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Solutions to MMO Problems.
Krelnor
Member Posts: 118
Please tell me problems there are in MMO's currently. Like How in almost all MMO's, if not in all, LFG takes forever because you must find a tank, healer, damage dealers. Things like that. I would like to find solutions to these things so i can implement them into the MMO my team is creating. And i shall post the solutions, if my team can't do it, or when my team gets farther along in development. Or If i really really want to post it. Thank you. (EDIT: My team does have a solid idea already of what we are doing, and we know a lot of the problems in MMO's today. This thread is here to see if we missed any major points that are bad in MMO's. Everything, except for maybe one thing, that has been posted so far we've already known about. Sorry for my misleading post.)
Comments
Unless a person is playing on a low pop server I consider LFG being hard a MYTH.
NOt one MMO I have played or tried made it hard to creat a group, actualy in all it is very easy and I am talking about it without the use of some sort of handhold LFG tool, we have a chat channel which is all I need to either find or creat a group, still wondering why that many people have problems making or getting into groups, kinda makes me wonder if these people are able to communiticate or just need their handshold with some sort of tool.
Other then that there are many problems with today's MMO's in my opinion, but LFG is not one of them. Want to know more I suggest to simply look at the many topics about the issue's with MMO's today.
I don't think there are any problems common to all MMOs without having to reach for unsolvable stuff like "I can't play when my Internet connection is down". There are a lot of problems common to many or even most MMOs, but all the ones I'm aware of have been solved by at least one game. As such, I think the best I can do is to list problems common to a lot of MMOs, even if they have been solved by some.
If this thread draws a lot of replies, it will probably mostly be things where different players prefer different game mechanics, and someone cites an approach he disfavors as being a "problem" even though a lot of people would cite it as a positive feature. With that in mind, I'll try to restrict to things where there really aren't any intrinsic gameplay advantages to having the problem.
1. A game requires or strongly encourages a player to group for some content without making it practical to actually get a group. Tacking on more bonuses for grouping makes this problem worse, not better, as it doesn't make it the slighest bit easier to get a group, but only penalizes a player even more heavily for being unable to do what the game design makes it impractical to do. That's a critical distinction that a lot of game designers ignore.
By way of analogy, if someone says you better fly to the moon within the next year or you'll be sent to prison for ten years, that doesn't make it easy to fly to the moon. Giving someone a spaceship that can take him to the moon would make it easier to fly to the moon. What most games seem to do as regards grouping incentives is the former, not the latter.
2. A game requires a player to play at particular real-life times of day in order to be effective. This can be due to varying player populations, with it sometimes being greatly advantageous to play when everyone else is in some games, or to avoid most other players in others. Some games do this quite unnecessarily and will say that if you do something at this particular time for an event, you get some big bonus. If you happen to be at work, sleeping, or otherwise busy at that time, well, tough luck.
Another common way this comes about is game mechanics that largely demand that a particular set of players group with each other rather than with random other people. The set of people won't naturally be online all at the same time, so this means that they have to schedule their lives around the game in order to play it. This is a really, really bad thing. A game should be playable by someone who has other real-life responsibilities, in whatever time he happens to have available.
3. A game requires a player to play in large blocks of time. This is largely a corollary of problem #1. If you're not going to make grouping practical so that on average it takes half an hour to assemble a group, having the group then take only 15 minutes to do the content means that you just spent most of your time getting a group. Shorter content is a lot more viable if you can get a group in two minutes.
The reason why this is a problem is that a lot of players simply don't have the time to sit and play a game for three hours at a time. This makes your game unplayable for such people.
4. A lot of a player's time in the game is spent purely waiting. This can be waiting for health and mana to refill between battles. This can be waiting for group members to come to where you are. This can be waiting to travel between areas (e.g., WoW flight paths). Sometimes it can even be waiting in combat, if your combat is sufficiently awful as to consist of turn on auto-attack and wait.
5. A game requires a player to spend a large fraction of his time grinding, that is, doing something stupid, trivial, and really repetitive for the sake of leveling. The reason for it is to try to drag out the content so that players will take longer to exhaust the content, and thus pay the monthly fee more times. But it makes the game terrible to play.
6. A player has to make choices early on that can permanently cripple his character, or at least be very difficult to fix later. Choosing a server at character creation and hoping it happens to have a suitable population six months later is a common form of this. Making players allocate skill or attribute points and then be unable to change them later is another common form of it. Anything a player screws up should be easy to fix later, especially when the player is new at the game.
There are a couple of other common things that I think are really bad, but some players seem to like, though probably not that many would claim it when it this way. As such, I'll name them anyway.
7. The game has a crafting system without a point. At its worst, the crafting process literally consists of click a button, wait a bit, and then you're done. There's no way to screw up. Rinse and repeat hundreds of times to level. And then a game will do something to strongly encourage or require players to deal with such an abomination of a crafting system.
I'm not against crafting; it can add a lot to a game when done well. I'm against badly done crafting systems, which unfortunately, seems to be most of them.
8. The game has PvP, but it consists of whoever is higher level wins, whoever has better gear wins, whichever side has more players in the area wins, or some combination of those. What the players actually do while fighting makes little difference, as one side is so vastly more powerful than the other that the skill of the players doesn't matter. That doesn't make for interesting gameplay. It seems to be the usual approach for a game that is fundamentally PvE and tries to slap on a haphazard, severely unbalanced PvP system.
A game doesn't have to have PvP. If you're not going to take the time to design a decent PvP system, then either don't have one at all, or let players opt out without gimping their characters by giving up PvP rewards.
If you are any kind of serious developer you would not be asking everyone to spoon feed you. You be in these forums digging for the issues and trying to find solutions on your own. You would be actively giving input and trying to work through scenarios to make a functional solutions a reality..
My 2 copper.
I think a lot of problems in MMO's are just the fact that there are so many different things to do and everyone has their own idea of what they 'feel' like doing at the time. Just like in real life, its hard to get together with certain friends or family when everyone has busy schedules. So then in an MMO what are you as a developer supposed to do? You could:
I'm sure there are plenty more but the point is that (option A) has really been over done by developers probably more than any other. Sometimes even done along with (option D) at the same time. The other options are ridiculous but all of them have a common denominator and that is freedom. People like their freedom. They like to be able to solo quests if they want to or just kill stuff just to kill stuff. They want to craft when they want to or grind for money to buy a new weapon or something. Work on certain traits to strengthen their toon. Sometimes just wonder off and explore and see what lies beyond the horizon. When there are so many roads to travel, numerous options to go off and do its very hard to form a group and especially one that will stick together for very long. Its like taking a large group of children to a theme park and letting them loose. They'll run off in every direction.
So then my reasoning to all this madness here is to say that the ultimate reward in a MMO (the golden egg) is freedom without limitations and lots of options and things to do. So why is this given away for free? (I can't believe I'm actually advocating opression.... anyway, its not real life) If there was a way to do this without killing the fun of the game I would give it a try. A way to get the golden egg without killing the goose that laid it so to speak.
While this comes across as rather confrontational, I'm afraid I do agree with it. For someone developing a game to just create a thread asking "what's wrong with MMOGs today" seems a poor way of going about designing a game. I hope you at least posted on other forums too, as some vocal people here will likely point you to a game style that will hardly get enough subcribers (or micro-payment players) to make it worth the development costs. ;-)
On the topic, like the first reply, I disagree that LFG is a problem beyond the players who can't get a team. Instead of focusing on how to help people find a team, give good reasons for people to team up with whoever they meet while adventuring, without making soloing a Bad Idea. Another "problem" I would like to see addressed is that crafting needs to be attractive on all levels, possibly using item durability so peopleneed to get crafter repairs or replacements.
And as was said above, if you will include PvP make sure to do it properly. Now, as there are many ways of doing PvP, choose one way and stick with it. And communicate it clearly. PvPers are very happy to badmouth you for a long time if they feel deceived and bereaved of what they were promised. :-p
While this comes across as rather confrontational, I'm afraid I do agree with it. For someone developing a game to just create a thread asking "what's wrong with MMOGs today" seems a poor way of going about designing a game. I hope you at least posted on other forums too, as some vocal people here will likely point you to a game style that will hardly get enough subcribers (or micro-payment players) to make it worth the development costs. ;-)
On the topic, like the first reply, I disagree that LFG is a problem beyond the players who can't get a team. Instead of focusing on how to help people find a team, give good reasons for people to team up with whoever they meet while adventuring, without making soloing a Bad Idea. Another "problem" I would like to see addressed is that crafting needs to be attractive on all levels, possibly using item durability so peopleneed to get crafter repairs or replacements.
And as was said above, if you will include PvP make sure to do it properly. Now, as there are many ways of doing PvP, choose one way and stick with it. And communicate it clearly. PvPers are very happy to badmouth you for a long time if they feel deceived and bereaved of what they were promised. :-p
LOL, Sorry for being so blunt . There are tons of posts both for and against group play.
I'll give the best suggestion I can though:
It does not matter how a developer makes the game They are going to piss off someone. If you make it over group centric, you piss off the solo players. If you make it all solo you piss off the group players. Does not matter how much input you get there are always two sides to it so make it how you want and let the chips fall where the may.
BUT:
Once you decide on how the game is designed and you make it offical, DO NOT change it or you are going to have a lot of players throwing bottles at you.
Better?
People dont group because there really is no benefit in doing so, they can wade through the levels solo at a similar pace or if not quicker than if they grouped.
Sure if they grouped they could get some nice gear and see some new content, but players just dont have to worry about that until they have reached the max level.
At that point they have rarely interacted with anyone else through out the game, get bored and leave.
A game that lets you advance in the game at a faster pace grouping than soloing, and at the same time feel more rewarding than soloing, should automaticly encourage people to group togheter, and a game that makes you feel like you actually have achieved something when you level up, should have a better stayer effect, than a game that lets you rush through the content in no time solo, until your max level is reach within weeks of playing the game.
Most games have PVP in them today, and this makes people choose classes that is favourable in PVP, like thousands of rouges running around instead of a nice mix of classes. Remove PVP entierly from the game if you wish to have classes, remove classes entirely if you want to have PVP.
Let the players be able to 'be whatever you want to be', i cant come up with a way on how to do it in a fantasy setting right now, but in a scifi setting, you could have the possibility that players can fit a certain type of gear needed for the job ahead, and switch around whenever they want to, have a skillbased system where they can train to actually do all 'classes' if they wish, this way when grouping, they can each adapt to what is needed, and they dont have to actually always be the Tank or the cleric for the rest of their lives in the game, they can cross develop their characters. In situations where the 'cleric' has to leave, the group wont have to sit around and wait for a new cleric to join in, another player in the group can try and fill that spot, until a replacement for the guy who left joins the group.
While this comes across as rather confrontational, I'm afraid I do agree with it. For someone developing a game to just create a thread asking "what's wrong with MMOGs today" seems a poor way of going about designing a game. I hope you at least posted on other forums too, as some vocal people here will likely point you to a game style that will hardly get enough subcribers (or micro-payment players) to make it worth the development costs. ;-)
Agreed.
@OP,
If your team doesn't have enough familiarity with MMOs and their audience to already know what the general issues with them are, then they're not going to be the team that serves up the magic panacea for what ails the genre. If anything, they are almost guaranteed to be yet another team that repeats history.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Well if you don't know what the many problems of the current crop of MMOs are...then you probibly shouldn't be developing one. And if you are developing a MMO, by now you should have your own solid idea of how things will work.
But if you want my two cents...the problem with MMOs now is the levels. It seperates the community. Can't go here till you are lvl XX you can't do that till you are level XX. So one guy falls behind a few levels while on vacation...then he hasta grind like crazy to try n catch up with his friends so they can play together again. I am a fan of Skills like in UO, where even a newbie can go out dungeon crawling with his vet buddies.
You have it exactly backwards. People do not group because the game makes it impractical to do so. Giving players huge rewards for grouping is implicitly giving them huge penalties for not grouping. If you don't address the problem that actually getting a group is impractical, then you make playing the game at all impractical. Even people who would be inclined to group if they could will solo if the game makes it so they cannot group.
What you are advocating is the common toxic combination of a game that requires players to group while preventing them from actually grouping. That's a sure recipe for a terrible game.
The holy trinity tank healer damage dealer is not really the problem and it never has been. It's only a problem for those that are tired of classes just because they want to be anything they want at any given time.
All a MMO has to do to solve the problem of searching for that 1 class to make a group complete is to make several classes able to take on that role just as well. Tank does not have to be a warrior. It could also be a paladin a shadow knight a monk a bard the list can be quite long. They should all be able to bring something unique that makes them different but equally adept to do the task albeit through different techniques. Same goes for healer or any other class you think is a MUST in the holy trinity setup. This would pretty much eliminate missing a key class. WoW does an OK job of it but still haven't perfected it. People still prefer certain classes and certain builds. To me that is a little fail and a little win.
No holy trinity is not the problem. It's how its been developed and implimented over the last decade. Since nobody has done much to improve on the system, leading to some of us naturally assume we need to head into another direction to eliminate the annoying downtime of assembling groups.
Unless a person is playing on a low pop server I consider LFG being hard a MYTH.
NOt one MMO I have played or tried made it hard to creat a group, actualy in all it is very easy and I am talking about it without the use of some sort of handhold LFG tool, we have a chat channel which is all I need to either find or creat a group, still wondering why that many people have problems making or getting into groups, kinda makes me wonder if these people are able to communiticate or just need their handshold with some sort of tool.
Other then that there are many problems with today's MMO's in my opinion, but LFG is not one of them. Want to know more I suggest to simply look at the many topics about the issue's with MMO's today.
Not HARD .. time consuming. It is pretty EASY to shout in the trade channel or use the tools in WOW, but if i only want to do Naxx 25, i can't always find a group. THAT is the problem.
Many people have only a short time to play. If i only have an hour, I really do NOT want to spend 15 min LFG.
Unless a person is playing on a low pop server I consider LFG being hard a MYTH.
NOt one MMO I have played or tried made it hard to creat a group, actualy in all it is very easy and I am talking about it without the use of some sort of handhold LFG tool, we have a chat channel which is all I need to either find or creat a group, still wondering why that many people have problems making or getting into groups, kinda makes me wonder if these people are able to communiticate or just need their handshold with some sort of tool.
Other then that there are many problems with today's MMO's in my opinion, but LFG is not one of them. Want to know more I suggest to simply look at the many topics about the issue's with MMO's today.
Not HARD .. time consuming. It is pretty EASY to shout in the trade channel or use the tools in WOW, but if i only want to do Naxx 25, i can't always find a group. THAT is the problem.
Many people have only a short time to play. If i only have an hour, I really do NOT want to spend 15 min LFG.
The only solution i see to what you are saying is either 1. eliminate group content or 2. Better group pairing tools like instant teleport to eachother once you form a group which you should be able to do no matter the distance.
If you only have 1 hour to spare then i don't think the MMO genre is geared towards your type. The idea behind a MMO is time sinks. If you complete the goals you set for yourself too quick. You end up quitting sooner. This leaves less monthly subscriptions for the game companies. That is why they are designed the way they are. We all set goals for ourselves when we play. Anything from maxing certain tradeskills or to reach richness of epic proportions. Have the best gear the game has to offer etc. If these things were accomplished quickly you are left cancelling your sub until an expansion comes out. Maybe you are different but that's how the majority of MMO players are. If it takes you 6 months to a year to complete a goal you set for yourself then you are more likely to be subscribed for as long. To drag it out little time sinks are introduced such as slow travelling, slow group forming, scripted events etc etc etc
Timesinks is a MMO's bread and butter.
My top issues:
1. "Modern" MMOs are WAY too easy. No challenge = progression is meaningless.
-> Left click NPC, watch TV while randomly pressing skill buttons, look back at screen, find new NPC, left click, continue watching TV , *bling* levelup, wow I'm so great...
2. Player has little influence in combat. 'Time invested' into char is a bad main factor for battle success.
In most cases your chars level and equipment decide the outcome of the fight. You, the player, cannot intervene and change the course of battle because of good tactics / movement / timing etc. There is no fuzzy "grey" area where a good player will win with 80% hp or a bad player will win with 20% hp remaining. In most cases its either a definite win or loss.
3. No incentive for grouping / guilding or being socialy active.
Why not 10% more XP for every other player in your team who is near you? Why not use a master/desciple system where the master gets extra XP for every desciple he has? Why not gain an extra guild specific skill when you enter a guild? Insert avenues into the game which can only be followed with a group of players. Mega building projects, rituals with lots of different roles/ingredients needed. Make it so that guilds can effectively protect their members. If it works well players WILL join.
4. No true char customization. I wanna be a ninja wizard with eyes that shoot lazer beams!!1
Yes there may be 10 different char types in the game but the difference between two chars of the same archetype will be minimal in the longer run. The reason is min-maxing. For a given role there is always a single most ideal skill/item setup. People will always stay close to that ideal setup. Make combat more fuzzy and multidimensional, give chars a lot of conflicting truely seperating skill options and add in team skills (certain char combinations result in different team skills). If you want to use the holy trinity then make it so that every char type can fulfill any of those roles if he wants to via skills and items. With that I mean a tanking mage or a necromancer with healing minions etc.
5. Quests are irrelevant and boring and always the same.
After lots of singple player RPGs and a few MMOs I simply do not read the quest texts anymore. I have A) most likely already heard the story before,
its irrelevant since killing everything alive at the ! on the map will solve the quest anyway and C) quests always have one outcome, no decision trees, no riddles, no alternative rewards. For me most questing systems have become unbearable. Add to it the overhead and the boring running around with 10234 meaningless quests with rewards that become obsolete after the next levelup. A simple grinding game without quests has become more entertaining to me BECAUSE of the missing quest system.
6. Boring combat.
Come on, pleeease make combat more interesting, like: combos, manual dodging & blocking & counterattacking, dynamic spells (two fire mages cast a fireball at one target at the same time -> 3x damage not 2x), using surroundings to your advantage (arrows from higher area fly longer, fire spells are weak in ice area), area effects that modify skills (higher gravity = good for strength chars, anti-magic aura = bad for mages).
7. Boring combat.
Just for emphasis.
8. Boring combat.
I simply cannot say this often enough.
In short: Make something new and innovative. Something that is actually worth playing and is not just an unstoppable run from level 0 to max level without a chance of failing. Something where I can be creative and individualistic. Something where simple combat against a common NPC is FUN.
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Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
3 major problems with MMO's today.
1. PVP, there is very little freedom in most new MMOs, any game that had a good pvp system patched it and basically slaughtered it. A player looting system is a plus and hard to find. Also there should be no safety in level differences. I mean keep things realistic. If a Level 30 wanted to attack a level 10, why couldn't he/she be able to? also with combat numbers, there is no reason why a group of 5 people shouldn't be allowed to attack a group of 2. In real life both of those things can happen, the game should reflect on the free choice of the players. Many people want their safety to role-play or for PVM/PVE content. A simple solution to this is multiple servers, some pvp, some none pvp. If pvp is going to be added to a game, it should be added with a wide range of free choice to the players. If it is going to be babied, then it shoudln't be added.
2. Character freedom. Level and class systems leave the player very little freedom to customize their own character. Even with classes and subclasses there is rarely more than 20 different characters. This owuld be good, except half of these 20 are probably completely useless and won't be used becuase each subclass won't fit every class. A skill system is basically a must to make sure everyoen is playing with a character that is customized to them. Also pvp won't be fighting the same guy again and again. Keeps the game spontanious and interesting. Either a skill system with many skills to choose from that can be mix and matched, or a level system with lots of classes and subclasses, maybe more sub-subclasses could be a good fix on this problem. Try to keep as many individual players as possible, so every player can have their own "E"-identity.
3. Repition. Lets face it, everyone hates grinding. Leveling always sucks. Games with 20 levels get real boring real fast becuase you max out too quickly. But also it is a shame when the cap is 80-100 with exponential XP requirements and it takes years to max out. This gives motivation to keep playing nad makes it rewarding to reach the level but if there are the same quests again and again and the all the creatures and raids are the same. Level 20-30, 40-50, and 50-60 all feel the same, who wants to do the same things over and over? Content gets old, keep a middle range level cap like 40-60, and/or make new content. Completely different types of quests. Progressively harder creatures. (so a level 50 creature is harder for a level 50 than a level 10 creature is for a level 10) This means the player will ahve to customize their character well to succeed and pick up new strategies along the way. All of these issues however, can be avoided without the level system and. A skill system is always a good alternative. Some players prefer classes and levels, some prefer skills, theres no right answer there. But new content is always a plus.
Another factor that not all games have but some do which i do not see beneficial to any company trying to sell the game: Some games now (World of Warcraft) have become almost entirely time-to-play based. The people who play the most get the best items. The people wiht the best items automatcially win every fight. Not everyone who is going to play a game has hours on end to play. There is content in many games now that cannot be touched if someone was kids or a job and only has an hour a day to play. This can be helped by either making the game not as item based, or offer all items to all players with minimal time requirements. I mean feel free to put in the endgame raids that drop uber items, but offer alternatives such as true pvp rewards (skill based, not whoever has the most kills or wins becuase they play more) or random drop items that rival the raid items.
These are just my suggestions. I tried to suggest things that show little positive attributes. One person's trash is another person's treasure so anything i just mention some other players probably love. Just keep that in mind. I would suggest reading over this post and other posts, and any common areas brought up seraching other forums on this website to dig for answers.
Very well said. I would also answer that people new to MMORPGs don't really see many problems because things are fresh and there is much to do and see. The real MMORPG problem lies with entertaining the veterans who have been grinding, leveling, crafting, tanking, healing, DPSing, raiding, PvPing, etc. already for 3 years or more. We've been there and done that many times, and the only thing that will get our money is something new and innovative and challenging.
For example, the first time in Everquest's the Estate of Unrest, it was chilling, frightful, very challenging, and yet very frustrating. Still, I kept going back, and failing. Then finally, venturing deeper into the Estate and having success. It's very hard to replace those first experiences, no matter how polished or smooth the game is. New players going into some dungeon in WoW probably have a similar experience, and soon they too will expect more.
But as long as the companies can keep drawing enough new people to their grindfests and treadmills, the genre will be ok for a long time in terms of success and revenue, but for veterans it will remain pretty bland and boring.
MMORPGs are virtual skinner boxes.
http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/skinner.html
If the only people who are allowed to play the games are those who invariably have blocks of several hours available, that excludes most MMORPG players right away. All else equal, surely it is better to make a game accessible to those who wish to play for an hour here and half an hour there than to exclude them entirely.
Most games historically have been able to do this just fine, albeit sometimes by allowing the player to pause and return later in a single player game, which really isn't an option in a multiplayer game. Still, looking through several dozen old console games sitting here, most either have a natural save point every 10 minutes or half an hour or so, or else let a player save and quit whenever he feels like it. Those that have no concept of saving can often be beaten in half an hour, and only a handful would even require a player to pause and return later in order to to beat a game without having to hurry or play for more than an hour at a time.
If you want a least some raving fans make the game challenging. This will gain you some real notoriety although I'm not sure about short term income levels.
The solution as far as I'm concerned is to do away with NPC's and quests and let the players battle amongst themselves. But no more single PvP combat - that is so boring and old hat. Who cares who gets the jump on who or who has the better equipment and/or higher level? Yawn.
The most challenging games I've ever played were where three sides manned with real players vied for domination over a complex landscape. This was successfully done in both Planetside and original DAOC.
These sorts of MMO games aren't for everyone and there will certainly be vocal detractors. But I can positiviely state that all my really great MMO memories come from these games where our side used our heads and did something unexpected and amazing that lead to success.
Zoom
To comment on your post here
1 - If you remove the limit of who can hit who your mmo will fail without any doubts, only way a game where you can attack anyone is if there is no lvl based system or anyway to know what lvl each other is then it could work.
2 - There is actually very little you can do about getting similar "classes" or characters. Even with lots of possibilites people would still choose the one best for their needs only a handful would be bothered to try play an average character.
A warrior would always choose the best path for being ultimate fighter. All on str, the best skills for fighting.
3 - When it comes to leveling yeah I agree it sucks it is to quick to level. I disagree with you that attaining max level should not be possible within a few weeks. Most mmo I played it's almost with very few exceptions I never seem to find others that is interested in other things than to achive max level as fast as possible. It's like giving a candy to a child and it want the whole bag instantly.
There is a limit how much they actually can do with a mmo, unlike pen and paper rpg you have very much freedom but then again you interact with persons that doesn't repeat themselves. A npc in a computer game can only be given a few options or else the game will never finish.
I agree that it's not easy to find a group to play with and let's face it we're playing mmo to interact with others wether you solo or group is what you like. People like to feel that there is other people around them.
Creating the ultimate mmo won't happen there will be as some has pointed out always someone that dislikes something.
In the end if you create a game create a game that fullfill what your goal is. Wether it be to earn money or make a game which you like.
OP just need to take a chance on making something. Success is measured in many ways, lots of people playing it, it brings in money or maybe just simply being able to create it.
Unless a person is playing on a low pop server I consider LFG being hard a MYTH.
NOt one MMO I have played or tried made it hard to creat a group, actualy in all it is very easy and I am talking about it without the use of some sort of handhold LFG tool, we have a chat channel which is all I need to either find or creat a group, still wondering why that many people have problems making or getting into groups, kinda makes me wonder if these people are able to communiticate or just need their handshold with some sort of tool.
Other then that there are many problems with today's MMO's in my opinion, but LFG is not one of them. Want to know more I suggest to simply look at the many topics about the issue's with MMO's today.
In WoW I played on a medium-high population server. I was a tank, a necessary role in 5-man dungeons. I spent on average about 2 hours in LFG before I found a group. I used both the LFG system and chat channels. Grouping definitely needs work.