Since I played wow from launch until just before cata I can comment on how groups were back then and how they are now. It went from 2+ hour chat channel spamming to a 'click' to enter queue and when a spot opens up you join a party and everyone teleports to the beginning of the instance.
Everyone said that it killed the economy and server statuses because everyone stands around the main towns and just waits for their queues, but I believe that is because of how their gearing is set up. See, in wow, you get a number of tokens for completing a heroic dungeon via that finder. Tokens can buy you (I think) 1 tier below the latest end game content raid.
Now, if ROM decided to implement a cross-server dungeon finder, I think they could actually do it very well. And if done right, players won't be obliged to sit in town all day waiting for their dungeons.
My suggestions are to take some aspects from wow though. Ability to define your role (healer, dps, tank) or multiple roles, enter a queue, queue forms a group (first come first serve) and players are asked to join party and teleport to beginning of instance. However, in wow there was always a HUGE tank and/or healer shortage. With ROM's dual class setup, I wonder if it might be beneficial to politely ask players that "could" take on a healing/tank role if they are in the queue and no healer or tank has been found for so long. They could provide limited class switching to accomodate.
I'll keep editing my post here to expand on some major points, maybe outline the system, give some examples, etc... But, if something was implemented like this, would you use it?
EDIT: Design thoughts for dungeon finder for ROM.
If you are a knight primary, you can select dps/tank role, if you are priest/druid primary, you can select healer/dps role, others can select dps role (wrd/war, or war/wrd not sure about their new tanking status').
After a selection has been made, you can choose any instances/dungeons that you are eligible to do based on your 'primary' class. You can also choose a random dungeon that might reward you in some way *** I will expand on this below, and it will be beneficial to players without killing rom's cash shop ***
After selecting a dungeon to do, you can enter the dungeon queue. It places you in a line in order to get matched up with a party. After matching a tank, healer, and 3 dps, each member gets an option of joining or declining the party.
* If a member declines, the rest of party is placed at beginning of queue to find a replacement.
* If party or members are in queue looking for more people for so long, and any member has a priest/druid or knight as their "secondary" class, the system may politely ask them if they wouldn't mind healing or tanking if the group is still lacking a healer or tank.
If party is succesfully fulfilled, the party members are teleported to the beginning of the instance. If any party member leaves during the instance, the group is placed first in line back into the queue to get a replacement.
* If a replacement is needed, replacements will teleport just behind the group so as not to teleport into an ongoing battle in case.
* If the dungeon is completed, and it's a random dungeon, members that were there at the end should get a reward.
On this thought, it would be nice to see quests list out which ones might be included from an instance (I remember some lower ones where I didn't know they were inside instances). If they were somehow pointed out in quest text, my apologies! Maybe if you accept a quest or two or whatever that has to do with an instance, it might politely ask if you would like to look for a group for that dungeon/instance.
*** Rewards ***
These can be tricky to define, if we don't want to step foot into the cash shop area.
If a random dungeon is completed below the level 50 dungeon's, members should get a reward equal to a blue quality equipment that the class can use (knight primary = 'plate' or 'chain', war = 'chain' or 2-h 'weapon', etc...). Maybe the lowest dungeons can give it out a lowest tier rune or lowest tier jewel (help the leveling process as I understand cash shop isn't normally utilized for the lower levels anyways).
If a higher random dungeon is complete, rewards get trickier. This part I will leave open to suggestion. The reward should be 'ok' in quality or economy status such that you don't waste your time doing a dungeon, but a dungeon a day won't overpower your character and won't step into the premise of the cash shop. Maybe it could help give out some more phirius tokens?
*** End Rewards ***
I know that being a new player myself, I would enjoy seeing all the lowest level content being run as well as all the highest level content. Who knows, maybe a chance at an extra equip might entice some lower levels to engage in interactivity and dungeons?
Enough rambling for now, I'll keep my brain rolling and if anything more comes up I'll post it up!
Quoted from "Silenteye7;468260"
i agree that the party finder from WoW was the best thing they ever implemented. Basically what it offered was a grouping queue that spanned multiple servers, so instead of trying to find groups with the limited number of people on your server, the pool included players you would normally have no in-game interaction with.
