Dungeon finder toolFollow

If you're carrying one person, maybe. 2-3 PUGs with an otherwise seasoned group isn't as realistic.

I haven't heard anything about them limiting the use to only content intended for smaller parties. I'm pretty sure it's for all dungeon content in the game. Yoshi has said that he will not be making things easy right off the bat. He will makes things fairly tough so that we can all enjoy the challenge and then he'll make an easy mode later on after several (6 i think) months.I'd imagine it'll be very similar to how they made the dungeons available to smaller parties later on after it's been available for awhile.

It really feels like individual servers for online gaming may become one of those things we talk about as "back in my day ... " type elements. Regardless of our opinion on it, more and more games are moving to seamless worlds joined together through background balancing.

I don't understand why you'd prefer they limit a looking for group/dungeon tool to midway through the game only.

What do you mean by additional reward? Are you talking about the Call to Arms feature that WoW implemented? If you are, that was to combat a very specific issue and for the most part, it worked well. What was happening was queue times were atrocious because fewer people are willing to take on the leadership responsibility for a dungeon and play as a tank. To some extent this applied to healers as well, but tanks are definitely the most sought after (not unlike XI was....) As a result, folks who played as a damage dealer would have very long queue times and for some of those people whose only options WERE to play in the damage role, it detracted from the overall experience.

So Blizzard looked at the problem and came up with a solution, in the call to arms feature. The tool looks at the queues, and based on what role is most needed it will offer an additional reward for players queuing as that role. The rewards aren't anything grand, just some mounts and potions and stuff, but it was enough to entice folks who otherwise would have just eaten the queue time to mindlessly mash the pew pew buttons, into switching over to that arms or blood or prot spec instead and lowering those queue times for everyone else. In short, everyone wins.

A dungeon finder tool isn't the end of the world. I promise. Other games have used it to great success.

1) I would hope that it ports you.
In other MMOs I've played (not just WoW), I've always used the Dungeon Finder not only when I'm in town, but often times when I'm out and about questing and doing whatever. That's part of why it's amazing, you can access it anywhere, stop what you're doing, do a dungeon and potentially get good gear, and then get back to farming puppy pelts (or whatever have you). This can be a very handy thing for someone that hasn't found a good LS yet.

2) Depending on the difficulty of said "Raid" - What would happen if your white mage had to take off because it was his night to make fish tacos? Being able to open the finder to find a quick healer is always better than packing up and going home. But then again, the next white mage will always be a wild card.

3) Meh. I could care less if there's a reward or not.

But all in all, I think it's a good system. Crossing servers should only happen if population issues arise, but not at first, no.

Honestly, I don't think it's purposes should stop there. I think it could be useful for grouping up for various situations you need multiple people for, not necessarily dungeons. If I could've used a system similar to this for finding groups hunting papers for AF3, I would've been pleased. It takes the work out of shouting for groups and certain waiting.

The biggest negative I saw in the cross-server LFG tool in Rift: Some people saw it as an opportunity at being a total loot ninja or some such. I think as more time goes by and cross-server matching becomes the norm, issues like this will definitely die down. Like someone above said it's going to be less about the "world" you're on and more about a total across the board experience. Add in social media playing a heavier hand in MMO's and it's going to be even harder for some hard core dbag to try to "steal" lootz and run back "home".

The biggest positive: I really liked that I could be out in the world doing whatever I wanted (harvesting/achievements/etc) and be immediately transported to my PUG from the LFG tool. In FFXI I always found myself running from halfway around the world to meet up with my group while fishing. Then, by the time you get there, someone has to be replaced in the next 30 minutes because you just wasted an hour trying to get there. The musical chairs start all over after that and you find yourself spending way to much time standing around waiting for a balanced party.





Edited, Feb 28th 2013 6:14am by LebargeX

Well, the word "ninja" is sometimes misused. Maybe you mean "wh*re"?

Two warriors are in a party, one is doing DPS and on is the tank. DPS piece drops. Both warriors can roll on it, and the tank wins the roll for his off spec. Does it suck that the DPS warrior needed it and the tank was a ****? Yes.

Is it "ninjaing" an item? No, it's really not.

Truly ninjaing an item isn't rolling need on an item your class is allowed to need on in a random dungeon, although we can all agree it's the "nice" thing to do to let that DPS warrior have the DPS piece. Ninjaing was something that happened in games like XI where everything dropped to the treasure pool, and you told Sephiroth he could lot on the Ridill and everyone else should pass, but Cloud lotted too and laughed as his roll went higher and he got the drop. Hope you put in the chat log that it was slated for Seph, or the GM won't do jack. Cloud doesn't care, because he just hops server and changes his name. If you're lucky, a thread will open on BG forums in the player warning section and dramafest will ensue, but not always. (more's the pity, I wasted many a lunch hour on that forum alone).

Anyway, I digress. That doesn't happen at the raid level in Rift (and wow\etc) because there is a setting called Master Looter, where the leader or the chosen Quartermaster recieves all the loot, and can distribute it to the person in the raid who was slated to get that item. Hopefully that will happen here as well, so we can leave that nonsense behind.

The issue with that, if I understand what you're saying, is that people would gear up too quickly.

No seriously.. in leveling content it wouldn't matter so much. But at endgame it absolutely would. You need people to be doing this content for a system like the duty finder to work, otherwise queue times quickly balloon into the absurd as people get the gear they want and stop doing it.



You don't know what you're talking about here. Your statements only make any sense at all if you consider gear to be the determining factor in whether a player is skilled or not; which is a patently absurd thing to say.

Let's take a trip to statistics land~

In the previous tier of WoW raiding (Tier 13, Dragon Soul):
62,648 guilds were documented on wowprogress as having participated minimally in raiding, or roughly 800,000 players give or take.
Of those, 1,300 guilds never killed the second boss of the instance on normal difficulty.
And when we get to the top end (the guilds that cleared the entire instance on heroic difficulty), we find that only 14,126 guilds (or roughly 200,000 players) killed the final boss on heroic.

So what happened? If the difference between casual and heroic is nothing, where did those other 600,000 players go? Could it be that, in fact, there's quite a large difference in what players are able to accomplish? That perhaps, even having gear from LFR (which existed in that tier) isn't enough to propel someone to the top, far beyond their actual level of skill?

Hell, let's go even further and look at the Glory meta achievement which, if you're unfamiliar, requires you to perform strange tasks while defeating all these bosses. It looks like 6,398 guilds got that, or roughly 10% of all tracked guilds.

I realize that WoW hurt you in a fundamental way when the designers realized they were spending a ton of time on something only a tiny handful of people would ever see. But if your entire thesis is that they've removed the distinction between casual players and top-end raiders, you are absolutely wrong.

Could be, if so I misunderstood him. I was confused by:



Which made it sound as though you'd be pre-selecting the loot you wanted and then you'd have a higher chance to get that as opposed to getting something less desirable.

My understanding for what WoW is planning is allowing you to sort of alter your loot table to get gear for another spec *instead* of your current spec. The odds would be the same, you'd just be getting loot as though you were a different spec.

Edited, Feb 28th 2013 11:23am by Callinon

The way I understand Kachi's idea is this:

Party of 8: Tank, Healer, Buffer, 4x DD, Caster.

When entering the instance, players pull up a list of the loot pool and choose:
Tank - Shield
Healer - Cloak
Buffer - Hat
DD1 - Spear
DD2 - Spear
DD3 - Gloves
DD4 - Spear
Caster - Staff

They go through the raid and kill the boss and the shield, spear, and a crystal drop. Tank is the only one who picked the shield, so he gets it. 3 DD's chose the spear, so the game rolls on each to see who gets it. Crystal is dropped randomly to anyone in the party. This way you don't have a BLM thinking about maybe lvling WAR, then seeing Ridill drop and going "OMG MINE I was thinking of lvling WAR!"

"I lotted for my offset."

Well, I can't ever imagine you'd need an ideal setup for random instance, but SE's made me scratch my head often in the past. Furthermore, if your LS or team is making you take a certain class to whatever it is that you're doing, they should offer you priority or at least a chance to roll. In the latter case, however, a master-looter system would be best.But that brings me to another point; if your guild is making you go to raids and not letting you loot on stuff that you can use, maybe you need to find a new guild.

Now, as far as a need/greed system with randoms is concerned, if it's a queue system, there should be nothing holding you back from queuing from the class that you want gear for. Even in WoW, most people are pretty cool about letting you loot for your OS, but the game blocks you from needing any gear that's useless to your class. I could only assume that SE is smart enough to develop a system that does the same.