The LFG system really DOES suck

Thanks to Lum and D-One to have pointed to this. LFG systems are one of my pet peeves (and, incidentally, something that Blizzard doesn’t get, like the PvP system). I already commented all this, but I guess there’s more.

From Lum:

The players of World of Warcraft discover the eternal dilemma of LFG systems: until a critical mass of people use them, no one uses them.

It becomes useful only if enough players use it. SURE. But, hey, the opposite is true as well and actually comes first (in particular from the design perspective): More people will use the tool when the tool will be actually useful.

Who’s born before? The egg or the hen?

This isn’t a fucking problem for game design because you first build the tools so that they are useful, then the players WILL use them. Because they are useful. If they aren’t useful then they aren’t used.

Especially: if they suck, then they won’t be used.

I ideally imagine a LFG system like a “punch card” used on those old mainframe computers. You go around in the game searching for someone else who has a card where at least one hole is in the same position of one of yours. When you find one hole that matches, you are set. You are a winner.

Now. It’s OBVIOUS that if you can have just three holes on your card and there are is a total of 1000 possible positions for those holes, then it will be really, really, really hard that you can find easily someone with a punch card with one hole that matches yours. Statistically your possibility to “succeed” are scarce. And things get even much worse if you add the fact that you have to repeat a specific search for EACH of those thousands of possibilities.

There’s no cumulative “look for anything that matches”. You have to go check MANUALLY one by one.

Now let’s make an hypothesis. Let’s say that every time you get an “elite” quest you are automatically flagged LFG for it, of course offering the possibility for the players to turn off this option if they so choose.

Right now it’s IMPOSSIBLE to find someone currently using the LFG tool and going to flag for that *precise* elite quest that you are also flagged for. If it happens it would be like one of those coincidences that only happen once. You DEFINITELY don’t build a LFG system that works on the premise of “RARE COINCIDENCE”.

There’s a label on this tool. It reads: “WORKING PROPERLY ONLY UNDER RARE CIRCUMSTANCES“. Yeah, I suppose it is going to be really useful. Expect many people to use such a wonderful tool.

Instead an automated system that flags you automatically for ALL the elite quests in your quest log right as you log in the game could lead to exact opposite results. It could work wonderfully. You could get quickly a list of all players on the server who share your quest and you could send them messages to ask if they are available for it.

You don’t get the possibility to flag, purposely, for THAT precise quest, in that precise moment. You get the possibility to, eventually, turn it off. That’s a subtle difference.

This would be as useful at level 60 as it is as you level up. My level 22 mage has elite quests that I will probably cancel or do only when I outlevel them just because I couldn’t find other players in scarcely populated zones such as Loch Modan. My level 60 has unfinished level 60 quests that sit in my quest log since more than a year. I have that last step for the Scholo key that wants me to go kill an ugly guy in the middle of the plaguelands but I was NEVER able to put together a group to go kill it. If there was a system that let me see all the others players on the server sharing that quest I’m more than sure than in two-three days I could manage to find someone and go kill that shit.

Hoping to do the same thing with the CURRENT LFG system that Blizzard built is just plain naive.

So don’t bitch because the LFG system isn’t used. The LFG system isn’t used because it sucks. That’s different. So bitch because it sucks. Bitch because we have waited two fucking years for a LFG system that is still inferior to some of those used in other games (even if I admit that the overall quality of LFG systems is crap).

From the “blue”:

First off, it diminishes the use of the new tool and makes it harder for us to refine it in a way that makes it more useful for players.

I’m sorry. You got your chances. Firstly with those fucking meeting stones, then with the server-wide channel, now with this. You cannot fucking get this right. I really cannot understand how Blizzard can be so completely clueless about something as simple but fundamental as this.

If you didn’t get it already then there isn’t any fucking possibility that you can “refine” it in the right way. It is just above you.

I have a feeling we’ll see a slightly different result in the use of the LFG interface once the expansion launches, but that will largely have to do with the players deciding to use it and doing so.

Yeah, the gates to level 70 will open up and the quest logs of every players will get SWARMED with a number of quests and new possibilities. And you’ll have to get along with THREE LFG fields that are supposed to cover all that? Yeah.

The release of the Burning Crusade will only make more obvious how inadequate is the LFG tool. Nothing else.

It’s a good tool.

No, it sucks. This WITHOUT A DOUBT. There really nothing at all to argue about. Objectively.

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