50 replies to this topic

[Tina Benoit]

Hey MechWarriors!

We'd like to hear out what you all think of the new Looking For Group feature.

Please share your thoughts!

[Serious Table]

You should add a Looking for Group chat channel that you join, as soon as you enter the LFG Queue. I think that would benefit both individual players, as well as groups looking for a couple more.

[Kanajashi]

The ability to name or give tags to your group, for example:

"Doing weekend challenge"
"need light/mediums"
"Attacking specific CW planet"
"Running brawlers, play agressive"

Would help players determine which groups they would want to join and help groups advertise a specific need or game plan.

[Jon Gotham]

Could be useful for finding extras for a cw drop and also for recruiting new players to units.....
However one negative aspect is it's essentially putting solos into the group queue. 4 randoms sans voip in group queue isn't a pretty sight.
I've noticed it impacting gameplay quality in the group queue.
Perhaps have subchannels for chat? I.e recruiting (really what we should be pushing MWO is a team game, right?) or CW, casual etc...

[TygerLily]

Kanajashi, on 22 April 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

The ability to name or give tags to your group, for example:

"Doing weekend challenge"
"need light/mediums"
"Attacking specific CW planet"
"Running brawlers, play agressive"

Would help players determine which groups they would want to join and help groups advertise a specific need or game plan.

Agreed! Allow players to name their group and let those IN the LFG queue to browse the open groups for what meets their needs.

It would also allow the UI to ditch the "Join LFG" > "Which LFG, group queue? or Community Warfare Queue" ...as players could just indicated if they are playing CW or not.

Edited by TygerLily, 22 April 2015 - 11:21 AM.

[Lazarus40k]

A 'Style' tag or desired mech type would be helpful.

Functionally, It shouldn't give control of a group to another group when merged. If i have a group of 9, and i try to add a group of 3 from the queue... the group of 3 shouldn't now have the lead.

Possibly an option (or at least a warning!) of 'group leadership will be lost, do you agree?'
When I ask a small team in, maybe the smaller team would get the same 'join xyz? Group leadership will be lost'

[Homeless Bill]

It's surprisingly functional, but it could use a few polish features to really shine:

• Group / Player Description - It would be nice to have a short, optional description attached to each group and player in the LFG queue. You could go with pre-set tags or statuses, but a 50-character-limit description would be the best way to get people in places that fit their playstyle. Grinding double XP is different than try-hard time which is different than Community Warfare, and it would be nice for everyone to know what they're getting into / what kind of player they're inviting.
  
• Group "Searching" Status - When you join a group of players that are in the process of searching, it just shows everyone as not readied up. It would be nice to know that they're actually searching and won't be with you for a while. Bonus points if you could see this from the LFG queue as well - I don't usually want to join teams that have started searching. This is less an LFG feature than it is a general friends list feature, but do want.
  
• Maximum Group Size - Sometimes, you'll have to send out five or six invites to get two or three players, and it would be nice to limit how many people can actually join. That way, if I have 6 and only want 2 more, I can set the group limit to 8 and send out more than two invites to get things done quickly.
  
• Private Lobby Support - This is a stretch goal, but it would be a slick way to appease the stock-'mech-queue people and other tough crowds. You should be able to open your private lobby to players, and another tab in LFG would list all open lobbies (and players looking for lobbies). There's no need for a stock queue if it's easy enough to create and find stock games. One of the biggest shortcomings of private lobbies is the lack of a way to find them.

[Canadian House Owl]

group size limits and group naming would be nice, during the challenge I waited so long cause of people dropping in and out of groups to big to small eventually gave up on the challenge sadly.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

I don't use LFG, and I don't plan to. Just providing feedback so you can allocate your resources accordingly.

I have difficulty seeing what an LFG function brings to the game. Furthermore I don't understand what an ad-hoc LFG group offers, on the surface it just appears to be a method of moving otherwise solo players into the group queue.

Note: I have am an absentee member of a Merc Corp, and if I choose to play in a a group, those options are readily available (if I am not mistaken there are a whole sub-forum dedicated to matching players with Merc Corps/Houses).

[Tarogato]

Homeless Bill, on 22 April 2015 - 11:30 AM, said:

<snip>

I second everything Homeless Bill said. I'm not sure you could get any more concise than that while also hitting all the major points.

[NocturnalBeast]

I was excited about it at first, but then I realized that it really is not much different than dropping into the pug queue on your own, or in your own small group. In fact. It is worse than dropping solo because you have the ELO penalty for being part of a large group, without the coordination of a group of premades who drop together regularly. Also, your pug-premade will be put up against real premades who will roll you. Finally, you also have to deal with people who are not willing or able to change weight classes if there are more than three mechs of that weight class, so it ends up taking longer to get into a game than dropping solo.

Overall, I think that the LFG tool is a good idea that was too late in its execution. The LFG tool and in-game VOIP should have been in MWO from the beginning and had the bugs worked out during alpha, before everyone got their own VOIP servers.

Edited by Ed Steele, 22 April 2015 - 12:24 PM.

[JHackworth]

it's just a bad design. Users like me want to interact and find out what others are up to, communicate in faction chat and easily get picked-up in faction chat. It'd be much better to kill the LFG UI and to make faction chat richer and more embedded in the CW experience:

• chat shouldn't support histories and smaller fonts
  
• linkable objects, i.e. my name or unit (or both) are clickable and various actions can be performed on the selection
  
• etc

[Tennex]

• Needs to be able to put a title to your group. "LFG 1 more" "Just pugging" "Weekend Challange run"
  
• VOIP chat allowed inside matched group screen, this will promote actual use of VOIP when the players drop into the game.
  
• Very annoying when you launch a game, that LFG feature still has people popping in and dropping out of your already launched game.

Edited by Tennex, 22 April 2015 - 12:52 PM.

[Hoffenstein]

Is there any way to incentivize it, such as giving a 5% Cbill bonus or more XP? I've tried using the LFG feature for CW but found nobody using it.

[Koniks]

I think it'd help to see unit tags in the list. That way units that are recruiting can see whether the players are unaffiliated. And unaffiliated players can maybe spot a unit they want to drop with.

Agent 0 Fortune, on 22 April 2015 - 12:13 PM, said:

I don't use LFG, and I don't plan to. Just providing feedback so you can allocate your resources accordingly.

I have difficulty seeing what an LFG function brings to the game. Furthermore I don't understand what an ad-hoc LFG group offers, on the surface it just appears to be a method of moving otherwise solo players into the group queue.

Note: I have am an absentee member of a Merc Corp, and if I choose to play in a group, those options are readily available (if I am not mistaken there are a whole sub-forum dedicated to matching players with Merc Corps/Houses).

It's a decent community building tool for solo players. It might help them meet new people and even get recruited into a unit. The forums and Comstar TS aren't a great solution because the forums aren't real-time, not every player wants to join a unit in order to find a casual group drop, not every player bothers with the forums in the first place, and not everyone knows about Comstar.

Ed Steele, on 22 April 2015 - 12:23 PM, said:

I was excited about it at first, but then I realized that it really is not much different than dropping into the pug queue on your own, or in your own small group.

The more drops you get with the same group, the more coordinated you get. Players have to start somewhere to get better and solo queue frequently encourages worse habits than group queue.

Edited by Mizeur, 22 April 2015 - 02:35 PM.

[Banditman]

It's a step in the right direction, but for a game that wants to be on Steam, it's not nearly enough. If you need to develop ideas, go take a look at Dota 2. There's a game with good Steam integration, and a lot of it is community building tools.

I've seen some good suggestions already in this thread, here are a few more:

1. Incentivize groups! Whether it's a Cbill and / or XP bonus, incentivize people toward being in a group. This game is far too group oriented to have the solo queue that it does.

2. Automatically put grouped players in a VoIP room as they join the group (assuming they have in game VoIP turned on). Don't wait until they are on the ground. The sooner they start talking, the better.

3. Allow lances to be formed, shifted and tweaked as the group is built. This is an important organizational thing. Having to wait until you're in a queue or on the ground to do this is a serious shortcoming.

4. Unit tags! Show them, or the lack thereof.

5. As an extention of LFG, consider some form of in game recruiting tool for guilds. To see how this is done well, go take a look at Everquest 2. Your other option of course is to simply hire me.

[Ialdabaoth]

For God's sake, let me right-click on a person's mech and see their loadout! I need to know who's LRMing, who's sniping, who's brawling, and who's providing ECM so I know whether to slap on a BAP, ECM, or TAG.

[orcrist86]

Along with LFG Chat Homeless Bill Nailed it.

[XX Sulla XX]

Quote

It's surprisingly functional, but it could use a few polish features to really shine:

• 
  Group / Player Description - It would be nice to have a short, optional description attached to each group and player in the LFG queue. You could go with pre-set tags or statuses, but a 50-character-limit description would be the best way to get people in places that fit their playstyle. Grinding double XP is different than try-hard time which is different than Community Warfare, and it would be nice for everyone to know what they're getting into / what kind of player they're inviting.
  
• 
  Group "Searching" Status - When you join a group of players that are in the process of searching, it just shows everyone as not readied up. It would be nice to know that they're actually searching and won't be with you for a while. Bonus points if you could see this from the LFG queue as well - I don't usually want to join teams that have started searching. This is less an LFG feature than it is a general friends list feature, but do want.
  
• 
  Maximum Group Size - Sometimes, you'll have to send out five or six invites to get two or three players, and it would be nice to limit how many people can actually join. That way, if I have 6 and only want 2 more, I can set the group limit to 8 and send out more than two invites to get things done quickly.
  
• 
  Private Lobby Support - This is a stretch goal, but it would be a slick way to appease the stock-'mech-queue people and other tough crowds. You should be able to open your private lobby to players, and another tab in LFG would list all open lobbies (and players looking for lobbies). There's no need for a stock queue if it's easy enough to create and find stock games. One of the biggest shortcomings of private lobbies is the lack of a way to find them.

This is a good start.

[G SE7EN7]

I like the idea of LFG, with in game comms it should be fantastic.
Heres what actually happens:
Instead of playing solo in full teams of solo players (ie pug drop), we can now play solo, in full teams of solos on one side and massive groups on the other side.
Dont see many premade groups adding themselves to the LFG to pull in a couple of solo guys.

I am in a unit so usually play in a group on TS, usually I dont see much action on the LFG if im looking. Maybe its different for others.