Social party finding or LFG?

[KabbyDankGod]

*DISCLAIMER! I'm not a professional on these types of topics, so if I get something wrong don't hang me, I'm just going off my and others' experiences*

**This is in suggestions as I'm suggesting a more social type of party finding, though i have no idea what the devs want.**

Hello fellow Eturians, With Dyescapes alpha release potentially being fairly close and at least one dungeon being planned, I wanna talk a bit about the social aspect of Dyescape. The active people on discord have already made some tight bonds and have already formed guilds before we even have access to them officially. And I want this to continue onwards after the launch of the server when the player count could be tens or hundreds of times more.
Now, I'm not sure if this has been discussed in general chat, any suggestions or the staff chats.

There are multiple aspects to MMORPGs, from gameplay to story to making cute anime babes, but one fairly neglected aspect of them is the social side of things. If there is no interaction between the players can you really call it an MMORPG, when it's more of an RPG?

So how do we give players these needed interactions?

Simply make them a mandatory part of the game!
- Wanna go for a dungeon run, but don't know anyone to go with? Just go to the dungeon entrance and ask around and form a party with the players there. Maybe those players will become your future friends and you can queue up again!
- Don't have a guild? Ask around, maybe there is someone advertising their guild.
- Can't beat a guest? Or the guest is designed as group content? Form a party with players who want to do the same quest!

But I know, someone is gonna say that you could just find a party finder or an LFG/LFR (Looking for group / Looking for raid), but that is very uninteractive between players. You are more likely to form a bond with players who you've found by interacting them than when you just clicked on join a party on the party finder. And sometimes people require you to have certain things done to join their group which promotes a form of toxicity.
What am I talking about? Well, I'm a GW2 player which is known for having a very nice and accepting community, and is very beginner friendly, which is true for everything. Besides raiding. The LFR on GW2 is full of people asking that you have had to complete 250+ raid runs before you are allowed to join their group! Though sometimes they can be a bit fairer and accept people, a lot of people fear the LFR because people expect you to know all the mechanics and have at least a few hundred raid runs completed. Which in turns makes people mad as they are not able to participate in raids, and makes the raiders look very toxic.
(Example of what I mean VVVV, You get one LI per run and 1-2 KP.)


So now let's get into the pros and cons of being more social for party finding or using an LFG system:

Social party finding
Pros:
- Makes people form bonds, which leads to a more friendly and accepting community.
- Your reputation is important to get into dungeons and raids, weeding out toxic people.
- Makes the world seem more populated outside of capital cities / important places for trade and crafting etc. with groups of people running around.
- Gives people a feeling of connection.
- Makes people communicate more.
- Makes the server look more attractive when looking from the outside.


Cons:
- People who don't have the courage to approach others or have a language barrier won't find parties easily.
- Off-peak times finding groups could be hard
- if players are scattered, finding the group could be harder.

LFG Party finding
Pros:
- People find groups easier, and with no real barriers outside of player set ones.
- Off-peak times people/people who are scattered are able to group up more easily.
- Makes the system simpler, with one click and you're in type of deal.

Cons:
- Can lead to toxicity, no communication between members and instantly forgetting about the other people.
- Groups can be formed basically from anywhere and the players don't have to group beforehand (excluding getting into the dungeon.)
- Has less interaction with players.
- Removes the feeling of real interaction

Example pictures:
GW2 LFG/LFR, Shows what you queue to and who you are queuing with:

WoW LFR, Let's you select which raid to join, but not which party and assigns you to a random one:

FF XIV, Let's party leaders set a minimum item level requirement so not everyone always gets to participate:

I'll be leaving a poll so people can vote after reading the post. I hope we get good ideas and discussions in the comments.

 

[Perotin]

*DISCLAIMER! I'm not a professional on these types of topics, so if I get something wrong don't hang me, I'm just going off my and others' experiences*

**This is in suggestions as I'm suggesting a more social type of party finding, though i have no idea what the devs want.**

Hello fellow Eturians, With Dyescapes alpha release potentially being fairly close and at least one dungeon being planned, I wanna talk a bit about the social aspect of Dyescape. The active people on discord have already made some tight bonds and have already formed guilds before we even have access to them officially. And I want this to continue onwards after the launch of the server when the player count could be tens or hundreds of times more.
Now, I'm not sure if this has been discussed in general chat, any suggestions or the staff chats.

There are multiple aspects to MMORPGs, from gameplay to story to making cute anime babes, but one fairly neglected aspect of them is the social side of things. If there is no interaction between the players can you really call it an MMORPG, when it's more of an RPG?

So how do we give players these needed interactions?

Simply make them a mandatory part of the game!
- Wanna go for a dungeon run, but don't know anyone to go with? Just go to the dungeon entrance and ask around and form a party with the players there. Maybe those players will become your future friends and you can queue up again!
- Don't have a guild? Ask around, maybe there is someone advertising their guild.
- Can't beat a guest? Or the guest is designed as group content? Form a party with players who want to do the same quest!

But I know, someone is gonna say that you could just find a party finder or an LFG/LFR (Looking for group / Looking for raid), but that is very uninteractive between players. You are more likely to form a bond with players who you've found by interacting them than when you just clicked on join a party on the party finder. And sometimes people require you to have certain things done to join their group which promotes a form of toxicity.
What am I talking about? Well, I'm a GW2 player which is known for having a very nice and accepting community, and is very beginner friendly, which is true for everything. Besides raiding. The LFR on GW2 is full of people asking that you have had to complete 250+ raid runs before you are allowed to join their group! Though sometimes they can be a bit fairer and accept people, a lot of people fear the LFR because people expect you to know all the mechanics and have at least a few hundred raid runs completed. Which in turns makes people mad as they are not able to participate in raids, and makes the raiders look very toxic.

So now let's get into the pros and cons of being more social for party finding or using an LFG system:

Social party finding
Pros:
- Makes people form bonds, which leads to a more friendly and accepting community.
- Your reputation is important to get into dungeons and raids, weeding out toxic people.
- Makes the world seem more populated outside of capital cities / important places for trade and crafting etc. with groups of people running around.
- Gives people a feeling of connection.
- Makes people communicate more.
- Makes the server look more attractive when looking from the outside.


Cons:
- People who don't have the courage to approach others or have a language barrier won't find parties easily.
- Off-peak times finding groups could be hard
- if players are scattered, finding the group could be harder.

LFG Party finding
Pros:
- People find groups easier, and with no real barriers outside of player set ones.
- Off-peak times people/people who are scattered are able to group up more easily.
- Makes the system simpler, with one click and you're in type of deal.

Cons:
- Can lead to toxicity, no communication between members and instantly forgetting about the other people.
- Groups can be formed basically from anywhere and the players don't have to group beforehand (excluding getting into the dungeon.)
- Has less interaction with players.
- Removes the feeling of real interaction

I'll be leaving a poll so people can vote after reading the post. I hope we get good ideas and discussions in the comments.

Why not have both a social party finder and a LFG? Get the best of both worlds and cancel out the cons.

 

[KabbyDankGod]

Why not have both a social party finder and a LFG? Get the best of both worlds and cancel out the cons.

People would eventually move to LFG as it's less effort and faster than going around asking people to join their dungeon run, though if there are large raids like wow (20-40 man) LFR could make getting into a raid way way easier unless you are already part of a guild.

 

[Perotin]

People would eventually move to LFG as it's less effort and faster than going around asking people to join their dungeon run, though if there are large raids like wow (20-40 man) LFR could make getting into a raid way way easier unless you are already part of a guild.

Well at least they'd have the option of either choice... its like a democracy, whatever the players chose will stay.

 

[MrDienns]

Hello fellow Eturians, With Dyescapes alpha release potentially being fairly close and at least one dungeon being planned, I wanna talk a bit about the social aspect of Dyescape. The active people on discord have already made some tight bonds and have already formed guilds before we even have access to them officially. And I want this to continue onwards after the launch of the server when the player count could be tens or hundreds of times more.
Now, I'm not sure if this has been discussed in general chat, any suggestions or the staff chats.

There are multiple aspects to MMORPGs, from gameplay to story to making cute anime babes, but one fairly neglected aspect of them is the social side of things. If there is no interaction between the players can you really call it an MMORPG, when it's more of an RPG?

So how do we give players these needed interactions?

Simply make them a mandatory part of the game!

As a bit of background info; Dyescape used to be a simple, pretty bad survival server before we turned it into a massive MMORPG. It was all pretty unprofessional back then, but one aspect which me, and all people on the server, absolutely loved was the community aspect of things. The community was small, but very close and very friendly. Everyone was welcome, everyone was playing together, hanging out together, talking to each other, you name it. For me, one of my top priorities in Dyescape even today is to keep this exact same aspect going. I want a super friendly community that feels open and heartwarming to each and every player, and me and my team will do the very best to achieve this.

While the initial launch of the game will only offer the absolute basics of the game, we have already designed other features which stimulate people to play together. One of these examples is Guilds, which we cannot share anything about yet for the time being. @Euvrounin has started designing some dungeons (which won't be there at initial launch yet) and it seems like he's a fan of making people work together. His dungeons seems quite interactive, sometimes complex or simply pretty difficult to complete, so I'm sure he's taking steps there to stimulate people to group up.

While it's not yet possible, I will make changes to the questing plugin most likely after launch which would allow people to do a quest together. I'm sure the content team would be able to make fun, interactive and engaging quests which would again stimulate people to form bonds.

Social party finding
Pros:
- Makes people form bonds, which leads to a more friendly and accepting community.
- Your reputation is important to get into dungeons and raids, weeding out toxic people.
- Makes the world seem more populated outside of capital cities / important places for trade and crafting etc. with groups of people running around.
- Gives people a feeling of connection.
- Makes people communicate more.
- Makes the server look more attractive when looking from the outside.


Cons:
- People who don't have the courage to approach others or have a language barrier won't find parties easily.
- Off-peak times finding groups could be hard
- if players are scattered, finding the group could be harder.

LFG Party finding
Pros:
- People find groups easier, and with no real barriers outside of player set ones.
- Off-peak times people/people who are scattered are able to group up more easily.
- Makes the system simpler, with one click and you're in type of deal.

Cons:
- Can lead to toxicity, no communication between members and instantly forgetting about the other people.
- Groups can be formed basically from anywhere and the players don't have to group beforehand (excluding getting into the dungeon.)
- Has less interaction with players.
- Removes the feeling of real interaction

I personally don't think it's a matter of what we implement, but how. There are many, many ways to try and find people that you need for your dungeon run. For example, a set of chat messages in a specific (LFG) channel (if we end up using those), or you could walk up to a dungeon entrance and simply wait outside till you have enough people (we want to have servers absolutely filled with players, so that shouldn't be an issue) for example.

While it's definitely an important topic which we should greatly think about, it's not something that we can finalize as of right now. We won't have a parties, dungeons and guilds at initial launch so it's not actively being worked on at the moment. Hence, it wouldn't make sense to finalize these kind of ideas yet, but we can always share ideas and look at this thread in a few months hopefully.

Something else which I would love to implement one way or another; when partying up with people on the server, it would be nice if this could be intergrated straight into Discord. I need to look up the limitations of Discord, but it would be great if you could link your Discord user to Minecraft (which you would be able to do inevitably anyway) and have it automatically move you to a private voice channel with your other party members. Unless ofcourse, you as a player absolutely don't want that. I hope that people won't be too shy to do something like this. We've already had people just hopping into a voice call all together, without really knowing each other, so I hope we can keep the same mindset going there if enough people are a fan of such idea.


In the meantime, can you share some examples of social party finding implementations as well as LFG/LFR implementations? How is this visualised or interacted through ingame?

 

[Euvrounin]

In addition to what Dennis said,
We can actually combine both.

1. Any player can randomly shout/look for people in public areas, whether you are a Party Leader or just a random dork looking for a party.
2. Any player can join in an existing public parties in the party list/queue. Even if you are not the sociable type of person, you can randomly join any parties and have fun.
3. Any player can create a private party allowing only invited players to join the party.

When it comes to socializing or creating bonds with the players, I don't think there would be much problem with that. The guild will already provide that need, and also Dungeon runs (Boss runs) will definitely help you socialize (maybe force you at some point) to work with other players. It is interactive in a way that the whole party needs to work together in order to finish the dungeon.

The only thing we need to remind ourselves as content-team is that, there shouldn't be discrimination of what classes would be helpful in dungeon runs. Usually, parties who want to finish everything as soon as possible, forms a DPS party ignoring the supporting classes. Though, we cannot always control such system. We want to make sure that the dungeon system we made will require the help of all classes, though it will be tough if the needed class is not present but it would be survivable if all mechanics are done right.

There will/might be instances where some boss/bosses will debuff the whole party, maybe have the whole party have the same damage and hp, or maybe ignore any bonus damage, or deals damage per %. Whatever it is, you'll see that any class will be helpful in any situation, which would require you to socialize with your team.

I believe most boss runs will require a Team Leader/Party Leader who can guide the whole team on what to do or how to strategically finish the dungeon which also contributes to the 'socialization' you are referring or the whole run will be a total chaos. You cannot expect a priest to spam its heal whenever someone is going to die, or let that single member die instead of wasting your heal when it would be more useful later on to save the whole party (yeah have your own sacrificial lamb). Just thinking of it, it is really fun playing the game and constantly interacting with different players, but it would take time to create such system.

I'm just giving ya'll an example how I/we envision it will work. Hopefully this helps.