Edit: more rants added.
Two of the main reasons that the new LFG system still fails are instance ownership rules and lack of incentive.
Instance ownership rules are still totally borked.
It’s wonderful, you’ve found a group for doing that instance you wanted to do and now you group is under way. Its ok that it took 5-10 minutes to find that one last group member. Everything is going great until ten minutes in to the dungeon when you wipe once and then someone’s fish catches on fire and they have to leave the group. Turns out, they were the one who opened the instance. Suddenly you have a loading screen and BAM you’re no longer in the instance and all your progress is lost. Your will to continue looking for a group is totally sapped and now you just say screw it and go do something else. Wouldn’t it be grand if this didn’t happen? What if instance ownership could be passed off instead of just kicking everyone out.? The person who opened the instance isn’t solely responsible for the progress the GROUP has made.
There is no incentive to create or join groups for instances that are “hard” or for instances that “take too long.”
People get on the fanboy train when you mention that big MMO from blizzard, but WoW really did get some things right. When there is a role that isn’t being filled in the LFG queue, they create incentive by giving an extra reward for that role. Here in GW2 you could add an incentive, an extra personal chest at the end of the dungeon, for people who use the LFG system to create or join groups for instance paths that aren’t usually done. Also, make a harsh penalty for people who leave a group before a reasonable amount of time has elapsed.
The LFG tool is great, but I feel its too little and too late and that there is huge room for improvement. Thank you for starting the ball rolling on this, but please continue to improve it along with also improving the current instance/dungeon system.
On a side note, as has been the complaint of many a people with cruddy internet connections across the world, it would also be great to make a 5 minute window in which you could re-connect and not lose instance progress for story missions (and SAB trib mode).
Edit: Story modes and vote kicks.
While we’re at the failures of the instance/dungeon system, we should probably also address story modes and personal reward levels. I have 10 characters on my account. Am I expected to sit through story mode 10 times in order to unlock explore modes on all my characters. And if that wasn’t bad enough do i have to suffer through 30+ levels of fractals PER CHARACTER in order to use my other characters in my 38 or 48 daily fractals? Pretty sure I’m not going to do 10 level 48 dailys every day as that would take roughly 15-20 hours to do so why not let my whole account enjoy the ability to enter the same dungeons and fractals as my most progressed character?
The group kick system is also quite flawed. As one commenter said, while in a dungeon or instance there really should be modified rules to this system. It really should be a group vote and not just a seconded motion to kick. There are 2 other people in the group who never had a say in it. This becomes most apparent in places like Jade Maw. On one occasion, I was slogging through fractals with a terrible group for two hours and when we finally got to Jade Maw, all I wanted to do was skip the trash and get the instance over with when two members of the group, who were from the same guild, just decided to kick me instead. The ability of two players to screw over another player, or indeed the rest of the group is just insane and a foolish way to have things set up. Not to mention those several occasions where I’ve had the instance opener DC for a bit and 2 people decide to vote kick him. WOOSH 2 hours down the drain.
Probably more dungeon/instance rants to come. I’ll just update the post when they come to me.
(edited by Arlien.9140)