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Should RIft's developers Trion, make the LFD tool cross server?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
Should RIft's developers Trion, make the LFD tool cross server?
I seen many arguments against the tool, but also seen some great support for the tool as well.
Adding a single shard LFD tool hasnt changed /solved the issues many people faces before the tool was introduced.
People say, that LFD tool kills the community in WoW. But wasnt these same people saying WoW's Community was already dead before the LFD tool was introduced? So how can they blame the tool than?
makes no sense. But if some people dont support the tool, are they forced to use it and pug? Wouldnt these people normally not Pug in the first place. So how would a Pug Ralated tool effect them?
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If enough dungeon support kicks in, I'll stick with Rift a long time.
Vote cross-server with the caveat that server transfers and xserver Friending both need to happen to make xserver matchmaking work correctly.
Grouping with some awesome random teammates and being unable to friend them and play with them again is really bad.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I am a long time MMO player. I have played them all dating back to Ultima Online, through the EQ days, WoW, Age of Conan, Vanguard, Warhammer, Aion, Guild Wars, and on and on.
That paragraph you wrote is the most innaccurate post I have seen on a message board since the internet started in 1994.
I play Rift and I am yet to meet anyone who is a soccer mum, 5 yrs old or a grannie.
You do get a some raiders and leet guys, it is a MMO what do you expect? Most of the players I know are former veterans of WAR, Lotro and WoW. Not the most inaccurate post I have ever seen but it is up there for a delusional award of some sort, it did make me laugh though as I thought of this:
Real example of Rift play logging off:
Leet boy: Goodnight Granma
Granma: Goodnight Leet boy
5 yr Old: ne-it gran
Granma: Goodnight Fiver
Soccer Mum: Good night you's all.
Well on planet bishbosh it is real anyway.
I can see it going both ways. I know the main problem on my server is that the larger guilds on Defiant only group with themselves, and those 3 guilds probably take up a full third of the side, so if they dont use the dungeon finder, it slows things down. I say give it a month and if its not being used effectively, then consider a cross server.
....or they should just get over their fear of merging servers? LFT tool is useless on low populated servers.
Well in a way i would say NO. For one, because, i want the realm to feel close and personal. I want to be grouped with people i know i will see again and there can be concequences for being a douche or just sucking. Because you can make a bad name for yourself and it can actually hurt your reputation on the realm. But then again, i can say YEAH "It's ok" because Rift has the Rift system which still makes the realm community involved opose to WoW where they don't have world action. Therfore deviding the population and making it anti social. Rift is pretty much based around there realms being involved in the world so i guess either way wouldn't hurt if they did X-realm. but preferablly i would like them not too.
Has to be cross server. I am on Rocklift and I went available for a random dungeon at level 50 for hours and got nothing. I don't care if I ever see the people I group with again. I just want to be able to group until I can get through the dungeon I need to do. Don't care about guilds, friends or any of that garbage. I just want to be able to hop into the dungeon, complete it with competent party members and get out to go about my business.
I voted no. I'm all for good tools that assist with LFG, but not instant queue cross server tools. The game just turns into some lobby forum after that. What happened to the days when you used tools to flag yourself for different types of events? I open a LFG tool set my personal flag to "Rift Hunting" or "XZY Quest." Then it is up to me to search for other people with the same flag and actually talk to them in-game. That's the way I've always viewed LFG tools until WoW came out with their version. Now everyone wants to instant queue. Just press a button to do a dungeon run, and never say more than one or two words in chat. I fear the community days of mmorpgs are gone.
If players (high or low level players) are still having a hard time finding a group, then yes a cross server tool is needed.
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Community really doesn't matter. The most important thing is to get into the game/dungeon and play it. Stats, loot, gear is king. Forget mindless chat. Bring on the cross server LFG please!
This topic was thoroughly discussed back on the ALPHA forums. The overwhelming consensus was to have it implimented as they just did. Shard only. With all the added extras for accountability. The thing that makes a LFG tool bad isn't the tool, its what it allows people to do if they have no accountability. Just take a quick note from your time in any warfront right now, and see what the prevailing attitude is when you dont have to care what your rep is with the people you team with. Thats the downfall of a cross shard LFG tool.
If you give people the chance, they will queue up and join a run, hit the first boss and not win what they wanted, and drop the team to requeue. Screw the others as you dont know them, never will see them again, and dont have to worry about your rep. It opens the possability for ninjas to do what they do best, really, its not like those on your team will ever see you again after you loot and run. You dont think Todd the Chloro knows how to play thier mage while you have only ever played a warrior, well its cool, just tell him how bad he is, use whatever language you want, not like he will ever see you again.
This is why they implimented the LFG tool as they did, becase we requested it that way. We, and I do mean we as there had to be 70% at least in ALPHA in the discussion for this, decided a LFG tool was fine as long as it had no cross shard, and built in accountability (this included the ability for the team to vote someone out if they turned out to be an a$$). The only people who want cross shard LFG are the ones who dont give a rats a$$ about thier rep, they want gear, it is all that matters to thier game time. Fast as they can advance themselves the better, the cost to anyone elses playtime is irrelivant. And that is exactly what Trion is making sure isn't happening right now.
But its fine if everyone wants to discus this all over again, mayeb a different view will come up. I'm doubting they will make any serious changes until the current system has had time for a good run through though. And then the argument would have to be very compelling to make them changer a system that doesn't harm the rep of thier player base in favor of one that might make thier player base more in line with that other game, you know, the one where not even the people who play it like the other people that play it. Just saying.....
Agree^^
I voted no in the hope that Trion would do the right thing and merge low populated servers and because of the lack of accountability that comes from making it cross server.
Yes, merging the low populated servers is the right way to do it, despite the bad marketting publicity. Either that or free transfers for certain servers, then merges when these servers are actually empty.
Using the LFG tool as a clutch to avoid having to deal with low populated servers is not the way to go, not in a game that relies somewhat in open world participation.
There's really no legitimate reason to support not having a cross server dungeon finder. People say that by spending more time playing with people from other servers than their own, players no longer feel the need to interact or establish a friendship with other players on their own server. I would say that if players were really so concerned with playing a game where interacting with others is important, they wouldn't be playing a game that allows players to reach the level cap without even so much as breathing on another living soul. Secondly, most players have grown so elitist that they will rarely group with other players outside of their own guild anyway, so I'm not sure why people are crying over the fact that they will loose out on the opportunity to become friends with random strangers. For most people, the leveling process as well as the process of gearing up a level capped toon is simply a means to getting to the real game which is usually the raid game and all the politics that stem from that. In World of Warcraft, I knew next to no one outside of my RL friends until I hit level 80 and started raiding ICC. Once there, my friends list started to grow and I began to gain a reputation because the aspect of the game that people most care about is still server-side only.
The next thing that most people say is that it encourages people to be asshats as they really don't have to worry about any sort of repercussions as everyone they're grouping with is from a different server. Well, I'm not entirely convinced that MMO developers can't find a way to solve that issue, but even so, I feel that the asshats will be weeded out once they reach the endgame. As to my own experience with ninja looters and other such nuisances in WoW, they certainly exist, but I would gladly take having to deal with those issues over waiting for two hours in a server only dungeon queue when the cross-server dungeon queues in WoW usually only take around 15-20 minutes for my hunter.
blah blah blah ...
Should we ignore your post like you seem to ignore the perfectly legit reasons mentioned countless times and the live example of WoW's pit of vipers that is their implementation of the cross-server LFG tool? I don't know how much of an experience you got with that tool, but all that asshattery you think will be weeded out by end level is actually happening, guess where, at end level.
Things that happened frequently when I was playing WoW:
Guy finished quest, left group mid dungeon
First wipe in one boss, guy left
Guy running along doing nothing
Somebody mentions a possible improvement for another player, other player leaves
Guy rages towards team for not going fast enough, dying, whatever
Guy gets the item he wanted from boss, ditches team without finishing dungeon
Guy rolls need on everything he can
In that game I don't remember a dungeon that I managed to finish with the same people I started. At certain tougher dungeons the entire team was pretty much different by the time we reached the end boss. The accountability that you dismiss so easily is the one and only factor that keeps the assholes from behaving like that on single shards (or at least hide it as much as they can). Cross server tools promote no accountability, which brings the worse behaviour out of people, a natural occurence when you don't care one bit about the person you play with.
I was talking about the tool and the content it was supposed to be used for. LFG is not used in raiding, otherwise you'd see the exact same behavior. The most likely scenario in your case is for a guy to be a total asshat to any content connected to the LFG tool, so that he gears up as fast as possible and then play nice with a raid guild of his server.
And yes, you can tolerate the kind of behavior I mentioned. People like me that have no issue running with randoms have a higher tolerance level that others. That however does not diminish the fact that the tool in the way it was implemented (aka the way the developers implemented it, those developers that you mentioned should have found a solution about the problem) promoted anti-social behavior. In many cases, it rewarded such behavior.
I would like to disagree at this point that raiding is "end game content". End game content is whatever you are doing at max level, whether it's group dungeons, raids, PvP of any type, picking flowers, playing the auction house etc. You're limiting your horison if you only focus on particular aspects of the gameplay.
The bottom line is this. Do you rather have a fast pass of the dungeon because it's a thing you must do, sort of like a job thing, and thus with whoever and however you do it doesn't matter? Or do you rather have an enjoyable experience while tackling the dungeon content with team mates with strengths and flaws in an as possible civil envirnoment and with the possibility to add new members in your friends list after the run?
I don't know what's end game for you but end game for me in Rift is getting all my max PvP gear (and well, open world PvP if and when they implement it). Raiding is one aspect of the end game, the one you enjoy. There are MMOs out there without raiding, in fact, there are people out there looking for MMOs that promote the adventuring party type of content instead of the big battles type we've been overfed with so far. Please try to look at the larger picture. The majority of the population does not raid. Just because the part of the game you enjoy is unaffected, doesn't mean that others should suffer with a bad implementation. Because this is what I believe it is, a bad implementation of the tool. Server merges and a local LFG tool create a more healthy community than empty servers and cross server LFG one.
The tool in WoW is used because at this point it is practically impossible to find a group any other way, bar asking your guild mates for one. But if you group up with your guild mates, there is no reason to use the LFG tool in the first place.
You are right, the tool does not create asshats, they exist regardless. The thing is, in your own server such people are branded as undesirables and they are having a really hard time finding groups, because of the anti-social behaviour they excibited. With a cross server tool it is guaranteed they will group with people they will never meet again, thus they can be as anti-social as they please without any drawbacks.
I believe Trion made the right decision with that tool. If I'm not mistaken SW:TOR is about to implement it as a one shard tool only as well. I guess both companies will monitor how this tool is used and adjust accordingly, depending on the players request.
*clap clap clap* not sarcasm btw
Shard only if ya want to avoid the above.
The following statement is false
The previous statement is true
Welll I guess it depends on how important community is to you . I voted no because the cross server lfg tool was what led me to quit WoW . Its fine on pve servers but in pvp ones its a killer (as is leveling through bgs something Trions already got wrong in my book ). Once this comes about you wont see many people questing and the game will seam virtually dead outside its citys as WoW does now . I would'nt be suprise if this eventually is implimented though . My jurys still out on RIFT . I'm enjoying it for now but the minuite it starts going down the route Blizzard took WoW I'm going . The cross server looking for a group tool may be the thing that leads me to quit .
I myself think that the tool is not that great an idea, though not because I dislike the idea of just setting myself up into a que for an instance, but more because i do enjoy looking for a group talking with them compared to just getting places into a random set of people and classes. I for one try to make sure to keep the armor selection within a group even so that no more then two people will be rolling against one another for gear to be fair (Had always wished they would make a fifth tpe of armor so that you do not get cornered into pigeon holing two people in a group.). If they do make this tool cross server i would hope they would first address the bigger issue here, that low pop servers will always be around till you merge them, and then after they merge afew servers nd still find that people are havving issues finding groups with the lfg tool (though not based on feed from players but also from a stand point of hard evidince of the server side pop in the instances from pre sever merge nd post server merge over i would say 3 months.), then it is more than reasonable to do a cross server tool (I would love to have a option to do only same shard or x-shard grouping in the tool even if they do go with the x-shard tool,). Just my thoughts.
Nah i don't think they should because everyone would get to know the player and you get to interact with other players in the same shard/server so you make more friends
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I'm normally against cross server LFD tools, as they do decrease social interaction between players and further the decline an MMO's community building.
But lets be real here, facilitating good social interaction is no longer a goal for most MMO's these days, and Rift is no exception. It's just a game now, and w/o a tool like this players have too much difficulty completing the content that they're grinding out.
I think for the typical dungeon based gear grinder MMO this tool is perfect in fact, only nice thing would be for players to be able to easily switch over to other servers to group with any new friends they might make.
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