Party search feature useless?

I've been playing this game for about 3 months and there's something that has struck me while playing the game. Very few actually uses the search feature to make parties and so on. Instead they shout in Uldah. I'm going to give my first impression about the search feature because I think it's confusing to use.

There's the normal search feature and there's the recruit option which is hidden beneath the party menu. For me this feels like two different search menus. I want to look after a party, how do I do that? How do I look after a party without looking up a guide how to look after one? I tried the party recruit option beneath the Party menu. What if I don't want to recruit members but to look after a party for specific purpose?

Let's say I want to seek for an invite to a primal group for let's say Ifrit. I go from Party -> Recruit -> Select "Primal Battle" under "Purpose" -> Select "Location: none" from "Location" (does this mean it will hire people anywhere or nowhere? I'm confused) -> Select "The Bowl of Embers (Hard)" -> Press button Conditions -> Select "Any" under Class (why couldn't it just say "Location: Anywhere" instead of "none" under "Locations"?) -> Select 50~50 from "Level" and number "7" -> Press Message -> Write a message under "Recruitement Message" -> Finally hit the button "Begin Recruiting".

When I hit "Conditions" and "Message", the menu expands. Why couldn't it just stay static in the first place? How can I find out how many people are interested in the fight? When I enter the Party menu again, I click on "Search" and I get a few drop down boxes that says "Purpose", "Location" and "Class". All I want to do is to seek out other people that want to do Ifrit, easy right?

I select "Primal Battles" under "Purpose" -> Select "Location: none" from Location -> Then I select... Why can't I select "Any" class and why are some classes faded out and not possible to click on? In fact I can only search for people on classes I myself have unlocked. So I select "Lancer" from "Class" and then "Begin Search". I only find myself. I'm unsure whether or not I have done this right or not. Either I have done all of this wrong or I have done everything right and nobody uses this feature, I can't tell for sure.

I haven't used the Search function much, but I can tell that very few are using it. Most of the stuff is hidden beneath sub menus which looks similar to other menus. When I hit the button "Close" in "Party" menu, I expect the menu to close but instead I get up my recruitment message. You can probably tell that I don't know how to use the party search feature. How many friends do you know that can use this search feature?

Actually, Solonuke.
The "Search" function is the partner to the "Recruit", in there you don't search for a player to fill your party, you search for a party to join. So using the Search function will search the parties that are open for Recruit which fit the criteria.

According to some JP players in my LS, the JP players on Aegis actually use the Search/Recruit feature....

There's actually a pretty good guide for using the party search feature in the Lodestone player guides.

I wish people would use the function more, it's not that bad really. Every time I recruit people for EXP or primal fights or w/e I always check the search system first and invite people through that.

search function is going to waste i usually see a handfull of people using it at the most @_@

It's going to be changed for something better in 2.0 anyway

I use it and always end up with JP only parties
only JP people seems to be using it

JPs use it all the time in their shouts too. They let you know what they are doing and you join through the search function. Type in the leader's name and if you fit what they need it automatically puts you in the party. I actually like it a lot.

not saying Primal fight, the 'party search feature' already beat EN PUG up.

One thing the search function is being used for recently is enabling people hunting items for repeat runs of boss fights to rejoin their party when they are finished without having to ask the leader for an invite.

It is all good saying "i wish more used it", and "just read this guide on how to do it". You should not need to read a guide to do use it, it should be self explanatory, it should be simple, with less options and less clutter. The Search in Party needs to be removed as its confusing having 2.

They really need to step up and have this fixed on 2.0 launch otherwise it will blow up in their face again, but hopefully with this dungeon finder thingy ma bobby they have a good idea, and hopefully we dont end up with 3 completely confusing features that require a manual to use...

Thanks for the responses so far! The guide on Lodestone I was looking for was hidden beneath "Parties". If you want to read it yourself, here it is. After reading that guide it's a bit more understandable how the system works. I still think that there's too many submenus and the wording is confusing. Could "Search" in "Party" menu be named anything but "Search"? I think "Search for parties" instead of "Search" could help out with the confusion a bit. "Search" makes me think of the similar named feature in the menu.
I really hope they work more with this because of it could reduce shouting and the crowdedness in Uldah in the long run.

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Originally Posted by viion

It is all good saying "i wish more used it", and "just read this guide on how to do it". You should not need to read a guide to do use it, it should be self explanatory, it should be simple, with less options and less clutter. The Search in Party needs to be removed as its confusing having 2.

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Well... no offense.. but I didn't require a guide to understand how to use both. People nowadays just stare at the screen for 1-2 seconds, say "I don't get it" and move on.

That's not the reason most people aren't using it though. At release, the recruiting system wasn't used because it was an unusual implementation, with people only having control over which classes can join, not who can join. So people resorted to shouts instead and invited manually.

Fast forward to the implementation of the party search system. People formed a habit of shouting, so even though now they got their LFG flags they whined about to SE, barely anyone uses it, because you can "just shout".

tl;dr: party search/recruit isn't useless, it's the community that chose not to use them. I do try to teach new players to first use search, then shout, but it's not changing much. I can imagine new servers will change that, in fact, when I tested Ragnarok, there were like 50 people seeking for party through it. On Hyperion, it's 0-5 most of the time.

Truth to be told, every game has a manual, and smarter, intelligent games teach you the intricacies of it's system as you play through it without you even noticing.
The party search feature goes completely unexplained and unadvertised in the game, so unless you decide to go hunting stuff down in your menus you won't notice it exist.

Hell, for all the discussions about anima all over, a friend of mine did not even KNOW teleporting existed the way it does until the day he was really pissed at having to make a gigantic trip and I told him "Why not just use anima?" and he went "Wait, what is that?"

(given, that friend is kind of spacy but even so)

only way to make people use search is Abolish PL and add Alliance mode


soo people will need balanced PT setups and make level Gap exp at 5 ratio -5 = -50% exp, 0 = normal exp

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

Well... no offense.. but I didn't require a guide to understand how to use both. People nowadays just stare at the screen for 1-2 seconds, say "I don't get it" and move on.

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That is the problem and the reason it is not being used. You should be able to understand it in 1-2 seconds, thats how all new systems get used, because people understand it, its natural to them. Look at XIV launch, everything was so unnatural that people just stopped playing. Make things feel nature and you just "Get" and "know what to do", and it will be used all the times.

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Originally Posted by viion

That is the problem and the reason it is not being used. You should be able to understand it in 1-2 seconds, thats how all new systems get used, because people understand it, its natural to them. Look at XIV launch, everything was so unnatural that people just stopped playing. Make things feel nature and you just "Get" and "know what to do", and it will be used all the times.

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No, it's not. Staring at something won't make you understand it if you don't turn on your brain while staring.

It was clear where to set your status (where else if not where it is displayed?), and the rest of the options is obvious.
Set your search criteria and press "search".

What exactly is not intuitive or unnatural about the search system?

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Originally Posted by carlosx

only way to make people use search is Abolish PL and add Alliance mode


soo people will need balanced PT setups and make level Gap exp at 5 ratio -5 = -50% exp, 0 = normal exp

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Neither of these things have anything whatsoever to do with the party search function. They don't need to Abolish PL, for one thing that's impossible, and for another thing, you're assuming everybody PLs and that's simply not true. Large group content will be added post 2.0 but I don't see that helping the party search system either, especially considering it's to be replaced with the content finder anyway.

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Originally Posted by viion

It is all good saying "i wish more used it", and "just read this guide on how to do it". You should not need to read a guide to do use it

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Yes because instructions were given to you as an optional thing right? You buy a car they give you a manual just for toilet reading I assume? Seriously. There is nothing wrong with reading a guide to learn how to do something...

...But this is the generation that hates to read books..especially given your overused "Learn how to read".

Its the age old catch 22 that has plagued these systems since the start. No body attempts to use them, because no body attempts to use them.

Why bother trying to wade into the sometimes scary looking options when you can /sh and /pcmd your way to a party?

I don't understand how people don't understand the Part Search/Recruit feature, even before the normal Search feature came along. It's pretty straight forward if you take the time to actually look at it.

Search
-> Name: Obviously the name of the party.
-> Purpose: Obviously the intended purpose of the party.
-> Location: Obviously the intended location of the party.
-> Class: Which class you want to be in the party

I really do not get how that is hard to understand at all. The only hard things are "Name," which is easy to figure out if you actually use it, and the fact that you have to go through the "Party" menu to get to it. The only changes I would make are: Change it to say "Party Name" instead of "Name," divide it into "Party Recruit," "Current Party," and "Party Search," and change the drop-down for selecting your class to be the checkboxes we have in the normal Search feature. That would be pretty good IMO.

The recruit feature is a bit less intuitive, but still pretty easy to get the hang of once you actually look at it. I mean "look at it" as in click stuff and try to understand it, not stare at it for 3 seconds and then decide it isn't as easy as pressing "PUT ME IN A PARTY PLEASE."

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-> Name: Obviously the name of the party leader.

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fixed that for you :p

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

fixed that for you :p

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:P Yeah I looked it up in-game and went to go do leves

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Originally Posted by viion

It is all good saying "i wish more used it", and "just read this guide on how to do it". You should not need to read a guide to do use it, it should be self explanatory, it should be simple, with less options and less clutter. The Search in Party needs to be removed as its confusing having 2.

They really need to step up and have this fixed on 2.0 launch otherwise it will blow up in their face again, but hopefully with this dungeon finder thingy ma bobby they have a good idea, and hopefully we dont end up with 3 completely confusing features that require a manual to use...

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That's like saying you should know how to ride a bike without someone teaching you or understand the aspects of adding/subtracting/dividing/multiplying without a teacher teaching you about numbers.

The system only seems complex because people are to lazy to take 10 seconds to read the information. Heck I didn't even read the guide but when I actually took the 5 mins to look at it in game I found the system to be very well designed, that if only more people actually used it making parties would be less of a hassle and the need for /shouting would not need to be there.

I think what lots of people overlook is how accessible the system is for finding parties in your required level range.

If a person is setting up Hamlet and you want to find groups recruiting you go to the recruit function and click what class you have. All the classes you don't have access to but the classes you do have access to remember what lv you are so if you are BOT 50, Fisher 20 and MNER 46 and hit Recruit as BOT you may see:
Party 1 0/1 ANY DOL 50-50
Party 2 1/2 ANY DOL 45-50
Party 3 1/2 ANY DOL 50-50

Then if you click Fish you'll see nothing. However if you click on MNR you'll see:
Party 2 1/2 ANY DOL 45-50

Then out of courtesy you can send them a tell first or you can just invite yourself into the party since you have a class they need.

The only real clunky bits of the system is the limit of only 4 class types when seeking, it would be better if one could be more specific so it can be harder if you want specific melee but can only put DOW 0/4 2/4 since you need the other 3 slots for PLD, WHM BLM lol.