So BW, what happened to community building?

[Furiel]

So as we know BW has already made a collosal blunder with the lack of server forums as a tool for community building, and their continued stance to not rectify this error has only exacerbated the issue.

Now I found this nugget on the Dev Tracker...

Your server isn't 'dead' by any means, but it's a lower population server than some others. The good news is, the population is growing daily as more people buy the game and get online (we can see the growth). However, you're right in that the number of level 50 players is going to be small and won't increase dramatically in a short period of time.

Cross-server queuing for PvP is something that the development team wants to happen, but it's not going to be available in the near future. In the interim, you might want to try re-rolling a new character, either on your own server or another server (perhaps a PvP server?). On your own server, you'll be able to PvP all the way from L10 to L49 without any issue, and by the time you get close to the cap you can see how the L50 Warzone 'scene' is. On another server - especially a PvP server - you may find a more PvP-centric community.

Now I admit to some doomsayer in this, but if the tool is there for PvP, it doesn't take much for them to add it to PvE down the road...and thus put a stake through the heart of any community that might still exist on the server since you can just FP queue and PuG with no repercussions.

[Jimer Lins]

Yeah, I saw that. I'm pretty ticked about it, to be perfectly honest.

[Dood]

What are we ticked about? That they're looking at developing a tool "down the road" that would allow cross-server PVP?

I'm having a hard time keeping up with what I'm supposed to be incensed about with this game.

[Jimer Lins]

Cross-server queuing, especially if they do it for PVE, is about the worst possible thing you could do to a game's community. You will probably never see the people you group with again, outside of another group (if even then). There's no incentive to even talk to your groupmates, let alone get to know them. It wrecks the social aspect of the game. It's a really, really bad idea.

[Blackferne]

What are we ticked about? That they're looking at developing a tool "down the road" that would allow cross-server PVP?

I'm having a hard time keeping up with what I'm supposed to be incensed about with this game.

The fear is this: In WoW it started like SWTOR where all pvp warzones and pve flashpoints were server specific. So if you did warzones you could in theory develop rivalries. Like "Oh that Gris always gets me!" or whatever. When they allowed cross server pvp warzones that pvp rivalry diminished because now your pool of potential rivals increased by a lot. The upside was people didn't have to wait in queue for 2 hours to get into a warzone. So ease of use trumped community in PVP.

So fast forward a few years later they introduced a lfdungeon tool. so you log on, your guild is all offline, you enter in and you can find a group of strangers to run. Previous to that you'd have to be spamming in general chat or whatever (I want to run the scary place with that ogre! Want to help?) Well since they had this nifty warzone cross server queueing tool, they just repurposed it for PVE. Now the problem was people stopped building up networks of friends on their server since the queue was easier to manage, and so people say that any community in WoW died as a result. You had the added problem of increased dickery. In PVP if there are dicks it is okay since you don't fight over loot and half the dicks are people you hate anyway since you are fighting them to begin with, but in PVE you run the risk of people rolling need on shit they can't even use. But since they came from a different server you have no ability to really black list them as ninjas or assholes or whatever.

Servers became basically where your raiding was based out of, and you used strangers on teh interwebs for everything else. And recently they have added looking for raid which means all group activity can happen across most servers (there are bundles of servers and other restrictions) so ther eis no real need to do any community building because all activities communities form to confront are made irrelevant due to these tools. Or so the theory goes.

[Blackferne]

If Bioware wanted to flip the incentives that WoW had they could give a bonus (credits or XP or commedations) base don the number of people in your group from your server. So you would have incentive to find a crew to roll out with, but aren't blocked from doing an activity you like just because your crew is offline (like when I play at 4am because of insomnia and my daughter waking me up with nightmares)

[Dodd Formeianna]

Cross server PVP would be ok, IMHO, just to speed up the queues if you want quick and random action. With some caveats...Specifically they should consider enabling or somehow give precedence to pregen group versus pregen group PVP Warzone matches. This would allow us to choose our opponents, have Alvian-Only Huttball match-offs, or playing against Unrepentant or even some of our guild allies, just for kicks. This would allow us to create tournaments and that sort of thing and would be a cool way of creating player-generated content and building up some server antics.

At bare minimum, they also need to fix grouping for PVP as well. As I understand, leaving a warzone makes a group auto-disband, so they need to regroup before queuing up again. They also need to fix random warzone queues. If I want to play Huttball, I should have the ability to queue up for Huttball.

But as far as PVE grouping goes...no cross server LFG tools. Ever. See Blackie's posts above. It would drive a stake in baby Jeezbus's soul.

[Dood]

Well it looks to me like the cross-server PVP is something the devs would like to do, but it is a long way off. I don't see any mention of PVE.

I guess I can't get my dander up about this stuff because I have my community right here and I hardly talk to you guys, so the idea of talking to strangers who probably suck even more than you guys isn't really that appealing.

[Jimer Lins]

We have our little community here, but we had a larger community network in SWG, fostered in large part by the forums. We wouldn't have had some of the great times we did without that. And with cross-server PVP queues it's only a tiny step to the same for PVE content and any chance we have of seeing the same types of great rivalries and friendships with other guilds and players go out the window.

[Furiel]

There's other levels of dickery and tyranny that LFD brings in that Joun didn't mention as well. It's not uncommon for people to be verbally abusive and general douches, especially if the group has 2 or more guildies and one of them is the tank. WoW, like most MMOs had a tank shortage, and I won't forget one of the last PuG heroics I did before I quit. Spent 10 minutes waiting in the queue, zone in to find the tank, healer and 1 other DPS are all in teh same guild and I'm greated with this message.

"Ok you fucking scrubs, keep your mouths fucking shut, keep up and if you don't break 10k DPS on the first pull we will fucking kick you. If you slack off we will fucking kick you. If you go AFK we will fucking kick you. If you fuck up we will fucking kick you. If you die we will fucking kick you. Just feel lucky we're letting you fucking scrubs tag the fuck along."

This type of crap is not uncommon when you get a couple guildies together running a group either because they have full control of the group. And playing as DPS if I dropped group immediately, I'd have to go right back in the queue and spend another 10+ minutes sitting on my ass doing nothing but waiting while they woudl get a replacement immediately and move on.

Basically cross-server lfg stuff opens up any and every level of dickery you can imagine because the anonymity of being from a different server "empowers" people to let their inner douche out.

And Dood, basically the concern is that cross-server PvP is a gateway. Once you tool is in place for PvP then it doesn't take much for them to apply it to PvE down the road, and as the game matures and some servers get a lower and lower population the call will start to come...and could eventually be implimented.

[Blackferne]

Seriously cross server PVP queues need to happen at some level. No one (except Dodd maybe) in this thread so far saw how long it took to get in a BG in WoW before them. And I'm not talking about AV(40v40) I'm talking about Warsong gulch 10v10. If your server had a faction imbalance (sith 55% world wide atm btw) you could be waiting a long time just to get to play a short game. For PVP where you need human opponents expanding the playerbase especially on offpeak times is a necessity. We play on an east coats server, but we have plenty of west coasters. If we assume most people are east coast or central on our server that could put hard core pvpers like "I press 2" Dood in a bit of a lurch as the server population logs off when he is hitting prime time. Without a cross server tool for warzones Dood has to choose "do my favorite acitivity or play with my east coast friends".

PVE is the real worry, but if they delay that long enough and work the matching to prioritize server matches (something WoW didn't do) you could see a different result.

[Reese]

What the fuck are you people talking about?



This thread makes me angry and confused.



And what the fuck is Leia doing to my Wookie?



Now please stop confusing me!

[Blackferne]

Improving our LFG system is high on the list of features that Systems Design wants to add to the game. We want this to be good not just for helping people find Flashpoints and Operations to run, but also other multiplayer content like heroic missions. A key emphasis will be on advertising for specific role needs (healer, tank, DPS). This feature is currently in the design stage, and once this feature has moved beyond this to a development stage and has a firm ETA, I'll be coming back to you guys to give more details.

We've known we would need to revisit this feature for a while. In the level-up game, finding players isn't too rough because, with few exceptions, everyone in that level band is either on your planet or on the fleet. Once more and more players hit endgame, and are spending their time in more places, the need for this feature is going to increase. Note that right now, high level players have the opposite problem - there aren't enough other players up there to group with. This problem will dissipate as the game ages, and more players reach the later levels.

That being said, our design team doesn't philosophically believe that cross-server Flashpoints are good for the game at this stage in the game's lifespan. There is huge social pressure to not be a jerk that goes away when the odds that you will never see these people again is high. I'm not saying never - there may come a time in the future where we reevaluate this - but at least in the short term, we believe this will cause more damage to the community than good.

Damion Schubert Bioware http://www.swtor.com/community/showthre ... dit1502055