LFD

[pxib]

From the Guild Wars 2 thread...

The popular excuse now is pointing to people whining about wow's dungeon finder destroying the community of the game.

Before the LFD system, which I think has ruined the game, WoW was as close to perfect as I could imagine.

Personally I think LFD with its auto-party function is the most evil and dehumanizing thing ever put into a game.

What exactly is wrong with it?

I understand that the "teleport everybody inside the instance", "place quest mobs inside the instance" and "much faster queue times" are quite popular and have made instances casual playable again. What are the most serious problems and how do you suggest they be addressed?

[Ingmar]

The only objection I've ever found vaguely sensible is the one that it essentially killed the PUG scene on individual servers. It isn't something I care about personally, but at least it makes sense.

[Sjofn]

From what I can understand, generally people object to the fact that it's SO easy to form a group, there's no sense of ... I dunno, shared somethingsomething when you're in there. It's you and four strangers, and there's no reason at all to get to know them, because after the dungeon is over the chances you'll ever see those people again is really low. Before that, you were only going to meet people on your server for a PUG, and so if they were cool, you might actually make a new friend.

I have met people from my server in a PUG, and even became friendly with one or two, after the LFD tool went in, but I believe now it's all the servers in the pool rather than just the battlegroup, so that unlikely occurance is even less likely.

I think it's a fine tradeoff, personally, but I am generally not playing the game to meet new people. If I do, cool, if I don't, I won't even notice.

[01101010]

Only thing I found with LFD that is problematic is endemic of the internet itself. You are basically anonymous when you join unless by some chance you get thrown on with a person or two from your own server. That allows carte blanche to act... well it's been said many o' time. Since I did my time in hell in FFXI looking for a group as a DRK for hours on end, I don't see the evils. Items drop, they get ninja'd, run dungeon again, get same items, repeat...people join group and afk, group takes 1 minute to vote kick, new person pops in...person joins who is a flaming asshat and talks shit, leave group, requeue.

I honestly suspect this is the EQ syndrome growing into WoW... everyone wants the new people off their lawn.

[Selby]

The only objection I've ever found vaguely sensible is the one that it essentially killed the PUG scene on individual servers.

This.  You don't play with people on your server very often if ever again.  So basically instead of interacting with people on your own server, you get people from your battlegroup who you likely don't give a fuck about.

I'll be honest, I didn't give much of a fuck about the PUG situation on my server considering how hard it was to run a dungeon before LFD.  I like LFD and the days of having to sit outside the instance and spam looking for group being gone make me happy.

[Ashamanchill]

Even though I personally love the LFD tool, I can see people having a problem with it for three reasons.

1. Social: Personally, I couldn't care less what EpICpWner has to say in a dungeon, but some people like to casually chat is up and meet new people. Also, since you are never going to see these people again, there is absolutely no connection to them.

2. Immersion: LFD destroys it. The dungeons are tasks to be completed, and it just so happens you need five people to do these ones. I think after the second or third time, dungeons become this way anyways, but thats just me.

3. Nostalgia: 'Ah remember when I stood outside BRD for two hours spamming in OOC for that healer I needed way back in vanilla? Good times.'

I'm with Sjofn, the trade off was more then worth it. Since this was ported over from the Rift discussion, I think that if it is going to be 'like WoW but X (being the class system) and launches without LFD, they are going to lose a lot of subs. It's become one of those QOL tools that is very hard to live without, although IIRC Rift has an auto join system for it's eponymous rifts, so who knows.

[Koyasha]

Number one problem of the LFD system for me is not being able to group with the same people again if I want to.  This at least would be alleviated if it were restricted to one server, or if they would add cross server tells, chat, and friends list so we could keep in contact with people we actually liked grouping with through LFD.  When I was leveling my most recent character I grouped with a couple people and we spent much of the day together by not leaving group, but of course eventually we had to break up the group.  To my surprise, I saw them again the next day, and we did a few more dungeons together.  Since then I've never seen them again.  I've now forgotten their names since it's been so long.  This is my biggest complaint with the LFD system.

This spreads out into lots of things.  How do people form or join guilds now?  Just apply for them on the forums or something?  Trade chat advertising?  What?  In the old days I used to just start playing on a server, eventually I'd meet some people that I got along with through grouping for stuff, and when I saw that several of the people I like grouping with are in the same guild, I'd eventually ask about joining.  It also means making less friends since there's less interaction, etc, which makes the game as a whole less sticky for me.  If I have no friends and I'm not being successful at advancing my character, hey, I just quit and don't even look back.  If I have friends and I'm not being successful at advancing my character, it's harder for me to leave.  LFD pushes the game more toward 'bring your friends with you or don't bother' because it's harder to get to know people in-game.  And considering most of the friends I have that play MMO's are people I met in-game and have eventually remained in contact with them over the years, taking out that method of getting to know people seriously reduces my interest in the game overall.

Beyond that, the more I use the LFD system the more my attitude toward the other players in it shifts, and not for the better.  I started out being reasonably friendly and behaving as I would in normal pre-LFD groups.  After some time using it, I rarely speak other than to give orders, call people morons and tell them to quit fucking up, and so on.  The people I mention above is one of the last fun groups I've had in LFD where I've actually had fun interacting with people.  Someone else mentioned in a post around here, the DPS in these groups may as well be NPC's at this point.  I don't care what they want anymore, they're so easily replaceable that I don't have to.

[Rendakor]

I don't really like the LFD tool, although I won't go into the hyperbole quoted in the OP. But when you were grouping with people from your own server, you had to be a decent person. If you were retarded, annoying, or a ninja, you weren't getting your daily done. If you couldn't get your shit together for half an hour, you'd get put on at least 4 ignore lists and probably called out in trade chat. Player's names and guild tags meant a LOT more than they do now, because if you didn't know someone you could just check the guild.

Plus pre-LFD, you actually had to fly to dungeons in order to do them, or at least get a summon into the world outside. You picked up the quests out in the world, then went and did the dungeon and it made sense. WotLK did this particularly well, in that each zone had 1-2 instances that fleshed out the story of those zones. As a result, the dungeons actually made sense instead of just being being drawn out slot machines.

[Sjofn]

Yeah see, I really don't see how having to pick up quests from the outside world was a good thing, especially the way the vanilla ones did them. Some of them were hidden at the end of a chain, some of them were on an entirely different continent, etc. It wasn't fun at all. I like quests for dungeons, but I don't want to go back to having to hunt down all the quest NPCs or hoping someone can share them with me.

As for porting to a dungeon, that doesn't bother me even a teeny tiny bit. The camera cut to the inside of the dungeon instead of detailing my journey. No problem!

[Paelos]

LFD was a blessing that alleviated the problem of getting anyone to do any of the lower level dungeons.

At the highest order it's a roll of the dice. Personally, I've found myself doing random heroics before I did them with my guild so I could learn them in a stress free environment. It's one thing to screw up royally in front of complete strangers, and quite another to do it in front of people who won't let you forget it for the next month when telling jokes. 

[Polysorbate80]

With LFD, I might get into a dungeon with party members I'd rather murder with a rusty spork.

But at least I'm in that dungeon.  I dunno about y'all, but on my server if you didn't have gear two tiers above the dungeon and the achievement for already completing it, good luck on that PUG.

[Numtini]

I never had any problems getting into PUGs whatsoever before LFD. No it wasn't as fast, but it wasn't that hard. I used auto-LFG which queued you for random questing in some godforsaken place and therefore put you in the PUG channel. Then I would see who was looking and if they seemed serious I'd send a tell. And if I wanted the daily, I'd put myself up for that. The result was that I very very rarely finished my daily quests before I had groups.

Why don't I like LFD?

The social thing is a big part of it. Not just actually talking in dungeons, but any sense that you might actually group with them again. I used to get invites to guilds and things like that. I had people put me on friends lists and got into raids. With LFD I was lucky to get "hi hi" answered.

I think it also forces dumbing down the skill level. There was much hand wringing over how difficult the new dungeons were and the real reason, just IMHO, was that you were forced to do them with random drooling retards who would randomly abandon the group or kick someone or whatever if things went wrong. I quit the game after a long string of dungeons where the strategy seemed to be "Fuck Crowd Control, rush them, and if we die I'll just quit (or in one case 3 of them in a guild booted the tank and I) and find another group until I get one that's overgeared."

LFD is a great system for a free to play MMO that doesn't have anything but the dungeons and keeps them easy. It's great for world of tanks, where even now in the background of this message I watch my PzKpfw 35 burning. I think it would be great if you wedded it to something like what COX has for combat. But for any sort of real MMO, I thought it was terrible. I play MMOs for the social experience of working with other players to get through something--LFD removed that from the game.

[WindupAtheist]

They should have taken the next step with Cata and rebuilt the back-end completely, turning it from a conventional sharded game into one giant server with phased/instanced zones to keep crowding and lag from getting out of hand. At this point the concept of individual servers is nothing but an anachronism that prevents people from socializing, messes up population balance for things like Wintergrasp and Tol Barad, and generally holds back the game.

This isn't UO, where all the shards are at least a little bit different. WoW servers are a hundred copies of the exact same thing in every detail. Having walls between them labeled stuff like "Firetree" and "Cenarion Circle" is just a pain in the ass at this point.

[Hawkbit]

I'm worried that I agree with WUA's recent posts the past few months...  But yeah, they need to just tear down the wall.  There's no reason to have closed servers anymore.

There was always a modicum of comraderie and accountability with a closed shard in WoW.  We knew who the bad guys were in PvP, got to know their names and playstyles.  People got called out for being loot ninjas and got blacklisted.  There was more honor between players back then.

It's all so common fucking denominator now.  Almost everyone is being an internet dick, so why don't I?  It's the only way to get ahead, or at least stay even.  Especially when I'm grouping with Troll86 from server X and Orc 34 from server Y. 

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all sunshine and roses pre-LFD.  But waiting twice as long for a quality group was better than what we have now.

[Lantyssa]

They should have taken the next step with Cata and rebuilt the back-end completely, turning it from a conventional sharded game into one giant server with phased/instanced zones to keep crowding and lag from getting out of hand. At this point the concept of individual servers is nothing but an anachronism that prevents people from socializing, messes up population balance for things like Wintergrasp and Tol Barad, and generally holds back the game.

This has been my thought lately, especially after getting back into Guild Wars.  'Server' should be nothing more than a channel you have a preference for, and switching is as easy as clicking a button or two.

[March]

This spreads out into lots of things.  How do people form or join guilds now?  Just apply for them on the forums or something?  Trade chat advertising?  What?  In the old days I used to just start playing on a server, eventually I'd meet some people that I got along with through grouping for stuff, and when I saw that several of the people I like grouping with are in the same guild, I'd eventually ask about joining.  It also means making less friends since there's less interaction, etc, which makes the game as a whole less sticky for me.

This is the nub for me.  I liked LFD in Wrath, but oddly adding the Guild (soft-)requirement to Cata sort of exposed an old issue that I had learned to live without. In every previous game I ever played, guild invites and the social aspect grew out of an initial grouping experience.  Cata sort of assumes you need (or at least want) a guild, but there's no really good way to figure out what guild you might like just by simply playing the game.

[Hawkbit]

EQ2 has an awesome, simply awesome guild recruitment tab.  It shows what the guild style is, a short descriptor about the guild, online officers, classes recruiting... the list goes on.  It's worth checking out the F2P EQ2 just to see it, imo.

[Ivanneth]

I'm in a 2-person guild with an IRL friend on the other side of the country. We play WoW because we both enjoy it and to stay in contact with each other. We use guild chat as a private chat channel, so the only reason we use LFD is to make it easy to get access to dungeons that we previously didn't bother with because finding a group was a PITA. LFD is pretty much perfect for us.

My only current complaint with LFD in Cataclysm is that it's so much more difficult to make up for the inevitable errors random people make. In the past I could cover for a lot of mistakes with a bit of intense healing/bubbling on my disc priest. Not so much anymore. That's more of an overall game direction/philosophy complaint, though.

[Nightblade]

The only objection I've ever found vaguely sensible is the one that it essentially killed the PUG scene on individual servers.

This.  You don't play with people on your server very often if ever again.  So basically instead of interacting with people on your own server, you get people from your battlegroup who you likely don't give a fuck about.

This is how some found guilds back in the day; aside from either knowing someone before hand of applying via application as if it were a job.

You form a group; if you like them / they're good - maybe you add them to your friends list and ask them later if they want to run something else. If he steals something and / or is a douche; you don't group with him and tell your friends to avoid him.

Now, you sit in town in a queue to be matched with people randomly. Just like cross server PVP killed local server rivalries; cross server PVE killed any last tiny bit of potential to make a new friend in game.

Next, you'll have to wait in a queue just to farm resources. Charge 5$ a month for rights to use a mobile phone app; and farm from your iphone after you've waited the necessary 15 minutes to be teleported to the peacebloom meadows.

[Paelos]

EQ2 has an awesome, simply awesome guild recruitment tab.  It shows what the guild style is, a short descriptor about the guild, online officers, classes recruiting... the list goes on.  It's worth checking out the F2P EQ2 just to see it, imo.

I would have LOOOOOOOOVED something like this in WoW for making up raids.

Imagine being able to implement a raid into an online system looking for required classes, gear reqs, style, descriptions, etc and having people contact you via mail with applications. That would make raiding like 10 billion times easier.

[Mrbloodworth]

It kind of makes the entire game world just a lobby for dungeon runs. Instead of a world where you can find dungeons.

[Numtini]

EQ2 has an awesome, simply awesome guild recruitment tab.  It shows what the guild style is, a short descriptor about the guild, online officers, classes recruiting... the list goes on.  It's worth checking out the F2P EQ2 just to see it, imo.

I don't know if they fixed it, but when I was last playing, there were a limited number of guilds and they were listed in order of level, so the list on AB was like 3/4s level 80 guilds that weren't recruiting. Which kind of defeated the purpose.

[Paelos]

It kind of makes the entire game world just a lobby for dungeon runs. Instead of a world where you can find dungeons.

My response to that is: ok, so what?

There's world out there if you're questing. I don't see how the implementation of better features would stop it from existing.

[caladein]

I never had any problems getting into PUGs whatsoever before LFD. No it wasn't as fast, but it wasn't that hard.

Sure, at or near end-game it's only a quality-of-life boost.  For leveling though it's completely game-changing.  No single server/side can support a Maraudon or Stockades run any time of day, but 70 of them in a pool together sure can.  Not to mention people that might want to level exclusively through dungeons now can.

Broadly speaking, taking humans out of the matchmaking process is a step in the right direction for casual play.

[Numtini]

I will definitely admit grinding out dungeons at lower levels is more entertaining than solo quest grinding. And my feelings about WoW other than dungeons make me an odd bird for hating the LFD system because I absolutely loathe solo quest grinding, I'd rather go back to camping. I guess really, I think WoW is trying to have it both ways and I don't think the result is very good. If you take a simple rampage through and kill everything easily system like CoX, that's great fun, and a great match for an LFD type system. If you take really complicated dungeons where you have to have teamwork and thought and prep and time to drink and all that, then that's great fun, but it really requires a community. WoW's matching complicated dungeons with a total lack of community and it just really doesn't work well. Dungeons are only fun if you bring a group which the LFD system makes virtually impossible or if everyone outgears them, which only happens after you "grind idiots" long enough.

Free to play COX in a fantasy world with LFD and a cash shop would be a WoW killer.

[Nebu]

It kind of makes the entire game world just a lobby for dungeon runs. Instead of a world where you can find dungeons.

My response to that is: ok, so what?

There's world out there if you're questing. I don't see how the implementation of better features would stop it from existing.

If I'm playing in a world where I'm going to complete content with a bunch of random nobodies that I will never care to know, then why even require me to group in the first place? 

With the addition of LFD, grouping is just a time sink.  While it's still better than not being able to do the content at all, it seems that Blizzard is saying that social ties are less of an issue when it comes to their player retention.  Why not give me 4 NPC's to group with, decrease my random chances at loot, and let me play rather than waiting in a queue?  Seems like it would be a similar experience and I get the added benefit of not having to listen to idiots or have them randomly drop during a run.

[Fordel]

I didn't PuG before LFD, I don't PuG after LFD.


All the same noise to me.

[Paelos]

With the addition of LFD, grouping is just a time sink.

I disagree. Grouping has always been a time sink.

[Lantyssa]

With the addition of LFD, grouping is just a time sink.  While it's still better than not being able to do the content at all, it seems that Blizzard is saying that social ties are less of an issue when it comes to their player retention.  Why not give me 4 NPC's to group with, decrease my random chances at loot, and let me play rather than waiting in a queue?  Seems like it would be a similar experience and I get the added benefit of not having to listen to idiots or have them randomly drop during a run.

This stood out to me after their wanting to turn the WoW forums into the next Facebook.  I don't think they really 'get' social dynamics.

[Malakili]

The only objection I've ever found vaguely sensible is the one that it essentially killed the PUG scene on individual servers.

This.  You don't play with people on your server very often if ever again.  So basically instead of interacting with people on your own server, you get people from your battlegroup who you likely don't give a fuck about.

This is how some found guilds back in the day; aside from either knowing someone before hand of applying via application as if it were a job.

You form a group; if you like them / they're good - maybe you add them to your friends list and ask them later if they want to run something else. If he steals something and / or is a douche; you don't group with him and tell your friends to avoid him.

Now, you sit in town in a queue to be matched with people randomly. Just like cross server PVP killed local server rivalries; cross server PVE killed any last tiny bit of potential to make a new friend in game.

Next, you'll have to wait in a queue just to farm resources. Charge 5$ a month for rights to use a mobile phone app; and farm from your iphone after you've waited the necessary 15 minutes to be teleported to the peacebloom meadows.

The guild I joined (though I wasn't there right at the beginning), that is one of the most successful raiding guilds on the server formed from about 8 core guys wanting to run UBRS consistently and finding more people in Ironforge chat, in kept snowballing and soon enough it turned into a full scale raiding guild.  That kind of thing just can't happen anymore :-/

[Ingmar]

The only objection I've ever found vaguely sensible is the one that it essentially killed the PUG scene on individual servers.

This.  You don't play with people on your server very often if ever again.  So basically instead of interacting with people on your own server, you get people from your battlegroup who you likely don't give a fuck about.

This is how some found guilds back in the day; aside from either knowing someone before hand of applying via application as if it were a job.

You form a group; if you like them / they're good - maybe you add them to your friends list and ask them later if they want to run something else. If he steals something and / or is a douche; you don't group with him and tell your friends to avoid him.

Now, you sit in town in a queue to be matched with people randomly. Just like cross server PVP killed local server rivalries; cross server PVE killed any last tiny bit of potential to make a new friend in game.

Next, you'll have to wait in a queue just to farm resources. Charge 5$ a month for rights to use a mobile phone app; and farm from your iphone after you've waited the necessary 15 minutes to be teleported to the peacebloom meadows.

The guild I joined (though I wasn't there right at the beginning), that is one of the most successful raiding guilds on the server formed from about 8 core guys wanting to run UBRS consistently and finding more people in Ironforge chat, in kept snowballing and soon enough it turned into a full scale raiding guild.  That kind of thing just can't happen anymore :-/

Of course it can. There's no cross server LFG for raids, and raiding is basically what UBRS was back then.

[Paelos]

I was going to say that was stupid, but Ingmar beat me to the punch.

[Hutch]

... I think WoW is trying to have it both ways and I don't think the result is very good. If you take a simple rampage through and kill everything easily system like CoX, that's great fun, and a great match for an LFD type system. If you take really complicated dungeons where you have to have teamwork and thought and prep and time to drink and all that, then that's great fun, but it really requires a community.

This matches up really well with the differences between using LFG in Lich King vs Cata.

In LK, I'd have to wait (as a dps) maybe 15 minutes for a group. Sometimes longer, but the point is, not as long as in Cata. But by the time cross-server LFG was in place, the Heroic LK dungeons were faceroll aoe fests, so a couple overgeared toons could carry the rest.

In cata, I cringe at the 40+ minute wait times. That's just one of the reasons I only do heroics with guildmates. The other being the fact that there's social pressure in place, so that when things start to go wrong, we're not calling our groupmates names and/or ragequitting.

[Sjofn]

It kind of makes the entire game world just a lobby for dungeon runs. Instead of a world where you can find dungeons.

My response to that is: ok, so what?

There's world out there if you're questing. I don't see how the implementation of better features would stop it from existing.

I'm with Paelos on that. There is a world out there. If you'd rather sit on your ass in a capital city waiting for your queue to pop instead of doing other shit (and the alternative, of course, was sitting on your ass waiting for a PUG to scrape together, be it sitting at the dungeon entrance or sitting in a capital city), that's not the game's fault.

I don't think it should just be all one server, though. It would wreck Moon Guard, for example, and I love Moon Guard. I also don't want a bunch of phasing to keep the lag down, that would be a goddamn nightmare. Servers ARE different from server to server, I have found. LFD took the server aspect out of dungeon running if you let it (I still see people asking to form groups, because it's faster than queuing for DPSers), but the server itself is not always as cosmetic as some people would like to believe.

[El Gallo]

LFD does not play nicely with group content that is not facerollable.  That's why it worked well in WotLK and doesn't work so well now.  If forced to choose between LFD and 5-man content that requires you to be slightly awake at some point, some people prefer the latter. I'm not one of them, but I understand where they're coming from.