Darth Hater

Cross server LFG would be great!!.  My server (the Progenitor) must have a low population because it is neigh on impossible to find a group and I have to abandon those quests.  I was a long time WOW playwer and I liked being able to complete the content I was paying for without taking hours and hours to find a group.  Yes, admittedly there were arseholes, but clicking the "leave group" option is simple.  How about cross server groups from similar kinds of servers? I found the real Pain in the Botty children came from PVP servers. ..keep them together and perhaps away from RPers.

Everyone refers back to wow on this one because it is where we have most used a cross realm LFG tool.

When i quit wow and moved to SWTOR and found no LFG tool waiting for me it meant that i have barely seen any of the content in the flashpoint system. Being able to log on at hours that didn't meet up with progression from the rest of the guild mean't that upto level 42 i have done 2 flashpoints.

In Wow i leveled characters from 70 to 80 via LFG. I personally love the group play, but i really can't be bothered spamming chat to try and make one. Then what is also to say that of the server pop that is online of say 1000 how many are in your level range and then how many actually want to run and instance, then how many actually fill the roles required. You can see how this narrows down things pretty quickly if you don't have cross realm look ups.

You could however create an honor system linked to the LFG tool where you vote for people saying it was a positive, negative or neither experience grouping with that player. Getting a good rep could provide some rewards, titles or something else. Getting constantly voted as a "bad" could have negative effects on your toon.

I support cross realm LFG. Lets get it in there so we can all experience the game....if you hate cross realm perhaps give an option in LFG....cross realm or on realm. But give us something because it sux not running flashpoints. I hate questing with a passion.

As a long time WOW player, I have two issues with how cross server LFD/LFR has changed that game. First, the oft-stated change to the culture of the player base. Things in randoms are truly toxic and I would hate to see SWTOR get that way.

The other change regards how the difficulty was dumbed down for LFD and LFR. At the start of Cataclysm  Blizzard made heroic dungeons just a little challenging and people freaked. In response, they nerfed everything. Now Heroics are tedious facerolls, and there is no interesting small group content in WOW.

Currently in SWTOR, I am very much enjoying the small group play. I've not tried any Ops, but the flashpoints and heroic quests feel nicely tuned with level appropriate groups. When I get together with friends, we have a blast. If Bioware adopts cross-server pugging, I fear they may take Blizzard's tack and  make sure content is in no way challenging to anyone. Again, leaving aside the fact that this has lead to a player base that resents doing dungeons and acts like they're too good for them (whether they are or not), it has left people such as myself with absolutely nothing fun to do that isn't scheduled, organized raiding.

So far that hasn't been a problem I've had with SWTOR and I very much don't want that to change.

I understand that I'm fortunate to have a circle of friends to play with, and that other folks on deserted servers want and deserve to experience group play too, but I agree with the position that there are other things Bioware can do first to improve their experience.

From what Damion was saying on the podcast, I'm not sure the actual implementation will be useful at all to me.

I, like many TOR players, have many alts.  Only a few are level 50, but I (again like most) still spend the most time on the 50s.  On any non-dead server you shouldn't have a problem grouping for a hardmode flashpoint unless you're a known jerk/incompetent/etc.  Things are different below 50.  Even though there are likely a lot of players on with appropriate characters for any particular leveling instance, they won't necessarily be on them, and it's hard/impossible to keep track of alts outside your guild and circle of actual friends.

I wouldn't mind, if I'm not running an op or something with my guild, pugging a level-appropriate flashpoint on an alt as a break from grinding dailies or solo qing -- especially if it lets me mix with and welcome folks new to the server.  I suspect a lot of 50s feel the same way, but because you're either on a 50 planet or in a 50 warzone most of the time as a 50, there's little communication with the leveling crowd.

Bioware needs to tap into this same-server playerbase, but I'm not sure they're planning to implement the right system to do so.

TL;DR:  WTB Legacy LFG, with of course a Legacy blacklist (to avoid these known jerks/incompetents/etc)

Could fill LFG with Same Server First, then if no takers within 2-3 min of cueing go to cross server finding of remaining roles?

Something to keep in mind too in regards to a cross server LFG tool is that while it can help ease the pain on a low population server, it will not change the fact that it's still a low population server. You'll still have no one to group with for heroic missions, a very limited supply of items on the GTN, and (with the exception of story mode) no one to do operations with either.

Overall I find a server only LFG to be the better deal. They just need to implement their transfers as soon as they can to improve the populations on servers so that there are people to run with.

Having played wow prior to LFD, played using LFD, and then come to a game without it, I've quite enjoyed the vast majority of the runs I've been on. I may not run as often as I'd like, but when I do they're fun.

One last thing, if they had to implement a cross server LFG, what might work best is if they offered it without the reward for doing a random daily. So if you want to get extra black hole commendations (for example), you need to do the server only random

Agreed!

However, since most of group/heroic quests are instanced, I don't see why Bioware can't take it one step further and add the heroic quests to cross server LFG tool. 

For example, it would be nice if I could queue up for "Firestar" while questing in Balmorra on my toon. 

Another thought!

Using my server cluster idea below and your GTN problem, how about making the GTN itself cross server and limited to the server cluster. I.e. Players on the same server cluster can access the same GTN on their own side of the faction. 

This will be massive leg up to the low pop server.

1) Lower pop == higher rate of gathering (less competion for nodes). So, stockpile and sell raw materials to high pop servers where people are fighting over nodes. 

2)  Low pop == slow access to end game crafting stuff that drops from OPs. So buy that rare Orange item from X-server AH from a crafter in a more progressed higher pop server. 

Hmm..

This model, unfortunately becomes a bit capitalistic in nature (developed vs third world country scenario)

/shrug

Assign Server clusters for all group activities, kinda like realm groups. Pick one-two high pop server in the group and the rest low pop. And restrict LFG to server clusters. 

An LFG tool will increase participation by making grouping more convenient. A cross server one effectively increases the player pool to form the group, thus further reducing downtime and increasing player participation. 

Icing in the cake would be if they could extend it to Story-mode Ops as well. 

No cross server functionality please.  A couple reasons.  First, I understand that there are many "dead" servers, but they're going to begin taking the steps to eliminate that problem with free transfers and, hopefully, server merges/shutdowns.  Theoretically, that should boost pops on realms significantly.  Second, you need to realize that people are forced to be relatively good with people on their own server or risk being ostracized by the community as a whole.  That is eliminated with cross server group finders.  You are no longer held accountable for your actions.  As it is, you may have never experienced it with the game yet, but that doesn't mean it won't change when people don't care about who they're grouped with if it's unlikely that they'll ever see that person again.  It's just the truth.

TOR isn't dead.  A loss of 400k is to be expected after launch.  I'm on Jek Jek and I think our pop is 54 out of 126.  With pvp the only time worth queueing on the republic side is between 3pm and 10pm west coast.  You can get empire teams from 9 am to 11pm.  I support a lfg function that looks on your server first and then if it can't find enough players do cross que after a significant wait.  Hopefully the times won't be so long since you only need 4 vs 16 for pvp.  The group also has to have the right  to kick a player.  I would expect that the quality of players doing flashpoints will drop simply because it is so much easier to do a flashpoint. People who haven't been doing flashpoints and haven't learned the tricks are going to be queueing.  

I think the idea that Cross Server group finder killed WoW is the most idiotic idea ever.  If anything it made grinding out your daily Heroic's and maxing your various tokens easy.  Not only that is there is no proof that the edition of that specific tool correlates to a drop in population on any server.

As to its application to SWTOR.  My server doesnt have the population to even support a LFG tool. 

For those of you who wish to imply that its because SWTOR is dead, well your wrong, 1.3 million subs puts the game ahead of launch on population its just some of them have moved to Oceanic servers and the such.

I believe SWTOR needs a LFG and that it needs to be cross realm so low pop servers dont experience terrible que times further diminishing our already small numbers.

Look at your own statement - "it made *grinding* out dailies easy". Grinding is never good. LFG grinding is never good.

Quote from mtthwrd »

I think the idea that Cross Server group finder killed WoW is the most idiotic idea ever.  If anything it made grinding out your daily Heroic's and maxing your various tokens easy.  Not only that is there is no proof that the edition of that specific tool correlates to a drop in population on any server.

Agreed.  The only downside I saw was that people were less likely to join guilds.  I would say that my LFG experience in WoW was a good one.  Very rarely did I run across jerks or ninja looters.  At the same time, SWTOR is still a young MMO so I would like to see features that encourage same server community.  A good balance between same and cross server would be a great combo.

Honest I'm amazed how you can take bad examples form 1 MMO and think it'll be the case in SWTOR.

- ninja loot, people going afk, people pulling half the instance etc.. Thanks to explain me why you'lll experience such things ONLY if the LFG tool is cross server versus same server.

- I read WOW WOW WOW, I didn't play this game and will never play it... people in WOW bla bla bla, WOW LFG killed WOW... we're in SWTOR not WOW. All of you who are refering to WOW, have you ever been in a PUG FP or OPS in which someone decided to have bad behavior ??? personally I've not a single time since the begining of swtor.

So why, all of the sudden, a cross server tool will change most of the community into bad guys ???

Based on my experience on my server, the community is quite mature and even if I indeed met few bad guys, they do not represent more than 5% of my entire PUG FP, heroic or OPS experience. But maybe it's because I'm on a European server.. I dunno.

In addition to that  thinking that all other server members are full of bad guys, ninja looter etc. is a bit weird. 

Anyway the LFG tool will not be the solution of all problem. guys in rakata armor wil not run any lower FP or ops in PUG, for such guys the LFG tool will be useless x-server or not.

Bioware need to find a way to motivate such guys to join PUG group and help.. could be by allowing them to have tiers X armor commendations as a final reward (dailies ?)

have fun