Originally Posted by
StrawberryZebra
Being able to find the queue is one thing, as you say it's not complicated. It's an easy to find UI button. Perhaps making a brief tutorial quest, something like use the LFG tool 3 times would be an idea, but that's not really the main problem with the system. Understanding what other players expect of you in that group is another entirely. No amount of FPS lobbies or menus are going to prepare you for that.
Imagine being a newbie tank or healer. You're asking four other players to die over and over until you can figure it out. Four random strangers you find in LFG are expecting you to already know how to do it flawlessly right from level 15. I'm sure everyone has been in a group where someone has made a simple mistake and the whole thing has collapsed into rage because of it. That is not going to be a suitable environment for you to learn in, but the later you leave it the worse it'll be. You'll almost always be learning group content in a hostile environment.
By the time you learn all of the usual group conventions, like marking targets, the terminology used and such, you've already overcome a lot of the hurdles to being a valuable group member. But most players never make it that far! They've either been scared away from group content or just quit the game entirely. There isn't any kind of "on ramp" for this content. You're immediately put in a place where you're already expected to know it all and any mistakes you make in small group content is immediately noticable and called out by experienced players. Which is completely the wrong approach.
One of the true genius features of LFR is that level of anonymity that it offers. No one cares if you make mistakes, you're still going to kill the boss anyway. There's no yelling, no blame and no rage. In many ways, it's a much more welcoming introductary experience than 5 man groups are. Having the space to make mistakes and the benefit of being able to blend in without having to really try means you've got plenty of time and opportunity to learn some of the important parts of your class in a lower stress environment than in a 5 man dungeon.
What if you're completely new to the game and haven't had the chance to make friends with anyone yet? Would such a player even know what a guild is, or even how to pick out one that suits them? Asking them to find the resources themselves outside of the game is a solution that is going to push them away.
What if you've just returned to WoW from a 4-5 year break to find all the friends you had have quit. You're going to find yourself in a place where you're so far out of the loop that getting back into it is hard. Your guild has likely collapsed and moved on, so you're completely on your own until you can form new social connections - Which is the elephant in the room really.
It's super hard to make new connections in WoW right now. Adding friends from dungeons isn't a viable option anymore, most of them are players you will never see or interact with again. The same is true for open world content, any players you do happen to come across are ones you're never going to see again. Where does one go to make new friends in WoW? You could join a guild blindly and hope for the best, which is really your only option in this situation.
FF14 gets around this by having a dedicated new and returning player channel, where you can ask stupid questions, get input and advice from more experienced players and so on. It's not a perfect solution, but it's an easy one. One that Blizzard could patch in extremely rapidly if they needed to, afterall, it's just moving players into a new chat channel. Easy. Obviously there are more factors in play, mostly around FF14's server structure, but as potential solutions go it's a straight forwards and simple one with very little risk attached.
To borrow ideas from other genres, Guilty Gear, BlazBlue and other fighters put players into a virtual Arcade of sorts, which acts as a form of social hub between games where you can chat to other players, use pre-determined emotes and such. It gives you the chance to interact with other players outside of a match, to ask questions, make frenemies and even to watch matches between other players. It's as much a learning experience as it is a social one.
Perhaps do something similar with the LFG tools, where you're moved to an instanced version of your factions portal room while in the queue with everyone else from your server. Creating a sort of communal area where you can talk to potential group members before hand, inspect players or even just form a group right there and then and skip the queue. For players who don't want to do LFG content, maybe add something like a park or a market or something where players from one server can just hang out. Maybe even have pre-scripted events that are basically giant parties (The social gathering kind, not the killing bosses kind) with free food and drinks where players can get to know each other.
It's far from an impossible problem to solve, it just requires a bit of willingness from both Blizzard and the player base to tackle it.
Recent Blue Posts
Hunter adjustments -- April 23
Crests in Season 4
World of Warcraft: The War Within Alpha - New Creature Models
MMO-Champion
Recent Forum Posts
Reply With Quote
