and has no negative effect on being rude due to cross-server.

Well I played WoW and I can tell you how WoW's LFD has damaged the community slowly over time. As many expressed their feeling in the needs of LFD in this game, WoW once had this argument aswell. Not enough time, not enough class to do XYZ dungeons or their dailies except with guildies. Yes I have been there, sitting in major cities looking for group calls in general chat (well more like LFG chat but not server wide).

 

The LFD was introduced 2 patches after they implemented the Dual Spec system. Don't get me wrong it was a very nice tool and it did just what people were asking. However by the time has passed, people gradually started to change. Since each LFD rewarded badges, later on to points in SW probably are commendations. People will start to ask for efficiency, speed, to get more loot / points per hour. And with this people will start acting rude, tank or healer threatening to leave, dps queue being long etc. The whole reason they made the LFD system cross server is due to compensate the lack of tanks and healers.

 

Now you can see the LFD tool wow has, and its a total chaos. You will be very lucky to find a good friendly group on LFD. Sure there are some options on using the general chat to find people, but how many will come? Many posters has already stated that once people will get used to the LFD tool's convenience they will not go back. So the "don't use it if you don't like it" will not work. Not unless you got a bunch of friends around your level around your play time and playing similar pace as you are available.

 

The convenience tool has now turned into instant gratification tool, where people seeks flawless efficiency and speed for their needs. For a reason the term "Wrath Babies" or "Wotlk Genre" was born in wow after LFD tool was introduced. Now its a mess, the chance of grouping with the same people again with LFD are very very slim. People will not be responsible for their actions due to this. Ninjas will start to rise. I mean... just look at the WoW forums and their topics.

 

Some said that LFD tool but non cross-server. Which is also what I had in mind too. But the queue time will be long for those classes that are abundant vs the key classes that are required. Basically tanks and healers will have a fast queue time, and dps will have much longer queues. Even with cross server, depending on your level of course but lets say at 85? I had a queue varying from 20-45minuits while as a tank its almost instant, and healer was like 5minuit tops. Thats not much different from what we have now without LFD tool isn't it? And I can already see people asking for Dual Spec because of this. And then there will be issues on looting, of course it will not be as exagerating as WoW but there will be I am sure, in conjunction with wanting loot for their companions. I am pretty sure those who are against LFD tool already have this experience in WoW or other game with this system.

 

For those who haven't used the LFG tool we currently got, I advise to try and use it. The times I open the who list and I usually only see like 1-2 people with the tag.

 

TL;DR version. LFD tool was a wonderful addition in wow, but in the end it turned the community into a tool seeking Perfect efficiency, speed, and reward and kick those who doesn't meet their criteria and has no negative effect on being rude due to cross-server.

That's your experience. I did hundreds upon hundreds of dungeons in WOW via LFG (impossible without it) with my 5 level 80, in all 3 roles. Less than 5% of those runs had jerks that would slightly bug me, in which case I would vote to kick someone, or just quit.

Ninjas? Never saw. It's a fallacy, people are there for badges to buy items off vendors, drops, after you have done so many, are insignificant. Plus, Bioware has this amazing system with pre-rolled drops, so it's twice an invalid argument.

Elitist? Sure, after so many runs I grouped with people that went from full heroic sets to tanks in full quest greens. Often nobody cares, as long as you are not screwing the group (even low health tanks, if weren't stupid, would pass).

Longer queues is better than spending my online time spamming General to get a group together. Even as a DPS in WoW, you click 2 buttons, and go do your dailies. Simple, easy and effective (similar to Warzones pre 50-bracket).

Multi-spec system is even more amazing and flexible. Not only you can play your class to its full extent, you might find situations where you swap roles to fulfill some particular need. I would often queue as a DPS, even though I was a well geared raid healer, just for fun. It things went south, I could (and actually did) swapped to heal.

The community in WoW is much stronger (you known, 10 million players) and these features (LFG/Multispec system) are part of the reason why. You pay to play the game, not to wait until a group is ready. Not to be forced to play on a specific time window.

Sorry, albeit your essay, you are just part of the crowd that keeps spreading this baseless rumors about LFG damaging the community, when in reality, it's the opposite.

There is only one community, the SWTOR one. Fenced people locked inside their servers not playing the game isn't helping making that community stronger, it's making it weaker.

We are asking for tools to enable people to play more, not less. Whenever they want, with as little effort as possible, so they can enjoy the game.

Finally, yes, if you don't like it, don't use it. I'm sure there will be like minded people not using the tool (if it, as you say, is so bad, full of jerk elitists ninjas) and ready to group with you every few days, whenever you are online at the same time. If the majority of the people are using, it's because they like.

BioWare said it didn't implament a LFD system for PvE because it wants to "build community." So, it's for the good of the PvE player community. Of course, BioWare doesn't feel the need to build "community" for PvP players, because they have a cross-server LFD utility. So suck it up, PvE players, no-LFD is for your own good.

Quote?

because i have understood that they were already working on a LFG system.

The community that I'm talking about isn't a mirage at all. It existed, once upon a time, pre-Wrath in WoW on the server that I played. Like I said, modern WoW (and I use WoW because it's the only game I've played that had a PvE queue system) has nothing apart from hardmode raids and rated BGs to encourage people to play together for any length of time. WoW was growing in a big way before Activision acquired Blizzard and everything was made to cater to casuals.

 

Stop and think about your experiences so far in TOR: do you recognize toons outside your own circle of friends (and, if you have one, your guild)? If you've played WoW, is it the same there? A community exists on a server when there's a persistence of dialogue between the players on it; I'd like to see server-specific (realm) forums added to facilitate this further.

 

WoW was a fun game for me back when it mattered which server you played on apart from end-game raiding, though a lot of other things changed that made it less fun, as well (adding difficulty levels to raids, for example).

 

YMMV, but I like the direction that the devs chose on this one.

You mean the pre Wrath where people stole members from other guilds when a member of their own left so they dont have to attune and gear a new player? Yeah, such a good community... i'm shocked how such a good community got screwed up...

/sarcasm

WoW's community in TBC SUCKED, it was full of ninjas en self entitled people that though that because they have killed 3 more bosses they had the right to stole people from other guilds.

Oh, and it was full of name callers too.

Take off your rose tinted glasses. Wrath didnt screw WoW's community, nor did it LFG feature. Wrath only increase the subscriber base, which in turn increased the number of idiots (not in % but in raw numbers).

Now, does this game want to be a game for few without LFG and such modern tools that caters for a tiny group of elitists (like for example EQ) or does this game wants to be a massive multiplayer game which intends to have a huge playerbase?

Well I played WoW and I can tell you how WoW's LFD has damaged the community slowly over time. As many expressed their feeling in the needs of LFD in this game, WoW once had this argument aswell. Not enough time, not enough class to do XYZ dungeons or their dailies except with guildies. Yes I have been there, sitting in major cities looking for group calls in general chat (well more like LFG chat but not server wide).

 

The LFD was introduced 2 patches after they implemented the Dual Spec system. Don't get me wrong it was a very nice tool and it did just what people were asking. However by the time has passed, people gradually started to change. Since each LFD rewarded badges, later on to points in SW probably are commendations. People will start to ask for efficiency, speed, to get more loot / points per hour. And with this people will start acting rude, tank or healer threatening to leave, dps queue being long etc. The whole reason they made the LFD system cross server is due to compensate the lack of tanks and healers.

 

Now you can see the LFD tool wow has, and its a total chaos. You will be very lucky to find a good friendly group on LFD. Sure there are some options on using the general chat to find people, but how many will come? Many posters has already stated that once people will get used to the LFD tool's convenience they will not go back. So the "don't use it if you don't like it" will not work. Not unless you got a bunch of friends around your level around your play time and playing similar pace as you are available.

 

The convenience tool has now turned into instant gratification tool, where people seeks flawless efficiency and speed for their needs. For a reason the term "Wrath Babies" or "Wotlk Genre" was born in wow after LFD tool was introduced. Now its a mess, the chance of grouping with the same people again with LFD are very very slim. People will not be responsible for their actions due to this. Ninjas will start to rise. I mean... just look at the WoW forums and their topics.

 

Some said that LFD tool but non cross-server. Which is also what I had in mind too. But the queue time will be long for those classes that are abundant vs the key classes that are required. Basically tanks and healers will have a fast queue time, and dps will have much longer queues. Even with cross server, depending on your level of course but lets say at 85? I had a queue varying from 20-45minuits while as a tank its almost instant, and healer was like 5minuit tops. Thats not much different from what we have now without LFD tool isn't it? And I can already see people asking for Dual Spec because of this. And then there will be issues on looting, of course it will not be as exagerating as WoW but there will be I am sure, in conjunction with wanting loot for their companions. I am pretty sure those who are against LFD tool already have this experience in WoW or other game with this system.

 

For those who haven't used the LFG tool we currently got, I advise to try and use it. The times I open the who list and I usually only see like 1-2 people with the tag.

 

TL;DR version. LFD tool was a wonderful addition in wow, but in the end it turned the community into a tool seeking Perfect efficiency, speed, and reward and kick those who doesn't meet their criteria and has no negative effect on being rude due to cross-server.

I have played with and without lFG.

Tanks and healers threatening to leave is not something that came after LFG, they were doint it already in TBC.

I'm sorry that your experience with LFG was so bad, i have had good and bad experiences with it, the same kind of experiences i had before it, good and bad. The problem is that before LFG i had less bad experiences because i was mostly doing dungeons with friends, which meant doing very little amount of dungeons in comparison to the amount i did in wrath with the LFG tool.

Wrath babies is not a term introduced with LFG, LFG was introduced after more than half the expansion had passed. Wrath babies was a term used by self entitled elitists that though they were more than others just because they killed 3 more bosses and therefore wanted to look down others by calling them names, which is a very bad practice and shows how bad the person doing the name calling is.

Also, 45 minutes of wait while i can quest, farm, or do anything is way better than 45 minutes suitting in the fleet spamming a chat that should not be spammed in the first place.

Spamming is bad, the same name tells you that, its annoying, yet you say we whoudl keep with the spamming method?

LFD didn't broke anything in wow, people just doesn0t remeber how grouping was in TBC outside of the groups with their friends.

PUGs in TBC were way worse than LFD groups.

As someone who played since vanilla, I've run hundreds of dungeons, both before lfd and after. The main difference in the "rudeness" is that prior to lfd even if a dps was pulling your group down you were inclined to deal with it because getting a replacement was so difficult. I put up with way more ninjaing/rudeness prior to lfd because someone could effectively hold your group hostage, or at the very least put you on hold for 15 minutes or so if you found them to be intolerable.

Many times would I sit through the hour + of the group leader spamming "LF Healer then g2g" only to finally form, someone has to leave, group fails on first pull, etc. Then the group just falls apart. So yeah, I see it differently, its not that people were nicer, its that they were always after efficiency and without lfd its more effiicient to put up with the ninja/rude player because god knows how long it will take to replace them. At least with lfd its easy to boot the problem players and quickly move on.

Yeah, I basically can't play this game at 50 in a group setting without a LFD system. My buddies are either into PvP or simply not interested in leveling quickly to 50, and I've found my hollering in /general in the Imperial Fleet to be futile.

I'll be playing Rift in the meantime, I think. WoW is very clapped out, tired, and while Rift dropped the ball on a lot of things, at least it has varying and complex gameplay systems and a LFD-esque system.

Hello everyone,

In order to keep the forums tidy and conversations in one place please use this thread to discuss the pros and cons of LFD and Dungeon Finders, we will be closing this current thread.