Is an Automatic Queue system required for WoW and MMOs in General?

[deniter]

I loved the First Iteration of the LFG tool in Burning Crusade.

Ditto, but i also wished it would have worked for group quests as well.

Anyway, automated group finders are the worst thing that ever happened to these games.

[kamuimac]

In your opinion, do you think it is necessary to have?

its an absolute must due to how absolute toxic and elitest douchebags people are over internet

[Deleted]

No it isn't, it's one of the most detrimental, if not THE most detrimental to an mmo.

[Vargas]

Yeah, they are required.

Most people would actually like to be out in the game world playing instead of standing in Org/Storm/Current Xpac capital spamming for group invites or putting together groups which could take forever depending on your class or spec. Impatient and rude/mean players weren't created with LFD/LFR, they were always there. If it were possible without being too easily abused, a sort of reward system that players could use to vote on who was the most helpful player (in raids maybe up to 5 or so) and maybe every week/month whatever the players that were voted consistently helpful would be given rewards kinda like the weekly chest from M+. Conversely, people constantly voted as being a PITA would either get longer queues or maybe "the Jackass" as a title that can't be removed for a week.

Its sad that people seem to require rewards for being decent, normal people but apart from treating them like dogs and children by rewarding good behavior and punishing bad, there isn't much that can be done.

[Konteil]

use it or dont. its there fo those who want it. for me personally i have days when i want to pug adn days when i want to run with guild. depends on teh moods im in

[Silver Forte]

No, i dont think its nesicary at all. In fact, i think it does more harm than good. It contributes to making the playerbase more impatient than what we saw before its introduction.

I cant remember the last time i used the automatic quesystem for anything in wow, must be years ago. The Custom grp finder takes care of all needs imo.

You must be joking. Most people who played WoW (and aren't LYING about it) before there was a LFG system would not agree with you. Sitting in Stormwind waiting upwards of an hour for a group to form, only to lose someone halfway through (or at the beginning due to impatience waiting on the group to form) then having to walk fucking back to Stormwind to ask for a replacement for X amount of time. Dungeons took hours to complete some days. I do not fucking miss that at all.

[Deleted]

anonimity is the problem, not automated queues/grouping.

most toxicity i get these days is in the manual group finder, not the automated ones.

[Aphrel]

You must be joking. Most people who played WoW (and aren't LYING about it) before there was a LFG system would not agree with you. Sitting in Stormwind waiting upwards of an hour for a group to form, only to lose someone halfway through (or at the beginning due to impatience waiting on the group to form) then having to walk fucking back to Stormwind to ask for a replacement for X amount of time. Dungeons took hours to complete some days. I do not fucking miss that at all.

I repeat, the custom grp finder takes care of all needs.

[Osmeric]

MMOs that have tried to go back on automated group formation have not done well, and have quickly added it. It's not optional.

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smaller more niche ones can thrive without.

How can a smaller MMO thrive? There are large fixed costs to making a MMO that don't scale down with player number.

[Razion]

If the game is open-world and instance-free, there isn't much need for Queuing (think Black Desert Online). It's by no means necessary (again, fully open-world type MMOs achieve this wonderfully). However, when utilizing the Tank Healer DPS trio, it ends up creating a second-class queue situation. Other MMOs solve this by not having a direct tank role, and have all survivability be self-reliant on manually evading or blocking most damaging attacks (think Blade & Soul).

If we're not talking about queuing in general and instead talking about groups being automatically made for us based on proximity (as some addons do in areas like Greater Rifts) then I think there is great benefit for that, but a lot of that benefit is mostly down to the lack of ease of play with other players who aren't in one's group. (It's harder to see and use a grid to heal as a healer, many abilities actually require the target to be in a party and won't even be cast unless you're in the same group.) Much of this functionality in other games is worked around by making the combat more free-form and aim-based, so it doesn't matter if you're in the same group or not, it'll just hit whatever is friendly or hostile in the area the ability impacts. A lot of the issue in WoW is that targeting moving friendly units to, say, heal them, while also registering that they need healing when the base UI for things like friendly player nameplates is generally not a natively enabled or generally used feature at all. Not only is there excess clutter with the base UI, but it can't be sized or organized so windows of nearby friendly units just appear in its own grid. If such a system were to be made, there may not be a need for a party system at all in open-world content.

I think to help open-world content like World Bosses or Greater Rifts, either combat needs to more drastically shift towards Action Combat, and/or take a direction where Friendly Nameplates or a new Nearby Friendly Grid can appear and be far less cumbersome than the current UI has them, to such a point where they feel natural to use and even enjoyable enough to be a standard and default option in the main client so that most players can expect that when they go into these Greater Rifts, that despite not being in groups, healers would be able to find damaged allies and be able to tell how injured they are, and actually be able to heal them by using it.

[Deleted]

Just a tangent to this type of experience, doesn't this still kind of happen with M+ runs?

No because these days you have the groupfinder.

[shadowmatrix]

Just a tangent to this type of experience, doesn't this still kind of happen with M+ runs?

Yes and no. While it can, and likely will, take a long time to put together a mythic+ group you are not stuck in one zone. You can do other stuff while waiting for responses.

[Deleted]

Call me a liar all you like, won't change the fact that I have never seen someone which, upon entering a raid or group, have written "123". Perhaps that's an American thing?

yeah surly you dont put ccause its an EU thing.

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"smoothest" doesn't mean bug free, there were plenty and still are some, hell some bugs that were reported way back in Legion's Alpha still exist, like Blessing of Freedom and Steed of Glory(Prot Paladin PvP talent) not removing some snares like they are supposed to, which is pretty game breaking for them in PvP.

So first you talk about Launch and now about bugs? newsflash: games will always have bugs.... but they dont hinder launch or anything so claiming the launch was bad because of some bug is pure hatespilling.

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I repeat, the custom grp finder takes care of all needs.

I repeat: no it does not.

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anonimity is the problem, not automated queues/grouping.

So you admit that PEOPLE are the FLAW not the GAME, correct?

[Schattenlied]

So first you talk about Launch and now about bugs?

Maybe you need to go back and read my previous posts, because I was always talking about bugs, I specified as much.

newsflash: games will always have bugs....

Thank you captain obvious

but they dont hinder launch or anything so claiming the launch was bad because of some bug is pure hatespilling.

Not once did I claim the launch was bad because of bugs, I said there were plenty of bugs at launch, those are two very different statements.

[RoKPaNda]

When I hear this argument all I hear really is "I want the game to fail." When the players set the requirements for content the participation rate for that content will fall. This has been the case ever since gearscore became a factor in pugging in WLK. Players set moronic requirements. And "make your own group." is a pretty garbage response because anyone who has ever stepped foot in a raid knows that not everyone is a leader.

I have to wonder if the people who are against automated queues have ever played a DPS role? I'm thinking probably not. I was a tank throughout Vanilla/BC/Early Wrath and I had no problems with the way things were because I had no issue ever getting into a group. When I switched to DPS I quickly learned how shit the pugging experience was for them. Even with the new group finder it would still be absolute shit for them. Right now even if you overgear the content if you're not playing fotm DPS it's a bitch to get into groups.

And if you're just the right gear level for the content, hahaha good luck to you.

As for removing LFR, again when the players set the requirements for groups that holds back most people. LFR players won't make that jump to normal without an automated queue. Doesn't matter how faceroll you make normal. And when those casuals quit because their endgame is gone again us Mythic raiders are fucked because we'll go back to shit filler tiers like Firelands/ToC/Ruby Sanctum/etc because they won't be able to justify the resources anymore. Screw that.

[Osmeric]

And when those casuals quit because their endgame is gone again us Mythic raiders are fucked because we'll go back to shit filler tiers like Firelands/ToC/Ruby Sanctum/etc because they won't be able to justify the resources anymore. Screw that.

You wouldn't even get that.

[Deadite]

Personally, im on the fence about this. I think automatic queues make sense in some types of content, and others not. But what do you think about this?

WoW these days seems to be about people finding ways to exclude people from content. It is pretty much needed. No one makes you use the automated queueing. Make you own groups if you don't like it.

[LanToaster]

yeah surly you dont put ccause its an EU thing.

Sorry, for the slight offtopic, I play on EU, and I dont have a clue what this "123" is supposed to mean.
Can you enlighten me?

WoW these days seems to be about people finding ways to exclude people from content.

Somehow very true.

[Lumineus]

I don't think it's required in general but it's required for games based on the same class archetypes as Everquest and WoW. If you want to build a game without the Holy Trinity of tank/heal/dd then by all means, have your manual grouping. Such games tend to be piss easy and all the group content can be soloed with patience, so they devolve into a single player mode, and then people wonder why they have to pay to access servers so they go F2P and land in microtransaction Hell.

On the other hand, manual grouping is bad for social games, and the Trinity exacerbates this problem. You might think otherwise in your silent heroics, but for some reason I think that it's more likely the entitled, self-important "martyrs" who played tanksWarriors and healers in Vanilla and TBC might, just might have contributed to the sub-10% subscriber retention rate.

[melodramocracy]

Depends entirely on the game, population per server etc. On some level, it shouldn't be required, and is probably detrimental. In WoW's case, where there's far more servers than population to warrant them (even with x-realm), and rather limited in-game matchmaking, it's probably needed.