Building on the current, informal ‘taxi’ system in the Open World LFG, could squads be added to this and allow for more organisation.
A commander could put an ad in the Open World section of LFG, and then players can join their squad rather than their party, and then join in on the commander to get to their instance.
That’s the first step, going a step further, a squad in PvE is limited to 20 (and 10 in pavillion) and a commander can reserve that number of slots for their squad. I think 20 is the right number for most content, small enough to be given a specific task and not too large so up to 6 squad slots are available on each map, 6 * 20 leaves about 30 places excess.
Add a new section to the LFG, just below Open World, call it ‘Local’, and this shows the up to 6 squads that have claimed a slot, with the name of the commander, their guild tag, and the numbers in their squad. The number of slots available would change dynamically depending on how full a server gets, but 6 is the maximum. When slots are claimed by a squad, the only way players can claim a spot in a squad, is either through the ‘Local’ section (i.e. they are on the same map) or if the commander advertises their squad across the region (Open World section).
It should be possible to mark squads as private too, they would still show up in the ‘Local’ section, but could not be joined except by players of the same guild as the commander.
In the ‘Local’ section there would be a new bit of UI that only commanders could see, it would allow them to move to a map by choosing if they want 1, 2, … or 6 squad slots available, if none is available a new instance is created.
How it would work in practice: A commander with up to 5 second-in-commands in their squad would travel to a map, and check in the ‘Local’ section how many slots are available. If there is enough the commanders can split up and claim the slots, making them private or open, advertising in Open World or not. If there is not enough slots, the lead commander clicks the button ‘take me to a map instance with enough room for 1, 2, … or 6 squads available’. The commanders reach the new instance and have a grace period of 2 minutes, where the megaserver doesn’t add any random players. There is another limit of 10 minutes from joining a map instance to fill 15/20 of the places, if the quota is not met, the reserved places are lost. If a commander fails to meet the quota, they are prevented from reserving a slot for a time (24 hours or more), with some punishment for continued abuses. Another commander can claim that newly freed-up slot if there are 20 spots still available on the map, there is always a maximum of 6 squad slots appearing in ‘Local’. If a player that joins a squad and then leaves, there is the possibility they are booted from the map if the instance is otherwise full, or remove the squad from the ‘Local’ list, but allow the commander to relist if there is enough spots left in the map instance.
Likely a lot easier on paper, but it would be great to see the squad system developed and make it a workable solution for large-scale content.