Jump to content

What is your basis for opposing a group-searching system in SWTOR?


Recommended Posts

seriously, I've read a lot of arguments pro/con dungeon finder with a lot of comparisons, but yours won the top spot for being the most rubbish.

so rubbish actually you're a hot contender for the lifetime award....

 

What your statement and the apocalyptic arguments against a group-finding tool have in common is the complete absence of any basis, which isn't surprising. The only thing missing is a shot at WoW. If you want to talk about rubbish, there's your insistence that your mere opinion is worth something and doesn't need an explanation. Of course, what else should anyone expect from someone that somehow failed to see the connection between the lack of a meaningful consequence that a group-finding tool would have for people that don't want to use such a thing and the lack of a meaningful consequence for heterosexual couples if marriage is opened to same-sex partnerships. Besides the sound of you breathing from your mouth, I mean.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 97
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

a LFG system improved beyond this one would be extremely nice. right now I just do /who then search for whatever i need, it's tedious and involves a lot of whispers. Even though i ask nicely many people feel harassed. Some say "thanks for the offer" but I'd rather not interupt someones questing etc with random spam. the Current LFG system just plain doesn't work. There are so many people spread out over so many planets/their personal ships it makes it very difficult to get a group together.

 

Maybe not a wow clone system, but something more substantial...please. Also, guilds seem nearly pointless, it's just another friends list... no real benefits for guilds is kinda meh

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Considering every Flashpoint is on the fleet, I wouldn't oppose a YOUR SERVER ONLY grouping system.

 

The knee jerk reaction for not wanting such a system is simply "WoW did it, I don't want to associate with that game any more so I flame anything that so much as has a shade of blue they used".

 

Cross-server grouping did kick 'community' in the bollocks a fair amount, but frankly what kind of community did WoW have in the first place? It was hardly stellar at the best of times anyway. Another issue with the LFG System was that it cut out any travelling to instances whilst in TOR (as I have already mentioned) they are all aboard the fleets anyway.

 

So, maybe have a LFG System but only for your own server, or just have a global LFG channel so people can do other stuff than squat in the fleet for hours.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One way or the other the system needs to be refined. You can't even but more than two words in the LFG comment because it gets cut off and there is no way (that I have found) to expand it to see what people wrote.

 

So I can fit in something like "LFG Tank" or "Tank HM FP" and that is it. Nothing more specific than that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cross-server grouping did kick 'community' in the bollocks a fair amount, but frankly what kind of community did WoW have in the first place? It was hardly stellar at the best of times anyway. Another issue with the LFG System was that it cut out any travelling to instances whilst in TOR (as I have already mentioned) they are all aboard the fleets anyway.

 

The problem really is the word 'community.' in this argument. It's take to mean some kind of pollyanna where everyone helps everyone. True. World of Warcraft never had THAT kind of community.

 

But they DID have a community where good sociable players could find groups very quickly and bad selfish players couldn't find anyone to bring them with them.

 

This is the main problem that cross server dungeon finders caused in WoW. In short - it doesn't matter if you suck. You can just queue and go again. In fact a tank - considered the pinnacle of skill can requeue the fastest of all if they suck. So they can easily 'group jump' to find a healer/dps to carry them.

 

And as someone that played in WoW before and after the Dungeon finder it really matters.. You want from PAGES of friends on your list to almost none because no one bothered to group manually anymore.

 

Of course this is just the start of the problem from a game designers perspective. The REAL problem is that a cross server group system speeds the forming of groups and lowers the quality of said groups. Thus you have to weaken your dungeons to compensate (people do not like repeated failures) AND make your players run them over and over..(you cannot have your players quickly out gear your content).

 

I'd rate this as equally bad if not worse then the side effects that ruin the community.

Edited by CelticPete
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have faith in BW to do the right thing. This is not wow and I'm certain they intend to keep important aspects, like finding your own groups, as a mainstay. Plus, people who actually enjoy playing mmos will not be too happy about a change like this, and BW could lose subs where as the reverse is highly unlikely.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem really is the word 'community.' in this argument. It's take to mean some kind of pollyanna where everyone helps everyone. True. World of Warcraft never had THAT kind of community.

 

But they DID have a community where good sociable players could find groups very quickly and bad selfish players couldn't find anyone to bring them with them.

 

This is the main problem that cross server dungeon finders caused in WoW. In short - it doesn't matter if you suck. You can just queue and go again. In fact a tank - considered the pinnacle of skill can requeue the fastest of all if they suck. So they can easily 'group jump' to find a healer/dps to carry them.

 

And as someone that played in WoW before and after the Dungeon finder it really matters.. You want from PAGES of friends on your list to almost none because no one bothered to group manually anymore.

 

Of course this is just the start of the problem from a game designers perspective. The REAL problem is that a cross server group system speeds the forming of groups and lowers the quality of said groups. Thus you have to weaken your dungeons to compensate (people do not like repeated failures) AND make your players run them over and over..(you cannot have your players quickly out gear your content).

 

I'd rate this as equally bad if not worse then the side effects that ruin the community.

 

 

Actually WoW did have that type of community during its golden era. Most everyone did help everyone when I began playing during classic. I would meet total strangers who would go out of their way to help me knowing I was new to the game. Makes them feel good, and they were bettering the community by helping others out making them more informed, thus helping them in becoming a better player over time.

 

Some guy let me follow him on foot, from Ironforge to Ashenvale to complete my quest to obtain my Succubus on my warlock, my first toon ever. I had no idea where I was going. I was a noob. It felt like it took us an hour to get there. It was a lot of running for certain. I couldn't believe this guy helped me out to that extent. You feel the need/want to pay actions like this forward in your community.

 

I pretty much agree with your entire post Celtic Pete. Very well though out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cross-server automated group-building systems destroy any sense of community. Back during WoW's BC era all you had was the /lfg flag. So to build a group, you had to look for people with the LFG flag turned on and whisper them or hit up people on your friend's list. There was even a rudimentary LFG tool which let you indicate some things (heals, tank, DPS) and a comment system.

 

As a result a lot of groups got built around friend lists and if you were an idiot / ninja it didn't take long for your reputation to get around enough that you got blackballed by the server community.

 

Fast forward a bit and the RFD tool got added (and the old LFG tool was broken and no longer worked). The ninja-looters and griefers rejoiced because now they could get into groups. The rest of us either ran solely with guild groups, or we didn't run at all. Because there was no longer a server-only LFG tool, it got a lot harder to find and meet new people who might deserve a spot on our friends list.

 

What we have in-game does work (you can flag yourself as LFG and give yourself a comment such as "DPS LFG Esseles" or "Tank LFG Esseles"). You can use the /who window, plug in "LFG" in the search field and get a list of everyone who has flagged themselves as LFG.

 

And there's nothing stopping anyone from creating a player run channel called "LFG" that people join when they want to find a group. The server communities just need to sort that out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

An improved LFG search tool wouldn't be a bad idea, if implimented right. Most of the stuff I've seen people disagree with is a system where it will form a party for you. Give people something where they can easily see who's available, and let that be it.

 

My issue with it is that a "dungeon finder" is a gateway drug. A soon as someone waits 30 minutes, for whatever reason, they'll be crying "we need cross server, I can't even get a group with the automated thing".

 

Cross server anything destroys community, as well as all social graces. The only thing I dislike more than being in a group with a *****, is being in a group with a ***** who knows he can't be blacklisted for his behavior.

Edited by TeyyOxto
Link to comment
Share on other sites

From some of the posts I've seen, it sounds like a lot of people worry that a lfg system will embolden many players to act like jerks without fear of reprisal. I come from a game where the simple party-search system does not grant automatic entry to a group nor anonymity prior to joining. Character name, class, level are all easily seen. People who have a reputation for grieving others, even if just for that day, don't get accepted onto a team or can kicked by the leader if someone makes accusations against him. That's perfectly normal.

 

..

 

Perhaps some people are thinking about something like a queue system, where a bunch of people line up for some flashpoint or quest, then every 4 in line get grouped together like riding on a roller coaster. That is most definitely a terrible system for game teams and whoever came up with it should be fired.

 

DDO by any chance? if not, the tool is similar there.

 

but yes, people are trained to just have a button to click and then get dumped after some time into an instance. that's where most of the complaints come from. I'm not saying chat or the current lfg implementation is perfect, but it works (other games ONLY use chat to find groups, if it that broken of a system it wouldn'T work in any of them).

 

we had the same discussion in rift, where people asked for a "proper" lfg-tool - like you described - but the devs were adamant it has to be wow's easy/lazy one-button solution. maybe bioware is smarter and improves the lfg-functionality bit by bit instead of dumping a system from another game in here which means there is no going back.

 

because, what a lot of people seem to miss: if you have a tool that queues RANDOM people together (x-shard for example), the difficulty of the content has to scale accordingly - which means the instance has to be doable by a RANDOM uncoordinated team of varying degree of skill and equipment.

it's still a game, so the reward you get is either based on challenge and/or time. if you remove the challenge, the time you spend getting the item has to be make up for it. in wow terms, the number of tokens you need per item increases (let's say a hard boss gives you 10 tokens. you wipe a lot in the beginning, but finally beat it. took you an hour, but you get 10 tokens. now, the boss is nerfed so you can easily kill it every time, 30 minutes in the instance so it only gives you 4 tokens - since the challenge is not a criteria anymore, the reward has to be based on time).

Edited by Graburr
Link to comment
Share on other sites

100% agreed, haven't managed to run a single heroic (or normal for that matter) if i don't count those made with a full guild group, which is plain wrong. Sure, we farm hcs with our own group, but if any of us (or even 2-3 just missing 1) want to get things going with randoms it's a nightmare.

 

Everyone should be able to do any fp at any time of the day/night imo. Having content/entertainment denied just cause the server is dead at weird hours or there doesn't happen to be people caring about what you want to farm is just terrible.

 

Here's a couple examples why the current stone age system is bad:

 

1)Just a couple days ago some random asked me if i wanted to do dir7 normal, so mind you, not even an hc or anything difficult, i said ok as i was just clearing corellia for the sake of it since the day i made 50 i had barely started that planet. Well, he/we couldn't find people no matter what, for 1,2,3 hours he kept searching, he even started asking for just 45+ people.

 

2)During a hc with randoms at some point a guy decided he couldn't be arsed to finish it and left, couldn't find a replacement for over an hour so we just gave up. BUT HEY at least we can blacklist that random who left, amirite? .. sigh. We would have rather have had someone insta joining via queue when the ***** left.

 

3)I'd like to make more examples on why this is terrible but truth is that aside from those 2 runs i couldn't even manage to get anything going (or joining).

 

Furthermore, the fleet system is nice and roleplayish but, seriously, when you've run instances 10+ times, all the loadings, taxis, recalls, elevators, whatever, get really ANNOYING AS HELL. It would be fine if it was a single player, but it isn't, mmos need functionality above everything else, come on. Force people to get the quest or discover entrances the first time maybe, sure, but after that, it shouldn't be required anymore.

 

tl:dr - wow's dungeon finder tool should be copy pasted into this game cause the current system is terrible in the long run and we aren't in 1999 anymore.

 

No I like the fact that your rep follows you. If you are anti social Pandas await you just go to them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

IMO, BioWare's on the right track with their current LFG interface. However, they lack some features which would greatly improve the ease of it's use. A better way to indicate what your role is, as well as what specific dungeon(s) you are LFGing for is the first step (the current "notepad" system isn't adequate, as the note you leave often runs too long, and isn't fully visible.) A requirement of setting your status to "looking for group" would be to designate which dungeon(s) you wish to queue for, as well as which roles you are currently capable/willing to fulfill.

 

Second, there needs to be a search function, which allows players to search specifically for other players who are queued for the same dungeon, and also search for players who are willing to perform specific roles, like tank or healer, so you don't waste time inviting players who aren't willing to fulfill the role you need. There needs to be an option to "notify me" of any players which queue for the same dungeon as me, through a chime and/or pop up message. Perhaps that little notification above the chat window (which currently displays all players in your area, which is a pretty useless piece of information on it's own) could be tweaked to show all players currently queued for the same dungeon(s) as you.

 

Third, the list of players visible to you in the LFG tool needs to be server-wide as opposed to restricted to the planet you are on, allowing both players on planets, as well as players on the main space station hub, to group with each other effectively. This is a big one that is lacking from BioWare's game right now, the ability to communicate between different planets, and between planets and the main station.

 

What shouldn't happen, is cross-server queuing, or automation. The game should never automatically add me to a group of strangers. The game should not teleport me straight to the dungeon, then back to my original location once the dungeon is complete. While those features may be necessary in PvP (a completely different beast) these are the things that kill server community, by taking away all necessity to communicate with other players in any sort of meaningful way. At least, that's exactly what happened in Rift.

 

-Macheath.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The game is perfect. There shall be no changes. No lfg tool because it will kill the people in the game and replace them with mindless wow zombies. I have spoken. It is now law.

 

You may stop talking about this thread now because it is now law.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually WoW did have that type of community during its golden era. Most everyone did help everyone when I began playing during classic.

 

Is this what we are dealing with here? I had to double take this.

 

When WoW was released its defining feature was its bad community. Maybe you just rolled on an rp server and hung out in Goldshire all day long.

 

Community was staying up until 2 in the morning helping another guilds cleric get his epic so that we would have more of them on the server, knowing he might res me with it later. That guy in WoW was just helping you because you were a female charater. I know the WoW mentality.

 

I don't think these people against improving the lfg tools are all that rational. I believe it has to do with the fact they don't do pug flashpoints much at all to begin with.

 

When its your preferred method of play, its extremely frustration in its current form.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't see why there's isn't a tool for finding people to group with outside of your zone. It's like if you wanna run flashpoints you have to sit on your butt in the fleet and spam /1

 

With a decent tool one can do solo quests until someone makes a group for that flashpoint and invites you.

 

Haven't played WoW for many-many years, so I don't even know what went wrong with their tool there, but I don't understand how it could have ruined the game.

 

The current lfg system here is all broken. I used it once and noticed people still stay /lfg after joining a group.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is absolutally no reason not to at least have a basic LFG tool, and at least put you in a server wide LFG channel. Right now its broken and worthless and impossible to find groups unless its people from your guild.

 

There is little reason not to have a que system similar to the PVP one, though it would be nice if both let you que for a specific warzone or flashpoint instead of a random one. Server wide or cross server, I don't care, and the people whining about it either have rose tinted glasses are idiots. I remember tanking and healing in classic WoW and burning Crusades. You know what? It sucked to try and get a heroic, or even a random dungeon group together. You sat in IF or Shat or whatever and spammed for hours, and even then you sometimes didn't get a group. And when you did, if you got baddies, it was over. You wipped on shattered halls trash or couldn't get past the first half of BRD and that was that. A LFG tool like WoWs is a great step forward, community be damned. You can still group with guildies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is this what we are dealing with here? I had to double take this.

 

When WoW was released its defining feature was its bad community. Maybe you just rolled on an rp server and hung out in Goldshire all day long.

 

Community was staying up until 2 in the morning helping another guilds cleric get his epic so that we would have more of them on the server, knowing he might res me with it later. That guy in WoW was just helping you because you were a female charater. I know the WoW mentality.

 

I don't think these people against improving the lfg tools are all that rational. I believe it has to do with the fact they don't do pug flashpoints much at all to begin with.

 

When its your preferred method of play, its extremely frustration in its current form.

 

Actually I played on a day 1 server, and it was the most active PvP server in the country at the time. I did not play at release. Maybe people just didn't like you because judging from your post, I wouldn't want to help you out either.

 

Also I was a male human warlock...not a female. But thanks for coming to the forums to spew up some garbage. Your made up statements don't help your case. In fact they dig you AND your argument into a giant hole.

 

Trying to call a general group of people irrational is not how to get your way on video game forums. Certainly you don't expect BW to see your post and realize they must change things to make you happy right?

 

Your post is extremely negative and condescending and mostly untrue. I cannot comprehend what you hope to gain from it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

because, what a lot of people seem to miss: if you have a tool that queues RANDOM people together (x-shard for example), the difficulty of the content has to scale accordingly - which means the instance has to be doable by a RANDOM uncoordinated team of varying degree of skill and equipment.

 

Absolutely. I made reference to this in my earlier post as well.

 

 

it's still a game, so the reward you get is either based on challenge and/or time. if you remove the challenge, the time you spend getting the item has to be make up for it. in wow terms, the number of tokens you need per item increases (let's say a hard boss gives you 10 tokens. you wipe a lot in the beginning, but finally beat it. took you an hour, but you get 10 tokens. now, the boss is nerfed so you can easily kill it every time, 30 minutes in the instance so it only gives you 4 tokens - since the challenge is not a criteria anymore, the reward has to be based on time).

 

This needs to be emphasized - because lots of people don't get this. They aren't used to thinking form the developer perspective.

 

World of Warcraft is a fantastic example of this phenomenon. They recently introduced a random raid finder. Well how easy to raids have to be made so 'random' groups of people can be succesfull. Well CRAZY easy.. and they can't give great rewards.

 

It's the same deal with LFD dungeons. Because you want random groups to succeed much of the time you have to make the dungeons easy - but the grind long. In this way you slow advancement AND you allow random people enough success. At first they tried to slow advancement by making the heroics hard - but it turned out that the failure rate was too high and frustration levels were massive.

 

So what you end up with its lots of people running trivial content non-stop. And of course even when the trivial content was originally kinda tough when you have run through it 100+ times it becomes pretty easy.

 

What's worse this is a big part of the 'rude' behaviour. The grinders feel a 'pressure' to get their 'runs' in. And thus they lash out and the poor fool who isn't on his 50th run. You might think you can chill out and have a good time - and explore part of the dungeon. But for the grinder this is just one of 10 more runs they need to run that day.. And they can't 'afford' to waste time on one run.

 

People like to think that people are naturally 'good' and that the so called "bad" community has nothing to do with the mechanics. But I'd argue the opposite. The so called awful community is a function of the game mechanics. The people playing WoW are just acting like how any population of players would act exposed to the mechanics they are..

 

Developers should not excuse 'bad community' on just bad luck. They effectively create and control the community to a very large extent. Implement a cross server random dungeon finder and watch the community structure become greatly altered..

 

OTOH I am totally fine with a more obvious enhanced way to find people on the same server -as long as some interaction is required to actually put the group together.. I'd also be open to even more radical ideas like server merging.

 

It might be that Bioware screwed up a bit and a 'full' server isn't going to have enough low level players to run flashpoints. I think the real solution to this is bigger servers not group mates you will never see again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote name='Hairyzac'] Maybe people just didn't like you because judging from your post, I wouldn't want to help you out either.[/QUOTE] I don't need your help, i need you to stop trying to block the rest of us from finding each other with an improved tool so we can get into these flashpoints more efficiently. Right now there are 0 people in cademimu and two people in taral v at going on 7pm on my server. I'm sure somewhere someone is helping you complete an easily soloable quest atm though, so its all roses. Edited by Karzi
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that there is already a social aspect of this game that has itself rooted in the community. People chat. Our War Zone groups are all inter-server. The people we dungeon with are all on the same world. You see randoms in all the same quest areas because all of us are leveling mostly together.

 

So all of us are going to have that social aspect of the game with us for as long as the game's around. But people who come in 6 months from now? Wont. They won't be a part of this million+ person leveling orgy to 50. The social part of the game that we're clinging to won't exist for them. When we hit 50? There's little reason to go back to the old leveling zones.

 

Which is why I feel like we do need a cross server LFG tool. Not a massive cross 10+ servers tool. I log in every day to different zone chats that are all spamming lfg. Without something to better connect us - in any regard, no matter what it is - for group content with a simple interface, it just gets skipped. And it's more socially alienating in the long run to individuals to have to skip group and flashpoint and zone content than it is to have a cross small server lfg feature. People can't find groups. They're just going to zerg to 50 in the future and skip as much as they can.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I propose we try to be construcive, most of the threads devolved into a pro/con shîtflinging contest which helps now one.

 

There is absolutally no reason not to at least have a basic LFG tool, and at least put you in a server wide LFG channel. Right now its broken and worthless and impossible to find groups unless its people from your guild.

 

 

see, that's one of the areas it could be improved: explanations. it's by no way broken (which means completely non-functional).

 

let's say you want to do athiss and are looking for people. one way would be the fleet, the instance is there and everybody hangs out there.

but, athiss is also a lvl20 instance, so you want people around lvl20 - where are these people? taris. so just type /who, put "taris" in the search terms and voila: you see who's in taris and who's flagged. and even people who are not flagged are probably ok with doing an instance, but don't want to sit around on the fleet. so hop in your space ship, go to taris, ask in chat - if it's not 5 am in the morning you'll probably get enough answers to fill 2 groups. then you take the shuttle back which brings right to the instance and there you go.

 

does it require a bit more incentive to get a group? definitely. but that's a minor issue compared to the advantages (and even that issue can be improved by a more powerful lfg-tool - the way it works in other games).

Edited by Graburr
Link to comment
Share on other sites

But people who come in 6 months from now? Wont. They won't be a part of this million+ person leveling orgy to 50.

 

Which is why I feel like we do need a cross server LFG tool.

 

a valid point.

currently there are enough people around to do stuff. and in 6 month the majority is 50, which means there are enough lvl50 around to do stuff on 50. a lfg-tool can be helpful for the small pre-50 population then, but sooner or later everybody is 50.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually you can put "LFG" in the tool, for everyone that doesn't know how this thing works. This will show you how useless it is currently because almost no one will be on it.

 

Furthermore most the people have generic "lfg" as their comment. This is because the tool is bad and resets your comments regularly on going into your ship and the like.

 

This also wont change the fact that a tool like DDO has, which is LFM, is more useful anyway. As you can see what the party makeup and the like are. For instance a dps consular might not want to group with a healing one and fight over loot.

 

This tool is just bad, its like the same one we had in EQ but without the open dungeons to group up in.

 

ps: there are 16 people on my server using it at 7:17pm

Edited by Karzi
Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...