Grouping really sucks to play if you are not in NA

[Question2005]

Because pretty much nobody plays the game outside of NA (for some reason). Near impossible to get groups. Not so bad if you are in EU, but try being in an asian time zone.

I had a LFM up for epic dailies on Cannith for 4-5 hours earlier today. For me, it was evening, a perfectly normal time to play. But in NA, it was early morning, so nobody showed. Whenever I see people talk about how they easily fill LFMs when leveling in heroics or whatever...I just shake my head in disbelief, because most of the time, I have LFMs up for 4+ hours with nobody joining. When I do get a party, I have to drop EVERYTHING to run with the party. I cant take a break for lunch or whatever, because the moment I do, people are going to leave and not come back.

Yea, ive tried asking the party if we can take a break and continue in a bit. Never works. People log off, go afk, join other parties, etc. They have no reason to wait for you. My entire schedule for the day has to be re-arranged, on the spot, when I get a party, because getting a party is incredibly rare and time consuming if you cannot play at NA peak times. Can you imagine whats it like to play the game under those restrictions?

All the scheduled raids you see? All NA peak times. This is the problem with the raid timer system...if you cant make the scheduled raid times, you are left out in the cold. Yea, try putting up a LFM for a popular raid like EE Chronoscope or VON at 3 am NA time. Its not going to fill. God forbid if you want to do something that isnt popular. Ive been trying to get parties for Heroic Abbot while staying in epics, its a total nightmare, almost NOBODY flags for it and people who do run it, run it at NA peak times. When im not available.

If most of the people in your guild are doing a certain raid at, say, Saturday 1 pm NA time, nobody is going to run the raid with you if you cant make it because they want to run it at the scheduled time with everyone else. So you put up a LFM, like what Ive been doing for the last 5 and a half hours, and nobody joins because its not NA peak time. Fun and exciting. Ive been trying to get a raid party going for Fire on Thunder Peak for the last 3 days...which people tell me is popular, but im not seeing it. People wanted to do chrono/VON. Nobody wanted to touch Fire on Thunder Peaks with a 10ft long pole. And the people who did want to do it cant, because they have to save the timer for their regular group.

To make matters worse, almost all the vets are in raid groups with scheduled times, so most of the people who pug raids are usually those who arent in a raid group...which means a very high proportion of under geared/leveled characters. Ever tried doing a pug Legendary Tempest Spine where only 2 people + a healer are capable of doing anything and the rest are just getting one shotted by random lightning strikes while doing no damage? Its not very fun.

Sure, people pug "leveling" raids like chrono/VON for xp, but anything that is remotely hard like legendary raids is usually run in a static/guild group because most people want to do the highest difficulty possible for maximum rewards. You cant do that if the party is full of level 20-25s and the raid is designed for people in full legendary gear. Raid timers not being seperate for difficulties dont help either...whos going to waste their 3 day timer carrying a pug group for an EN or EH legendary raid when they can do it with their top tier group and get maximum drops at EE or above right?

The entire "end game" raiding scene simply isnt available for you if you arent able to make the scheduled raid times which are all NA specific because the raid timer system isnt flexible. Its one raid per 3 days. Its not like X raids per week/month where if you cant make it on saturday, people might decide to run with you on sunday because they have runs remaining for the week/month. Even if you can scrap together a party, most of the people with good gear/builds are not going to run with you because they have their own group (which you cant join because again, NA peak times)...so you are basically stuck running EN mode forever.

I used to play another game that had end game raids limited on a weekly basis. Sounds crazy right? But it works really well because if you cant make a scheduled raid, theres usually another group you can join and you had the whole week to get a group to use up all your weekly runs.

As I type this its nearly 6 am here and im dead tired because I am literally forced to stay up till 6 am to wait for a scheduled raid, because again, scheduled raids all happen at NA times. I cant be the only one who finds this sad, that I have to go to such extremes to get into raids. I have no choice, because if I dont stay up till 6 am, I dont get to do this raid because I can NEVER fill the party when its normal time for me. And of course, since im dead tired, im not helpful in the raid which gets me black listed so its a slow spiral to the bottom.

There are two things i absolutely cannot stand in WOW style games...the ridiculous number of "skills" you have to spam in various rotations to optimize whatever your role is, and WOW style raids where you NEED all the roles in perfect ratios and everyone needs to do everything perfectly or its a wipe...and god forbid someone cant make a scheduled raid because that inevitably creates tons of drama (oh we could have completed that raid if X had showed up like he was supposed to).

I used to play warhammer online, and I just got so sick and tired of the WOW style raids they had, I had to call people on my phone for raids if they didnt show up, and if they never showed we had to scramble to get a last minute replacement, except that most people already had their own static groups so we usually couldnt get anyone...spending hours and hours on a raid just to get gear that was all for the wrong class and which couldnt be traded so we had to NPC them (or some ******* just rolled on everything)...and if someone got left out from one raid, they usually tried to get into another group's raid at the first available opportunity, so then our raid timers didnt match up and we had to find a permanent replacement...and whenever we got people geared up to progress to the next tier of raids, they usually had to stop playing for some reason, so we had to start from square one...

DDO doesnt have the skill spam, but its now looking like it has the latter. Except DDO has an additional problem : Almost nobody plays this game outside of NA, so if you are not in NA, you are screwed when people do scheduled raids at NA peak time.

[pegrad]

so you rambled through a small novel to tell us what can be said in one sentence: There are more active NA Players than those of other time zones. So what do you suggest SSG should do, Sherlock, force NA players to stay up all night?

[simo0208]

Try building a character or two in some other servers. Some servers have better non-NA player bases than others.

[MaximumCharisma]

Sarlona has an active Chinese population. They play during the times that you seem to find most convenient. They also tend to host a lot of groups and join them as well. Everything from R8+ rxp dailies to en daily runs to raids and such. Because of my schedule here in NA, my play times are more compatible with when Chinese players are online and I would probably have re-quit this game if it were not for the ability to group with them.

You should try Sarlona and see what you think.

[Enoach]

One of the things about the DDO servers is that each server seems to have different demographics.

While it may seem difficult right now, it is actually a valuable idea to check out the other servers to see if they have populations that match your time of play.

[BoBoDaClown]

so you rambled through a small novel to tell us what can be said in one sentence: There are more active NA Players than those of other time zones. So what do you suggest SSG should do, Sherlock, force NA players to stay up all night?

Love the empathy

To the OP: yes, late night play in DDO can be frustrating. I think there was a snowball effect of people leaving the game once the population reached a certain lack of size: people left because there was no one to group with. This is why there is such a discrepancy between NA and other populations. This has plateaued (or actually, may have even improved - I used to see 65ish in the who tab. It doesn't seem to get this low now).

An idea, which you might already do: Find someone to play with regularly during your time zone. Start Legendary TS on the difficulty you two can duo. Fill in progress - it normally fills if people can see it progressing. Finish TS. Then do Fire on Thunder. Probably half your raid will stick around, so it will fill fast. Make sure your characters can cover roles, stats needed etc. I'm a late night player and this works for me.

[Tyrande]

Because pretty much nobody plays the game outside of NA (for some reason). Near impossible to get groups. Not so bad if you are in EU, but try being in an asian time zone.
[...]
DDO doesnt have the skill spam, but its now looking like it has the latter. Except DDO has an additional problem : Almost nobody plays this game outside of NA, so if you are not in NA, you are screwed when people do scheduled raids at NA peak time.

Yes, the Sarlona server environment has the time zone you are looking for. I sure hope you do speak/write Chinese though, as least the pinyin part.
At least the bare bones part:

Ni Hao => Hi
Zai Jian => Bye
Wan Ang => Good Evening
Zao Ang => Good Morning
Sheng Wang => Favor (quests)
Guo Ren => Countrymen (specifically Chinese)
Xie Xie (or Xie Le) => Thanks
Wo Bu Shi Zhong Guo Ren => I am not Chinese
>> => Haste Please
Qing Yi Zhi => Heal Please
Qing Si Wang Bao Hu => Deathward Please
Qing => Please

There is also an Australian/Oceanic population server, and a Korean one. I do not remember which server it was though.

[boredGamer]

Love the empathy

I love the request for empathy when always asking everyone else to change for him. But literally starts off his post stating why he won't change for others.

Also - Cannith is way more active during NA daytime than any other time. By 9 or 10 MT it's mostly dead. 10am or noon is great. I guess this makes it european. Or just people not at normal 9-5s. Doesn't really help asia timezones.

OP - could try scheduling a raid at your time. It might even become a thing !

[Xanthrawl]

TL : DR

If I were to begin playing a Korean MMO, I would assume that the PuG scene would not be great during most of my free time. Idk why this needed a thread (as I didn't read your wall), but good luck with your grouping woes.

[BoBoDaClown]

One of the things about the DDO servers is that each server seems to have different demographics.

While it may seem difficult right now, it is actually a valuable idea to check out the other servers to see if they have populations that match your time of play.

I did this when I returned to the game. All the servers were pretty anemic in the early hours. The only one that seemed livelier was the default at the time.

Perhaps things are different now or I got a non representative result.

[BoBoDaClown]

I love the request for empathy when always asking everyone else to change for him. But literally starts off his post stating why he won't change for others.

I read the whole thing as probably bleary eyed frustration.

[BoBoDaClown]

TL : DR

If I were to begin playing a Korean MMO, I would assume that the PuG scene would not be great during most of my free time. Idk why this needed a thread (as I didn't read your wall), but good luck with your grouping woes.

Healthy MMOs have a robust grouping scene around the clock. I'm not in the DDO doomed camp. In fact, I think the game has improved, with perhaps a resulting small increase in population; however, DDO is, unfortunately, long past the easy grouping around the clock stage.

[psykopeta]

like others pointed, sadly that depends on the server

i mean, if your trouble is that most players in your server are american (cause its the same timezone north and south XD) you would even find more people in wayfinder lol

in thelanis the most active raiding groups are chinese (and they type... "know it cause we can't teach you" lol)

sorry to say that, but unless your server becomes the default one (when was the last time thelanis was the default server? sigh) or you pay to play, in another server by transfering your main or... they migrate servers

yup, i would migrate servers, but guess what happens when someone points "grouping sucks in DDO" ? the fanboys attack cause in their 5 meter world, that's not a trouble, in fact pretty sure crappy DDO servers wouldn't handle much more population, that's why you don't see DDO advertising

and for others it is a trouble, and for others it sucks, and i understand them (i spend less time in DDO due to being so repetitive and cause most times you're soloing so... like in other single player times, you don't focus so much)

btw don't feel bad for piking 1 quest while eating, it's not your fault needing to eat or pee on playing time

others can stay in the same place for hours like it is a job, you're not forced to do so

[Xanthrawl]

I used to play another game that had end game raids limited on a weekly basis. Sounds crazy right? But it works really well because if you cant make a scheduled raid, theres usually another group you can join and you had the whole week to get a group to use up all your weekly runs.

Ok, I read your post. No offense meant, but some criticism that is intended to be helpful but may come off a bit harsh:

The quoted section above should have been the meat and potatoes of your post, but it was mostly lost in the whining (can't get a raid group during your playtime) and rambling (your WoW experience is not relevant.) Coming to the forums and making a really long post (at least you used the enter key periodically, thank you for that) without any type of solution or recommendation is usually not well received. Never did you actually recommend the game adopt this style timer/raid system. Just bemoaning that it doesn't use this style.

As someone who also has limited play time due to life (full time job, married, baby, a puppy, and an older dog, not to mention other hobbies, etc.) I fully understand the drawbacks of a 3 day timer. A player that can have a more flexible schedule than me can run more raids than me.

• From a player standpoint, it would be nice if they gave us 3 runs per week of each raid. Make the schedule run server restart to server restart. I would then be on more even footing as someone else that can run the raid on a Tuesday, for example, when the bulk of my play time is on a Saturday. I could just run the raid multiple times on my DDO day.
• From a developer standpoint, this may not be easy or even possible for them to implement. And would probably negatively impact sales of bypasses.

On another note, even during peak times, PuG raids for Chrono and Thunder Peaks don't typically fill in my experience on Ghallanda. Unless you get a huge head start with 8-10 players from the same guild. These raids are old. They don't drop endgame loot. Maybe temper your expectations. I'd be more interested to hear how a Baba, Strahd or Killing Time fills. I'd bet they get more traction than a 5 year old raid...

[boredGamer]

There are 34 LFM's up on Cannith right now.

[Selvera]

There is also an Australian/Oceanic population server, and a Korean one. I do not remember which server it was though.

I can say that in addition to the Chinese; there are a fair few Australian/Oceanic folks on Sarlona. Unfortunately not as many as the Chinese, but they're friendly folks to chat with and fairly capable of pulling together reaper or raid groups if you get their interest.

And there's also those NA people who don't sleep on Sarlona >.> oh goodness I shouldn't stay up so late so often.

[BoBoDaClown]

There are 34 LFM's up on Cannith right now.

Free/cheap transfers please

[SpartanKiller13]

Because pretty much nobody plays the game outside of NA (for some reason). Near impossible to get groups. Not so bad if you are in EU, but try being in an asian time zone.

Try different servers I've heard Ghallanda has a larger EU population, for instance. Maybe those hours are better for you? Or a lot of people here saying Sarlona has a decent Asian population?

All the scheduled raids you see? All NA peak times. This is the problem with the raid timer system...if you cant make the scheduled raid times, you are left out in the cold. Yea, try putting up a LFM for a popular raid like EE Chronoscope or VON at 3 am NA time. Its not going to fill. God forbid if you want to do something that isnt popular. Ive been trying to get parties for Heroic Abbot while staying in epics, its a total nightmare, almost NOBODY flags for it and people who do run it, run it at NA peak times.

If most of the people in your guild are doing a certain raid at, say, Saturday 1 pm NA time, nobody is going to run the raid with you if you cant make it because they want to run it at the scheduled time with everyone else. So you put up a LFM, like what Ive been doing for the last 5 and a half hours, and nobody joins because its not NA peak time. Fun and exciting. Ive been trying to get a raid party going for Fire on Thunder Peak for the last 3 days...which people tell me is popular, but im not seeing it. People wanted to do chrono/VON. Nobody wanted to touch Fire on Thunder Peaks with a 10ft long pole. And the people who did want to do it cant, because they have to save the timer for their regular group.

Cannith is pretty NA heavy. So of course scheduled stuff is at NA peak times; still, many people have >1 toon in epics, and in guild raids I regularly see people swapping because one or another character is on timer (from running a PUG raid or joining another guild's raids).

I don't think Abbot gets run a lot on Cannith, I have a guildy who's been trying to get a group for the past week or two with little success.

Highest priority for raids from what I can tell is Baba, Strahd, and Killing Time; TH raids and stuff like Chronoscope/LHoX/LTS still go fairly well, but not nearly as much as the first.

To make matters worse, almost all the vets are in raid groups with scheduled times, so most of the people who pug raids are usually those who arent in a raid group...which means a very high proportion of under geared/leveled characters. Ever tried doing a pug Legendary Tempest Spine where only 2 people + a healer are capable of doing anything and the rest are just getting one shotted by random lightning strikes while doing no damage? Its not very fun.

I'm an officer in an open invitation guild. Frankly, I've had much better success with PUG raids than with scheduled guild raids (easier LH PUGs than LN guild raids if it's a bad day). From my experience in PUGs there are usually a few excellent vets, a bunch of mid-range toons, and a few newer players.

I've puzzled both sides of Baba on a few occasions, bugs and all. I've run raids with party members who have double-digit death counts, and those who have 400 HP at level 30. Just rez them when you can, but don't prioritize it

We've all had bad raids, but at the same time most are a lot smoother than that. I had a 19 minute Strahd last week, which was very nice considering we stood around for like 5 of that at the start. We finished torches before Strahd activated.

The entire "end game" raiding scene simply isnt available for you if you arent able to make the scheduled raid times which are all NA specific because the raid timer system isnt flexible. Its one raid per 3 days. Its not like X raids per week/month where if you cant make it on saturday, people might decide to run with you on sunday because they have runs remaining for the week/month. Even if you can scrap together a party, most of the people with good gear/builds are not going to run with you because they have their own group (which you cant join because again, NA peak times)...so you are basically stuck running EN mode forever.

Most of those vets with good gear/builds have a second or fifth character that can raid as well lol. Some don't mind getting timers as well. I'm not saying it's easy, just that scheduled raids are far from the only available ones.

As I type this its nearly 6 am here and im dead tired because I am literally forced to stay up till 6 am to wait for a scheduled raid, because again, scheduled raids all happen at NA times. I cant be the only one who finds this sad, that I have to go to such extremes to get into raids. I have no choice, because if I dont stay up till 6 am, I dont get to do this raid because I can NEVER fill the party when its normal time for me. And of course, since im dead tired, im not helpful in the raid which gets me black listed so its a slow spiral to the bottom.

Almost nobody plays this game outside of NA, so if you are not in NA, you are screwed when people do scheduled raids at NA peak time.

Sorry about the 6 AM lol. Maybe try LFMing on the weekends? I'm not likely to join a 6AM raid regardless, but 2 AM I might do on a Friday-Saturday lol.

Scheduled raids are all going to be at bad times for you (although my guild has later raids on weekdays and earlier on weekends); but I've had quite a bit of success with non-scheduled raids?

As for non-NA, again, try other servers

One of the things about the DDO servers is that each server seems to have different demographics.

While it may seem difficult right now, it is actually a valuable idea to check out the other servers to see if they have populations that match your time of play.

My favorite DDO meme is how Wayfinder is the solo server :P

[Selvera]

My favorite DDO meme is how Wayfinder is the solo server :P

Is it a meme when it's the lonely truth?

When I play with my friend on wayfinder; we cheer and laugh and cry whenever someone hits our lfm. Such rare occasions demand such reactions.

[Krell]

Try Ghallanda. Lot's of people in Non-NA time zones. Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong. Some EU too. Also good if you're in NA and like to play late at night.