Dungeon Finder Needed Badly

My wife and i ran 6 randoms in wow today with zero problems or rude people. We then logged on to rift and ran 5 randoms with OMG zero bad players or rudeness!
I then logged on to swtor while she raided HK. I ran zero flashpoints and zero heroic quest....

In all due fairness mate, really low level content is kinda obsolete in SWTOR because the gear progression is rather rapid here.
There is little point in finishing any flashpoint before level 30ish more than once for the story and some random loot.
Unless you wanna hook up with a friend and go grind "that particular jacket" in which your companion looks really cool, until it finally drops

The point isn't whether or not you had issues when you assembled your group of human controlled, randomly selected NPCs. Its the fact that you did it with human controlled, randomly selected NPCs.

SWTOR needs a better grouping interface, but cross server LFD a la WoW is not the answer.

I'm voting against the dungeon finder. The other game has turned into a soulless husk because of these incompetent people who can't even assemble a group.

Hi,

I have posted this in a separate suggestion, but it seems to get overlooked there, so here it goes. Careful! Long post

A WoW style LFG tool would cement the current "I solo hack&slash my way until I reach group content" style that is so very much the predominant playstyle on any server I have tried so far.

Now, in my humble oppinion, that is the essential problem: People do not team and group for their adventures. They are so focused on "power leveling" or "grinding" their way to max level, that they are missing the thing that sets MMORPGs apart from Shooter Games such as Quake, Halflife and their successors.

Instead of comparing to games like WoW, Bioware should search their own archives and take a good look at their earlier RPG work: Neverwinter Nights (NWN). It was not "massive" multiplayer, but it was multiplayer online RPG with lots and lots of different community driven servers. Each with a unique setting and content. There was no limit, to how many servers you could "subscribe", but since the maximum number of consecutive players was limited (with tweaking) to 64, if you where a regular, you would meet the same people most of the time.

Over the weeks, you would begin to recognize certain players and even certain characters, and you would then team up to adventure together. Nobody was ever looking for groups, because there where no special instanced dungeons, just one "flat server", with tough and not so tough areas. It came naturally that you had to team up for the tough areas.

Since XP awards where handed out for team play, there was also no issue finding team mates. Even -- or most of all -- power leveling people always made sure they where in a team, preferable with lower level players, to maximize their own XP gain. Awards where based on the average level of the group. So huge "raid groups" formed spontaneously to take out a particularly tough "world boss", everybody was welcome, no matter the level, gear or "skill". Teamplay was phantastic. And after such a raid, when the spoils where divided up, you had just spend a very satisfying evening with a game thankfully made with community in mind. Oh, and nobody even thought about having a "guild" or any such clumsy bureucratic tool to help one another out. You would just resurrect, heal, buff, etc. the other players whenever required. Even when not in group. It was just a common understanding of courtesy towards the other players.

I think that the "instancing" on the servers to achieve a max player number sharing the world is a good way to encourage this type of spontaneous grouping and finding team mates. However, the fluctuation of players is too high and the play time schedules too diverse these days, with obligations in "real life" such as work, family, university, etc.

So my suggestion is this: Make group/team play much more worth a player's while. Do not just hand out social points in dialogues every once in a blue moon. Increase XP dished out, enhance the gear dropped, hand out rewards for "100 rats killed while in a team" or XP for "you played 20 consecutive times in a group of at least 2", etc.

Anything to make people team up. Then, when they discover the odd heroic quest or Flashpoint, they are already in a balanced, well known team and don't have to neither idle for hours to find their last mate nor having to click on a "beam me to the dungeon with some random idiot" tool. LFG is the least ideal solution for the problem.

You frequently end up in groups that have done a particular "dungeon" 100 times over, rushing to the end boss and complaining endlessly (if not just kicking you out) for wanting to look left and right while you go, explore for loot in not-so-straight paths or -- god forbid -- take your time to find out the best strategy against a given opponent.

Also please note: My solution does not force anyone to team play. Players can still solo hack&slash their way to endgame, if that is their preferred style. However, it would take them slightly longer to achieve their goal and they would miss out on some better gear earlier on. I think this reflects the missed out opportunities and satisfaction you get from taking the time to meet people and the satisfaction you get from accomplishing goals as a team.

Well, this sums up my "most urgent point to improve", because once a certain way of playing this game has been established, it is very hard to change it back. Please please oh please do not go the "WoW" path! It is the darkest of dark sides of the force!

Cheers

JP