Groupfinder MM FP Queue issues

[NayaruLovegood]

Hi, I wasn't entirely sure where was the right place to post this but it's something I feel should be addressed by developers and in general appears to be design bugs but could be coding bugs, it's hard to tell from a player point of view. I couldn't find adequate explanations or information about this by searching. I play on Darth Malgus server on Republic side.

Since I've returned to the game (didn't play since pre-7.0) I'm observing quite serious issues to the state of the queue system for Master Mode Flashpoints. Uprisings too, I've never seen a queue pop for these but as I've not had a reason to play uprisings I don't know what the point of them is.

1) Except for a small window of time in the evenings there is barely anybody queueing for MM FP's and even in that window of time the numbers of people queueing are low. I always queue as tank or healer and I'm almost always waiting for other people to queue, I'd say this happens more than 95% of the time. I can workaround this by recruiting in fleet chat to fill a party but it seems strange to need to do this for what used to be (and IMO should be) popular content and when some of the significant rewards are locked behind using the groupfinder in the first place. I believe part of the problem is that the difficulty of the MM FP's is harder since the level cap was raised and this may be partly addressed by upcoming raises in irating potential but it would seem also that the available rewards are not lucrative enough relative to the difficulty to make these worth running - on top of that one of the currencies FP-1 is severely limited by a weekly cap that is easily reached within a few runs which further limits reasons for running these. It of course doesn't help that the population of Darth Malgus Republic side appears to be very low at this time, I don't know if it is different on other servers.

Enquiry 1) Are there any plans to make MM FP's more worthwhile in rewards to draw players to running them?

2) For some reason it is now impossible to swap builds while in the queue or when in the flashpoint. This raises these issues: 

2a) If waiting for a queue as a tank or healer it means that running solo content such as daily missions or heroics must be done while setup as a tank or healer. This takes a considerable amount more time than doing them as a DPS. Which means not enjoying the daily content in the desired way on top of not being able to get into the desired group content.

2b) If the queue does pop for MM FP's and someone leaves, the group is then locked into the roles they've chosen and will be back to point 1) of waiting for someone to hit the groupfinder for MM FP's with the role that is missing. This is less of an issue when it's a missing DPS, as always, but if the missing player is a tank or healer it can be a really long wait. The irony is that due to how the lockout system works you can leave the party and switch to another character with the role that's needed, queue up with that new character and almost always the queue that pops will be the group in progress that you left. So there is a workaround it's just tedious and shouldn't be necessary.

Enquiry 2) Are there any plans to address this lockout that prevents players changing their role while in the queue or while in the MM FP?

Thank you 😃

Edited March 25, 2023 by NayaruLovegood

[LD_Little_Dragon]

The rewards are lackluster for doing MM fp.  You can't use the filter and still get the conquest social points or your weekly done; so it's either take a chance on getting the boring fp, or filter and lose out on most of the rewards.

They also nerfed most of the MM flashpoints to a ridiculous point where they aren't even good for improving your skills or much fun to do unless you're still chasing achievements. 

I can do 20k plus ehps easily, but rarely need more than 10k or so to get though most MM fp.  Ditto for the dps requirements to get through most MM bosses. 

It's boring, it's pointless to run since you can't improve your skills, and the rewards are really lacking.

Basically: the 7.0 changes to the weeklies and the massive nerf bat made MM fp undesirable content for grinding, improving your skills, or just plain fun.

[NayaruLovegood]

Thanks for your response. I'm not finding them to be easy but they are less challenging when everyone in the group is up to 336IR. Not everyone has the same reasons for doing MM FP's so whether or not they're boring to do is subjective. Thanks for validating my thought that rewards are lackluster and this may be contributing to the lack of interest in them. 😃

[LD_Little_Dragon]

Sorry went on a bit of rant.  Still salty over the 7.0 downgrades to the qol of so many things.

I like doing MM fp for a bit of variety, I wish they were a bit more challenging, but even as is I would do more if the queue's popped faster.  Or if I could do solo questing as dps then swap to heals if the queue pops.  Solo questing as heals is a pita.

It's the lack of meaningful rewards imo that is leading to long queues and driving old players like me into other content.

 

[vianiel]

The inability of swapping builds in the FPs might suck, but it's to prevent people from just switching classes to all stealth. That said, swapping builds mid-FP should be fine, but swapping classes shouldn't be. All of this is moot anyways if the GF matches you with an already all-stealth group.

[Traceguy]

1. MM FPs are harder than SM Ops, and SM ops offer around 2000 TFs on completion. I do agree, MM FPs need better rewards. How about offer TFs for MM FPs bioware? Even if it's 1/3 what you get in ops.

2. This definitely needs to be addressed. I queue as healer, and I can't really do anything while waiting for the queue to pop because I have to pick a healer loadout before entering the queue. I can't just do dailies as a DPS and then switch to healer when the queue pops.

 If I do queue as DPS, and a healer drops, I can't update my role to healer, even though the game idiotically asks you to update roles when requeued. 

 

 

Edited March 27, 2023 by Traceguy

[Traceguy]

On 3/26/2023 at 2:58 AM, vianiel said:

The inability of swapping builds in the FPs might suck, but it's to prevent people from just switching classes to all stealth. 

As it stands, you can just all queue as stealth, and that never happens.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

On 3/26/2023 at 3:58 AM, vianiel said:

The inability of swapping builds in the FPs might suck, but it's to prevent people from just switching classes to all stealth. That said, swapping builds mid-FP should be fine, but swapping classes shouldn't be. All of this is moot anyways if the GF matches you with an already all-stealth group.

 

If that was true then you just wouldn't be able to swap combat styles in a flashpoint but could still swap loadouts to change your specializition.

They ALREADY HAVE that in the game.  Walk into an operation and you can swap loadouts on a whim, but can't swap combat styles inside the operation.

The 'no using loadouts to change spec' while in group-finder is a completely pointless restriction.  Let us have our dual roles back.

 

[NayaruLovegood]

It seems very strange to lock out every class from changing specs because of stealthers. The problem would seem to be stealth in that case rather than the swapping builds. It would seem to me to be obvious to limit the effectiveness of stealth during FP's rather than corner everyone into being stuck in a role. But given that the devs here have a funky way of handling things - dealing with inflation by taxing the poor and the new players, as an example - experience suggests not to expect a logical address of this issue, if any at all. =(

I see my post was stealthily moved to suggestions which means some staff member has seen it and chose not to respond, I'm guessing it was a simple forum moderation move though. Given that very few developers of most games have time for player suggestions I would guess that this isn't going to be looked at, at least not any time soon. I'll remain loosely optimistic that something may change in the next few years as the result of some other factor. Sadface times.

Edited March 28, 2023 by NayaruLovegood

[steveerkcanjerk]

I think the tough part is atm what even would be the reward of MM FP. Like they are not particularly hard so you can't really give it the same level of reward as a raid or even pvp. Maybe they have them give out really go matrix, embers, or something like that but you would have to put MM FP on a rotation so we dont get hammer station or red reaper spam. But if you are good enough to do a MM FP then well you can do a SM Raid. its just in a weird spot. 

[LD_Little_Dragon]

SM raids are ridiculously easy too, probably easier than MM fp (and most fp were nerfed like crazy when 7.0 dropped).  So why do the sm raids give so much better rewards than the MM fp?

[Traceguy]

11 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

SM raids are ridiculously easy too, probably easier than MM fp (and most fp were nerfed like crazy when 7.0 dropped).  So why do the sm raids give so much better rewards than the MM fp?

100%. Things like EV, KP, DF, DP, ToS, and TFB are all way more fun and much much easier than MM FPs. And to this day, I've never been in a group that has completed MM Assault on Tython. The final boss is way too difficult.

Considering the difficulty curve, and the fact that SM Ops offer millions more in rewards, there is zero reason to waste my time in a MM FP. Uprisings have better rewards.

What we need is a Master Mode weekly for FPs like Uprisings have, and we should be paid the same CQP. Completing a weekly for uprisings offers nearly 200k CQP. Completing a weekly for GSF offers nearly 200k CQP. There's not much CQP to be made with MM FPs.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Traceguy

[vianiel]

IDK, if MMFP rewards the stuff at the same level as playing ops, it surely would hurt ops participation as FPs generally take shorter to complete. Uprisings having more CQP is because they are less played and devs probably want to entice people to do it. Keep in mind that ops are gated by subscription, while MMFP can be done by non-subs. There were already threads salty about the Hammer Station spams so maybe that's why they got a nerf. It's just that you can't really win in balancing rewards while curbing the player spamming the path of least effort.

[DeannaVoyager]

7 hours ago, vianiel said:

IDK, if MMFP rewards the stuff at the same level as playing ops, it surely would hurt ops participation as FPs generally take shorter to complete. Uprisings having more CQP is because they are less played and devs probably want to entice people to do it. Keep in mind that ops are gated by subscription, while MMFP can be done by non-subs. There were already threads salty about the Hammer Station spams so maybe that's why they got a nerf. It's just that you can't really win in balancing rewards while curbing the player spamming the path of least effort.

Yes and no. MMFP rewards (gear) are blue, you can get purple from HM and MM ops. Blue is only good if you have green gear to replace. Currently the ops participation is spamming DF and sometimes DP, when it used to be TC in 6.0. That insanity deserves to hurt, sorry. But then again, there are some really bad players out there, and df and dps is probably the only content they can finish, because they have a big group killing everything for them. 

 

I play more uprisings than MM FPS because MM FPS never pop and trying to get into one is a waste of time. But I can solo or 2-man uprisings easily and get insane amount of conquest points for very little effort. Same as GSF. One might think that MM FP, which require better gear, skill and sometimes doing the mechanics would give more, but no. I don't think the devs want us to play MM FPS for some reason. Even when we have a so called flashpoint havoc conquest week, the FP objectives are one time only. Everything else is daily repeatable, every week. 

They could have ended the 6.0 HS spam complaints by allowing people to tick off 1-2 fps from the selection and still have them count towards weekly. I don't really care what content other people want to farm (df, dp, tc, hs and rr) as long as I don't have to do it. With 6.0 HS spam the problem was obvious: one person could manipulate the group finder for hours and force others to fulfill his personal needs. People got sick of it and now the MM FP queue is dead. 

 

Another problem with MM FPs is that there are people who won't let the tank pull. That usually means chaos and havoc, and everything will die slower than needed and stress the healer more than needed. Being a tank or healer in a MM FP with muppets is not fun, hence the long queue times. It's not fun for tanks and heals and it should be fun for everyone.