First, let's dispel the notion that a DF tool is for just casual players. May have started out that way but in fact WoW has proven that it is not. In fact, it is the hardcore player's use of it that has exposed its pitfalls. (People queueing in roles they aren't equipped to handle, people bailing on groups whenever a death occurs, etc.)
World of Warcraft forced you to the dungeon. You had to go there to earn rep. You had to go there to earn badges/tokens. Later, access to dungeons began to have a dependency on gear level (which of course you could really only realistically raise by, guess what, running dungeons).
So let's step back from that for a moment. Trion has stated 50% of its end game content is instances (raid/dungeon). If accurate, right there that is a departure from the WoW model. That means that someone that does nothing more than use a DF tool will miss out on 50% of the game. It also means, they are missing opportunities to meet people they will need to meet in order to experience the other 50% of the game. Similarly, if you are out running the non-instanced stuff, your chances of finding people interested in doing an instance increase tremendously.
Reluctantly, I am trying to keep an open mind about the tool. Perhaps it does have a place and won't have the same type of social impact as was experienced in WoW because the end game model isn't identical. I'm willing to give Trion a chance to make it work. If we see the refabrication of Azeroth as a result, well then at that point, I guess I will be moving on.
There are a great many more people out there who simply don’t have the time or patience to sit in a major city spamming the LFG channel to round out their groups
what about people who dont have time to do quests,same teleport tool to them is good idea too?
or gathering,same tool for them too?
who dont have time to search rare bosses,same tool for them too?
i think theres still shopping channels too,what about those people? who dont have time to spam shopping channels in hope to find that rare item what he needs,or dont have time to search good deals,money finder tool for them?
The difference is that your players are doing nothing while standing around waiting for a group.
The slippery slope thing only applies when the slope is actually slippery. Players still have to run the dungeon to get the gear or the XP.
As far as putting a group together without a looking for group tool when it exists, outside of guilds, I don't think that's going to happen. But if your goal is to be social, you're probably going to be in a guild anyway. Then you can spend as much time as you want putting a group together to run something.
This is only a problem with WoW and it's clones. In real MMOs, you don't have to stand around waiting for a group. You can actually <gasp> go into the dungeon yourself, find random people inside it. Or hunt on your own while putting the group together, meeting up once you have people. Or <gasp> making it so that you can get gear/xp from OTHER places if you don't wanna run a dungeon! WoW is one of the most horribly flawed MMOs out there, and Blizzard has to keep fixing their poor game design with instances upon instances.
This is how I used to find groups - enter a dungeon, see a cluster of people hunting, ask to join, bam I have a group. Or, find someone, ask if they wanna go to Salisbury plains, then put my group up on the LFG window. People then start to message me asking to join. Or I add more people to the group who are already in the plains. Not. Hard. And guess what, I meet new people that way. Being social in an MMO? That's just dumb!
First, let's dispel the notion that a DF tool is for just casual players. May have started out that way but in fact WoW has proven that it is not. Um.. how? WoW is a game made up of entirely by casual players.
Good article, and I agree, at the start I HATED the dungeon finder tool but now I am warming up to it, not 100% in favour of X-Realm but it works fine in WoW. I used it while I was leveling but now that my guild is all back together we just grab a guild group and go.
Great, thanks for proving the point that socializing is dead. You either roll with people you already know, or you use the dungeon finder with people you'll never see again. And they don't even talk while you're playing, just mindlessly go through the instance. Might as well be playing with bots. Diablo here we come!
Why would I want to play with people I don't know ? With my guildies I have vent, and peeps I can depend on. Do you walk around in the street greeting everyone you see and hoping they will be your special fwend ?
We talk shit, Lol and generaly have a damn good time, how is that not socializing ?
And this ladies and gentlemen, is proof that modern MMOs aren't social.
Playing with people you don't know used to be the entire appeal of MMORPGs. You took part in a living world, met people and made friends. Many of my best online friends came from random pick up groups inside non instanced dungeons.
Now, people either solo quest grind, or run with people they ALREADY know.
MMOs are dead, and you're the reason.
I would a disgree 110% with you and I think a lot of people would too.
MMO's were always built on the guild model. Do you think random strangers had success with raiding in early EQ? Nope, it was the guild.
MMO's were always about finding the guild you fit with and making friends with those people and occasionally going outside of the guild as needed. Guild tags use to be badges of honor, reputation markers or bad marks on you as a person. In EQ and DAOC and SWG, it was the guild that had the reputation and I felt honored to carry that guild tag.
I have been with the same guild (its a new guild for me since the one from EQ/DAOC broke into several) since LOTRO beta and love the people in the guild and yes, many are my real life friends.
I do not see a problem with that.
Raiding is a VERY small part of most games. In DAoC it was even smaller. I was loyally in a guild in those days, and loved grouping with guildies. But primarily, everyone in the game grouped with everyone else. Sometimes you'd get two people in a group from the same guild. On a rarer occasion you'd see an entire group of guildies doing some kind of event. But, almost 100% of the time I was leveling up, it was with people from a large variety of different guilds. Guilds came together for small raids. Alliances came together for big raids, but everyone was welcome to join. RvR was the only time you ever saw guild exclusive groups. Games were just more social back then.
Seriously i would LOVE a LFD tool on my own server but i don't like the idea of X server. I could care less about the server community as i think its bull crap. Everyone just gets into there guild and THATS there community. Countless times have i been in a group where half way through the healer said "Sorry guys guild is calling need to join for raid sorry!" People who think there is a server community is lieing to themselves. The reason i dont like X server is the accountability issue. Trolls can do whatever they want and /ignore will mean nothing. This is unacceptable.
Playing: PO, EVE Waiting for: WoD Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
i cant believe all of this over a simple lfg tool, its been in every game released since like 2004. not in this way exactly but lfg tools have been in place since city of heroes that i know of. lfg tools do not hinder play for anyone in anyway, name me one way that the lfg tool will hinder your play, it wont. does it create less community interaction, maybe but the biggest problem wow had is they made epic gear obtainable via a 5 man dungeon. that was their biggest mistake, then it made the asshats really come out. face it hardcore raiders are assholes, ive been in a number of those guilds, even the not so hardcore and they are all assholes who is only focused on one thing and if you do 5 less dps than the next guy they look to replace you, that is the death of communities. gear gating rep grinds killed the communities in these games, back in ac gear didnt mean anything except what you would drop when you got dead. armor had some value but not a whole lot, with wow every game became gear grind, where better gear equaled you were better at the game and could do more, rift is following that trend it seems, but i dont know the exact effects gear is gonna have ive looked at some of the end game gear that i can see and it dont appear too bad with the stats. but seriously hardcores and their elitist attitudes have killed the communities not casuals and stuff put in game for casauls, just look at the comments on this thread and you can see who is saying the worst stuff, it is the hardcore players that dont want casuals in the game.
Good article, and I agree, at the start I HATED the dungeon finder tool but now I am warming up to it, not 100% in favour of X-Realm but it works fine in WoW. I used it while I was leveling but now that my guild is all back together we just grab a guild group and go.
Great, thanks for proving the point that socializing is dead. You either roll with people you already know, or you use the dungeon finder with people you'll never see again. And they don't even talk while you're playing, just mindlessly go through the instance. Might as well be playing with bots. Diablo here we come!
Why would I want to play with people I don't know ? With my guildies I have vent, and peeps I can depend on. Do you walk around in the street greeting everyone you see and hoping they will be your special fwend ?
We talk shit, Lol and generaly have a damn good time, how is that not socializing ?
And this ladies and gentlemen, is proof that modern MMOs aren't social.
Playing with people you don't know used to be the entire appeal of MMORPGs. You took part in a living world, met people and made friends. Many of my best online friends came from random pick up groups inside non instanced dungeons.
Now, people either solo quest grind, or run with people they ALREADY know.
MMOs are dead, and you're the reason.
You do realize I met these people in-game right ?
MMO's are dead.... rly, 14 mil subs = dead, kk
I would prefer that the new tool be server only, and only switch to X-realm if it goes over 30 min, but if you think that spamming LFG LFG in trade is social, then by all means keep doing it, a lot on my server still do. Do you want a facebook long friend list in a MMO ? Some of us want to play, not chat for hours on end, go download IRC if that is your kick.
What I really dont get is why people bitch about it when it's optional, if you don't like it, DONT USE IT. I don't like my nipples to bleed, so I don't buy nipple clamps, simples.
I still think it boils down to some people have fun in MMO's by doing stuff, and some people have fun in MMO's by knowing other people can't do the stuff they do. When tools like this keep the later group from having their fun, they tend to get butt hurt.
I disagree with this article, it is features like the Dungeon Finder in WoW which kills immersion in newer games. Money talks and bulls*it walks. All of these features cater to casual players that do nothing for the community on their server yet dictate the design by numbers and their subscriptions. Sigh. Still, I hope Trion does not implement a Dungein Finder like tool, and that people shoud PUG when necessary but should aim to join a guild or (yes!) make some friends or invite some to the game. It is an MMORPG, not a single player adventure where you can see other people play the same adventure as you... I find that running an instance using a dungeon finder doesn't feel the same as putting a group together from scratch, there is no socializing or teamwork at all, and as the article says, it's only function is to help players see some content that they would ordinarily have to find a group for.
This is exactly why people crave the design of the old games, because those were designed to enforce a strong player community and gave enough freedom that sometimes players goofed around using emotes or roleplaying instead of just running quests constantly, or queing up for a "dungeon finder"... meh
You realize that you can still do things the old way? Stop trying to force people to change the way they are and force your definition of fun on them when you have the option to do it your way already.
But you cant. It is nearly impossible to find a group via spamming chat in WoW. So many people use it that groups are too hard to find that way.
I dont like it and I use it becuase its the go to way to group. It makes making friends in a game very hard since you never see anyone ever again. Now if it was like 3 servers for the dungeon finder to use and we could talk to those people cross server to group with them w/e that would be a bit better.
Raiding is a VERY small part of most games. In DAoC it was even smaller. I was loyally in a guild in those days, and loved grouping with guildies. But primarily, everyone in the game grouped with everyone else. Sometimes you'd get two people in a group from the same guild. On a rarer occasion you'd see an entire group of guildies doing some kind of event. But, almost 100% of the time I was leveling up, it was with people from a large variety of different guilds. Guilds came together for small raids. Alliances came together for big raids, but everyone was welcome to join. RvR was the only time you ever saw guild exclusive groups. SOCIETY was just more social back then.
Fixed it for you.
Seriously though, to me, MMO's are not the issue, just another symptom of a growing problem of society in general. We are no longer a communal or social soceity, but a voyeur society. We like to know what's going on but nothing more. Facebook isn't about making friends or forming communities/socializing, its about being able to be nosy at a distance and only integrate yourself into people's lives as much as you want.
As I have said before, Sure a lot of people walk down the hall or acrss campus and say "Hi, how are you?" but they only expect you to say "I'm good" and not say anything as to how you really feel or what's going on in your life. And if you do, they get uncomfortable and quickly move on.
The same is true with MMO's. Its not about being a community or being social, its about being as social as you want to be. And sadly, the majority of players are content with a LFD tool and only "using" their fellow players to get what they want and a LFD tool makes that easier. Today's player only cares about being social enough to make it seem like they are helping you, but in turn, they only want the reward they are after. Its an entitlement culture at its worst...but that is another debate.
Good article, and I agree, at the start I HATED the dungeon finder tool but now I am warming up to it, not 100% in favour of X-Realm but it works fine in WoW. I used it while I was leveling but now that my guild is all back together we just grab a guild group and go. Certainly won't put me off from playing, may use it, may not but its a feature some people could use.
In WoW a lot of groups are still formed the old way, plainly because you can inspect gear before you go, and it saves the dice roll of landing in a nightmarishly bad PUG.
Any group that inspects gear in Wow is one I quickly leave because they don't have a clue what they are doing, especially in heroics. Skill is far more important that silly gear even in gear centric Wow.
As to the dungeon finder in Rift, who wants long waits for a group, cross server groups lessen that immensely. If you don't like the tool, form groups using chat.
Raiding is a VERY small part of most games. In DAoC it was even smaller. I was loyally in a guild in those days, and loved grouping with guildies. But primarily, everyone in the game grouped with everyone else. Sometimes you'd get two people in a group from the same guild. On a rarer occasion you'd see an entire group of guildies doing some kind of event. But, almost 100% of the time I was leveling up, it was with people from a large variety of different guilds. Guilds came together for small raids. Alliances came together for big raids, but everyone was welcome to join. RvR was the only time you ever saw guild exclusive groups. SOCIETY was just more social back then.
Fixed it for you.
Seriously though, to me, MMO's are not the issue, just another symptom of a growing problem of society in general. We are no longer a communal or social soceity, but a voyeur society. We like to know what's going on but nothing more. Facebook isn't about making friends or forming communities/socializing, its about being able to be nosy at a distance and only integrate yourself into people's lives as much as you want.
As I have said before, Sure a lot of people walk down the hall or acrss campus and say "Hi, how are you?" but they only expect you to say "I'm good" and not say anything as to how you really feel or what's going on in your life. And if you do, they get uncomfortable and quickly move on.
The same is true with MMO's. Its not about being a community or being social, its about being as social as you want to be. And sadly, the majority of players are content with a LFD tool and only "using" their fellow players to get what they want and a LFD tool makes that easier. Today's player only cares about being social enough to make it seem like they are helping you, but in turn, they only want the reward they are after. Its an entitlement culture at its worst...but that is another debate.
Well said.
It's a Jeep thing. . . _______ |___| \_______/ = |||||| = |X| \*........*/ |X| |X|_________|X| You wouldn't understand
Raiding is a VERY small part of most games. In DAoC it was even smaller. I was loyally in a guild in those days, and loved grouping with guildies. But primarily, everyone in the game grouped with everyone else. Sometimes you'd get two people in a group from the same guild. On a rarer occasion you'd see an entire group of guildies doing some kind of event. But, almost 100% of the time I was leveling up, it was with people from a large variety of different guilds. Guilds came together for small raids. Alliances came together for big raids, but everyone was welcome to join. RvR was the only time you ever saw guild exclusive groups. SOCIETY was just more social back then.
Fixed it for you.
Seriously though, to me, MMO's are not the issue, just another symptom of a growing problem of society in general. We are no longer a communal or social soceity, but a voyeur society. We like to know what's going on but nothing more. Facebook isn't about making friends or forming communities/socializing, its about being able to be nosy at a distance and only integrate yourself into people's lives as much as you want.
As I have said before, Sure a lot of people walk down the hall or acrss campus and say "Hi, how are you?" but they only expect you to say "I'm good" and not say anything as to how you really feel or what's going on in your life. And if you do, they get uncomfortable and quickly move on.
The same is true with MMO's. Its not about being a community or being social, its about being as social as you want to be. And sadly, the majority of players are content with a LFD tool and only "using" their fellow players to get what they want and a LFD tool makes that easier. Today's player only cares about being social enough to make it seem like they are helping you, but in turn, they only want the reward they are after. Its an entitlement culture at its worst...but that is another debate.
I played rift and I was one time in a higher dungeon. About half an hour i requested ppl to join group. Wasnt a good balanced one and we were killed. Because of this heavy timekilling I was never able to complete my dungon quests and now my lvl is too high that I wnat to enter (if i would find group). And YOU want me to dont find a group. Thanks. ^-^
Raiding is a VERY small part of most games. In DAoC it was even smaller. I was loyally in a guild in those days, and loved grouping with guildies. But primarily, everyone in the game grouped with everyone else. Sometimes you'd get two people in a group from the same guild. On a rarer occasion you'd see an entire group of guildies doing some kind of event. But, almost 100% of the time I was leveling up, it was with people from a large variety of different guilds. Guilds came together for small raids. Alliances came together for big raids, but everyone was welcome to join. RvR was the only time you ever saw guild exclusive groups. SOCIETY was just more social back then.
Fixed it for you.
Seriously though, to me, MMO's are not the issue, just another symptom of a growing problem of society in general. We are no longer a communal or social soceity, but a voyeur society. We like to know what's going on but nothing more. Facebook isn't about making friends or forming communities/socializing, its about being able to be nosy at a distance and only integrate yourself into people's lives as much as you want.
As I have said before, Sure a lot of people walk down the hall or acrss campus and say "Hi, how are you?" but they only expect you to say "I'm good" and not say anything as to how you really feel or what's going on in your life. And if you do, they get uncomfortable and quickly move on.
The same is true with MMO's. Its not about being a community or being social, its about being as social as you want to be. And sadly, the majority of players are content with a LFD tool and only "using" their fellow players to get what they want and a LFD tool makes that easier. Today's player only cares about being social enough to make it seem like they are helping you, but in turn, they only want the reward they are after. Its an entitlement culture at its worst...but that is another debate.
^ This +1000
"It would be awesome if you could duel your companion. Then you could solo pvp".--Thanes
Raiding is a VERY small part of most games. In DAoC it was even smaller. I was loyally in a guild in those days, and loved grouping with guildies. But primarily, everyone in the game grouped with everyone else. Sometimes you'd get two people in a group from the same guild. On a rarer occasion you'd see an entire group of guildies doing some kind of event. But, almost 100% of the time I was leveling up, it was with people from a large variety of different guilds. Guilds came together for small raids. Alliances came together for big raids, but everyone was welcome to join. RvR was the only time you ever saw guild exclusive groups. SOCIETY was just more social back then.
Fixed it for you.
Seriously though, to me, MMO's are not the issue, just another symptom of a growing problem of society in general. We are no longer a communal or social soceity, but a voyeur society. We like to know what's going on but nothing more. Facebook isn't about making friends or forming communities/socializing, its about being able to be nosy at a distance and only integrate yourself into people's lives as much as you want.
As I have said before, Sure a lot of people walk down the hall or acrss campus and say "Hi, how are you?" but they only expect you to say "I'm good" and not say anything as to how you really feel or what's going on in your life. And if you do, they get uncomfortable and quickly move on.
The same is true with MMO's. Its not about being a community or being social, its about being as social as you want to be. And sadly, the majority of players are content with a LFD tool and only "using" their fellow players to get what they want and a LFD tool makes that easier. Today's player only cares about being social enough to make it seem like they are helping you, but in turn, they only want the reward they are after. Its an entitlement culture at its worst...but that is another debate.
I missed the part where you explain why its bad as in "both good and bad." I mean this with all due respect but to say, "thats just the way games are" and " let them try it out it might not be that bad". I have 2 reasons for concern. Rift already has 1 thing in the game that pulls people away from content, namely the Rifts. Ala Warhammers public quests while fun, they get old, deprive the world of people and are really no different than an instance run at this point. So Rifts pull people out of the world, dungeon finders pull people out of the world so in short if youre going to have this , why waste the time and effort building A WORLD? Seriously, do what Global Agenda did for the longest time. It wont be long before their are daily quests and your spending your time in Rift doing dailies, queuing pvp or a dungeon and AFKing while you wait for the dungeon queue sound to pop up. Its bad because its not an mmo, its no different than Diablo at that point, which is what WoW has become.
The Dungeon Finder was something Blizzard implemented when their MMO had come to it's life conclusion. The whole point of the Blog here, that you can just still go on the old-school way, is in direct opposition to the half page long advocate for the dungeon finder he starts out with.
In other words, if 9 out of 10 just use the dungeon finder, the players left who like the mmo experience, have just lost 90% of the server playerbase. Good luck trying to form parties in a scenario ten times as difficult as the example the author he describes.
The notion that people can't make it work, is in contrast with the booming success WoW was, when it functioned as an MMO. And players made it work allright. Furthermore, the hostility and confrontational attitude of the WoW playerbase has increased linearly with the easiness of the game and the focus towards a non-personal experience.
Before this, the hardcore and the casual actually intermingled. Maybe not often in Raids, but in tenmans, in towns and in instances. In a Hardcore guild of 40 people, 30 of these were actually "nice guys" willing to help, to lead and to give advice. The remainder rarely logged on unless they had something to do, or they were the unpopular type belittling other players. The latter were not enough in numbers to give the hardcore a bad name, nor enough to spread a sense of animosity and unpleasantness to your gametime.
But now this sense has come to be as a mix of kids who lack attention span, and grown-ups who insist they haven't got the time, yet demands it all anyway, gaining nothing at the end of the day.
not everyone has the time to sit numbingly at a screen, spamming the same LFX class until they get a group going. some of us like the idea of being able to play the game and still have the chance to run a dungeon, without the searching factor eating up all of our free-time. i quit playing WoW for a while, and only went back after the LFD was put in. anyone saying that the LFD only gets horrible groups is a blatant liar (or had bad luck). 80% of everyone i get grouped with (across many lvls and alts) is just there for some fun, and groups are either quiet and efficent, or maybe a couple of laughs and ,mistakes here and there. random people leave, sure, but in those cases the tool gets a replacement (no matter what you lack) within an average of 5 minutes. only in Cata heroics did the tone sour a little, and that is only because it is new content that not everyone was geared/ready to complete.
the same people who talk all day about horrible communities, and how horrible the genre has become, are the same people that are no fun to group with. i'll play with a 'casual' bunch of people only interested in having fun, compared to a wannabe elitest, that can't find a new hobby that suits them. grow up, get a new past time.
ironically, all of those games that get praised as being the 'great', 'real', mmo's, are still around on live servers. so, if new games are so horrible, go back to your classics and avoid the games you don't like, while i enjoy games i consider fun like EQ2, WoW, and now Rift.
go play dinosaur games with outdated graphics, clunky ui, and slow response time. you won't be bothering me, that's for sure.
(sarcasm)
curse players for playing games they consider fun! curse them to hell!
A dungeon finder tool is not needed functionality for a game. It's a tool requested by people who want instant gratification, and use a "lack of time" as an excuse for being lazy. Previous MMOs have done fine without any such tool, in fact WoW did perfectly fine for several years without it.
Furthermore, this completely glosses over the negative impacts that introducing such a 'feature' has upon a game. In short, it greatly hurts a game's community by devaluing the need for players to socialize. Yes, players need to socialize in MMOs. The entire point of an MMO is to participate in the game with other players, so there is an inherent purpose for players to need to socialize with each other.
That's not to say that players don't socialize via a random dungeon finder group. Rather, the level to which they socialize is extremely shallow. They've put no investment into forming their group, they little to no reason to speak to anyone else in their group, and they have little to no reason to be polite to others in their group due to the LFD system removing the choice in whom you end up in a group with in the future (this is espcially true for cross server LFD).
Lastly, claiming that the LFD is completely optional is a half-truth at best. Yes, using the LFD tool is optional, and the option still exists to manually form groups. However, the existence of a LFD tool means that it is significantly more difficult to form a group manually due to sheer frequency of players who would simply go the 'easy route' and use the LFD tool. As such, use of the LFD tool is more of a forced option due to the increased difficulty of manually forming groups.
The above pertains mostly to an automatic group forming LFD tool, particularly if it were cross server. I would have no problem with an LFD tool where players could opt into "LFD", and then other players could browse the players LFD on their server and invite them. This would still give a measure of commitment and communication, without being too much of a hassle.
Comments
First, let's dispel the notion that a DF tool is for just casual players. May have started out that way but in fact WoW has proven that it is not. In fact, it is the hardcore player's use of it that has exposed its pitfalls. (People queueing in roles they aren't equipped to handle, people bailing on groups whenever a death occurs, etc.)
World of Warcraft forced you to the dungeon. You had to go there to earn rep. You had to go there to earn badges/tokens. Later, access to dungeons began to have a dependency on gear level (which of course you could really only realistically raise by, guess what, running dungeons).
So let's step back from that for a moment. Trion has stated 50% of its end game content is instances (raid/dungeon). If accurate, right there that is a departure from the WoW model. That means that someone that does nothing more than use a DF tool will miss out on 50% of the game. It also means, they are missing opportunities to meet people they will need to meet in order to experience the other 50% of the game. Similarly, if you are out running the non-instanced stuff, your chances of finding people interested in doing an instance increase tremendously.
Reluctantly, I am trying to keep an open mind about the tool. Perhaps it does have a place and won't have the same type of social impact as was experienced in WoW because the end game model isn't identical. I'm willing to give Trion a chance to make it work. If we see the refabrication of Azeroth as a result, well then at that point, I guess I will be moving on.
The day that Trion implements there LFD tool , is the day i implement my Canel Sub tool........
This is only a problem with WoW and it's clones. In real MMOs, you don't have to stand around waiting for a group. You can actually <gasp> go into the dungeon yourself, find random people inside it. Or hunt on your own while putting the group together, meeting up once you have people. Or <gasp> making it so that you can get gear/xp from OTHER places if you don't wanna run a dungeon! WoW is one of the most horribly flawed MMOs out there, and Blizzard has to keep fixing their poor game design with instances upon instances.
This is how I used to find groups - enter a dungeon, see a cluster of people hunting, ask to join, bam I have a group. Or, find someone, ask if they wanna go to Salisbury plains, then put my group up on the LFG window. People then start to message me asking to join. Or I add more people to the group who are already in the plains. Not. Hard. And guess what, I meet new people that way. Being social in an MMO? That's just dumb!
Raiding is a VERY small part of most games. In DAoC it was even smaller. I was loyally in a guild in those days, and loved grouping with guildies. But primarily, everyone in the game grouped with everyone else. Sometimes you'd get two people in a group from the same guild. On a rarer occasion you'd see an entire group of guildies doing some kind of event. But, almost 100% of the time I was leveling up, it was with people from a large variety of different guilds. Guilds came together for small raids. Alliances came together for big raids, but everyone was welcome to join. RvR was the only time you ever saw guild exclusive groups. Games were just more social back then.
The lustre just came completely off this game for me. Good luck, RIFT and fans.
Seriously i would LOVE a LFD tool on my own server but i don't like the idea of X server. I could care less about the server community as i think its bull crap. Everyone just gets into there guild and THATS there community. Countless times have i been in a group where half way through the healer said "Sorry guys guild is calling need to join for raid sorry!" People who think there is a server community is lieing to themselves. The reason i dont like X server is the accountability issue. Trolls can do whatever they want and /ignore will mean nothing. This is unacceptable.
Playing: PO, EVE
Waiting for: WoD
Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO
Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
i cant believe all of this over a simple lfg tool, its been in every game released since like 2004. not in this way exactly but lfg tools have been in place since city of heroes that i know of. lfg tools do not hinder play for anyone in anyway, name me one way that the lfg tool will hinder your play, it wont. does it create less community interaction, maybe but the biggest problem wow had is they made epic gear obtainable via a 5 man dungeon. that was their biggest mistake, then it made the asshats really come out. face it hardcore raiders are assholes, ive been in a number of those guilds, even the not so hardcore and they are all assholes who is only focused on one thing and if you do 5 less dps than the next guy they look to replace you, that is the death of communities. gear gating rep grinds killed the communities in these games, back in ac gear didnt mean anything except what you would drop when you got dead. armor had some value but not a whole lot, with wow every game became gear grind, where better gear equaled you were better at the game and could do more, rift is following that trend it seems, but i dont know the exact effects gear is gonna have ive looked at some of the end game gear that i can see and it dont appear too bad with the stats. but seriously hardcores and their elitist attitudes have killed the communities not casuals and stuff put in game for casauls, just look at the comments on this thread and you can see who is saying the worst stuff, it is the hardcore players that dont want casuals in the game.
You do realize I met these people in-game right ?
MMO's are dead.... rly, 14 mil subs = dead, kk
I would prefer that the new tool be server only, and only switch to X-realm if it goes over 30 min, but if you think that spamming LFG LFG in trade is social, then by all means keep doing it, a lot on my server still do. Do you want a facebook long friend list in a MMO ? Some of us want to play, not chat for hours on end, go download IRC if that is your kick.
What I really dont get is why people bitch about it when it's optional, if you don't like it, DONT USE IT. I don't like my nipples to bleed, so I don't buy nipple clamps, simples.
Excellent article. And I completely agree with it.
I still think it boils down to some people have fun in MMO's by doing stuff, and some people have fun in MMO's by knowing other people can't do the stuff they do. When tools like this keep the later group from having their fun, they tend to get butt hurt.
Good, screw em.
My Thoughts on Content Locust
But you cant. It is nearly impossible to find a group via spamming chat in WoW. So many people use it that groups are too hard to find that way.
I dont like it and I use it becuase its the go to way to group. It makes making friends in a game very hard since you never see anyone ever again. Now if it was like 3 servers for the dungeon finder to use and we could talk to those people cross server to group with them w/e that would be a bit better.
^this
Any group that inspects gear in Wow is one I quickly leave because they don't have a clue what they are doing, especially in heroics. Skill is far more important that silly gear even in gear centric Wow.
As to the dungeon finder in Rift, who wants long waits for a group, cross server groups lessen that immensely. If you don't like the tool, form groups using chat.
Well said.
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You wouldn't understand
elidien gets it.
I played rift and I was one time in a higher dungeon. About half an hour i requested ppl to join group. Wasnt a good balanced one and we were killed. Because of this heavy timekilling I was never able to complete my dungon quests and now my lvl is too high that I wnat to enter (if i would find group). And YOU want me to dont find a group. Thanks. ^-^
^ This +1000
"It would be awesome if you could duel your companion. Then you could solo pvp".--Thanes
My thoughts, your keyboard. Good show.
Life of an MMORPG "addict"
For 7 years, proving that if you quote "fuck" you won't get banned.
I missed the part where you explain why its bad as in "both good and bad." I mean this with all due respect but to say, "thats just the way games are" and " let them try it out it might not be that bad". I have 2 reasons for concern. Rift already has 1 thing in the game that pulls people away from content, namely the Rifts. Ala Warhammers public quests while fun, they get old, deprive the world of people and are really no different than an instance run at this point. So Rifts pull people out of the world, dungeon finders pull people out of the world so in short if youre going to have this , why waste the time and effort building A WORLD? Seriously, do what Global Agenda did for the longest time. It wont be long before their are daily quests and your spending your time in Rift doing dailies, queuing pvp or a dungeon and AFKing while you wait for the dungeon queue sound to pop up. Its bad because its not an mmo, its no different than Diablo at that point, which is what WoW has become.
The Dungeon Finder was something Blizzard implemented when their MMO had come to it's life conclusion. The whole point of the Blog here, that you can just still go on the old-school way, is in direct opposition to the half page long advocate for the dungeon finder he starts out with.
In other words, if 9 out of 10 just use the dungeon finder, the players left who like the mmo experience, have just lost 90% of the server playerbase. Good luck trying to form parties in a scenario ten times as difficult as the example the author he describes.
The notion that people can't make it work, is in contrast with the booming success WoW was, when it functioned as an MMO. And players made it work allright. Furthermore, the hostility and confrontational attitude of the WoW playerbase has increased linearly with the easiness of the game and the focus towards a non-personal experience.
Before this, the hardcore and the casual actually intermingled. Maybe not often in Raids, but in tenmans, in towns and in instances. In a Hardcore guild of 40 people, 30 of these were actually "nice guys" willing to help, to lead and to give advice. The remainder rarely logged on unless they had something to do, or they were the unpopular type belittling other players. The latter were not enough in numbers to give the hardcore a bad name, nor enough to spread a sense of animosity and unpleasantness to your gametime.
But now this sense has come to be as a mix of kids who lack attention span, and grown-ups who insist they haven't got the time, yet demands it all anyway, gaining nothing at the end of the day.
WoW was once fun, now it is not.
not everyone has the time to sit numbingly at a screen, spamming the same LFX class until they get a group going. some of us like the idea of being able to play the game and still have the chance to run a dungeon, without the searching factor eating up all of our free-time. i quit playing WoW for a while, and only went back after the LFD was put in. anyone saying that the LFD only gets horrible groups is a blatant liar (or had bad luck). 80% of everyone i get grouped with (across many lvls and alts) is just there for some fun, and groups are either quiet and efficent, or maybe a couple of laughs and ,mistakes here and there. random people leave, sure, but in those cases the tool gets a replacement (no matter what you lack) within an average of 5 minutes. only in Cata heroics did the tone sour a little, and that is only because it is new content that not everyone was geared/ready to complete.
the same people who talk all day about horrible communities, and how horrible the genre has become, are the same people that are no fun to group with. i'll play with a 'casual' bunch of people only interested in having fun, compared to a wannabe elitest, that can't find a new hobby that suits them. grow up, get a new past time.
ironically, all of those games that get praised as being the 'great', 'real', mmo's, are still around on live servers. so, if new games are so horrible, go back to your classics and avoid the games you don't like, while i enjoy games i consider fun like EQ2, WoW, and now Rift.
go play dinosaur games with outdated graphics, clunky ui, and slow response time. you won't be bothering me, that's for sure.
(sarcasm)
curse players for playing games they consider fun! curse them to hell!
I disagree with this article.
A dungeon finder tool is not needed functionality for a game. It's a tool requested by people who want instant gratification, and use a "lack of time" as an excuse for being lazy. Previous MMOs have done fine without any such tool, in fact WoW did perfectly fine for several years without it.
Furthermore, this completely glosses over the negative impacts that introducing such a 'feature' has upon a game. In short, it greatly hurts a game's community by devaluing the need for players to socialize. Yes, players need to socialize in MMOs. The entire point of an MMO is to participate in the game with other players, so there is an inherent purpose for players to need to socialize with each other.
That's not to say that players don't socialize via a random dungeon finder group. Rather, the level to which they socialize is extremely shallow. They've put no investment into forming their group, they little to no reason to speak to anyone else in their group, and they have little to no reason to be polite to others in their group due to the LFD system removing the choice in whom you end up in a group with in the future (this is espcially true for cross server LFD).
Lastly, claiming that the LFD is completely optional is a half-truth at best. Yes, using the LFD tool is optional, and the option still exists to manually form groups. However, the existence of a LFD tool means that it is significantly more difficult to form a group manually due to sheer frequency of players who would simply go the 'easy route' and use the LFD tool. As such, use of the LFD tool is more of a forced option due to the increased difficulty of manually forming groups.
The above pertains mostly to an automatic group forming LFD tool, particularly if it were cross server. I would have no problem with an LFD tool where players could opt into "LFD", and then other players could browse the players LFD on their server and invite them. This would still give a measure of commitment and communication, without being too much of a hassle.
totally agreed up top, PuG's without efforts mean careless gameplay...
LOL@being "afraid" of strangers on the internet...
Don't wanna play with strangers, but will get on a forum and argue with some all day long..
I will not even begin to understand the logic..