[Dev1065] How About That Search Feature?

[Seraphite]

Excuse the tangent dev tag, it's the closest thing I could find that related to what I'm talking about. If there is a more proper dev tag, please feel free to direct me to it.

So, search. /search, /sea, whatever you wanna call it. I feel like I've never really seen people talk about this too much (or at least not a hot topic about it), and I wonder why not. The search function we have in XIV now is just horribad. For those of you that don't know/couldn't figure it out, the gist is basically this: Party forms, Party advertises their party vacancies on the search function, Player searches and finds parties, profit. In this system, the player must seek out the party, and can only do so if the party leader remembers to update their advertisement once an hour. This is incredibly ineffective, as it's a backwards system to how people usually think. Parties should look for players, not the other way around.

The search function in XI was great: you could set up parties, help track friends ETA, and generally examine who was in the areas. I think that adding an effective search function to FFXIV would pull server communities together. Players would become more familiar with the names they always see online and could ask those in their level range if they were interested in playing together.

Some players, however, may not want to be searched all the time. They may want to go be "invisible." That's where you would have a /anon or /invis or other command to make your character unsearchable. You would still be able to anonymously check the player and see their rank/LS/equipment if you find them in game. This way, players would not have to feel stalked if they are trying to avoid another player or just have alone time. This may defeat some purposes of the search, but at least having search with anon would be better than no search at all.

Ideas? Suggestions? Comments?

Would love to hear from a dev on this subject.

[Warlyx]

the /search funciton was removed 2 months ago......

[Firon]

the /search funciton was removed 2 months ago......

No we never had an search function they just removed the player count on the server

[Seraphite]

the /search funciton was removed 2 months ago......

No, it wasn't. The search feature is still in the game, you just can't see how many people on the server are online.

And there has never been a text command /search in the game.

[Elexia]

the /search funciton was removed 2 months ago......

How can they remove something that never existed?

[Dreamer]

I personally hope they don't add this feature. I find it rather annoying to have to respond to tells from people constantly asking me if I want to join their random party.

[Seraphite]

I personally hope they don't add this feature. I find it rather annoying to have to respond to tells from people constantly asking me if I want to join their random party.

It's like people don't even read the OP. :\

That's where you would have a /anon or /invis or other command to make your character unsearchable. You would still be able to anonymously check the player and see their rank/LS/equipment if you find them in game. This way, players would not have to feel stalked if they are trying to avoid another player or just have alone time.

[BlackomegaKingofwaffles]

No way they would add a search if they did that we would be able to see how many people are playing. Think of how demoralizing that would be. I'm sure well get one after ps3 and they have deemed the population large enough to let us see.

[Volsung]

As long as they EVENTUALLY re-add this feature with party seeking functionality I will be happy. This feature did exist at one point then /sea was removed along with the ability to see population. Right now it is almost impossible to find a grind party because we have no lfp and /sea abilities. I know a ton of people that could find it useful. If it comes with ps3 release or before, thats fine, but it better happen. And if you don't want to be bothered use /anon.

[viion]

I personally hope they don't add this feature. I find it rather annoying to have to respond to tells from people constantly asking me if I want to join their random party.

(/anon) (Do you need it?)