Discussion on Policy: Looking for Group (LFG) Tool

[Jura.2170]

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:I don't think that a "facelift" for the interface is in the cards.

Hi Gaile

I made a few suggestions to improve the Guild Window here. Like when someone rejects a guild invite, instead of the roster history saying they left the guild, it should be changed to say they declined a guild invite. The membership list Roster tab should say how long someone's been in a guild and how many times someone's declined a guild invite. And it needs a bug fix too, since when someone leaves a guild, the Roster History shows a blank entry for 10 or 20 minutes every time its clicked on

Can these small and simple improvements be made? They shouldn't take much time. Even letting us write more in the Guild Window's message of the day would be a big help. I always run out of space to put things

[kharmin.7683]

@Diobolica.8523 said:Give an option to block the player advertising from the LFG interface; with the result of the advert then not being displayed making it easier/cleaner to scan for 'actual groups looking for more players'.

But how would the system know what is advertising and what isn't? Wouldn't the advertisers find ways to circumvent any such filters?

[kharmin.7683]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

@"PeerlessArch.6547" said:Why does it bother you?I for one, do not raid, but I do see advertisements for selling raid clears -- but again I ask, why does it matter?It's not like there is a limit of LFG creations that are taking up "spots" preventing others from putting up LFGs.

That's a good point. It's not like the announcements are blocking a finite number of spaces in the message queue. :)

I think the point is that some players don't want to have to wade through a bunch of adverts to find "legitimate" LFGs.

[Guest]

I can't speak to raids, since I don't raid, and I acknowledge what Gaile said about no rework being in the cards... but I can't help but reiterate that some kind of design change is warranted. And I'm gonna go against the flow here and say that more granularity is NOT the answer.

As others have said, it's not exactly intuitive how to get to the LFG. Perhaps for that reason, for the most part the LFG is a ghost town. I have on many occasions when I was bored clicked around in there to see what people were looking for others to do, and almost none of the tabs had anything advertised in them. For the most part, everything gets slapped into Central Tyria groups or squads, since they're on top and thus the first and last thing most players check. Fractals are kind of busy, there's usually some action for metas on popular farming maps (Istan and Auric Basin primarily), and that's about it. No one ever uses most of the slots - for example, a new player who tried to use the "mentoring" tab would likely come away with the impression that no one plays this game at all. I've never seen a listing in PvP, WvW, Roleplay, Story Journal, or Achievements. You'll wait a very long time for a dungeon group nowadays. And even the new Festivals tab, most of the time was empty with people posting in Central Tyria like usual.

So, adding more ways to fracture the eyeballs looking at the lfg isn't a good thing. There needs to be a way for people to find specific things they're looking for, yes, but there also needs to be more initiative to guide players who are just looking for something to do or help with something to a central location. It needs a critical mass of traffic, because if you list yourself looking for help on a fiddly achievement and sit there alone for 10 minutes you'll probably conclude LFG is useless and not come back to help the next guy. More eyes in one place leads to people hopefully jumping in to do something they weren't considering but will be fun anyway, and then leads to people being more likely to list there for stuff they want to do. Create the virtuous circle.

Creating more tabs, more ways to filter, etc. is going to exacerbate the issues with LFG, not make things better.

[Nowaki.2136]

Speaking from the Raider side There's 2 main different points that may be inconflict with the "right here right now":

1- Raid sellers: not sure if you are gonna allow this or not, but how raid selling works is, they advertise, an interested person contacts them, and they find a time they are both Ok with (given that buyers are usually 2 or 3, meaning sellers need to coordinate 7 or 8 people wich wont be waiting all day in case a buyer comes up, specially cuz it doesnt happen that often). That will NOT work with the "we are selling 2 spots for raids right now" cuz then people could just stay still for several hours and even then not get a buyer.

2- Static/Guild finder: When you wanna suround yourself with people that do same content as you do, what better place than somewhere where all people doing the content can meet, AKA the LFG tool, leaving guild aside, when it comes to statics there's no other place to advertise "we are needing 1 person for an static that runs 3 days a week from X pm to Y pm, that is able to fill W role" that will totally not be a "right now" kind of party, since people undergo trials and stuff in order check if they are a good fit for the other 9 people (not only in game skills, but also interpersonal skills).

Main reason why LFG is used for those is because you can just AFK and read messages later, and everyone and anyone in the game can read it despite of where they are, that Versus using region chat where only people in same map can read it, and where you need to be actively in the computer to read/speak.

[Diobolica.8523]

No issues with the what Nowaki.xxx has described.What I suggest is a way to filter out these adverts by 'block' or some other means so that I can monitor the LFG window for raid groups that are looking for classes that I play rather than having to wade through static & sell adverts.

1. Action: right click LFG UI / context menu / block player (cmdr or player who is hosting the advert)
2. Effect: player is added to my block list and I do not see adverts placed by that person/account.
3. Review: clearing my block list will enable me to see adverts placed by persons likely to place adverts.

SortedPS I recognise that this would need to be done a few times as persons would use other players/accounts in their team to also place adds; put I am fine with that.

Job done :)

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

What about actual guild recruitment in general? This had been addressed on the German forums a while back but no one tends to take it seriously and to be honest it's all I see in most normalized pve sections for content. Instead of grouping organization I get that so and so guild is recruiting so and so players...they aren't even forming a group for the content I the section they advertised.

Is it possible to add a lfg tool ruleset with anti guild recruitment rule in the interface so rhey can be held accountable?

Will you address this?