Feyshtey said:In EQ you could just type "/LFG". This put a looking for group flag on you. You could also do a global search for "/who all LFG", and every person who was looking for a group would be listed. From there you could start sending tells.
I never really needed the LFG part of this feature in EQ. I would use /who all [level range] and sometimes [class] to specifically find what I was looking for.
edit: to be fair, I was already doing this to find ports though.
Zorkon said:Fluffy said:ZennExile said:What if you go to a place where you want to group, and you "/shout4Group Howdy Campers", which then triggers selective mob pathing toward the shouting PC, and visual or audio ques to give the sense that, yelling in say, a cave full of monsters, might piss off those monsters. So the solo person could become the target of select roaming mobs trying to find the source of shouting. The mobs that block the path and walk around are already in prime position to perform this role.
But the trick here, you let people in the cave (or any area) respond back with "/shout4Group Howdy Stranger". Which changes the roaming target to the group. Clearing a temporarily safe path to their location, organically, and in a way supported with immersion.
Menus are cool too I guess. If you like convenience more than immersion and fun.
However,
What makes an MMORPG, Massive Multiplayer, and not just a matchmaker, is that the gameworld itself is the Lobby, so to speak. It stands to reason, an ideal MMORPG group finder, should follow that model, and use the game world itself as the group finder, whenever possible. Job boards, expedition notices, dynamic mob behaviors. These should all play a strong role in bringing players together. The more convenience you build into the gameworld, the less immersion you sacrifice for it. People need groups, but they don't really need a groupfinder specifically. Right?
At least that is what I think. Why replace "/shout Camp Check" with a menu system, when you could just make shouting better?
Yes,I'd love the yell/shout/ feature tied in with the NPC disposition system,so that it can draw unwanted attention from certain mobs.
All about embracing risk and danger <33
It might work differently in safezones like cities,compared to wildernessMany say immersion is an overused word but it is exactly what is needed to make finding groups fun.So for many systems i'd prefer the gameworld itself as utility.One thing I kind of liked in Tera was the use of campfires to regenerate stamina and it played and important role to camp efficiently. Campfire could also serve as group finder in wilderness,with risks attached for the smoke signal it causes
Interesting ideas here. It would take more than just these but I like to think out of the box ideas are always worth exploring. So in out door areas a campfire with smoke rising up through the trees and hills to show a group LFM as you mentioned, would also aid in finding the group without the use of maps.
I'll add to the idea some type of Flair crafted from low level items (keep the knub zones alive) that could be shot through the zone to announce a player LFG.
ZennExile said:A literal campfire with smoke, that signaled party LFG, would dill my pickle in just the right brine.
I am not a fan of global text communication, or even zone-wide chat, but zone wide smoke signals... that I can support. Maybe put a lookout in a strategic place where players can go look for campfires...
Anything at all really that keeps the player interacting with the gameworld rather than the User Interface wins in my book.
In order to achieve the mission to create a game where players spend meaningful time in each area ,I believe it is best they take the mission to heart to create a game were players interact with the gameworld
rather than the user interface.
Killing 2 birds with one stone here ;LFG interface and Map interface.Replacing them with a system that urges players to pay attention to the environment.
The only kind of maps I'd love to see are vague hinting treasure maps btw (but that is also another topic here)
Adventure games have always dilled my pickle in the right brine <333
There is another game I'm looking forward to where pirates can play a song and the distance they play at affects how loud you hear the song.Might be intersting for dark Myr to have a siren's call
I wonder how the dark myr communicate in the dark,murky poisonous depths
For the halflings I imagine they communicate with some kind of mirror reflection in the far distance.
Sorry ,carried away here <333
The more interesting matter is how the one signaling and the one looking for the group interact to overcome the challenges when certain NPC dispositions respond to yells and shouts + other environmental challenges on the way .Maybe some climates like snowy winter blizzards could use flairs
How it differs in wildlife areas to safe zones like cities
Feyshtey said:[Edit] Ok, I'll admit that included in an interface it would be nice to check off the areas you're actually LFG in.
An interface could also make it a lot easier to look for replacements ahead of time. If you could add notes to your party listing saying something like "Looking for replacement DPS in 15 min (11pm PST), Master Chef camp"
Aggelos said:I really liked what Final Fantasy XIV did. See screenshot below:
This looks gorgeous! I hope it comes with a search option for finding relevant text, e.g. the name of the dungeon you're going to.
While /lfg worked well most of the time in WoW it didn't quite cut the mustard when your needs exceeded finding just a few players for a well known dungeon. Grouping for odd content, large groups, and special requirements makes a primitive system really lacking. Spamming text in /lfg was especially tedious at peak hours and with people typing in double or triple lines IN CAPITALS so their message wouldn't drown.
I hope we can have an evolved system that both promotes a good community and satisfies our grouping needs.
For LFM requests the tool Aggelos suggested is quite nice but IMO needs even less:
- text field to enter a description of what the group wants to do, any extra information etc.
- checkboxes for the roles required (I think its pointless to have checkboxes for classes, if you absolutely need a specific class you can say so in the description field)
- a great feature would be if the LFM request automatically updated itself once a player with a required role joined the group
A link to the person who posted the request should be listed in the overview so you can /tell them. And in the overview the groups which are almost full should be sorted to the top of the list.
With an emphasis on cooperative play I can understand the desire for a system to find people to play with.
Yes Gnog and it also affects how people interact.
In the form of the LFG tool I think players often take the help they get for granted;there is no effort from neither sides for each other as it is all automated by that tool
So after the job is done the group disperges as quickly as it is tossed together by an LFG tool.
Just like how fast travel can trivialize the journey,I believe LFG can trivialize the need for social bonds because contact is ephemeral and players do not engage the world together.LFG allows them to bypass that
I believe in order to have players connect on a deeper level,good audio-visual links connecting the players are required.
Only interface won't do.Because it can never approximate a more face-to-face bonding style
There's plenty of effort involved. Moving the ability to form groups to a separate UI piece doesn't suddenly make things low effort.
There is zero reason why a game needs to be interacted with through slash commands in 2017, barring some very rare exceptions.
Also, the ease with which a group is put together has zero bearing on how easily it is disbanded. Spending 30 minutes putting a group together in EQ didn't change the fact that 6 people could type /disband and leave in 10 seconds.
I'd rather have my chat window as unpopulated as possible. That means not having a million LFG/WTS messages everywhere. Even if you make separate chat channels, people will not use them.
It's ridiculous how much emphasis some of you put on such trivial things. What is "face-to-face bonding" about spamming a macro with an LFG message in a chat channel?
I'll actually go a step further: Why is so much emphasis placed on things like "effort" when it comes to interacting with a user interface? What makes some GUI functions (which are just simplifications of underlying code to make things more easily interactable to the average consumer) acceptable while others aren't? The arguments almost seem to be more along the lines of favoring functions that are clunky so you can get some bizarre satisfaction out of winning a war against your user interface.
Here's the LFG from EQ1 today:
Link to imgur image: http://i.imgur.com/Ap9wy5x.png
Four tabs, lots of filters. Room for a comment when LFG or LFP.
Related image: http://i.imgur.com/U05y7dy.png , just showing the typical UI when you /lfg now.
Unfortunately, the adoption rate of the LFG window is still extremely low in modern EQ. Even on TLP servers, 90% of chat spam is reduced to LFG messages. People are very resistant to change, and they are very stuck in their ways.
Even that UI piece is pretty clunky, but it is miles ahead of chat spam macros. Something far nicer looking and more functional would be nice to see in Pantheon.
I'm opposed to any tool that automates interaction between players to the point that you really don't have to talk to anyone at all. I dont promote auto-invites, queues, or teleports of any kind.
I'm not at all opposed to a tool that simply distills the number of people I'm going to strike up conversation with to those most likely to fit what I'm looking for.
I do not think it's interesting, entertaining, or a good use of a player's time to engage in a serial exercise of :
Me : "Hi, we have a group setting up for a dive into Cave of Doom, care to join?"
Player_001 : "Nope. Looking for group in Charred Chamber"
Rinse/Repeat ad nauseum.
There's almost no likelyhood that a community tie to another player is made here. It becomes a repetitive annoying task to endure as many rejections as it takes to find a fit for your group's needs. It isn't enjoyable and adds nothing to a sense that you're part of anything.
Conversely, a tool that shows you everyone, no matter where they may be in the game world, who actually desire to go to Cave of Doom and break down that conversation to a handful of people, conversation still happens that's relevent to all involved, and players can get to actually playing in a more reasonable timeframe.
If you happen to be someone who's up for just about anything, then let to tool simply list you as LFG and anyone can see you as available.
