As someone who often plays with PUG groups in dungeons and fractals, it was inevitable that I’d notice many of the strange and funny LFG messages that people put out in the hopes of finding that “ideal” party in an effort to make their dungeon/fractal run as smooth or as fast as possible.
I thought I’d share some examples of these examples, as well as my thoughts on them.
“Fractal LvL X: Swamp ready!”
Now, I understand why most players doing regular fractal runs would want to get swamp first. It’s fast and easy for an experienced group and so it can cut your fractal run time down by a reasonable amount if you’re lucky enough to get it.
What I don’t understand is why people often won’t join a fractal or start one unless they get swamp first. I’ve even had people join a party where I haven’t specified that we’d be doing swamp, only to then ask if swamp was ready and then subsequently leave when I say “no”, thus wasting their own and the rest of our party’s time (the ironic part was that we still got swamp when we went in anyway). In other cases, it isn’t uncommon to see a party enter and quit fractals multiple times, over and over, until they get swamp.
To me, this is counter productive, because often a player might spend more time looking for the swamp, or looking for a group that has it ready, than they would have spent simply joining another group instantly and completing another fractal.
“LFG Zerker only pls! Gear Check.”
It’s odd enough that players would go so far as to gear check their fellow party members just to make sure they get their ideal party formation. But, this message is even more strange and funny when you see it while looking for a group for an easy and fast dungeon route, like CoF P1.
In many cases, you actually lose more time waiting for the ideal zerker party than you save with the extra dps, especially for shorter dungeon paths.
“LFP, 2 Warriors, 1 Mesmer, 1 Guard only!” (example)
This is by far the most hilarious kind of LFG message. Almost every time I see this kind of message where people demand X number of X kind of class, the people I see join that party never meet the requirements anyway.
Aside from that, the sheer amount of time people like this spend waiting for their ideal group formation often far exceeds the gain. I’ve had situations where I’ve gone onto LFG to join a fractal, seen a group ad like the one mentioned above, joined a completely different group that doesn’t have such stringent requirements, and have completed the first fractal already, all the while their group still hasn’t filled yet.
“LFG, 5000AP + only”
In this last case, I can only question why players fall under the belief that somehow, someone’s AP count is an accurate representation of their skill level. I actually have a guildy who only started doing fractals when they had around 8000 AP. They hadn’t done it sooner because they were a bit anxious about them, so they put them off for quite a long time. On the other hand, I’ve also played with people who have less than 3000 AP’s, who have already done a lot of fractal runs, because they start them the moment they hit level 80 and do them daily.
So, not only are AP’s in no way a representation of player skill (mostly because acquiring AP’s in itself often does not require any skill), but they also in no way indicate whether a player has even played a particular kind of content at all, nor hint at how often they play it if they do. Once again this is a case where players are just wasting their own time by trying to put unnecessary and often impractical restrictions on party requirements in LFG.