How to Improve Party Recruitment

IF Square decides NOT to implement party seek option (ala FFXI), what would you do personally to improve the party recruitment system we currently have in the game? I'll start:

1. More "Reason" Options

I think they need to give us more options under "reason for party". Options such as SP party, Dungeon party (which I anticipate anyway), etc. Moreover they should allow us to generalize the specifics. For example, when you choose Regional leves as your reason for recruiting, it allows you to choose specific leves from your list. However, what most people would rather want is a choice of camp(s) that leves will take place in. Sometimes a party is setup to go to both Broken Water and Halatili (sp?) in a run, we should be able to show that and correspondingly we should be able to show all 6 leves we'll be undertaking there (they don't have to be a requirement to join said party but its just a way to let people know).

2. Alert us of available parties

Currently, the reason nobody uses the party recruitment system is because...nobody uses it. Its become easier to just ignore it because the only way to check if someone is recruiting for a party is by opening the menu and working your way to it, most of the time only to find nothing (and the UI lag, albeit minimal, can annoy a few people). My suggestion is to have an alert system in place. How this would work is simple: say a person is recruiting for a party in your level range, or one which conditions you meet, a small alert window will show up on the top right corner of the screen letting you know "One party currently recruiting in your level range" which you can click on to see the specifics.

I think this would work great because it'll make the system more in your face and would get people using the party recruit feature more often because it will actually start getting results. A better example of this: say two people start recruiting for a party, you get the message alert telling you two people are recruiting, you click it to check the specifics to find one is doing a dungeon and one is doing a leve run, and you choose to your liking. This system is versatile and would work wonders imo.

I know some of you are thinking the alerts will get annoying, especially if you're not looking to party; perhaps you just want to craft for the day. Fair enough. I suggest the system allow us to toggle the feature on an off. In a sense, if you're "seeking" party you would toggle the alert system on, and if you're not looking to party you would turn it off.

3. Your ideas

We need more ideas only for the recruit party feature and how it can be improved please, so lets hear them. Thank you for your time.


P.S. No tag really falls under this category so I put it under "popup help".

Give us a reason to group up with random people and form parties. That is the biggest problem with the current party system, there is no reason to join up with others.

Grind parties are meh until Raptors really but even they are completely overshadowed by Leve abandon parties for SP. If you do Leve abandon parties you would not really group up with randoms incase they didn't have the right Leves.

So they need to give us a reason to group up with others and then maybe we will start seeing more parties.

Before the great nerf of November 2010 there would always be loads of people grouping up on Eft grinds then it got nerfed and it stopped. Then it went to solo/duo Cobs/Dobs then they got buffed so now it is Leve abandon all the way.

I would do nothing other than make a graphic to show that someone is looking for a party/looking for members and implement /sea all invite/member so that we can actually see who is up for what.

Add seeking party flag.

Done.

Simple, make party SP outside of leves the fastest way to level, perhaps by implementing SP chains alongside SP adjustments. Keep leves and solo grinding a good alternative though for those who don't have the time to seek/form parties.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AlexiaKidd

Before the great nerf of November 2010 there would always be loads of people grouping up on Eft grinds then it got nerfed and it stopped. Then it went to solo/duo Cobs/Dobs then they got buffed so now it is Leve abandon all the way.

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Yep. If there was one thing that that horrible SP mechanic got right, it was fostering party play among randoms. It was the most that JPN and EN players grouped up. Now, everyone is in their own little groups - not because they are anti-social, but because that is the best way to get SP.

A balance for respawn times would be nice to.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Corrderio

A balance for respawn times would be nice to.

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Yes. Slow respawn rates are one of the many factors discouraging grind parties. I go into more detail about that in my thread analyzing the problem of SP gain.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-How-to-Fix-it

Other than party seek flags how do we improve party recruit which is far more intuitive as it reverses the process and makes it so that one person seeks ONE thing only, instead of one person seeking 7 people.

I'll bump this again tomorrow 'til you guys hop on board. There's 3 topics on jumping on the front page, 4 about the patch, 2 about the upcoming patch, and really nothing much of any significance and I think with the addition of dungeons and more party play the more important the party recruitment is so it needs some attention.

I think the main problem isn't so much the recruitment function itself, though it can be greatly improved. The main problem is giving people a reason to party.

Personally, I haven't touched any battle classes in a while because I HATE soloing. I don't play MMOs to play by myself. I know I'm not alone on this. Fix party SP first and SOON, then work on the party search. Or fix them both together. Either way, this is much more important than things like targeting issues.