Guild Wars 2

I looked around a bit and did not find much on this (granted I only looked for 5 minutes). But aside from an actual thread with suggestions there was none that I could find.

As it is now, players can open their contacts menu and then “activate” LFG. Which is basically just displaying an Icon above the characters head.

While this works nicely in theory, it does not serve it’s purpose in the game.
As players we need to be able to find other group members or players much easier.
I’ve been thinking on ways to improve the current system, and to be honest it’s the basic features we see in most mmo’s a LFG list.

- Add a list of available parties that anyone can join (or apply to join)
The party leader can set a few parameters such as which dungeon they want to do, whether the party is open to the public or not (if yes the party will be displayed in the LFG list).
- Add a list of available players who are looking for a group. Same parameters apply here (turn “allow invites” on or off and dungeon/purpose of group)
- Separate LFG chat channel

We should be able to filter the list based on dungeon type (so for instance If I am looking for a group that is doing Arah Explorable I can find one, but If I am looking for a group that is doing AC on Story mode I will also be able to find that via a filter function). And of course there should be a clear distinction between looking for a group or looking for players to add to your already existing group.

The “List” would be great, I absolutely agree. But let’s not limit it to dungeons only. We could see listings for spvp, wvw, keg brawl, vistas, random adventuring, roleplaying, etc, in addition to dungeons. This would instantly make the game better and help people easily find friends to play with. I do think such a list could be server wide, or even bigger.

As for the LFG chat channel, I happen to think it would just become /map chat part 2. So not too helpful really.

@Robert Hrouda: I have found, through many years of experimentation, that better/faster results are achieved by flailing ones arms about while holding either bladed objects or confectionaries.

Don´t underestimate the utility of a competently swung cat!

How about a realm wide LFG chat channel, or even better each dungeon specific LFG chat channel ?

Realm wide chat would be very useful, currently the only way to find groups is to sit in lion’s arch and spam /map which is extremely boring. I’d like to be able to pvp or work on zone completion or play alts instead of sitting in one place while LFG’ing.

Not to mention the message suppression! very hard to advertise a group when suppressed >.<

Be careful what you wish for. Server-wide LFG chat also means server-wide gold selling spam.

Everybody knows about the gold spammers, its part of mmos. Bring on the LFG finder please!

You can avoid all the problems related to a server wide channel with a simple solution: automated LFG! Queue, wait, have fun, repeat. Simple and easy. Add the option to only queue with people from your server, for those looking for a more social experience, and voila.

There won’t be any LFG automated cross realm system in GW2.It was already said in one other thread.So stop asking for it.It’s not going to happen so deal with it!

Sorry to break it for you, but it’s inevitable. When population on servers starts to go down and players start to give up on dungeons because there aren’t people to play with, I’m pretty sure they will seriously consider connecting those same players separated by invisible walls of “servers” together. It’s good for the game, and with a simple checkbox for “only party with people form my server” you can keep everyone satisfied.

I wouldn’t want an automated group finder. What I’d rather see is: When you walk through a dungeon portal, instead of being put directly into the dungeon, you’re ported into a small ‘staging area’ instance which all servers share – like an Overflow, only without a ‘home’ server alternative.

Suddenly, you’re in the same room as everybody else in the world looking for a group for that particular dungeon, and yet the system is not completely randomized and robbed of all social interaction.

A temporary LFG channel would be ideal. Just disable it when you get your LFG tool reworked.

Crater.1625:

I wouldn’t want an automated group finder. What I’d rather see is: When you walk through a dungeon portal, instead of being put directly into the dungeon, you’re ported into a small ‘staging area’ instance which all servers share – like an Overflow, only without a ‘home’ server alternative.

Suddenly, you’re in the same room as everybody else in the world looking for a group for that particular dungeon, and yet the system is not completely randomized and robbed of all social interaction.

I like this solution—it is more or less how GW1 handled it.

Crater.1625:

I wouldn’t want an automated group finder. What I’d rather see is: When you walk through a dungeon portal, instead of being put directly into the dungeon, you’re ported into a small ‘staging area’ instance which all servers share – like an Overflow, only without a ‘home’ server alternative.

Suddenly, you’re in the same room as everybody else in the world looking for a group for that particular dungeon, and yet the system is not completely randomized and robbed of all social interaction.

This would be really nice! It would be like the SPvP mists area.

Seems like it would be necessary, under the new reward system, to have a way to designate what paths you’re willing to do whatever the revamped LFG winds up being.

Crater.1625:

I wouldn’t want an automated group finder. What I’d rather see is: When you walk through a dungeon portal, instead of being put directly into the dungeon, you’re ported into a small ‘staging area’ instance which all servers share – like an Overflow, only without a ‘home’ server alternative.

Suddenly, you’re in the same room as everybody else in the world looking for a group for that particular dungeon, and yet the system is not completely randomized and robbed of all social interaction.

I believe the reason Anet hasn’t implemented an instanced Heart of the Mist-like version for PvE dungeons is partially because it would essentially be the same as waiting in Lion’s Arch for a group(albeit a little faster).

What I would prefer them to do is to provide a new fleshed out LFG UI. The dungeons unavailable to your level would be listed(with level range) but grayed out, once you select one available to you, you’d be given the option for Story Mode or Explorable.

From there they could go about letting people group up one of two ways:

• If cross-server they could opt for a simpler hot join system similar to their sPvP, where available parties are listed with a 1/5, 2/5 and so on.
• If server only they could opt for a system they had going in alpha(beta?) for sPvP: Allowing people to list themselves as they do now but with an attached description for what kind of dungeon path they are going for. (See attached image below)

Just one of the few ways I can think of spicing up the current system we have implemented. I look forward to seeing what Anet spruces up for us, honestly anything would be an improvement from the hidden sign-up system we have in-game currently.

I think that a staging area would be pretty fundamentally different from Lion’s Arch LFG in at least two ways: 1) Most people in Lion’s Arch at any given moment are on Lion’s Arch in their home server, where you can never reach them, whether you’re on your home server or in an overflow. And 2) Most people in Lion’s Arch at any given moment, in any given instance, including overflows, are not looking to do dungeons at all, let alone the specific dungeon you’re looking for.

So when you go to Lion’s Arch to look for a group, you’re only able to communicate with a minority (the people looking for the same dungeon as you) of a minority (the people who are looking for a dungeon group at all) of a minority (the people who are on your server, or are on the same Overflow instance that you are). It’s really no small wonder that it can take a lot of doing to find a party.
With a staging area, you would immediately be put in contact with all players from all servers, who are explicitly interested in the same dungeon that you are.

I wouldn’t complain about a dedicated group finder with its own UI, certainly. But one of the bigger advantages of a staging area is that it doesn’t seem as though it would require ArenaNet to develop any sort of completely new technology. Overflow instances are already built into the game, and the Heart of the Mists seems to already basically work this way. The area itself could just be the first room of the dungeon, with the gates locked shut. I can imagine it being implemented, tested, and rolled out within a week or two, without requiring too heinous of a team resource investment. If nothing else, I’d like to see it considered as at least a stopgap measure.

GW1’s group finder system was already a pretty kitten good finder, it surprises me that they didn’t use it as a base model for the LFG system.

It wouldn’t be the same as Lion’s Arch at all imo. The reason people go to Lion’s Arch to form groups right now is because it’s the only sensible place to go other than the map where the dungeon of interest is. But it doesn’t work the other way around. Many people are in Lion’s Arch for reasons other than looking for groups – crafting, mystic forge, running using it to get somewhere else, etc. Right now, even asking between the dungeon map and Lion’s Arch, it can easily take me more than 30 minutes to get a group together – and that’s assuming I even manage to get a group together in the first place.

Having a specific area for each dungeon that is cross server would be quite different because if you head there, you know that everyone there is there to, well, run the dungeon.

I don’t really think putting in a cross server list of players would be that big a stretch either. Think about what the guild screen does right now – you can see a list of players, their status (online/offline, representing/not representing, away/lfg), their class, their location, their profession levels, etc. This works across servers – it doesn’t even matter if you’re in EU or NA. Compiling a list of players who have their status set to, say, LFG/TA, across all the servers or even just one server, should not be a problem.

Other than the fact that a lot of people don’t know about it, the current LFG tells you absolutely nothing useful and is inconvenient to use. Why are you looking for a group? What if I want to look for a group to do something in another map you’ve completed, while I continue to explore this map? What are you even? The idea that the current LFG tool could have ever been deemed sufficient and useful boggles my mind. It fails in so many different ways, and is something that I assume was rushed out the door.

Also, because I forgot to report this as a bug. Earlier today a guy turned on LFG while in a PvE zone, then went into WvW. I found him, then added him to my party through the use of the LFG menu.

Problem: I’m on Stormbluff Isle, while he’s on Jade Quarry.

@Robert Hrouda:
Hey Rob, I work at a major financial software/service provider, the big one. So I know what you mean when you say that programming hours come at a premium and you need to give good RoI based justification for any development you wish done.

But, there is always more than one way to skin a cat. The LFG issue is a matter of liquidity. And there are 2 ways to improve liquidity:
1. A more organized exchange system (like a Trading Post)
2. More interested parties

Right now, it’s super hard to find a group for Dungeons, especially story mode, because even on high pop servers, there are just not that many people wanting to do them anymore.

Dungeons have been labelled as a high risk, low reward option in people’s minds.
Watering them down is sure to generate some angry gamers at the hardcore end of the spectrum. But I doubt you will be unpopular if you just boosted the rewards. 1.5G should be a minimum for the average Arah run considering how much time and effort it takes.

And this is something that can be done in less than a day, as it is just a matter of changing a few multipliers.

This might sound counter-intuitive, but I think it is very important to consider not to display class and level info in a future, upgraded LFG system. It leads to homogenization of group compositions and favours certain, as more useful perceived classes/specs and fully levelled characters. While in theory this is already the case, in practice it is not feasible and common practice for a leader to just invite every “attractive” character and kick unappealing characters. In a list-based menu where the leader alone has authority to throw together their group, the currently existing element of randomness, the “impromptu” nature of Pugs could be lost.

LFG has to be cross server or it just won’t work. Everyone who has ever used a LFG tool when it wasn’t cross server (DCUO, SWTOR – with their 1 hour + ques) can tell you it sucks. The pool is too small, particularly with certain more obscure or unplayed instances. It defeats the purpose if you have to wait for an hour to form a group as opposed to shouting in LA for an hour to form a group.

In each instance its a waste of time and annoying to do.

thats a world of different answer from the devs then we have gotten before on this issue…
well nice to see they at least acknowledge that its a real issue know and are actually gonna fix it and give us a decent lfg system (cant believe how you could release without one in the first place though, but hey better late then never.)

ChrisLew.5492:

LFG has to be cross server or it just won’t work. Everyone who has ever used a LFG tool when it wasn’t cross server (DCUO, SWTOR – with their 1 hour + ques) can tell you it sucks. The pool is too small, particularly with certain more obscure or unplayed instances. It defeats the purpose if you have to wait for an hour to form a group as opposed to shouting in LA for an hour to form a group.

In each instance its a waste of time and annoying to do.

not completely true, there is a few games which have done fine without, or at least in the start when there was still players playing it but granted it would be preferred and ther is a STRONG need for some kinda way to identify players ability to do x and x.
but single server works just fine in some games, its a matter of giving a decent reason to actually run the dungeons which is a MAJOR issue in gw2 now..

when the dungeons actually works without breaking bugs etc and a decent team which havent run it too many times so its a bit/very challanging (without being lupi kitten freakaing luck circle of dodge perfect and hope to god your luck keeps up so the random of scale bounches doesnt kill you, badly designed with that random crap -_- ) its freaking awesome and when you kill those big HARD things and clear the really nasty parts you are all like “HELL YER AWESOME!!!” then you get the reward at the end without ANY kind of worthwhile reward through the 30-100min run and your like “christ this is soo kitten dissapointing and crap… sigh… thats a bummer”
this means you do the dungeons a few times and then the AWESOME feeling gets overshadowed by the feeling of dissapointment over the total lack of any worthy reward for your hard work.

i feel like the dungeons are very well made (some of them need some rebalancing at some points which is either too easy/hard compared to the rest of the instance, but in general i really like the dungeons setup and the challange of most of them) but the total lack of reward finishing them up will end up removing any incentive to keep doing them.

I would really like to see a Dungeon finder UI in game. Something that lets me queue for a dungeon without being at the dungeon itself. Right now as pointed out in another thread its getting harder and harder to find groups doing story mode dungeon runs. This could possibly help to alleviate the problem.
Also, sometimes spamming LFG in the map chat irritates players who are not looking for a Dungeon run.

Falcon Night@
Anet already said in one other thread that it’s 100% certain that automated LFG cross realm system like the one in WoW,Rift,Swtor won’t be put in GW2.
Why can’t people understand that?

This might sound counter-intuitive, but I think it is very important to consider not to display class and level info in a future, upgraded LFG system. It leads to homogenization of group compositions and favours certain, as more useful perceived classes/specs and fully levelled characters. While in theory this is already the case, in practice it is not feasible and common practice for a leader to just invite every “attractive” character and kick unappealing characters. In a list-based menu where the leader alone has authority to throw together their group, the currently existing element of randomness, the “impromptu” nature of Pugs could be lost.

That’d be fine, as long as you’re unable to put yourself under the list as looking for a group for a particular dungeon if you aren’t high enough to run it. Right now, someone could put themselves on the LFG list and you’d have no idea if they’re even capable of running the dungeon, or if they just want to run through the map objectives with a party, or what. Of course, nobody puts themself on the LFG list to begin with right now, but yeah.

ChrisLew.5492:

LFG has to be cross server or it just won’t work. Everyone who has ever used a LFG tool when it wasn’t cross server (DCUO, SWTOR – with their 1 hour + ques) can tell you it sucks. The pool is too small, particularly with certain more obscure or unplayed instances. It defeats the purpose if you have to wait for an hour to form a group as opposed to shouting in LA for an hour to form a group.

In each instance its a waste of time and annoying to do.

But it creates more issues than it solves, I’m sure the design of the standard lfg could be tweaked to remove these issues, but the one biggest fear is the lack of accountability for trolling and/or griefing, the looting issues are non existant, but players are STILL trying to get their kicks being jerks.

I wouldn’t want an automated group finder. What I’d rather see is: When you walk through a dungeon portal, instead of being put directly into the dungeon, you’re ported into a small ‘staging area’ instance which all servers share – like an Overflow, only without a ‘home’ server alternative.

Suddenly, you’re in the same room as everybody else in the world looking for a group for that particular dungeon, and yet the system is not completely randomized and robbed of all social interaction.

Best Idea Ever! And keeping the Guild Wars feel!

Tetsuo.2593:

You can avoid all the problems related to a server wide channel with a simple solution: automated LFG! Queue, wait, have fun, repeat. Simple and easy. Add the option to only queue with people from your server, for those looking for a more social experience, and voila.

And take out what little team building and tactical planning there is in grouping? I don’t think so. The game needs more elements that bring people together in meaningful, synergistic ways, not less.

What team building are you talking about? Pugs are pugs and will remains pugs. People discuss strategy IF and WHEN needed, period. Everyone know their jobs (which is even easier with GW2 combat system: you either kite the boss or do ranged damage). It makes no sense to have match making for PVP (which actually requires strategy) but not for PVE (where the AI is always limited and predictable).

As I said, if you want a “social experience” check in the option to not group you with people from other servers and let the rest of us who don’t care just queue up and play the game. If you want really intricate strategies, join a guild. Or better yet, just don’t use the tool. The fact is, a LFG mechanism will allow those who don’t care about the social aspect to just play a co-op game, while those who care can still spam map chat looking for a group and make friends.

Believe it or not, there is a good chunk of the player base that just want a co-op experience.

“But it creates more issues than it solves, I’m sure the design of the standard lfg could be tweaked to remove these issues, but the one biggest fear is the lack of accountability for trolling and/or griefing, the looting issues are non existant, but players are STILL trying to get their kicks being jerks.”

Sorry, but I disagree. You’re likely thinking of WoW, which has one of the most toxic, gear-driven communities in MMO history. A LFG finder has far more advantages – time, organization, access to instances that are unpopular – than detriments. People will be trolls and jerks in any MMO you play. They exist in GW 2 today in droves sans a LFG tool. A LFG finder won’t necessarily exacerbate that, nor does it mean we should preclude one even if it did. The benefits outweigh the negatives, as you can see from the number of people yammering on about the lack of this feature.

In 2012, you simply need these tools in your game. Why ANet didn’t launch with it is a gross oversight when every competitor, every single one, has a similar tool. It just wasn’t ready in time for launch, or they knew the dungeons were too messy to even implement it for now. Those are the only logical answers.

Having a single pool of players also breaks the invisible walls of “servers” that would otherwise prevent them (players) from doing what they wanted (a dungeon). No matter if you are playing during peak time or not, if you want a explorable at high level, or just do a AC run for the first time on a level 30 alt, there will be other people for you to play with, plus the benefit of not wasting time ‘looking for a group’.

Claims of trolls and jerks are overly exaggerated. Yes, there are, as in any other online game. No, they aren’t as common as people try to portrait. They, truth be told, are harmless. What’s the worst that could happen? Someone call you bad names and gets reported/likely banned for being a idiot?

ChrisLew.5492:

“But it creates more issues than it solves, I’m sure the design of the standard lfg could be tweaked to remove these issues, but the one biggest fear is the lack of accountability for trolling and/or griefing, the looting issues are non existant, but players are STILL trying to get their kicks being jerks.”

Sorry, but I disagree. You’re likely thinking of WoW, which has one of the most toxic, gear-driven communities in MMO history. A LFG finder has far more advantages – time, organization, access to instances that are unpopular – than detriments. People will be trolls and jerks in any MMO you play. They exist in GW 2 today in droves sans a LFG tool. A LFG finder won’t necessarily exacerbate that, nor does it mean we should preclude one even if it did. The benefits outweigh the negatives, as you can see from the number of people yammering on about the lack of this feature.

In 2012, you simply need these tools in your game. Why ANet didn’t launch with it is a gross oversight when every competitor, every single one, has a similar tool. It just wasn’t ready in time for launch, or they knew the dungeons were too messy to even implement it for now. Those are the only logical answers.

Yes I was definitely thinking of wow, the only concern which I don’t feel you properly noted, was that accountability because of the LFx feature was at an all time low. Whereas before a player would have to pay REAL money in order to start again with a fresh name etc or a server transfer should their shenanigans go too far, instead the LFx systems merely enabled them to not even care in the first place.

No, we don’t have the potential for the hypocritical “ninja looting” but that’s not to say we won’t just open ourselves up to an overall bad mentality and enable the inevitable jerks and trouble makers to bypass what is in my opinion a VITAL aspect of an M.M.O and that being a reputation and accountability for one’s actions.
To do that, even if the systems are better and less encouraging for jerks and trolls would be to go against the rather refreshing attitude that I’ve seen plenty of times, when players are being silly other players simply call them out on it, and tell them in no uncertain terms

“we don’t want you ruining the game with that cancerous attitude”

And I personally fear for what would happen if these players were enabled by not having this reputation matter. If a player is trolling and griefing enough, the community should just be able to exclude them.

There’s nothing wrong with a game being “gear driven” that’s a motivation that players can choose to ignore should they wish. However when players can retain horrible anti-social, toxic and outright damaging attitudes, and not lose out potentially or be inconvenienced by this attitude I then feel that it just helps to encourage it unintentionally.

@Tetsuo (awesome username btw)

I feel that it’s not exaggerated, I feel that the amount of trolls and general bad eggs in the game is linked to the lack of accountability for their actions, with such convenience with LFx we simply DON’T have to worry about being even considerate and decent of the other player and thus we can be selfish and annoying and still gain access to groups at any point, there’s no loss because the system won’t treat a toxic player any different from a regular decent player. The answer that is being reached with the issues of toxic players by many companies, is to once again allow the community itself to self-police via tribunals, or by simply just informing one another and altogether standing up to the griefing “schoolyard bullies”

Against LFG it destroyed the comunity in other games…just a world wide chanel would be suficient imo

Akame@
I totally agree with you.

Having played WoW since well before that game got it’s LFG system, I’ve noticed a couple of problems that came with it:

1. Pre LFG I ended up getting invited into a couple of good guilds that suited my playstyle, because everyone in the dungeons was on the same server, and playing with people was kind of like an audition for a place in a guild. With the introduction of LFG that way of accessing guilds was lost. GW2 kind of has that issue solved with guesting, but it would still be nice to have LFG favor grouping people from the same realm where possible, to make it easier for new players to get into guilds that do dungeons on their home realm.

2. The other problem with LFG covering all the servers, was that you could have a great experience playing with a group of people, or at least some of the people in the group, but then never see them again (or be able to requeue for another dungeon with some of them, in the cases where one member of the party either disconnected or refused to leave the group after the dungeon had been completed, at which point the vote-kick function was disabled).

Adding them as friends wouldn’t be entirely appropriate, as you still wouldn’t know them well enough to bug them when they come online and ask them if they want to group up. It would make more sense for the LFG system to favor grouping people who enjoy playing together, up until they get to know each other well enough to make use of the friends list.

To that end, in addition to an ignore system that makes sure you never have to see someone again if you don’t want to, there could be a like system, where if a player wouldn’t mind being grouped with someone again, they can be flagged as such, and moved up a level in LFG, to be more likely to be placed together in future. When the flagging is mutual, the priority could be at a higher level again.

The system wouldn’t need to store every person a player has flagged, just the most recent ones, as with any luck, once people have played together a few times, they’d start using the friends list (you could even give a notification that someone is dropping off the preferred players list, and ask if you’d like to move them to the main friends list).

I’d also recommend punishing players who are so obnoxious that they are regularly added to other player’s ignore lists, perhaps by suspending their access to LFG for a short time (and perhaps the same for players who overuse the ignore function too).

Of course, players who are just bad at the game would get ignored regularly too, but as much as they have more of a right to play than those who deliberately ruin the game for others, pandering to people who unwilling to make an effort to learn to play, results in a large enough number of players being so bad at the game, that there is no alternative but to dumb it down.

A poor player can learn to play to a higher standard, and in time enjoy the content as it is. A skilled player cannot find enjoyment in unchallenging content.

In order to overcome this issue, it would make sense to have a couple of check boxes on the LFG window: ‘learning’ and ‘happy to teach’, so that those who might get ignored, just because they haven’t yet learned to play, can have access to players who aren’t likely to ignore them just because of their inexperience.

Perhaps players who regularly check the ‘happy to teach’ box, and get a like at the end of those dungeons, could be given some kind of reward.

Polarity ..very nice idea. .thought of things simular to that myself… but it will never .i repeat NEVER get implimented.
Game companies want more people buying their games ..if they put that idea into action ..they would get less ..becouse of the vast number of ‘bad’ players that happen to be out there, there would end up being tones of players unable to find groups for dungeons becouse they ..well… ether a) suck ..b) are as*hats.
Its not illegal to be an as*hat ..there are deffinatly enough out there ..but A subscription/purchase from an as*hat and a subscription/purchase from a ‘normal’ person looks identical on a companies bank statement :P