Guild Wars 2

I find it impossible to assemble a group yo do any story modes. Noone wants to do the same dungeons that im interested in.

How can you miss this vital feature?

Yuri.5368:

How can you miss this vital feature?

Uh, the feature is not vital, in fact it’s a scourge on the MMO landscape.

Ask in chat, join a guild, be social. You may not get to do them at the exact instant you wish, but keep your ear to the ground and you’ll find a group.

As Bsquared has said, the dungeon finder feature is one of the things that destroyed the social aspect of most mmos for many of us. It promotes selfishness and instant gratification, something i never, ever want to see in guild wars 2.

The harder it is to find a group, the better you can bond and make friendships with those that you will eventually group with

WoW’s dungeon finder ruined the game’s dungeons because of antisocial behavior based on the need to compete for loot rolls coupled with the relative anonymity granted by the huge player pool and the way the devs started creating dungeons to cater to the unskilled pugs that attempted them. GW2 doesn’t have the loot problem and as long as ANet is able to separate dungeon design from the method used to find a group it won’t impact future dungeon design.

I’d like a basic dungeon finder.

a “group finder” would be nice.

as Mars pointed out, GW2 can side-step the whole “loot issue”.

I’d like to point out that any “dumbing down” was performed on NEW CONTENT. The RDF did not dumb down the older dungeons. Case in point: BRD (best dungeon in that game, iyam).

a WELL DESIGNED “group finder” would be most welcome.

I think this game’s recent release has proven that you don’t need a group finder to destroy the social aspect of an mmo. It’s already a solo game disguised as an mmo. If you’re going to have instanced content then you should probably have a group tool.

Be like DDO, which being 100% instanced content it is served flawlessly by a group tool which gives the leader full control over group composition, not some kitten auto queue. Theres plenty of time to be social as the group forms and it’s entirely optional.

I hope they never make a DF for GW2 for the reasons already pointed in this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Dungeon-Queues
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Dungeon-Finder-alternative-Improved-LFG-idea
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/ATT-DEV-S-dungeon-finder-needed

Related threads if anyone was looking for more discussion on the topic.

I have trouble believing that finding a dungeon group for story modes is “impossible” in any way. I would agree that it is more difficult, but a little effort to reach out and accomplish something is really what keeps an MMO from becoming stale for me.

I am opposed to a WoW style dungeon finder and agree with the points people have made against it. I would love to see a social interface for finding groups (much like matchmaking for PvP), but something as simple as a LFG channel/filter might make things run smoother.

I dont care about WoW but I feel this game needs some sort of dungeon browser.

Every map Im in has people map jumping spamming chat trying to find a group. Thats costing silver them to jump all over the place like that. It also can take hours to get a group now…

I was around from the beginning of wow and I watched how the implementation of dungeon finder tools destroyed social and moral aspects of the game.

First it was dungeon stones and those were pretty good, run to the instance click on the stone outside it puts you in an Lfg with everyone else that ran and touched the stone so you could assemble a group from that pool.

Then those turned into summoning stones, this is where trouble started. After a few weeks of the change everyone asked to be summoned instead of going to the instance, which was a problem since you needed at least 2 people to use the summon. Thus you stood for 10 minutes alone by the stone telling your party members at least one if them has to come to summon. 2 out of 3 times someone left cause it was taking too long and the didn’t feel like running.

Then we got global LFG chat, oh how horrible spamfest/racial name calling that turned into in mere weeks.

Then came the saviour dungeon tool. Now one of the largest problems in wow would not exist in gw2 that is long queue times for dps. But the second problem and the worst would. That is the zero tolerance policy that overtook dungeons. 1 wipe was 1 too many. One mistake, or wrong pull or anything deviating from a smooth run was an instant execution on your group. People would rather leave and jump back into queue than “rack up repair bills with a bunch of noobs”

Given the difficulty that inexperienced groups can have in dungeons there would be an aweful lot of that and overall it would degrade the attitude of the community.

I also don’t agree that a World of Warcraft dungeon finder should be implemented. Instead, they should create a Party Search system similar to its predecessor, where you can submit a request to look for a party or as a party advertise for more players. Players can then filter through this list and select the party of their choice. Preferably, this system would incorporate all servers.

I really hate the fact that there are servers though. They should have kept the district system from Guild Wars. It makes sense as to why though, to allow WvW to function correctly.

A LFG system wouldnt ruin socialization and make people selffish.

This game has loot for all and everyone gets their share based on luck.

If you think an LFG system is going to cause people to be uncooperative or socially negative, then guess what theyre kitten-holes. When i join a group i usually like to say hi cuz im happy other people want to run this dungeon. Im not thinking about the LFG system and matching me with “zomg oh noes, Randoms!”

People will choose to be social or anti-social, cooperative or uncooperative, nice or straight up mean, With or Without a LFG system.

The LFG system would just help streamline the process to aquire a group for a dungeon. Allowing a player let says to run his Orichalcum rounds around Frostgorge Sound and Cursed Shore while looking for a group at the same time.

How exactly is this going to ruin the social aspect of this game, someone please give me a real example lol?

Well, I, like many others, don’t have time to sit in town for ages forming a group of soon to be BFF’s. I would much rather have the old “p” function from GW1 that brought up a menu that had party listings and what they were looking for people for. It worked, and it eliminated, for the most part, the “GLF/LFG” spam that is the real scourge of socialization.

LFG systems works, they do not ruin communities, WoW’s LFG system failed because the dungeon, badge & loot-system failed.

Helping players form groups will never be bad.

People talk about LFG tool ruining the games social aspects, granting I’ve only ran one dungeon once so far in GW 2 but where is the social aspects that you are talking about?

I am member of 4 guilds ATM but there’s not much talk going on there besides sometimes when ppl look for explore parties etc. In the Map chat at least from level 1-50 theres not that much talk either other then occassionally a “event near X waypoint” other then that I haven’t seen this huge social thing you are talking about.
Even in the main cities there isn’t very much talk going on, so where is the talk you are talking about? :P

I would like a group finding tool but not WoW’s type of LFG tool but just something where you could add a note to yourself that said “I’m interested of doing this add me for fun and giggles”

Wizardauz.3761:

A LFG system wouldnt ruin socialization and make people selffish.

This game has loot for all and everyone gets their share based on luck.

If you think an LFG system is going to cause people to be uncooperative or socially negative, then guess what theyre kitten-holes. When i join a group i usually like to say hi cuz im happy other people want to run this dungeon. Im not thinking about the LFG system and matching me with “zomg oh noes, Randoms!”

People will choose to be social or anti-social, cooperative or uncooperative, nice or straight up mean, With or Without a LFG system.

The LFG system would just help streamline the process to aquire a group for a dungeon. Allowing a player let says to run his Orichalcum rounds around Frostgorge Sound and Cursed Shore while looking for a group at the same time.

How exactly is this going to ruin the social aspect of this game, someone please give me a real example lol?

When getting a group becomes as easy as pressing a button and waiting 30 seconds the value of that group is destroyed because there’s another group always waiting for you. When groups are harder to come by and you have to put in the effort to make them you have more invested in it and want it to succeed.

I get that you may feel that this would change nothing for you but as wow showed by example millions of people feel the way I described. If you never played wow and haven’t seen 3/5 people instantly leave the group when someone isn’t careful and pulls an extra pack then you won’t fully understand how little value wow has made dungeon groups with their Lfg tool.

Swagman.9013:

Wizardauz.3761:

A LFG system wouldnt ruin socialization and make people selffish.

This game has loot for all and everyone gets their share based on luck.

If you think an LFG system is going to cause people to be uncooperative or socially negative, then guess what theyre kitten-holes. When i join a group i usually like to say hi cuz im happy other people want to run this dungeon. Im not thinking about the LFG system and matching me with “zomg oh noes, Randoms!”

People will choose to be social or anti-social, cooperative or uncooperative, nice or straight up mean, With or Without a LFG system.

The LFG system would just help streamline the process to aquire a group for a dungeon. Allowing a player let says to run his Orichalcum rounds around Frostgorge Sound and Cursed Shore while looking for a group at the same time.

How exactly is this going to ruin the social aspect of this game, someone please give me a real example lol?

When getting a group becomes as easy as pressing a button and waiting 30 seconds the value of that group is destroyed because there’s another group always waiting for you. When groups are harder to come by and you have to put in the effort to make them you have more invested in it and want it to succeed.

I get that you may feel that this would change nothing for you but as wow showed by example millions of people feel the way I described. If you never played wow and haven’t seen 3/5 people instantly leave the group when someone isn’t careful and pulls an extra pack then you won’t fully understand how little value wow has made dungeon groups with their Lfg tool.

But I don’t understand the difference in this argument:

1.) Have a LFG tool where you add yourself to the queue while doing other things

2.) Spam and teleport around different Maps for hours until you find a group.

I just don’t see the positive with having to spam for a group. Spamming the same thing like “LFG AC 3/4” or whatever how is that being social?

I think if you want a game to be social you have to encourage that and one way is to make certain aspects of hte game required to be achieved by getting a helping hand like quests or crafting or something else.

I just fail to understand how spamming for a group in the Map chat is better then queing while going on with your business and also save everyone who reads the chat from your spam.

Recent MMORPGs that I have played (SWTOR was the most recent) have been pretty lacky on the social part but what I found was the reason for that in those games was because they were setup mainly as single player games thus ppl didn’t interact with each other because they were too busy leveling and doing their own thing and isn’t that a good change?

I hated the old days where u had to find a group for anything, the chat was cluster spammed with LFGs, Trades, LFG Crafting, Trolling and so on. I do actually enjoy that MMorpgs is turning into a more quiet platform. If you want the social aspects then join or form a guild and interact with ppl there but it’s nice to not being forced going into Ogrimmar and see 50000000000000 chat bubbles and chat text messages popping around everywhere on my screen.

I find it quite funny that the people against dungeon finders are those that believe it would “destroy” the “social” aspect of Guild Wars 2. The irony being is that there really is no true “social” aspect to the game. Sure, there are the group events and all that good stuff, but how much of that actually results in some sort of conversation getting started or actual parties being formed?

Guild Wars 2 is perhaps one of the most anti-social MMOs I’ve ever played. Maybe that stems from the fact that Guild Wars 1 was basically a single player game played online so that’s how the community is but to be honest: aside from a few people I’ve come across during a couple of dungeon runs everyone in this game is completely introverted.

Now I agree that there needs to be some sort of real LFG system for dungeons and the likes. Whether that be a finder or some server wide lobby doesn’t matter. It has become extremly difficult to find people doing story dungeons. I remember it took me four days to find a group running AC Story – I had actually done all three AC Explorer paths before I found a group for AC Story.

There is no real reason why this should be. I shouldn’t need to go through such effort to find a group in this day of age. I shouldn’t be required to join a guild if I don’t want to. I also shouldn’t have to read what is essentially “LFG spam” or have to write “LFG spam” myself.

Some sort of accessibility option is needed. Not all of us have the time to spend 24/7 online on the off chance that a group is actually running story mode.

GuardianHope.8145:

Guild Wars 2 is perhaps one of the most anti-social MMOs I’ve ever played.

I believe in this statement. I just want to point out that I have nothing against ppl who want their game to stay social but the thing is that there is no social activity whatsoever going on in GW 2 outside of guilds.

A LFG tool won’t affect guilds but will make the dungeon runners happy while the social addicts can talk to their guild mates. It was the same in GW 1, if you wanted to talk then you had to join a guild.

I think this is the natural evolution of the MMORPG genre; new games is not as challenging as the old school games.
The new games is also much more accesible and tuned so that everyone even if you only play 20 minutes a day can enjoy it and therefor I conclude that the need for social interaction has become much smaller because you n o longer have to run dungeons or being in one of the top 5 guilds to win at the game.

GuardianHope.8145:

I find it quite funny that the people against dungeon finders are those that believe it would “destroy” the “social” aspect of Guild Wars 2. The irony being is that there really is no true “social” aspect to the game. Sure, there are the group events and all that good stuff, but how much of that actually results in some sort of conversation getting started or actual parties being formed?

Your logic is flawed here. You talk about LFG in dungeons and then cite DE as an example. I don’t have many social interactions during DE too, but in dungeons it’s been a completely different beast. Every dungeon I’ve been there’s been a lot of chatting before, during and after it’s done.

As it has been pointed out, when you find groups too easily you’ll also discard them too easily.

Calavera.1086:

As it has been pointed out, when you find groups too easily you’ll also discard them too easily.

Because there is more players in todays MMORPGS then we had back in the 90s. When you had a player base of 50k-75k people you HAD to know ppl, and also you HAD to know the correct people or you would not get anywhere any soon.

Now there is so many players in the games that you don’t have the same need for social interaction. Look at our society becuase the same trends are showing there. We don’t communicate as much as we used to since communication have become so much more easier and more accessible by finding things for free on the internet and cell phones.

The influx of MMORPG players have affected everything from how crafting profits works to the game design as whole. I also remember the barrens chat in WoW but that was a long time ago and even in games as AO I remember that the social aspects was hard to get involved with unless you knew the correct people and IMO that was a terrible way to design a MMORPG; you had to know the correct ppl to anything but getting to know them was hard because you had to build rep and fame as a player first.

That is my opinion; a more social game is not always a positive thing since a big fraction of that social part will be trolling and flaming and namecalling which will force u to hire mods to mdoerate the chat and I don’t think that’s such a good thing either.

It’s not about socializing in the aspect of what is being typed out its antisocial in the regards that people develop zero patience for people. Mistakes become unacceptable. Instead of trying to teach people how to do a fight properly it becomes easier to wait for the next batch and hope its better. That is what I mean by antisocial, it’s not the content of what is being typed its the aversion to contact with people that will be deemed unacceptable by people’s standards.

That is the antisocial behavior I speak of. It’s the exact thing that happened in wow. When you have easy access to a pool of hundreds of thousands of players they all become less valuable and the slightest misstep or flaw by someone is seen as a easier fix to replace them rather than help them learn what they did wrong. Cause why bother spending anytime teaching when there’s 10,000 people waiting in line behind that guy.

I know you might say, we’ll I wouldn’t do that, but once again as wow proved by example most people do.

And to clarify this is about a wow style dungeon finder. I’m not against Lfg tools but not one that does all the work for you.

How would mistakes become less unacceptable without a dungeon finder lol? Look at League of Legends, do you think ppl would hate less on you if there was no matchmaking?

There will always be haters and there was just as much haters in WoW before the LFG as it was after. Heck, a lot of achieving guild were know for their elitist jerk attitude towards players who were new or didn’t play their class flawlessy in dungeons.

That’s why you join a guild that’s not like that. It has nothing to do with having or not having a LFG finder but how the internet works.

In the real life if you call someone a kitten then he prob will punch you in the face but when you are behind your computer you are safe from lashbacks and this combined with player rules being too soft promotes bad behavior.

I don’t think it’s fair blaming bad behavior on the LFG finder. If you don’t want to use it, then don’t I don’t get hte problem with you ppl? Why is it always have/not have why can’t we have both? If ppl want LFG then let them have that as a suggestion and we’ll see what ArenaNet thinks of the idea.

The new MMORPG model = antisocial because every new MMORPG is basically a single player with a multiplayer feature added on. GW 2 is this just as much as SWTOR is and I believe that this is a good evolution.

If you want the old formula then there is WoW, EQ, EQ2, UO, DDO and so on for you to play but if you want to play a game that doesn’t forces you to interact with other players to have fun then a LFG tool can be a helpful tool in your enjoyment.

- If ppl want to be social then the game should provide platforms for ppl to be social.

- If ppl want a LFG tool then the same game maybe should have one.

- If ppl want the game to be easy and others want it to be hard then introduce a hard mode.

A game can aim to appease as many as possible and in general MMORPG use to be the kind of game genre that tries this.

all of you opposed to the idea of a group finder all bring up “socialization” and interaction with other players.. i want to be on your server, i am in a 150+ member guild and no one talks. in map chat in every map, no one talks. if you type in LFG blahblah no one ever replys. the most chat ever going on is gold spammers. A LFG list, where you apply to “LFG” would be efficient. and whoever is relating this to WoW, there is no relation a dungeon finder in gw2 would be completely different and actually make sense. there are no tanks and no healers(designated) meaning everyone would find groups quickly and not wait the 45 minutes+(as a dps in wow) which WE all wait for any sort of group to happen in gw2.

Also whoever says the dungeon finder ruined all morality and social aspects of wow you are wrong. everybody loved it except DPS classes, YOU may have been that person who ruined the group and got kicked which is why you didnt like it.

If anything a gw2 “LFG mechanism” would greatly improve the “morality and socialism” of the game. meeting new players from other servers would be great and a much better time than chilling with event farming bots all day.

i see virtually 0 downsides to having an LFG tool and would love to see one in-game.

If ANet is unsure, they can do a generalized in-game poll on who’s for and who’s against it (with an optional reason field either way).

Also to add to what I wrote; I played SWTOR for a long time and when doing dungeons and esp after the LFG tool was implemented I always tanked with my Vanguard.
There was never, and I repeat never any instances where I had a person in my team that were displaying negative behavior against the rest of the team and I ran several dungeons a day on that toon all day.

Instead of negative behavior people excused themselves when they were doing mistakes and they were always very polite and listened to me (the tank). They were also always open to suggestions to improve our dungeon run.

Sadly there is very little room for being social in a dungeon run because ppl are often very focused at what they are doing with their toons. People that are not used to play MMORPGs is even more focused because they might be nervous because they don’t want to make a wrong move.

Personally I just can’t play a GW 2 dungeon and type at the same time because then I will miss my support abilities, miss dodging incoming attacks, miss interrupting the bosses/mobs and miss buffing/healing my team members.

Talking is just impossible to do for me while we are fighting and in a lot of dungeons in MMORPGs you are almost always fighting constantly more or less the biggest exception being WoW where there is a lot of prepping going on in dungeons.

Talking also removes immersion for some players therefor I understand if some ppl don’t want to be social because they are currently in the moment enjoying what is happening in the game.
PPl should be able to enjoy the game as they see fit and if they want a LFG finder then I’m all for it.

The more options the better whether it’s game mechanics related or cosmetic, additions mostly adds more enjoyment for more ppl and enjoyment leads to a healthier happier community and in turn more social interaction. Forcing ppl to communicate won’t lead to a happy community however giving the people the tools neccessary and making the game fun to interact through will.

Calavera.1086:

GuardianHope.8145:

I find it quite funny that the people against dungeon finders are those that believe it would “destroy” the “social” aspect of Guild Wars 2. The irony being is that there really is no true “social” aspect to the game. Sure, there are the group events and all that good stuff, but how much of that actually results in some sort of conversation getting started or actual parties being formed?

Your logic is flawed here. You talk about LFG in dungeons and then cite DE as an example. I don’t have many social interactions during DE too, but in dungeons it’s been a completely different beast. Every dungeon I’ve been there’s been a lot of chatting before, during and after it’s done.

As it has been pointed out, when you find groups too easily you’ll also discard them too easily.

See I have had the opposite experience with dungeons, No one talks, the one group that did, was a group with 4 people who were in the same guild and were speaking Korean to one another (I dont speak it). Heck Ive done explorable, my first time, people rarely stop to explain things. We need to face it, server communities dont exist anymore, they exist in guilds and other small groups. This has happened because MMOs became mass market and have tons of widely varied people playing. Maybe in smaller niche games like Darkfall or Mortal might have good communities, but I havent seen it, myself, in a MMO in a LONG time.

I will say in TSW, it was very very easy to get a group, because 1) a single area connected the entire world and all top tier dungeons had entrances in this area, so everyone knew that was the place to get a group, and 2) chat was cross server and you could easily teleport to your group mates server. So you had the entire game population as a pool for grouping.

Here I have to check LA, port over to where the dungeon is to check that place for grouping, post back to mists and then to LA (to avoid fees)

I have also noticed a significant drop off in the people doing story modes, Ive done most of em, but I’m lacking CoE and Arah. I just worry for the future players who might want to see the story, but have an almost impossible time to get a group together for it.

Calavera.1086:

GuardianHope.8145:

I find it quite funny that the people against dungeon finders are those that believe it would “destroy” the “social” aspect of Guild Wars 2. The irony being is that there really is no true “social” aspect to the game. Sure, there are the group events and all that good stuff, but how much of that actually results in some sort of conversation getting started or actual parties being formed?

Your logic is flawed here. You talk about LFG in dungeons and then cite DE as an example. I don’t have many social interactions during DE too, but in dungeons it’s been a completely different beast. Every dungeon I’ve been there’s been a lot of chatting before, during and after it’s done.

As it has been pointed out, when you find groups too easily you’ll also discard them too easily.

I haven’t had that experience at all. Ive ran ac explorable enough for 9 weapons (a few of them prior to the token buff), Ta explorable enough for multiple set pieces and a weapon, CoF enough for some set pieces(pre DR), as well as most explorable multiple times and every story mode multiple times. Out of all that ive gotten mabe a couple dungeon friends. There is hardly anything social about a dungeon run besides quickly saying what strategy to use and saying good job at the end.

If anything the DR system ruined what was left of dungeon social life. I made those few dungeon friends while i was spamming ac explorable pre DR and we all wanted to run with people who were efficient and knew what to do. Now that we get 60 tokens for a first run ive noticed a lot of people just running a path once for the day, effectively cutting off the need for people to stay with their party for multiple runs.

To those who say that the dungeon finder ruins communities – I don’t understand that.

For me – when WoW added their dungeon finder at about the same time as dual spec – well, I am pretty sure that kept me subscribed for an extra 3 years.

See, I was a resto shaman, and a raid healer for my guild. If I remember right, the dual spec and dungeon finder both came out around the time that Naxx was getting old, but Ulduar wasn’t out yet. At that point I was pretty much ONLY logging in for raiding, as I was simply not willing to change my spec 3 times a week (for a cost), and was pretty much unable (or unable in any sort of fun way) to do daily quests as resto.

So WoW was simply logging in to raid on raid days, and if I felt like it, logging in to spam Dalaran for a tank to get my daily dungeon done.

It wasn’t much fun.

And the “community” that existed before the LFG tool came into being was Dalaran being spammed with LFG and LF tank, and that was most of it that wasn’t guild chat.

I know my dungeon completion success didn’t really drop when LFG tool got introduced, and I also know I played a lot more once it was introduced. No longer did I have to level the SAME quests on alts – I could just use LFG and play with other people in an MMO (or do BGs for XP). So much that before LK ended I had 3 fully decked out raid toons (shaman both hance and resto, druid resto and priest disc) and a DK that was 5 man geared. Played through Cata (until the day they announced Pandas) and got those 4 plus a hunter to 85.

Without LFG and dual spec I doubt I would have even lasted past Ulduar – due to sheer boredom.

With my TOR experience (level 50 juggernaut tank and level 50 sorc healer) I will never play a subscription MMO again that doesn’t have an LFG tool. Once again spent so much time spamming LFG on Fleet (my guild was low on healers and no one ever wanted to change spec for 4 mans – and even on my healer it was hard to find a tank).

In GW – my experience is that any zone with a dungeon is simply a very steady LFG/1/2/3 more for X path for zone chat. That’s…not community.

I’ve done a few runs with my guild – but nothing about these dungeons is worth spamming chat for any amount of time over 5 minutes – and as I play at oddish hours, that’s what every run other than weekend runs (for me) requires.

My all time favorite MMO is FFXI, and that’s one that (at least in the past – not sure now) required you to group to even level up, and while I loved it at the time – never again. This is someone who had 4 jobs to 75 and the rest to 37.

Maybe I’m just getting older, but any amount of time spent LFG is time spent not playing a game.

And, since guild wars 2 has no loot competition, and no traditional tank/healer roles – an LFG tool would work great here. Especially considering how many runs of any dungeon is required to get a complete set. I can’t see any path not becoming a chore before you have enough tokens for everything you want – and at that point the only thing you want to do is get in and get done.

Automated and cross realm LFG system in GW2?
Hell NO!
That is what ruined Social aspect in WoW.
If the system is not queue based and is server specific only then YES.
Other wise no,no and no

I keep seeing, “social” aspect of WoW, honestly never really saw any significant social aspect when compared to other games like AO or EQ.

I remember in AO, people used to chat all the time in the Omni entertainment district, sell services, buffs, other items through chat. The bronto burger stand was the major gathering place. I used to sit in there for a while selling my metaphysist buffs and implant assembly skills. We had a list of the good crafters on our server, because crafting was a choice you made, you had one pool of points every time you leveled, you could invest those in either crafting or combat skills, so crafters had to kitten themselves in combat to be good at crafting, not many people did it, so dedicated, high level crafters were that much more rare. WoW just seemed like IF/Shatt was full of trolls and LFG spam.

IMO there was no significant server community in WoW before or after LFD. There were still ninjas before LFD, there were still people who dropped after bosses before LFD. Very few people, on my server at least, cared about reputation, you never saw anyone say “dont group with him hes a ninja” Maybe my server was just an abnormality, but I honestly didnt notice a difference pre to post LFD. After all the main purpose of running the dungeons was to gear up so I could raid with my guild, the community I actually cared about. In fact my average dungeon experience improved after LFD, sure there was the initial rush of Ninja-offspec rolls, but as time went on, certain social morays evolved, and people usually asked to roll on off spec pieces, not that that would be an issue here.

On the one hand, the game’s current system for finding a party is woefully inadequate. It should not take more than five minutes, tops, to assemble a party, if you aren’t being especially picky about who you invite. Period.

On the other hand, I’d be much more comfortable if I still had to at least say “Hi” to someone before joining their party, or having them join mine.

My suggestion, as I’ve posted here and there before, is to have a cross-server ‘Staging Area’ zone in front of every dungeon (that is, when you walk through the dungeon portal, you would be brought to the staging area, rather than immediately entering the dungeon).

When there are a lot of people actually looking for a group for a particular dungeon, it’s very easy to get into a group given the current tools. The problem is that the player base is too fractured to make this easy: 1) People looking for a group for a dungeon may be looking inside of the zone where the dungeon is located, or they may be looking in Lion’s Arch. 2) Most of the people in either zone are there to do something else besides look for a dungeon party. 3) You’re further restricted by server; unless you already have a specific connection to another player, your advertising/searching messages will only be seen by people on your server.
The net result? At any given time, there are probably 50-100+ people looking for a group for any given dungeon, except due to being fractured across servers, across zones, and shoved into areas where random /map chat is scrolling ads off the screen, none of them can actually find a party.

A ‘staging area’ zone solves all of these. 1) It creates one zone for everyone to go to when they’re looking for a particular dungeon. 2) The only reason to be in that zone is to find a party for that particular dungeon, and 3) If it were cross-server, then everyone in the world looking to run a particular dungeon would be in that area.

Ultimately, a UI-based tool would be better than the current system, which just doesn’t work, but I really think that the problems with finding a group lie almost entirely with the fracturing of the game’s population. And another advantage of the staging area model would be that none of it would seem to require significant new development by ArenaNet; the tech for cross-server zones is obviously already there, the maps themselves could just be the dungeons themselves, before the gates open to let players through, and there’s no call for any new UI or chat functions.

The whole “Dungeon Finder ruined WoW/Rift” makes me cringe. I was there before LFD was implemented; it involved spamming trade (sometimes for hours) and silent dungeon runs where we killed the boss, took our loot and left.

Don’t kid yourself with this moral/social balderdash. You still had ninjas and trolls in your groups long before LFD.

I don’t understand why a group finder would ruin social interactions in the game. The most important part of the social interaction in any mmo is playing the game with other people. Is standing around lions arch spamming LFG really what you want to do with your time? What’s social about saying the same thing over and over again? People aren’t going to be like “oh I like the way you spam lfg let’s be friends.” They’ll get to know you through your dungeon experiences. By implementing a dungeon finder you get to meet MORE people in the same amount of time, more opportunities for socializing.

That said, there will always be people who are antisocial when the dungeon finder pops up who are only interested in the goods at the end, well you don’t really want to be friends with them anyways right? Just play your game, get your loot, and better luck next time. You get your rewards and you don’t have to waste your time spamming lfg again to make another attempt.

As for people quitting in the middle of a dungeon, there just needs to be a lockout on the lfg system for people who leave party before the end. It’ll make the time spent braving the rest of the dungeon more welcome than having to wait like an hour to try again. The timer will have to tick in offline time as well in case the person left because they needed to go somewhere in rl, and so they won’t suffer for it when they get back.

One thing I’m noticing a lot is when people say LFG tools kill socialization, they often tell people to join a guild. This tells me that these people are in guilds that they socialize a fair amount in, and have people to call in and fill slots. I pug a lot and I rarely see much socialization in runs.

I pretty much never see people explain fights or ask if people have done boss fights before. I vary in how proactive I am in finding out if people are new, but if we wipe on a boss fight, I always try to explain the boss fight. Though someone often pulls while I’m in the middle of explaining. I usually only get one or two sentences off before someone just charges in with their face. Also we already have good examples of “that guy” who doesn’t make any attempt to explain things or help people, but yells at people if they mess up and starts initiating vote kicks right away.

So no, I am not very impressed by the “socialization” in this game, and I’m highly skeptical that having a LFG tool or chat feature or something would kill it. Again, I really wonder if the people who are against these tools really pug that much.

For those who have been pugging content exclusively, having either a global chat channel or a LFG tool, or something to make it easier to pull people together would be incredibly nice. It’s gotten considerably harder to pull a group together over the past couple weeks, and I’m getting to the point where I often just give up and play something else if enough time passes without anyone biting in several zones.

I’m in a guild of friends from other MMOs who have pretty much all dropped Gulid Wars for other games (we still all raid in SWTOR, so that’s part of it). So I have basically just pugged everything despite having a guild tag. My guardian is in full exotics from dungeons, and at least 90% of these runs were pugged. But like I said, it’s gotten considerably harder to pull a group together lately, and I would really appreciate some kind of chat feature or tool that can call out to a greater pool of people, especially when I’m flexible on what dungeon I’d run. I don’t know, maybe it’s just my server that’s dying out.

A group finder for this game would not have the same effect that the dungeon finder in wow had. The primary reason being the lack of the “holy trinity” in this game. There are no healers or tanks in GW2. That is one of several reasons that the WoW dungeon finder made that game worse. When one or two roles is valued dramatically over another, then they feel privileged to be kitten-holes. Those over-valued roles also got instant groups in that dungeon finder system due to high demand. The profession system in this game has successfully prevented that from happening here.

The loot system in GW2 also prevents that as there is no shared loot to fight over.

I would definitely not want any global chat channel for group finding as that is just a soap box for kitten-holes anyway (Trade Chat in WoW or Barrens chat in WoW).

If they implement a group finder, I’d prefer it to be a posting board instead of an automatic match making tool that just sucks randoms in together. So long as my above points stay unchanged…I would welcome a party finder in this game. I just spent 4 days camped out in fireheart rise waiting on someone to finally agree to do story mode CoF. I would have much preferred to go about my gaming experience while waiting on a group. I vote yes for a group finder so long as the game conditions I listed above don’t change.

ODB.6891:

A group finder for this game would not have the same effect that the dungeon finder in wow had. The primary reason being the lack of the “holy trinity” in this game. There are no healers or tanks in GW2. That is one of several reasons that the WoW dungeon finder made that game worse. When one or two roles is valued dramatically over another, then they feel privileged to be kitten-holes. Those over-valued roles also got instant groups in that dungeon finder system due to high demand. The profession system in this game has successfully prevented that from happening here.

To be fair, WoW had tanks selling their services to groups long before dungeon finder came out. Tanks and healers always got groups faster, dungeon finder just made it more quantifiable.

I play on very odd times of the times of the day, so a Dungeon Finder would be nice. On the other hand, it would be a bit too much luxury considering that we don’t have to wait for a healer or tank to log on. I can see that aspect of why there currently isn’t one at this time. All other excuses, however, such as the common “ruins communities” one that some people like to use absolutely make no sense. As far as WoW goes, I think it’s a combination of many things that ruined that community. The LFG system in that game probably contributed to a bit of it, but I don’t think it was the sole feature that really tore that community a new one. In fact, when I was guildless for the month or so that I played WoW, I used the LFG finder almost exclusively and ran with a variety of people of different personalities and quirks. There were some good people, and some really sour apples. However, it felt no different than the same kind of people I’d bump into with pugs on my home server. With that said, some components by themselves won’t ruin a community, but when mixed together (such as the nerfing of content so it’s less challenging), then it could garner issues.

Personally, I feel some of us shouldn’t feel forced to join a specialized guild just to run dungeons. I’m pretty happy with my small band in my own guild that I’ve stuck around with for quite some time now. Networking with friends outside of the guild is nice, but what if these friends don’t show up during the times when you want to play?

Let me attach a few pictures. Recognize those places? Yup! Those are the entrance portals for Honor of the Waves, Sorrow’s Embrace, Caudecus’ Manor, and Ascalonian Catacombs. I’d also include the one for Citadel of Flames, but it was contested at the time and map chat seemed pretty quiet. Also notice something else in common: there’s no one else there besides the typical NPCs outside of the dungeon and me. I shouldn’t have to run around the zone and spam “LFG for HotW Exp mode!” and get suppressed for spamming.

You might be thinking: Well, why don’t you transfer to a server with a crap ton more people? If I was playing on a server like Kaineng or Devona’s Rest, maybe I would, but I’m on Jade Freakin’ Quarry! That’s like one of the most populated servers in GW2; and last time I checked, we have like 95% of the the borderlands in WvW— so we obviously have a lot of people doing something!

Let me show you another picture: my friend’s list! Note that NONE of my friends are online (or they could be Invisible but how should I know?). A handful of those friends are those I have met when pugging dungeons. Sometimes I see them, and sometimes I don’t. Most of the time, I don’t see them during the times of day that I play.

What I ask is this: the current LFG tool needs a TOTAL REHAUL! I’m sure you’re aware of that, but it bears repeating. A dungeon finder would be nice, but knowing you guys and your quest in being the Apple of MMO Makers, I’m sure you guys might come up with something pretty crazy, intuitive, and unique; and somehow magically make it work for everyone. I remember reading someone suggesting a “Staging Area” sort of deal that is cross-server but allows those to meet each other face-to-face. I think that’s a cool idea and you build something should on top of that. It would be like GW1 all over again when it came to building a party; and that’s something I enjoyed.

bump Dungeon finder is definitely needed. I didn’t think this was a problem when I was on ET which was a fairly PVE type of server outside of the PVP alliances when we were there but since transferring to Fort Aspenwood, I was shocked at how little advertising was going on and how dead the population was by comparison. It wasn’t just a lack of Arah groups, it was a lack of dungeon groups period. There would be many times in the day when I would log on with literally nothing to do because of this which is kinda important especially since dungeons ARE the PvE endgame for now.

Anyway a CROSS SERVER dungeon finder is needed, especially for Arah, prioritized for locals on the server who have indicated an interest. They did one for GW1 so I’m sure they can do it for GW2, I think they haven’t just to observe us socially without one for awhile and consider the effects and need. If more dungeon groups start falling off across servers I’m sure it will be done soon.

The sad thing is I had to transfer to a different server just to find groups, i didn’t really want to take up a slot for someone who is looking to be more than a tourist.. but the last week has especially shown that the endgame is REALLY screwed up between server transfers, burnout and more and things are going to hell suddenly and very quickly. There is definitely a segregation into haves and have-nots that is happening extremely quickly before most people can really notice

also the socialization happens during and after you’ve gone to war with someone, not during the LFG phase. 95% of the people I’ve PUG’d with I’ve never seen again or have not added to friends list after we were in and out, the other 5% only became friends or acquaintances because of the run and had nothing to do with finding each other to begin with. That’s entirely a strawman argument

They need server wide global chat channels for sure. This is a huge feature missing from this game that is in most MMOs. Lions arch and the particular zone for the dungeon are not where I’d like to be all the time when looking for a group, and it would be nice to be able to hit up a different zone and quest while searching.

From the POV from someone who played WoW for a long time I think the danger of a full blown match making system has more to do with the content than the community. The dungeon finder absolutely killed 5 mans for me in that game. It was nice in Wrath but the dungeons were super easy in that expansion, a chore you did for tokens. As soon as they tried to introduce content that took a shred of coordination (cataclysm) it devolved into people being the nastiest I had ever seen them in all my years playing that game. 3/4 of the groups in the dungeon finder would not work together and would drop, flame each other and otherwise considered other players a “barrier” to their 30 minutes until badges. The conversation went straight to trying to get them to tune the dungeons to make them work better for their LFG tool.

The funny part it that the heroics were actually easier than the burning crusade counterparts, but people had become used to a different system that encouraged little coordination and DEMANDED changes. Considering the dungeons in this game are really the only PVE content that requires group coordination of any sort I would not want to see the pressure on for Anet to start making these areas more friendly to random groups.

WoW’s success and the influx of 12 million players many of which were new to mmo’s, along with the anonymity of the internet destroyed WoW’s social aspects not some Dungeon finder.

caveslug.5934:

WoW’s success and the influx of 12 million players many of which were new to mmo’s, along with the anonymity of the internet destroyed WoW’s social aspects not some Dungeon finder.

I agree. The LFD tool did not kill WoW, it was the developer’s decisions in attempting to please everyone. They were on this mission to increase the player base so much that they did not see a problem with sucking in immature (age or attitude) players who had no concept of how to behave in a group setting. I applaud Anet for strictly enforcing behavioral rules so far as the language in and frequency of zone wide posts. This, in itself, makes the game immensely more tolerable than WoW. I am generally against global chat channels just because of how I saw them abused and not moderated properly in WoW, but if Anet sticks to a strict moderation policy…I can see that working in GW2. If they apply at least half that level of moderation to behavior in any LFD tool they implement, then it will be a success.

The game NEEDS a group finder.

I was playing AC and someone bailed out of our group. The four of us had to stop, then I volunteered to teleport out and spam for someone to join so we could resume. Twenty minutes later, I had no luck, and the group fell apart. This has already happened a few times.
I already know about having guild mates help out but my guild is only a few and were not enough to roll a dungeon and spamming chat seems inconvenient and lame.

Please patch-in a group finder!!!

moiraine.2753:

Automated and cross realm LFG system in GW2?
Hell NO!
That is what ruined Social aspect in WoW.
If the system is not queue based and is server specific only then YES.
Other wise no,no and no

server specific would be less effective because the number of people in queue is lower.

I am not entirely sure what ‘social aspect’ of WoW you are talking about, I played from BC to cata (refuse to buy MoP) and other than the various hijack/abuse gigs (tanks selling fast queues, randoms afk’ing so they can’t be kicked and getting rep/loot etc.) which are not applicable in GW2, there was very little detriment to the WoW ‘community’ if you could call it that. Do NOT pretend that LFG or even raid finder ‘destroyed’ WoW. The pathetic trash that you see in trade chat from time to time has existed long before any of this was implemented, and will continue to exist regardless (even in GW chats, although there seems to be a modicum of regulation going on).

I am not looking for an ‘auto match’ system specifically, I would even be happy if they added a ‘LFG channel’ feature or search system where you could specify which dungeons, paths, whatever it is you were looking for, preferably cross- server, and in any location. As it is now, the built-in LFG tool is near-useless.

I’ve been trying to find a group to do COE story for a week and a half now. I’m in two guilds (one small and another with 400+ people), I try map chat, I use the “LFG tool”, I sit in LA spamming LFM… blah. I feel like this game is going to die too soon without a streamlined process to find dungeon groups. Every player base for every MMO I’ve played greatly appreciated when one was added and every time it comes up in GW2 the groups I chat with unanimously agree it’s a need feature.

Disconnected.9253:

Do NOT pretend that LFG or even raid finder ‘destroyed’ WoW. The pathetic trash that you see in trade chat from time to time has existed long before any of this was implemented, and will continue to exist regardless (even in GW chats, although there seems to be a modicum of regulation going on).

Yeah, seriously. Do people really not remember what “Barrens Chat” meant? “WoW community” has pretty much always been “WoW community.” I played WoW from early Vanilla through the end of Wrath of the Lich King, and I admit that I was lucky enough to be in a good guild, but I sure remember pain in trying to pug Strat, Scholo, or BRD. And yeah, those runs could easily fall apart mid way (or early). They had their share of ninjas. Seriously, how often did people actually finish BRD with a pug?

I think people might be getting a little unrealistically nostalgic, then blaming the dungeon finder for the current reality. I mean, let’s face it. WoW has by far the biggest MMO population on the market. “WoW community” is just a lot of freaking people. With complete internet anonymity. You do the math.

I agree that there NEEDS to be a tool, especially when the guesting feature is implemented. There should even be a place where people could group up for all dungeons from across all servers. And about ruining the social aspect Anet wouldn’t have made it so you could have multiple guilds.

Ok time to crush you cavement who actually believe an automated dungeon finder somehow “ruins mah communitah!”.

So, many games including this one involves playing with other people to access and do certain content, to this end they they employ various systems to help players get together and play whatever content the group is meant to do, in GW2 this mainly means dungeons.

The presence of a system, of sorts, shows a willingness to help players achieve this but lets look at the horrible problem this current system suffers from.

LFG Tab
The system put in place to help grouping, clearly showing the will for players to have some sort a tool to help them find other people who want to group for some sort of content.

This currently shows you anyone who has marked themselves as looking for group, but that’s also where the assistance from this ends. There’s no showing what they want to do and it suffers from being only zone wide.

Now either you have to sift through the list of people and whisper them, asking what they’re grouping for and see if it matches your desires, a tedius process due to the constant whispering of people caused by not knowing what they want to group for and you only see players in the same zone as yourself which limits the candidates greatly, there could be three of four other people on the other side of the world with the same dungeon in mind, but you can not see them.

This can be leviated by players in on way, there’s some sort of gathering point for this grouping process to take place, a city or the zone in witch the dungeon itself is located, forcing players to be in either a city or a specific zone to have a reasonable chance to gather a group as the people wanting to do that dungeon are focused into this area.

- Doesn’t show you what people want to group for, this includes story/explorable mode of a dungeon, lots of tedius and time consuming whispering asking about what dungeon and type of run they want ensues

- Only zone wide, excluding an enormous part of the playerbase from your search unless players gather in specific zones, which then forces you to conduct the search in these specific zones regardless if you want to do content in another zone while you search.

In fact these drawbacks are so great this system has been deemed so bad it’s simply not used amongst the playerbase, the reason it’s still brought up is to demonstrate the flaws in the means currently supplied. This leads us to the system currently used.

Manual chat spamming

Chat spamming, as basic as it gets in terms of grouping tools and it speaks volumes that this has turned out to be more effective than the LFG tab in place.

While more effective it’s still as mentioned, as basic as it gets. The only thing it really leviates on of the horrid flaws from the previous system is that players can actively say what they’re grouping for. However it still suffers from being zone wide, which means either we exclude the vast majority of the playerbase from our search, or we gather up in specific zones.

The later is now unarguably the reality we have. We either sit in lions arch, or the zone which the specific zone is located in. You want to do content in Sparkfly fen while searching for people to a group for Twilight arbour? Well then you’re more than likely gonna have a tough time searching for people, that’s the reality, your options on what content you do between “I want to get a group and do Twilight arbour” and “I have a group and I’m going to do Twilight arbour”.

And now when in these zones you still have to engage in time consuming chat spamming to form a group, while somewhat more efficient than the LFG tab due to A) reaching more people with one written line and You can actively state what you want to do, dungeon as well as explorable/story.

- Still only zone wide, this limitation has basically forced us to actively be present in specific zones to search for people, or otherwise probably not finding much people to do a specific dungeon with.

- While suffering less than the LFG tab from this issue, the process of chat spamming can be time consuming as it needs to be repeated, people do as we all know come and go in zones so we need to actively make them aware of our presence and desire to get a group going and hope they’re interested.

These are the current systems and using the second one is the current situation we’re in, we have evaluated and identified the shortcomings and problems present in it. Now for the actual suggestion part and how it changes the current situation we’ve just covered.

cont.