No Cross Realm LFG tool please!

[Darth_Bond]

remove pvp finder, it ruins communities too!

[MalignX]

LFD same server tool was a godsend. It just made your community tighter because you saw the same people frequently. We picked up many good guildies with it. Low population servers still had issues.

 

Cross realm LFD did destroy the closeness you felt. But it did make getting in groups faster if you were not a tank. The game became a little worse (my opinion), but it pleased a lot more people.

 

FPs shouldn't be your only avenue for socializing and guild recruiting, besides you'll still be able to manually create groups. Then all the Anti's can play together. Everyone wins. Yay.

[Proksham]

I think any LFD should at least make same server group mates a priority. While chances are you will still wind up with many others from another realm, at least it still encourages domestic socializing compared to being completely random.

[Touchbass]

I think any LFD should at least make same server group mates a priority. While chances are you will still wind up with many others from another realm, at least it still encourages domestic socializing compared to being completely random.

 

I think this is very fair, thank you for posting Proksham. The only issue is that a X-LFD is intended to help realms who cannot foster a group so there has to a 5 minute penatly or something to encourage cross server grouping.

 

Players who want a dungeon experience on the same server will wait a slightly queue and search out players manually instead

 

OR

 

Get in slightly faster and do cross server

[theoffspringlp]

I think any LFD should at least make same server group mates a priority. While chances are you will still wind up with many others from another realm, at least it still encourages domestic socializing compared to being completely random.

 

^This. It should at least try to group people from the same server together. Personally, I think this aspect should come later, as server populations start to rise. If people on low-pop servers have to worry about tanks and healers being constantly snatched away from them because people from the tank's/healer's server decided to queue then it really doesn't end up helping those low population servers much, if at all. So yes, in theory, I'd like same-server grouping to be the eventual goal, just not right away.

[Lethality]

I am going to copy this post from the WoW forums, because it addresses specifically why this LFG tool is a bad idea. I did not write it, but I agree with it completely. TOR already doesn't have a world that feels alive, this will kill it even more.

 

 

-------

I'd like to start off by saying that I think Blizzard has done an absolutely amazing job with this game. Really, you guys should feel wonderful about it. This game is unmatched in its music, lore, quest design, atmosphere, and general sense of aesthetics. Never have I played an MMO that has enthralled me as well as WoW (and the list of "have played" is quite extensive). Your customer support team deserves major kudos. Whenever I've had a problem, they've always managed to not only fix it, but fix it without making me feel like a complete idiot. There is a reason that I've continued to play this game after six years.

 

It's with a heavy heart then that I see this beautiful world being ripped to shreds by something as seemingly small as the LFR and the LFG. These two systems have not only destroy any semblance of a World ever existing outside of Major cities, but any sense of a Server community outside of the forums. Yes, it kinda sucked traveling half way across the world to get to a summoning stone, summoning the three people, realizing the Warrior had forgot to switch to prot, and having to wait for him to travel to SW (or Org whatever floats your boat) and be summoned back. Ya know what you were doing for that 10-20mins you were waiting though? Messing around with the opposing faction as they attempted to enter the dungeon portal (I remember the great war of Blackrock Mountain, or more recently Naxx 10/25 where druids would push people off of the necropolis for giggles (NEVER FORGET PARACHUTE CLOAK)), playing tag, comparing items, raiding nearby enemy faction towns, yelling at each other, complementing each other, joining, disbanding, and creating guilds, talkin' smack, talkin' strats, Netherstorm Russian Roulette (how late CAN you hit that accept button?), PARKOUR MEGAMAP ADVENTURE, Snowball fights, Daily quest marathon race, Dueling, Talking in general, racing, comparing Non-combat pets, using the in-game voice feature, giving vent info, and lastly but most importantly making friends and enemies. These were people who were ON YOUR SERVER!

 

Gone are the days of having someone call in their pocket "geared pro healer/tank/dps friend" who might not even be that good, but it was okay because hey "it's easier to train him/her than it is to find a new group member". Even with low level dungeons it was great, because these were people that you would be leveling with and running into repeatedly. Heck, leveling mid-BC from 55 to 70 was by far one of the greatest experiences I've ever had in this game. I even wound up joining a raiding guild with those same four people, and while we never made it passed The Eye, we did manage to hole up in Org for over an hour while 10-20 members of the opposing faction attempted to route us out of the small building we had take up occupancy in.

 

Not to mention the fact that servers no longer have an effective way to police themselves. It used to be so simple! You ninja loot, have a bad attitude, and refuse to fix your mistakes? You gained a name for yourself on the server, and were blacklisted causing you to either get a name change or server transfer. Same thing worked in reverse to. You have a nice attitude, are laid back, and seem like you're at least trying to look like you know what you were doing? You were added to a friends list, and called in for runs out of the blue. The LFG and LFR have seemingly taken the job of discipline out of the hands of the Player and handed it to Customer Support to deal with. Rather than us being forced to settle our problems like adults, we now have to go to Teacher to deal with it.

 

Not to mention the fact that the LFR and LFG have dramatically increased the rate at which players see and devour content. The people who did the content day one back in the day, are still doing it day one now and being burned out. The people who USED to take days and weeks to do the content are now ALSO getting it finished day one, and are now ALSO getting burned out day one. Before the LFG, I was lucky if I got to do a single instance a week, AND I WAS OKAY WITH THAT, it just meant that the content, for me was stretched out. Rather than doing the same instance over and over again in a manner of hours, it was disseminated over a period of months.

 

You, and by you I mean Blizzard, state that the reason you put in the LFR and the LFG was because it gave players who normally wouldn't see the content, a chance to see the content. Are you saying that instances are the only content? Are you saying that the other 70-80% of the world you put so much time into isn't content? Of course not, your simply trying to provide a better game through better features. Unfortunately these features have replaced a better system, the player.

 

TLDR SHORT VERSION!

What WoW is doing right: Music, Customer support, player interaction, PvE content, Quest design, Atmosphere, character models, smooth animations, providing new content, I LOVE YOU VOID STORAGE AND TRANSMOGRIFICATION

 

Why the LFG and LFR did more harm than good: Shrunk the world, gave other people no reason to socialize with others on their server, increased the rate at which people devour content, made WoW a grind, gotten rid of the special feeling of doing an instance (It stops feeling special when you're able to do a run 5 times a day back to back of a specific instance rather than the one your time has allotted you.), Made it easier to replace a group member than to train a group member

 

Took the WORLD out of WOLRD OF WARCRAFT.

 

P.S. Sorry if my argument kind of trails off and fractions, or is hard to understand, just point a part out and i'll try reply as quickly as possible.

 

P.S.S Regardless of your opinion on the manner, please be respectful!

[Brandoe]

Dunno I came from EVE Online and the fleet finder there was a godsend. Granted it's a single server universe but hey can't we all get along.

 

I think the reason the LFG (fleet finder) works so good there is because you get to set very specific rules for people who get into your fleets. So if you want to have a closed group have one if you want an open group have one. If you see someone afk'ing in a group you can "BAN" them from the group, and so on and so forth.

 

How is it bad if you get to know people from different TZ's. I've brought quite a few people from all over the world onto the USEast servers and so far the world is still here and nothing terrible has happened. Maybe it will now that I've let the secret out.

[tormeanted]

It's not that the servers are dying.

It's not that there is no end game content.

It's not that the pvp is boring.

 

It's that there is no cross-server LFG tool so that people can quickly find groups, experience the end game content, and the pvp can have more variation in who wins and who you play against.

 

The current LFG system is a piece of crap, likely due to lazy or incompetent devs.

They didn't make it better because of the trolls that said noob noon no LFG noob noob.

Well welcome to the biggest flop mmo of 2012.

[ryuukhang]

You think the forums are bad now with QQing about no cross-server LFG? Just wait for cross-server LFG, people will act like asses and there will be even more QQing about cross-server LFG looting/harassment/dou-che-baggery.

[Touchbass]

-------

I'd like to start off by saying that I think Blizzard has done an absolutely amazing job with this game. Really, you guys should feel wonderful about it. This game is unmatched in its music, lore, quest design, atmosphere, and general sense of aesthetics. Never have I played an MMO that has enthralled me as well as WoW (and the list of "have played" is quite extensive). Your customer support team deserves major kudos. Whenever I've had a problem, they've always managed to not only fix it, but fix it without making me feel like a complete idiot. There is a reason that I've continued to play this game after six years.

 

 

I believe we are on a similar page

 

It's with a heavy heart then that I see this beautiful world being ripped to shreds by something as seemingly small as the LFR and the LFG. These two systems have not only destroy any semblance of a World ever existing outside of Major cities, but any sense of a Server community outside of the forums. Yes, it kinda sucked traveling half way across the world to get to a summoning stone, summoning the three people, realizing the Warrior had forgot to switch to prot, and having to wait for him to travel to SW (or Org whatever floats your boat) and be summoned back. Ya know what you were doing for that 10-20mins you were waiting though? Messing around with the opposing faction as they attempted to enter the dungeon portal (I remember the great war of Blackrock Mountain, or more recently Naxx 10/25 where druids would push people off of the necropolis for giggles (NEVER FORGET PARACHUTE CLOAK)), playing tag, comparing items, raiding nearby enemy faction towns, yelling at each other, complementing each other, joining, disbanding, and creating guilds, talkin' smack, talkin' strats, Netherstorm Russian Roulette (how late CAN you hit that accept button?), PARKOUR MEGAMAP ADVENTURE, Snowball fights, Daily quest marathon race, Dueling, Talking in general, racing, comparing Non-combat pets, using the in-game voice feature, giving vent info, and lastly but most importantly making friends and enemies. These were people who were ON YOUR SERVER!

 

This is a fair comparison so I'll respond in kind. When things were good in WoW, things were great. LFD did kill a lot of the things you mentioned. What you must realize is not everybody was having fun in this intended way, people where suffering, sort of like your example mentioned. The old system caused ruin for people when a tank had to leave during the middle of a run, then it's suddently your night is over. It's about finding the right balance to appease everybody, if possible. Either way someone has to lose unfortunately.

 

Gone are the days of having someone call in their pocket "geared pro healer/tank/dps friend" who might not even be that good, but it was okay because hey "it's easier to train him/her than it is to find a new group member". Even with low level dungeons it was great, because these were people that you would be leveling with and running into repeatedly. Heck, leveling mid-BC from 55 to 70 was by far one of the greatest experiences I've ever had in this game. I even wound up joining a raiding guild with those same four people, and while we never made it passed The Eye, we did manage to hole up in Org for over an hour while 10-20 members of the opposing faction attempted to route us out of the small building we had take up occupancy in.

 

After BC especially, it was impossible to find a low level dungeon in WoW. A similar trend is occuring here in SWTOR. You do however lose out on 'epic' experiences. I haven't felt anything remotely epic in SWTOR except some questing scenary.

 

Not to mention the fact that servers no longer have an effective way to police themselves. It used to be so simple! You ninja loot, have a bad attitude, and refuse to fix your mistakes? You gained a name for yourself on the server, and were blacklisted causing you to either get a name change or server transfer. Same thing worked in reverse to. You have a nice attitude, are laid back, and seem like you're at least trying to look like you know what you were doing? You were added to a friends list, and called in for runs out of the blue. The LFG and LFR have seemingly taken the job of discipline out of the hands of the Player and handed it to Customer Support to deal with. Rather than us being forced to settle our problems like adults, we now have to go to Teacher to deal with it.

 

Not everything was as tight and gravy as you imagined. Veterans players were very critical on new players or undergeared alts for not mastering their roles before doing dungeons. There were several noted instances of having to be a certain class or out gear trhe instance before you were allowed to do a speed run for badges. Rampant etitism wasn't a very good thing for encouraging players.

 

Not to mention the fact that the LFR and LFG have dramatically increased the rate at which players see and devour content. The people who did the content day one back in the day, are still doing it day one now and being burned out. The people who USED to take days and weeks to do the content are now ALSO getting it finished day one, and are now ALSO getting burned out day one. Before the LFG, I was lucky if I got to do a single instance a week, AND I WAS OKAY WITH THAT, it just meant that the content, for me was stretched out. Rather than doing the same instance over and over again in a manner of hours, it was disseminated over a period of months.

 

If you are ok with doing one instance a week then more power to you. Dungeons aren't suppose to be an alternatve form of advancement. There are a social network on your server, an avenue for guilds on off nights to gear up recruits/alts and a method of gearing for raids. They shouldn't be punitive.

 

You, and by you I mean Blizzard, state that the reason you put in the LFR and the LFG was because it gave players who normally wouldn't see the content, a chance to see the content. Are you saying that instances are the only content? Are you saying that the other 70-80% of the world you put so much time into isn't content? Of course not, your simply trying to provide a better game through better features. Unfortunately these features have replaced a better system, the player.

 

There is lots of work to be done to improve on the system, was really hoping Bioware would do something to improve it.

 

TLDR SHORT VERSION!

What WoW is doing right: Music, Customer support, player interaction, PvE content, Quest design, Atmosphere, character models, smooth animations, providing new content, I LOVE YOU VOID STORAGE AND TRANSMOGRIFICATION

 

Why the LFG and LFR did more harm than good: Shrunk the world, gave other people no reason to socialize with others on their server, increased the rate at which people devour content, made WoW a grind, gotten rid of the special feeling of doing an instance (It stops feeling special when you're able to do a run 5 times a day back to back of a specific instance rather than the one your time has allotted you.), Made it easier to replace a group member than to train a group member

 

TLDR: Players can't have their cake and eat it too

Took the WORLD out of WOLRD OF WARCRAFT.

 

P.S. Sorry if my argument kind of trails off and fractions, or is hard to understand, just point a part out and i'll try reply as quickly as possible.

 

P.S.S Regardless of your opinion on the manner, please be respectful!

 

Thanks for the share

[Touchbass]

You think the forums are bad now with QQing about no cross-server LFG? Just wait for cross-server LFG, people will act like asses and there will be even more QQing about cross-server LFG looting/harassment/dou-che-baggery.

 

All those issues have been fixed in WoW to a good enough degree that everybody mostly uses the LFD. Is there room for improvement? Course!

 

Without LFD or server mergers soon this game is going to die on roughly 60% of its servers.

[ConradLionhart]

All those issues have been fixed in WoW to a good enough degree that everybody mostly uses the LFD. Is there room for improvement? Course!

 

Without LFD or server mergers soon this game is going to die on roughly 60% of its servers.

 

Would you like to give us citations and reliable sources on how you arrived at that 60% number?

 

If you want to argue your case FOR LFD, use sound arguments instead of creating numbers out of thin air.

[tormeanted]

There was a 10% drop in server usage just from last week to this one.

Check the stats pages...

[ConradLionhart]

There is no need for LFD.

 

The game is still in its early stages, so there is no need for stuff like flying mounts, dps meters and complex addons for raiding, etc.

[Touchbass]

Would you like to give us citations and reliable sources on how you arrived at that 60% number?

 

If you want to argue your case FOR LFD, use sound arguments instead of creating numbers out of thin air.

 

Regardless of numbers, it doesn't take much to realize a large amount of NA servers are in trouble. There are various people all showcasing there 'standard' server on the status page but with less then 40 people on the fleet (this is shown the many images that people have taken). The only thing that'll save these servers are mergers and/or a X-LFD. Hell I wouldn't be shocked if 83% of the servers are having population issues.

Edited March 3, 2012 by Touchbass

[Galjoss]

Instead of a cross server LFG tool would it be possible to make a LFG tool that lets people form groups across alt's of their account, what I mean is a system where you can log into one account and join a queue for a group from any of your character's, when a group is ready to form and you've clicked your popup to join the action it automatically switches you over to the character you queued as and a magic shuttle takes you to the action, when the group is finished then another magic shuttle return's both character's to wherever they were before they joined the group and your free to carry on questing as you wish.

 

I think this would have several advantages over other LFG tool's, firstly the biggest delay in forming a group with any tool is finding a tank/healer, all the servers in the world isnt going to help if only 10% of the available players are tank's, allowing people to effectively queue up as 3 roles at the same time, albeit across several accounts at different levels could reduce queue time's more than simply allowing more people to wait for the same bottleneck of not enough available tank's

 

The second advantage is social, because of the Legacy system encouraging people to group across alt's would both re-ignite the leveling game experience and also over time you would begin to recognize good players by their legacy, while its hard to quantify how much of an effect this would have it would definately make people more accountable than any of the never meet again x-server LFG system's

 

And finally just fun, waiting around for a group is boring even if its only 20 minute's as a dps class, I'd much rather spend that time running around with a low level char killing durni's (where are the durni's anyway!) than twiddling my thumb's waiting for a popup

 

I can see faults with this, I'm sure it wouldn't be easy from a technical perspective and players turning up with damaged gear or unprepared could be a problem but that could be fixed by sending them to a orbital staging area with a bank/vender/mailbox before they actually jump in the shuttle down to the flashpoint.

 

Anyhow, I'd be interested to hear what anybody else thinks about this?

Edited March 6, 2012 by Galjoss

[Gimixes]

Ofc there are no tanks and healers.

Most peeps want to play dps because they dont to cary the responsibility.

If you keep whining about tanks/healer shortage...make one

 

Plain and simple.

[Galjoss]

My main is a healer, my next char probably will be a tank, but that's not the point, the point I was trying to make is that a system that allows you to join a queue for a group as a alt could possibly reduce the bottleneck effect more than a x-server system and definitely more than expecting people to re-roll because from prior experience in wow very few people do. Reducing queuing times was only one advantage, other than the advice that I should re-roll do you have any opinion about the actual idea?

[chemela]

There is no need for LFD.

 

The game is still in its early stages, so there is no need for stuff like flying mounts, dps meters and complex addons for raiding, etc.

 

My god we are talking about LFD cross server, we are not talking about flying mounts, if u wanna fly use your ship on the rail space missions so imba arent they .

If ppl dont like LFD cross server dont use it, stop all this gibberish talk.

Besides I doubt that the game engine could handle dps meters and complex addons for raiding.

 

LFD Cross server is need period.

 

I guess Biodrones gotta drone.

Edited March 6, 2012 by chemela

[Gimixes]

LFD server only, not cross server.

Look what cross server brought to Wow.

 

afk people

rude people (there always be some but now even more because they arent on the same server)

kick system

kick abuse

 

bla bla

 

Why do people always forget that...it gives blizzard a headache

[DarthTHC]

It would indeed be a tragedy if BioWare were to put a facility in the game that let me actually play the game instead of standing around Fleet for hours on end waiting to play the game.

 

/sarcasm

[natashina]

I've just stopped by to put my 2 credits in the matter. I know this isn't popular and I will not say I'm correct. This is based upon my observations, just my opinion. I'm not going to say I'm right nor that everyone else is wrong. That kind of blanket hyperbole just makes people more likely to shut down.

 

I had played WoW from March of '05 til October of '11. Cross server-LFG is one of the big reasons why I left the game. It seemed to be a license to people to act in horrendous ways. I had noticed that people play a lot nicer if they are all on the same realm. For example, there was a guild back in the day that had a ton of ninja looters and gold farmers. Since this was before X-LFG, everyone on the server knew who they were and stayed away from them. I'm not saying people are incapable of being civil, but they seem to be more rude and arrogant if they aren't on the same server.

 

In my opinion, X-LFG ruined any sense of community from my server. And before someone else says something, there was a community on each server.

 

In any case, I hope everyone can come to some middle ground on the matter. I'm having fun w/ the game. I don't want to see that go away. Even though I'm very opposed to X-LFG, I can certainly see why some posters would want this. If anyone can come up with a valid compromise, I'd read and judge with an open mind.

[dirtyklingon]

spammming LF1M HEALER THEN G2G MUST BE GEARED NO BH QUICK RUN over and over and over again is surely a sign of a solid community.

 

especialyl when actuall chatter on the fleet is told to go die because it's ruining the visibility of LFG spam.

 

 

the only community that exists on my server happens outside of prime time when there's zero hope of getting a group together.

[natashina]

spammming LF1M HEALER THEN G2G MUST BE GEARED NO BH QUICK RUN over and over and over again is surely a sign of a solid community.

 

Sadly, it wasn't always this way( for WoW at least, in the over 6 yrs I played.) People would actually take the time to talk to each other, whereas once X-LFG was in, communication of all kinds stopped.

 

 

Now, I know some people want X-LFG. I'm not one of those people, but I can understand. Is there any middle ground that can be discussed?

Edited March 7, 2012 by natashina

[natashina]

I wanted to add that this particular poster had an excellent point against X-LFG:

 

 

"No question about it, LFD was a breakthrough in the MMO field which made life a lot easier, etc etc etc. But this system of faceless, anonymous, infinite streams of players grinding out instances as impersonally as possible devalues the content and deteriorates the quality of inter-player interactions. Just search for "tank abuse, healer abuse, LFD abuse, votekick" or anything along those lines and you see what I mean. This is something that is here to stay I am aware, so there's no point complaining about it...still, worth pointing out."