How would you like to group up?

I voted for all of the grouping options.

Randomized grouping has often been maligned by the old school crowd (which includes me actually) but the reasons are not necessarily insurmountable problems. Randomized systems tend to cause problems only because they allow such fast turnaround and greater rewards than other kinds of play. Those bad groups you've ended up with are even a part of this problem, because bad players, and jerks trying to work the system all shove their way into those systems and then overly protective developers trying to help one or two disenfranchised players, set up rules that allow more gaming of the system.

How to make it work:
Make the process transparent and well... simple. There don't have to be a ton of rules for the process. Try to pick people from the same server if possible to foster local contact. Allow players to join and leave at whim with no penalty. If people have to go they have to go. People who ditch out to grief will end up on blacklists (more on blacklisting/whitelisting below). Let players kick anyone from the group at most any time. there may be exceptions to prevent loot ninjas and such, but nobody wants to be stuck with the ****** who was sitting at an entrance to a dungeon for the last five times he was kicked.

Weak community tools lead to weak communities. Give players robust tools to manage their social interactions. Don't just let me ignore someone's racist rants, let me blacklist them on all my toons and all of their if I want. let me whitelist folks as fun to play with but without having to get alerts every time they log in and out. The finder tool can simply try to group me with them if they are online. Let me join and talk to multiple guilds at once. Sometimes one guild is great for RP, and another for raiding, and yet another for PVP. Let me socialize with all of them. Maybe let me join the chat channel of another guild (with their permission) without even joining their guild. In that way alliances can be formed and organic grouping encouraged even more. Perhaps they could even give outsiders access to their calendars so events can be seen by a greater array of people. Perhaps even a public calendar if a guild so wishes to make one.

Perhaps it is also worth letting players know they have been blacklisted/ignored by X number of players and to what extent.

Last but not least.... Don't make dungeons/instances/group content give so much greater rewards. Grouping together to do great deeds is really nice, but grinding tons of instances every day all day to get the best gear is bad design. Instances should be relevant, but not the only game in town, especially for PVE content. Outdoor elite content is awesome and brings flavor to the world.

Summation: If random grouping ruins your community, it's because you failed to build a good community in the first place. Give the players the tools and they will do it.

P.S. Another thing that burns down communities is tolerance of complete asshatery. Please SOE, have the GMs seriously enforce community rules about how people treat each other. It's not that hard really to distinguish between legitimate goofing off, going a bit too far, and being sociopathic. If you focus on removing the latter behavior it will keep things within reason.

I think game balance and cutting people out IS the point being discussed so I'd have to disagree.it's not about catering to everyone or trying to please the masses ofpreteen mmo players out there like what WoW tried to do simply becasue they are a source of income, spending mom and pops cash in lu of actually being babysat or being put into boyscouts or something more benifical to a young child.

My entire stance has been that people and the game need to be balanced from the point of equal access, not access geared solely for YOUR time perceptions, monetary ability, skill ability in regards to being handicapped or not etc, or any one persons. While you might work two 20 hour a week jobs and have the weekend off, others might not have the option in a nice big chunk of free time they can count on like clockwork. Getting online to play was a big hastle for my friend who was our guilds monk due to the fact he was not only in the military, but got assigned some whack multi job function due to his technical skills and a lack of others to do the assigned tasks over in Iraq and do them sometimes under fire. Sometimes things like that happen, and you just have to bite the bullet and admit you dont have much time to play anymore, but that is a case of extremes. There is no point in you attempting to make it sound like I am pushing an extreme, like making travel irrelevant, when I am not. You say 'non-trivial' travel, yet you seem to lack the understanding your arguing FOR trivial travel in most cases that are beign discussed. There are several people arguing for this to become TravelQuest, more like some left over dinosaur back in games where you just walked around, wandered randomly and that was the entire point. The gamble of randomly openning a chest you randomly found under a bush. In the desert. With no one around. For miles. Modern MMO's are capable of being much more than that. And thankfully, I think this is a largely moot discussion point, as the dev's themselves seems to have posted a video and snickered at people who sounded like they had some sort of walking fetish, or possibly a horse phobia.

I just feel that the grouping mechanism is admitting failure before you even start. Those things work great in lobby games that are designed for them, but for them to work here you have to make assumptions:

1) all the dungeons are instanced. I hope they don't instance anything. They have a giant underground maze. What do they need instances for? Random encounters >>>>Instances.
2) The emergent AI is a complete failure so the adventure to the dungeon isn't relevant.
3) Social system in place are weak.
4) the gameplay is the same as the last 15 years.

I just don't like these assumptions in a sandbox type game that is supposed to have a true fully explorable globe, emergent AI, strong guild and faction systems and new gameplay.

Ok I threw in the faction part....See the point?

How is a grouping system a failure?

What is so different about a computer system finding people for you to play with when there are none in your immediate vicinity? There are always going to be times when this is true. Most of them in the wee hours of the morning in the US. Would you prefer tons of people spamming chat repeatedly for hours looking for people when there aren't enough to make a group? Why not make it easy by having a system that lets people know you want to group up and do something? You don't need to only have them for instances, but rather have even a zone wide sign-up board of sorts in your UI for outdoor elite areas or whatever you want to call them.

As I stated above, if a random grouping system destroys your online community, it wasn't strong to begin with. You touch on this with your third point, but I think it's really the basis of the problem. A random grouping system doesn't also have to allow you access to dungeons you haven't found on any of your characters yet. Random grouping isn't really the issue, it's all the baggage that often accompanies MMOs with poor social structures and which reward dungeon play significantly more than outdoor environmental play.

If you ran dungeons in wow you were always ahead of the gear curve even if you quested well above your level in circumstances that were far more challenging. At end game it's one of the few ways to get better gear before raiding. The whole design is focused on grinding dungeons rather than being out in the world. The random dungeon finder didn't break the system, it merely showed that the devs wanted to focus on instanced content. They could have easily decided to make heroic group quest chains and zones but did not. I enjoyed the public style quests/events in WAR and GW2 (and probably other games I am not recalling atm) and I hope EQN will build on that type of concept as well as having large explorable outdoor elite areas (used to lobe Jintha'alor in WoW before the big elite nerf). I think random grouping options would be awesome for that.

The only valid assumption in the list is the expectation that there may be times that players log in when it's time consuming to find like-minded players to group with. Better to design contingencies for that in advance than waiting to discover it's actually a major problem.

I wonder how long it will take for that to happen?

If the content is ever changing and there is no set class holy trinity, how often will that situation actually happen? We're basing our need for a typical "dungeon finder" on the typical MMORPG, where a dps class could spend hours waiting to farm an older dungeon. The system was designed to combat the faults of the holy trinity and instanced grind fests. When the problems are removed, the solution becomes the problem.

Its like paying for flood insurance in a desert, or buying auto insurance when you don't own a car. Sure, it may rain someday and I may own a car someday, but even when it rains will it always flood and wouldn't it be smarter to buy car insurance after I buy a car?

I understand it being used as a tool to find like minded players to group with and become friends with, but is it really going to accurately forecast player interpersonal relationships? I'm trying to find a group, not fill out an app for EQDate.com

EQN/L could always implement this soft-cross/community concept with text shading/transparency/color to emphasize state.

(i.e. blacklist scale 1-3 with each 'tag' making that player's account more transparent on all chats observed/received vs whitelist scale 1-3 with each increment more bold in the chat.)
_ _ _ _

As it is all we can do now is chalk it up that that player had a bad day and elect not to put them on ignore unless they're really closing in the EULA as who you gonna play with in Feb in the general pool if every turkey in a PUG/R goes on perma-ignore?

The Devs will note that many details of the RP/PvP/General population separation by chat and soft-invite by community on the server type thread could be applied for social interaction here as well.

I want the option to complete small group content with pre-formed groups or to be randomly matched up with other players.

Everyone is online on my friend's list or guild, then I will form my own group, maybe even get 1-2 pick up players if needed. Some days I just do not feel like doing all of this work. That is where a randomized finder would really be nice. Some times sitting in a chat channel going LFG for 1-2 hours really gets old. Some players hate certain classes and will never invite you. Randomized group means they do not have a choice in the matter.

I would really like to see it that system (if implemented) to stay server only. Not cross server. If cross server then by server types only. AKA RP servers together, normal ones together, PvP ones together. Honeslty when it comes to cross server it seems like people care less about who is in that group, or what things they choose to say to those people, or how loot is handled. Keeping it server only would really help to build a better server community in the end. Everyone thinks Oh man that is going to make que times take forever then. I don't see that being an issue. Just means not enough tanks are playing on your server at that time is all

With the right que perks for lacking roles, that system could ballance itself fast or heaven forbid a game has a tanking or healing role that is both rewarding and fun for once and makes more players want to be those classes....

I'm not basing a "need" for a matching tool on a dungeon finder at all.
I'm really not even thinking much about dungeons at all, although dungeons would be an option among several options that could be checked off for an activity a player is interested in during any particular play session.
I might be LFG to harvest, to explore, to build, to craft...

You're saying "the system" as if a matching tool be exactly like dungeon finders in previous games.
I'm saying a matching tool could be helpful for those times when it takes a while to find other players interested in doing what we're interested in doing. And that also matching by playstyle, instead of leaving that to random chance, would be nice.

It's closer to having a driver's license when you don't own a car. Comes in handy when opportunities to drive arise.
Or the option of having car insurance existing, even if there will be individuals who choose to never use it.

It could help to filter conflicting playstyles - yes.
Simply finding a group through a tool is unlikely to help build a community much. What you just suggested indicates we don't really care about the players, we just need bodies to overcome an obstacle.
Matching players based on interests and playstyles is more likely to result in retaining relationships with the players we've been matched with and forging a stronger community. Because we're more likely to want to further interact with players who share our interests and playstyle.

I don't know where my brain was on mentioning fast travel for real money after reading your reasons not to do it.

I stand corrected ... yes that would be a horrible mechanic.

I think we should be able to play with friends or random or even add random. I can't say how many people I run into that just have bad experiences with PUGs. Yes you might meet a cool person, but 95% of the time it is a disorganized mess with one person pulling the whole darn area and not caring if the healer can keep up or has mana. Let alone where the rest of the group is. Then there is the opps my network connection just happened to fail when we wiped the first time on a boss.

That being said the PUG is something that is necessary to progress when you can't find your friends online or they don't want to play the same game you do. You just need to make it advantageous to use the looking for dungeon group tool; maybe even sweeten the pot if they do more than one dungeon together.

Are you actually saying to make it more advantageous to group up with a random group maker tool?
I can't say I totally disagree with you on this point. But it should be on a limited basis / not the norm.
Just for certain content I guess ... an option available by subscribing yourself to an in game "Blind date game"

I can see there being a video channel for people to watch the best of the best out comes ... (Funny/Awesome/ or otherwise) So hence driveing the public to use the limited tool that SOE put in the game to group up randomly.
And like you said ... the rewards increase as that random group completes more content.

But for just the regular world ... no random group tool. (put the random sign up activator at the social halls)

Or....

You can take those global group making tools and make them faction and alliance specific, so you start off with tools that will help faction and guild members form groups. This would help them become a part of the game rather than a bolted on monstrosity. All players could then form a random group and accept a specific mission at the same time, giving the group tool some actual purpose other than to endlessly run dungeons over and over.

I'd rather just have a tool that allows you to post your details and what you're looking for a group to do instead of an automatic matchmaking queue. More like an advertisement board that anyone can search through and see who is LFG in a particular area, but they still have to send a /invite to the person to actually form a group.

At the same time, I don't think dungeons should be instanced. Let's get back to the days of Lower Guk and Old Seb where dungeons where persistent open world zones that anyone could walk into and see a bunch of other players. Have HUGE underground zones act as dungeons where bosses are on a long"ish" respawn timer or placeholder spawn. Where you might have to "race" another group to get the boss pull. The 3-tiered, underground map setup that EQN has would work quite nicely for such a setup. Let's do away with the concept of "dungeon runs" or "instance runs" where you enter a linear map and hop from boss room to boss room hitting the loot pinata until it's time to teleport out and restart the instance all over again. They make the game feel so sanitized and boring. There are plenty of lobby based games out there, which is fine for the people who want to just play a lobby, but let's make EQN a true, persistent world again.

What you mean is the random encounter. This means that there wont really be "spawns" in the traditional sense. You may see nests, barracks, and other monster generators but these might be far from where you encounter the mob and would of course be heavily occupied. You could run into an orc raiding party wandering pretty much anywhere, but especially close to Crushbone where they are formed.

With a giant underground space the random encounter method is a much better alternative to the dungeon grinding method. There's always something new just around the corner.

Hence raid content would and should be defined by a more realistic definition.
Encampments and townships wont even be approachable except with a large enough force. Maybe some would require multiple raid forces. But then again with emerging AI , an overtime process of wearing down that encampment should be possible. Even if it means many other attempts made it possible for 1 lucky group to go in and seize the glory.
But I would like to see more than one means to do that. Stealth/deception/ and diplomacy should be options besides brute force. Crafting and economic means also ... much like was the case with the Crusades for the holy land of the middle east.

Yes exactly. Crushbone would be a raid type area that could be overcome by player pressure. If they added in patrols and alarms it might be then possible to access smaller portions of crushbone without disrupting the whole area. Alarms could be disabled, areas could be sealed by heavy doors or magical locks. Or just brute force with half the server.

Let's say the game ends up with one million subscribers (I suspect much higher numbers but this is for the sake of argument). Let's say one quarter of those people make it to endgame content (down to 250,000). Let's say there are 10 servers with even populations at endgame (25,000). Let's say only 10 percent of the pop logs in at any given time for endgame content (2,500). You now have 2,500 people trying to do the same content level on a given server. The numbers are high, but even at ten percent of that you have 250 people working on the same things. Instances became more necessary when gamer populations got larger. I agree that there can be far too much instanced content, but it is likely an inevitability.

Unless.... The emergent AI can be made to handle this by spawning more units to engage all interlopers in various areas. Some of these units could be bosses and scale to the threat at hand. In this way multiple raid groups may be necessary to achieve victory and rewards do not have to come from downing specific bosses necessarily, or bosses could spawn for each raid group detected. Anything smaller than a raid group may find itself woefully outmatched as a raid level patrol hunts it down as soon as scouts spot it.

I am praying that the emergent AI will operate more along these lines. Rather than little raids we may find ourselves in epic wars. I have been hoping for such a thing since in the first few months of playing WAR we crashed our server with an epic battle at The Maw. I looked out and saw what people were doing and said "you know an AI could just as easily fight this battle if someone bothered to take the time to write the code."

I don't like one group getting glory, but I do love treachery and diplomacy! Sun Tzu basically said any general who does not employ spies is a fool. Equally foolish is a leader who wages war when diplomacy will resolve the conflict. In this way we may be able to get neutral factions to change their minds towards our enemies, soften enemy defense, or even destroy their supply lines. Some enemies may be easy to placate (needs food or other basic commodities), some may be less so (racial supremacy and other delusions of grandeur). Not all of these enemies have to be vast forces. Some may be rival towns or villages that could grow into larger threats if unattended.

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