If you disagree with me your a moron. See? That obviously helped encourage debate >.<

He's specfically talking about warzones not flashpoints.

Frankly I would rather at least 'try' having a dedicated in-server tool that allowed you to: a) filter flashpoints you want (and potentially group quests) b) allow communication between players on different shards (ie worlds) so people dont feel like they wont find people if they arent on the fleet. This to me would go a LONG way to solve grouping issues at the moment before we need to resort to desperate measures like cross-server issues. In my view i'd like some server merges regardless. My own view is that bioware have spread their playerbase out too thin either way. But the above would solve the fundamental issues with group forming at the moment. Also, ending with 'oh but if you dont like it then your trying to be a dicatator' is a pretty poor way to have a debate xD

The one with Arthas? The one who was effectively the main character in the warcraft III games for all intents and purposes? That didnt have a SLIGHT effect? How do you explain the sub incline pre-LFG tool then? . Clearly it wasnt the tool because tool+arthas should have made a vertical rise in subs. I believe you left out 'wow loses subs' about three times there. No explaination for that?

Exactly the point I was making.

Man thats childish Arthas helped them reach the peak. People surged to beat arthas. After Wrath subs have been declining. You cannot at one time say one surge with plenty of other explaining variables is responsible while at the same time saying that the massive sub decline that happened immediately after (when arthas was done with) happened independent of that. Thats assinine. 'Oh it only matters when subs go up then its CLEARLY the LFG tool but if it goes down its not the tools fault!!!'. You cannot empirically say that the tool was responsible for 'peaking' wow subs while ignoring that the vast majority of subs were in before the tool while at the same time ignore it in the decline afterwards. You should stop the wow arguments as I never believed that the LFG tool explained wows sub rise or fall, because thats impossible to verify though if your making the hypothesis that sub rate is explicitely tied to the LFG tool then in wows case its clearly had a bigger sub deficiet than rise. I only responded to the person who had the folly to claim that . Correlation does not equal cause. Just as your remiss to say that say a 300,000 sub rise is the result of the tool but the 2m decline wasnt, I woudl be to claim the opposite as true. I'm only pointing out the mistake your making and bias in your argument in claiming victroy in the rise while ignoring the pitfalls. If the theory you present is that LFG tool explains sub rate then you cannot claim the rise while ignoring the fall.

Then they should make everything post act 2 a lot easier. Shorten the flashpoints a hell of a lot. Lower the numbers for class quests and buff companions. Ultra-casual doesnt mean stupid and cannot paly without headbutting the keyboard like you and others seem to be insinuating. Every server is a low pop server barring one or two they should be merging it they dispersed the population to much. If you really believe what your saying then everyone shoudl have their own server rather than open worlds because it obviously wouldnt hurt the game. If it does come, my choice will be simple. If copying wows systems ends up with the wow end result. This game isnt worth the sub.

WoW development is irrelevent to TOR. You obviously cant ignore other games. But that doesnt mean that the bioware team have to copy features completely. How did ti make loads of money btw? WoW got pretty much all of its subs pre-LFD tool (strangely people got on without it for 5 years) and reached its peak shortly after 3.3 which gave the tool (during the expansion against the character arthas a popular character from its origin warcraft RTS games) then has basically fallen since cata released. It obviously hasnt been the guardian of subs and you cant make any argument for or against LFG tool as exemplified in wow from the sub trends.

You mean that during its tenure its not stopped a signifcant decline in wows subs? Your the one making the argument that LFG tool = subs after all.

Not if theres alternatives. Loving how you pick one line btw its absolutely brilliant how you seem inable to engage in the wider argument

Theres more evidence that it hurt it than helped it. Though I'm not making the claim personally that it hurt it, only as a rebuttal to your claim that it helped it given that if your making the argument by subscriber numbers theres obviously been more of a decline while its been in force. Are you saying that if TOR added the tool its subscriber base would jump to 8m? Not going to happen I like how you skipped over the rest of it though. Must be nice to be able to stick your fingers in your ears and shout loudly that your not listening.

Generally give them chances, if it continued I'd kick them from group after confering with other group members (if i was leader or similar process but would request group leader remove him if i wasnt) or leave if it was that unbearable. That player would get a place on my ignore list, which is what i use to keep track of players I dont want to group with. I woudlnt go so far in general as to jump into general/trade to lambast him, though I know some people do and they should haev that chance, but would warn friends/guildmates to stay away from the offending player. Its not about making the game have hardset mechanisms in place to punish these players as to allow players informal measures to address them if they occur. It allows offending players to have additional chances rather than be condemened by a handful of past misdemenours that a rule-based game mechanism would impose with less chance for abuse. Cross-server LFG systems however give such people free reign with the potential for any kind of deterence dissipating rapidly. 'Convenience' is not in itself a good reason for sweeping changes. Is the flashpoitn reward system out of whack? In my own personal view it kind of is, though some (the majority perhaps) may disagree with me. However that doesnt mean that flashpoints for instance have to become the 10 minute 5x a day grind fest that wow is. Its the same deal with the cross server tool. Why go for the cheap fix with frictious problems with gameplay when you can deal with the underlying issue? In the case of grouping, a dedicated LFG tool with filtering options and ability to list your role and other information under specific flashpoints for people to search for and the ability to communicate cross-shards without being forced to sit in the fleet and pray that the 4% of the server that is there meets what you need.

Pretty weak argument as wow became the most successful MMO long before its LFG queuer. In fact theres been a pretty large decline the past year and a half since its been introduced. While I wouldnt go so far as to say that decline is the result of the tool itself (the way you insinuate that the tool is why its 'the most popular MMORPG in the world 5 times over) it has had a definite social aspect that has provided many clear examples of the negative impact the tool has in encouraging players to be less commited to groups. In fact till wow reached its zenith people got by quite well with searching for groups with tools LESS sofisticated for filtering and communication that I propose. Let people communicate across shards with decent filtering for group searches and the issue of long group searches in TOR will be pretty much solved.

Not assuming anything I think we have a pretty large scale case study in wow with which to base such predictions on. Your making a pretty fundamental error in not considering the main issue is that there is no truly functional way to filter group desires (ie what flashpoint) and communicate across shards (ie planets) to find other players without going the grindy way of whispering everyone on a /who list for each shard which understandably most people wont do. Have a dedicated in-server LFG tool that lets you filter group options and communicate with people on the fleet and other planets from whichever shard you are from and most issues will dissapear.

Its popular because it allows people to be lazy and as a general rule not have to worry about any possible reprecussions. Civility and decency exist, but a cross-server finder will just massively compound them by removing any potential penalties at all for transgressors. Inevitably its a social issue to deal with offenders, but a cross server tool limits the ability of players to deal with social issues. If bioware actually did a decent LFG tool where people could communitcate across shards rather than fingers crossed over whether the right people happen to be in the fleet at that time things would drastically improve. It just pains me how we cant even concieve of doing anything other than mass-convenience changes for the individual.

Its really human nature to go the easy route... that doesnt mean its 'good'. The problem with cross server is mainly because it encourages the worst part of it. The notion of group content is that its at least PARTLY social. In that you are actually interacting on some basic level with other people. Doesnt meant to say that you become best friends forever with people you group with. But cross-server instantpop-porting tools just encourage the marginilisation of content. Just makes everything into a speed run where, because there isnt even the tiniest disincentive to not acting antisocial because of the low costs of forming the group. And I'm not talking antisocial as in sulk-and-ignore-people but as in people who will elave at the slightest sign of trouble, do everytrhing they can to steal loot and generally act like complete gits. Its inevitable that will happen on the internet. But we dont actually have to have systems which give these people free reign to profit over people with the slightest bit of deceny. Main problem with TOR is that most servers are 'standard' and standard population, with all the sharding on planets dividing the playerbase, makes forming a group onerous. There shoudl be a dedicated LFG tool with communication allowed between shards through it and decent filtering options. Ideally also mild server mergers as well but thats a personal preference that is a bit drastic for whats being discussed here. At the worst... it should be confined to your server.

They dont want to admit that having no way to search for group members across worlds (or shards) was a bad idea. But rather than fix it so that you can search for flashpoint groups without sitting in the fleet they're going the lazy route because they have already given up on 'community'. Though the TOR community in general is a bit of a cesspool with the number of people that want features that go to the extreme end. Asking for a cross server thing and arguing that it builds 'community' is oxymoronic. If theres no opportunity to play with that person again it means nothing. The main issue is that it lowers the opportunity costs for grouping. At the moment the game coudl really benefit from server merges, basically only one server at peak times above standard and standard with all the planet shards leads to a diffuse population that makes it very difficult to find groups with the heavy sharding. But at least when you get a group going people are willing to stick it out a bit. With cross server LFG queue systems you have people that dont face consequences for their antisocial behaviour. Good systems dont encourage antisocial behaviour they give players the tools to discourage it. If you HAD to sidestep it without even attempting to have a proper in server LFG tool with filtering options and chat potential across shards dont bollox it by making it cross server. Its less 'community' for me (thats just a really nice side effect) as not giving the players who are right gits the opportunity to profit. If they're right gits they should have to hide it at the best of times, and if they dont care face the prospect of ostracisation by forming a bad rep if they continue to do it on their home server.

They arent on the same server obviously. I made my republic alts on a different server. Because theres no real benefit pre-legacy to wasting character slots on different factions if I want to replay story. Plus gameplay wise having one of every AC down the line may be something I want to do. Rather not have to face the choice of deleting an invested character on the other faction if it comes down to that. May reevaluate that stance depending on the legacy system if having other faction stuff in the legacy is engaging for some reason but till then playing it safe.

Heh its kind of irrelevant to make these 'get a life' comments because, as I said, its just a pathetic way for some people to look 'cool'. On an extreme note... he may be disabled or some such which gives him a lot of time to play. Or most likely he doesnt have those issues and made the most use of his time. Playing alts is the easiest way to get legacy xp. I've leveleld one to 50 one to 48 and im just shy of legacy level 17 on empire. About legacy level 7 at the 40's on my knight on republic. I woudlnt see it as far fetched getting to level 50 legacy since theres no substantial xp scaling on legacy levels with about four or five toons which will surely speed up if your sick of the generic quest dialogue past the second time. Your 'shots' at my 'non-existant life' are pretty pathetic. You play this game 'tons' and are only level 18 legacy wise. So clearly from that little amount of information you only have one toon, and do loads of endgame stuff and somehow managed to grind your way to 18 from the pitiful legacy intake at endgame. Thats clearly a FAR greater indicator of 'no life' than levelling a few alts xD. Go seek some mental help.

Heh, always funny to see this kind of response plastered over the forums. 'This guys ahead of me zomg say he has no life thereby making other people think im COOL!!!'. Kudos to the OP in a way. Must have levelled a fair few classes, cant really stomach more than two per faction atm before the legacy >.<

@OP Because its not a 'great' story. Its a reasonably engaging story as far as class story is concerned (which is undermined by the little in terms of substantial long term consequences by your actions because of the need to balance out expansions to the story) and pretty god damn tiring as far as the generic quests are which make up about 90% of the game. A good story has consistency and build up. Something that is lacking in most areas of the game. And a fair few of the class stories are hit and miss.

I have thought about this myself. Though more in the guise of justifying it by 'story telling' to companions who werent there. My pre-release stance was that there was more than enough solo content (which was logically based on the assertion of 200 hours of content for each class which i believed would end up to be 50-100 which in the end in my view... turned out to be 10... if I was generous) but frankly when the class story ends it does feel a bit dry. Max out your companion affections and they clam up. Have no compunction AT ALL with the multiplayer focus of endgame, but it'd be nice to have something to do even just for kicks to make use of the class content. Some of it was really ace be nice to go back and experience it again without the 90% of drag content on the side. Companions basically have no real gameplay function at endgame at the moment so maybe scale the content up and make it a companion gearing route /shrug.

Ergh I kind of hate how 'LFG tool' has been sublimated to apprently include queue style systems. When five different ways of going about group forming are grouped under the same names its stupid. I'm on the anti-queue side. I don't really think you need an auto group former+porter. As someone earlier in the thread said theres not a lot of incentive to hang around the fleet for long stretches of time. I don't think we need to incentivise fleet-sitting. Rather we need a dedicated LFG tool (not queue auto-former) that allows you to filter what flashpoints you want. Most importantly it needs to give a way to communicate over the various shards (ie worlds) to broaden the playerbase it can reach. Listing group quests woudl be problematic but allowing you to track specific worlds or even updated based on your quest log would go a long way in that department.

On the pve side I absolutely concur. The gear levels should be tied to the level of difficulty. I'd also say that HM flashpoints should drop a commendation each (with crystals being off minibosses and more off them so intake remains the same). Since the normal mode operations are of such a low level the flashpoints arent really meant to lead into it I'd hardly think it'd harm things. Hard/nightmare mode operations are the substantial content in that regard and the whole system shoudl be weighted accordingly. The hash-bash mix up atm has a fundamental disconnect between the content and half its rewards.

1. Nope, I'd much rather have a fully developed LFG system that allowed conection between the 'shard's (ie worlds) rather than than a queue system. 2. Again really no. Arguably, in my view, some server mergers wouldnt be a bad idea. I think bioware made a few too many servers and really spread the playerbase out too far. Part of the neccessity of not having an cross server group finder is that if you lower the cost of finding groups people are willing to commit less to them. Soon as one thing goes wrong boom their gone. Same server is fine so long as what I said in 1 is addressed plus perhaps some server mergers.