Group Finders are one of the worst things that ever happened to MMORPGs.
I wouldn't say group finders, I would say Automated Group Finders. Having a tool where you could flag yourself for group content and others can browse for you is fine. You still have to be Social and talk with people to join a group. It also pushes you to make friends. Automated Group Finders fucked MMOs.
Agree. I think people are confusing LFG Finders (EQ + EQ2) with Dungeon Finders (WoW). Having a tool that let you know if people are looking for a group is very helpful and it doesn't interfere with the social interaction which is still required to form a group (Asking the players to join). WoW Dungeon finder on the other hand is very impersonal, it treats players like numbers and kill the social interaction from the get-go.
Without a LFG tool in the game, it will force players to be more sociable, not a bad thing in itself, but it does mean that those who have trouble socialising will effectively be at a disadvantage to those who make friends easily, and as players will likely only allow 'friends' into their groups, after all who would trust someone who maybe acted a bit shifty or evasive into their group for dungeon content, loners, misfits the socially inept, those are the people who will likely be stood around begging for groups to do content, and being largely ignored, regardless of whether they are tanks, healers or dps. The game could be an interesting social experiment in some ways, you only have to look at games like Eve Online to see how important if not integral, the social aspects of the game are.
Not sure on what basis someone find your post funny. But maybe you were trying to be funny, I dont know.
The point you raise in this post very much matters.
People are different, come from different walks in life, different cultures, language barriers. All these things have been overcome in progressed games with a LFD and LFR.
I dont see how its a bad thing to actually make clever game designs, like these LFR and LFD tools, when it helps overcome the above challenges.
Especially considering, there is not a single thing standing in the way of someone making their own groups manually, if they still want to.
Grouping Centric MMORPGs do not work today because Developers spend $100+ Million on MMORPGs today, look at SWTOR, $250 Million, ESO is around $250 Million, Wildstar, and so on ALL are spending Hundreds of Millions of Dollars. They HAVE TO be solo based games with Automated Group Finder tools. WHY? Because 100K or 250K subs will not pay the bills. Pantheon is not going for a large budget MMO. They will likely succeed and prove people wrong because everyone since WOW became a thing figured WOW was the new norm for MMORPGs. Well none of succeed. Yes FFXIV is doing well but that is mainly because how many FF fans there are.
We don't know game costs. A poster in another thread had much lower numbers. They were guesses as well. Simple enough to recognise that the cost to develop a game is a factor in the games long term financial health.
And comments can be made about the games you list. Wildstar was heavily promoted as a group centric raid focused hard core old fashioned game. (Did I hit all the tight buttons?). SWTOR is touted by those who play as a group friendly game. ESO is not an "mmo that promotes solo play" - its a solo game and a co-op game and a group centred game.
And games don't have to be solo centric. Have you tried Respawn's Titanfall? Its mandatory group only. Star Wars Battle Field? You can solo but the biggest complaint against the game is its almost group only. Key points however: expensive successful titles and group centric.
What developers have to do - easy to say very hard to do - is develop (and market) a game with a set of features that enough people will buy to allow them to recover their costs. However much they have spent.
While the primary focus is on group content, there will also be solo and raid content.
Also in-game tools to help people find groups, form friendships, create guilds, and keep people together so they can focus on playing the game and not finding each other will be a huge part of Pantheon.
Playing the map-devils advocate for a second, You could argue that maps are a very important and useful tool for "focus on playing the game and not on finding eachother". Now I grew up in eq so through thousands of (at times not very fun) hours I learned the zones, learned how to find my way with printed maps (later maps open in a browser) and /loc command - It was something I endured, but never something I enjoyed. While I appreciate the idea about navigating by learning the area, at least in eq the vast amount of zones and their design made it almost impossible to remember.
I am not sure what other means Pantheon will have to help getting people together, but I think the reality is that more often than not players will be invited to places they have not been before (which is a point of exploring), and as such without a map will be forced to get extensive direction instructions and spend much time on travelling, not to mention take focus away from the actual game (the fun part).
In eq what would happen is you either didn't bother with newbies, or spend those 20 minutes sending out a guide to pick them up, later we got Call of Hero and even later Fellowship summons. All eq players have tried this scenario often, where a whole evening was "wasted" just trying to get a group together and getting everyone to location, all including getting gates, guiding, holding while waiting for tank, heal, cc, slows, handling replacements and maybe a wipe or two on toop. My point is maps solve some of these issues, and I have not heard any specifics about how to address the challenge of having players spend time playing the game more than spending time getting together to play the game.
The lfg tools planned I am happy about, they are the natural solution to the lfg typing madness you had to go through to collect 6 players, and not taking it too far with auto-grouping as is the problem in wow. Perfect example of mechanics evolution that when implemented correctly, improves an oldschool game without messing with its core values.
Without a LFG tool in the game, it will force players to be more sociable
How exactly do you force them to play the game and "socialize" instead of playing some other game...?
With the amount of games available these days that is indeed a very significant problem.
Yes it is....for other games. Pantheon is not in competition with those. If you want a slow paced, co-op, social MMO, Pantheon is the ONLY game around.
Of course we can have endless discussions on how many people prefer a slow paced MMO over the modern fast paced ones, but we don't have a real answer for that, do we? It's all suppositions either way. I guess we have to wait and see. All I am going to say is that many people will be surprised to know how many players actually enjoy this type of MMO.
In eq what would happen is you either didn't bother with newbies, or spend those 20 minutes sending out a guide to pick them up, later we got Call of Hero and even later Fellowship summons. All eq players have tried this scenario often, where a whole evening was "wasted" just trying to get a group together and getting everyone to location, all including getting gates, guiding, holding while waiting for tank, heal, cc, slows, handling replacements and maybe a wipe or two on toop. My point is maps solve some of these issues, and I have not heard any specifics about how to address the challenge of having players spend time playing the game more than spending time getting together to play the game.
Oh yea, bringing up Call of Hero... I remember how people saw that as so ridiculously useful that entire classes would be passed over for party slots in favor of someone with Call of Hero.
Which kinda goes to show just how... "niche" Pantheon will be. Just goes to show that most players indeed despise long travel times even back then when Call of Hero played such a big role in determining if one got a party slot or not.
If you want a slow paced, co-op, social MMO, Pantheon is the ONLY game around.
Project 1999 Project Gorgon
There are a few others.
No thanks, that's not what I am looking for. It seems like you still don't understand Pantheon demographics. Why you guys think we want to play old games with retro graphics and 1999 features?
Without a LFG tool in the game, it will force players to be more sociable
How exactly do you force them to play the game and "socialize" instead of playing some other game...?
You don't. Antisocial gamers who enjoy soloing everything shouldn't be playing MMOs in the first place, single player RPGs are made specifically for them why on earth do they come in MMOs and whine about the games not being soloable? It's dumb and selfish beyond belief.
I don't mind there being antisocial people in the game, as long as the game doesn't reward them for it. A game should be comprised of all types of people, just like real life. Also like real life, many things should be less efficient, if not impossible, to do alone.
The issue is some people do not see the value in player interaction. They are fine with people just populating their group like NPCs to facilitate their progress. Whether people realize it or not, there is value in having to interact with people, even in the smallest matters.
Scambug said: why on earth do they come in MMOs and whine about the games not being soloable?
Because your premise "gamers who enjoy soloing everything shouldn't be playing MMOs" is false. Such line of thinking is "dumb and selfish beyond belief"....
Without a LFG tool in the game, it will force players to be more sociable
How exactly do you force them to play the game and "socialize" instead of playing some other game...?
You don't. Antisocial gamers who enjoy soloing everything shouldn't be playing MMOs in the first place, single player RPGs are made specifically for them why on earth do they come in MMOs and whine about the games not being soloable? It's dumb and selfish beyond belief.
If I were a sologamer or someone who just prefere my own company while inside MMORPGS, if I stumbled across someone saying "Be social or gtfo" My first thought wouldnt be "Oh what a nice guy, I think I will send valentine cards to this fellow and ask him to be best friends forever"
Its really really hard to turn social on demand, just like a laugh or a smile is hard to do on demand.
I understand you refere to the sologamers that complain about MMORPGS not being solofriendly though, specifically.
I just think its much easier to invite people to be social, if you start out with a traditional way of greeting. Middlefingers tend to work so poorly when trying to make people collaborative.
Without a LFG tool in the game, it will force players to be more sociable
How exactly do you force them to play the game and "socialize" instead of playing some other game...?
You don't. Antisocial gamers who enjoy soloing everything shouldn't be playing MMOs in the first place, single player RPGs are made specifically for them why on earth do they come in MMOs and whine about the games not being soloable? It's dumb and selfish beyond belief.
That's a bit judgemental but "ok".
Here's another scenario:
Some people like a living world. They might not be "shootin' the shit" with everybody and their mother but they enjoy a world that is dynamic with conversations and things happening around them because of what players are doing.
There are people out there who just enjoy listening. Heck one of my former girlfriends was like that. She loved being with people but rarely said anything unless she had something of substance to share.
There are different types of people out there who enjoy things and interpret things and react to things "differently" than other people. To say that they don't belong because they don't fit your definition of how things should be seems a bit, um, "selfish".
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Global chat works, just it is not the best game for those that want to get in, play, and get out........like EQ was compared to WoW
Anyone remember how chat used to work in original EQ1. Anyone here claim it was easy to read in a populated zone? The text box certainly scrolled down mighty fast sometimes ......
Without a LFG tool in the game, it will force players to be more sociable
How exactly do you force them to play the game and "socialize" instead of playing some other game...?
You don't. Antisocial gamers who enjoy soloing everything shouldn't be playing MMOs in the first place, single player RPGs are made specifically for them why on earth do they come in MMOs and whine about the games not being soloable? It's dumb and selfish beyond belief.
I don't recall anyone officially designating you as the authority over who should be playing MMOs or not in the first place.
Nor do I ever recall EQ or Ultima Online developers or marketeers saying the game was intended to force people to socialize.
Even the real world doesn't force people to socialize 90% of the time, so why should an MMORPG, which many believe is supposed to represent an immersive world, always do so?
Of course, as pointed out by many others, if you are representative of the type of player that will be playing Pantheon, that attitude isn't doing a very good job of making others want to socialize with Pantheon's type of player anyways. But hey, when one says "Pantheon is not the game for you" in that case, I agree there! That said, I'd be surprised if the people in charge of Pantheon wanted to take that up as their advertising slogan.
Regardless, even if (if) what you say applies to Pantheon, trying to force it on the entire MMORPG genre is indicative of a rather inflated ego.
I don't mind there being antisocial people in the game, as long as the game doesn't reward them for it. A game should be comprised of all types of people, just like real life. Also like real life, many things should be less efficient, if not impossible, to do alone.
The issue is some people do not see the value in player interaction. They are fine with people just populating their group like NPCs to facilitate their progress. Whether people realize it or not, there is value in having to interact with people, even in the smallest matters.
lowut? What happened to the lack of independence being one of the core components missing from modern mmo design?
The second thing I believe is important, is letting players find ways to do things for themselves. Just doing away with so many of the gamey systems that do things for you and letting players succeed independently is an important aspect of MMOs that has been done away with. Read more at http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/459745/no-group-finder/p6#Uup0hRDQpmcwtbQp.99
Should players be independent or punished for it?
You keep using the word player interaction but haven't said what qualifies that? Apparently using players like NPCs to fill their group is okay as long as you interact with them first. If you don't interact then it's not okay to treat them as disposable.
And the idea of punishing players for not interacting on your terms and conditions is laughable.
I think, in general terms, some folks would like to see MMORPGs, in the unique position to do so more ably than any other genre, reward the effort of cooperation and social symbiosis that we enjoy in our every day lives to some extent.
I like my friends, and I like smiting Orcs.. I'd love to smite Orcs with my friends, or make new friends while smiting Orcs.
Today's MMORPGs typically do not reward players for the effort of cooperating (any more than is dictated by class mechanics and auto-grouped, mostly instanced content), do not reward them in any meaningful or noticeable way, or (when they do reward players) don't require any purposeful social interactivity. The most common example of the last is LFD groups being able to complete dungeons without ever speaking a word to one another (or ever having a chance to as regeneration rates mean the fighting never stops).
Make no mistake: grouping requires more effort than soloing, because it very much involves variables both out of a single player's control and unknown to the player. Soloing involves elements out of the control of the player (mob attributes/mechanics), but he isn't going into a fight without knowing his general chances unless the game is so poorly designed that any given mob might be any given power level. And once he's experienced that content once, it will then always be known to the player. The grouper never knows who or how many folks are on that would like to group until he logs in and checks. Then, in some cases, he is forced to either solo or play something else. The soloer is never force to quit or play something else in the largest portion of modern MMORPGs, because he either never needs a group or, when he does, he can have the game auto-fill his group with players and take on content scaled so laughably easy that a 5-man NPC group could clear it without a single intelligent person sitting at a PC banging away at their keyboard and mouse. Being able to flag one's self as looking for a group for other players to see when they are also looking is not even in the same league as scaled, instanced content and auto-ports to any dungeon in the world (in some cases, chosen cafeteria-style by the player prior to submitting himself to the queue). That's done for a very clear purpose: to enable the soloer to complete group content without every truly interacting with other players.
As I said at the beginning of the post, MMORPGs are in a unique position in the industry to create a game that groupers can enjoy. Watching them actively avoid doing so is irritating for many folks, myself included. I don't mind providing content for the soloers, as it takes all types to make a world, but when you start watering the group content down and taking all of the actual interaction out of it to appease the solo types, we start to wonder why you would even want to make a massively multiplayer game in the first place. Just give us Skyrim 2 with 5-man MP instead and make more money for yourselves for less work.
Just give us Skyrim 2 with 5-man MP instead and make more money for yourselves for less work.
If one considers team-based games like MOBAs or FPSes (Overwatch, etc) and even survival games or hack-and-slashes for 5-man MP games or so, well...
Game companies are pretty much doing what you said. And for the same reason you said it (more money for less work, when you look at how profitable MMORPGs are these days and how much they cost to make...)
There's a reason why there are so few MMORPGs on the horizon now.
Yea, you want forced interaction? It doesn't get much more forced than a MOBA, really. In order to play the game AT ALL, you're FORCED to team up with others, and you're FORCED to play against another team. And if you don't coordinate with your team, you're going to lose. HORRIBLY.
Now that's some really forced interaction!
I imagine most people looking for a forced interactive experience that truly requires you to work with your team members like a well-oiled machine get their fix from MOBAs (and other team-based games). All of it without the subscription fees (or predatory cash shops if F2P) and annoying grind that MMORPGs have. You just jump into a MOBA, and it's 100% forced interactive hardcore team work all day, every day, with none of that annoying MMORPG baggage to get in the way (and you still get the same little rat pellet persistence too since most MOBAs give you little rewards for playing over time. Just without being pressured so much to get it just to be viable in the latest dungeon).
I don't mind there being antisocial people in the game, as long as the game doesn't reward them for it. A game should be comprised of all types of people, just like real life. Also like real life, many things should be less efficient, if not impossible, to do alone.
The issue is some people do not see the value in player interaction. They are fine with people just populating their group like NPCs to facilitate their progress. Whether people realize it or not, there is value in having to interact with people, even in the smallest matters.
lowut? What happened to the lack of independence being one of the core components missing from modern mmo design?
The second thing I believe is important, is letting players find ways to do things for themselves. Just doing away with so many of the gamey systems that do things for you and letting players succeed independently is an important aspect of MMOs that has been done away with. Read more at http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/459745/no-group-finder/p6#Uup0hRDQpmcwtbQp.99
Should players be independent or punished for it?
You keep using the word player interaction but haven't said what qualifies that? Apparently using players like NPCs to fill their group is okay as long as you interact with them first. If you don't interact then it's not okay to treat them as disposable.
And the idea of punishing players for not interacting on your terms and conditions is laughable.
You are trying too hard.
Asking for clarity and consistency in your arguments is trying too hard? You couch your arguments behind subjective vagaries. Something tells me you can't reconcile and answer it so you deflect instead.
No, I just won't be wasting my time explaining context and reading comprehension while you intentionally interpret the things I say to mean something different.
I have used this GoodGamer LFG Finder app before, it works pretty well for finding players for LFG/LFM groups. I recommend getting it to help find other LFG players.
If you are interested, this is their website. They have a free Android app with real time alerts and there is a Web portal as well for non Android users.
Apparently MOBAs are in an even bigger position to provide a game that groupers enjoy so no mmorpgs aren't in a unique position to satisfy that requirement. Any team based competitive game is in that position as well and some genres do it so much better in that regard than mmorpgs.
So this argument really comes down to the idea that some people feel everyone should interact on their terms in their way. Just like it didn't end up working back then that won't work now.
Actually you are correct IMO as I play LoL a ton (Mostly ARAM) because you are working as a team and have "roles" where if you don't know what you are doing you may detriment your team. Problem is the meta is pretty one dimensional and I also love in-depth MMORPs. That's why Pantheon seems so appealing as it combines the two. Playing titles where the challenging content is the end 5-10% is just boring.
Comments
Agree.
I think people are confusing LFG Finders (EQ + EQ2) with Dungeon Finders (WoW).
Having a tool that let you know if people are looking for a group is very helpful and it doesn't interfere with the social interaction which is still required to form a group (Asking the players to join).
WoW Dungeon finder on the other hand is very impersonal, it treats players like numbers and kill the social interaction from the get-go.
LFG Finders = Yes
Dungeon Finders = No
Not sure on what basis someone find your post funny. But maybe you were trying to be funny, I dont know.
The point you raise in this post very much matters.
People are different, come from different walks in life, different cultures, language barriers. All these things have been overcome in progressed games with a LFD and LFR.
I dont see how its a bad thing to actually make clever game designs, like these LFR and LFD tools, when it helps overcome the above challenges.
Especially considering, there is not a single thing standing in the way of someone making their own groups manually, if they still want to.
And comments can be made about the games you list. Wildstar was heavily promoted as a group centric raid focused hard core old fashioned game. (Did I hit all the tight buttons?). SWTOR is touted by those who play as a group friendly game. ESO is not an "mmo that promotes solo play" - its a solo game and a co-op game and a group centred game.
And games don't have to be solo centric. Have you tried Respawn's Titanfall? Its mandatory group only. Star Wars Battle Field? You can solo but the biggest complaint against the game is its almost group only. Key points however: expensive successful titles and group centric.
What developers have to do - easy to say very hard to do - is develop (and market) a game with a set of features that enough people will buy to allow them to recover their costs. However much they have spent.
I am not sure what other means Pantheon will have to help getting people together, but I think the reality is that more often than not players will be invited to places they have not been before (which is a point of exploring), and as such without a map will be forced to get extensive direction instructions and spend much time on travelling, not to mention take focus away from the actual game (the fun part).
In eq what would happen is you either didn't bother with newbies, or spend those 20 minutes sending out a guide to pick them up, later we got Call of Hero and even later Fellowship summons. All eq players have tried this scenario often, where a whole evening was "wasted" just trying to get a group together and getting everyone to location, all including getting gates, guiding, holding while waiting for tank, heal, cc, slows, handling replacements and maybe a wipe or two on toop. My point is maps solve some of these issues, and I have not heard any specifics about how to address the challenge of having players spend time playing the game more than spending time getting together to play the game.
The lfg tools planned I am happy about, they are the natural solution to the lfg typing madness you had to go through to collect 6 players, and not taking it too far with auto-grouping as is the problem in wow. Perfect example of mechanics evolution that when implemented correctly, improves an oldschool game without messing with its core values.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Pantheon is not in competition with those.
If you want a slow paced, co-op, social MMO, Pantheon is the ONLY game around.
Of course we can have endless discussions on how many people prefer a slow paced MMO over the modern fast paced ones, but we don't have a real answer for that, do we?
It's all suppositions either way.
I guess we have to wait and see.
All I am going to say is that many people will be surprised to know how many players actually enjoy this type of MMO.
It has to be immersive !
Which kinda goes to show just how... "niche" Pantheon will be. Just goes to show that most players indeed despise long travel times even back then when Call of Hero played such a big role in determining if one got a party slot or not.
It seems like you still don't understand Pantheon demographics.
Why you guys think we want to play old games with retro graphics and 1999 features?
The issue is some people do not see the value in player interaction. They are fine with people just populating their group like NPCs to facilitate their progress. Whether people realize it or not, there is value in having to interact with people, even in the smallest matters.
If I were a sologamer or someone who just prefere my own company while inside MMORPGS, if I stumbled across someone saying "Be social or gtfo" My first thought wouldnt be "Oh what a nice guy, I think I will send valentine cards to this fellow and ask him to be best friends forever"
Its really really hard to turn social on demand, just like a laugh or a smile is hard to do on demand.
I understand you refere to the sologamers that complain about MMORPGS not being solofriendly though, specifically.
I just think its much easier to invite people to be social, if you start out with a traditional way of greeting.
Middlefingers tend to work so poorly when trying to make people collaborative.
Here's another scenario:
Some people like a living world. They might not be "shootin' the shit" with everybody and their mother but they enjoy a world that is dynamic with conversations and things happening around them because of what players are doing.
There are people out there who just enjoy listening. Heck one of my former girlfriends was like that. She loved being with people but rarely said anything unless she had something of substance to share.
There are different types of people out there who enjoy things and interpret things and react to things "differently" than other people. To say that they don't belong because they don't fit your definition of how things should be seems a bit, um, "selfish".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
Anyone here claim it was easy to read in a populated zone?
The text box certainly scrolled down mighty fast sometimes ......
Nor do I ever recall EQ or Ultima Online developers or marketeers saying the game was intended to force people to socialize.
Even the real world doesn't force people to socialize 90% of the time, so why should an MMORPG, which many believe is supposed to represent an immersive world, always do so?
Of course, as pointed out by many others, if you are representative of the type of player that will be playing Pantheon, that attitude isn't doing a very good job of making others want to socialize with Pantheon's type of player anyways. But hey, when one says "Pantheon is not the game for you" in that case, I agree there! That said, I'd be surprised if the people in charge of Pantheon wanted to take that up as their advertising slogan.
Regardless, even if (if) what you say applies to Pantheon, trying to force it on the entire MMORPG genre is indicative of a rather inflated ego.
I like my friends, and I like smiting Orcs.. I'd love to smite Orcs with my friends, or make new friends while smiting Orcs.
Today's MMORPGs typically do not reward players for the effort of cooperating (any more than is dictated by class mechanics and auto-grouped, mostly instanced content), do not reward them in any meaningful or noticeable way, or (when they do reward players) don't require any purposeful social interactivity. The most common example of the last is LFD groups being able to complete dungeons without ever speaking a word to one another (or ever having a chance to as regeneration rates mean the fighting never stops).
Make no mistake: grouping requires more effort than soloing, because it very much involves variables both out of a single player's control and unknown to the player. Soloing involves elements out of the control of the player (mob attributes/mechanics), but he isn't going into a fight without knowing his general chances unless the game is so poorly designed that any given mob might be any given power level. And once he's experienced that content once, it will then always be known to the player. The grouper never knows who or how many folks are on that would like to group until he logs in and checks. Then, in some cases, he is forced to either solo or play something else. The soloer is never force to quit or play something else in the largest portion of modern MMORPGs, because he either never needs a group or, when he does, he can have the game auto-fill his group with players and take on content scaled so laughably easy that a 5-man NPC group could clear it without a single intelligent person sitting at a PC banging away at their keyboard and mouse. Being able to flag one's self as looking for a group for other players to see when they are also looking is not even in the same league as scaled, instanced content and auto-ports to any dungeon in the world (in some cases, chosen cafeteria-style by the player prior to submitting himself to the queue). That's done for a very clear purpose: to enable the soloer to complete group content without every truly interacting with other players.
As I said at the beginning of the post, MMORPGs are in a unique position in the industry to create a game that groupers can enjoy. Watching them actively avoid doing so is irritating for many folks, myself included. I don't mind providing content for the soloers, as it takes all types to make a world, but when you start watering the group content down and taking all of the actual interaction out of it to appease the solo types, we start to wonder why you would even want to make a massively multiplayer game in the first place. Just give us Skyrim 2 with 5-man MP instead and make more money for yourselves for less work.
Game companies are pretty much doing what you said. And for the same reason you said it (more money for less work, when you look at how profitable MMORPGs are these days and how much they cost to make...)
There's a reason why there are so few MMORPGs on the horizon now.
Now that's some really forced interaction!
I imagine most people looking for a forced interactive experience that truly requires you to work with your team members like a well-oiled machine get their fix from MOBAs (and other team-based games). All of it without the subscription fees (or predatory cash shops if F2P) and annoying grind that MMORPGs have. You just jump into a MOBA, and it's 100% forced interactive hardcore team work all day, every day, with none of that annoying MMORPG baggage to get in the way (and you still get the same little rat pellet persistence too since most MOBAs give you little rewards for playing over time. Just without being pressured so much to get it just to be viable in the latest dungeon).
I have used this GoodGamer LFG Finder app before, it works pretty well for finding players for LFG/LFM groups. I recommend getting it to help find other LFG players.
If you are interested, this is their website. They have a free Android app with real time alerts and there is a Web portal as well for non Android users.
Website for more info:
https://jpstudiosonline.com
LFG Web portal:
https://jpstudiosonline.com/siteapps/gg/
Sorrowsnow77 Blog
Actually you are correct IMO as I play LoL a ton (Mostly ARAM) because you are working as a team and have "roles" where if you don't know what you are doing you may detriment your team. Problem is the meta is pretty one dimensional and I also love in-depth MMORPs. That's why Pantheon seems so appealing as it combines the two. Playing titles where the challenging content is the end 5-10% is just boring.