LFG expansion?

The TUT doesn't actually queue the team up for the tf, it simply dumps them at the contact in the zone of the contact.

The person with the star can then choose a team as needed, including dumping everyone who was tp'd via que, and choosing team members the traditional way.

Bluntly and very honestly, I do not expect you to run that content.

You are deigning to run that content only because the system now makes it mechanically convenient. You still don't want to interact with those other people. Now, though, you don't have to interact with them to get invited, so you'll take that route to get in now that it's an option.

Your dilemma isn't alien to me. Historically, I was a pretty dedicated soloer from the time they introduce the very first purple patch (which badly broke teaming and lasted several weeks*) onwards. I didn't do much in the way of TF or old-school trial content. If I did it, I did it with friends or sucked it up and asked to join people I didn't know and who didn't know me.

Don't get me wrong. I don't begrudge people the LFG queue. It's going to empower the one-off players to join other groups. What I don't like is the proposed notion that because this exists, pre-formed teams need to be deprecated.

My default mode is to solo. If I don't solo, it's because I do want to team with people I know and like teaming with, or because I have to team. If I have to team, I always prefer to do it with people I like to team with.

So of I am teaming only because I want to team, I'm going to be teaming with people I know. By definition, that means I'm not going to want a group of random teammates. Random people may be welcome, but only after I've already ensured the people I actually like to team with are guaranteed a spot in the mix. That means I'm preforming a team.

If I am teaming because I have to team, there's still a very good chance I am going to want to do that with people I know. I don't like to join pugs. I do it in iTrials because I often have no choice due to the size requirements. But for other content, where I can get away with teams of 2-8, I'm simply more picky. It's not because I don't think a team of random people can't finish, I don't know, Manticore's TF. It's because I tend not to enjoy how most PuGs go. The people I do like to play with tend to share my playstyles. So, again, I'm always going to try to pre-form a team with them first. If the content is actually hard, then I also care about what I invite, not just who, so again, I'm going to preform the team, at least a little.

Finally, and related to the last point, even if most non-iTrial content can be completed by an arbitrary team, there are worlds of difference in how random teams can end up performing related to ones formed with some forethought. If you're the only 50 who joins an ITF, and everyone else is, say, 35-40, that's a whole different experience than having a core of 50s, and not one I personally enjoy. If you hop on your Force Field bubbler and join a Kahn with four Tankers, an Empath a Blaster and a Peacebringer, the end fight is going to take a whole lot longer than one where someone brought a debuffer. There's a difference in what's possible and what's desirable, at least for me. I always want control over that.

* For those who weren't here back then, the original purple patch made fighting +2s more like fighting +4 today. This was in the days when very few people were over level 20, you Sidekicks were per-character (no SSK system) and IOs weren't even a gleam in anyone's eyes. About all you could reasonably fight was +1s, but it was easy to end up facing foes +2 or higher to you if you weren't exactly the same level as the team leader. I stopped teaming and started soloing, and pretty much never looked back.

That's a pretty far cry from what I think most people imagined. Interesting.

Yeah, I assume it was just much easier to do.
it eliminates any zone issues, being in a mission issues, that are restrictions on the tf

Yeah because of those issues I pretty much expected it to work the way it does.

Well, I was really just responding to Tony's call for adoption/support of the broadening LFG system, to let him know why some people might be unable to show much excitement for it. It's not because I'm a spoiled sport or anything, but rather the opposite: I have put some effort into community-building in my little corner of the Virtueverse. I've also persuaded a handful of shyer players to get to know each other and it's paid off for me and them. I've heard more than one player admit that the game was getting boring for them, but they weren't very good at reaching out, so they probably weren't long for City of Heroes. It's great to log in, months later, and see these folks already in a team with each other without me having to organize.

I know that these types of players are going to attempt to use the LFG system as a crutch as it broadens in scope, but based on feedback I've heard from players on the subject of teaming mechanics, I'm not sure it will give them what they're looking for.

I quoted this because, even though you're looking forward to forced teaming and I'm not, you've encapsulated my expectations for the system better than I've been able to describe in my own words. As someone who solos AND socializes, I respect your playstyle Sam (heck, Captain-Electric is on /hideall right now, doing the Howard Zaine Trilogy in peace and quiet ). I'm not against this LFG stuff, or trying to tell anybody what they should or shouldn't like. I'm just saying, to any readers here with naive notions about what LFG queues in MMOs mean, that you shouldn't expect any MORE than what Sam has described in his expectations for the system. This is why auto-teaming in World of Warcraft receives such lackluster sentiments: it's as warm and inviting to players as Chernobyl on a cold winter's day. But for those who have enjoyed "soloing in a team" in other games, then this is a plus.