"Content Finder" - Please be careful

[Misteyes]

I normally refrain from doom and gloom posts, but that bit about the Content Finder in the 2.0 blueprint stuck out at me.

I was a WoW player before I came here. (Quit for various reasons I won't get into). As most are probably aware, WoW introduced a "Dungeon Finder" queue about three years ago. At the time, I loved the idea of the dungeon finder. I thought it was the coolest quality of life improvement the game had seen since dualspecs.

It was something new and unpolished then, and its implementation permanently damaged the game in a way that could not have been predicted. The content finder feature has the potential to be great, but only if it's done better than WoW did it.

In XIV a couple months ago, I was looking for a Toto-rak group. I hadn't done any of the Grand Company stuff, but the group I found for it was kind enough to explain what I had to do and walk me through it, even though it delayed their dungeon run by more than half an hour. That was a kindness I had not seen in an MMO in three years, and I believe that WoW's Dungeon Finder is to blame for its loss.

Being assigned to groups makes mercenaries of us all. There is no incentive to be civil to people, because you can expect to never see them again. There is no incentive to pass the Gladiator shield that just dropped to the tank, even though its his mainclass and mine's still level 1 (because hey, I might want to level gladiator some day), unless the game forces us to do it. Those who try to be kind will only get screwed over by those who don't, and they will have no recourse for justice because (no matter what happens) selfish, uncivil players will always be able to enter the queue and get a fresh batch of people to screw over (with a wait time that's no longer than a civilized, kind player would have to wait).

For the last year I spent on WoW, almost every group was either completely silent for the entire run, or else singling out a single member (one who was less geared than the rest of the group - one who needed the gear that dropped in the dungeon we were doing rather than outstripping it by miles) to berate endlessly for "slowing the group down" simply by being there. I played a healer, so I avoided the worst of it, but it was dehumanizing to watch every day.

After hearing it enough, I came to believe it. That someone who was performing under what I would have expected from their gear level was "wasting my time" by "not bothering to learn how to play their class." On a good day, I'd keep my mouth shut. On bad days, well, by the time I'd calmed down, they were gone across the realm boundary and I wouldn't be able to apologize.

I don't want this community to become that, and I don't want to become that again.

Please, SE, whatever you do, do not make the game build parties for us. Make people talk to eachother. Let us see a list of names so that we can choose people we know to be good or avoid people we have had bad experiences with. Make it cross realm. Make it nudge people along when there's a group that can be formed but no one is forming it. Make it as convenient as possible for us to find people to form groups with, but do not make it build the groups for us.

Please be careful.

Thank you.

[DNO]

As long as i am not waiting for a party for hours the i do not care........

[Alhanelem]

It was something new and unpolished then, and its implementation permanently damaged the game in a way that could not have been predicted. The content finder feature has the potential to be great, but only if it's done better than WoW did it.

Could you elaborate on this bit? They almost suckered me back into the game with the idea that it would become easier to do dungeons (originally I found it impossible to do dungeons due to the opressive nature of that game's endgame community judging you by your "gear score."

[Cycloptichorn]

I quit playing WoW for the same reason, though slightly differently: I didn't tolerate partying with ***. If someone in our party started giving someone else a hard time for the reasons you mentioned, I always sided with the lower-level dude. I ended up /ragequitting quite a few raids lol

[Wolfie]

My personal experience with WOW's dungeon finder was the complete opposite. Aside from one out of every 40-50 groups, everyone was willing to both cooperate and talk if you were respectful and people were willing to work with me when I was new to a dungeon.

The trick, like anywhere else in life, is to be the first to be nice.

[UmJammerSully]

The community of WoW and the community of FFXIV are very different and the stories you're telling us tell us more about what your average WoW player is like and not what the adverse effects of the dungeon finder are.

I party with random people all the time and 9 times out of 10 they are decent enough people. However, you are probably right about people not giving away drops they don't really need but that seems like a small price to pay to have a super quick partying system.

EDIT: For the record, I've never played WoW myself and I'm just going by what I've heard, which is probably unfair.

[FestAkos]

Could you elaborate on this bit? They almost suckered me back into the game with the idea that it would become easier to do dungeons (originally I found it impossible to do dungeons due to the opressive nature of that game's endgame community judging you by your "gear score."

They introduced a Dungeon Finder which you would select what roles(tank/heal/DPS) you could fill and queue up. This would then find people across other servers to make a balanced group and put you inside of the instance. Many people thought this killed server community. I for one did not.

I played on 3 different well-populated servers at the time and the community of all of those servers were dead. People never wanted to do anything with anyone they did not know simply because they didn't know if they were any good. People also thought this new Dungeon Finder created more ninja looters and people who were jerks just because they weren't on the same server. I also thought these people were not created solely because of the Dungeon Finder. Those type of people were rampant on every single server.

In all honesty, the reason why WoW grew so much in WotLK(expansion in which the dungeon finder was released) was solely because of the Dungeon Finder. The majority of people who play MMOs play it to enjoy content and the Dungeon Finder made the content so accessible. The FFXIV devs want to make a good game, but they also want people to play their game. Content needs to be accessible for the game to grow. The developers realize this. The Content Finder is coming. People need to learn to deal with it.

[Cycloptichorn]

Don't we already have a 'content finder?'

It's called a Map.

[Wolfie]

Don't we already have a 'content finder?'

It's called a Map.

Fun fact: FFXI also had an auto-group function, but it sucked so hard nobody used it.

[Misteyes]

I played on 3 different well-populated servers at the time and the community of all of those servers were dead. People never wanted to do anything with anyone they did not know simply because they didn't know if they were any good. People also thought this new Dungeon Finder created more ninja looters and people who were jerks just because they weren't on the same server. I also thought these people were not created solely because of the Dungeon Finder. Those type of people were rampant on every single server.

Yes, jerks and ninja-looters existed before the dungeon finder. The dungeon finder did magnify their impact (and, I believe, increase their number) by removing accountability.

Partial premades of 3 which were trying to gear up a guildmate would very often kick potential competition from the group before the boss which drops the gear they want. If someone rolled need on every item that the game allowed, intending to vendor them (and many did, at least in the Emberstorm battlegroup in the month just before Cata), the worst that could be done was kick them from that group. Half an hour later, they'd be in another group doing the same crap. Players who wanted justice were powerless to seek it.

Before dungeon finder, people would say, "Stay away from [that guy], he did [terrible thing]." After, it became, "[Terrible thing] happened to me today."

The community of WoW and the community of FFXIV are very different and the stories you're telling us tell us more about what your average WoW player is like and not what the adverse effects of the dungeon finder are.

The WoW community that I knew during classic and burning crusade was actually quite nice. It was sometime during Wrath that they really started to turn hostile. I blame dungeon finder for this, but as another poster pointed out, the Gearscore addon (an addon which would rapidly - and somewhat inaccurately - audit another player's gear and give the user a single number representing how well geared the target was) came at about that time as well - I might be misplacing the blame.

It might also be that I didn't do any of the endgame stuff until late in Burning Crusade.