How to make a Duty-Finder system that helps rather than hurts community

[Nilotec]

Wow Crica. Way to be a Debbie Downer... I hate when people have nothing to offer but extreme negativity and shoot down decent or good ideas.

1. Is about ease of use not about IF its POSSIBLE to create random groups on your own server. Sitting there shouting for 20 minutes is not nearly as simple as queuing up a dungeon and then participating in a few FATES while you wait.

2. Yes I want cross server friends and even communication! Some of my friends won't be changing servers, others will and I already have friends on the server I play on. The game isn't about pleasing just one person. If there's an option you don't like you can choose not to use it.

3. FFXIV has been in the red as well as SE for a while but that doesn't stop their development on other games. It shouldn't cease progress on this one either.

4. It doesn't mean they can't change it so it creates a party leader. I just see too much potential abuse for a kick function, especially after hearing about "blackmail" runs but we'll see.

5. Not having a kick makes this somewhat moot.

6. How on earth did you find a way to complain about this? It is completely random when the party is formed. How does the party staying together cause that initial selection of players no longer random? If a group of randoms like each other then let them stay formed. If you hate it... drop party.

7. I see an extremely rare need for this unless cross world communication were to start, but why not...

8. I would prefer a blacklist on a "by account" basis as opposed to singular characters. Whatever makes it easier to avoid gilsellers is OK in my book.

9. As if, in the 325k concurrent logins in FFXIV, a group of 4-8 players couldn't come together that hadn't blacklisted each other.... That's ridiculous. What is the point of limiting people's options? If a player chooses to exclude blacklisted players from their DF why not let them? No one said it had to be a policy applied to all. It could be made as a toggle.

10. Not sure that I see this one as necessary unless SE started taking action based on the number of times someone has been blacklisted. It could lead to abuse and then you might need to know if you were being targeted.

11. Uh, that response doesn't even relate to the OP.

Thank god for the ignore list on the forums... Crica added. Especially after seeing the tone of all his/her other posts.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

OP, I agree with your suggestions. Also, complementary to the "only leader can submit a vote to kick", there could be a "vote to promote leader" available to everyone (including the default leader): this way, when people notice someone's doing well in terms of leading and/or social management, or that a person has a solid MVP score, they could ask others if they too want to give power to that person. This could be good in preventing abuse, I think, and kinda fits well with both the MVP system and your suggestion.

Edit: on a default basis (before anyone requests for a vote), leadership in a random DF group could also be given to the highest MVP score. That may be better than random leadership (I'm a strong advocate of athenian-like democracy with random choice of leaders, but I'm curious to see if an MVP system allows for perhaps more, and better selection, than pure chance). At least it's worth a try I think.

[Rahze]

My only addition to this, as I told Makeda outside this forum.. Is if you are going to instill the party leader kick function (which I have no problem with), PLEASE make it so the party leader remains the party leader. Currently, this seems to change randomly when loading as you enter the instance. I have formed parties, then found I was no longer party lead while in the duty. I also often have my partner start the party so he remains the F2 position as the tank (it just makes it more convenient for me) and still ... he loses party lead and someone else is in that spot. It's bizarre. So, I happen to like all these suggestions Makeda put forth, but would add to please make party leader not switch randomly.

[gamesmart]

4) there is NO party leader in a random Duty Finder group because NO ONE formed the group themselves, SE formed the group for everyone

Look again, one member of the party is in fact designated party leader, it just has little to no meaning right now, aside from placing the party back in Duty Finder to find a replacement.

[Zakalwe]

If we are keeping a cross-worlds duty finder, with all of its community-destroying tendencies, some set of reforms like the OP's are really called for or we're in serious trouble.

My preferred fix, however, is the simplest: make the DF one world only (and I'd throw in a kick as well, but it would become less necessary). All problems solved. There may be longer wait times, but maybe not. Sure, a smaller pool to fill positions but also fewer players competing for slots.

[Balaur]

I'll give a shot at what my opinions are on your post.

Give the option to form same-server only randoms.
In theory I'm all for it, but expect long queue times. Since you are only localizing your search to your own server, you have to deal with a much smaller pool. You think being stuck in queue waiting for a tank or healer is bad now, just wait when you reduce your selection pool to your your server only. Not everyone who uses DF is doing the same content as you. The pool gets smaller even more so.

Just a minor point on this.

If we assume that the concentratioin of tanks/healers/dps is the same throughout all servers, that the several thousands of players within your range that can use the DF are available/queueing in the DF, then statistically regardless of the pool size the availability of a tank/healer/dps at any given time would be the same local versus systemwide. If 500 tanks are available from world A, 478 from world B, and 502 from world C, statistically the average across each world would be a useful number to round per world, and there'd be no difference if you were to claim that this would "reduce the pool." Yes, less people overall would queue, but they'd be queueing in the same frequency, at the same times, etc. At this level, there'd be no difference save you'd see people with a significantly higher frequency than you'd otherwise when the DF is pooling from 4-5 other worlds.

[render4439]

Great Ideas, except for the leader kick. Because it would be possible to actually kick someone just because they could, it will happen. Generally if agreement from ALL the other parties is required, theres a much higher chance that subjective kicks wont get passed.

Also, the dungeons i've seen so far aren't actually that role sensitive, aside from heals. Just to troll some stupid leader (possibly a ps3 player :P) could not do anything until the last boss and kick someone just to annoy them. There would still be a good chance of clearing the content anyway if it was dps.

With cross server queing and even worse, lack of general chat, the consequences of behaving badly in a group are quite distant here..

Also.. the flip side is.. say 3 "elite" people end up grouping with one "nice" person. If the "nice" person gets booted from the "elite" group that's (probably) just fine, they are the majority in this case. Anything less and its business as usual.