Quote Originally Posted by Nipa View Post
And again, having to read a documentation to play a game is crazy. For some people this is the exact opposite of everything a game means.
Welcome to RPGs? Especially Square Enix RPGs.

A drop-down list is not obvious, for something that could be done with a check box. You don't have all the informations on the screen at all time, this requires you to fiddle with the interface a bit to understand how it works. For some people, this is difficult. For other, it's a bother. Those people will rather spam in the local shout for a party.
It is pretty obvious. They have the downward arrows next to them, and it says what the field is. Check boxes would clutter the screen so much, and it's impossible to use a check-box for Rank anyways.

Check boxes, radio-buttons, text-aeras are obvious, because everything is on-screen at once. Dropdown lists, +/- systems, menus, are less obvious (and it's no binary, a text-based interface a la "/pcmd add" is even less obvious).
Radio button wouldn't really do much. Classes pretty much have set roles. You don't expect a GLA or MRD to do more than Tank/DPS, which they can do at the same time, so having a radio button for that would be redundant. CON who wants to nuke would never be invited to a dungeon party because they are the only class capable of AoE-healing.

Agree on the /party cmd thing, needs to be fixed. However that isn't something that has to do with the party search interface.

Uh? I am only saying that usability is subjective. If someone is used to an interface style, he will be able to use an interface of the same kind very quickly. If he encounters an new kind of interface, he may find difficult to use it. And some people will have more difficulty to adapt than others.
Usability is not subjective. The amount of it is, but you can't say "this is unusable" as a general statement if other players can use it just fine. The intuitiveness of an interface is a different story, however, and the entire interface of FFXIV is unintuitive if you've never played FFXI before.