Dungeon Finder Needed Badly

So it looks like the points of contention are

• LFG Tool versus No
• Same-Server versus Cross-Server
• Automatic Fill versus No

Lots of support for LFG Tool and weak (IMO) opposition to it. Most concerns are about a Cross-Server one. I agree Cross-Server doesn't make good sense and is only a crutch to bridge localized population issues. Population issues can be resolved separately and constitutes just one of the reasons people have trouble finding groups. LFG tools can address the other factors.

From DDO, I love putting the group leader in charge and would be uncomfortable with an automatic fill.

Because this isnt 1999 where a 15 hour raid was "the norm" a la the EQ1 days. This is the Post World of Warcraft land where 90 minutes should be long enough to do just about anything but a raid (and I think some on these boards even claim you CAN raid in under an hour).

I'm sorry, I am in much the same position as the dude you are rippin on - I have a ridiculous amount of time to spend on games, but in smaller stints. I can log into wow (I dont want to, realllllly I dont want to) and queue for a dungeon and be done with it in 45-60 minutes EVEN IF I HAVE TO WAIT IN AN AUTOMATED QUEUE FOR HALF THAT TIME. In ToR, I have to manually parse every line of chat and sort through 1283913829103 sentinel DPS toons before I find a tank.

And yes, I use trade, general, my servers level 50 channel, flag myself as LFG and what spec(s) I can cover, am in a fairly active guild, whisper people of the appropriate level... doesnt matter.

I did cancel the game not because there was nothing to do at 50, but because THERE IS FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFIN NO ONE TO DO IT WITH

I don't think you understand demographics. The reason WoW got so big is because they made it so single player accessible with great content. You don't know the mentality of the playerbase so don't impose your ideas on them. MMORPG's are finding more success in putting out single player orienated content then group content becaus most people don't want to do group content cause of the hassles it brings. I'm sorry that bothers you but it's the reality of the situation

Sure it's happened that I've somehow gotten a 5 person pre-made since LFD was put into the game. I've spent most of the time I've been playing in active raiding guilds after all, but these are the exception, not the rule.

Back in BC, as an active player, you were part of a community of people. Your name got "out there" and people knew you, or knew of you. You had people on your friends list just because they were a good tank, or healer, and you could hit them up if you needed a tank or healer.

It wasn't just "oh we need a tank let's just hit the queue button" as it is now, and don't try and tell me that isn't the way it is now. I've tried to form PuGs from my server before, and in all cases the people just want you to hit the queue button instead of actually waiting to find people.

So since you can't select players for quality, everyone suffers from the lack of quality in the player base, which means that content is nerfed endlessly so that groups made without regard for composition or player skill, and without the ability to effectively exclude terrible people (or preferentially include good people) can get through the content.

It's a net drain on the game as a whole. There's a reason BC and vanilla are looked upon fondly by the WoW community, whereas WotLK (and even Cata) are eschewed. It's because the game was fun and engaging, as opposed to a chore-filled grindfest.

BC heroic 5-mans were like nothing that's been put into the game to date, even the hellish Cataclysm heroic 5-mans didn't come close to BC heroic 5-mans. The only reason the outcry about Cataclysm heroic 5-mans was so great is because people had been conditioned to believe (by WotLK) that they should be able to just slap 5 people together (with the assistance of the LFD, of course) and steam roll it.

If you like rewarding, challenging game play, you can't want an automatic, cross-server LFD, because those two are mutually exclusive. The latter leads to the elimination of the former.

If you like meeting people, making friends, and playing with the same people over and over, you'd better either have a large base of established friends before automatic, cross-server LFD hits, because meeting people in LFD groups is nigh impossible (I haven't managed to actually meet anyone in them to date, whereas I met new people constantly in BC).

But if you want to treat TOR like it's Call of Duty or Counter Strike, and you want to throw a little tantrum because the genre won't conform to your time constraints, then by all means, agitate for it.

Because heaven forbid you should have to make intelligent decisions. Heaven forbid that a game which relies on the involvement of other people -- i.e. an MMO -- should be contingent on other people being around when you feel like it.

While we're at it though, why don't we petition the government, to develop a tool, to group people together at bars, or the movie theatre, in case all your friends just happen to be busy? After all, if you don't have someone to go out with, or go to the theatre with, whenever you want, that's a travesty, and you're paying for the food (at the bar), and the tickets (at the theatre), so you ought to have people to do these things with!

That's not an argument.

What are you talking about?

The people I "may have run with routinely" I never would've "run with routinely" had there been an LFD system...

...how are you not understanding this.

In order to meet people, you need a way to have recurring interaction with them. When you're thrown into a random group with someone for 30-60 minutes, that's rarely a basis for recurring interaction.

Sure, you could add them to Real ID, but what if they don't want to give their e-mail address out?

And besides, why bother when you can just hit the button and get another tank/healer/dps anyway?

Interpersonal relationships don't just grow out of nothing. You don't get on the same bus as someone and instantly become friends. There needs to be something that forces you together as a precursor to the relationship developing.

LFD gets rid of that.

DDO had a great model for this. And it wasn't automatic.

An MMORPG where all the content is effectively single player is no longer an MMORPG.

There are RPGs full of single player content, they are simply called "RPGs" because you don't need other people to play them so they're not "multiplayer", massively or not.

How is this concept difficult? I gave you an example. BioWare makes squad-based RPGs where you have a party of entities that are under your control and available for you 24/7/365, no LFD needed!

Not only population, but also playing or not during prime time. The lack of XLFG penalizes people that can't play during a specific window of time. It creates huge gaps between geared and non-geared people, because one group won't mix with the other for way to many reasons.

In a XLFG scenario, given "derserter" type of debuffs you get from bailing a group, people will often endure running along under geared players simply because they just want to get their daily/weekly done.

I love raiding, it's just not a sustainable model for a game to survive on if it wants to make huge population projections.

There's something else that does that.

It's called "real life".

Other people are not tools for you to use to accomplish your ends. They don't play the game for your benefit. If you want this play a squad-based game. You don't have to go through all the trouble of paying a subscription or waiting in a queue.

Yes because "non-geared" people can't become "geared".

Also I played with plenty of "non-geared" people who geared up quickly in BC. The barrier was mostly getting raiding gear, which the proposed situation doesn't address anyway.

So what you're basically saying is that you have a right to negatively impact someone else's gameplay, and that if they don't want to play with you, they should be penalized for it?

Exactly which letters of the acronym does it violate?
MM = Lots of Players, Check
O = Online, Check
RPG = Game Style, Check

An FPS in Deathmatch mode could almost qualify. You're attaching your own meaning to it.