So what's the general consensus on the Search function?

Proverb (erm... yeah...)

If you make something so simple an idiot can use it... only an idiot will use it.

The search window is useless precisely because it only encompasses the one town you are in. There are no people in that town there to see the content of the search window therefore anything put into it 100% irrelevant to anything. This is by far the biggest reason why search window is totally useless. The character limit is also annoying, but it is way secondary to the main problem.

It's not a problem of "no one uses it" either. No one uses it only because they realize even if they did the message would not be seen by anyone because it only encompasses one specific town you are in. Even if everyone used the party search window instead of local chat spamming, it doesn't accomplish anything different whatsoever. To accomplish something different, the search would have to encompass many towns and not just the one you are in.

- character limit too small

- in chat you can just press up arrow and be editing your message constantly, it's easier than going to the UI every 10 seconds

- no one using it sets off a chain reaction of abandonment

- people read spam

- few places have multiple questing districts making the multi district feature unnecessary most of the time

What search function?

Fortunately this works both ways... if in ToA I see no one using it and I'm looking for a party, I take the time to use it... a few minutes later, I see more people seeking a party through the search function.

THE SEARCH BUTTON RIGHT UNDER THE PARTY WIN-- Ohhh I get it, sarcasm!

Yea the in game search function (press P on your keyboard if you're new to this) sucks. It was a good idea, but the character limits don't leave much room for crap you want to sell. People would rather spam local and trade channel since you can type more characters and tell people what you want/need.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong wrong.

Everyone who has posted has totally missed the point of why the search button doesn't work. I'll give you a hint. It has nothing to do with limited character size. Anet could triple the size tomorrow and I guarantee not one more person would start using it.

The problem is that it doesn't catch your eye. There is absolutely nothing to draw your attention to it whatsoever. If you're a causal player and you see a message flicker by, you can't help but read it. This is why people hate SPAM so much. Their eyes can't ignore it, so they want people to stop doing it.

The search button is incredibly ignorable. You have to go out of your way to remember it's even there.

The way to make the search button viable is to give some moving, visual indication a person has posted something.

There needs to be something like a pulsating icon representing the category of search. For example, a pulsating dollar sign <$> could indicate someone had a wtb or wts on the search feature.

Yes, it's might be considered annoying, but if it isn't a little annoying, it will never work.

For the party search to realy be useful, the character limit needs to, at a minimum, be doubled.

Adding item links, and a global search instead of just a single town/outpost, will help significantly as well.

To realy get it going, they need to filter out "WTS, WTB, WTT, SELLING, BUYING" and varients from public chat, as well as better measures for repeated posting (coppy+paste).

Reason why I dont use party search often is your post gone after you move around districts.And I have to retype after that.Not really convinience.

Maybe just change the way how party search work for misson and quest to be global that other can access your post from the same continent(But have to think about people abuse it to use it as trade).And for trade and recruit just make them stick to the town and only dissapper if player left the outpost for a few minutes by default.

I would suggest using the search function for different purposes such as Trade.
with this menu it would be alot easier to find out exactly what there is to sell and who needs to buy. just increase the strings lenght and thats it, auction house!

Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V?


But anyway, would the amount of allowed characters increase I would certainly use it. It will of course never reduce the spam completely, but it will at least give us a good tool to read some trades if you are interested in buying, selling or making a party. Like the trade spam in Kamadan, the chat scrolls so freaking fast you can't even read anything anymore

Character limit is annoying, but really not that devastating. What really sucks is that you can only use party search if you're hanging out in the outpost anyway. If you're chilling in the outpost, you're sitting there doing nothing, and may as well spam for a group.

It would be nice if you could stick your name on a sign-up list for the mission and then run off to do other things while people stream in. Sadly, you still have to sit around in the outpost, making the whole thing kinda pointless.

I think the search feature is amazing... for searching for a PUG for a mission or quest (you needn't specify every party component).

As far as trade goes, it is Way too small. The items that people want to trade are just to detailed for the character limit. If you are vague you are either going to be flooded with questions that you have to answer individually (and most follow ups will be "oh, that's not what I was looking for"), or it will be so vague that it won't grab any interest at all.

It's more than adequate for party searching, but not even in the ball park of what you need to describe a Jeweled Staff with 20% dazed reduction, +1 illusion 20%, and + 5 energy. You can't fit that in, but it describes the basics of the item. If you can't describe it, you can't sell it.

Make it open by default and unclosable like Party Formation is now.

Oh yes, and unmovable so that people can't drag it off-screen, that would be helpful.

But seriously, the real problem is that people don't use it.

You can set it to show entries from other districts.

The limit on characters is the biggest problem, maybe some type of incentive to use it would work, Any suggestions?

I think the problem that poster was saying was if you post a message, say WTB or WTS and then you change districts (say, to look at an item someone thought was what you wanted), then the message you posted disappears from the list. It does not stay, nor is the district number updated.