Suggestion: Party finder tracker/watcher

[Bixby]

I'd like to see a way to keep a background search for certain types of parties in party finder. Perhaps something in the duty list.

For example, set up a search for Hydra parties that need a healer (or any other PF party search), and set it to keep tracking if nothing's found. Every 5 minutes or so, it checks in the background, and if someone has created a PF party, a notification pops up. Either a small window that lets you open that PF entry's window, or just the window itself.

[Niwashi]

Why not just create it yourself? If you want a Hydra party and there isn't one there that suits you, start one and add it to the party finder. I'm pretty sure you'll get notified as people join you.

[Onyxys]

I'd like to see a way to keep a background search for certain types of parties in party finder. Perhaps something in the duty list.

For example, set up a search for Hydra parties that need a healer (or any other PF party search), and set it to keep tracking if nothing's found. Every 5 minutes or so, it checks in the background, and if someone has created a PF party, a notification pops up. Either a small window that lets you open that PF entry's window, or just the window itself.

Nice idea. Not comfortable every 5-10 minutes open PF to see whats new. Such notifications will be very nice

[Camate]

Greetings,

Thanks for the feedback and suggestion!

Below is a comment from Hiroshi Minagawa in regards to a similar requested feature for the party finder.

Can you add some sort of feature where we can select what content we would like to do and then there is a notification when someone creates a party for it? For example, if I want to fight Ifrit, I can check a box on the list and when someone starts a party in Party Finder for Ifrit I would receive a notification.

The notification feature that is to be added in patch 2.16 is an extremely simple message that displays the number of recruiting parties every 15 minutes.

By only notifying the number of new parties and sending this to all players, the stress on the server would be minimal.
*On the client side, you can hide this notification, so that it won't appear in the chat log.

This feature alone should be sufficient enough to prompt you to check the party finder list, instead of having to open the party finder window to check if there are any new parties gathering.

However, from a player's perspective, the requested feature is useful and it would definitely be convenient to have this.

The problem with this, as usual, is server stress.

To implement the requested feature, the following is a rough idea of the data and processes that would have to be added.

1. Expand the party finder server so that players can register content they wish to participate in and be notified when it appears.
   
   Add server memory.
   
   Make it possible for each player on each World to register (roughly a max of 5,000 players).
   *With the implementation of the feature in 2.16, this memory is not needed.
   
   
2. Make the party finder feature server execute the notification process at either of the below timings:
   1. When the notification list is updated in #1 (possible for 5,000 people to update this whenever they like).
   2. When a new party recruitment is registered.
   To give a breakdown of the notification process, all of the newest notification list registrations and all of the newest parties that are recruiting would be compared, and then the system would determine to which character and for which recruitment a notification should be made, and this process would involve sending out notifications to each character on an individual basis.

Therefore, compared to the previously mentioned feature planned for patch 2.16, memory would be needed to perform this process on the server side, and due to the fact that the processing load would significantly increase, countermeasures would be necessary to disperse the load (which could potentially involve enhancing the actual servers). As a result, this would drive up the time needed for implementation as well as the work needed to ensure stable operation.

Due to the above reasons, we will be pushing out smaller-scale changes to features that can be accomplished with a small amount of server stress and bit-by-bit improve their convenience. As for features that run large risks of server stress, we will continue to look into everyone's requests and see if we can implement them in some way as operation of the game moves forward and the conditions change.

[ForteXX]

Yay, another feature to disable.

[Bixby]

Will this be giving the number of parties matching your search criteria every 15 minutes? Or just the number of parties in the party finder all together?

The first is at least a first step, though 15 minutes is, IMO, too long. The second is pretty much useless, and may as well just be a reminder that you haven't checked PF in 15 minutes; the total number doesn't tell you anything useful at all.

[seraseth]

I agree, if it's just spitting out the total number of parties in party finder at the time, then it's entirely useless spam to be filtered off. Plus the 15min window makes it even more useless. Many parties are formed and filled in less than 15mins. I don't see this providing anything of value to anyone.

[Alice_89th]

I agree with Niwashi, why not just create it yourself?

What is the point of waiting until someone makes a party search you want to join? If there is no party search for what you want to do yet, just make one yourself. In my experience there are always people that want to join.

[RatedKh]

I just want a feature to select what to show on the PF, for example if I want to do Turn 4 or Ifrit Extreme, then select both instances and just show parties for those 2 instances only, since I'm not interested on doing Crystal Tower or Garuda HM at the moment, those other results would just litter the search PF window.

[Laraul]

Yes, after fifteen minutes of starring at a static window of available parties, I need to be reminded with a message that I should refresh the list because it might have changed.

Why are you adding this? And if you limit a player search to just 200 why would you ever think that every player on the server will register a party? Why would you even allow this? At any given time, the most open parties is probably less than 20. I'm going to bet that if all 5000 parties are added to the party finder, it would probably take so long to download that all the open parties would be irrelevant when the list has finished being retrieved.

Why not make the party finder easier to use. Allow search via a command. Do not add a feature you KNOW that people will disable and won't take seriously. You need to find a better solution.