LFG Status, Mentor System, etc.

I looked through and I'm pretty sure I didn't see anything like this, so here goes.

I don't know if any of you have played Final Fantasy XI, but I played it for a while last year. One thing that I liked about it (although I didn't like how they went about it) was the Looking For Party status. I think this would be a nice thing to have because it would drastically cut down on spam in towns.

Basically, there should be a GUI that allows you to set your Looking status. It could have things like:

Looking for [Mission] | [Quest: <Name>] | [Exploration] | [Travel] | [Hunting] Group

And any others you can think of.

Inside the GUI, you should have a dropdown of choices for the type of group you want. Then, it would list all the people matching your choice. This list should be able to be sorted by:

Name
Level (I know, level doesn't really matter, but people still put stock in it)
Profession(s)

This would streamline PUGs a lot, I think, and would take the annoying spam out of the city windows.

Another option that could use this is just a general list of players that are online or just in the city you are. This would enable starting guilds to target recruits more easily. Granted, that may increase whisper spam, but I would personally use it to offer guildless people more help than guild members, since there's the possibility of expanding my own group while helping out people.

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Next on the list would be another thing I picked up from FFXI. I liked the Mentor system in FFXI a lot. If you're the kind of person that likes to help people, you can apply for a Mentor tag to wear around. This would tell newer players that you're someone to ask questions of. Of course, you could have the option of turning your tag off when you're busy doing your own thing. I think this would help newer players get adjusted to the game quicker, since going from Pre-Searing to Yak's Bend is quite a "culture shock".

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Here's something that may have been mentioned before, but I haven't looked as it just came to mind while I was typing this. I don't know about all of you, but I think the Trade chat has become a little ridiculous. Another thing could be taken from FFXI -- the "personal shop" idea. Players could open "shops" displaying their wares while standing around town. This would make the market a lot more accessable, as well as less of a headache of sifting through mass chat.

The other side of this is the auction house, but I know I've seen that around so I won't go into it.

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Anyway, that's just some of my thoughts. FFXI is the only MMORPG (well, graphical at least) that I've played, so it's the only game I have to compare it to. If I come up with anything else, I'll add it. Thanks for reading!

The group suggestions and complaints are kind of spread out.

This topic actually has a number of responses. Check it out.

In the interim, where I find pages like this, i'll make a note and add a sign to them under that section.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ighlight=group