Let us queue for fractal, dungeon and raid parties - like unranked/ranked PvP

If we were able to queue for PvE parties, I think it would be awesome. Yes we have LFG. LFG is like a stepping stone to queuing for an instanced group IMO. Just an idea

M-hm. Teaming up inexperienced people into a ragtag group with random composition. Seems like it might work. /s

It could work for fractals based on personal level but raids? Boy, that is not even funny.

Memory serves, party maker in pvp was unreliable at best, why would you want that in pve?

Well considering you dont need anything special in pvp you just get mashed up with randoms it works kinda crap there.Now you want to take that system and somehow have it figure out who que as tank, support and dps and mash those together what magic wand are you thinking this system should use?

This could actually be a fun system to use if designed right. It would be easy to have various slots labeled Support, DPS, ect. all in the name of stream-lining the pug group building process. Having actual slots with a nice user interface instead of just 6/10 (LF druid, condi, off-chrono) would be pretty sweet. It isn't that hard to read but anything that makes building pug groups easier and more efficient is a plus in my book.

The PVP matchmaker uses rating to decide how to form teams, and it's not perfect at all. What kind of metric(s) would be used to make these PVE groups?

Something along these lines would do nicely..

@Zagerus.8675 said:Something along these lines would do nicely..![] image snip for size )

While I'm not sure an auto group system would be easy to implement, I have been voicing my opinion on a required rework of the LFG to make it both more player friendly as well as easier to navigate and use. Nice work on the image.

Maybe having squad leader be able to assign desired roles/class per slot might work. In general though I think the LFG needs a major overhaul to accommodate the many changes the game has seen over the years, and an introduction for new players to show them where in all the menus it is hidden (or better yet, give the LFG its own menu button).

@"Zagerus.8675" said:Something along these lines would do nicely..

This looks great. Only problem is that you cannot. Restrict kp/li. Someone might want to play with 600+ li but they might get 60.

People asked for this years ago for dungeons where it was pretty simple to implement in comparison to a system for raids.We got an official statement that they don't want such a system for PvE in the game. It won't happen.And everybody knows how good the system worked for WoW and slightly more difficult content. (Hint: It didn't).

A system like that would only be worth a damn if these personal statistics were to be used to form proper squads of a similar level of experience and possibly skill. There needs to be options to allow each individual to set the type players they wish to be matched with and many other things they would have to consider and include properly. It would be mostly used by the very inexperienced and lead to rather disastrous runs otherwise while being completely avoided by anyone else.Properly filling roles and classes would be another mess entirely. They could give us the option to cross out classes or builds we do not wish to be matched with for each boss but that would make it even worse. Queue times might end up being insanely long.

Something I'd much rather see is an update of the LFG with some of these options. Allow us to do more than just type down whatever we are looking for and take away all of the frustration of people refusing to read anything or worse trying to get in anyways. They could still whisper you if they didn't fill some requirement.

No, thank you. The game is impersonal enough as it is without having to also automate simply finding a group to play with. If you want a massively single player game with occasional annoying cooperation to get the next big shiney go sit in your Garrison.

It has been great reading everyone's comments - keep it up. For those against it: How did an MMO like WoW make dungeon and raid finder work? Why wouldn't it work for GW2?

I feel like group finders for content should be a basic QOL for today's MMO's.

@"mrauls.6519" said:It has been great reading everyone's comments - keep it up. For those against it: How did an MMO like WoW make dungeon and raid finder work? Why wouldn't it work for GW2?

I feel like group finders for content should be a basic QOL for today's MMO's.

Well wow have clearly defined roles some classes can be tanks/healers when attuned to the tanking/healing speziliastion line.Gw2 dont have that.You can heal for example with a full damage traited elementalist by just going into water.

Well imo it didn't work in WoW, at least not for me. I quit for many reasons but certainly one of those was how impersonal the game got. You could quest on your own, sit in your own town, and when you wanted to group up it was as simple as letting the game do all of that for you too.

@"mrauls.6519" said:It has been great reading everyone's comments - keep it up. For those against it: How did an MMO like WoW make dungeon and raid finder work? Why wouldn't it work for GW2?

I feel like group finders for content should be a basic QOL for today's MMO's.

Agreed, but other mmos have distinct and obvious roles. Guild wars 2 currently has 9 classes, and even changing elite spec doesn't specialize you that much.

WoW to an outside observer seems to be set up in a similar way to guild wars 2: 12 classes with an average of 3 elite specs each class. But actually playing the game shows that wow actually has 36 classes, grouped up into 12 thematic groups, with a player choosing and leveling a thematic group and has the possiblity to change class within the group while out of combat. There is a fundamental difference between playing a restoration shaman and an enhancement shaman, and this difference doesn't exist between its closest gw2 counterpoints, tempest vs weaver.

Its also important to note that wows roles are all class based. Its fairly rare to require specific types of gear in order to do a role (there are a few trinkets). In gw2, gear is arguably more important then the class for doing a healing role.

Is it possible to have a queue in this game? Yes, but you have to have players define there own roles. Roles that are by there very nature weakly defined in game even among the hardcore playerbase. And then you have to trust those players to those roles even though there is no guarantee that players even understand what they signed up for. That doesn't even get into players lying in order to reduce queue time.

You could do it pretty easily for fractals T1-T3, that can just be a queue with no arguments, but IMO t4s basically require 1 and only 1 healer nowadays, especially in pugs. Its just a lot more fun to do them with healers, and stuff like hamstrung is magnitudes easier with healers. And raids need roles, with different bosses at times requiring different amounts of each role.

So I typed up this entire thing and them remembered something massive, and I feel so dumb. Everything I said is true, but the real nail in the coffin is that wow doesn't have queues for dungeons and raids. at least not at the difficulty levels that exist in this game. When talking about raids, Wow only has queues for raid finder, the lowest difficulty of raiding, and the easiest GW2 boss is harder then the hardest wow raid finder boss. And dungeons lose the ability to queue after heroic, which is equivalent to fractal T2. The T3 and T4 fractals are roughly equivalent to Mythic and lower Mythic+.

I would be in favour of a supplementary matchmaking service for dungeons and fractals. ESO does this for normal or vet dungeons and it works great. I've clocked significantly more time into their dungeon content then I have in GW2 simply because of this accessibility. Pick a dungeon or fractal you want to run or let the matchmaking server pick one at random, then continue playing GW2 while waiting for the matchmaker to form a group and everyone ready up, and finally teleport you all into the instance. The great thing about GW2 is that there's no concept of trinity, so no need for specific party compositions. The service would be pretty quick to pair you up so long as there's a healthy population to play with.

As for raids, even ESO doesn't offer matchmaking for Trials (raid equivalent mode). LFG and organized guild runs would still be required there. The main issue is Anet cannot dictate party compositions, so it would be difficult for the matchmaker to know who will play power, condi, or healer and how many of each you would want. Any workaround to this problem means that after people are paired up and brought into the raid instance, some will need to relog on a new toon so they can fit the role best needed for the group. This is an automatic no-no for any game developer. As such, raiding relies on players to setup the squad manually. However, there are ways to simplify the current system for pugs. LFG is to manual. You ask for a Chrono and two join in at the same time. Now you got to deal with that situation. A better interaction would be to have a game interface where you can setup your party roles in advance (any condi, any power, any healer, or specific profession/elite). When a player views your LFG request, they can slot into that role if they meet the requirement. When all roles are filled, start a countdown timer. When it reaches 0, teleport everyone into the raid instance. Quick, simple, easy.

Something is telling me its quite easy to type this out Nate.8146 but alot harder to program it to be done.

Linken, when I read these pie in the sky posts, I know any community feedback or opinions given is simply that, words. None of us are in a position to debate development complexities, costs, priorities, or even feasibility. Nor should any of us expect any action to take place here, or even assume someone from ANet reads these kind of posts. And even if ANet did decide to take action on this subject, we should expect their professional staff to come up with their own ideas and solutions as that is their job.

@"phs.6089" said:And everybody knows how good the system worked for WoW and slightly more difficult content. (Hint: It didn't).

"worked" is subjective. I was around in WoW before, during and after their LFG system was implemented, but there is one very key difference between WoW and GW2: on WoW you could only group with people on your server, GW2 does not have that restriction. So back when you only had a group finder (very similar to how LFG in GW2 works) you could wait for hours for a 'tank' or a 'healer'. I have never waited in LFG in GW2 for longer than 15 minutes, and if I did wait, it was because I was at an off peak time.

Just before reset I can get into a T4 fractal run in under a minute, and I don't even play one of the Holy 3 professions (Druid/Chrono/BS).

Raids might be different - I have no experience with that game mode, but for everything else in this game the LFG tool works just fine.

Lol I would like to see this just to see elitists complaining about "Ugh, I was put with n00bs!111!!! FIX THIS ANET" much like pvpers do with matchmaking ahahahahahah

haha yeah but unlike in pvp you could actually solo dungeons and carry people ;-p

@"mrauls.6519" said:It has been great reading everyone's comments - keep it up. For those against it: How did an MMO like WoW make dungeon and raid finder work? Why wouldn't it work for GW2?

I feel like group finders for content should be a basic QOL for today's MMO's.

To provide my opinion/analysis of your questions:

1. "How did an MMO like WoW make dungeona dn raid finder work?"Not everyone agrees that raid-finder in wow did "work". It is commonly complained about inside and outside of the game, and even Blizzard devs have mentioned they wish they had not implemented the RF system at all because of the damage it caused to community building.It also forced a new difficulty requirement in the game of "keep bashing head and you literally can't lose". Because of the nature of "anyone and everyone" is invited as long as you queue and wait, it forced their hand into implementing the Determination system; where every wipe increases your damage and healing by a % until the boss is dead.

I am personally fully against such a system, as I believe it ruins one of the core competencies of the MMO genre when compared to other RPGs.Our current group-finder system allows us a singular place to communicate with people and "apply" to groups. It provides us with a way to meet other people and build communities; Waiting in line never gave us this opportunity.

2. "Why wouldn't it work for GW2?"I think that completely depends on your definition of "working". If the sole purpose for implementation of said system is to quickly line people up and build groups then sure, I believe it would "work". However, I fully support the idea that this would be detrimental to the game in the long run, for similar reasons to why it's referred to as a problem in WoW.

I'd argue that group-finder as we have it today is more a staple of QOL for grouping in modern MMOs. I'd like to see the complete removal of automated queuing.

@"Zagerus.8675" said:Something along these lines would do nicely..

This looks horribly long for the squad leader to organise. Manually restricting every role is so much more hassel than typing LF1 druid,bs,chrono into lfg.Id rather keep it fast and simple to create a group.