Dungeon Finder Needed Badly

Had to add this to a new post, sorry to bump again (lol).

Here's some more feedback from that other developer about that other game which I think gives more insight into the popularity of LFD and what might happen for SWTOR:

"[...] Yesterday we discussed low-population and faction-imbalanced realms with our developers. They have some pretty bold and spectacular plans for addressing this in anticipation of implementing some of the features we plan to in Mists. I just don't have a lot of information to share with you at this stage of programming and development."

"Take LFG. Yes, convenient, it's quick, it's good! But at the same time it destroyed server communities and turned the whole experience of going to dungeons from a fun adventure into a mini-game grindfest. Overal? Bad change in my opinion."
"The option to manually find people for your group and travel to the dungeon is still there, so you're totally free to continue doing it that way if you wish. But LFD is a very handy and convenient tool for most people, its popularity demonstrates that beyond a doubt.

Having said that, we're very aware of these concerns, and we're working hard on ways to get players out of the cities and back into the world again in Mists."

"You're basically telling us that we're wrong for not liking these features of WoW, because the numbers are against us. A lot of people use LFG, so that must mean it is fantastic?"
"No I'm not saying that at all, but it's clear that many people appreciate it. The point you make about a path of least resistance is true, but it's a fine balance. Make something too easy (such as a free gear vendor) and it's no fun, no challenge. LFD keeps the challenge part (the dungeon) but alleviates the often-long-winded group-finding part, allowing people to quest or gather mats, just go about other tasks while a group is found for them. Granted, it's not for everyone, some people enjoy putting a group together personally but, again, we're not forcing anyone to use it.

As I said just now, we've acknowledged people might have issues with some of the changes LFD made to the game. We're hearing it loud and clear, and we're working to address some of these in the expansion."

Source: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...medium=twitter

One thing 1, ofc you force people to use the LFD tool.. you give much better rewards for doing it in LFD than you recive if you make your own group.

Soloution is, remove the extra rewards from LFD and LFR tools, and give those extras to thoose who make their own group - that is a level instance, a HC or even for their own LFR (ok need a new name for that, but that cant be to hard)

Problem with wow - is you made it more rewarding to use your tool, than if you made groups on your own - remove that, and players might be back to form communities on server level again.

Well, pardon me for being skeptical, but these same issues have been around since crossrealm battlegrounds in vanilla. All we've ever heard on the topic has been how fantastic it is that there are more battlegrounds running.

Same issue with Alterac Valley, where it's so amazing that "new" AV can be played in 5 minutes so many AVs can be run by more people.

In fact, it seems like numbers are the only gauge used to determined success. If more dungeons are run, if more BGs are played, if more people are in raids, if more people gain better gear, if more characters are at max level, that means that all decisions leading up at that point are justified and correct. It may not be the truth, but it sure seems like it.

Again, I apologize for coming off as hostile, but I've been hearing the PR talk for over seven years now. I've seen many of the things that matter to me eroded for the sake of convenience or balance or any of the other sacred relics of the MMO world, and I've seen a lot of spindoctoring from Blizzard CMs. I'm jaded, though I feel I'm justifiably so.

Nobody is interested in any other dungeons anymore because the game designers removed daily dungeon quests and FORCED users to do LFG to get their JP/VP reward. Incentivise people to do dungeons without using the LFG system at all (not even to TP in, as that would just take away the trip to the dungeon entrance) by giving them additional rewards for NOT doing it with random people from different servers and you'll see people become interested in joining a realm-group again and forming communities and gaining game-buddies.

But hey, since the game designers didn't realize that themselves this just shows they're incompetent yet again.

Dungeon finder is a terrible idea. It reduces every social aspect of the game, especially if it's cross server.

Much easier way to address this is making a server wide LFG channel as opposed to just spamming on the fleet. It's not perfect, but it also keeps the social side of things alive.

Again my argument against a X server LFD tool. It should be server only. It should not have extra rewards to use it.

Dungeon finder is a terrible idea. It reduces every social aspect of the game, especially if it's cross server. Much easier way to address this is making a server wide LFG channel as opposed to just spamming on the fleet. It's not perfect, but it also keeps the social side of things alive.

Principal Lead System Designer, Damion Schubert, made a statement on 1/11/2012 in regards to this: http://www.swtor.com/community/showp...&postcount=508



“Improving our LFG system is high on the list of features that Systems Design wants to add to the game. We want this to be good not just for helping people find Flashpoints and Operations to run, but also other multiplayer content like heroic missions. A key emphasis will be on advertising for specific role needs (healer, tank, DPS). This feature is currently in the design stage, and once this feature has moved beyond this to a development stage and has a firm ETA, I'll be coming back to you guys to give more details.



We've known we would need to revisit this feature for a while. In the level-up game, finding players isn't too rough because, with few exceptions, everyone in that level band is either on your planet or on the fleet. Once more and more players hit endgame, and are spending their time in more places, the need for this feature is going to increase. Note that right now, high level players have the opposite problem - there aren't enough other players up there to group with. This problem will dissipate as the game ages, and more players reach the later levels.



That being said, our design team doesn't philosophically believe that cross-server Flashpoints are good for the game at this stage in the game's lifespan. There is huge social pressure to not be a jerk that goes away when the odds that you will never see these people again is high. I'm not saying never - there may come a time in the future where we reevaluate this - but at least in the short term, we believe this will cause more damage to the community than good.”