To be honest, there shouldn’t even be a “looking for group” system, as it adds a very complex, very unpredictable step between the user and what they really want to do – play the game.
Besides, the whole premise behind “looking for a group” is broken anyway. I didn’t log into the game to look for a group of people, I came in to play the content. If anything there should be a “looking for something to do” system and just let the groups form naturally.
So what “could” the LFG system be that would really help connect players to what they want to do?
1. Let the players subscribe to notifications of server-wide PVE events. Let us know when the centaurs are acting up in Hirathi Highlands, or when the Splintered Coast is seeing increased activity and that Tequatl’s approach is imminent. Let us know if the Citadel of Flame is under Flame Legion control or that Zojja needs our help at the Crusible of Eternity.
2. Incentivise revisiting certain lowly populated maps. Perhaps in the “LFG” tool, we can show a priority call for action letting us know when the Durmand Priory’s forces are low (there are too few players on the map), or when (and where) the forces of Tyria are planning an attack on Zhaitan’s forces on Orr and need our help. Increase the magic item drop rate for these troubled zones.
3. Let the user queue up for dungeons that we want to queue up for. I have read that the development staff have no intentions on doing this, but I just cannot see how this would have any negative impact on the gameplay or the user experience.
If you don’t want to LFG, play Skyrim. Group or party – team anyway – is the main reason one game to be called mmorpg, but not just rpg. If you cannot find team, something is wrong with you, not with game. Maybe you are a bad player. In L2, with GoD they in practice removed lfp. You can see is there parties, which need players, in special window. You don’t need to write Lfp in chat. Cool idea you will say? This cool idea made clans – equal to guilds here – almost useless, at least on daily basis. There you can even make party with instant members, but anyway removing LFP chat was antisocial. Most ppl start to play with players they don’t know instead with their mates, and if you play with someone for a half hour, and this is all, you don’t need to know him in fact. So it’s step back for mmo game.
(edited by Ikcen.7518)
I never mentioned removing team play, so where in my suggestion did you see that? Perhaps you should read the entire post rather than just the first few lines and assume you know what I’m saying.
I did, however suggest a replacement to the current LFG tool that certainly doesn’t do it’s job. You can easily validate that it doesn’t work yourself by changing your status to “LFG” and wait and see if you actually do get a party invite.
1. Let the players subscribe to notifications of server-wide PVE events. Let us know when the centaurs are acting up in Hirathi Highlands, or when the Splintered Coast is seeing increased activity and that Tequatl’s approach is imminent. Let us know if the Citadel of Flame is under Flame Legion control or that Zojja needs our help at the Crusible of Eternity.
I like this idea, and it would fit well with the idea of pushing the content out of instances and outdoors for the whole server to share in (a general theme of GW 2 that we see with the numerous world bosses). They just need more challenging outdoors content to go with such a theme, but that’s an entirely separate thread:
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