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Improve finder With a dam ETA timer plz


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Because the silly devs didn't even think a group finder was needed any more than servers supporting large populations were needed.

 

They seem to be slowly shifting their mind set and acknowledging their mistakes, but it still seems they have these outdated notions about good game design and don't fully grasp the importance of robust social and grouping tools.

 

Also there are way too many shrills on the forums who will create endless 'the sky is falling - my server community will be destroyed' threads if they were to state cross server GF was coming soon.

 

And to the OP, i think we don't have an estimated wait for GF because the devs can't figure out how to estimate one.

Perhaps you could name this sever that has a surplus of tanks and healers waiting around for DPS to queue? Putting in a cross server GF so these people could group with me would be awesome!

 

Several people have stated good reasons why cross server GF would solve absolutely nothing and possibly create new problems and your counter argument is to name call and make fun of. Well thought out and effective reasoning on your part.

 

I have met many of my in game friends when doing GF Ops and flashpoints. If its was cross server how would this be a part of "the importance of robust social and grouping tools" if I can not friend them and get together outside of a FP speed run?

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cross server wont solve a thing the ratio tank, heals, dps will stay the same maybe even worrse for dps more ppl to compete with.

 

What can help is show a bit more appriciation towards heals and tanks, show them some love so they will que sooner .

Stick to your roles dps, dont pull before tanks,give them some time.( as a tank i dont mind those kind of dps, if you pull you tank and often healer understands this and wont heal so you die, so you wont pull again )

Stop qqing if heals or tank screw a pull or what so ever, mistakes happen no need to go rage and go all kingkong in the grp ( repair aint that high ).

 

Give them a reason to que more often, guide them if they still learning ( fresh 50s ) give them a nice experience and they will return, give them no reason to ignore you so you can still end up in a grp with them again in the future.

Edited by NrDLeipe
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cross server wont solve a thing the ratio tank, heals, dps will stay the same maybe even worrse for dps more ppl to compete with.

 

What can help is show a bit more appriciation towards heals and tanks, show them some love so they will que sooner .

Stick to your roles dps, dont pull before tanks,give them some time.( as a tank i dont mind those kind of dps, if you pull you tank and often healer understands this and wont heal so you die, so you wont pull again )

Stop qqing if heals or tank screw a pull or what so ever, mistakes happen no need to go rage and go all kingkong in the grp ( repair aint that high ).

 

Give them a reason to que more often, guide them if they still learning ( fresh 50s ) give them a nice experience and they will return, give them no reason to ignore you so you can still end up in a grp with them again in the future.

 

This. Tanks are the most criticized and under appreciated role in the game, mostly because if a tank messes up, you wipe. (The same can be said of healers, but for some reason Healers don't mess up that often that I've seen). If you have a bad DPS, they just extend the FP's length, and a lot of times it's hard to tell if a DPS is bad (esp for Maras/Sents that are Carnage/Combat specced. They're so bursty that it may seem like they suck, but then they burst and you're like "Oooohhh, you're actually decent".)

 

Furthermore, i usually don't walk away with any usable gear. Everyone and their brother rolls a sentinel, all of whom are competing with me for that end of raid gear piece for ( that doesn't always drop ). Furthermore, DPS seem the most prone to ninja looting and being rude. So watching that Columi drop go to the dick who didn't follow kill order and broke CC the entire time just pisses me off. Put it all together and I get more creds from dailies, more commendations from Section X, and more enjoyability from rolling an alt. If DPS really wanted to shorten their queue time, then don't act like a jerk and I might requeue. Heck, if you're polite I might requeue WITH YOU and you get the fruits of short queue times.

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they need to add the waiting time on the Finder because it saves waiting soooooooo long when you don't even know the ETA would help BIG TIME

 

How can you have an ETA when the true problem is twofold:

 

1. DPS are a dime a dozen. So few tanks and even fewer healers populate the servers these days and those that are on the server are not queuing for HMFP's because they are geared beyond them.

 

2. So many DPS(not all) end up ignored because of behavior during FP's or even on the fleet or running other material in game. DPS players need Tanks. They need Healers. Tanks and Healers can just queue and get a couple of DPS. Once you start showing up on everyone's ignore list, your game is pretty much over.

Edited by DarknessInLight
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they need to add the waiting time on the Finder because it saves waiting soooooooo long when you don't even know the ETA would help BIG TIME

 

How do you propose Bioware comes up with an algorithm to tell them when enough humans with a tanks and healers in your level range decide to log in and queue for group finder that you get a group? It's not like you're waiting for a server to become available.

Edited by Larry_Dallas
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I think adding a feature that showed the number of tanks, healers, and dps roles in the queue would be nice.

 

There are times I've been queued up on my tank and have had to wait for a healer, or even a dps. And same with on my healer waiting for a tank or dps.

 

For example, if I'm queued up as Healer. And see that there is another healer queued and at least 2 dps queued, but we're missing a tank, then I'd change to my tank and queue up.

Edited by LordBarok
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i would like to see how many dpsers are ahead of me in queue so i can get a somewhat idea of how soon i will get a group.

 

if its only a couple then i know i shouldnt have to wait that long. but if its like 30 then clearly i have time to go afk without missing the GF or being able to work on things that may take a little time

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I'm surprised no one has mentioned the fact your length of time the the group finder might be a function of being on too many ignore lists. if you act inappropriately in chat, group or in game like taking nodes etc you will be placed on ignore. a lengthy group wait is your punishment for being a dick. sadly the thing is many people dont think this applies to them.

 

the only thing cross server will ever do is allow more players to not care and play more shenanigans than we have now. bioware has stated there will not be a cross server lfd. there is no need for one except for those that behave like a 10 year old and the drunken sailors talking in general chat. too many shenanigans were learned from mmos with a lfd and frankly some of us have had enough of it. there is nothing you or bioware can do to make me queue up on my healer for a pug. i play only guild groups now. many of my guildies do the same. occasionally we will look for a fourth when we guild recruit. that is how we recruit which is by playing with people. we have friends list with players from other guilds too for ops fill in and groups. it is a mmo so learn to interact with other players. make friends and or join a guild.

 

i cant see how a queue length could be implented. there are just too many unknown variables to "guess" a time for. but a number of players per role could work.

 

an option which isnt a wow nor its clone mechanic is a "mentoring" feature which allows a higher level to "lower" his level and level of gear and abilities to the player he is "mentoring". both players got a experience bonus for such and worked rather well in eq2 for getting certain roles. this way your 40 tank can tank athiss with a level 22 dps he is mentoring making his effective level 22 allowing full experience gained. higher levels did this to get aa experience from content they missed or to help guildies out.

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an option which isnt a wow nor its clone mechanic is a "mentoring" feature which allows a higher level to "lower" his level and level of gear and abilities to the player he is "mentoring". both players got a experience bonus for such and worked rather well in eq2 for getting certain roles. this way your 40 tank can tank athiss with a level 22 dps he is mentoring making his effective level 22 allowing full experience gained. higher levels did this to get aa experience from content they missed or to help guildies out.

 

City of Heroes was, as far as I know, the first to implement such a system (called the Exemplar system, the inverse of the Sidekick system) so it's not just an EQ2 thing.

 

There are a couple of problems with said system, however (CoX's weird and screwy "equipment" and power system were actually designed in such a way that it got around both of these problems; I'm not sure how EQ2 got around them or if they did).

 

The first is how you're going to handle the inverse bolster: at 50, you've got *way* more talents, a *vastly* more well filled out rotation, and, if you're doing end game gear, you've *also* got way better gear (comparatively) than you had any chance of getting while leveling up. Bolster isn't horribly broken because it maintains any gear advantage you might have had when fighting people of the same level as you (i.e. it factored in the level difference between you and your gear and maintained that ratio when you hit 50) though you're still inhibited by the fact that you have fewer talents and abilities (which is as it should be since there should be some impetus to hit higher levels). An inverse Bolster system designed to *downlevel* would have to overcome the issue of said inverse Bolstered person becoming *way* too strong. For example, imagine a current end game geared tank (full 63s with relics, augments, and everything) going down to level 20 to run some buddies through Athiss. Based on how Bolster currently works, you would have more abilities than a similar tank (since the game doesn't remember what level you took which talents so, even if the game disabled class/AC abilities that you were lower level than the first rank for, you'd still have more abilities than you should have based on talents; the only possible restriction I can imagine would be designing some system wherein certain talents are explicitly level restricted, which would mean hybrids are more effective, but that might be acceptable since we're only talking about being high level and coming down for low level content) and *way* better gear (since you've got gear 13 levels above you that's augmented, so the game would give you stats as if you were a level 22 character in the gear for a level 33 character that had augmented all of their gear; there could be some workaround that applies some degree of severe diminishing returns to the level of gear higher than your level). Preventing those problems would actually increase the developmental effort involved in creating such a system by a substantial amount (especially since, for the first, you're having to program a separate system into the existing talent system).

 

The second problem is loot. Yes, if you're less than level 50, extra xp would be useful but FPs aren't really a great source of XP in the first place. The primary reason most people do FPs (at least the primary mechanical reason for people motivated by the game's controllable reward structures) is the gear. If you're a level 35 tank running with a level 20 group, the only gear you're gonna get is the right to roll on some level 20 gear, which isn't going to be useful to you, though the change from individual planetary comms to a single planetary commendation system could assuage this somewhat (you'd still be getting way less in the way of a reward than otherwise). You'd even be getting fewer credits since you're getting loot from level 20 content while your repair bill remains as it would be otherwise. While it's not going to be a major *balance* problem, this problem would need to be solved in order to provide a justification for random people to help out other random people (since most people aren't going to downlevel themselves to help out other lowbies out of the kindness of their hearts). This might be a place to include a "bonus loot bag" upon completion for people that help out lowbies that provides a piece of random level and class appropriate gear, credits, etc., but you've once again got to ask the question of whether it's worth the developmental effort involved.

 

The overarching question, once you realize the additional developmental hurdles involved in designing a balanced inverse Bolster system, is *whether* said system is worth the developmental cost, which is to say, are the answers to the 2 following questions "Yes":

 

"Is the problem big enough that it needs to be fixed?" - In this context, the "problem" is long queue times for people doing leveling FPs since the system doesn't address problems with long queue times for high level people. If the problem is only a minor issue that doesn't appreciably affect at least a significant minority of the game's population, it's not likely to deserve the developmental effort involved.

 

"Is this the best way to deal with this problem" - Unless a system is seen as the most effective solution at the level of developmental effort desired to be devoted to fixing it compared to other potential implementations, it's probably not going to be implemented.

 

Unless both of those have positive answers, it's doubtful such a system would see the light of day. Post-release game development has to be incredibly risk averse (since most companies aren't willing to reinvest more into a game that's already out since said investments tend to provide dividends at a lower rate) so unless they can be pretty confident such a system will end up making money (in this case, decreasing subscription loss by keeping people interested), there's not much reason for the bosses to sign off on it.

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I think adding a feature that showed the number of tanks, healers, and dps roles in the queue would be nice.

 

There are times I've been queued up on my tank and have had to wait for a healer, or even a dps. And same with on my healer waiting for a tank or dps.

 

For example, if I'm queued up as Healer. And see that there is another healer queued and at least 2 dps queued, but we're missing a tank, then I'd change to my tank and queue up.

 

I like this idea and Skodan's. Would be really helpful knowing how many DPS ahead in the queue and whether it is healers or tanks holding the queue back.

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Addressing a bunch of comments made.

 

1. Can't implement/Too Hard/Can't Predict - Simply not true. WoW implemented a long time ago and while it's not perfect it provides a reasonable estimate. There are many algorithms that can be used for predictive purposes. At the simplest you start by calculating the average wait time for a role and multiply by the number of people ahead of you. It is a bit more complicated than that when you take things like multiple people in the group, overlapping queues etc but compared to some of the other technical things solved in the game not insurmountable.

 

2. Not useful - True it doesn't necessarily speed up queue time but it does provide a gross level of estimation. Is my wait time short enough that I should just browse GTN for a few minutes or is it so long that I should go start my dailies? Or is it so long that I will need to log before I pop so I shouldn't waste my time?

 

3. Doesn't solve the problem of not enough Tanks/Healers - Nope. It doesn't. It also doesn't cure cancer, deal with rampant illiteracy, or cure male pattern baldness. That's not a reason to not implement it.

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I'm not trying to troll or anything like that but...

 

Why is this still not X-server yet?

 

I hope BW never goes down that road. With single server GF if someone is an a-hole there is a price to pay for their bad behavior.

 

But most likely, because there are so few servers, chances are the players who are like yourself (play a certain way), and who play when you play are all on one server anyway. How would you feel if as a player on a PvE server you got grouped with a serious RPer from a RP-PvPer server? he walks everywhere, never mounts up inside a building or ship, he only chats "in character," and does not acknowledge you if you don't...

 

and how would you even calculate eta when its dependent on people joining the queue?

ETAs are based on prior data. the system looks at how long it took all DPSers to get a group in the last hour, averages that data and generates an ETA. The E in ETA is Estimated not Exact :p

That or roll as one or the other.

 

My main is a healer, and my second most active character is a tank. I have lots of tank friends who ask my healer to que with them, and my girlfriend is my tanks pocket healer. :p

To encourage this, I think that BW could implement some sort of reward system for those who queue as underrepresented roles. Blizzard did this with WoW to great success. Granted it took a couple of months for the bad tanks and healers to shake out or learn, but DPS queue times were cut in half.

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they need to add the waiting time on the Finder because it saves waiting soooooooo long when you don't even know the ETA would help BIG TIME

 

If you want this, do Bioware a favor and invent a dependable way to accurately see the future, maybe you have a DeLorean laying around?

 

I don't know how you can expect BioWare to put an ETA timer on when a certain class of player will not only log into the game, but decide when they will choose to queue in the GF...

 

Come on.... really.

 

I can see it now:

  • Bioware implements this feature based on trends they have seen in the servers for the past year.
     
  • Player "X" queues in the Group Finder, the "ETA Algorithm" predicts he will wait approximately 30 minutes.
     
  • Based on this information, Player "X" goes to the Black Hole to run dailies while he waits.

 

~ one of two possible outcomes occur ~

 

1- After < 30 minutes, the queue pops. Yay! Or not...... Player "X" goes to the forums to complain that the ETA was wrong, and he didn't get to finish his dailies because the queue popped before the predicted wait-time, and whines about how Bioware is /fail.

 

2- 30 Minutes goes by. The queue does not pop. At 30m 01s, Player "X" goes to the forums to complain that the ETA was wrong, and now he has to wait even longer for his queue than the predicted wait-time, and whines about how Bioware is /fail.

 

Just let Bioware skip all the work that would be needed for an ETA prediction tool... and just have everyone go straight to whining on the forums. Oh wait!!! That's what we have now!

 

/end rant

Edited by Ocho-Quatro
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it would not change the time you'll sit in queue. find a tank or healer to queue with in the GF.

 

I think everybody knows that. The point isn't to change the time in the queue. The point is to give people chance to do some better time managment in the game.

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If you want this, do Bioware a favor and invent a dependable way to accurately see the future, maybe you have a DeLorean laying around?

 

I don't know how you can expect BioWare to put an ETA timer on when a certain class of player will not only log into the game, but decide when they will choose to queue in the GF...

 

Come on.... really.

 

I can see it now:

  • Bioware implements this feature based on trends they have seen in the servers for the past year.
     
  • Player "X" queues in the Group Finder, the "ETA Algorithm" predicts he will wait approximately 30 minutes.
     
  • Based on this information, Player "X" goes to the Black Hole to run dailies while he waits.

 

~ one of two possible outcomes occur ~

 

1- After < 30 minutes, the queue pops. Yay! Or not...... Player "X" goes to the forums to complain that the ETA was wrong, and he didn't get to finish his dailies because the queue popped before the predicted wait-time, and whines about how Bioware is /fail.

 

2- 30 Minutes goes by. The queue does not pop. At 30m 01s, Player "X" goes to the forums to complain that the ETA was wrong, and now he has to wait even longer for his queue than the predicted wait-time, and whines about how Bioware is /fail.

 

Just let Bioware skip all the work that would be needed for an ETA prediction tool... and just have everyone go straight to whining on the forums. Oh wait!!! That's what we have now!

 

/end rant

 

Sure, at the extremes there will always be kooks who will complain regardless and the standard response should be,"The E in ETA stands for estimated not exact. The definition of estimated is: a rough guess based on data gathered previously."

 

The rest of "normal" society already knows this.

 

Besides, I have played games with GF ETA timers and I very rarely saw complains of that nature.

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it would not change the time you'll sit in queue. find a tank or healer to queue with in the GF.

 

With my lowbie dps, the most annoying situation I can think of is that I've been sitting in the group finder for ages and then someone posts "LFM for WB!". In some planets, it may actually be hard to get a wb group together, so you don't see them very often, but of the long-waited pop is going to come soon...

In these situations, it would be very nice to know if the pop is coming in 10 minutes or 30 minutes. Cause if it's 30 minutes, I'd just leave gf and join that wb group.

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it would not change the time you'll sit in queue.

 

Of course it would. If it looked like it was going to be an hour+ I'd either relog as a tank or healer or do something else. I often miss out on heroic daily groups because I'm in GF for FPs and don't want to drop. Having some visibility of the state of the queue would enable to make a call on whether to drop from GF.

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