Potential LFG improvements

shoop.3829 · January 25

I'm a longtime player on NA who uses the LFG at least once during almost every play session. It's invaluable for PvE players especially, but I think could be improved a lot in a few different ways:

1. If I'm looking for a group for a certain activity that I don't want to start and lead myself, I'll check the LFG listing every few minutes while doing something else in the game. This means that every few minutes, I have to click to open the friends list > LFG tab > maybe scroll down > click the section > click the channel > maybe scroll down > click to join group, or close the window and repeat all that again later. Even if I just leave the window open and drag it to the side, it still blocks a significant chunk of the screen. I wish that the LFG system had its own icon on the toolbar, or at least the LFG tab would be open by default instead of the friends list (which I personally use less often). An even more helpful but complex feature might be a new UI element (maybe like the hourglass that sits in the bottom right corner when you join a map queue) that allows you to quickly see the listings for a specific LFG channel that you've bookmarked by hovering over or clicking on it.

2. There are a lot of channels in LFG that I have never used and will never use. I think some should just be removed because no one else uses them either. WvW is the worst example, since you can't actually play WvW with a pug group unless they're on your same server anyway. Otherwise, I personally use LFG most often for strike missions and T4 fractals, so I wish there was a way for me to pin those channels to the top so I didn't have to find them in the long list of sections every time.

3. There's plenty of group content that you pretty much have no choice but to use LFG to complete, but it's is never made very clear or accessible to new players. I often see newer players use chat to ask for help completing a dungeon or strike for the first time, or get frustrated because they can't complete a certain group event on their own and don't know how to find help or switch to a more populated map instance. This is especially an issue for dungeons, which are less popular with higher level players but strongly encouraged for players who are still completing the core story. Making the LFG system more visible and accessible, especially at group events or during the tutorial stage, should help with this.

4. LFG listings can't display a very long description. This causes its own issues for groups like meta trains, who can't list all the events they're planning to do. It also contributes to a lot of shorthand in LFG listings that new players don't immediately understand, like "lf hb", "exp", and "south 10". In addition to a longer LFG listing description, maybe it would help to add a feature where a player can check boxes or select from a list to add certain predetermined "tags" when creating or editing a listing. That way, other players can more clearly see what that listing is about without the poster needing to use up more time or space to write it.

Thanks for reading! Anyone else have some good ideas for LFG?