I agree with most posters here.A global LFG channel is the way to go.It might seem old fashion but it works fine.

5,000 people all using 1 global channel for everything from help with local quests to any of a dozen flashpoints...

Useless. The spam would scroll by at 15 lines a second.

My opinion is that we don't need anything like that in the game, get into a decent guild with people you like to play with. Problem solved. Farming instances just for loot is not fun anway, and even worse with strangers (even if they are from the same server).

You just explained why YOU wouldn't use it, not why the game doesn't need it.

5,000 people all using 1 global channel for everything from help with local quests to any of a dozen flashpoints...

 

Useless. The spam would scroll by at 15 lines a second.

Worked fine in WoW. Active moderation on said channel helps, of course as does passive moderation (ignorelist worked wonders to keep channels clean). You're assuming things will work like they CURRENTLY do in the likes of WoW. Without the ability to do whatever they please without repercussion people tend to be a lot more sensible towards eachother and very quickly implicit rules are created within a server community. Just ignoring these rules will most likely make the offender's time playing on that server hell as nobody will want to have anything to do with them.

In fact, this worked a lot better than active moderation and I'm pretty sure the amount of work for customer support was LESS back then.

We had ONE "Trade-clown" in, well, Trade chat during TBC. Now the channel is taken over by them as they don't care what the rest of the realm thinks of them since it has no influence on them whatsoever as they as good as NEVER meet up with other people on their realm to do things. Battlegrounds are cross realm, dungeons are cross realm and raids are run within the guild. Contact with other players is as good as zero.

You just explained why YOU wouldn't use it, not why the game doesn't need it.

Sure, then there's those of us that want to pug and actually meet new people doing so, you know, the thing most people started playing MMOs for in the first place, something a WoW style LFG system makes pretty much impossible.

It's the wrong solution to the problem and one of the reasons people are massively quitting WoW.

If people want to just crawl dungeons without meeting others I can recommend Neverwinter Nights 2 (in case you want to only do so with close friends) or Skyrim (in case you want to do so on your lonesome)

i have to agrea the Dungon finder took the fun outa it especially if on a PVP realm where both factions were waiting outside, major asskicks were going on, even in other realms it was nice to gather your group and then all meet outside the instance ready to conquer it.

now in WOW all you do is sit in the citys all day (boring) waiting do maby , hopfully get into a dungon where the Tank or healer isent gonna rage quit because someone isent geared to there spec (alts are screwed) so then it take ages for you to refind a tank/healer or just any other one.

yeah Ninjas had a field day but rather get ninjad than get abuse for gear not being up to spec even if you state This is my ALt.

WOW has now gotten so damn boring, no body explores, players barly leave the city cause they can queue for everything PVP,PVE everything

We have a dungeon finder go to your fleet, post in General .

Non-trolling, Down the line a dungeon wouldn't be a bad thing but keep it to the server to lessen the chances of ninja's. Especially on a PvP server if some arse-hat ninjas my loot I can open the social window find what planet he goes to change to my other faction alt and kill him, whereas if they're on a different server.. well they can ninja without chances of being punished.

Dungeon Finder? ok..

X-Realm Dungeon finder? HELLL NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!:mad:

but I also like wow's original idea that was rehashed over and over again...1 person or 2 people travel to the stone and summon, that way for pvpers it brings in a lil thrill of gankers also and it doesn't take all the feel of the world out of it.

^^

This

i am aware that im going to get flamed here, for what i am about to say. but unless they find some way of automagically decrease time in que from hours to minutes, i believe cross realm is a nescesity (<-- typo i know it, but cant remember the proper way to spell it). having a cross flashpoint finder in no way prevents you from grouping with your guildmates, or create a pug in general.

personally, i dont mind it, as it gives faster ques for those of us who doesnt enjoy playing as a tank or healer. and i know a rather large portion of players (id assume its the silent majority) agrees with me. i know the most hardcore players prefer it another way, but they have to accept that even though they are the most devoted custumers, they are also a minority. and so the hardcore endgame content should be tailored to their needs, but the content that every player is ment to see relatively early after it going live should not be.

in the end the succes of this game rests on the shoulders of casual players, they bring in the largest portion of money. so catering to them to a certain degree would be a wise move from bioware, and free up more funds to develop more raids, and new battlegrounds for pvp'ers.

i am aware that im going to get flamed here, for what i am about to say. but unless they find some way of automagically decrease time in que from hours to minutes, i believe cross realm is a nescesity (<-- typo i know it, but cant remember the proper way to spell it). having a cross flashpoint finder in no way prevents you from grouping with your guildmates, or create a pug in general.

You are wrong. Setting up a dungeon PUG in WoW will only get you laughed at, the only way to do it is if you already know all the people you want to group with, and as such it is no longer a PUG and obviously also defeats the purpose of being useful in getting to know new people.

personally, i dont mind it, as it gives faster ques for those of us who doesnt enjoy playing as a tank or healer. and i know a rather large portion of players (id assume its the silent majority) agrees with me. i know the most hardcore players prefer it another way, but they have to accept that even though they are the most devoted custumers, they are also a minority. and so the hardcore endgame content should be tailored to their needs, but the content that every player is ment to see relatively early after it going live should not be.

I don't play as a tank or a healer, and never have (on any of my mains anyway, well, except in EQ2, but there healers aren't in short supply so the point is moot) and I had no problems getting groups during TBC. The trick is to build something of a reputation on the server. Agreed, if you don't play often this will take longer than for others that do play a lot but sooner or later people will recognize your name and sooner or later (probably sooner if you are social and nice in the groups you get into) people will ask you to join when they start a group. Even if they outlevel you they will often notice when you get to their level (or the max level, whichever comes first) and the invites will be coming again.

What I'm saying also isn't something I'm making up, but actual experience. I actually got asked to a guild's first kill of a raid mob (The Lurker Below in Serpentshrine Cavern during TBC in case it matters) because they were short a dps and one of their members remembered me from when we grouped a few times while leveling. She had outleveled me and we hadn't had all that much contact since, but people DO remember and even better they don't generally care how 1337 your gear is as long as you don't constantly do stupid things and are a nice person. (on an unrelated note, this was my first ever proper max level raid and got me hooked to raiding, so I wasn't some 1337 geared guy at that point, I DID however know how to play my class)

LFG systems stimulate result and gear driven grouping where all that matters is getting to the end as fast as possible and where you're not welcome unless you have the best gear, irregardless of whether that gear is actually needed for the zone you are going to do. Not having such a system generally results in people being a lot more relaxed and a lot more talking going on before, during and after the run (and it's not uncommon for such a group to wreck through dungeon after dungeon, sometimes taking 30min for lunch/dinner and then just continuing).

in the end the succes of this game rests on the shoulders of casual players, they bring in the largest portion of money. so catering to them to a certain degree would be a wise move from bioware, and free up more funds to develop more raids, and new battlegrounds for pvp'ers.

LFG is especially bad for casual players as I explained in detail in a previous post in this thread. Fact is that if you're not into hardcore raiding you don't NEED to be able to get the best gear fast, all that would mean is that you run out of content in a jiffy (something Blizzard is finding out the hard way). I prefer doing one enjoyable flashpoint on an evening and *maybe* getting new gear over doing 50 unenjoyable ones in an evening and getting a bunch of new stuff (and running out of loot to get after a week...)

Another thing worth noting since you make the distinction between casual/hardcore players is that hardcore players WILL stop doing flashpoints if they're not fun for them as they WILL run out of gear to get from them FAST. If flashpoints stay fun for them (which in most cases means social) they will keep running them on a semi regular basis.

As an example I use my former WoW guild, during TBC most members regularly PUGged just for kicks (we were raiding Black Temple and up so nobody needed any of the gear) but a while after LFG appeared in Wrath people stopped doing so and only did just enough instances to get the gear they needed. Eventually this lead to most of the guild only logging on to raid and more and more people quitting the game until the guild died halfway through WotLK.

Another thing is that if you start to lose your hardcore players this generally means there's something seriously wrong and the "casuals" will eventually follow (also as Blizzard is finding out)

I always play tank or healer these days. I just feel I can offer more to a group that way.

I stopped doing PUGS on wow using random LFG, It killed it for me tbh. While I think in essence it’s a good idea, the total lack of any kind of responsibility or accountability turns your average intertron Joe into an unmitigated ***.

Trying to tank a dungeon full of morons who don’t care about the group, their reputation or their tanks nerves is just horrific. I hated it to the point that even tho it took less than 5 seconds for a instance to pop as a lvl85 tank I refused to tank PUGs. Guild runs or I just didn’t bother.

Please Bioware, if you go down this route, tread lightly.

You are wrong.

sorry for shortening your post, basically i think you have a point. but through using wow as a reference you sort of broke it again.

see from the moment activision got involved with blizzard, wow content releases grinded to a halt. giving players nothing to do, other than replaying the same content.

but as your argument goes, you prove very validly that no dungeon finder would be best for you, however you fail to see the downsides to it. the lack of a tool to help you get into a group will exclude a lot of people from participating, and will prove a massive wall for new players to climb before having acces to the content.

people with weak english skills will generally be percieved as either kids or stupid. not to mention that even those rationally thinking will put into concideration that communication will be troublesome, and hence give them a hard time finding a group.

new players with absolutely zero experience will have to either lie, or spend immense amounts of time looking for a decent group.

to sum it up, you might be partially right and non cross realm could be the way to go to keep the core happy, but the dungeon finder tool does make the game a lot more enjoyable for a lot of people.

if they need inspiration, they could look at how trion has implemented it, and when. since it worked really well in rift.

edit: forgot to mention that once you geared out to flex on your main, your alts will automatically become a gear grind, since there is a limit to the number of times the same cutscenes can be enjoyable.

I'm okay with a LFD tool.

 

 

I'm not okay with cross-server queueing.

My sentiments exactly.

edit: forgot to mention that once you geared out to flex on your main, your alts will automatically become a gear grind, since there is a limit to the number of times the same cutscenes can be enjoyable.

every class in this game has a different story line, its not like playing through WoW or an MMO where every class you play goes through practically the same thing. yes eventually it will be a gear grind at level cap. thats the expected part though.

and about the LFD or what would be the LFF or LFFP here, it would be okay. (sory i have to use WoW as my example) but when they (WoW) put it in, it seems like the servers lost something. you no longer had to know the people on your server unless it came to pugging a raid and now you dont even need that. other games im sure had a better system of doing it.

sorry for shortening your post, basically i think you have a point. but through using wow as a reference you sort of broke it again.

see from the moment activision got involved with blizzard, wow content releases grinded to a halt. giving players nothing to do, other than replaying the same content.

I'm not sure if the release of new content grinded to a halt as much as they made it easier to get through the content (in various ways), so people ran out of stuff to do faster.

but as your argument goes, you prove very validly that no dungeon finder would be best for you, however you fail to see the downsides to it. the lack of a tool to help you get into a group will exclude a lot of people from participating, and will prove a massive wall for new players to climb before having acces to the content.

people with weak english skills will generally be percieved as either kids or stupid. not to mention that even those rationally thinking will put into concideration that communication will be troublesome, and hence give them a hard time finding a group.

new players with absolutely zero experience will have to either lie, or spend immense amounts of time looking for a decent group.

I should probably mention that I'm a rather shy person (something I managed to work on quite some), but as long as I'm not entirely confident in my ability to play my class, the boss tactics or about the gear I have I will be very reluctant to group (though that has improved some as well). LFG hasn't exactly done anything to help with that, if anything the chance of being chewed out is higher as chances you'll ever meet those people again is rather small so a lot of them are much ruder than they would be if they knew it could backfire eventually. But that's just how I see it, I'm quite willing to believe others see this as an easy way to remain anonymous so mistakes made while new don't keep haunting them.

Maybe I'm just a nice guy, but I've never left someone out of a group if they say they are new, in fact I (and I'm certainly not alone in this) enjoy helping and guiding new players. I do however take offense to people remaining silent or blatantly lying about being new. (I just don't take kindly to liars in general)

I'm also always honest if it's the first time I go somewhere, usually that doesn't pose a problem and barring a few exceptional cases people just explain things for you, often more verbose than I need (the boss does this, this and this is good enough for me), but I appreciate that and I always return the favor when running into new players.

I am unlikely to start a group though and will usually "lurk" until I see someone needing a player for a spot I can fill. I can imagine some people don't want to have to start groups but also don't want to wait until a group shows up.

You make a very valid point about people not being too well versed in English though.

to sum it up, you might be partially right and non cross realm could be the way to go to keep the core happy, but the dungeon finder tool does make the game a lot more enjoyable for a lot of people.

if they need inspiration, they could look at how trion has implemented it, and when. since it worked really well in rift.

I quit Rift before they implemented the dungeon finder but iirc one of the problems with Rift was the sheer distance to get to some dungeons, also the game emptied rather badly shortly after the start, that didn't help finding a group any. So maybe their dungeon finder doesn't result in the issues I have with WoW's cross-realm LFG system, though if it is cross realm I doubt it'll be a big improvement, I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.

Note that there IS a dungeon finder in ToR, but not an automatic grouping tool (which is what I refer to when using "LFG" in this thread).

edit: forgot to mention that once you geared out to flex on your main, your alts will automatically become a gear grind, since there is a limit to the number of times the same cutscenes can be enjoyable.

Well true, but my (and most of my guildies') reason for keeping on doing dungeons was the social aspect (that and enjoying the mechanics of another class of course)

I wouldn't mind automatic grouping too much, as long as it stays within the server, most of the issues I have with WoW's system arise because it's cross-realm.

I thank everyone that has voiced their opinion about this topic, one way or another in this thread.

Posting this, I knew that there are many who feel strongly one way or another. I have read through all of the replies here, through all of the debating between each other. This is ultimately, a healthy process, of debating and making points for both sides.

Something that I did not convey in my original posting was regarding the server community, and the friends made. The current "first" posting was put there through a bug in the forums that messed with the time stamp.

The argument brought up about creating friends, getting to know each other better is probably the strongest argument that can be made to not have a cross realm dungeon finder. Like others, I made friends while leveling by chatting in open channels. Many of those people joined my guild, and some of them I still chat with today. I can not tell you who anyone is that I met through a Looking for Dungeon feature. I can't tell you their character name, I can't tell you who they are.

As I stated in my original posting, I am all for this feature being within the same server and not cross server. However, once you do internal server, it is one step closer to that urge of doing cross server. It is a slippery slope here.

As several here, I began my MMO gaming in WoW before Burning Crusade. I have since played most major other MMOs, including F2P ones, even if just a 10 day trial. Prior to dungeon finder, general chat in zones was active, people would chat about doing group quests and dungeons. Much like the current zones in Star Wars. People are socializing!

After the cross realm dungeon finder was released in WoW, chat became non-existent. The mentality was to queue up while questing, do the dungeon, get your gear and get out. Absolutely no socializing occurs.

Don't believe this? Load up a trail of WoW, go to The Barrens, which once even had t-shirts devoted to what was known as "Barrens Chat", go to Westfall, go to Silverpine. All of these zones have dungeons for people to do. Just sit and watch the chat that occurs, sit and watch how people ask for doing dungeon groups. Sit and wait.

*crickets*

Absolutely no socializing in a Massively Multi-Player Online game.

After reading all these postings, I would propose to Bioware, to make the many happy, give us an option. Give players a choice. Let us decide when we queue up to look for others on our realm, or an option to look cross realm. Don't give us rewards for either, just let us decide where to draw our player pool from.

After reading all these postings, I would propose to Bioware, to make the many happy, give us an option. Give players a choice. Let us decide when we queue up to look for others on our realm, or an option to look cross realm. Don't give us rewards for either, just let us decide where to draw our player pool from.

this would in my opinion be the best solution, however it is unlikely as it would require creating either 2 algorithms for matchmaking, or one very complex one that would include players preffering their own realm in the pool if all players = same realm.

balancing this with que times might be a very tricky buisiness

something about leaving rift after the launch burst vanished

they decided to close off some of the realms as trial shards, which in turn balanced population on the remaining realms, and from there on the player count steadily increased. at least the eu whitefall shard had a very healthy population on both sides, as well as a decent amount of pug raids, world pvp, pvp events, and general randomness. while also having automated que systems.

to me personally, a lfg tool is essential to my lvl'ing, as i epicly hate solo grinding in mmo's (hoping tor will be better). and usually lvl purely (or at least close to) through group content. sitting around spamming chats all day would earn me a reputation as both a spammer, and as someone who cannot put a group together through the power of assumptions.

anyways, this is proving to be a rather cool forum argument, as i dont see anything except for valid points, and i hope the bioware forum mods will see this as well, and refer dev's to this thread for future reference when they are developing the systems.

I'll throw in another vote for either no lfg tool, or a server-only lfg tool. I don't like the idea of allowing the individual gamer to choose server only or cross-server, because that means less players in the server-only queue. You let some people do cross-server, it all goes to hell, and so does the importance of a gamer's reputation.

Does swtor as it stands now have an lfg channel? If it exists, is it planet/fleet only?

I also didn't like the automatic porting to a dungeon entrance, a la Rift, etc. Make me be a part of the world! Getting to some of these entrances is half the excitement, whether it's because you have to fight mobs or other players.

The way I found a group in the swtor beta was to go to the flashpoint entrance, and say out loud in /say something like hey, anyone need a lvl 11 mercenary healer for the instance? It worked every time.

I think you are all crazy and trying to make something into nothing. Takes from the game... This game like all things in life will be what YOU make of it. Not ruined or great because of some dungeon finder. If I had a dungeon finder would it take from exploration. Hell no I would explore while I waited for the que. Should the dungeon finder be cross server? YES that was a stupid question if you ask me. More people = faster ques = more people wanting to play over the couple of antagonists that say otherwise. Its funny to me to watch people try and turn ridiculous points of personal preference into fact. In case non of you who are apposed to the easier dungeon systems have noticed. Its an MMO that means bigger than you and your little brood. If you dont like games where you cant always be the big fish maybe you should stop playing MMO's

 

 

 

The line between life and death are at best shadowy and vague, Who is to say where one ends and the other begins.

 

Zezv

Agreed X 10.

In fact here is a recent anecdote to back up this concept of we make the game what we want.

I have a friend who has never played an MMO before, we are both in our early 30's, I have played MMO's for almost a decade, and he is brand spanking new . . like 5 weeks now.

Dungeon finder for him is a given, HOWEVER guess what, he loves exploring the world and finding the portals to the dungeons. He also likes to jump on vent and talk people into running him through the dungeons so he can get mad loot, so for him its ALL about knowing where the dungeons are. When I showed him how to summon people he about flipped out. He loved it. WHY? Because now its not such a pain to talk people into helping him, which is really what dungeons are anyways, groups come together to help each other, if you make that hard to do, guess what? IT HAPPENS LESS. EASIER = MORE and with less wasted time.

The bottom line is, the people saying these things ruin the game are making an arbitrary, personal judgment call and trying to make the claim that this personal and arbitrary thing is somehow inclusive of any new gamers.

Exploring the world is fun, knowing the world is cool, its worth doing for its own benefit, and in these games that benefit is always there regardless of dungeon finders and portals, and summons and every other thing that makes the game easier and faster. We briefly talked about this, and he agrees that once he has explored the entire world a few times he will likely not want to run around everywhere. Right now is he really enjoying archeology because it rewards exploration.

The idea that cross realm dungeon finder ruins in game immersion is some kind of self imposed psychological hurdle for the people who believe this is true. Its a self fulling prophecy made of smoke and mirrors. Its essentially telling people what they should enjoy about the game and why . . . . that is not in the slightest fair and objective.

I copy paste myself, as I've said this on several forum for several games already.

I'm strongly against a Dungeon Finder a la WOW, x-realm, with teleportation, because, in my opinion, it spoil deeply the community to the point of making the game hardly playable.

I can tell you, that I'm for one, very unhappy with this feature in games in general.

While it can seem very convenient to gather a group more easily, I thing it's a destroying feature. I had a very bad experience in World of Warcraft, and I strongly believe it helped to ruin the community.

Dungeon Finder make players :

• Selfish : they just think about their loot, their pleasure, their friends, their quest.
  
• Lazy : why make an effort when you can just click on a button? Players are educated to click button and do what they want. They enter in a CBA attitude that I hate, that will influence their behaviour in the game in general, not only restricted to dungeon finding.
  
• Impatient : players are used to recieve everything in their mouth as fast as possible. They can not wait anymore a group to get prepared, someone to explain tactics. This obviously influence their behaviour in other area of the game such as behaviour in guild or in raid
  
• Anti-social : players don't need to speak to each other to make their dungeon and succeed their quest.
  
• Anti-community : players will not get used to the players of their own server as they will play as much with players from other servers. This doesn't help to create a feeling of community inside a same server.
  
• Rude : players don't care about their reputation. They can behave as bad as they want there is no more consequences for their wrong behaviours.
  

What's extremly wrong with such a system is that it changes for ever the attitude of players in all aspect of the game. Not only the dungeon.

By creating such a system, World of Warcraft spoiled its own community and the MMO community as a whole, making players selfish, solo, and lazy. If selfishness, soloness, and laziness concern only dungeon it's maybe managable, but when it corrupt all aspect of the game, because players are used to click a button, get TP by enchantement into the "come get your loot easily" place, it become hard to play in good conditions. No one will move his a** to organise anything, players will not take the time to teach others, players will expect to get loot easily. Everything will seem too hard to get, or too bothering to make the effort.

That's the reasons why I'm radicaly against this Dungeon Finder. It's not only because the attitude inside the instance themselves. But because it's destroying the entiere MMO mindset to a CBA attitude in general that will spoil ALL aspect of the game, may it be PVP, PVE, quest, leveling, gear, encghantement etc. In addition, there will have no feelings of community

i used LFG channel in WoW for a long time before the changes and it worked great but the LFG system was terribly abused with players who would be going into the rotation for either no greater reason to "grief" other players or grief the WoW developers and since cross server made limited liability for poor playing habits <i am not talking about people who try and fail here as i was more than will to spend hour with people learning if they were friendly and non trollish(lol not meaning the race of course)>

cross servers and LFG tools seem great but yet again they rush games that already have a high level of levelling speed so the game got old as the instance become mad rush to see how many you can do in a single day.

Dungeon Finder make players :

 

• Selfish : they just think about their loot, their pleasure, their friends, their quest.
  
• Lazy : why make an effort when you can just click on a button? Players are educated to click button and do what they want. They enter in a CBA attitude that I hate, that will influence their behaviour in the game in general, not only restricted to dungeon finding.
  
• Impatient : players are used to recieve everything in their mouth as fast as possible. They can not wait anymore a group to get prepared, someone to explain tactics. This obviously influence their behaviour in other area of the game such as behaviour in guild or in raid
  
• Anti-social : players don't need to speak to each other to make their dungeon and succeed their quest.
  
• Anti-community : players will not get used to the players of their own server as they will play as much with players from other servers. This doesn't help to create a feeling of community inside a same server.
  
• Rude : players don't care about their reputation. They can behave as bad as they want there is no more consequences for their wrong behaviours.
  

 

I totaly agree on this i've played wow since beginning and it was fun you got to know on the server who was a nice and friendly player who was fun to group with when they launched the group finder and speccially cross server it was a mess you never knew what kind of person you would play with and as stated above they are rude not caring for a reputation of what kind.

MMo's should be fun and social with a dungeon finder you take a part of the social part away