Why the New LFG Interface is BadFollow

When I first heard about the new LFG interface, I thought it was a brilliant idea. But after only two days I've realized at least one reason why it won't be as good as the LFG channel.

You won't get random joiners. With the old channel system, a lot of people were always logged into it keeping an eye out. That made for a lot of "ahh, what the hell why not?" joiners. People that didn't necessarily need the instance, but out of boredom might choose to join anyway. I know more than once after seeing a group "needing 1M" that I broke down and joined to help them fill the group.

Also, often it contributed to a lvl 60 running a lower instance just for the hell of it. With the new system, how often is a bored character going to submit himself as "looking for" a lower level instance? Probably rarely.

The new interface is going to be great for putting together that group that knows exactly what they want. But it's going to hamper those occasions where a group just formed spur of the moment.

Opinions?

Last night was the first time I used it. I signed up for Scholo, LBRS, and BRD. I stated I was a 41 Holy Spec Priest and within a few minutes I was invited to a well balanced group for Scholo (Paladin, Warrior, Warlock, Druid, Me). The only issue I saw was that even though I was in a group I kept getting invites for the same signed up instances and I couldn't figure out a way to shut if off. The other issue I saw was if the leader forgot to disable auto-add members and when looking for a replacement tank we kept getting all the wrong classes joining which then forced us to remove them and apologize for wrongfully inviting them.

I think I am going to give the new interface a chance because on my servers /LFG is always spam.

I completely agree with Grollog. I don't like it. In fact, I hate it

I had similar trouble at first. Guildies informed me that you go back into the UI and instead of selecting an option like "Dungeon" (from the pull down menu) you just go and choose "None" for the type of group you're looking for. That should take care of it.

if you're a group leader and only need one class, how do you look for just that specific class? oh and they should totally make the Meeting Stone (i guess summoning stones now) able to use with high lvl players. Me and a guildie were gonna have our other guildie run us through gnomeragon cuz we had a few quests there but he had to come all the way from gadgetzan to gnomer because it said he was too high for the meeting stone to teleport him...that's just stupid, why put those there if not everyone can use em. I know it has a lvl range but there's no lvl range for the instance, for example: the SM one says 29-45 so nobody above 45 or below 29 can use the stone. i'm pretty sure though nobody below 29 can even get into the instance (i think) but above 45 can, so why not just make it say "29+" for the stone...that way high lvl characters that like to help aren't discouraged by long travel times (just my 2cents)

On my primary server, Icecrown, the LFG channel was rendered almost useless by spammers. Occasionally, I would find a group there, if I had no other choice. But, I had to turn it off of my main chat window.

So, I am very happy that the LFG tool was implemented. Last night I used the tool to find a UBRS group for my priest, and got one 10 seconds after I set it up.

However, as stated above, there is an "opportunity" for some significant changes. First off, I would like to see a list of the groups looking for players, and what types of toons they need. I might not be really interested in a specific instance/dungeon, but I might want to just do some adventuring with folks who need one of my mains. Also, it would be nice to see who else is lfg and what they are interested in doing. I found this immensely useful in EQ. I would bring up the LFG tool, and look at what people wanted to do, if there seemed to be enough interested in something I wanted to do, then I would start a group.

Anyway, I think this is a good "first step" and I hope the LFG tool becomes more functionally robust in the future.


Good discussion.

Something to add to my list of things that need tweaked...

I can't browse instance groups for instances that don't fall in my range. Every once i na while I get bored and feel like helping a group through SM or RFD. The LFG interface only allows me to browse other lookers for instances tha tare considered to be at my level.

I feel bad for those who came from servers where lfg channel was completely spammed. Of course ours (Andorhal server) got that way occasionally, but it was great for the occasional interesting debate/conversation - even though they mostly revolved around Allakhazam, complaining about the opposite faction, and politics (the best chats involved all three of those). Now you can only participate in those in the general chat channel, which is zone specific. I did join a lookingforgroup channel, but very few are on and saying interesting things.

While I haven't tried it enough to bash it or celebrate it, I would agree with Imake that there needs to be more functionality: especially a list of groups LFM for each instance/raid/quest. That will solve the problems of people who might want to pick up one or two to farm a lower level instance (since you can't choose a lower level instance in the LFG tool), people who want to check for available groups for their alts, and possibly increase more of the random joins since you could see who might be looking for only one more. I think the framework is good, but it could definitely use a lot more "stuff" to make it even better.