sinnereso wrote: »

You can already do most of that! You can choose the specific dungeons you want OR choose random to help fill another group and reap the rewards for it.

or are you wanting the rewards for completely selfish play?

I don’t understand this question at all. What does selfishness have to do with a better grouping tool?

I don't think it would work this far post launch.

Overwatch added a LFG function post launch a while back and it rocketed off to a good start at first then plummeted within a couple weeks.

The problem was that many of the users were happy enough with the existing system that they didn't switch to try it and many of those that swapped weren't actually compatible with one another/the circumstances the method produced and as a result quit.

Some of the players that swapped wanted to get into matches more rapidly which may have worked at first but, quickly fell apart as players left the mode.

Some of the players that swapped wanted easier matches but, the system didn't necessarily deliver that as the people that wanted easier matches generally weren't really improving anymore and weren't necessarily that good. As the system didn't deliver what they expected they quit.

Some of the players wanted to have more social interactions with players in and before the match but, this fell apart for the most part because most of the other players didn't share that desire.

When I last played Overwatch, LFG was a dozen groups that were mostly social with the occasional smurf group mixed in.

The functionality might have hit a different outcome if it had launched with the game but, the population it's later addition brought in simply wasn't a population that made the queue method a sustainable popular function.

I've suggested this myself. Numerous other threads have been started requesting this EXACT thing. I don't really understand the complete silence from the devs about it. But I'll be on every thread I see about it for support (For all that matters here).

Paralyse wrote: »

As someone who witnessed first-hand over the last few years how this system damaged World of Warcraft by fostering an exclusionary, toxic, anti-social environment for group content

Would just like to point out that trials are more or less inaccessible for players who cannot change their IRL schedule to meet a guild's. No, /zoning in Craglorn is not a reasonable solution (Because I know someone will suggest it). This to me is just as exclusionary, toxic, and anti-social, even for a game that is getting more and more anti-social every year. At least with this option, I as a player could have some level of control over when and who I play the game with.

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

I don't think it would work this far post launch.

Overwatch added a LFG function post launch a while back and it rocketed off to a good start at first then plummeted within a couple weeks.

There are a couple points that make this comparison less relevant. For starters, the LFG in Overwatch only got you a group to play with, but you still had to rely on the matchmaker to get an opposing team. The problem with this is that if you had a full 6-stack, you had to wait to be matched with another full 6-stack, or in the absence of one, a team with as many grouped players as possible. This meant your queue time increased the more players you joined with, and of course who wants that? In ESO however, you're usually looking for players for PvE, and getting a full group means you can start immediately on whatever task you signed up for. There is no secondary queue to wait in after the fact.
There's also the fact that in competitive Overwatch, which the LFG was primarily designed for, having a full stack would often put you against stronger players if it couldn't find another full stack at your rank, so players were essentially handicapping themselves by using the LFG. Again, this isn't a concern in PvE content (And it's not really a concern in ESO's PvP which already has a poor MMR system).

Ksariyu wrote: »

I've suggested this myself. Numerous other threads have been started requesting this EXACT thing. I don't really understand the complete silence from the devs about it. But I'll be on every thread I see about it for support (For all that matters here).

Paralyse wrote: »

As someone who witnessed first-hand over the last few years how this system damaged World of Warcraft by fostering an exclusionary, toxic, anti-social environment for group content

Would just like to point out that trials are more or less inaccessible for players who cannot change their IRL schedule to meet a guild's. No, /zoning in Craglorn is not a reasonable solution (Because I know someone will suggest it). This to me is just as exclusionary, toxic, and anti-social, even for a game that is getting more and more anti-social every year. At least with this option, I as a player could have some level of control over when and who I play the game with.

I've seen trials guilds at all hours of the day, here and EU/Oceanic as well. I work odd hours (10-8) and so yes it can be tough to find a guild for trials at weird hours but they do exist. Craglorn zone chat may not be the best solution, but I've had far more good experiences than bad. Compared to WoW, this game's community was (and still is) absolutely amazing.

One of the things that I love about ESO is the strong guild system. I sat and watched (and played) as WoW made guilds increasingly irrelevant for all but the hardest content, to the point where it's now a game of random people doing random things with other random people.

When I talk about exclusion, what I mean is that people who were forming groups for content wanted only the best possible players to apply -- whether because they wanted to be done as fast as possible, were hoping for a carry, or just had previous negative experiences, or some other reason. As a result, the content became more and more inaccessible to players who didn't already have clears/meet the increasingly high requirements to apply to a group. "Training" and "Teaching" runs vanished almost entirely. To fill the void, run sellers took over, allowing people to buy clears for gold so that they would be able to join a group to run content. Naturally, once they were actually in the content, they would get harassed or abused for being "bad", discouraging them from grouping in the future.

Ordinarily, those players would have been able to join guilds, to learn and progress through the content as intended, working their way up to more and more difficult ventures. But the LFG system kneecapped guilds by making them increasingly irrelevant. The players who wanted to join guilds for that reason now found that there were very few active guilds left they could join, especially on the many low-population servers.

So let's put this in ESO terms if ESO had a LFG:
- Bob wants to run Veteran Rockgrove to learn the trial but he's not in a trials guild and doesn't want to PUG.
- Bob has run normal Rockgrove several times in the past, but never VRG.
- Bob uses our new ESO LFG to find a group for Veteran Rockgrove, but can't get accepted to one since he doesn't have a clear achievement to link to the leader, or parses/Pithka screenshots to link.
- Bob settles for running more Normal Rockgroves to improve his gear and skill level, but now he can't get into normal Rockgrove runs either because the players hosting those groups want their runs to be as fast and smooth as possible, so they are only taking players with 100k+ parses on the 21m or Vet clears.
- Bob goes to join a trials guild that will help him get better and learn mechanics in a teaching run, but most of those guilds are now gone since they 're no longer needed to group for content -- why waste time with running a trials guild when you can just use the LFG tool?
- Bob starts selling crowns to get gold so he can buy a VRG clear for gold, so that he can get into those vRG runs in LFG
- Bob gets into VRG finally through LFG, then gets harassed for being bottom parse dps or dying to every mechanic that can be ignored in nRG, causing him to get frustrated and maybe give up on endgame content altogether or even quit ESO.

This is what I do NOT want to happen in ESO. The guild system of teaching and training that allows new players to work their way into running endgame content would be severely damaged by an LFG-type tool, which would have the knock-on effect of making the pool of players doing endgame content even smaller than it already is.