I made a post about how I thought with tools like looking for dungeon and looking for raid it was easy to phase out the social aspect of MMOs and to never leave our little protective bubbles – but I do also think there’s a very simple solution (two, really) for this situation. One would be to implement Rifts method of allowing free character transfers. That means at least if you group up with someone via the LFD tool you can potentially move to their server and be recruited because you’re such an awesome player and had such a great time with the group in question. Does it happen? Probably rarely – but the potential for that to happen is at least there.
The second would be the method that EQ2 has implemented with their latest LFD tool – don’t allow the tools to work cross server. Now, you may look at that and scratch your head a bit, after all the point of the tool is to get you into a pre-made (basically, made by a computer system at least) group and into the dungeon as fast as possible, but I think by coding it to work on your server only you’re not only allowing for faster groups (faster then they were previous to the tool) but you’re also allowing for people to get to know others from their own server. They can add you to their friends list and next time they may not even use the LFD tool but simply form a group with players they have been with before. Is it flawless? No of course not it’s rare that any systems are but I think it’s a reasonable compromise to both the time it takes to find a group and the lack of social interaction that may go on because of these tools.
I poked around in EQ2 last night, channels were relatively quiet and my LFD tool was populated on all of my characters, even the one 25 guardian I have. It was nice to see. I didn’t see a way for warriors to queue as dps / tank which had me scratching my head a bit, I think perhaps all fighters that queue are placed as tanks? In EQ2 they’re the only class that can have multiple roles, in specific brawlers can act as dps or tanks. Some scouts also have stances and can technically tank but it’s usually a temporary encounter and not an entire zone.
Have you tried the tool out yet? What are your thoughts on it? Let me know in comments below!
I tried several characters over the weekend, but no luck here!
As a level 90 wizard I spent 40 minutes trying for a group despite the estimated dungeon times being between 6 to 15 minutes. I had to laugh as a guild mate with his Guardian got a group within 3 minutes.
I can’t help but feel that without the cross-server function and an auto-mentor option then ultimately on our server it will become just another unused tool.
I’m thinking of rolling a tank class come November. One Tank, one Healer, and four Beastlords – anyone?
Used it, but not really for what it was intended for: I was in a traditional advertise-in-Level_80-89-chat pick-up group last night to run this weeks’ Dominance quest. Once we had finished Pools, the group leader queued the group for Ascent, and (since we were a full group) we were immediately transported there. While we could have just zoned out, ran 200 feet, and clicked ourselves into Ascent, the Dungeon Finder made it that much quicker.
Still not sure how much I’ll use it in the traditional sense, but it sure does scratch my laziness itch. =P
Free to play get this or just the paid servers?
Imagine how packed it would be if they just combined all the servers and didnt seperate F2P and pay servers :)
I have not tried it out yet. I need to see if my Mystic can join as something other than healer. Light DPS/support/backup healer would be closer to my role on him.