Party Search feature

I like the function, but I don't PUG much either. When it first came out, I used it to sell items which sold a lot quicker than spamming.

It's sad that it's not used more because it's a great tool for what it should be used for.

However, it isn't a good sub for an in-game auction house.

As long as I can filter traders out I really don't care they are there.

1. I use party search.
2. I don't care few people use it.
3. I do so because if nobody uses it it will die and because spamming "blah blah blah LFG" is really boring, much more then watching TV and awaiting PM sound in speakers.
4. I don't have much problems finding groups by using the party search only.

Agreed, the party search needs to be tweaked a bit.

Solution:

1. Add ingame auction house to remove trades from search function.
2. Remove the old party forming method (point and click.....) so ppl are forced to use the search funtion.

perhaps the following might bring some light into the matter:

1) Search Party function first introduced:

"zomg no more trade spams!" *places item description into log and waits patiently for whispers*. _________1 week later_________ "@#%@ this!" *proceed to spam both local and trade channel for the item hes selling*

2) Got to the Gate of Maddness mission:

"woah great i finally got here, time to find a party. Theres so many players here, i wonder why? No matter i should be able to find a party with the party search function." *opens the serach functions and see none existing party forming and proceed to start one*_______5 mins later_______some one joined the party and ask: "Do you have wild blow, SV or empathy or degen?" you answer: "No, but i have lightbrin......" XXXXXXX has left the party.

_________2 hours later__________ You see the same toons that have remained stationary 2 hours ago are still there with a full party sign above their heads. *Gets desperate and proceed to spam the local chat for a party and proceed to invite every single person in the town.* *7 D/Mo joins your party.*


Has the above happen to anyone before?

Post NF Heros-Pre search function days, we were arguing about the impact of Heros on the multiplayer aspects of the game. I will come out to admit that i am a strong supporter of Heros concept, it allowed me to play the game on my own terms without limiting to PuGs. But since i have quickly come to realise that many causal players suffer from this implementation. Most players just play the build they like and have little care about leadership, tactics and were able to play the game pre Heros times, as they were mostly carried forward into the game by other more experience players. But no longer for Nightfall. Some players playing for social reason find themselve shunded from everyone else who are rushing with their HeroHench(HH) teams playing the game solo. Nightfall was making Guildwars PvE into a single players game. RoT didnt help them either.

So constructively the community suggest that a better way to look for a party is the way out. Buggy at first, Anet finally got it to work with options to facilitate trade, questing and mission grouping. But after a while we discovered the nature of the GW community: We dont want to play with others(PuGs) unless we are forced to.

So the options before Anet is not a easy one:

A) Force Players to play with each other(?), Remove Heros(?) -god i hope not.

B) Provide players with incentives to actually group up? Titles? Increased loot for full 8 man parties to encourage forming up? -speaking of which i was trying to farm a green scythe with a full human party for about 20+ runs...got jack.

C) Improve on the existing Party search function as a global search instead of local town/mission search. Its dumb to try to input a lfg ad in the serach when the area only has less than 4 persons. A global serach will enable players anywhere in the game to look up LFG/trade ads from any location in GW and facilitate partying and trade. -recently the lag been gettting bad to worse, i am not sure if Anet can do this without causing the game to stall without incluring major bandwidth cost.

Harder missions might make people consider re-trying the Party Search. People generally PUG up for the harder ones, e.g Vizundah Square, Thunderhead, Gate of Madness. A bit off topic but my preference for each chapter is for less missions, (Factions was about right I thought), but more difficult than in Nightfall.

Having too easy missions is pointless, no-one's gonna PUG up for those, and they lack a sense of achievement, Venta Cemetary comes to mind. NightFall missions seem to lack something, compare Venta Cemetary to Riverside Province, essentially the same objectives but wow, Riverside blows Cemetary out of the water.

Oh I hear that. It's just like Factions...in Factions there are far too many Assassins who want groups...in Elona, far too many Dervishes. I have made a Dervish (although this time I waited to see if they would be the "nightfall sin")...and I am now at the Gate of Madness. I think it's my 8th Character to get that far. Well...it's just not happening. I think my main option is to wait for a couple of Guild members and load up some heroes because some missions just have far too many dervishes. Why? In my opinion it's because people think they sound cool...like assassins. The word "assassin" conjures images of quick, stealthy kills...teleporting here and there...when actually it's a bit crap. I chose Dervish after waiting to see how they would fare and I do enjoy playing them, don't get me wrong, but there are far too many of them.

In the Gate of Madness mission however there are another couple of problems... 1. As with the dervish....FAR too many wammos. I joined a group some time ago, there was one warrior, an ele, a necro, then my Dervish. Because people have no patience the party fell apart and other people joined. SO what did we have? A party of 6 with no monks - one Dervish (me) and FIVE wammos all spamming in team "ZOMG we need monks". 2. The only things which exist in Gate of Madness are Wammos and Dervishes. There never seem to be spellcasters. Even Eles...there are just never any there. I could list Monks but, I never bother looking for monks any more. I just assume there wont be one and automatically load up Dunkoro instead. Aside from always being there...he wont quit half way through.

People who insist on waiting for human monks REALLY annoy me. I am of the opinion that it would be quicker to load up the hench monks and do the mission thann wait for a human. By the time a human monk appears you could have finished the entire game..

Totally agree with the OP here. I remember ppl here whining and bitching to implement an auction house, a better party forming system,...
And now that they get a better system for forming parties they dont use it! Its like a little kid crying over a toy that he wants, and when he finally gets it he doesnt want it anymore...

Meh.... I use the Search Function, but only if I absolutely HAVE to associate with meatbags. I find humans far too unreliable most of the time to bother with, but on occasion it becomes necessary.


So there I was.... in Kaineng Center the other day... and the search window had a few people searching for quest parties... and three people trying to trade-spam under the mission description.... typical idiots...
And so I put in a message for a mission... gathering at Jade Quarry as it happens. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but it didn't lead to anything anyway.

I asked a few people innocently enough in the local chat if they'd mind trying to gather at the Jade Quarry for exploration.... but it was drowned out in a stream of censor-bypassing spam-merchants.

So do you know what I did?

... I started whispering all the spam-merchants in the Kaineng Center one by one, telling them that I'd seen a buyer / seller (as appropriate) for their item somewhere else.... typically pointing them toward Lion's Arch or somewhere in Elona.... and usually the French district....
For about three minutes... I actually manage to clear English District 2 of the Kaineng Center of merchant spammers.... then new ones started popping up again.
I was still rather chuffed with myself...
I got an extra laugh from thinking that a few of them might genuinely have gone to the relevant French districts and pestered the French for a while... How I love our cross-channel snail-crunching neighbours.

^_^


The unfortunate truth is that merchant spamwh0res are just simple-minded animals.... and the only way to get rid of them is to bait them with the proverbial carrot... and hurl it somewhere far away.


I'm still gonna use the Search function before resorting to the local chat in future though.... always...

I play a monk so usually I have no problems getting into a group. Yes, lucky me

I don't use Party Search and don't plan to. Why? Because:

1. Heroway is superior to a pug and easier to organize.
2. If I can't win with heroes, I need people I know are competent.
3. The only people I know in advance are competent are friends or friends of friends.

So the reason I don't use party search is because party search doesn't add any value to me. I think the whole concept of party search was a nice gesture, but it ultimately missed the point. Like most people, I don't need help finding a pug for one mission, I need help forming solid, long term connections with players of similar skill and interests. Party search is simply was a ho-hum way to form ... a worthless, short term pug. What we need is a way to build a community of similarly minded guildmates, allies, and friends.

P.S. Now an auction house, I would enjoy. It would save us all time and hassle.

Its not that theres a lack of people using it, its that theres a lack of people. The problem is that in the end game areas with only 1-2 districts there arent many people. Its a usefull feature to have in central towns but not in the remote areas. I personally feel this feature needs a central area (Look At what i believe was Lyra Songs thread correct me if im wrong about a central island) to help compliment it and to have all the people in one area.

I can see why ppl dont use it in pve but for something like AB?? HELLO!!! It is PERFECT to use there but no one does?!?!

Best way to fix the problem of finding competent people would be adding a /whois command.

It would list:
1) a player selected account name (Joe Shmoe Pwnt)
2) a brief (500 character) description box
3) any disciplinary actions taken by Anet against the account
4)a list of PVP titles
5) guild status and history (kicked or left, date of each event, names of previous guilds joined, names of previous guild leaders)
6) campaigns owned
7) date of account creation
8) a collapsible list of characters, under each of which would appear:
a) PVE titles
b) missions completed
c) campaigns completed
d) date of character creation

A /whois this detailed would allow players to make informed decisions about who they associate with and why. Players would be less likely to rely on pre-existing relationships (currently the only means of gathering information about another player), and would be more likely to group with strangers.

Seeing that a player had completed all previous campaigns on all characters would make me very likely to take them over, say, Dunkoro in a PVE setting. Seeing that an unranked player has been in multiple top 100 guilds would make me more likely to take them with me on a halls run.

Conversely, seeing a total newbie might cause me to feel bad and attempt to show them the ropes. Seeing a description that looks like it was written by a head case would prevent later pug drama.

The main reason I stopped using the Party search window is that it's just too big. When it's up on my screen, I can't do anything else in town, because I can't see a thing.

Using chat, I can merch, storage shuffle, tweak my build, buy some skills, hold down ctrl to see if any orange guildmate tags show up, etc, all while monitoring the LFG/GLF messages.

And since when I breeze into town, preparing for a mission/quest, I tend to have a lot of prep work to do, so I tend to use chat first when I feel like looking for a group. I'll then glance at the party window, and if nothings happening, heroway to the rescue.

There are maybe some reasons for it. The description of what your party would like to be supplemented with is a bit short. You cant see the exact composition of the party you want to join is composed of. It determines a bit if the leader is sensible or not. I don't join parties with 6 melee versus shiro in the gate of madness. Not because it can't work, but usually the chances are slim.

I liked the system though, and used it in the beginning. I would even like to see it promoted world wide with some options so that you can select without even be present physically at the mission place. Maybe invites with select and plus should be restricted to force the majority of people, I guess there will be some whining ibn the beginning, but in the end they will get used to it and probably even praise it.

However... against Shiro in Factions its a fun way to get extra % toward the Grandmaster Cartographer title... (because when I'm surrounded by tanked up warriors... and I'm an Assassin running around in the nude... WHO is Shiro gonna banish to the island?)... which is precisely why I did it last night... ^_^ [I'm not sure what they thought of my suddenly stripping down and running around Shiro in circles until he banished me... but still]...

You know what's really a hassle, trying to read things in a rapidly scrolling chat window. I don't understand how you think it's easier to use all chat. I very rarely have it on because of this very thing.

Yeah.....me too.


That is an excellent idea! Maybe if we all start doing that, more people will use it.

Still a big fan and user of the Party Search. Though I'll usually spam for good measure :P

It's mostly due to the fact that spamming chat is faster, it's been effective since the start, and why toss away something that works well enough (ugh... as annoying as it is to be reading it sometimes) for something else?

I guess that's a thought that might be going around... My main problem was that even though the party search function is nice and neat and everything, it's a problem when even AOL-speak (ugh...) still doesn't fit when making a description, it's just too limited...

It's bad enough that ingame chat is limited, this is like 5 or 6 times shorter, and therefore worse since many spammers (especially trade) have to use LOTS of AOL-speak just to get the barely understandable message across in the first place.

That's my opinion on it anyways...

Originally Posted by darktyco
Ug, I can't stand it that people don't use this feature anymore. Especially when I'm in a crowded district and see a "GLF 1" message and can't even find the person who said it in the vast sea of names. It did seem like a lot of people were using it in the very beginning, I can't figure out what happened...

One way to avoid clicking around in the vast sea of names is to type the name in manually. Although that can be a pain if their name is "Ayyxxllbarr Toolong Nametotype"

I think you should be able to invite folks by clicking the name in the chat window. Doing that currently brings up a whisper window, maybe they could fix it so that a right-click will invite the player.

I like the search window and will NOT join a pug unless they are in the search window. Why? Because if they use the search window it means that the chance of getting someone with a measurable IQ cause they can figure out the search button.

The simple fact is I get upset that not more people uses it. So they gave up and less people used it and you get the idea. More people use it more people will use it.