Well let's hope none of the people trying raiding for the first time ever come here and see how they are being described - as "idiots", "morons" etc. Otherwise, rather than learning from their experiences and striving to become better at it (thus adding to the available pool of good raiders), they'll probably just give up on the idea and go back to playing alts.

 

What people should realise is that this situation was inevitable. Many of the people entering OPs/FPs through LFG will be doing so for the first time - for a lot of them this will even be their first MMO - such is the attraction of the IP. Some will have come from quiet servers where they couldn't get a group together even if they tried. Because of this I'd imagine many of them think that this kind of content is just the same as they have already played, just BIGGER, which is why (in their minds) it requires more people.

 

I'm sure things will settle down and improve - provided those with experience have the understanding and patience to help those who want to learn, to get through their first couple of runs without rage-quitting on them mid-run.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are plenty out there who not only don't have a clue what to do, but don't care either, for them there is no help.

Buggy.

 

Overall, the experience is either smooth as silk or pure torture, with very little scope for anything in between.

 

If you have a person in the raid who's already done EV/KP SM and they don't zone in first (or are leader - maybe both)... the group gets split between 2 instances. The option to reset phase seemingly disappears and trying to get 8 people who've never met before to agree a viable solution doesn't happen.

 

Without voicecomms, the raid is limited to people either knowing the bosses well already and agreeing on tactics - or relying on someone very patient with good typing skills to do "cat herding".

 

Occasionally you get a player or two who's never done KP or EV before, at which point you learn how patient or intolerant yourself and your fellow players can be.

 

Add to that the players who only want to do EV and who won't accept on the group formation screen for KP runs.

 

Finally, there are the players who didn't deselect "heal" or "tank" when they queued as DPS, or the LFG reset their choice last time. In which case, you get 10mins of "who's healing?" or "who's the MT?" at the outset, before the group dissolves back into the ether.

 

Personally, I've never had a queue time less than 45mins as DPS. But then I've avoided using LFG for operations for the most part too. I have had some very good experiences with groups organised in /general first, then queue as a full 8man team. But we could have done that before LFG.

 

I'm not being theoretical here - I have experienced the "split group across two instances due to someone already locked", "herding cats", "watching people click decline for KP runs", "who's the healer?", "I've never done KP before" and "let's reform the group, maybe that will fix it" - and all within a single attempt at queueing for what ended up being a KP run that didn't even get started. In that same run, we also had about 5 people all wanting to be promoted to raid leader and 1 person who didn't know that he was the leader already. I've also done a successful entirely random group EV run too.

 

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Edited July 1, 2012 by Woetoo

It's painfull... Tried 4 times (The last one didn't count, tbh, because 6 guys were from the same guild and I was specifically invited as a "friendly" backup to patch their lack of healers on that day... With my Scoundrel Alt in Rakata gear, so go figure the level of outgearing of that run)

 

Returning to pure PuGs... I have encountered all the bugs mentioned here just in the 2 1st attempts... In particular if you have ppl locked to some encounters... That seems to open the Pandora's Box... You will have ppl that instant travel do not work, split into different instances and ppl not getting the BH reward quest (Didn't finish any of the pure PuG runs... So can't confirm if lacking the "Group Finder" quest denies you the reward... As on HM FP you don't get any special extra quest and on the 4th run every1 had the quest and everything went smooth).

 

But that's only the 1st problem... The next is a more crippling one. It's the PvP soloers... I don't know the rest... But over the brief period (All days since 1.3 hitted... Obviously on the HM T1 queue... No single pure PuG LI has been successfull so far) I have been systematically farming the 5 bh... I only found 1 person exclusively geared for PvE (He was in bad blues... But all of them coming from PvE activities)... The rest of the components of the PuG parties I have been tanking (On purpose... I wanted to check how the system is... Instead of using the easy approach of going with my Gm8s to speedrun farm this) have always come with PvP gear of varied levels. Why is this a problem? Simple... Months of WZ solo queues have created a habit on the "expected duration" on anything accessed through a queue... On the 3 100% PuGs to EV & KP I have tried... We lost ALWAYS at least 1 person at the moment I explained the average duration of a run... The persons that left were systematically PvPers (Notice what I call a "PvPer" here... Some1 with Valor Rank and good proportion of PvP gear). Coincidence? Bad luck? I don't think so... it's the filtering of 6 months of solo PvP queues that has "created" this common profile of player.

 

On those 3 100% PuGs... I manage to explain patiently tactics to beat XR on EV twice (With the exception above of ppl leaving at the very moment I dared to say average full run duration... That forced us to recruit new ppl)... 1 EV failed on the way to Gharj due to ppl been frustrated by been killed on the trash (Healers weren't brilliant on that one) and the other at Gharj because the tank was a 1stimer (I was with my Healer Alt on that run) and, tbh, Gharj can be quite confusing for some1 new to MMOs and to tanking (It was embarrassing how he was treated, tbh... A lot of ppl is crying left and right about lack of tanks... But when they see a good willed guy trying to tank for the 1st time an OP that tries to follow the instructions of another player (me)... All are shouts and angry comments at him... From ppl that have no clue what they are talking about and are making the same or worse mistakes)...

 

...But Bonetrasher on KP, tbh, was a nightmare... Seem that doesn't matter how much times I explained it, but having a Giant Rancor looking at you makes the average 1st timer to run around like a headless chicken that invairably ends with an acid shower for him and with a lot of unnecesary damage applied on each Claw Swipe (There were 2 persons moving left and right all the time like if they believed moving around randomly will help them at all on PvE... I have seen it also on some HP FP this week... Is this somekind of autoscript/macro PvPers use to trigger facing errors while PvPing?).

 

EDIT: To avoid confusion... When I say I have encountered almost exclusively ppl with PvP gear... It's not just them that are a high proportion of the GF users... It's that dedicated PvErs avoid pure pugs by organizing full parties (As they have been doing from day-0) and then using the random HM FP/SM OP queues... Thus they are "invisible" from users that are "pure PuGing". Even more, as I have been queueing as tank (mostly), even most partial PvErs parties secure by default tank (and healer usually) before even bothering with FP activities... Making even harder for me to see them.

 

EDIT2: Before you jump to a wrong conclusion... I play on a PvE server with those characters.

Edited July 1, 2012 by ragamer

I genuinely suggest that nobody queues for Karagga's Palace with the group finder - unless they know the Heavy Fabricator puzzle inside out.

 

That fight is SEVERELY overtuned for a random pug because there are way too many things to keep track of, you won't figure out the puzzle on the fly and the enrage timer is relatively tight. It's the hardest fight in the game outside Explosive Conflict and even with a guild with voice communications it's really tough. Without Vent or Teamspeak it's impossible imho - unless, I repeat, someone knows the puzzle inside out and can do it with his eyes closed.

I really believe that BIOWARE should do some kind of gear censorship for the group finder. If you are not geared enough - you cannot enter queue. For example, to enter Explosive Conflict SM you're to have average gear rating of 136 (full columi). And ALL of the PVP gear rating there is to be reduced to 0, so that we could avoid those good-geared but utterly useless in ops war heroes, gladiators, battlemasters etc.

I haven't tried this, but you can't have any sort of group setup before you queue? I think thats kinda dumb if thats the case. I think it would be nice for guilds that are short a couple people. Same with running hm fp's I really don't want it to be all pug (assuming thats the case)

 

I tried to take a group of 8. Queued everyone in the group finder. Didn't get comms. Big waste of time.

Did some KP

 

First boss done easily. Then one dps disconnects.

So after some waiting we decide to 7-man second boss, and do it easily again, and then another dps disconnects.

 

So we kicked the disconnected and then we were stuck with a group 2 tanks 2 dps 2 healers, and no matter what we did, we could not make it work so that we could queue for replacements for our 2 missing dps. It was impossible to get new people. Well that was the end of that.

 

The same thing happened to me! ha!

 

Were you in my group?

 

 

I was qued up and very surprised that the 8 man group finder worked. Pretty fast, too.

 

But a player DCed (a tank) and the group fell apart just as quickly as it came together...

 

We beat the Rancor but couldnt get through the 2 gaurds...

 

 

Oh, and If you know the fights, it's no problem. But a voice chat (for all OPs / HMs) is helpful...

@OP it's pretty pot luck. I had a really smooth EV GroupFinder run where two people didn't know the op at all (1 dps, 1 healer), no voice comms, and all typed instructions. Then I had a pretty rough KP run where only 1 person fessed up about not being there before (melee dps), but it was obvious there were at least 3 others in that run that were clueless (2 tanks, 1 melee). Really depends on the personalities on your server.

 

I genuinely suggest that nobody queues for Karagga's Palace with the group finder - unless they know the Heavy Fabricator puzzle inside out.

 

That fight is SEVERELY overtuned for a random pug because there are way too many things to keep track of, you won't figure out the puzzle on the fly and the enrage timer is relatively tight. It's the hardest fight in the game outside Explosive Conflict and even with a guild with voice communications it's really tough. Without Vent or Teamspeak it's impossible imho - unless, I repeat, someone knows the puzzle inside out and can do it with his eyes closed.

 

Oh it's not overtuned, it's fine. If you see above, I had a really rough KP, no voice comms, all typing. Yes it took us a few tries to get through the puzzle boss, but that's part of the learning. We were too worried about the enrage and overcompensated by having 2 clickers, and more dps on the floor. Went with 3 clickers and it was fine.

 

I tried to take a group of 8. Queued everyone in the group finder. Didn't get comms. Big waste of time.

 

I believe that's working as intended. If you join the Group Finder with a full (4/8) group, you're not adding anyone from the pool and therefore not actually using the GF, and thus no comms for your group. I'm not saying I'm right, just a gut feel for the spirit of the tool.

After my first run in GF in which I was placed with a group of 3 players in greens doing FE, I had very low hopes for A pug op. No vent, random players, seemed like a disaster.

I was pleasantly surprised when I grouped in GF for EV. Everybody knew their part, we one shotted the whole instance. Amazing. I guess the coin flips both ways