Copernic

After two years the LFG debacle at Blizzard has grown to near-mythic status. While pretty much every aspect of the game has become more powerful, flexible, and user-friendly, the LFG aspect has limped along, the red-headed stepchild, beaten at every opportunity. First we had a workable LFG tool. Then we had LookingforGroup - Ironforge, but you could join from everywhere. Then we had LookingforGroup - City. Next we had Global LFG, which was full of silliness, but at least it generally worked. Now, we have a new LFG tool. It's terrible.

WHY IS IT TERRIBLE:

Lets back up for a minute and think: what is a LFG tool meant to provide? Three things. First, liquidity. There are only so many people LFG at a given time. A good LFG tool will rope in as many people as possible -- regardless of zone location, level, or their ability to use an LFG tool. The second function for an LFG tool is distribution -- adequately placing people within discrete groups. A third function is useability, giving information to the player to enable them to quickly find a group.

The new LFG tool fails on all three metrics. Lets compare it against Global LFG.

Liquidity:
There shall be only Three: A player can only look for three Dungeons, as opposed to as many as he might choose to. Most people I know, me included, don't strongly care which Dungeon I go to, if I feel like a PuG run. Maybe I'd prefer Scholo, but I'd be happy to go to any of the others -- excepting probably BRD. In this method, if I pick the three Dire Mauls, I cannot advertise for a single other Dungeon.
Alt-Unfriendly: A player can only look for Dungeons in his level range. This is a huge liquidity hit. Instead of hypothetically every 1-60 character seeing my LF1M Strat, you only get around 52-60, or whatever the range is. Every single alt is excluded. A prime feature of PuGs is that they're composed of people who MAY join a group, or MAY just be leveling -- not many would like to sit around IF and hope that someone will need a Warlock. Another huge hit comes from the inability to adequately advertise.
Casual Groupers: Before, if I had 4 people and needed a Priest, I could advertise and hope that someone not necessarily looking to join a group will decide to come along. The whole category of 'Oh well, why not?' group members has been erased -- and that's a big pool of people.
Weeding out morons: One of the big things keeping people away from PuGs are the usual idiots that crop up. With Global LFG, it's not that hard to discriminate between 'need pppl Scholo no hunters' and 'LF1M Scholomance -- Warlock pref -- already inside.' Or to check out a player's qualifications prior to inviting him. With no discrimination available, ironically, you'll have less total people grouping.
Help my liquidity: Liquidity is the biggest problem at lower levels, when there aren't many people trying to go to Razorfen Kraul. In that situation, I want to see EVERYONE looking for a Dungeon in that level range, including those a little above or below. And my need to advertise and catch people's attention is at its greatest. And yet here is where LFG fails the most -- placing me in a group with one Priest and assuming that three others will just happen to join that queue. Would it be hard to run an internal metric determining how often RFK groups are formed? Wouldn't that tell them right away that RFK groups don't just coalesce within 30 minutes out of 5 players, randomly interested?

What makes this so frustrating is that these are discrete design choices that had to conclude with: "Lets do it backwards." There HAD to be a decision to restrict Dungeons to level caps. There HAD to be a decision to kill Global LFG when the LFG tool came along.

Distribution:
Auto-Disjoint: The presence of the Auto-Join tool is a mistake. Lets say that I don't turn it on. I have no way of knowing, from the UI, when someone new enters the queue. I have no way of knowing, without constantly checking the tool, if there are groups being formed. But lets say I do turn it on, but that last Priest turns on LFG without auto-join. I have no way of knowing he's even there. Again, I have to go to the UI screen and constantly hit 'refresh' for that last member.
Specs: As a Paladin, I can be a capable main healer, a reasonable tank (esp. in UD), and a good backup. There are DPS Warriors with no shields. There are Feral Druids and Resto Druids. There are, in other words, far too many specs and intentions for an LFG tool to deal with. Thus, any kind of matching tool is essentially doomed to failure. The only possible way to work it is to either include a drop-down menu with spec options (DPS/Healer/Tank/Other) or to allow some sort of player choice -- but this defeats the purpose of an auto-join in the first place.
Strat: It's laughable that Strat is included as only one Dungeon. Has Blizzard never played this game? There's UD Strat and Hu Strat. They are discrete runs.

Useability:
I'm given very little information to work with. I cannot see, easily, who is LFG for other Dungeons -- all in one place. I cannot see specs. I cannot see if someone is inside the Dungeon or outside of it! In sum, I don't know enough to make adequate decisions.

All in all, the LFG tool works adequately in one situation: when there is a big pool of existing liquidity and so many different players that even the Auto-join tool will work well. But this is exactly the situation where an LFG tool is unnecessary. A simple chat channel would work just as well. An LFG tool needs to overcome those situations where liquidity is low -- and here it actively prevents grouping.

Solutions:
It doesn't make much sense anymore to ask Blizzard to create a working LFG tool. I hypothesize that something about the idea of a broad, widely searchable tool is deliberately off the table, maybe even for legal reasons beyond my understanding.

But I'm wondering if a UI addon tool could possibly circumvent SOME of the problems. Some sort of Call To Arms that could take reporting from players using it, build a list of everyone LFG for every dungeon, and place it into a single window. Here's hoping.

 

◊ Zoid

The LFG tool has worked wonderfully for me on the beta realms. I've found groups quickly with it. I have augmented groups by asking for the fourth of fifth needed role in the general channels, but for getting a base group together its worked well.

The new LFG tool is great for starting groups. You can quickly get together the three or four people needed to seed a group and from there you can ask others to join. I find its much easier to find a fifth than starting a group all together.

 

torrent495

I thought you could write comments on LFM. Does that not solve most of your complaints?

 

• Karakas

My experiences with the LFG tool are mixed, and I really haven't had the full time to play around with it, but on my Ally Pally I managed to get a group together for Maraudon pretty quickly, and we definitely had the group setup to beat the dungeon.

So, on the bright side, at least it puts the groups together semi-intelligently.

 

Kody

Yeah, honestly, it's worked great for me in beta as well. Try the comment feature - not everyone pays attention to it but I sure check it when forming groups. :)

 

egesia

I don' like the new LFG tool.
It's a very small step forward, i was expecting a lot more from a tool that took 2 years to be designed.
Problems are a lot,
and i aggree with the original poster 99%.

The main problem is liquidity: the new system is too static.
Why can i flag myself only for 3 dungeons?
Why at lvl 60 i cannot flag myself for Wailing Caverns (why not?)?
Why i cannot specify my role in the group?
And, most of all, why i cannot flag all my different alts at the same time?

I think the LFG tool should be Player-related, not Character related. I want to make a detailed list of all my alts and flag all of them in all the dungeons they need. In this context the pool of characters will triplicate and hundreds of new party combination will pop out.
This would decrease a lot the waiting times, wich are the main problem of Wow.

I think the poor solution Blizzard has chosen is related to a precise decision: go cheap on resources. This means limiting the data flow in servers and reduce the amount of instance-servers. But that's only my opinion.

 

shellfish

Why can't Blizzard just put in an /lfg flag, then allow /who all lfg and /who all [class|level] lfg searches? EQ did it and it worked beautifully.

 

Kody

Server performance? I don't know, just a guess. Allowing you to queue for every dungeon would no doubt increase the load on the server's queue system and the LFG logic of trying to find you a group.

This is pretty simple: you don't need a group for Wailing Caverns at 60. It's fairly silly to have that as an option.

You can, use the comments! :)

I would guess several reasons. Technical issues come to mind as the most prominant. You could always add that to your comments that your alts are an option(assuming they're all 60?).

I'm not sure you understand the way the LFG tool works. It's a queue system; this wouldn't increase your chances of getting a group at all, and it would actually mess with the queue system more than likely, by trying to place one of your alts in a group with another of your alts, etc. In essence it would slow down the process of finding a group for the character you want to play at the time.

It's definitely designed with how resource-intensive it is, but it isn't really related to how many instance servers are running.

Now with that in mind, it could be improved a bit, but it's certainly not doom and gloom. It's also been more than a small step forward for me in beta - I didn't like it at first but it's grown on me now that I've gotten used to using it and know how it works a bit better.

That's basically what this is. You can(or could?) type /who lfg and it would open up the LFG window with search results. Is this not the case on live? I haven't had a need for it yet to test.

 

Tynnan

/lfm brings up the window with searchable results

 

Jaithra

But that's one of the problems, people's alts are often not all 60, and if you don't feel there's much left for you to do on your 60, you might want to go level an alt while also trying to get into that one last UBRS run that you need. With the global LFG channel, you can at least watch for groups forming and then whisper someone from your level 20 character "I have a 60 <insert class> I could bring". I guess you could try to do this from the comments in the new system, but you'd have to get pretty lucky to have the audience of your comments - which must be for one character and a set of 3 instances - also have an alt in the same level range, looking for the same other instances, as your alt.

I suppose that probably is too much to ask, especially on a technical level, but wouldn't it be cool if you could flag your character as LFG while playing a different character?

I agree with the original poster - the system looks like it should work, but it's missing some key things. I also am a bit hesitant to use it due to lack of idiot-screening - I really do decide whether I want to group with someone based on how stupid their posts in the LFG channel are. Sure, I can be wrong sometimes, but I find it's easier to just not try with the ones who are "NEED PREEST 4 deir maule", etc., and now how am I going to tell which ones those are? Too many bad PuG experiences and I won't be LFG outside my guild at all.

 

Karway

I agree with the OP. I like to play on an alt while I troll the LFG channel looking for a group for a specific instance. This UI does not support that.

I am also interested in more than 3 at a time and feel that live and undead strat should be seperate in the UI. I will occasionally help out with Jailbreak if I am feeling charitable, but I am not definitely not interested in running all of BRD.

If I have 20 min to kill in SW before my raid starts I will take noobs through stockades for fun. This UI doesnt support helping in that way. I foresee /1 getting spammed more as a result of this new system.

 

shellfish

I guess I was spoiled (or jaded) in this sense by Everquest. Just because of the bare bones interface as well as the more community-minded forums for particular servers everyone knew everyone, and if you didn't there'd be a flame post about it on a forum intelligent players actually read. With the /who all lfg business you knew to avoid certain people in certain guilds, or you could look them up on the forums if you really wanted to. Don't know why I brought this up, really, just seeing an implied request for automated idiot-screening ruffled my feathers.

 

Proeliata

To those who keep bringing up idiot screening--I don't know what it's like on your realms, but on Mal'Ganis, for the most part, the LFG channel was a desolate wasteland of stupid people talking about stupid things ("omg u ninjad my ______ u barstud" and "lol y r hunter pets rtarted?"). Most of the time if you typed in an actual grouping request it'd get scrolled out of the chatbox within the first 10 seconds, and most people didn't like to keep it on because it was just a constant stream of, well, crap.

The new LFG system, while not perfect, at least allows me to actually USE the LFG system, whereas before, turning on the LFG channel was the very, very last resort.

I will miss the antics of Katzeliebe though.

Generation 29:
The first time you see this, copy it into your signature on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
^^ don't ask me why I fell for this.

 

torrent495

How would you propose the LFG system "idiot screen" though? I'd much rather have a real LFG system than an crappy, crappy LFG channel that maybe can help you eliminate children who can't be bothered to type, but hardly filters out incompetent players.

 

Jaithra

Oh, I admit to having no clue how one would do that - just pointing out that as crappy as the LFG channel is on my server as well, one small advantage was that I could find myself a group of people who could type coherently. Neither system is capable of filtering out bad players or jerks who'll ninja every piece of loot that drops.

 

Farstrider

The alt thing is particularly annoying in my opinion.

As someone who has a variety of characters from a variety of 20-60 dps-ers to a junior (56) tank to a couple of 60 healers, one thing I like to do is just sit there and wait for something that I quite fancy to pop up in LFG. I basically use it as a bulletin board - when I see a group that is 1 member short, looking for an "insert role here", I can work out whether that is a role I fancy filling right now.

Personally I agree it should be a less definitive, less restrictive, more open ended (without the lol chuck norris) system.

<Fric> "If I ever met a NG who could read through all my posts in this thread and still date me I'd finally have found love."
<Zeroblack> "Your safest bet is to go for that new HG then. I'm not altogether sure she can read."

 

Irshish

I have more of a "Glass is half full" attitude about the LFG tool. While using it in beta, I came a cross the same issues. It is a MAJOR leap forward from the LFG Channel. I welcome the change, but I do think it could use some tweeks and improvements.

Alts: I thought to myself "Damn, I have to stay on my main if I want to get him a group for Crypts tonight." This is a weakness of the system that I hope is addressed sometime down the road, but hardly a Deal Breaker.

Idiots: There is a pretty good Idiot Filter: Disable Auto-Join. I'd say 90% of my groups when not using Auto-Join in Beta were top notch. When I used Auto-Join the group rarely made it even to the first boss. This isn't foolproof, but certainly adds a Hoop lazy players won't go through.

Spec: Comments and disabling Auto-Join address this problem. Even if people aren't using the comments, by disabling auto-join you can still whisper them and talk to them before inviting. Or accepting an invitation. I'll get blind invites when I'm queued up, I leave the prompt up and whisper the person asking which instance and what role do they need before accepting.

BIG Dungeons: No real help there, but in 5 weeks this problem goes away. All the dungeons are DM/SM style and each wing is a separate option in the system. But again disabling auto-join, using comments, and using /whisper goes a long way.

IMHO, it boils down to most people are just adjusting to change. No simple computer system can replace human decision making. If you want the lowest common denominator you can leave it up to the flawed system to create a group for you and hope you get lucky. If you want to get the most out of the system you have to learn to use it to your advantage. Aside from the alt issue most of what I am hearing you want is available by just talking to people.

 

GrizleyCQ

At the risk of sounding overly elitist...

I would love it if I could for instance, say looking for a tank with at least 9k hp and 8500ac. Or a healer with at least +700 healing, or a rogue with at least 900 atk.

Just sort of filter out the people who are going to infuriate me when I try to group with them. Nothing is worse than a group where the tank can't hold agro off me and its a good thing because I take a hit better.

 

egesia

Let's imagine this: 5 players are playing on their 60's main, they are bored; they dont know each other, but they all have an Alt in the 38-42 level bracket. They all would like to run Scarlet Monastery.

With the new system they will NEVER find each other! The group will never exist! Their only way to go is continue to play, and get bored, with their 60's. Dont you see something wrong? Why blizzard wants to waste such possibilities?????

I dont want a queue, i just want a database, and leave people free to chose what they want to do.
My solution would be to create a LFG interface external to the game experience (like diablo 2 for example). This LFG tool would be an instrument for Players, not for single Characters.

 

• Tharas

Totally agree with the OP's assessment.

I have 3 60's:

1) My from-release fury warrior that I 40-man raid/grind-faction/farm gold on. Never do 5-mans anymore unless a guildmate needs something specific.
2) My mage who hit 60 a few months ago and is now half-epics. He likes to do PUG ZG/AQ20 since there's still decent loot for him there, and maybe DM West or UBRS for a few elusive drops. He also is my herb/alch farmer so I spend a bit of time on him.
3) My rogue who hit 60 only two weeks ago. She still needs lots of blues from 5-mans, is finishing up AD quest chains, and is excited to get into ZG or AQ20 runs since pretty much every class-applicable blue is an upgrade.

I have a slew of lower alts at various brackets of 20's, 30's, and 40's, used mostly for profession and bank mules, and to "get the flavor" of the different classes. If I see a "LFG Duskwood quests" or something like that, I would sometimes send a tell and hop over to a lower alt for some good old-fashioned questing.

I used to be able to play any of these 3 main characters, have global LFG stashed in a separate chat tab and use CallToArms to filter global LFG for only LFM or LFG entries (this was truly a great interface). I could ignore all the mindless drivel in LFG channel, and see who all the LFM or LFG requesters were. I could decide based on guild tag, personal experience, or bad typing/writing skills if this LFM entity was worth spending time on. I could also send them a tell saying "I have a 60 mage for ZG" or "I can bring a 60 rogue for UD Strat" while playing another character and getting useful things done, either for raiding or faction farming.

I played a bit with the /lfg interface and was disappointed. I didn't realize that /lfm gave something else, perhaps this does what I want.

I suspect the /lfg interface works fine if you are leveling a main (and should be fine for TBC when all the mains will be out LFG in the new instances), but it seems to fall apart once you are playing the alt game with the current end-game 5-man/20-man content.

 

Irshish

While that would be cool, as a healer I am rarely ever sitting around in my Healing gear unless I'm already in a party with other people. I can't heal mobs to death to farm my repair bills, so I put on my cat gear and start grinding.

 

modhelm

This is the most annoying thing about the tool, and I'm not as forgiving as you. If I get a blind invite box appear on screen unexpectedly, I click decline and pretend it never happened. If they want me in the group, they can develop some courtesy and whisper.

The alt thing doesn't affect me because I've never looked for a group for a character other than the one I was playing, and I've never experienced the urge to join a PUG for wailing caverns at level 60. As for the limitation to 3, they should probably just add an "any" option to the list of dungeons.

Beyond that, I like it. Sure beats the spam of a global channel.

 

• frmorrison

I agree that it could be improved, but the functionality of it vs. just asking in the LFG channel is a big jump in effectiveness.

Use the comments, and give it some time, it will grow on you.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Irshish

I agree. What is up with blizzard's obsession of putting us in queues?

I've never known anyone that enjoyed being in a queue, be it a game queue, a queue at the DMV, or a line to get into a Concert.

 

Baradaga

I think the new LFG isn't as good as it can be which is disappointing seeing as there was a great example in Call-To-Arms that Blizzard could of modeled it after. I let CTA parse the /LFG channel for me and also hide it so I can't really tell you how bad the channel was with random stuff. CTA allowed me to play any of my eight 60's or lower level alts and also passively watch for an instance or quest group for any of my characters. When something come up in CTA that piqued my interest, I would send the person a tell and then log in the appropriate character. Now with the new tool I can't do that. The LFG tool should be based on the player and not the character that they are playing at the moment. This allows a much larger pool of people to help fill out a group.

Personally, I think Blizzard should of just used CTA as base starting point and added in a way to setup LFG/LFM requests and they could have still ditched the global LFG channel.