[WoW] LFG Interface

[Etadanik]

A belated observation, to be sure, but anyone else feel that the WoW LFG interface is one step forward, three steps backwards? I have three main problems with it -

1) The interface doesn't support one of the primary functionalities that a MMO LFG tool should support - the ability to find groups for characters other than the one you're playing. Sure, you can browse through the Looking for More List, but they're level-locked, so unless all your alts are around the same level and have the same quests it's not usable. Given that most people have more than one character and given that WoW is so heavily advertised as a game where you can solo/quest while looking for a group, the absence of such a feature is retarded.

2) Along the same lines, the interface sucks balls. As far as I can tell there is no way to display the list of all groups looking for more members. WHY? One of the classic principles of UI design is that the user spend as few clicks as necessary; as it is I have to systematically skin through the lists of ALL eligible dungeons/raids/zones in order to see what groups are available. Combine this with the fact that Blizzard determines what sort of adventures you can LFG for this becomes absolutely ridiculous. Again, WHY? Does Blizzard think that people don't shop around for groups, don't join for anything except dedicated "group" quests/zones, and know exactly which one they want to join every night? This becomes even more assinine when you realize the attitude behind it, which suggests that players would only join groups for their own elite quests/instances and never just to be part of something social.

3) Community. I don't know about anyone else, but despite the spam and retardation the Global LFG Channel added a sense of community and liveliness to the game. With its removal the game has once again gone back to the "single-player with ganking" feeling it had back when meeting stones were the primary means of LFG. The sad part is that there was absolutely no reason to do this - it's okay to have a LFG tool and a LFG channel, and those who did not like the LFG channel could have easily turned it off. Of course, let's not even mention the better solution - ie the EQ one - in which you had a globally listable, searchable, write-your-own-witty-notes LFG interface that made it seem like that much adventuring was going on. By comparison, the LFG tool for WoW feels dead, especially for lower level players, who might rotate through all the various level-locked dungeons only to find that a grand total of 1-2 groups are actually LFM.

In conclusion, WHO DESIGNED THIS SHIT? I can only hope that this is a Beta and that the TBC version will be a hundred times better, because this is the second time Blizzard has tried to "innovate" from traditional MMO LFG tools and failed.

[Cad]

Actually, I've been pretty happy with it. I needed to do ZF the other day on my Druid, and I plugged in the appropriate stuff and got a group in less than 20 seconds. We had a couple of people leave and got replacements in ~1 minute.

I thought it was pretty nice, all things considered (my server age, relative population of people around that level, etc).

[woqqqa]

I don't like the new tool much due to its inflexibility, but as it happens CalltoArms was updated soon after the patch so I've been convincing everyone on my server to download and use that instead. Why Blizzard simply didn't buy out the author of that mod I'll never know...it's an excellent LFG tool.

[Believe]

The LFG channel was horrible on my server. Full of attention whores just fighting for attention all day long. My wife has about 25 people on her ignore list because of it. I'm glad it was removed.

One of the biggest problems with the LFG tool I believe is ignorance. People just don't take the time to understand all the different *basic* functions and thus just refuse to use it.

With a few tweaks the LFG tool will be close to perfect, in my opinion.

Edit: I must add that on beta I've had nothing but good experiences with the LFG tool so far. Group always filled up relatively fast and always had a pretty decent group. With a large-ish group of informed players the tool works pretty well.

[Abalieno]

Enjoy

[frott]

The first thing that pops to mind when looking at your interface compared to the blizz interface is the resources that each would consume with each search. You are relying on the user to make intelligent filtration (to lower the data sent). You are also asserting things like "mousing over the map to see who is lfg" which would be a ridiculous amount of information sent to anyone and everyone in the game as a "good design?" Part of design is the feasibility.

Clearly this is why your LFG tool is a "design" and not actually one created and/or downloadable. That one already exists, its called Call to Arms and it works without these lewd amounts of user choices to give the armchair designers a feeling of accomplishment.

Why do we need to reinvent the wheel? Here's my LFG design:

1. you are flagged LFG or LFM
2. you can enter a comment
3. people can see that you're LFG/LFM, see your comment, and talk to you

Holy fucking hell, what a radical invention.

All these checkboxes for which zones you're interested in, etc. Yawn. Bloatware. Demon eyeballs notifying you that you're LFG? Yeah, totally worth it. People have been standing too close to the retard rocks.

Hell, the original blizzard LFG interface is lightyears beyond any of this stuff - all it was missing was the "comment"because I suppose they don't want people being LFG for POO POO FUCK FAG

[Etadanik]

Originally Posted by Cad

Actually, I've been pretty happy with it. I needed to do ZF the other day on my Druid, and I plugged in the appropriate stuff and got a group in less than 20 seconds. We had a couple of people leave and got replacements in ~1 minute.

I thought it was pretty nice, all things considered (my server age, relative population of people around that level, etc).

The LFG tool is great if you know exactly what you want, whether it be character or instance, and can stay around to wait for such a group in the case it doesn't exist. It's horrible if you want to shop around for a group or if you like to, as I do, play an alt while waiting for an appropriate group.

I'm just pissed that after such a long history of good MMO LFG role model interfaces Blizzard churns out something that has less functionality and which feels like it's designed by an UI retard. I guess they wanted to make it like Warcraft III because that's what Blizzboys are familiar with, but RTS and MMO are two different things. In a RTS (esp. a Blizzard RTS) hundreds of thousands of people are looking to play games on a regular basis and you can get auto-matched into a game within seconds of looking; in WoW, on the other hand, depending on your server's population you might be waiting anywhere from seconds to hours. In this situation, automatic matchmaking requiring you to be online with that character sucks and is a throwback to the pre-LFG tool days of EQ, while not being able to list all the groups that are LFM is just plain retarded.

[Kayiznaru]

Originally Posted by frott

1. you are flagged LFG or LFM
2. you can enter a comment
3. people can see that you're LFG/LFM, see your comment, and talk to you

I'd take it one step further and add a seperate interface for the LFM portion that shows the current group makeup (ie class/level). Otherwise I 100% agree.

I think Blizzard's biggest problem lies in the fact that they try to bring extravagant solutions to problems. It's nice, but in reality sometimes the simplest functional answer is the best solution.

Someone just needs to drill that into their head. Repeatedly.

[Pizoi]

Originally Posted by frott

1. you are flagged LFG or LFM
2. you can enter a comment
3. people can see that you're LFG/LFM, see your comment, and talk to you

Holy fucking hell, what a radical invention.

This is how the FFXI LFG tool worked. It was great. Very simple, very user friendly, and very efficient. When Blizzard scrapped their first system for those meeting stones, I was fucking baffled. Like you said, all it was missing was a comment.

[copernic]

I've seen a lot of people from Beta saying 'LFG works great in Beta. I always get groups'

But honestly, the experience in Beta has absolutely no relevance to how good the LFG tool is. In Beta, you have hundreds upon thousands of players with one goal: to run the new instances. You could get a group in 5 minutes just by parking a healer in front of Hellfire Citadel.

The true test of an LFG tool comes when people are thin on the ground. Does it aggregate people on different continents, with different levels? Does it provide for the widespread use of alts? Does it make it easy to browse? All in all, does it help me or hinder me at forming a Gnomeregan group at 11am on a Thursday?

And in all those situations, LFG fails. Hard. Fails when it's actually needed.

So don't compare it against Beta. Sure, LFG works in Beta. My POS car would work if you put it at the top of the hill and pushed it down, with 5000 people to help. That's not what LFG is for.

[Tirinal]

It's just a halfway blip. If you're going to make it complicated, let us see snapshots of the person's talent layout and maybe a brief recap of gear level. If you're going to make it simple, shamelessly steal the system from FFXI. The amount of resources that have gone into various WoW LFG incarnations is baffling.

Half the pugs I ran before becoming disgusted with the general competency level (how are people still wiping at the summoner room in Scholo 2 years after release?) were "sure, why the hell not?" decisions. The new system completely removes this as a possibility and thins out half the potential recruit pool.

[GrobbeeTrull]

Even EQ's LFG system from 2002 would be an improvement.

[Abalieno]

Originally Posted by frott

The first thing that pops to mind when looking at your interface compared to the blizz interface is the resources that each would consume with each search. You are relying on the user to make intelligent filtration (to lower the data sent).

The intended purpose is exactly the opposite and I'm actually surprised by your comments.

It's in Blizzard's LFG system that you have to repeat a search for every "topic", as you cannot pull a general list. My idea instead provides that general list. You flag ALL that you care about through checkboxes and then do *one* search to get the matchmaking results.

In other comments I described a LFG tool like a "punch card". Every player has different needs and a corresponding "punch card". You just have to compare your punch card with those from other players and see the "holes" that match.

Why do we need to reinvent the wheel? Here's my LFG design:

1. you are flagged LFG or LFM
2. you can enter a comment
3. people can see that you're LFG/LFM, see your comment, and talk to you

Holy fucking hell, what a radical invention.

Oh, I agree. But tell that to Blizzard because what you just described is INFINITELY better than that crap they fed us.

The point of my own idea had two purposes to accomplish:

1- give more customization so that you can flag for more than three purposes.
2- See ALL pertinent results with ONE search

Why your own system is not so practical as you think? Because at some point you have a need to filter "noise" that you don't care about. You don't have to see EVERYONE LFG on the server. You have to see only those who are interesting in the same thing of you.

My tool provides exactly that.

Demon eyeballs notifying you that you're LFG? Yeah, totally worth it. People have been standing too close to the retard rocks.

It's just an icon. I described its purpose. It's not to remind you that you are LFG.

It's to make the LFG tool a VISIBLE part of the UI so that more players can relate to it. Instead of hiding it somewhere.

You are also asserting things like "mousing over the map to see who is lfg" which would be a ridiculous amount of information sent to anyone and everyone in the game as a "good design?" Part of design is the feasibility.

Duh.

What I actually wrote is to mouse over the location field and you would get a list of all the players that are LFG in that zone.

I couldn't imagine a feature that requires LESS bandwidth. It just needs to send you a byte when someone flags or unflags LFG.

[Deris]

Originally Posted by copernic

I've seen a lot of people from Beta saying 'LFG works great in Beta. I always get groups'

But honestly, the experience in Beta has absolutely no relevance to how good the LFG tool is. In Beta, you have hundreds upon thousands of players with one goal: to run the new instances. You could get a group in 5 minutes just by parking a healer in front of Hellfire Citadel.

The true test of an LFG tool comes when people are thin on the ground. Does it aggregate people on different continents, with different levels? Does it provide for the widespread use of alts? Does it make it easy to browse? All in all, does it help me or hinder me at forming a Gnomeregan group at 11am on a Thursday?

And in all those situations, LFG fails. Hard. Fails when it's actually needed.

So don't compare it against Beta. Sure, LFG works in Beta. My POS car would work if you put it at the top of the hill and pushed it down, with 5000 people to help. That's not what LFG is for.

No one *Queue lightbulb and AH HA!* RUNS INSTANCES ANYMORE.

In beta *everyone* will be running instances. Yes all 6k+ Level 60s on your server will be LFG for the same instances you are at multiple level ranges, and even Heroic Mode at 70.

But jfc are you KIDDING me about bitching that you can't find a group for Gnomer? The entirety of the WoW population has surpassed anything under level 60, and even then most don't bother espescially with the new pvp gear being far better than anything they can obtain in a 5man.

This is alot of bitching about something that works just fine when people actually want to instance, not "QQ Why can't I find a group for Wailing Caverns, but im the only person in my entire level range online wtf this TOOL SUX!"

[copernic]

Originally Posted by Deris

This is alot of bitching about something that works just fine when people actually want to instance, not "QQ Why can't I find a group for Wailing Caverns, but im the only person in my entire level range online wtf this TOOL SUX!"

Are you saying that the tool works fine, or that I'm a retard for wanting to run Gnomer on an alt?

There's a big, big difference between the end result of the tool, and the efficiency of the tool. I agree that, with the Expansion, I'll have no problem finding 60+ groups through LFG. Definitely. And that's great.

However, and this may surprise you, people still do run lower-level instances on characters called 'alts.' These 'alternative' characters are good ways to kill time and try out new playing styles. Especially because the only instances I haven't run umpteen times are Uldaman.. Maraudon.. etc. This is the situation where LFG sucks.

Lets say I'm a 44 Hunter. Before, if I advertised LFG in the worldwide channel for Zul'Farrak, I'd probably get two people on their 60s looking to level an alt, one person in Tanaris, and one person at the last moment once they see 'LF1M already inside can summon.'

Now? I can't get anyone on a 60, or on an even lower-level alt. I can't get any 'lower-dedication' players who will only come if it's LF1M. And even those in my range might be wasted in a 2 person SM Cath group. So the efficiency of the tool gets worse when there are fewer people online.. which is when you need a competent LFG tool the most.