Please add a looking for group function

[Jeddo]

By that I hope you mean their boneheaded move to use cross-server LFG searches. A same-server LFG tool would be nice, though. The whole "set LFG comment" thing is useless for FPs because unless you're on your faction fleet station, the chances of finding others for specific flashpoints is ~0%, and even then almost no one uses it anyway so the chances are still abymsal. I'd sooner be out doing something than endlessly asking in General for flashpoint groups that may well fizzle out because not all the required roles can be filled in time.

 

single server lfg would not work for people playing in the morning or people on low population servers, and if you are so afraid of people from other servers just dont use it, just use it when group is filled so people dont have to travel all over the world...

[HighPriestMikhal]

single server lfg would not work for people playing in the morning or people on low population servers, and if you are so afraid of people from other servers just dont use it, just use it when group is filled so people dont have to travel all over the world...

 

A true LFG tool would do exactly what you say: bring folks together from wherever to run a flashpoint and deposit them back where they came from. But cross-server tools make it near-impossible for bad behavior to become known. Plus if BW is so hung up on forcing socialization, a same-server LFG tool would make it easier for folks who might not meet otherwise to come together and potentially form the kind of social groups the devs had in mind.

[Yummymango]

By that I hope you mean their boneheaded move to use cross-server LFG searches. A same-server

WoW uses a cross-server function; yes it's easier and takes less time, but that just opens the door for people to behave in the worst possible ways and not have to worry about any repercussions. At least with a same-server tool bad behavior in a group means word gets around where it matters. Like one guy who has quit my guild twice, the definition of "noob" in that they don't know their class, refuse to listen to friendly advice, and then lash out at everyone else for their own poor performance.

 

You are right but you know what I have many times met great guys on cross server grouping. The "Bad behavior" is imo over hyped.

 

Also LFG tool is an option. If anyone doesn't want, don't use it.

I personally work full time which is 9 hours work time with 1 hour driving. So I get around 3-4 Max to play everyday. In that limited time I want to get things done faster. I really dont want to build my "Community" by spamming and waiting for people. I am part of a great guild (In quality not quantity) and I like each of them and that is enough for me.

 

I really don't understand the solid reasons for not implementing LFG tool. I am 100% sure that if it is launched, the whiners will be the ones to use it regularly too.

 

I personally dont run instances at all right now unless someone is looking for my specific role and that is only one to fill.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Yummymango

[Skann]

WoW uses a cross-server function; yes it's easier and takes less time, but that just opens the door for people to behave in the worst possible ways and not have to worry about any repercussions. At least with a same-server tool bad behavior in a group means word gets around where it matters. Like one guy who has quit my guild twice, the definition of "noob" in that they don't know their class, refuse to listen to friendly advice, and then lash out at everyone else for their own poor performance.

 

Sorry, but the hyperbolic nature of the "LFG brings the worst out of people" comments makes them a little hard to swallow.

 

It has been noted by several posters, a lot of people have had little issues with cross-server LFG. Not everybody has had awful, 100% bad experiences using such features. You did, I'm sorry, but what about people that didn't? What about the people that have had positive experiences?

 

What about this 'word gets around' stuff? Are you serious? If a guy bad mouth/ninja you on a pug and quit, are you REALLY going to spam general about that 'bad apple', and if yes, for how long? Every day? Are your server this close to a 30 people town in the middle of nowhere where everybody known everybody else? Do you guys really have open black list of jerks to avoid? Again, this sounds like hype more than anything.

 

And IF somebody ninjas something from you, is it really that bad? SWTOR has epics like green items thanks to RE. Besides your e-honor getting hurt, it's not going to totally kill your enjoyment.

 

Either way, you naysayers keep framing the "LFG cross-server" as the worst thing in the world as if everybody else has had your type of experience (100% awful).

 

And again, nothing forces you to use LFG. If you are going to be left without groups is because most people don't share your view of how bad the tool really is.

[Silverion_one]

/signed

 

/double signed

 

/triple signed ...

[Syluar]

the definition of "noob" in that they don't know their class, refuse to listen to friendly advice, and then lash out at everyone else for their own poor performance.

 

No thats not the definition of word noob but rather a word idiot. Noob is a player new to the game (origin of "noob" from newbe) who does not understand it's mechanics period. The later stuff you mentioned is just how some "noobs" act like. This acting however does not come in pacage - it's simply BM.

 

Also LFG tool is an option. If anyone doesn't want, don't use it.

 

That seems to be the ultimate reason just like in addons discussion.

 

I really don't understand the solid reasons for not implementing LFG tool. I am 100% sure that if it is launched, the whiners will be the ones to use it regularly too.

 

Ofc. It will be standard, everyone will be using it. Why would I want to make my life more difficult than it has to be.

However some things are good as they are even if less comfortable just because of the climate around them. For example: am I sending emails with christmas wishes to my friends and family? Sure! But my God how much would I give to actualy send AND RECIVE some nice card via regular mail again! Why am I not doing it then? Because noone of my friends and family members carries on with doing so.

So why would we want this game to be similar to WoW at it's current stage? It's much better to have an alternative.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Syluar

[Hanscholo]

No WOW LFG please.

[Wassow]

I started a private channel called "Global" on my server. I'm getting all the 50's I see to join it and spam their LFG messages, so anyone in the server can see when someone says something in that channel.

 

Perhaps you could try that in yours

[Jeddo]

If there is no quick and easy way to do dungeons you will lose the casual players, those that have limited time to spend in the game and dont want to idle spamming for the most of the playtime.

Also the argument about lfg bringing out the worst in people is wrong, thinking you are better than others bring the worst out already, happens in groups already, some "elite"player whining in group cause some "ebay" player did not know the dungeon. No wonder, was probably his first dungeon in the game. A jerk is a jerk anyway you look at it.

[Jhed]

Please dont turn this into another WoW. Ever since the LFG, and later the LFR, feature got implemented in WoW, the world of Azeroth died. World PvP more or less disappeared. Everyone could just stay inside their respective capital and click a button instead of making the world feel alive. Dont repeat their mistake.

[Grissaostdrauka]

The whole LFG thing does wreck the community...

 

Last night made 3 new friends looking for a tank, when is the last time you made a new friend on WoW?

 

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say BC before there was a LFG.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Grissaostdrauka

[Momotomo]

Hello,

 

I think herb from earlier has made a nice point form argument for and against LFG tools generally. Most of the counter argument seems to be that the "community destruction" is an over-stated argument by a vocal minority. So here's my two cents:

 

The best way to reflect on this is from WoW. I have played that game since release, and so maybe I can tell a bit about how LFG has changed things. In the beginning, there was no LFG. Doing dugeons and what not were difficult, and a pain. You would have to sit around Orgrimmar for sometimes up to an hour just to get a group ready and going. Worst still for me was that I was playing from oceania on a US server, so there simply weren't a lot of people around for most of the time. In case anyone accuses me of nostalgia, I'll say it straight out that yes, it was inconvenient, and many a time I came back from work and just wasted time running around Org.

 

But as I am honest about the short-comings, I will be honest about the benefits too. First, the thing about hanging around Org so long is that eventually I got to know most of the people on my server playing at around my time. Not just as people filling a role in a dungeon, but as the people behind their characters. We had server gossip even, and on some days hanging around trade was not so bad.

 

Second, because I ended up seeing the same people for more than a couple of times, the chances of me knowing and caring about them were much higher. We could trade stories about "do you remember THAT time when you pulled the whole room in scholo?" and the like.

 

Third, people generally were nicer. Now this could be in part because wow was a younger game back then. But the fact that your reputation meant something also counted. Ninja looters, rude people and spammers eventually found out that no one wants to group with them. They also did not have the option to auto queue cross server, and so either had to behave or really just had no access to content. In this way, the server actually had a community "voice" that could censure some of the really silly and idiotic people.

 

Now looking at what wow is today, yes, you can get a group going in less than 20 minutes (or 2 minutes if you are a tank). And that's fantastically convenient. But let's not pretend that this didn't come with some costs:

 

1) People hardly speak in LFG

2) There is no incentive to pass on loot or be nice since you won't see these people again

3) Content has to be easy enough for 5 complete strangers who are not going to talk to complete

4) There isn't much incentive to make friends with strangers any more.

 

 

 

At the end of all of this, it comes down to a trade off between convenience, and community. I'm trying to be as intellectually honest here by pointing out that it is a trade off. Because people who are saying "just get friends by talking on general!" and missing the point as badly as "yeah right the community argument is so over stated." I want to point out that these aren't mutually exclusive things. We CAN have some of our cake and eat it, and simply put while WOW has done many things well, it does not mean that WoW is perfect.

 

 

 

My suggestion is thus: include an LFG feature that is within the server. I actually really like the PvP "MVP" voting, and so if that can be included into an LFG interface that would be pretty spiffy too. For servers that are too small, then the answer is to simply merge or offer free transfers. Because the issues of a small server aren't just limited to dungeons, but also the heroic quests/world bosses etc.

 

 

 

While this is not AS convinient as a cross server LFG tool, it will definitely make things a little easier. The effect on the community is also limited, since what you do still matters.

[pyrobot]

Yeah, it sucks for now, but something I saw on reddit that I've been trying on my server is to get everyone to /cjoin global which makes a server wide LFG channel for FP's and WZ premades.

[Neffian]

I'd say a multi-server LFG tool, like that of WoW, wouldn't really change things for the better. You might as well be playing an offline game with NPC fighting through dungeons with you; I'm sure they'd be a lot more sociable than the players in LFG on WoW! The current LFG search isn't too bad; yes it definitely needs refining (as do many aspects of the game) but it would really harm the server community by adding a "WoW" type LFG system. Maybe make the same thing but that only groups with your realm?

[grueber]

Very odd how people wax eloquently about community. Based on my time on a very heavy pop PvE server (Shadowlands) there is almost zero community.

 

General chat at Fleet is almost nil considering there are 130-150+ people milling around. Yeah there are attempts to form groups, but easily half end up failing. Not surprising since there is a split in the server population between 50s and non-50s.

 

On mid level worlds in the 20-40 range getting a group for heroic 4 mans is alot more difficult than at launch. General chat is nearly dead.

 

The only conceivable reason Bioware has not released a lfg tool is they don't have one. That there are so many gullible people eating this up as a design "feature" is hilarious.

 

LFG tool didn't kill WoW. WoW simply got stale for alot of players. For God's sake it's been out for almost 8 years. I stopped playing WoW long before lfg tool was implemented from raid burnout.

[HeawiNobal]

LFG Tool would be nice to put the groups together... you should still have to walk your lazy *** to the instance though.

[Skann]

At the end of all of this, it comes down to a trade off between convenience, and community. I'm trying to be as intellectually honest here by pointing out that it is a trade off. Because people who are saying "just get friends by talking on general!" and missing the point as badly as "yeah right the community argument is so over stated." I want to point out that these aren't mutually exclusive things. We CAN have some of our cake and eat it, and simply put while WOW has done many things well, it does not mean that WoW is perfect.

 

My suggestion is thus: include an LFG feature that is within the server. I actually really like the PvP "MVP" voting, and so if that can be included into an LFG interface that would be pretty spiffy too. For servers that are too small, then the answer is to simply merge or offer free transfers. Because the issues of a small server aren't just limited to dungeons, but also the heroic quests/world bosses etc.

 

While this is not AS convinient as a cross server LFG tool, it will definitely make things a little easier. The effect on the community is also limited, since what you do still matters.

 

I'll ask the same question I'm asking forever in these threads: What if you don't care about virtual community and virtual "friends"? What if, for you, it's just a multi-player game, not a socialization tool? What if you consider guilds the social aspect of the game, not meeting random people and "talking" (whatever you can talk to while playing a FP) with them via an IRC interface out of the 80s? If you said yes to any of the previous, are you automatically the "wow jerk" that you guys keep on talking about?

 

Again, not everyone had bad experiences with WoW's LFG. Actually there is a lot of positive feed back (it's efficient, fast, time saving, etc). Are there a minority of jerks? Sure there are, but that's life.

 

There's a lot of hype and hyperbolic comments demonizing such a feature, and they are just that, hype and exaggerations.

 

Finally, nothing will ever force you to use it. "Oh, but then I won't have groups on my own server because everyone will use it". Well, take a hint, you are part of the vocal minority.

 

I, and a lot of people, pay to play a game, not to participate in any sort of social experiment.

[Sir-Phobos]

Please dont turn this into another WoW. Ever since the LFG, and later the LFR, feature got implemented in WoW, the world of Azeroth died. World PvP more or less disappeared. Everyone could just stay inside their respective capital and click a button instead of making the world feel alive. Dont repeat their mistake.

 

No flashpoints in TOR require traveling to open world PVP areas anyways.

[Valsdad]

No WOW LFG please.

 

I remember towards the end of my WoW career grinding heroics and going the entire dungeon with no one saying a single word in group chat. This would happen 2 or 3 times in a row and it got really old, really fast.

 

I don't think we need to discuss politics or religion in group chat, but I also don't want to feel like I'm playing a social game with high quality AI either.

[Skann]

I remember towards the end of my WoW career grinding heroics and going the entire dungeon with no one saying a single word in group chat. This would happen 2 or 3 times in a row and it got really old, really fast.

 

I don't think we need to discuss politics or religion in group chat, but I also don't want to feel like I'm playing a social game with high quality AI either.

 

What sort of meaningful discussion are you expecting to have with a text based chat interface, while you need your keyboard to actually play the game? People are there to kill bosses, wipe as little as possible and get their loot. That's the recurrent reason among any person running a FP/Dungeon.

 

You know with whom I talk and giggle? With my guild mates on Team speak. Then it's talking all the time about whatever **** we feel like. In a pug without voice chat? I don't see how it is even possible.

 

I have pugged as much as SWTOR allowed me and not a single time people would stop and "talk". I mean, really? It must my anti-community behavior, but I wonder what would happen if I were to stop and start talking "hey guys, how are you doing? what do you do? where do you live?". As a healer or a tank. Can you imagine that? Is that what you pro-community guys do during your runs? Do you really have meaningful conversations with your party members?

 

Once again, nothing will force you to use a LFG tool. It's optional. I am sure that, if the majority of the people share your views, they won't use it either and everybody will be happy. Ninja jerks will bang on LFG while the pro-community guys will have their own thing.

 

BTW, about Ninjas, it's not really an issue if BW wants. They have this loot system in Operations that pre-rolls drops, so whatever drops is already assigned to a person. It's just a matter of start using this system on flashpoints.

[Avap]

You might have reading issues, or problems with elementary logic, maybe both.

 

I'll explain: MMO have to cater for the majority of the player base, not any vocal minority (otherwise content would be tuned for hardcore players).

 

You say that if LFG were to be introduced, most people would use it (that's majority), while a minority (you) wouldn't be able to group anymore. That is to say: most people don't care about fenced server communities. They care about playing the game. Period. Given that, one can safely say that most people would use and support such feature, ie, they are for it, not against.

 

With that said, think about it this way: the jerks would pile on the LFG while you, and your minority friends, can do all the content you want, free of idiots.

 

It's win-win scenario.

 

Really?...your gonna go with the majority BS....need i remind you of SWG...and how it died.....the majority were against the changes yet SOE pushed the changes though....you sir fail at facts.

[Valsdad]

What sort of meaningful discussion are you expecting to have with a text based chat interface, while you need your keyboard to actually play the game? People are there to kill bosses, wipe as little as possible and get their loot. That's the recurrent reason among any person running a FP/Dungeon.

 

You know with whom I talk and giggle? With my guild mates on Team speak. Then it's talking all the time about whatever **** we feel like. In a pug without voice chat? I don't see how it is even possible.

 

I have pugged as much as SWTOR allowed me and not a single time people would stop and "talk". I mean, really? It must my anti-community behavior, but I wonder what would happen if I were to stop and start talking "hey guys, how are you doing? what do you do? where do you live?". As a healer or a tank. Can you imagine that? Is that what you pro-community guys do during your runs? Do you really have meaningful conversations with your party members?

 

Once again, nothing will force you to use a LFG tool. It's optional. I am sure that, if the majority of the people share your views, they won't use it either and everybody will be happy. Ninja jerks will bang on LFG while the pro-community guys will have their own thing.

 

BTW, about Ninjas, it's not really an issue if BW wants. They have this loot system in Operations that pre-rolls drops, so whatever drops is already assigned to a person. It's just a matter of start using this system on flashpoints.

 

Talking only with your guild is a great social method if you're goal is to never meet new people.

 

I don't know, there something very turn-offish about a group of people forcefully placed together whose only goal is to trudge through content for a daily reward.

[Skann]

Really?...your gonna go with the majority BS....need i remind you of SWG...and how it died.....the majority were against the changes yet SOE pushed the changes though....you sir fail at facts.

 

I never played SWG, however, as far as I can tell SWG died a glorious death a few days prior to SWTOR release, after 7-8(?) years of life. Is that failure in your book?

 

You sir, don't have a point to make against LFG.

[Skann]

Talking only with your guild is a great social method if you're goal is to never meet new people.

 

I don't know, there something very turn-offish about a group of people forcefully placed together whose only goal is to trudge through content for a daily reward.

 

You didn't address any of the other questions I made, so I can assume the answer for them is that your conversations during FPs are as meaningful as mine.

 

Forcefully? As I said, nobody forces anybody to do anything. You queue yourself and play a multi-player co-op game. As much as you queue for Warzones, play the game against other players, and go back home.

 

A LFG won't force you use it. You can still rely on your list of friends to run FPs while you are chatting with each other, even if that triples the time necessary to run the dungeon, if that's your thing, go for it.

[Smashbrother]

All I have to say is...WoW has lasted 7 years and is the largest subscribing MMO in the world, and the automated LFG finders have only been added over the course of 2 years, starting with the last content patch of WotLK. The LFG system originally in WoW was infact gen/trade chat, and the LFG panel where you listed your name and your roll. It is not essential for these systems to be in the game at launch in order for it to succeed.

 

Except WoW had a world chat from the start that allowed people that are out questing to use it to LFG on quests and instances. TOR does not have a world chat. At the very least it should. People who don't want to be spammed can merely leave it.

 

WoW when it came out also had no dailies or WZs so there was never any reason to leave the capitol city when you hit max level. TOR on the other hand have dailies and WZs already, and it's retarded I can't LFG while doing both of those right now.