Group finder needs some time debuff for people that decline, say ten minutes before they can queue again.

Here are the improvements I would like to see to the group finder:

• Allow players manually set the queuing priority for content when queued for multiple content.
  
• Add all Heroics as separate checkboxes, just like Flashpoints and Operations are and allow the group to travel to their starting point.
  
• Add World Bosses
  
• Add Ranked Warzones to the group finder.

One thing I would like to add to this is that an audio queue for when the LFG window pops up would be really nice for when you are alt-tabbed or AFK.

Yes, the same goes for warzones, too.

 

Yes, a popup sound, does play at times but when your alt-tabbed out, for some reason it doesn't play, even when you have background sound enabled. This is for proper Full Screen mode only, it works fine in Windowed and Full Screen (Windowed) mode.

 

It would also be great if the TOR icon/tab in the Windows taskbar flashed when any join popup came up.

Edited June 12, 2012 by Glzmo

Yes, the same goes for warzones, too.

 

Yes, a popup sound, does play at times but when your alt-tabbed out, for some reason it doesn't play (even when you have background sound enabled).

 

You can still hear it if you run in windowed mode, fyi.

Shuttling to Starting Location:

One of the issues most commonly noted is that you are not returned to your original location when you end/exit a Flashpoint or Operation.

 

This is not a bug; let me explain that a little bit better!

 

In the game today, without the Group Finder, when you exit a Flashpoint or Operation you are NOT shuttled back to your original location - you're taken to the entrance.

 

Although this is currently how the Flashpoint and Operation exit technology functions, we understand the importance of modifying this functionality, especially for the Group Finder. We already have a plan to provide this as soon as possible. The moment we know what update this can be included with, we will let you know!

This should have been in the first draft of your design documents.

 

Got that you're going to fix it but it was a big mistake not to have it.

 

Gear Score:

While we may never implement a “Gear Score” system, we understand the need to correctly match players with appropriate content. We also understand the need to match groups with a high chance for success. We are currently evaluating several ideas to improve this.

You can have a server side gear score without ever handling it to the players.

 

Unless you wanted to avoid having tier 2 and over in group finder. This should have been included in the important points of group finding as it will annoy players either to feel useless or being grouped with players that for example can't hold the aggro as thank when you out dps them.

 

Advanced Classes and Roles:

The roles that you are allowed to queue for in Group Finder are based on your Advanced Class and not your skill point allocation. For example, if you are a Jedi Sage you can queue for both Damage and Healing. We know that this option launches in advance of multi-speccing. However, once you launch Group Finder you can limit yourself to a specific role if you so choose.

As long as we don't have dual specs (and even) the matching choice should have been made on talent trees allocation because class allocation means nothing. BTW Trion uses a very well polished system with a tank/healer/dps and support queuing.

 

I can already see players complaining against another because he queued as healer/tank for shorter queues ending not being able to do the job.

 

It should also have been in the first iterations of the design drafts.

Queuing Order:

Group Finder attempts to place you into a group by evaluating potential group matches in a specific order. This order is matched to the in-game order displayed in the Group Finder window. For example, at level 50, Group Finder will first check if you can form a valid Operation, and if not, it will then check Hard Mode Flashpoints, and so on. The specifics:

• At level 50 this will be in the following order: Story Mode Operations, Hard Mode Flashpoints Tier 1, Hard Mode Flashpoints Tier 2, Flashpoints, Planetary Destinations
  
• Under level 50 this will be in the following order: Flashpoints, Planetary Destinations
  

Not bad but maybe players like a different order.

 

An improvement in the long term would be to let player choose the priority order client side.

Planetary Destinations:

You want more content controls for Planetary Destinations and so do we! We know that planetary destinations are an area of improvement for Group Finder in future releases, and we're looking at more options, like adding directly selectable Heroic Missions and world bosses.

Hopefully with porting option.

 

Still good to know.

As we form our plan for future improvements, one of the pieces we need the most is your feedback. We are in the process of evaluating potential designs for player-set group size and specific mission queuing, among many others.

 

What do you want to see?

• First step: check WoW and Rift and do the same thing
  
• Second step: check DDO group finder and make it happen
  
• Third round: improve what you have and add companions in the loop.
  

 

And before all that improve the UI and certainly add queuing time estimation and player notes.

Also it would be much welcome to be able to browse a list of queued players

 

Finally, in the future, let players queue with an alt.

It would change the game drastically.

 

P.S.: thx for the feedback.

Edited June 11, 2012 by Deewe

Groupfinder requires a gone for a bio or to make a coffee select whilst your in the q. If you have been there for a while and you just need to make a sarnie or visit the toilet its like group finder knows you have just walked away and puts it up on screen so you miss it.

 

What i suggest is when you tick the box you keep your place in the q but it wont select you as active until you unclick it and set yourself as active again.

What do you want to see?

 

More responses like tkat ;]

 

But since you did ask - something to discourage people from declining groups and trying to get certain flashpoint at random(and with rewards)

You can still hear it if you run in windowed mode, fyi.

Correct. The same is true for Full Screen (Windowed) mode as well. The bug is only with proper Full Screen mode (which I use for performance reasons as AMD/ATi's CrossfireX only works in full screen and I don't want one of my video cards to run idle. ).

This should have been in the first draft of your design documents.

[...]

P.S.: thx for the feedback.

It feels like you are trying to teach a qualified engineer to do his job.

 

No, they wouldn't look at other games already out on the market...

 

------------------------------

 

thank you for the first BW feedback and your thought's intentions and plans concerning the group finder. As it's beta there will be a lot of changes i hope.

 

If the things stay the same till release I am looking forward to finally run Flash Points. I mean i got a lot of chars that hardly saw any flash point at all.

Would be really neat if the mission terminal could be rolled into the group finder - so I never have to go to the terminal again. Same for warzone queuing, for that matter.

It feels like you are trying to teach a qualified engineer to do his job.

 

No, they wouldn't look at other games already out on the market...

 

------------------------------

 

thank you for the first BW feedback and your thought's intentions and plans concerning the group finder. As it's beta there will be a lot of changes i hope.

 

If the things stay the same till release I am looking forward to finally run Flash Points. I mean i got a lot of chars that hardly saw any flash point at all.

I don't mind what it looks, it's just the truth/reality check.

 

Maybe it was even in the design docs and not implemented for whatever reasons.

 

BTW the "qualified" engineer(s) and more specifically the leads/producer delivered a sub optimal MMO.

Time to fix it. Because there's no other SW MMO around. At least officially.

Edited June 12, 2012 by Deewe

Adding the ability to queue for world bosses sounds good to me.

I'd also love to see Ranked WarZones added to the Group Finder, that would be very cool & very useful for us PvP'ers who at this point feel very left out of this whole group finder business.

It's good to hear you're aware and looking at resolving issues people have with the LFG feature. I would suggest the following tweaks to the LFG feature.

 

You listed the priority for the group finder as Story Mode, Tier 1, Tier 2. Please adjust this to be based on the rewards. It should be top down for what people queue for in difficulty. Story, Tier 2, Tier 1.

 

Second, and this is my big one. I have no desire to pick up further Black Hole pieces so Black Hole commendations are worthless to me. I've gotten the ear, implants, and chest now (which was actually a dps downgrade but I wanted to change my looks). I need to keep 4 pieces of rakata to maintain my set bonus. Many of the Black Hole mercenary pieces are actually dps downgrades because they have the tank armorings in them. With the implementation of LFG give me a reason to want Black Hole commendations. Otherwise I have no reason to participate in LFG.

 

Possible suggestions to address this concern: Give us more things to buy with Black Hole Commendations. In particular, let us buy 61 armorings, mods, and enhancements in a variety of types so we can customize our gear the way we want. This gives us something to spend our commendations on that makes doing Flashpoints or Operations that we don't need gear from worthwhile. Another possibility is allow us to buy 61 armorings of Black Hole quality that actually have set bonuses on them. The fact that the older sets weren't updated to the new set bonus model is a huge source of frustration for me. I get that the tech required new items and it couldn't be easily done. But adding new options could easily resolve that.

Well from a technical viewpoint I imagine it would be a nightmare but some way to queue alts to LFG.

 

If not that then maybe a system whereby when someone enters the queue LFG does the checks to see if it can form a full group, and if it can't it flashes up a message saying something like "Not enough healers queued to form group, you have been placed in the DPS queue at place X (and the Tank queue at place Y)". Then if I want I can change to healer and queue again. If it then says not enough DPS queued I can either stay queued as a healer and wait for another DPS or switch back to DPS and wait for a healer. The choice would be informed by knowing if there are 20 DPS ahead of me in the queue or if i'm queued at 2 in which case it's not worth switching.

 

I also disagree with removing denova from LFG. It should be treated as a tier 2 operation and share it's reward with EV and KP in the same way that Lost Island does with T1 HMFP's. You don't need a pug group to do it if you queue as a guild so the "It can't be done with a PUG" argument doesn't hold up.

 

Finally, be really tough on people who decline groups. I'm not talking about the ones who timeout because they looked away for a few minutes and it popped. I'm talking about the ones who queue then decide they don't want to go and decline. 24hr ban from LFG.

 

And totally agree with the last post about the search order, if someone selects lost island and all the other fp's too they probably want to do lost island since it has the best gear drops.

 

Am I correct in thinking that if you want OPs you are better just queuing for ops only. Since it looks for Ops first then flashpoints surely if you queue for both it will always find a flashpoint, for example if you have 2 tanks 6 dps and no healers queued and 1 healer came queued would it immediate pop the FP or wait a little to see if another healer came on so you could do ops?

Edited June 12, 2012 by MaliksKid

A group finder that doesn't port me back to where I were doesn't help me that much. I had no problems finding FP groups, when and if I went to the fleet and spammed a bit for them. Probably got those groups faster going than with the finder anyways.

 

The convenience should lie in being able to go out questing and queue up for FPs to do them additionally to one's solo endeavours. If I have to travel back and forth, I won't bother doing them if I don't have business on the fleet anyways. This leaves me in the exact same situation as before. It's either the fleet and FP or planets and questing.

 

I'm sure I'm not alone with this and since there's no x-server queue this will thin the player base the finder can draw from. What's so complicated of storing the player location? This really should come with 1.3 not later.

 

Another downer for me is the lacking planetary mission support. This is where I had the most trouble getting groups and finished most planets with just +2 missions done or none at all. Trying to get groups together for all heroics at the end of the planet's quest lines worked sometimes, but when I'm finished with a planet, I don't really see a point of staying any longer, especially since just doing the solo content suffices to move on to the next.

 

The group finder should help here to battle the design flaws. Even if it's just a cure for the symptoms, at least planetary heroic content would have been more accessible. But it just doesn't cut it in it's current state and how you've planned it to be for 1.3 and not only for me essential feature will be missing.

 

Yes, I know, in some future update you'll add them in. I just don't have the patience to wait for it anymore.

Here are the improvements I would like to see to the group finder:

• Allow players to prioritize which content to be matched to first themselves when queued for multiple content.
  
• Add all Heroics as separate checkboxes, just like Flashpoints and Operations are and allow the group to travel to their starting point.
  
• Add Ranked Warzones to the group finder.

Yes, the same goes for warzones, too.

 

Yes, a popup sound, does play at times but when your alt-tabbed out, for some reason it doesn't play, even when you have background sound enabled. This is for proper Full Screen mode only, it works fine in Windowed and Full Screen (Windowed) mode.

 

I know that the Rift tab would flash at me if a dungeon/battleground popped (or if anything happened to my character, really).

 

I'd love to see that happen in SWTOR.

*snipped for space*

 

Antonia,

 

Thank you for taking the time to respond but after reading your post I've come to the conclusion that this current version of LFG probably shouldn't even be launched.

 

For nearly every topic, your response was "We want this too" or "We appreciate the need for this and are looking into it". This tells me, from a development point-of-view, that you are not satisfied with the functionality of LFG, at all. It also tells me you are tossing a half-completed tool out to the masses knowing it's lacking functionality that will ensure basic operation.

 

Your post makes it clear that this tool is about to be deployed on live servers in an alpha, not even beta, state that will frustrate a lot of customers with its limitations and problems. Not to put too fine a point on it but delivering a poor product is worse than not delivering one at all.

Edited June 12, 2012 by Captiosus

Antonia,

 

Thank you for taking the time to respond but after reading your post I've come to the conclusion that this current version of LFG probably shouldn't even be launched.

 

For nearly every topic, your response was "We want this too" or "We appreciate the need for this and are looking into it". This tells me, from a development point-of-view, that you are not satisfied with the functionality of LFG, at all. It also tells me you are tossing a half-completed tool out to the masses knowing it's lacking functionality that will ensure basic operation.

 

Your post makes it clear that this tool is about to be deployed on live servers in an alpha, not even beta, state that will frustrate a lot of customers with its limitations and problems. Not to put too fine a point on it but delivering a poor product is worse than not delivering one at all.

 

That's a lot of assumptions you make!

Are you sure you want to make those kinds of 'accusations' or conclusions from a single dev post?

As long as we don't have dual specs (and even) the matching choice should have been made on talent trees allocation because class allocation means nothing. BTW Trion uses a very well polished system with a tank/healer/dps and support queuing.

I didn't read the rest of your thread because you ramble on about a lot of things, however from the beginning of your post, this in particular makes no sense at all...

 

What about people who have some points in one tree and some in another? How many points do you need in the Damage trees in order to qualify as that role? Is a Vanguard with 20 points in Damage able to fill that role? IMO in some cases yes, depending on the difficulty of the content and skill/gear of the player. Is an Operative with 20 points in the Healing tree able to fill that role? IMO in most cases definitely not, because they are missing an ability which is completely vital for that class in that role.

Is a fully heal-specced Sorcerer in augmented campaign gear good enough at doing DPS in order to do normal mode flashpoints? Come on, is anyone actually doubting this?

 

Also, when you say things like "should have been in the first draft", remember that you really have no idea what was in the first draft and what was not. You should realize that some things take longer to implement than others, and some things have a higher priority than others. E.g. actually having a group finder that works is more important than being able to choose to teleport back to your original location, so making the actual group-finding work correctly has higher priority.

It's good to hear you're aware and looking at resolving issues people have with the LFG feature. I would suggest the following tweaks to the LFG feature.

 

You listed the priority for the group finder as Story Mode, Tier 1, Tier 2. Please adjust this to be based on the rewards. It should be top down for what people queue for in difficulty. Story, Tier 2, Tier 1.

 

Second, and this is my big one. I have no desire to pick up further Black Hole pieces so Black Hole commendations are worthless to me. I've gotten the ear, implants, and chest now (which was actually a dps downgrade but I wanted to change my looks). I need to keep 4 pieces of rakata to maintain my set bonus. Many of the Black Hole mercenary pieces are actually dps downgrades because they have the tank armorings in them. With the implementation of LFG give me a reason to want Black Hole commendations. Otherwise I have no reason to participate in LFG.

 

Possible suggestions to address this concern: Give us more things to buy with Black Hole Commendations. In particular, let us buy 61 armorings, mods, and enhancements in a variety of types so we can customize our gear the way we want. This gives us something to spend our commendations on that makes doing Flashpoints or Operations that we don't need gear from worthwhile. Another possibility is allow us to buy 61 armorings of Black Hole quality that actually have set bonuses on them. The fact that the older sets weren't updated to the new set bonus model is a huge source of frustration for me. I get that the tech required new items and it couldn't be easily done. But adding new options could easily resolve that.

 

/signed We must have a good enough reason to do them.

Shuttling to Starting Location:

One of the issues most commonly noted is that you are not returned to your original location when you end/exit a Flashpoint or Operation.

 

This is not a bug; let me explain that a little bit better!

 

In the game today, without the Group Finder, when you exit a Flashpoint or Operation you are NOT shuttled back to your original location - you're taken to the entrance.

 

Although this is currently how the Flashpoint and Operation exit technology functions, we understand the importance of modifying this functionality, especially for the Group Finder. We already have a plan to provide this as soon as possible. The moment we know what update this can be included with, we will let you know!

 

Excellent!

Edited June 12, 2012 by JeramieCrowe

My characters weren't copied to PTS, so I haven't had a chance to test this, but I'm concerned about planets whose bonus series are offset from the normal quest run. For instance, does the LFG tool correctly handle queuing for the Hoth Bonus Series Heroics? From what I've seen in this thread, it sounds like the tool is ok for queuing for HM FPs, but not much else.

If this goes to live, I will use to no-port-back-to-origin-point as a free fleet pass, just to prove that people can and will.

 

There is a Back-To-Fleet Shuttle on every planet, you just need to QT close to it and use it.

 

However, BW should mark those shuttles on the maps including the QT map.

 

 

(Also I think that these shuttles could be used to initiate the port-to-group, instead of being just teleported from wherever you are...just for the ingame immersion. And after the FP is done a window pops up asking you if u want to go back to Fleet/Ilum or back to the shuttle you came from)

Tiers of Flashpoints:

What is the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 Flashpoints, you ask? Difficulty! Tier 2 Flashpoints are more difficult than Tier 1 and we felt that it wouldn’t be a good experience to place undergeared players into groups where they couldn’t meaningfully perform their assigned role. To support this, Tier 2 Flashpoints will be disabled by default and must be actively enabled through the Group Finder filters. Although there is only a single selection (Lost Island) for Tier 2 right now, there will be more in the future.

 

In addition, Tier 1 and Tier 2 Flashpoints share the same Group Finder daily reward mission. As we gather feedback when this feature goes live we will be making changes to the reward structure as needed.

 

If this is basically just choosing between Normal (Story) Mode and Hard Mode, why not just call it the way it has always been called? Trying to change the name to Tier 1 and 2 is the reason why people are probably confused. Just label it as Normal or Hard Mode.

If this is basically just choosing between Normal (Story) Mode and Hard Mode, why not just call it the way it has always been called? Trying to change the name to Tier 1 and 2 is the reason why people are probably confused. Just label it as Normal or Hard Mode.

 

It's not. There's going to be a Storymode (Normal), a Tier 1 Hardmode, a Tier 2 Hardmode, and then Nightmare.

 

I'll see if I can find where I read that. I think it was a Q&A.

Edited June 12, 2012 by JeramieCrowe