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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
That is when you add a filter for level range.
Any time there are 30 people looking for a group in the same level range, someone will come along and form a group with 8 of those players - reducing the number of people looking for a group.
The only reason you should ever have more than 8 people of a given level range looking for a group in the same area is if there is a shortage of a key role. It isn't as if you have some people only wanting to do one piece of content and others wanting to do osmenother piece of content, and so both are unwilling to group with each other. Rather, you have people just wanting a group, and so as soon as a group is available, they are taken out of the pool of players looking for a group.
Basically, adding the option to specificy a content option means you will have fewer groups form, and thus more people looking for groups, many of whom won't find one. Remove that option, and only people looking for a general group will use the system, and thus all will be more likely to find a group.
Those wanting to run specific content are then encouraged to find friends to do it, which is exactly how it should be.
1. Play mostly solo on classes that solo best.
2. Stop playing support classes because they can't find teams.
I spent an hour yesterday yelling for a team in global chat. As a level 14 Bard. I could not find a team. Soon as you start fighting. It's hard to keep up with global chat. Just my two cents.
Totally agree that something is needed.
It's just a question of making it so that it adds to the game as opposed to detracts from it.
To me, the best option is a simple flag thst players can give themselves to denote they are looking for a group, and a means to easily search players in the local area that have this flag.
No bloat, no need to go to a specific location to look for that one member, no need to interrupt players RP'ing in a tavern to fill out your group, no means to avoid player interaction in setting up a group.
I agree.
/LFG to flag LFG
/LFG to turn off
/LFG 10-14 to find people flagged LFG in that level range
/LFG message - will display that message when people search LFG, ie /LFG quest kill Ted dead. When people looked up who is looking for group you will know what they are looking for.
Bard lvl 14 Quest Kill Ted Dead
Bard lvl 14 with lvl 13 Mage
Bard lvl 14 full team needs a tank
This should not be too hard to add to the game.
Nothing Noaani said there had anything to do with "having an established network" already by the time you're looking for an encounter. The comment was entirely about the system focusing on interactions that aren't just convenient for you to check off your tasklist. By making the system less convenient, you force players to interact with what they've got, make more concessions and compromises, and thus actually interact with the people they end up with (After talking to enough people to find someone who roughly wants to do the same type of content as you) to figure out how to get something rewarding done, instead of just having their mind set on what they want to do, accepting no alternatives, and using other players as NPCs for their personal objectives.
Having to compromise encourages genuine interaction and connection.
It's like the difference between using online dating, compared to flirting with someone you met in a casual hobby association where you're not there to perform and speedrun your way into a "successful family"/"perfect relationship." For modern daily life and its struggles with time management and matching expectations, online dating might be necessary. But which experience would you **want** to have more of baked into the system of a **game**?
Don't view it as a limitation for the system. View it as designing the system to make the interaction more open-ended, so people don't get stuck on their expectations. It's a feature, not a bug.
(And yes, some players will still always insist on doing exactly the content they want in exactly the group configuration they have set their mind on, and they'll go on Discord LFG communities and wait around playing solo until they get exactly what they wanted, and reject everything else. And that's fine, we can't expect the tool to heal OCD. But we can at least avoid shoehorning every other player into that same behaviour pattern.)
These are the words I was looking for,
Thank you.
Your argument seems rooted in a romanticized ideal of social interaction that doesn’t align with the practical realities of online multiplayer games. Let me break this down:
1. Filters don’t remove concessions and compromises.
Filters simply narrow down (if wanted) options to make finding a group more efficient. They don’t dictate what happens within the group. Even after forming a group, players will still need to adapt, compromise, and collaborate to achieve their goals. The presence of filters doesn’t eliminate teamwork or problem-solving—it just reduces the frustration of sorting through irrelevant listings.
2. Inconvenience doesn’t foster meaningful interaction.
The idea that an inconvenient system leads to stronger connections doesn’t hold up. Frustrating systems often drive players away rather than encouraging community-building. If players are forced to wade through irrelevant listings or spam chat channels to find a suitable group, the experience becomes more tedious than rewarding. Frustration is not a reliable foundation for meaningful connections. Moreover, expecting players to group up without knowing what they’re signing up for—without a shared goal—makes no sense in any context, gaming or otherwise. Shared objectives are the foundation of meaningful interaction and collaboration.
3. Filters don’t enforce rigid expectations.
Using filters doesn’t mean players will only accept “perfect” groups. It simply helps connect people with similar goals. For example, someone filtering for a dungeon run isn’t demanding a min-maxed team—they’re just looking for others who want to do the same activity. This still leaves room for flexibility, adaptability, and genuine connections.
If players have teh ability to filter, then what they have filtered out becomes the only thing they will accept. There are obviously some exceptions to this - as there are in anything - but this is generally the rule.
In fact, if this were not the rule, those filters would be ineffective. It kind of does.
Meaningful interaction is often a result of overcoming some challenge. An inconvenience is one such challenge. Expectations with filters are more rigid than without.
If people didn't have expectations when using filters, why would they use filters? The point of them in the first place is to facilitate more rigid expectations than would be the case without them - that is literally the function they provide.
That is not what happens in games with LFG tools, and the more you turn your tool into something that can be used like an LFG tool, the more people will use it that way.
People that use autogrouping don't compromise. If they don't get exactly what they want, they leave and re-queue.
My problem here isn't with these people's behaviour. I think it's natural to behave like that if the game offers those tools. It's a rational gameplay loop to choose when it's available and efficient. But it kills player interaction.
The more players you are surrounded by who expect perfect convenience for their party-finding experience, the less of a point there is to trying to talk to people to invide them to something that doesn't perfectly align with their existing plans. And you can't effectively fight it by willingly engaging in more compromise and interaction yourself while everyone around you is using the system to be hyper-efficient, because you'll just be a nuisance to people who already have a guaranteed path to success available for them. (I find that kinda cringe myself; I like player interaction, but I won't abandon the game's logical objectives for it. If the game wants me to be dead-set on what I want to do, and use other players as nameless group members to do it, I will; I'll just likely be bored to death and leave the game if I don't find a like-minded community in time.)
The problem is that it's not actually a guaranteed path to success, because of all the hidden mismatched expectations under the surface that will never be made explicit because the convenient path is good enough to clear the dungeon. But it won't be good enough for having a good time or forming lasting connections. It mostly serves to get through the dungeon.
I've seen it in ESO in its worst form. Guilds become hollow, and player interactions become excessively transactional.
I've played better games, and I know how much more profound the community interaction can be. There are still players who don't respond to proactive communication and finding shared goals. But those who do have a lot more fun, build stronger connections every play session, and, depending on how well the game encourages spontaneous true interaction, can also be much more successful when they do find people willing to group up. I'm not just talking about myself here, I'm speaking from observations of the people I've played with and against. The fact that people who do agree to grouping up for a task that requires more strategy-coordination, expectation-matching, and time commitment, tend to level up faster, and hold more prestigious PvP objectives, than those who insist on doing what they want, when they want, and only accept party members who already perfectly match their expectations. And so a game shouldn't further incentivise that type of behaviour and make it more effective.
Nope. It's not irrelevant things. The interaction of talking to people and asking them if they want what you want, and accepting being rejected, are crucial parts of finding someone you actually vibe with. If you're force-fed nameless players who are listed as wanting to do exactly what you want to do, you skip those interactions. If you're used to skipping those interactionsnamd still being effective, you're highly disincentivised to talk about even more details, like strategy ,and other expectations you have. Because it becomes more efficient just to head out and get started, and if you don't like the outcome just to dump the party you're with and use your tool to find the next nameless party member.
Yes, because those players haven't developed any frustration tolerance. A solid indication that those players would have zero interest in forming compromises.
That's why it's important that the game forces those players to overcome their lack of frustration tolerance instead of feeding into it. By making their tools convenience-proof, requiring players to use their chats and get to know their parties.
If they choose to circumvent the tools and use highly automated Discord/web communities instead, that's totally fine. But the more specialised and automated those communities are, the more they tend to be fairly limited compared to the entire game's pool of players, which leads more people to overcome their issues with rejection or inconvenience, than overcome their lack of frustration tolerance, so they have access to the rest of the player pool.
It doesn't need to be perfect. You don't need to turn every player into a social butterfly for the system to be doing its job. Just by nudging players in the direction of accepting anything other than perfect convenience, and getting their mind to accept that they won't have everything they want handed to them, you encourage more communication and frustration tolerance.
It's funny, but your point is literally exactly the reason why it's important that the system isn't overly convenient. Because frustration tolerance needs to be cultivated before you can benefit from the advantages of inconvenience.
And as for the players who never develop the frustration tolerance to talk to people to find party members, *nor* can be satisfied with going through the external LFG communities that automate the matching process for them - the game will be better off if those players recognise that the game isn't for them, than by perverting the group-finding experience and altering the average player's expectations, just to be those players around.
Yup. That's why you have to *talk* about it. Using your chat. With individual party members (or invitees who happen to say no to your offer.)
Show me where I said "enforce," pls.
The point has always been the habits and laziness they foster. If people can avoid rejection, they will. If people can avoid compromising, they will. And their communities and player interactions will be worse for it.
If you just want to do what you set your mind to, you don't need the illusion of a community for it. You can just play a single-player RPG with a co-op mode. That's not meant as a slight, I'm not saying you dislike player interaction, I am just pointing out that your approach to an MMO community turns it into a lobby game, and you need to be more open to other approaches.
They have already showed us one way to group up in the event update. How an open party forms that anyone can join.
I would imagine they're gonna expand on that and hopefully make everyone be able to create open parties that anyone can join, with a description on what they are doing and what they search for.
So no need to worry. A better way of grouping up is coming.
This wouldn’t apply here since the system I’m discussing isn’t automated. Players would still form their own groups through communication and interaction.
I completely agree that ESO can feel hollow in terms of player-to-player dynamics. This is likely a result of their automatic party finder. While they’ve recently introduced a manual LFG tool, it feels like too little, too late. My argument, however, supports a system more akin to WoW: WotLK Classic's LFG tool, which encouraged interaction while remaining efficient, it was not automated. I also know that ff14 have a similar lfg system, but I have not used it.
While rejection and negotiation are aspects of social interaction, they’re not inherently enjoyable or meaningful. A system with filters doesn’t “force-feed” players—it connects those with similar goals, facilitating conversations rather than replacing them. Even with filters, players still need to communicate, introducing themselves to group leaders and awaiting acceptance or rejection. This process doesn’t eliminate interaction; it enhances it by making it more focused and less frustrating.
Frustration tolerance isn’t an inherently desirable trait in an MMO context. Games should aim to be fun and engaging rather than create obstacles that test players’ patience. Designing systems to be inconvenient risks alienating players who value efficiency without diminishing meaningful social interactions.
External LFG platforms like Discord often arise because in-game tools fail to meet player needs. These platforms don’t cultivate frustration tolerance—they fragment communities and pull players away from the game. A well-implemented group finder can foster inclusivity by making connections easier, not by forcing players to overcome arbitrary hurdles.
Which will still happen since im not talking about a automated party finder. People will still need to talk.
While convenience can occasionally reduce interaction, it doesn’t inherently foster laziness or harm communities. Tools that streamline group-finding (while remaining manual) don’t remove rejection or compromise—they reduce frustration, allowing players to focus on building connections. Efficiency and meaningful interaction aren’t mutually exclusive. A well-designed system can foster both without diluting the spirit of the MMO experience.
It really is though.
Sure, games should be designed to be fun - but with an MMORPG, you have other players. Other players don't care about your fun, they care about their fun. You need to find a way to try and work your fun in with their fun, and that will always open up the possibility of frustration.
Games shouldn't design around this - this is an inherent thing that should be a part of any social platform.
You can literally playing the game while using chat; you're not even losing out on effectiveness if the only difference between the systems is that you have to use private chats to find a decent match in my method.
I completely agree that players naturally prioritize their own fun, which is exactly why I'm such a strong advocate for guilds. With a guild, you have a higher chance of fostering a community with like-minded people, where cooperation and mutual interests make the experience more enjoyable for everyone.
Please anything to stop this:
Indeed.
Guilds are where people should look to complete that content they want to complete. If there is a quest that requires a specific update, or if there is a mob that uou want a specific drop from, your guild is where you should look to.
That is why there is no need at all for these kinds of things to be accounted for with an LFG system. That isn't where players should look to for these things, and so those systems should be designed in a way where they don't encourage people to look there instead of to their guild.
Yup global lfg is not a fun way to find a group. It's compounded by the small lvl gap we have for groups. I'm a Bard and struggling sometimes.
Doubly so because once Corruption is tuned properly, even if you're daring and looking for PvP, broadcasting your location and plan for people to go check isn't exactly a great plan.
At least with a basic 'search people flagged LFG' you can limit it sensibly to the current node or so. Then again, the entire reason people might be using Global Chat to begin with is that they got used to it since you can't use Citizen Chat until after level 10...