Guild Wars 2

I would like to know as it is a pain trying to find a fractals group, and it would help reduce spam from areas that have dungeons. It would allow players to go and do stuff while waiting for a group instead of typing LFG ____ every 30 seconds.

Edit: Got a reply from a red

The GW2LFG site listed above is a handy tool, but we are working on something internally to improve and upgrade our group tool.

Edit: and here is another

the problem with rough estimates is that if I gave a date, that’s /the/ date everyone will expect it. Then, if it’s not ready, people get upset with us. It’s just best to say “we’re on it!” and try to get it out as quick as we can, with as much awesome functionality as we can

but.. to evoke Colin Johandsome: “When it’s ready.”

Don’t know about anyone else but knowing that Anet is working on making it easier to find groups is a big relief. Keep up the awesome work Anet.

over level 19 (at 29 right now) every level except 25 took me over 50 minutes to fill up the group, gg anet.

http://gw2lfg.com/

Luke.2643:

http://gw2lfg.com/

Yeah a lot of people already know of this, but what we want is an in game system that finds groups for us while playing at the same time.

I believe that they said they are working on this in the patch notes. Although I don’t understand why it wasn’t there from launch

Barbarka.9362:

I believe that they said they are working on this in the patch notes. Although I don’t understand why it wasn’t there from launch

Sadly most ArenaNet devs who have posted when asked about a LFG tool have stated there is no plan in the near future to implement one. This might be do to such mixed feedback from players on the forums half want one and then other half just spout off it ruins the game and WoWs was bad.

as for gw2lfg.com the problem with this is players don’t want to use a outside source for something that should be built into the game, GW2 has a LFG tool already built in it is just a awful excuse of a feature no one ever uses it or those who do use it you can’t tell what they are LFG for.

I used Wow’s in BC + a little in LK but i really think with the lack of a trinity this shouldn’t be an issue. What was so wrong with Wow’s anywaY?

Barbarka.9362:

I used Wow’s in BC + a little in LK but i really think with the lack of a trinity this shouldn’t be an issue. What was so wrong with Wow’s anywaY?

nothing, they just fear that the lack on needing to spam /map for extended periods of time would kill a servers community. They also think that getting auto put into groups would mean always getting stuck with baddies, none of these are true tho and it happens right now with you /map for pugs… same chance of getting a bad player as getting a good one.

There is no reason we shouldn’t have a cross server LFG tool, I have better luck getting dungeon groups in overflows because of different servers being there.

Yeah I’d just like to point out that I have not been able to do a single dungeon yet due to real life constraints and more importantly being forced to rely on others.

Can we just have some henchmen like the old days so people who don’t feel like pugging for an hour can just get a dungeon out of the way? I mean I still haven’t even seen the inside of the first one yet.

I don’t WANT to play with other players, I hate being forced to play with other players, I can’t get tokens unless I do a dungeon, I can’t do a dungeon because there’s no one to do a dungeon with.

This is idiotic and is kind of ruining this aspect of the game for me.

ophidic.1279:

Yeah I’d just like to point out that I have not been able to do a single dungeon yet due to real life constraints and more importantly being forced to rely on others.

Can we just have some henchmen like the old days so people who don’t feel like pugging for an hour can just get a dungeon out of the way? I mean I still haven’t even seen the inside of the first one yet.

I don’t WANT to play with other players, I hate being forced to play with other players, I can’t get tokens unless I do a dungeon, I can’t do a dungeon because there’s no one to do a dungeon with.

This is idiotic and is kind of ruining this aspect of the game for me.

If you don’t want to play with other people a MMO is not for you, that said if there was a LFG tool that helped form members across all servers it would greatly shorten the time you have to waste waiting to actually do the dungeon

no henchmen thanks, they can’t even get the ranger pet to an acceptable level, let alone a whole new ai entity. It is frustrating when it takes 2 hours to get a group however. And no, I am not being silly, took me from 8pm to 10pm to get a group together.

I often play at awkward hours too, from 2am till 10am, trying to find a group for the correct level of fractals at that time of night, is hard work! End up doing fractals -5 or less lower than the one I need.

And even with all that, I still do not want Henchmen in Gw2. They served their purpose in Gw1, Gw2 does not need them right now, and I hope it never does.

Henchmen literally killed GW1 overnight for PVE. They were convenient but when they were introduced, that was pretty much the last time anyone really talked to each other or went on missions with other people anymore. City chat essentially became an auction channel only.

This is not a single player game, I understand the frustration but this is an MMO. It is for playing with other people. They already gave you a 1-80 journey with little forced grouping or social, and imo this was already worse than it should have been

I never played GW1 but I am guessing that these “henchmen” replaced other players when doing dungeons so that people could do a dungeon on their own?

And if Anet has said that they have no plans to implement a Find a Group system then… they are extremely stupid. I don’t see why they wouldn’t there are a lot more pros than cons and if anyone says that it gives a higher chance that you will get matched with pugs who are inexperienced then I have to say, that this is exactly what people are doing when they type LFG _ .

I don’t think the dungeon finder was in at launch because they were still having grouping issues in zones and instances, overflows for about every zone and “Join in…” not working properly at launch, remember? They had other fish to fry then. They still don’t have overworld server guesting in either. Add in that fotm has weird mechanics with same server zone in and kitten out of luck for disconnects, and that’s another thing they need to refine or work around. The dungeon finder is in the works.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

The GW2LFG site listed above is a handy tool, but we are working on something internally to improve and upgrade our group tool.

Awesome news

Please please make sure it at a minimum meets the usability that gw2lfg has:

1- Dungeon or Dungeons desired + mode
2- Character Level Desired
3- Party status ie how many people are present or needed
4- Region
5- Generic short comment field

Robert Hrouda.1327:

The GW2LFG site listed above is a handy tool, but we are working on something internally to improve and upgrade our group tool.

That’s great to hear, though if you don’t mind me asking: when should we expect this improved tool to be released? A rough estimate would be nice.

fathamburger.8453:

Henchmen literally killed GW1 overnight for PVE. They were convenient but when they were introduced, that was pretty much the last time anyone really talked to each other or went on missions with other people anymore. City chat essentially became an auction channel only.

This is not a single player game, I understand the frustration but this is an MMO. It is for playing with other people. They already gave you a 1-80 journey with little forced grouping or social, and imo this was already worse than it should have been

I must agree that this game’s dungeon system is not a single player friendly component but the rest is. The correct answer is that a solo player who has completed GW2 and should move on once the leveling/exploring/pvp components are completed to their satisfaction. The dungeons are reserved for groups.

As for the impact of henchman killing community, if people stopped playing together because they no longer had to why where you forcing them to do something they didn’t want? The myth that MMO’s require interaction needs to be dispelled. The draw of an MMO is the stage and the feel of being in a live environment. I am happy to ride the bus with you but just don’t talk to me.

LFG tool is a nice way to speed up dungeon crawling and I would think a required MMO tool that pushes grouping on players. I am glad to see it will get rework in this game a help reduce spam.

@Capzero:
The entirety of GW2 is shaped so as to encourage people to play solo whenever they want, but not punish them in any way for playing in groups, as other games so often do. If you wanted to be able to solo dungeons, you’re playing the wrong game. As far as bosses/events/anything else goes, sure; you can do it all yourself.

“MMOs require interaction” isn’t a myth in the sense that I haven’t seen any evidence that would suggest otherwise. The above posted noted that area/map chat devolved into nothing but auction chat when henchmen were introduced, strongly suggesting that, in fact, introducing henchmen killed the community.

Aside from your personal anecdote, what evidence do you have?
You might very well be the outlier here, keep in mind.

I wouldn’t like to see a LFG tool, myself. The disadvantages to it that I’ve seen far outweigh its benefits, especially when joining a guild to find people to consistently run dungeons(Including Fractals) with is one of the simplest things in GW2.

A pain trying to find a Fractals group you say?
Try finding an Arah group, or CM, or any old dungeon. Even with that handy little website, its pretty much impossible.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

The GW2LFG site listed above is a handy tool, but we are working on something internally to improve and upgrade our group tool.

I’d just like to say that I am really happy to finally hear something about this – and even happier that it’s in the affirmative.

I suppose it’s fair then. I do agree that people might get upset if you mention that it would be released when so-in-so event comes around, like the Wintersday update or something.

Whatever it is though, I’m looking forward to actually utilizing it and spend less time spamming Lion’s Arch. If it’s one “community” that I’d like to see “ruined” by such a tool, it would be the LFG Spammers of Lion’s Arch.

A side inquiry and offer while we’re talking about future content: if you’re looking for beta testers for future content, then I wouldn’t mind volunteering and sharing some insightful feedback. If there’s an opening for one, who would I get in contact to participate in it?

I, for one, will be happy to see a much more in depth lfg tool. Never thought I would say that, I agree that they have been detrimental to mmo’s in the past.

Dungeons are my favourite aspect of the game, I enjoy the challenge of exploring and learning them. Pre-fractals it wasnt too bad finding groups in LA. Most folks are running fractals, and who can blame them, with the cursed shore events nerfed its probably the best way to cash up for that legendary you’re after. This being said, I do enjoy the fractals, they are fun instances.

Problem is that the population is now spread between different fractal levels, sometimes people will run lower ones, but lets be honest everyone wants to progress. Don’t get me wrong, I still find good groups for the old dungeons and fractals alike. I’m just finding myself forced to stand around doing sweet nothing in LA looking for a group and often jumping into a dungeon i dont necessarily want to run just to overcome boredom.

I understand people are using a 3rd party website to find groups, but some people would just like to log on and play the game. Anyways, just my 2 cents, I feel that in the game’s current state, a convenient cross-server lfg system, where you could select the dungeons and paths you’d be interested in running, would be advantageous.

I really, really hope you don’t implement a system similar to any of the generic mmorpgs out there (Im talking about the “click what dungeon you want to queue for, then wait till get matched with complete team of pugs and get in the dungeon instance immediately after” type of system). These sort of things will hurt the community and will empty the zones even more, cuz everyone will be just sitting in Lion’s Arch.

Why don’t you just make the current tool work like the one in GW1? Its simple and gets the job done right. Just move it to a separate UI panel so its easier to find, then make it work across different servers/worlds/overflows. And of course – the most important thing is to automatically add you in the tool whenever you type something starting with lfg/glf etc.
For those, who have no idea what Im talking about – more info: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Party_search

As Chap said it for the pvp rankings the other day – the systems are there, they have been tested and worked in GW1, you just have to adjust it for GW2.
And he is right. The first Guild Wars (after some time) did a lot of things right, why would you just ignore and trow them away?

Very good point Sav, especially with lower levels being able to queue for many dungeons, just getting slapped with 4 derps would not help haha. Something that displayed classes and levels where players still fundamentally built the group would be nice.

With an dungeon finder it can even come an general PVE finder…. We just may post “Need Party to do this X Event” and people open an explorer to find suitable parties in the Map they are. Then it will be much more social than it is now with only map spam

Even for stories and something that may be awesome for do it with more people.

I Hope that will be not just for dungeons, it can be expanded to many things in this game.

Personally, I definitely prefer to wait more and have a good LFG tool, using GW2LFG in the meantime than having it fast and that it sucks, with no option to filter etc … or looking like GW2LFG at its beginning …

I’m curious how it will handle if the character has explorable unlocked or not. Sweet we got a group of 5 lets go! Aw no one has explorable /disband.

My question for you Robert Hrouda are there plans to make explorable unlocks account wide? It makes no sense to me why they aren’t in the first place since you obviously designed story modes to never be ran more then once in the first place.

A bit more info on the Party Search from GW1, cuz I have some free time, but cant play GW2 atm.

The tool in GW1 wasn’t automated and all it did was “echo” your lfg line.
I will explain what I mean by that with one really common example: You are looking for a group to run Ascalonian Catacombs (ac for short). So you go to the zone (Plains of Ashford in this case) and type “lfg ac explorable” in map chat. In that moment the system kicks in, captures the “lfg ac explorable” line and makes it visible in the tool UI to everyone in the zone (hopefully across servers/worlds/overflows), no mater even if they entered the zone AFTER you started looking for group.
From there I see that you are looking for group and the tool showing your name, profession, level, party size, server/world/overflow and also gives me option to whisper or join you.

Basically you will do what you do now – “spam” in map chat, but instead of “spamming” only in your server/world/overflow, you are “spamming” everyone that is in the same zone, no matter of the server/world/overflow they are in. This will reduce the time spent for gathering a group by much… very, very much.
And “spamming” isn’t really the right word, because it will not get lost in the chat, bu you have to type it once and it will be listed in the tool for as long as you decide to disband the group.

Of course this will (have to) work for everything, not just dungeons – Tournament PvP, WvW and even as someone above mentioned – world events, bosses, puzzles, etc etc.

If the LFG system does not allow you to see the LFG from players outside your current zone, it will be useless and most players will continue to stick to GW2LFG, as simple as that ^^

The GW 1 system worked just fine. Don’t see any reason not to do something similar.

Dungeon Group Finder or cross server lobby for each dungeon where ppl from different servers can find a group.

Just woke up, good to see that we have had some Red input

Robert Hrouda.1327:

“When it’s ready.”

As long as you make sure it’s a proper Dungeon Finder and not another “improved” LFG tool.

Auvic.5679:

@Capzero:
The entirety of GW2 is shaped so as to encourage people to play solo whenever they want, but not punish them in any way for playing in groups, as other games so often do. If you wanted to be able to solo dungeons, you’re playing the wrong game. As far as bosses/events/anything else goes, sure; you can do it all yourself.

“MMOs require interaction” isn’t a myth in the sense that I haven’t seen any evidence that would suggest otherwise. The above posted noted that area/map chat devolved into nothing but auction chat when henchmen were introduced, strongly suggesting that, in fact, introducing henchmen killed the community.

Aside from your personal anecdote, what evidence do you have?
You might very well be the outlier here, keep in mind.

I wouldn’t like to see a LFG tool, myself. The disadvantages to it that I’ve seen far outweigh its benefits, especially when joining a guild to find people to consistently run dungeons(Including Fractals) with is one of the simplest things in GW2.

I suggest reading this article and some of the related research

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/02/alone_together_.html

I understand that WOW is not GW so the distribution of collaborative play may differ but in general the ‘solo’ player far outweighs the group player. That being said I still firmly believe that you need content for all kinds of players as high population is good for both the solo and group oriented player.

My main point is that if you introduce options that allow players to play without grouping or getting involved in community (but you don’t block access to them) and your community falls apart then it was a false community. Player only involved themselves because they had to not because they wanted to.

Either way, tools that reduce tedium can only be good

Great to know you’re working on it! Looking forward to it. Just don’t forget to solve the mixed server’s FotM problem. (and the DC one).

Zyphent.2967:

A pain trying to find a Fractals group you say?
Try finding an Arah group, or CM, or any old dungeon. Even with that handy little website, its pretty much impossible.

This.

I’ll be honest, I had absolutely no idea there was a group finder tool in this game. Maybe it doesn’t stand out enough? But I really never knew this existed.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

the problem with rough estimates is that if I gave a date, that’s /the/ date everyone will expect it. Then, if it’s not ready, people get upset with us. It’s just best to say “we’re on it!” and try to get it out as quick as we can, with as much awesome functionality as we can

Don’t you worry, everyone already upset with you in the first place.
I hope you at least providing gw2lfg.com with hosting or something.

After getting several characters to end level I find the end game incredibly boring as the content I really want to see and participate in takes over an hour to get into so I finally stopped playing. My guess is I’m not alone on this and that it’s just getting that much harder. When you have a full time job and kids to take care of an hour waiting to get into a group is just to long.

Barbarka.9362:

I used Wow’s in BC + a little in LK but i really think with the lack of a trinity this shouldn’t be an issue. What was so wrong with Wow’s anywaY?

WOW tool is bad, because it generate the party randomly, with no choice for player to chose the group members or the dungeon.

basically, dungeon finder tools are bad for the community, group finder tools are healthier for the community.

one more drawback is that the tool must be server only. cross server tool is also a community killer.

since there is no “trinity” people will not wait for tanks and healers. no reason to go to cross server tool concept.

I want (one more time), to recommend the concept of the grouping tool DDO have.
it allows for the group initiator to declare what kind of activity he wants, and what players he expect to join.

players who seeking group, have a very easy list of initiated groups, they see the group leader class/level/name and the purpose of the group (specific dungeon, fractals, WWW, Orr event etc)
and they can chose to join the group.

the group initiator see who wants to join (class/level/name), and he accepts or deny the person. when the group is full, it is removed from group list.

no need to spam chat, no need to be in a specific map. you have the control to which group to join, and the group leader has the control of whom to invite.

Dungeon finder tool is great, because you get a group formed up while you can still keep exploring and not waste an hour spamming for members. Players still get to choose who they group up with by simply not using a dungeon finder if they don’t want to meet new players.

Basically, cross-server dungeon finder tools are awesome for communities, because they let you meet players from other realms. Also, another good thing about a dungeon finder is that they take away the power of deciding who gets to be named “bad tank” or “great healer”. Simply put, the jerks that had a hold of a server witnessed how their powers were stripped away from them when people were allowed to group up with others from different realms.

People keep referring to this mythical guild who’s members on demand run dungeons with you, has dozens of people who are more than willing to help you when you find the time to play.
I would really like to find this guild. The guild I’m in currently seems to have about 3/4 active players (including me,) and most of the time when I’m playing the others don’t seem to be around.
I have been searching for new guild. So if anyone can suggest a Guild in CD who can replace my need for an LFG tool please let me know. BTW, I usually play around 9pm (GMT+8), until about 11pm (have to work the next day.)

You probaly wont find that guild, guilds are dying faster here then in any other mmo ive ever playes.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

The GW2LFG site listed above is a handy tool, but we are working on something internally to improve and upgrade our group tool.

Happy to see that you guys are working on it.
Please give us a proper automated tool.

what should be includes in a dungeon tool is the ability to join an overflow and search for fractals over all servers.

@Falcon:
Keep in mind that you can do dungeons with people cross-server, so you could very well join a guild not on CD, and find people to run with. :]
Best guess would be the guild in the forums, as per https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OPERATION-UNION-Bringing-Players-Together/first though admittedly it’s still just a guess.

@Capzero:
Well, I’ll be! Interesting stuff in that article, though I still feel in my gut that if it wasn’t for the community, it wouldn’t be the same. It might not be sufficient on its own, but I feel it’s still integrally necessary. (Then again, I’m also happy to admit that we might just be players of completely different playstyles altogether, since I’m much happier doing anything in a group.)

That said, one of my main concerns about a LFG tool is that it might encourage people to start grouping along certain lines, IE “LF support guardian” or anything similar. An updated version of GW1’s tool might work out rather well, but in the same way that I feel like any metric of gearscore is poisonous, I feel like giving people a way to build parties that don’t have the same level of I-got-this-random-group-of-classes-together-now-let’s-do-a-dungeon feeling would detract from the overall experience.

Then again, maybe it wouldn’t. Gut feelings, instincts, etc; I could very well be wrong – these’re just the things that bothered me most from the LFG tools in other games.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

The GW2LFG site listed above is a handy tool, but we are working on something internally to improve and upgrade our group tool.

Please don’t make it a separate chat channel like you did for trade chat in GW1. The updated Party menu worked ok in GW1 but we definitely need something more comprehensive here in GW2.