DEV REQUEST: Please fix PUGS. It will change this game entirely. (and get you $UB$)

(I am talking about NA here, I don't know how JP is)

Party Finder is broken.

The system we have now, which is basically an "honor" system -where players are left to self-regulate, is not working.
Too many players don't honor the requirements advertised by a group (e.g. please know mechanic X, have been to phase Y, etc.) and instead, lie about their experience.

There's a lot of reasons why people lie to join PF, but I won't go into that here (because it will be tl;dr).
The important thing for DEVS to know is that they (players) do (lie), and they do it a lot, and it completely ruins the PF experience..
leaving many players who don't have the scheduling flexibility for statics, to give up on top tier raids altogether. (in many cases unsubbing)

How do you fix this? help players progress without statics. In PF create an OBJECTIVE measure to determine a player's experience in a given instance.

(tl;dr at bottom)

There’s a lot of ways to do this, but here’s two ways you could do it, off the top of my head.

1.% based
2.Token based

1.% based: Track either A) the players completion % in a given instance, or B) the boss’s HP% that the player has gotten to.

then, allow us, in Party Finder to filter recruits based on the % a player has gotten to in a given raid/primal.

for example I could set a mechanical filter in PF (just like how I would for ilvl) based on a percentage from example A or B and
only players who have been to that % in that raid will be able to join the party.

2.Token based: you guys (dev team) have stated before that you are working on a system to allow us to practice fights by phases.
Enable a Token System along with this. After completing each phase, the player gets a token.
So there will be a token for phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, phase 5 etc. This could be a progression based single-token-system
where phase 2 token replaces phase 1 token and so on, or it could be a multiple token system where you have a separate token for each phase,
so that you can practice phases in any order.

then, allow us in Party Finder to mechanically filter recruits based on the Phase Token they have in possession.
For example I could lock a PF ad so only ilvl190 players with phase 3 (or 4 or 5 etc) token can join. or if you’re using a multiple token system,
maybe I can select multiple tokens for the filter (for example setting it to "player must have tokens for phase 3, 4, and 5")

Being able to actually, -efficiently- PROGRESS in PUGS (by having an objective measure we can use to be matched up with players with similar experience in a given instance/raid)
will completely transform this game and much more players will be able to clear end game (read: difficult, a.k.a FUN) content.

Players who want to stick with statics will be able to continue to do so. In fact this will make forming high-level statics easier as well.

Seriously, Party Finder should be one of the top 3 features you guys sink your time and effort into at all times (continuously improving it).
It's fundamental to the mmo experience. Please realize this.



(tl;dr: In Party Finder create an objective measure to filter players based on their experience in a given instance. It will completely transform the pug experience)

You can edit your post to by pass the 1000 character limit instead of making multiple posts.

ok
1) you can edit posts to surpass 1K limit you can simply type "incoming post" edit it and put what you want to add"

2) there is a thread called "block new players from party finder" title aside Winter luna puts an opinion on suggestions to improve Party finder.

As well as other suggestions to improve party finder

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You can edit your post to by pass the 1000 character limit instead of making multiple posts.

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eek sorry lol! I actually realized/remembered it while editing.. thanks though I appreciate the tip

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Originally Posted by Griller

Party Finder is broken.

Too many players don't honor the requirements advertised by a group (e.g. please know mechanic X, have been to phase Y, etc.) and instead, lie about their experience.

There's a lot of reasons why people lie to join PF, but I won't go into that here (because it will be tl;dr).
The important thing for DEVS to know is that they (players) do (lie), and they do it a lot, and it completely ruins the PF experience..

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For the love of all that is holy. The party finder system is not broken. The Party Finder is a system that helps players form parties for specific goals, be it to run dungeon/raids/trials or gather together to chase Hunts/FATE's. That's all the system needs to do. The rest is up to the players.

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Originally Posted by Griller

Too many players don't honor the requirements advertised by a group and instead, lie about their experience.

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^ This is the real issue.

You cannot fix the attitude of other players by introducing a more complex system which would "prevent" other from joining (unless they meet the requirement), or it will eventually be a hassle to create/maintain a party. The problem lies is with the people who use it, not the system it self. Since you are dealing with actual people, you can never be 100% sure that they are entirely truthful about what they say or do. Most of this has be dealt with at face value.

• If you create a party where you ask for players who are experienced with the content you want to queue up for and a players joins your party without a shred of experience (without asking if (s)he can join your party), then you're dealing with a douche.
• If someone creates a party and asks for players who are experienced with the content they want to queue up for and it appears that the creator of said party doesn't have a shred of experience him/herself, then you're dealing with a douche.
• If someone creates a farm party and someone joins the party, only to leave the second (s)he got their clear/drop, then you were dealing with a douche.

You cannot introduce a system that will stop these things from happening. You can't change human behavior with a system. Because, if this doesn't happen, something else will. People are resourceful beings and will always come op with a solution to circumvent the rules, break them or bend them to their advantage. Whether you like it or not.

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Originally Posted by Aldora

You cannot introduce a system that will stop these things from happening.

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? I gave 2 specific examples of how it can be done.

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Originally Posted by Aldora

you can never be 100% sure that they are entirely truthful about what they say or do.

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It's not about them being truthful about what they "say." It's about removing that part and replacing it with an objective marker. If I have a filter for something, I don't need to rely on what you "say."

If I set a filter for ilvl190, I am 100% sure that the people joining the party are at or above that ilvl because the PF doesn't let you join unless you are.

What I’m suggesting is the exact same concept. Filter players based on objective markers- in the form of either completion % or phase tokens that could be given to players.
What would need to be done is adding the marker(s) and adding a filter to PF for those markers and viola,
problem (objectively recruiting players who have made it to the same part of an instance, instead of having to go by their word) solved.


You're making this about controlling whether people will be honest in ALL circumstances and that's off base. I'm talking about something specific here.

So you want SE to police the PF is what you saying?

The problem with this kind of filtering is that your problem isn't getting solve more so that you are reducing the amount of players that can join your PF. Knowing how players think, most will always, always select the highest number option that the developers decide on. For example, let's use "10" times completions. You are going to select "10" times completions because you want "experts". At that given hour that you opened you party finder, only 3 players are on that have "10" completions. The PF timer runs out and you have to re-queue.
Than you have to decide, "Well, I'm going to have to accept a bit of mediocrity.". So you reduce the completion times to "6". This time up to 5 people join up, there may be more people that have that many wins but they ignore joining for various reason. The timer runs out and no party is form.
Finally, you conclude that "I am going to have to accept the scrubs.", and you reduce the number of completions to "1" because you just want to get this thing started. BOOM, the party fills but you still may end up wiping over and over cause most of the members don't have a grasp the fight yet cause of this type of filtering.

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Originally Posted by Aldora

For the love of all that is holy. The party finder system is not broken. The Party Finder is a system that helps players form parties for specific goals, be it to run dungeon/raids/trials or gather together to chase Hunts/FATE's. That's all the system needs to do. The rest is up to the players.

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basically the people are broken xD

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Originally Posted by Lexia

So you want SE to police the PF is what you saying?

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No. Unless if you consider filters to be Policing. In that case SE already polices PF with ilvl and class.

Yes because I need even more tokens in my inventory that just sit there.

I just don't use PF :p. The people going into PF groups are the worst ><, they get carried through things and when you expect them to do a certain thing for a mechanic in the boss fight suddenly they have no idea wtf you're talking about.

Just don't PF :p. PF is terrible, I prefer to stick with DF or undersized with the FC.

I going to go with... People LIE... because the community doing endgame content as a whole doesn't give people without experience a chance to learn.

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Originally Posted by Kewitt

I going to go with... People LIE... because the community doing endgame content as a whole doesn't give people without experience a chance to learn.

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Whatever happened to taking some responsibility for your own progress? I certainly don't expect anyone to give me anything.

If there isn't a learning party out there for you to join, then make one.

The problem there is that without someone experienced to guide things, it generally ends up being a total wash. If it happens at all.

I'm betting a lot of the people who are saying 'Just make a PF of your own' are on the high-pop servers and don't realize how much of a chore that actually is outside of their bubble. I maintain the big problem is just how this game handles cross-server play, and DF is a bandage that comes on too late for any of the high-end content. SE knows this too, which is why they already put the full-tilt Echo on Bis/Rav.

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Originally Posted by Arashmin

The problem there is that without someone experienced to guide things, it generally ends up being a total wash. If it happens at all.

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PF people don't generally listen, they learned the fight their way and they want to stick to it and just call you a noob if they cause the wipe :p.

If these tokens would take up inventory space then that is the last thing XIV needs right now, most people already struggle for room.

Honestly I doubt it will be changed. There are ways around it now. Start the fight, remove people who you think lied. (State you will do so in PF description to avoid drama.) Make a LS and invite the "good" players to it so you esentially make a static of sorts. (Not a let's do this at x time every day static but a we know we are good at this so we can always do it again when we are available one.) Yeah it takes time kicking people and all that but it's a way around it that works now.

The more i see threads like this, the more i am glad i am in the EU. We dont have to deal with this bizarre notion of "NA vs JP party finder"........we just get on with things.

End game here is all about networking, finding good players you want to be involved with for clears and practise. If someone doesnt read pf and joins without the experience and it becomes clear they have, then kick, blacklist and move on. Utilise linkshells and fc. However, dont give us yet more tokens/currency to clog up our inventories with.

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Originally Posted by Natashio

you are reducing the amount of players that can join your PF.

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Precisely. However that doesn’t mean the PF will fill slower, because it will increase the amount of players that will want to use PF in the first place.

To the contrary, actually I think it will fill PF much much faster. Taking myself as an example, if I knew with 100% certainty that everyone who joins a party in PF have been to a certain part of the fight,
I would have no problems joining. In fact I would join everyone group I can find in party finder if I knew no one would be trying to lie their way in and end up just wiping everyone.

So I would PF groups much more often. As it stands now, I’m very cautious about joining PF groups. Even if they are recruiting for the phases that I’m working on,
I know there will be a lot of players who haven’t even gotten past the beginning parts that will try to join :(

If I had a guarantee that everyone who joins through PF met the advertised requirements, I would probably use it at least 5 times more often.
This would in turn make parties fill faster, or at least even out the players lost by filtering.

Not only that, but imagine if word spread and everyone trusted PF. Much more people would be using PF, so that would make up for and expand past the players lost.


here’s what I mean: As a thought experiment, let’s say 100 players use PF. 10 of them meet the requested requirements.
In the current state, only 3 of them join because no one trusts PF. Then 3 more people who have no experience join because they don’t care what you’re asking for, they are going to join anyway.

that brings the total to 6.

Now, if everyone trusted PF, because it has a filter for this, Then maybe 6 of the 10 experienced people join because they feel better about their chances.
Even without the extra 3 inexperienced people that we lost from the filter, we end up with the same amount of players:6

Now, if word spreads that you can trust PF and 1000 people use PF instead of 100, the parties will actually fill faster even though players are being filtered out, because 10 times as many people are using PF period.

tl;dr: more people using PF because they can trust the filter = parties will fill faster even with the people that get filtered out

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Originally Posted by Kaelah

If these tokens would take up inventory space then that is the last thing XIV needs right now

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I agree that if the tokens were to take up inventory space, it would be less ideal. I prefer the % solution myself. Which definitely wouldn’t affect your inventory. But there’s a lot of ways to do this, these are just the two off the top of my head. The token system is probably easier to implement but the % system is the better long term solution.

This is an incredibly insulting measure of handholding that offends my adult sensibilities. However, I find your suggestions to be nothing short of necessary to "fix" what the party finder is like. It's horrid, and the players are to blame.