Dungeon Finder did not create bad people.

[Ethern]

Maybe Bioware will implement a Looking For Meaning tool so three other people can explain it to you.

Yeah you made a witty comment. You have unlocked a cool achievement. Now go back to add something useful to the debate instead of commenting one's comprehension's skill. That was an invite to rephrase your point, but don't bother.

[hulduet]

LFD does nothing a game already does on it's own. If there are bad people you'll encounter them with or without the help of a "LFD" tool. The only thing that brings LFD out is that it allows much easier ways to find people to do a group. Right now we're stuck at 2000. We have to sit in spam and invite people. The good thing is that right now there are plenty of people around your level range. This will change in a month to the worse, it always does.

 

Some of you say that LFD is bad and destroys a game but seriously? Dual-spec is what destroys the community entirely. You're not suppose to be able to fill any role in the game by yourself. I hope they don't add any dual-spec option but they will eventually since WoW did it.

 

While i do enjoy group quests when they work, ie there are plenty of people around to do them, but they fail miserably when there aren't. Yeah, you don't have to do them, that is true. You also don't have to play the game either. My point is i wish they would have gone the "public" quest route instead. The group quests are already located in their own "heroic" zone on the map! They could have scaled the event based on the amount of people in the vicinity, thus creating quite an epic feel to it. Currently it's just a spam feast in the chat... LFM/G <insert group quest name>. Which is fine as long people get a group and may finish the quest.

 

I feel sorry for people rolling a month or so from now when there aren't enough people to even complete the heroic 4+ group quests.

[Sendrel]

Tools can alter the environment to encourage certain behaviors, this is not false. Tools are neutral, there effects are quite often not.

 

Oil is a tool, it is neutral, dump 10,000 gallons of it into an eco-system and watch it amorally destroy the eco system, set it alight and watch it amorally turn everything into ash. Now watch the survivors behavior change because of the alteration to the environment. It is correct to say the oil was neutral in all of this yet the oil encouraged the behavior of the survivors.

 

What ever happened to personal accountability?

 

How did the oil get there? Unless it just magically appeared and then spontaneously combusted, there's a human element to take into account. In your analogy, the oil didn't encourage anything, it was the actions of the hammered tanker captain that caused the mess.

 

I get what you're trying to say, its the same thing that gets said every time this topic gets posted. Its a variation on 'guns are tools that kill people, ban guns and you'll have less people killed'. Which is a great way of avoiding any kind of responsibility for your actions.

[Mykander]

I support a tool, even cross-server, so I'm not going to rehash the benefits but instead address the three negatives that get tossed around:

 

Socializing - If you say a automatic grouping tool kills the social aspect of the MMO, I encourage you to analyze what is the root of the problem. Because if you don't find anyone socializing in the majority of the groups, there are two common denominators that can be the problem: You, and the game. Pro-Tip: It isn't the game. You know why I personally don't see this ridiculous subjective complaint? Because when I want to socialize and no one else is doing it, I start chatting my *** off. Be polite, nice, and stick to a in-offensive subject and you're almost guaranteed to get results.

 

Kills Communities - Yeah, it does, it kills the ridiculous LFG Spamming community which needs to die anyways. If you want that back create a custom channel and announce it to the world periodically in general chat and on the server forums. "Hey guys, if you hate the LFD tool or just want an alternative, join chat channel "LFD", and announce when you want to run something. We'll get together, have a fun run of server people and enjoy life." It may take some time and effort to make happen, but it works every time I've tried it.

 

Encourages jerks - Welcome to the real world. On top of that, there is no way anyone with a single brain cell can legitimately claim this is true or valid without something other than "Oh, I say its so therefore it is". Some people were jerks without the LFD tool, some people will be jerks after it, and... wait for it... wait for it... wai... SOME PEOPLE AREN'T JERKS IN GENERAL. Holy cow, I know its hard to believe but trust me, you can find people who won't ninja loot you, LFD tool or not.

[hulduet]

If you're going to be a jerk you're going to be it regardless of it's a cross-server or not. People are like this. You should know this if you've played WoW. It has nothing to do with you being on another server.

 

I've run across a ton of ninjas since i got into the pre-launch. I didn't expect any less. It really isn't the players fault tho, it's the game design that creates "bad" players.

 

The only negative thing about the LFD is that once you're using it, you're going to use it a lot. You're going to run into people that wipes your group, you're going to run into people that are rude, you're going to run into ninjas. Big deal, you do that already. Unless you're that guy that goes berserk in general chat when someone ninjas. You might think that you're doing something "good" but you're not. You're only getting on peoples ignore list.

[GraunKrynn]

I've seen a lot of people expressing their opinions that the WoW dungeon finder and similar tools from other games "ruin communities" and create so many "bad players". This is a very naive perspective in my opinion.

 

The players didn't change. All that happened was everyone had easier access to a lot more people in shorter periods of time. Having that access allowed you to actually meet the bad players that you otherwise wouldn't have met without the dungeon finder.

 

Saying dungeon finder ruins communities is like saying Facebook ruins marriages. No it doesn't. The guy didn't become a lying & cheating loser because of Facebook; he just got caught because of Facebook. Stop blaming the tools and blame the people.

 

SWTOR flash point finder for the win!

 

They breed lazy people that didn't want to wait for anything and started devouring content at a rapid pace. Looking for a pick up group without a DF tool can be a time sink but while you wait there's plenty of crafting to do...or quest and use who...ya know the same thing you would be doing anyway with DF This is why getting a good guild can make a huge difference. You have a pool of people that you would generally get along with and can run groups together and build team cohesion via flash points, so that way when you get to operations you already have a good base of people together.

 

A random dungeon finder was added at a point in the game where Blizzard thought it was appropriate. So far BW doesn't believe there is reason to implement yet as the community is just now starting to grow. It's not hard to type /who and pst. Or ask in general of your planets or fleet. It's easy to get to the fleet from anywhere and is relatively fast.

 

I have had 0 problems finding groups for flashpoints. I think the longest we waited was for 8 minutes to find 1 extra non jedi DPS for better loot balancing. But we got to pick our group composition and didn't have to wait long to find somebody willing to clear it with us. That person later joined our guild (3 of us were already guild mates) and we've been off the races ever since.

 

There's also the LFG tool in the social menu and you can flag yourself there. Take the extra 2 minutes to actually ya know...talk to people. I've had entire DF PUGs go through with ZERO conversation. We were all just going in and zerging content knowing we probably wouldn't see each other again, so why bother talking? You will occasionally find some decent people cross server but likely the conversation is probably limited by things like, 'lol' 'ty' 'mind if i need for os?' 'again?'. No interaction. No community.

 

If the LFD tool was same server I would be much more likely to support it. However it's not needed at the time. It's a minor convenience feature that can be added later as necessary. Get to know the people on your server as they will be the people you group with in all aspects of the game.

 

It's an MMORPG, if you want to keep silently repeating the same content then by all means, May the Force be with you in Azeroth until this game brings in these features that you like. But when you're tired of Kung Fu Pandas, Pokemon, reskinned 'new' boss models, Recycled content (Onyxia anyone?), and silently collecting your shinies...I'll still be here with open arms growing with an amazing game with awesome potential.

 

TL;DR - Fluff feature not needed right now. Community in WoW was dying already. Help develop your server community with more interaction...inb4 wall of text...inb4 thread lock

Edited December 21, 2011 by GraunKrynn

[Kashaan]

Dungeon finder "ruins communities" by completely ridding the game of the need for community.

 

With dungeon finder, people queue up, sit in town while they're watching TV, and only turn back when they find a dungeon. They then usually just run through without saying a word (unless one of the players is bad, in which they might insult them).

 

 

Bottom line: There is a LFG system. Use it. BW doesn't have to change or make apologies because you want the LFG system to be automatic.

[Ethern]

I support a tool, even cross-server, so I'm not going to rehash the benefits but instead address the three negatives that get tossed around:

 

Socializing - If you say a automatic grouping tool kills the social aspect of the MMO, I encourage you to analyze what is the root of the problem. Because if you don't find anyone socializing in the majority of the groups, there are two common denominators that can be the problem: You, and the game. Pro-Tip: It isn't the game. You know why I personally don't see this ridiculous subjective complaint? Because when I want to socialize and no one else is doing it, I start chatting my *** off. Be polite, nice, and stick to a in-offensive subject and you're almost guaranteed to get results.

 

Kills Communities - Yeah, it does, it kills the ridiculous LFG Spamming community which needs to die anyways. If you want that back create a custom channel and announce it to the world periodically in general chat and on the server forums. "Hey guys, if you hate the LFD tool or just want an alternative, join chat channel "LFD", and announce when you want to run something. We'll get together, have a fun run of server people and enjoy life." It may take some time and effort to make happen, but it works every time I've tried it.

 

Encourages jerks - Welcome to the real world. On top of that, there is no way anyone with a single brain cell can legitimately claim this is true or valid without something other than "Oh, I say its so therefore it is". Some people were jerks without the LFD tool, some people will be jerks after it, and... wait for it... wait for it... wai... SOME PEOPLE AREN'T JERKS IN GENERAL. Holy cow, I know its hard to believe but trust me, you can find people who won't ninja loot you, LFD tool or not.

Very good post. Not much to add.

[KithPine]

I don't adress comparisons, they are often unapropriate. As for your first sentence, it has to be placed in the context of the debate. The effects will change depending that the tool is used by good players of bad ones. Your observations are sound when deprived of context. That's derailing the thread too much with useless considerations for the debate. The point being that the LFD is not the source of all the evils that some claim it is.

 

It wasn't the source of all evil, but it created an environment that supported it. You cannot say the tool was blameless, you may wish that it was, but it wasn't, for it altered the basic environment in a way that resulted in the encouragement of a certain behavior. You can say the tool users are the ones to blame, but the truth is the tool users used it to create an environment. Remember this is not like a gun control argument because we are in an environment where the genie can be kept in the bottle. Tools alter the environment limit those tools and you limit the damage.

 

You don't like this argument that's fine but don't say it's just noise. You say, the tool was neutral and it COULD NOT have created the problem. I say quite clearly that the fact is the tool altered the environment in a fashion to encourage set behaviors. You wish to address this? It is a know fact that tools alter the environment that is their purpose, the environment rewards types of actions, rewards alter behavior, this means quite simply that tools are capable of altering and even creating behaviors, to say otherwise is to deny reality.

 

Just as you are avoiding reality a cross server dungeon finder has been observed in loot based games to modify the behaviors of a large group of people though encouragement.

[Ethern]

It wasn't the source of all evil, but it created an environment that supported it. You cannot say the tool was blameless, you may wish that it was, but it wasn't, for it altered the basic environment in a way that resulted in the encouragement of a certain behavior. You can say the tool users are the ones to blame, but the truth is the tool users used it to create an environment. Remember this is not like a gun control argument because we are in an environment where the genie can be kept in the bottle. Tools alter the environment limit those tools and you limit the damage.

 

You don't like this argument that's fine but don't say it's just noise. You say, the tool was neutral and it COULD NOT have created the problem. I say quite clearly that the fact is the tool altered the environment in a fashion to encourage set behaviors. You wish to address this? It is a know fact that tools alter the environment that is their purpose, the environment rewards types of actions, rewards alter behavior, this means quite simply that tools are capable of altering and even creating behaviors, to say otherwise is to deny reality.

 

Just as you are avoiding reality a cross server dungeon finder has been observed in loot based games to modify the behaviors of a large group of people though encouragement.

I am not avoiding any reality. I am avoiding your reality, the one claiming that the tool supported an environment tending to ease bad behaviours. The LFD tool shed more light on already existing behaviours; that's a given. The tool per se did not magically create such behaviours, and if it is the case, that has yet be proven. That's the whole point.

 

Secondly, for the last time, the LFD has not to be the carbon copy of previous LFD and sustain the same design faults, including encouraging such behaviours that you wrongly attribute to this poor tool.

You might be right, but I have no choice but taking your word on it for sole proof. Again that's your reality, and that is no way the basis for a fact.

 

What I will retain is that people transpose speculations and fears from previous bad implementations, and that's stupid.

 

In conclusion, denying a feature based on such speculation and uncertainty is stupid per se.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Ethern

[Sendrel]

It is a know fact that tools alter the environment that is their purpose, the environment rewards types of actions, rewards alter behavior, this means quite simply that tools are capable of altering and even creating behaviors, to say otherwise is to deny reality.

 

You should have just typed this the first time and saved yourself a really idiotic analogy.

 

Here's the thing, you say WoW's implementation of LFD encouraged bad behavior. I say it just exposed you to more people, thereby giving you the perception that behaviors might have been altered. But neither of those statements are very relevant when we could have something better than WoW's implementation.

[Shillen]

WoW had a terrible community long before dungeon finder existed. I do think cross-server grouping does hurt the community, but it isn't what made WoW's community terrible. SWTOR has a far better community than WoW did at release. I don't think dungeon finder will hurt it too badly.

 

All I know is right now the tools available to find groups are not acceptable, especially with how heavily they've integrated grouping into the leveling/questing system. I mean I've tried using their LFG system and it's more difficult than just typing LFG into general chat. Their LFG system is basically worthless.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Shillen

[Unborn]

It should be a same server dungeon finder so u can look for a group w/o having to sit at the flashpoint hub

[Ethern]

All I know is right now the tools available to find groups are not acceptable, especially with how heavily they've integrated grouping into the leveling/questing system. I mean I've tried using their LFG system and it's more difficult than just typing LFG into general chat. Their LFG system is basically worthless.

The main problem with the current LFG is that it is too passive and not cross planets. If you type /who and you are on Balmorra, you are not reaching the ones who are on the fleet, Nar Shadaa, etc You reduce your chance to find people on the same level bracket as you, and that's one component making finding groups a nightmare.

Also, ignore people who claim that spamming LFG on the general is fine, acceptable and efficient. It might work for them now, on certain servers, at certain hours, under certain circumstances, but that's not a reason to assume it works for everyone the same way.

[Chevex]

This +1

 

Ninjaing is a problem resolved by only allowing certain classes to roll on loot that's relevant for them.

 

Griefers are a problem resolved by allowing a majority roll vote kick.

 

I've never seen any of these problems ever fixed by this mythical 'social pressure' or the dreaded, 'black ball.'

 

But you know what problem I have seen fixed. In WoW I used to have to spend HOURS spamming trade chat looking for a tank and healer to run a specific dungeon. Lousy *** Halls of Lightning. Now, to be fair I was looking for people at 3 in the morning, insomnia's a *****, so the server wasn't exactly hopping with volunteers. LFG fixed that problem.

 

So yeah, I hope they do introduce that here. I hope I do get a chance to play TOR as a "mindless NPC wanna be" when I'm feeling the urge to do a flash point but not feeling the desire to engage in pointless socializing with the same idiots on my server.

 

Very much in agreement with you. I believe game mechanics are the solution to the jerks, not social pressure.

[Chevex]

"I saw someone LFG in general chat once." and the obvious notion that players will always follow the path of least resistance hardly clinches your argument. While we're at it, let's get rid of raid lockouts and bind on pickup items. Everybody will raid every day and gear up much faster so it must be better for the game, right??

 

You're starting down a slippery slope. Eventually you'll use the silly argument that there should be a giant blue button that says "win" and when you click it you are max level with the best gear. Asking for helpful tools is not the same as wanting to be a care bear. Don't make such wide leaps in logic.

[Chevex]

Tools can alter the environment to encourage certain behaviors, this is not false. Tools are neutral, there effects are quite often not.

 

Oil is a tool, it is neutral, dump 10,000 gallons of it into an eco-system and watch it amorally destroy the eco system, set it alight and watch it amorally turn everything into ash. Now watch the survivors behavior change because of the alteration to the environment. It is correct to say the oil was neutral in all of this yet the oil encouraged the behavior of the survivors.

 

Yes, they have an affect on the environment, but negative side-effects can almost always be mitigated by tweaking the mechanic rather than getting rid of it. (e.g. not allowing classes to roll on loot they can't use and building a better vote to kick system.)

 

Tweaking the tool to do its job better is a far better choice than removing it and reverting to spam tactics.

[Chevex]

Thing is, you're going to /ignore this guy. Some of the people who read it on the General Chat might even follow.

If he's truly a full-time Jerk, eventually half of the server or more will have him on ignore and he'll start thinking about why he can't get groups.

 

On WoW, I'd only go ahead and /ignore people if they were REALLY REALLY jerkish... Because to ignore every jerk, you'd have to ignore 90% of the realm. When it became Cross-Realm.......... You couldn't do anything about the jerks. And even then, my ignore list was always on the limit!

 

I wouldn't see a problem with a server-only Group Finder, so long it doesn't allow people on my ignore list to group with me ever again AND I have infinite size ignore lists, it must also ignore the whole account, I want to avoid the PLAYER not the CHARACTER. And that's too resource-intensive and won't happen, so please no Group Finder! I'll take a better /Who, though. With little boxes for all the heroics and flashpoints and all that and better listing and and it must be pretty.

 

As a counter point. I and many others would mute people spamming to find groups because it was annoying.

[G-Seven]

A cross-server group finder enables players to behave like jerks because it provides a type of anonymity much like the interweb bullies.

 

I have no issues with a local server group finder.

Edited December 21, 2011 by G-Seven

[Chevex]

They breed lazy people that didn't want to wait for anything and started devouring content at a rapid pace. Looking for a pick up group without a DF tool can be a time sink but while you wait there's plenty of crafting to do...or quest and use who...ya know the same thing you would be doing anyway with DF This is why getting a good guild can make a huge difference. You have a pool of people that you would generally get along with and can run groups together and build team cohesion via flash points, so that way when you get to operations you already have a good base of people together.

 

A random dungeon finder was added at a point in the game where Blizzard thought it was appropriate. So far BW doesn't believe there is reason to implement yet as the community is just now starting to grow. It's not hard to type /who and pst. Or ask in general of your planets or fleet. It's easy to get to the fleet from anywhere and is relatively fast.

 

I have had 0 problems finding groups for flashpoints. I think the longest we waited was for 8 minutes to find 1 extra non jedi DPS for better loot balancing. But we got to pick our group composition and didn't have to wait long to find somebody willing to clear it with us. That person later joined our guild (3 of us were already guild mates) and we've been off the races ever since.

 

There's also the LFG tool in the social menu and you can flag yourself there. Take the extra 2 minutes to actually ya know...talk to people. I've had entire DF PUGs go through with ZERO conversation. We were all just going in and zerging content knowing we probably wouldn't see each other again, so why bother talking? You will occasionally find some decent people cross server but likely the conversation is probably limited by things like, 'lol' 'ty' 'mind if i need for os?' 'again?'. No interaction. No community.

 

If the LFD tool was same server I would be much more likely to support it. However it's not needed at the time. It's a minor convenience feature that can be added later as necessary. Get to know the people on your server as they will be the people you group with in all aspects of the game.

 

It's an MMORPG, if you want to keep silently repeating the same content then by all means, May the Force be with you in Azeroth until this game brings in these features that you like. But when you're tired of Kung Fu Pandas, Pokemon, reskinned 'new' boss models, Recycled content (Onyxia anyone?), and silently collecting your shinies...I'll still be here with open arms growing with an amazing game with awesome potential.

 

TL;DR - Fluff feature not needed right now. Community in WoW was dying already. Help develop your server community with more interaction...inb4 wall of text...inb4 thread lock

 

See my microwave argument. Do microwaves breed lazy people that will never use an oven again and will get fat off of TV dinners and hot pockets? Or does that only happen to a specific subset of people who probably would have found a way to be lazy and fat with or without the microwave?

 

There might be a correlation where fat guys tend to heat up a lot of their food in the microwave, but I would never posit that the microwave made him fat and without it he would be a healthy guy.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Chevex

[Malaix]

Dungeon finder is a pro-con double edged sword kind of deal. It really really is. It dosn't create trolls and griefers but it certainly helps promote them, but more then that it completly distorts and destroys server community at least it does the way WoW has it implemented, you never friend group with or talk with people you meet on random even though the tools are there. Before the group finder it was a pain to LFG, it is true, but after it I stopped making new friends in WoW. The game for the most part turned into an endless cycle of blank facesless impersonal groups and the only thing that is ever said is if the group wipes on a heroic to say how much the tank or healer sucked.

 

So far in SWOTR I have a budding friends list in just one day. In the same amount of time in WoW you are lucky if you are invited into a zerg guild that will never interact with you and its only goal is to have a billion members.

[BrimstoneAshe]

It didn't ruin the community -- WoW's community was a cesspit long before that -- but it did take the "massively" bit out of the MMO. Having no reason to leave the capital city is kind of stupid.

 

See, that's the argument(I put in bold) I hear time and time again that I just don't understand. The DF tool actually ALLOWED me to leave to capitol city and quest/gather/etc instead of sitting in the city spamming LFG for a Heroic.

 

Which interestingly enough is what I have to do now if I want in a flashpoint. Instead of questing on Nar Shadda while I wait for a Mandalore group, I get to sit at the fleet for 30+ mins trying to form a Mandalore group like I did last night to no avail. I'm guessing its mainly because the majority of players are still in the BT/Hammer levels, but I tried for 30-45 minutes last night to form a Flashpoint while I crafted and couldnt get one together. And after all the time I spent in a chat channel last night I didn't come away with any new friends or social contacts. In fact I came away feeling less like I was in a "community" than I felt in one.

 

Last night I was in game for 4 hours. Got to do ZERO Flashpoints, but did get a good bit of questing done. A FP tool would have allowed me to do both.

[supernickx]

There's a fairly dated philosophy that flies around which people seem to think dungeon finder = more jerks. No dungeon finder = people are reluctant to be jerks at fear of everyone on the server hating them.

 

Which yes, sure, this was a fine logic when your average players online for your faction were 400-500 and lots of people knew each other.

 

These days.. servers are huge and lots of people come and go. People are gonna be jerks regardless; at no point do people stop to think "uh oh better not act a child at fear of being banished by everyone on the server"

 

Thus dungeon finder or not, the outcome is the same. People can be jerks.

 

So hey.. i'm very pro dungeon finder. Spending 30 minutes to organize a group, get to it and then finally do the dungeon is a pointless waste of time after a while. It is not a "challenge" nor does seeing the same trip to the instance every time somehow add to my experience. First few times it's cool.

 

That said: in the short term while people level up and BW do want people to experience the world, it is wise to keep it away for the time being. Otherwise people will simply never do the trip.

 

Definitely hope to see this in game sometime in 2012.

Edited December 21, 2011 by supernickx

[Chevex]

You should have just typed this the first time and saved yourself a really idiotic analogy.

 

Here's the thing, you say WoW's implementation of LFD encouraged bad behavior. I say it just exposed you to more people, thereby giving you the perception that behaviors might have been altered. But neither of those statements are very relevant when we could have something better than WoW's implementation.

 

To expand on this it is just like the modern media. People think the world on the whole is becoming a worse place to live and that people are becoming more insensitive and cruel. I don't believe this is the case. I believe the world as a whole is steadily improving, but that in our time we are able to receive information much faster therefore we are able to see the negative things in the world in greater abundance and much more often.

 

Crime rates might spike for a year but the more you expand the timeline the more you can see the trend that things improving rather than getting worse. If you watch the news though, you will start to get a negative feeling about the world we live in because all you hear about is all the bad things that happen.

 

I don't blame the media for making people depressed about the world. I blame the people for not realizing that simple fact that they are processing more information more quickly and are therefore processing more negative information than they would have 50 or even 20 years ago.

 

In a hypothetical scenario where any given pool of information is about 30% negative, consuming more of that information will yield more negative information in the long run. Combine that with the human tendency to exercise confirmation bias and you can start to believe that the amount of negative information is increasing when actually it's just the amount of negative information that YOU'RE consuming that has increased.

 

Applying the same scenario to a game server let's say that about 30% of any gaming community are rotten jerks, ninja looters, and generally anti-social. Before dungeon finder you would play with a certain amount of those people. After dungeon finder the amount of people you play with goes up by A LOT. The "bad people" ratio has not changed but now that you are playing with more people in general you are also playing with more "bad people". The amount of bad people didn't increase. The amount of bad people you got to play with did.

[Miyaka]

Did the same people exist before the RDF? Sure

The difference is they relied on the good will of others on their server to get groups before the random dungeon finder.

They maintained a facade of being a decent person to get what they want. They had to, or else no one would group with them.

 

Enter the RDF and any motivation they had to maintain that small shred of decency went out the window....never to return.

 

So while the RDF doesn't make good or bad people...it certainly doesn't encourage or reinforce polite behavior. In fact it enables bad behavior.

 

I for one, would not welcome it.