Guild Wars 2

First, a disclaimer. This thread is for constructive purposes only.

The LFG tool currently implemented in the game is not serving its true purpose. This system was mostly ported from GW1 and it did work awesome there, because people could only group in outposts and cities. However there are a few things that i noticed weren’t implemented in the sequel and that I’ll discuss.

The awareness

Go to any reddit thread about LFG Tool. You’ll always see a comment about someone that just discovered it. This also happened in many other parts of the game in the betas and resulted in the addition of hints. So, a hint for LFG would be really useful.

There is also one thing I didn’t see ported from GW1 that would entirely change things.

See, in GW1 when you said in chat “LFG for X and Y need Z” it would instantly flag you as Looking for Group, make your name and whatever you typed into chat appear in the LFG window. You could even make another inherent chat tab just for LFG (with its appropiate hint of course).

The UI

Implementation of the UI is quite good, however two things that could be improved would be the addition of a comment section and current party size.

I’ve heard people talk about dropdown lists for dungeons and their respective paths, however LFG is not just for dungeons and I believe comment would work out better.

The reach

In GW1, zone-only LFG worked because people could only form parties in outposts and cities. Hence, you would go to the one closest to whatever you wanted to do. Here, in the open world of Guild Wars 2, that is not the case. Playerd are spread across multiple zones. Even Orr farming parties are spread across the 3 zones. While i wouldn’t like worldwide LFG because the UI would be really cluttered, if it means more coverage and better grouping, by all means do it. The addition of filters could also be implemented and would be nice to deal with the world LFG clutter.

Hope these suggestions are viable, but if you think you have better ideas, show them off! Discuss!

To me there can 3 ways to implement the LFG system.

1) automatic server/global grouping system
2) instance/hub area for dungeon/dungeons (like in GW1)
3) interface/chat server wide system

I am pretty sure Arenanet already have a general path they are working towards, so it would help if they could perhaps outline that so we can discuss what features would we would like to have.

For me personally, I think a server wide chat/UI based system will be the easiest to implement. Basically just building on the existing system. I still enjoy looking for groups manually, but it’ll help immensely if we have a channel to bring all the people together while venturing in the world. No one likes to have to sit in LA for 15 minutes to solely to look for groups. In a perfect scenario, I would like a LFG server wide channel, but I understand if such channel exits, it will be clogged by people talking nonsense instead of actually looking for group.

So here is what I think I would like

1) keep the current LFG flagging system, but give it it’s own icon on the top left. (along with the other hero tabs, inventory tabs, WvW tabs etc)
2) make it server wide
3) make it possible so that player can flag themselves for dungeon/paths or farming groups.
4) make it possible for players to flag themselves as LFG or LFM
5) have a browsing system for dungeons and path to look for players
6) have a request/invitation system, could be independent of the party request to join/invitation system
7) have a way of removing players from the system. This can be done manually or automatically. Manually is self explanatory, automatically as in once a player accepts an invitation or a request to join group is granted, they are removed from the LFG system

It probably sound like a fuss and some may just prefer an automatic group forming system. I still somehow don’t prefer that, I still like that sense of forming a group myself, even when I’m pugging. I don’t even mind spamming in chats, but sometimes players interested in the dungeon may not be in the area of interest for specific dungeons, so the only thing that need to be addressed for me is this.

As an aside, it would also be great to have modifiable friend lists (or a comment section for each friend). My friend list have grown to a large size, I have added numerous people who I found it enjoyable to run dungeons and play with, sometimes for a very specific dungeon, but after a while they are quite hard to distinguish.

Quickest fix right now: Increase the Cap on the number of Guilds you can join and remove the arbitrary limitation of only being able to “hear” chat in the guild you’re representing. We don’t have Guild HALLS … we don’t have Guild VERSUS GUILD … so at this point they might as just be a glorified stand-in for custom Chat-Channels and be operated that way. …That’s how a lot of them are in lots of other MMO’s out there.

Some of harder to find dungeons are already seeing Guilds form specifically around them.