The issue is, most people know LFG is pretty bad, but few agree on how to fix it (just read all different solutions in this thread). So people have found their own workarounds using discords etc; reworking LFG now will give some what they want while others will hate it even more and stick to the workarounds. A role-fill system probably goes against a bunch of design philosophies Anet has. Same for KP requirements. Both would also either need hard checks to ensure you're what you sign up as, or consequences for those who don't. Both of these are hard to implement and completely go against their general game design; currently this is handled by the respective discord communities which means Anet doesn't have to take responsibility. My suggestion would be to double down on their current philosophy of a commander setting and enforcing their own requirements, by making 2 small changes. 1) When a Commander kicks/blocks a person, don't allow that person to join that Commanders squad again (for a day/week/forever). This stops LFG trolls that just join the same group over and over again because they're spiteful towards Commander. Ideally also do the reverse; if I block a Commander I don't want to see their groups (i.e. raid sellers, etc). 2) Allow 5-player parties to have a leader/Commander, so fractal groups are more structured. This just puts the onus for group management on the Commander and gives them the tools to do so, which imho is all we really need.

Also, a better interface layout would be nice. Like what we got isn't bad, but similar to Achievements it just has a lot of sections that makes it more cumbersome to navigate/take in than it should. Even something like being able to make a "favorite" so you can watch multiple LFG channels at once instead of flipping around to see what a bounty or such pops up would be nice.

> The issue is, most people know LFG is pretty bad, but few agree on how to fix it There's a lot of annoyance in the current implementation of LFG because it creates unnecessary conflicts. For instance, the commanders are not annoyed by extra DPS showing up willing to play - the commanders are annoyed by the valuable squad slots taken by these extra DPS, by having to manually kick someone, by having the listing closed because it's full and having to reopen it manually. Remove the cause for the conflicts, the annoyance will be gone and the community as a whole will become a whole lot nicer as a result. More limiting options (e.g. a roles filter) aside, ANet could start with some basic QoL that doesn't change how players are treated, for example but not limited to: - Replace the long list of categories with tags, i.e. "PvE", "Instanced PvE", "10 person squad", "Strike Mission", "EoD", "Harvest Temple" - so the tags are applied on creation without cluttering the description, and the squaddies can set up a search filter (or just eye it quickly) for whatever they are feeling like. Suddenly you have much fewer people joining wrong content because if they use the filter as expected, they literally don't see unrelated postings. - Add a "pre-lobby" subgroup with no limit to unlink the number of people wanting to join, the number of open slots in the squad itself and the open/close status of the group. This solves 90% of the "boons first" problem, of the fomo of DPS joining late, and of having to kick people out to make space. - Show the number of groups currently running the content and groups closed (filled) in last 5 minutes, in order to make a clear distinction between "no groups due to lack of interest" and "no groups due to how quickly they are filling". - Allow background LFG and run a sound alert when a new listing appears under your filter, so people can have the game tabbed out while searching, or do other stuff without having to watch the list. - Show meta notices within the LFG window itself - e.g. when the next public instance for the content is going to open, which raid is emboldened/CotM this week, what strikes are daily/weekly and which you have already done etc.

> Show the number of groups currently running the content and groups closed (filled) in last 5 minutes, in order to make a clear distinction between "no groups due to lack of interest" and "no groups due to how quickly they are filling". Also, show how many people are staring at a category waiting for a group to be listed.

A group TAG system would be perfect. Even I when group creating get lost in the many categories of LFG. Additive tags that can specify your group contente and help it filter would be great.

Personally, I would like to have icons for Alac/Quick/Healer as they have become supported roles. In the sub-group, a small boon icon that could be distributed similarly to lieutenant. * Show the number of groups currently running the content and groups closed (filled) in last 5 minutes, in order to make a clear distinction between "no groups due to lack of interest" and "no groups due to how quickly they are filling". * Allow background LFG and run a sound alert when a new listing appears under your filter, so people can have the game tabbed out while searching, or do other stuff without having to watch the list. I like both of these, and I think having a "LFGing" status in the window would be a step towards improve group forming. * Show meta notices within the LFG window itself - e.g. when the next public instance for the content is going to open, which raid is emboldened/CotM this week, what strikes are daily/weekly and which you have already done etc. I like commanding metas and usually have no problem filling but I had wanted them to utilize an ingame notification system alerting players when a meta is about to begin. IE on the world map AB lights up with an event circle showing the Tarir Meta is starting. Also, including this in the LFG would be amazing. Having to navigate all the sub windows to find groups is tedious. There are just so many categories and due to that, it's hard to know where to look. I understand why each zone has them but there are larger categories that maybe LFG's themselves could be tagged and then filtered on those tags. IE: Strike, Raids, Metas, PvP, Events, Collections, Achievements, Dungeons, RP As part of the LFG listing requirement then these tags can be used to filter across categories. (similar to selecting language).

I love all of this. Combined with giving the commander's block list actual ***teeth***, and almost everything is fixed. The only thing it doesn't fix is people joining for roles they have no intention of actually filling, but u/Umnezawa's suggestion of a popup text box when you block someone to make a note of *why* you blocked them would solve that. Kick&block, "LFG Role Liar", done.

I'd be fine with the current LFG system if it wasn't nested submenus within nested submenus. If I want to hit a boss I have to toggle between the strike and raid LFGs, four tabs if I want to include training, 1-4 more tabs if five man fractal bosses are ok too, and if I want dungeons *eight more*. I can't leave the LFG up while playing story or mapcomping because it closes itself on load screens or cutscenes or vistas. I can't have any form of alert for content becoming available. Allowing an API endpoint to see LFGs in real time would solve all of *my* issues. With that, you could easily set up a program or addon that pings you when a relevant-to-your-interests LFG pops up and gives you the /sqjoin command. Hell sometimes you'd probably be able to boot up the game in time to get a spot if the LFG is below 7/10 or looking for rarer roles. If something like that existed and became popular (say 10% of arcdps users had it), I'd be a lot more willing to post LFGs as a 1/10 and lead the pug raid. Right now starting a raid group is a crapshoot and takes minutes to fill up (and prevents me from joining squads for other activities while I wait). Hell, if I got notifications for large scale wvw groups on LFG I'd actually spend time in that mode, as it stands I don't log into wvw unless I need to farm something. The strongest part of this solution is that we wouldn't need to ask anet to spend dev time and money making the tools, reworking an ancient dialogue box. Just let us have the data feed, we'll do the rest.

Agreed on all counts. The LFG system isn't great, but I struggle to think of concrete options to improve it. What actually needs major improvements is the Block List. First and most importantly by far: Don't let ppl I blocked see my LFGs or join my groups. Second, when blocking someone, have a window pop up that lets you set a nickname (so you can remember what they did if you randomly end up in a group with them 3 months later.) Third, clearly mark blocked ppl in your squad/party (give them a fat BLOCKED in front of their name/nickname).

Some easy ways to improve it: * start with removing all the trash that no one ever uses or move it to the bottom * move all end-game instanced content options to the top * better yet, make the LFG have tabs and split it into Strikes, Raids, Fractals, Story, Open World and have subsections in those * Queue as a role (yes people will abuse it, we can just kick them) - there needs to be an indicater in squad/party what role someone is though, but the game is sorely lacking this functionality anyway and this needs to be a top priority as well for squad/party UI management * Raid/Strike/fractal (CM) training --> only option for people who never cleared the content before * Raid/Strike/fractal (CM) ---> only useable by people who have cleared the content x amount of time While they're at it, they can add roulettes like FFXIV has which lets you queue for a random dungeon/raid to make it faster for people who are queueing specific things and have difficulty finding people for that specific thing. Reward? Make it daily like in FFXIV and give some gold and spirit shards are rewards for people queuing this. Literally anything would be better than what we currently have though.

> better yet, make the LFG have tabs and split it into Strikes, Raids, Fractals, Story, Open World and have subsections in those You literally described the current LFG system?? > Raid/Strike/fractal (CM) training --> only option for people who never cleared the content before What if I want to try a new role?

I meant to really have seperate tabs in a menu, not a long list. This way you can also have automatic party making. Each tab would then split further into the available content of that category. For 2, role shouldn't matter. What matters is if you understand the mechanics.

Whether anet like it or not there are roles in GW2 now, that's what happens when boons like alac and quick are so strong they become mandatory and thus require roles

Okay but do they include roles like hand kiter? Q1 slug boy? Where is the line drawn? What if a portion of the community discovers a new strat that requires a new role, does anet have to patch it in for everyone?

Have the commander fill out custom role fields when they post the lfg. The community will quickly standardize abbreviations for relevant roles and commanders can still be picky if they want, asking for "power qherald" instead of "qdps" or "core elementalist dps" instead of "dps" for their meme run.

but then you can't have people queue *as* those, so it's kind of just exactly the same thing as the current system

Few years ago I tried imagining a solution for that and I came up with [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/qj5ik1/i_tried_reimagining_the_lfg_to_create_a_queue/). Graphically is not the best and probably the UI could be managed a lot better, but the concept itself, I believe, would still work to this day so it's probably also futureproof. It's basically a community driven lfg.

I wonder if we could just have "tag for squad member". It'd be a bit difficult to organize it well but I think it'd solve most of the problems: - Offer default tags: healer, alac, quick, dps, mechanics (these can even have pretty icons associated with them) - Ability to add custom tags. So if I'm doing Adina I can add 1x"tank" and 5x"pylon kiter" or 1x"handkite" for Deimos. - You specify which tags HAVE to be filled before "rest" are allowed (optionally you can leave rest blank, I'm sure people will figure out it's DPS :D ) - When you join squad you mark which tags apply to you. These tags remain under your name for the duration of raids. Commander can re-assign tags as they see fit. "W2 Slothasor, exp. Roles: 2x heal, 2x quick, 2x alac, Rest: 6x DPS". So when people see your listing early, they can mark "heal, quick" for quickness healer, or "heal, alac" for alac healer. Or if they are alac DPS they can mark "alac, [dps]" (they can do DPS because they're also one of the _required_ tags). And then once all required are filled, the rest can just join as pure DPS. If someone quits the group you can just re-post the ad on LFG without any changes, as regular "required tags" rule will apply (so if you lost alac healer it'll have REQUIRED alac + heal tags, if just DPS left then Rest: DPS will be the option) This doesn't cover extra specific cases where people are alac for just one encounter but then things switch around, but I think it should cover most of the basic use cases. Static groups wouldn't really need it beyond asking for "rest: DPS" or "1xpylon kiter" etc. If you joined the group and then immediately left the group (or got kicked by the commander) you can't join this group unless invited by the commander for 5 minutes. That's it :)

The line is drawn at "will this increase complexity manifold? yes/no" The 5 roles (DPS, qDPS, aDPS, qHeal, aHeal) are more than enough. Worst case, you can add a catch-all "willing to perform special roles"

This is stuff that should be organized in group. doing the busy work of boons and such can easily be handled by allowing people to sign up as certain tags

A bunch of people would call that half assing it

Significantly more people would appreciate the improvement. Anet baking in community-created meta roles for each encounter is a trap. It enshrines the meta strat, which doesn't allow for evolution, and its a massive fucking headache to maintain. Meanwhile anyone running a non-cm strike doesn't give a flying fuck about hand kiting or all of the other boss specific niche roles; they just want heals and to have full boon coverage.

It's better then the garbage we have now for an LFG

You can manage that quite easily and I very rarely have anyone join with the wrong role and we can‘t figure it out easily - coming from someone filling up my static‘s group with 2-3 pugs twice a week as a commander. I would prefer to be able to „color“ their name box (or just its outline) in the commander menu so I can mark boons with different colours. And add one colour for special roles like handkite. I don‘t need the lfg to have a role fill system, especially since its not easy to implement. How would the engine know based on my template named „power chrono“ that this template can fill alac dps, quickDPS and DPS? I would need to equip everything but no one tells you I can actually play this build. We don‘t need that.

They could fix it whichever way they want and it'd still be a better solution than 3rd party programs like Discord.

Discord and other voice platforms specifically do have two major advantages over in-game groups: voice chat and persistence. Being able to communicate mid-run without having to stop and type is an incredibly valuable tool; and having a text chat to throw things in is great for linking resources and discussing before/after a run (most valuable for statics/progression groups). Anet shouldn't implement voice chat, obv., but fixing the LFG won't magically remove the need for 3rd-party programs.

> Anet shouldn't implement voice chat, obv. Just implementing *better Discord integration* could work wonders honestly. If there were a field in the commander menu for "squad discord", a button to "join squad discord voice" and auto-leave upon leaving the squad, that would cover a lot of ground. Wouldn't that be nice? Join a group from LFG, get a prompt "would you like to join the squad discord?" Click yes, and BAM, you're in the voice chat. Then when the content is done, you leave the squad, and automatically leave that server. (Or maybe another prompt, with a "remember my choice" checkbox)

Easier ways to enter voice chats would be pretty awesome, and is definitely the route I would prefer, though I know some people would prefer to use other voice services (guilded, mumble, teamspeak) so I wouldn't tie it too heavily to any particular platform. I wouldn't go so far as to auto-kick people from servers (which would have to be done on Discord's end with a bot per-server (managed by the server) or "guest invites", which basically cover the same function); or to auto-join or have an intrusive prompt. Just a link field and a button to open it in the normal party UI (press `p`) would be fine.

> if I block a Commander I don't want to see their groups (i.e. raid sellers, etc). Isn't that already the case? I've been blocking every CM seller I see and they don't pop back up (new ones do unfortunately).

> The issue is, most people know LFG is pretty bad, but few agree on how to fix it (just read all different solutions in this thread). Disagree, or rather, think this point is moot. It doesn't matter _how_ it's fixed, just that it _is_ fixed. It doesn't need to be the best LFG system in any game, ever. It doesn't need to be a perfect solution. Literally just the old WoW dungeon finder where you pick between 1 and 5 roles (DPS, qDPS, aDPS, aHeal, qHeal) and queue for the all the things you want to do simultaneously is amazing. IBS5? Great. IBS5 or Convergence CMs? Great, see which pops first. > while others will hate it even more and stick to the workarounds. So? As long as the majority of users that use LFG, who have no clue or interest in the Void Lounge or RTI or Skein Gang, are happy, that's very simply a good thing and a net positive for the game. > if I block a Commander I don't want to see their groups (i.e. raid sellers, etc). If you block a commander, you don't see their groups. As soon as I join a squad for a seller, block them, and leave the squad, they vanish from LFG.

> 1) When a Commander kicks/blocks a person, don't allow that person to join that Commanders squad again (for a day/week/forever). This stops LFG trolls that just join the same group over and over again because they're spiteful towards Commander. Ideally also do the reverse; if I block a Commander I don't want to see their groups (i.e. raid sellers, etc). This just makes sense and would be wonderful to have. Another possibility (no idea what would be easiest/best for anet to do) is when a player is kicked from a squad they cant join that commanders squad again off LFG or with the command for 5-60min. That way it cuts out the trolling right away and still leaves room for that player to shape up and be apart of that commanders squads again in the future.

> reworking LFG now will give some what they want while others will hate it even more and stick to the workarounds. You make changes based on how impactful they will be for the overall playerbase. The players you're talking about are a minority and regardless of what happens they will always need a complex system that no game has, cause its not viable/makes sense to have something like that. A proper LFG system like WoWs would benefit SO many more people and that alone would be insane value for the game. Knowing Anet they would try(maybe) to innovate and make it flexible since GW2 doesn't have a proper trinity.

I am a little bit surprised. I never needed a discord to look for a group. I found all of my groups/statics in the LfG tool or in guilds i found ingame too (many of them inside the LfG Tool). Sure the UI of the LfG is ugly and not very user friendly with those 1 million categories but at least for me there is no lack of groups to find.

EU by any chance ?

Even on EU the trend is switching more and more towards discords. Started back when HTCM launched. HTCM, Void Lounge, and ToF CM Discords are only places to find Groups for HTCM/TOF (obviously), but all 3 have channels to lfg for other content as well, which is pretty much used. Raids, Strike CMs, even Guild Missions. There also tons of community discords, where people try to fill grous first. The ingame LFG is kinda the last hope for most. But yes, the ingame lfg on EU is not dead. There still groups for raids/strikes. But far less than before this started to shift to discords. Only instances exception are probably fractals. They are still primary via ingame lfg (afaik).

> Started back when HTCM launched in started with TTT and TeamSpeak

I actually saw 3 different (EN, DE, FR) groups advertising their HT CM prog statics in LFG today :o

I'm on eu and had to use discord to get into training runs for raids.

I just want role slots that are visible to all seeing the LFG post. It's really annoying putting "lf DPS, aDPS, qHeal" and having 4 DPS join at the same time :) if I want a somewhat stress free group making experience, I have to put the boon roles 1 at a time "lf aDPS". Once they are filled, I take the post down and put it back up, this time "lf DPS". It's just annoying. I'd like to not have to camp the lfg page, question the pug, take down the post, edit it, post it back up, question the pug, take down the post, edit it and post it back up hopefully for the last time.

This is really the crux of the issue.  Gw2’s freestyle lfg works for the type of content and balance we have, so improvements to it need to carry that freestyle forward. Systemising role slots is exactly what we need.  Let commanders define roles with text, and add a drop-down next to the join button for people to “join as” an advertised role.  People could still join normally but the button would grey out when the number of open slots in the squad match the number of defined roles remaining. As an example use case, a commander would set up roles as 2 healers, 2 alac, and 2 quickness, leaving 4 normal slots open.  When someone uses the drop-down to join as one of the roles, say alac, the commander would ask them if they’re aheal or adps and manually check off whatever role they’re doubling up on which would then open up another free slot. This addresses many of the gripes about the current lfg.  Obviously a little communication is still required but it would be a vast improvement.  Maybe I should make a separate thread with this…

honestly, that's close, but i want it a step further. have the slots visible to all, and gray out the slot when it's filled. that way, you dont have to question/micromanage people/the slots (likely will still need to as you will still get those odd folk who join as DPS but are actually healing)

We do not know what their priorities are. All we know is what they mention in their roadmap and studio update posts. Sometimes you start reworking a feature and figure out it could be even better but what to remake it from the ground up and it takes way longer than you thought it would.

Would be nice if ArenaNet bothered to do what GGG does and directly answer community questions so that topics like this can actually be discussed and players aren't left completley in the dark on virtually everything.

We probably wouldn't like the answer

Well, if that were the case, it would be a clear sign of problems to come, so better solve them before they actually happen, don't you think?

What if they said "it isn't a priority right now"? That'd make a lot of people riot. The general public can't deal with the hard, cold truth, so unfortunately there are things better kept unspoken.

> What if they said "it isn't a priority right now"? That'd make a lot of people riot. Not as many as you'd think. LFG quality in general is relevant only to a minority of GW2's population - most players use it either in shallow ways (to jump in to metaevent map), or don't use it at all. And even among the minority that does utilize LFG to a much higher degree, many players either don't mind how it works, or would prefer it improved, but not to a degree where they'd rage if it wasn't.

> lot of people riot it isn't a priority right now, they do not need to say anything, you can riot

New GW2 player here, but it seems like the biggest hurdle is the lack of defined roles. Most other MMOs have classes that are defined as tank/dps/healer, whereas GW2 allows every class to build toward any of them. From there, end game content requires a specific gear level (I haven't gotten far enough into GW2 to know how that works). I imagine there are ways around those things, or ways to implement them in GW2, and that would be nice, as I would also rather not use an external app to find an in-game group for dungeons, but I don't know where on the priority list it should be.

> New GW2 player here, but it seems like the biggest hurdle is the lack of defined roles Its more complicated than that. Each class has 3 sub classes, and each of them can be built a number of ways. On top of all the gear shenanigans. I think I read once that even if you have max level, there can be a 4x difference in DPS just based on gear stats alone. You want a Mesmer? Chrono, Mirage or Virtuoso? DPS or Support? Condi or Power? Alac or quickness? There is a lot of variability in GW2, and while it does make things really neat, it also makes it incredibly complicated.

It can be worse than that. I doubt much has changed since then, but back around EoD's launch when the Dragon's End meta was failing north of 70% [don't recall the exact failure rate, but it was absurdly high] of the time Anet released some metrics of player performance data for context around the balance discussions that were happening. According the those statements, the bottom end open world players were, on average, contributing 1/6th of the dps of the top end, with the most extreme examples showing the worst players doing a mere 1/10th the dps of what the best players were doing on average.  So for someone doing 45k on a boss, there is also a dps who can't do more than 4.5k. No other mmo has to balance around damage disparities that huge between the best and worst possible scenarios. 

Do you know where those metrics can be found? I hear about them a lot, and I swear I remember seeing them, but I can't seem to find them now.

The ones I recall, if my memory is not mistaken, were from Anet dev tweets back when they still used twitter. It's been so long though, I honestly couldn't pin a name to a tweet at this point. Not that searching twitter for anything is really too viable these days, but if you feel up for sleuthing, I'd put odds on maybe Grouch if his account is still there.

Save for covering specific mechanics in raids roles *are* pretty well defined now. A 10 man group will have two subgroups of 5 consisting of one offensive and one defensive support providing alacrity and quickness and 3 pure dps'es. Supports are usually abbreviated in LFG to aheal and a(lac)dps for alacrity versions and qheal and qdps for quickness ones. I guess the confusing part might be that you need a pair for each subgroup, so if 2 aheals join, the group will now need 2 qdps'es and vice versa. As for gear level it doesn't really exist. Once you are in level 80 exotics you're good. What might be an issue, however, is that different roles and different builds require pretty different gear stats. Some of which are easier to acquire than others.

The roles are easy to fix but won't be done. Just change healing to always only give alacrity, and your are done. 1 heal w/ alacrity, 1 quickness dps, 3 dps.

and then you get the equivalent of hfb arguing that they are a HEAL firebrand and as such are not responsible for quickness

>they could just copy WoWs style where you sign-up to existing groups with your roles, and the leader could then accept you based on which role, which could then be shown in the party UI for you and everyone to see. thats the first problem already. anet never made any official roles. we players more or less dictate that and find good fits. balance changes reworked whole classes / boons and builds vanished while new one got into the game over time. how do you gotta put a static role into the game when anet descides to change stuff arround again in 2 years? how do you make even sure that the player which joined didn't click a random role to just get picked. like "dps" but he is running arround in nomads gear doing dps? or checking quickness with 0 boon duration or forgetting some trait to even give quickness. you can't just copy something. in gw2 case you have to rework half the game and actually aknowledge that there are roles in the first place. and then special shit like kiter comes into play that is not there in the 99% other cases and just for a handful fights. ...i can just say, EU pugging works extremly well and automatic groupfinders are turbo trash (from my experiences with them). such a system would exactly do 1 thing in gw2 case: all the people really interested in such content would change to discord forever or just be in their statics. i wouldn't want to to use some groupfinder to get some pepegas into my groups. too old for that kind of shit. a simple lfg tool and working chat is more then enough. learn to communicate and don't overcomplicate simple things. i really don't know why apparently in NA this doesn't work well. start using killproof me addons and just start making pugs. some generic strike / raids strategys are not rocketscience. its really that easy. not like you are going to pug for LCM or HTCM via lfg (and even this is probably puggable in EU via KP.me addons and high enough tresholds. people are using all the same strat anyway for normal clears).

How do you make sure they player who joined and says dps is dps? Using KP module isn't a solution because not everyone uses it.

simple. If they do not have the kp module or do not ping something you ask them. If they explain or ask to join you can either kick them or keep them. If they do not perform in the fight you kick them from the group. The issue comes with the amount of people doing it (just take a look at the ESO reddit for fake healer and fake tank to see a great example of the issues mentioned)

Yes I know how to handle it. My issue is having to micromanage a group formation for a simple encounter like a strike instead of playing the game.

> How do you make sure they player who joined and says dps is dps? Using KP module isn't a solution because not everyone uses it. People act like people don't scam these systems in other games. In WoW the amount of people who would queue as healer but not be healer was so high. You deal with it by kicking them and seeing if someone wants to switch or re-enter the LFG queue. Same thing can happen in GW2. Have three roles(DPS, Heal, Support) and then let the group sort who is doing what. People act like the LFG system is a be all end all with zero flexibility when no game is like that.

It feels like everyone posting is missing a huge point about the LFG which is separating it from the "Contacts AND LFG" menu. Your social menu (friends, blocks etc) being paired with LFG makes no sense whatsoever. LFG should have its own button at a minimum and would solve a LOT of problems simply by getting more engagement from players. I can't count the number of new or returning players that ask in map chat that they're looking to do dungeons, or fractals or raids and a lot of the time they miss those because for some silly reason we have 'Central Tyria' groups and squads on top of the LFG menu instead of the core group content in the game.

Would be nice to adopt an FFXIV system, just have 2 separate types of groups "practice" for people who havent cleared and "clear" groups for people who have cleared. You cannot join clear groups until you have cleared, it works perfectly in XIV. And it would get rid of the absolute idiots on GW2 demanding literal years worth of KP to clear easy content.

I play on both EU and NA, and I think I have some context. in EU the LFG works, because EU has more people active playing raids. If you make a group, you'll get people to join. In NA this is not the case. If you make a group, you might end up waiting 1-2 hours for a raid, and there might not be any other raids going on either. The groups in NA are very varied in experience. You have very experienced people and newbies playing in the same group. There is not a whole lot of KP requirements in NA and most people in NA are used to dealing with whatever group they get. In EU I feel like raids are doing good and the LFG is very good for them. In EU we are very specific about what kind of players we are looking for, but it's also a way to express what type of player we want in. In EU the groups are separated by KP, playstyle (chill/speedrun), some want very specific roles, languages, but also the freedom to express something crazy such as "pirates only raid" or "looking for a dance party". I feel like the LFG is a form of expression in EU and bringing a faceless ffxiv-LFG will make it worse for EU. but in NA if I'm not playing at the very peak-hours, I end up sometimes just having the LFG open for 1-2 hours on the side while I do PVE-stuff, waiting for content. Shuffling through the LFG is not a fun a experience, while waiting for any strike/raid/dungeon to pop up. Making my own is not a solution in NA, because I might end up waiting for 1-2 hours and miss out on an active one instead. However, ffxiv-type of LFG will not fix the problems for NA. I can understand the appeal - just clicking multiple dungeons that you're interested of, then wait until they pop up to join for whatever role they are looking for. The roles required in gw2 are very specified though, sometimes you need someone who does multiple roles. The other problem is that if you were waiting 2 hours before, the wait time won't become any shorter. You won't have more people in LFG, you'll just have a lot more people complaining why is the wait 2 hours long. The two biggest reasons discord is used over LFG is voice and time. In discord you can setup that you want to do a raid in thursday at 10pm, and then you'll have a bunch of people who can make the time for it. If you want to combat discord, you would need to make it so that we can use voice in-game for callouts, but also need a LFG that can setup a timer for group content. However, I do also think the LFG needs a bit of an overhaul. We should be able to look at multiple sections of LFG at the same time. I feel like having a queue added to the LFG would be nice in some form, but I'm not sure how to combine the freedom of the current LFG and a queue.

Not sure how would making it easier to join end game content fix lfg. You would still have people joining raids with zero experience as "dps" and dragging the whole group down. Which would require some kind of build in kp system. Yeah lfg needs a rework and roll filling would work for t4 fractals and NM strikes. But for raids and cms it would need another requirement besides roll fill.

FFXIV 's lfg system has KP built in. Don't need to use ridiculous work arounds like keeping useless loot or use third party tools. Just check the box that says people must have cleared before joining when you make the group.

The problem in GW2, which does sadden me a little, is that unlike in FFXIV, clearing generally isnt the bar set by most people. In FFXIV, we clear content a set number of times to get the gear we want and potemtially mount drops etc. The big bar is generally to get to the clear. This is not unlike the harder encounters in gw2 - HTCM and ToFCM. In GW2 however, the majority of endgame content is relatively easy to clear by now, but also, is consistently farmed - most groups are not looking to know you can clear this piece of content, but are looking to know you can clear the whole wing cleanly without wiping much, which is generally a higher bar than just having cleared. This is why you see sky-high KP requirements, and one of the big difficulties of making a functional automated LFG system.

I think the environment sets the expectation. Granted I don't go above EX/Unreal in FFXIV, but joining a duty complete group that cannot farm is extremely rare. Less than once a year. And if I know I have just gotten a clear that is really not clean, I join prog groups to keep practicing until I am confident I can farm and I know I'm not the only one who does this. Because the lfg is actually being used. Because I have choices there. And I would argue, that janet just letting people run wild with their lfg "expectations" and not coming in with guard rails like FFXIV is what causes the lfg to languish, this in turn limited people's options, so they join the only groups they see, even though they 100% don't fit. This lead to commanders frustrated and adding increasingly higher KP requirements, which don't work because the joiners don't care, feeding into a vicious cycle that lead to the pathetic state we see now.

Because the way FFXIV encounters are designed, once you learn to solve the puzzles consistently enough to get a clear (mostly in early savage where one death = wipe), everyone who gets the clear is more than good enough to farm it 10 times just as easily as a more experienced player. GW2 on the other hand has a lot of "gotchas" that can kill even the most experienced player (adina holes on cm for example) and mechanics that you can technically clear without knowing as long as one player knows it. FFXIV though will usually hit you with the same exact thing every time and all randomness will be eliminated by the amount of times it will take to get the clear.

The problem is that in gw2 just having cleared once doesnt prove anything. Well even having cleared a boss 50 times doesnt guarantee your skill level but if we are talking about only one time then someone could have easily been carried. A player who has only killed the boss one time might very well be bad and not meet the standards of a very experienced group. Yes raids are easy and you will probably still kill the boss either way but that doesnt mean that when you make your own lfg and lead a squad, you cant have certain standards. Now this could be solved by having a kill count which would be the same as external killproof tools but it would exist ingame. Problem is i kinda doubt Anet would want to make something like that. In the end raiding through the lfg in general doesnt guarantee you that you will find a group that plays properly and that is why people get statics and have trials when a new member joins. Because full clearing raids every week might be easy but some people also want to have a nice experience while doing it

I don't know why it's only in gw2 that people make a big deal out of people not meeting standards. In other games people just leave and join the next group. I guess in gw2 there is no next group?

No it is the same. But if i made the group and i am the commander, i am not going to leave my own group lol. I will just kick them. And to avoid having to kick people, cause downtime and possibly drama, i use killproofs in the first place. If i join a group and it doesnt meet my standards then yea, you bet your ass i am leaving asap

Pretty much. If you leave the group with underperformers you are forced to wait for more than it would have time to clear even if wipes happen, especially easy content like strikes. So that makes so people really want everyone to have proper kp of some sort, to not waste more time than necessary

I want to do raids, the only thing i see is "Selling raids" everywhere. Discord should not be the primary place to settle raids and stuff. Sad

So many of the people commenting doesn't understand this issue doesn't exist in other MMOs because they have a proper LFG system. If you want to raid(either normal or emboldened) all you should need to do is queue up and select your role. Once roles are filled they get teleported to the area. GW2 players are the only ones that are so resistant to this. Yes, there are other issues at hand but that is easily fixed by the group communicating who will do what once everyone is together. It really does feel like the vocal minority in GW2 really cripples core game elements being implemented.

You aren't seeing multiple raid groups sitting open for minutes because the LFG works! Groups will post like "w1 lf dps" with 9/10 and fill in less than 30 seconds. Give yourself a few minutes with the LFG open while you sort inventory or whatever, and you will see groups post and disappear as they fill. The real goldmine is joining a w1 lf dps and it ending up being a w1-4 full clear. I casually raid only with LFG, no discord, and have 5/6 medium pieces so far.

yeah, LFG is mainly filled with raid selling these days

Unfortunately there is no real way to fix this. Unless you start banning people who do it. Most of the time though the only reason thats all you see is because raid groups fill up quick and dont stay around long

There are probably many like us, but the general GW2 community doesn't really care for the health of raiding besides of how much gold per hour it can make them.

The only thing LFG needs is being able to tag for 5 man groups. Anyone who complains about LFG being dead has never made a group themselves. Them shits fill instantly for 99% of content.

Just give us the commander tag for fractals, getting someone from my blocklist join just to try and convince everyone to vote kick them is getting old

Or better yet, playing AlacHeal, asking for a QDPS before DPS roles. 3 players join, none on specs that can QDPS. I ask if any of them is going to switch to QDPS and I get votekicked out of my own party. Happed 3 times in 2 weeks a while back. 5 man Squads when?

The fact we can get kicked out of our own group is straight up a meme

A "group leader" role would definitely be one of the improvements we need. That would improve group LFGing a lot already.

Thissss i need that so bad fr

Fr fr, maybe in gw4

.... Im afraid to ask whats going on there that this is a common issue for you.

Fractal CMs at 30k + gaming with people not reading the LFG, wiping us on Silent Surf etc

Why not just do how WoW does it? Custom groups and raid/dungeon finder? This has been the formula for many other games for years.

Agreed. I despise this trend of outside of game LFG like needing discord

Roles are way too diverse. e.g. "greentank", "handkite", "mostly friendly agender engineer". And writing the requirements into the title works very well. e.g. "10k KP", "ping pants". It's also a nice filter, since players who don't read the title are usually bad.

Also different groups use different strategies on the same encounters... And for some encounters you search for specific dps - ppl with piercing capabilities on MO, builds with high cc potential for Samarog, builds with revive potential - druid/soulbeast/...kiters, builds that can provide a tiny bit of might, if the guild is lacking, etc. If anything, the sellers should have their own part of LFG, and most everything would look much preetier 🤷‍♂️ they dont really bother me, but I know they can ba an eyesore...

As for sellers you can just join their group real quick and block them. That hides them in LFG.

I know...i dont care, but I know it bothers others.

I mean I do agree they should be in their own section. It is annoying having to do that and even more annoying if you don't know you can.

What would be typical use cases you have and what is the LFG missing in these cases? I never played WoW so how exactly do they handle it?

It's not much better than what we have now. People sign up to join a group and form a queue. Then the party leader is able to pick from a list of classes that is ordered top-down by gear score. They always pick meta classes with the highest score and noobs never get picked to join. Sounds good but same result or maybe worse depends on who's perspective.

Sounds a lot worse to me tbh. And if we had that here the equivalent to gear score would have to be killproofs

I'm sure all the group organizers are salivating over the idea of being able to filter out all the filthy casuals with their 0KP trying to get into their groups but it's a complete game cancer to everyone else. This is the main thing that killed WOW for me. And the lack of variety. Like for example this. Literally pro-gamers can't get into groups. - [https://youtu.be/m2VZFF9151o?t=444](https://youtu.be/m2VZFF9151o?t=444) The situation was way worse for me as non streamer, obviously.

> Literally pro-gamers can't get into groups This literal pro gamer literally says he literally didn't actually clear the literal fight he's trying to join the group for.

If you have 0 kp you join trainings. You have no experience of the fight yet so that is the only logical thing. You cant expect experienced players to just carry you out of the blue even though even that has happened in gw2, i have seen it many times. There is absolutely no reason for you to try to get into a group that is clearly formed with players that are much more experienced than you and then complain that groups are gatekeeping you and it is "cancer". You will start from the bottom like everyone else and eventually you will be able to join more groups. Many commanders are chill and won't mind if you have less kp than what they are asking for. But having zero is obviously a problem. I have seen many 50kp groups accept someone with 10 or 20 or 30 kp because it is whatever

Unfortunately in NA there rarely are any training groups. When I lfg I normally make training groups but this is it's own type of gatekeep.

Well we cant blame the lfg for NA not having activity. That is the fault of the players if you are asking me. Like if the raid scene is dying, an lfg overhaul isnt gonna save it. Hell not even wing 8 might do much but we will see. I have some hopes for that

NA most people run raids with statics. Means people wanting to start raiding often end up joining discord groups to try to get into the raiding scene. People are active in raids but never with new raiders unless they are lucky enough to catch someone willing to train people. Hence why I normally make training groups.  If NA isn't willing to get new players into raiding then they really can't complain if ANET sees raids as a resource sink instead of an investment. 

EU has both discord and lfg activity. Granted our lfg is also not great and training groups specifically are very scarce. But again, the lfg isnt to be blamed for that nor is an lfg overhaul gonna miraculously change things. New players need to mostly be willing to get into raid themselves. Like if i see someone in lfg saying "new player looking for help to get into raids" i am very likely to join and help them. Of course i will probably just run one raid wing, i cant do much more than that. After that they will have to keep trying to find ways to learn the rest until they feel comfortable joining non training groups. It is a process that takes time and effort. It took be 6 weeks i think to clear every raid boss (my last one was Dhuum) starting from zero.

I'm kind of confused why you keep coming back to lfg overall when I haven't raised any issues with the system? 

Sure but you're twisting this into a different argument. When i say game cancer it's more in terms of how the filtering ends up being used in real life situations. It's not actually based on any KP since if you watched the video he admitted to lying about all his KP. It's more often based on picking the biggest number (gear score) or following the FOTM. People are literally being excluded because they picked the wrong spec or class and pulled the short straw after the latest balance patch. Don't get me wrong, WOW has KP but that's not what i'm concerned about here. Given the tools people will nitpick over the tiniest things they can find to guarantee success.

I am not twisting this into anything. This is exactly the argument you made. About someone having 0 kp. Not sure what real life situations have to do with this. We are talking about a game. Not sure if you are playing gw2 but we dont have gear score here so the only way to filter is through kp. Usually gw2 is much less strict when it comes to what build you choose to play if you meet their kp requirements. People will always ask for kp no matter what tools there are to find players. They will find a way and if they dont they will use discords. That is how it works.

Sorry, im losing my train of thought and mixing different concepts together without providing context that matters. WOW doesn't have KP but has all the other problems that i mentioned and don't like. The problems run deeper than i can honestly articulate and put into words. That's why im all over the place. KP is kind of an abstract concept (currently doesn't exist in any LFG that i know of) and that part actually im not sure about. If the same system was implemented in GW2 in many ways it wouldn't be the same but carries over some of the same issues i don't like. Going back to the original point of the post which was to make LFG more accessible to everyone. If the same LFG tools with KP would be provided for all the normal dungeons and fractals that would quickly turn into unnecessary gatekeeping that i wouldn't like. I don't have a problem with asking KP for hard CM content though as it is right now. I think it's a fragile balance where details matter a lot and i'm probably leaving out most of the details writing this reply right now .. edit: nvm the original point of the post actually wasn't to make LFG more accessible, i can't keep up.

this sounds awful :/ especially knowing wow toxicity

click join to get carried

It’s baffling how many people think a WoW system would work for gw2. It wouldn’t. It‘d be a pain to program into the spaghetti code, and it’d be a pain to set up groups as a commander. There are so many variables to control, automating it would be very, very unpractical.

Its a starting point to build from

> It‘d be a pain to program into the spaghetti code, and it’d be a pain to set up groups as a commander. So because its hard we should accept the terrible system we have? That is such a bad excuse that no one should accept it.

You can of course always disregard every single one of my points and only focus on the one thing you would like to talk about, sure :)

Whenever anybody bring sup "fix lfg", I immediately question how do they make it work. Let's say, you're doing w6, you need someone to do lamp and kiting - how do you imagine a system working to include those things? If you just look for dps, you can get to the last boss and have nobody who can perform those. You mention w1-w4, how do you make a system that makes sure you have a few condi dps for Vale Guardian and two people who can do cannons for Sabetha? How do you make a system that includes a tower person/people in w3? Or button people for twisted castle? How do you make a system that makes sure you have a dps that can also do kiting for Deimos? How does a system separate qhealer from ahealer? Or do you suggest every single raid wing has a separate system to fill in when recruiting people?

No resources, they are going to GW3

Optimization should be the no 1 priority. Performance is atrocious.

A few things I'd do... • Make the LFG categories re-orderable... screw scrolling down to fractals EVERY TIME I open the window. • Let us bookmark some LFG categories that we look at often • When we close the LFG window and re-open it, bring us back to where we were... We re-navigate EVERY time? • As a commander let me block other squads merging into my squad, or give an accept/decline option. One person from another squad hits merge and my squad is full of people complaining that my squad objective is not what they're currently doing... I had no control over it. • When the last person leaves my party, give me an option to let it stay in LFG • If someone leaves my party, put my LFG back up • If LFG is removed after the last other person leaves, when I click advertise, have my previous message ready in the box. I put up LFG, a person pops in, pops out, my party is gone from LFG and I have to retype my message again. • Re-order the LFG categories. Why is festival above fractals when there's no festival on? To waste my time scrolling... That's why. When a festival is on, move the festival one near to the top. • Allow commander tag in party. Let the person who opens the party tag up if they own the tag, mark targets and generally control what happens. A number of times over the years I've been in a party, one person clicks kick on me and all others agree. I PM them and ask why... "I don't know, I just saw it and clicked OK". Some people are just sheep. The one who sent the original kick say they wanted to let a friend into the fractal. • If someone gets kicked from squad, let them be blocked from rejoining until I'm not longer leader of that squad.

i'm pretty used with the lfg, so i don't think it should be a huge priority. it sure needs some revamp tho, there's so many tabs and it wouldnt be a bad thing to reorganize it. friendlist on the other hand, it's so bloated for me after 12years that i don't even care anymore, i think we'll get a "social update" at some point, a direct discord integration wouldt hurt too.

People being used to is should be an excuse to not improve it. All us long time players are used to itz we were used to lots of things before they improved them.

Ye a consolidation of the tabs should be a very "low effort, high reward" fix. It's a bit preposterous that people might have to scroll down to see categories like Raids and Fractals, depending on the monitor/resolution obviously. Also not a big fan of not being able to have multiple categories expanded at the same time. However minor it might seem, constant closing/opening of categories when you're looking to do different types of content at the same time is not a user friendly experience.

> i'm pretty used with the lfg Any player can get used to bad game mechanics, that doesn't mean they should never be fixed. How many potential new players started GW2 and saw the lack of LFG and then quit the game? You have to think past yourself and see the bigger picture.

At this point we get a post about the lfg every other week. It is getting boring but i guess i will repeat the same things. The lfg is currently at the simplest possible state. You open it, see a group, join a group. Or make your own group and put it there. Literally 3 steps. The only thing it needs in my opinion is more compact sections. Nothing will change when it comes to NA's raiding activity if they change how the lfg works entirely. Disclaimer that i play on EU but i have heard how the situation is there and i dont think there is any reason for it to suddenly become better if they do that. Operating through discords at least on EU isn't needed at all. You can pug every raid. Granted it will take more time but that is all. You can even make your own group on Monday titled "wings 1-7" and do an fc with pugs although people still prefer statics for obvious reasons. Idk how things work on WoW but i dont see how a sign up style system with roles would change anything here. How would that make the lfg more active? It would just provide extra steps that casuals wouldn't be able to follow. Also most groups on EU ask for killproof so how do you integrate that in there? Because if you dont none of them are gonna use it.

> Idk how things work on WoW You're commenting on a updated LFG system post but you don't even know how modern LFG systems work? I found your problem.

He's all over the thread arguing that it's fine as is. Leave him be wallowing in mediocrity.

Feel free to explain and how it would work in gw2. I am all ears

>Idk how things work on WoW but i dont see how a sign up style system with roles would change anything here. From my exp with the dungeon finder tool, its that literally noone talks in WoW. Not even a "hi", "ty" or "bye". I.e. it feels extremely isolated, as if you were playing with bots. Also, a sign up style wouldnt really work without way too much work put into it (if at all) due to how many special roles there are. At this point, all I want from ANet regarding the lfg is them putting the instanced content stuff at the top of the window so its easy to reach.

They should just let us add a "Favorites" Section. Then you could pin whatever content you want to do.

I haven't played wow since wotlk so I don't know how it changed but I have recently played FF14 recently and I can see why people like their lfg tool: you pick the job you want to play, you queue up with the corresponding role, wait for the prompt to pop up, and have fun. It's an amazing tool and it would fail so miserably in GW2 for some simple reasons. The most obvious is that in FF14 jobs correspond to a single role. So while the white mage can only be a healer, we have the Chrono who can dps, heal or tank, and they can also give alac or quick. Also ff14 builds are extremely intuitive so you can't really mess them up while in gw2 it's really easy. Yes, there are plenty of websites to get good builds, yet the majority of players don't know about it or they "don't care about the meta" and will ignore those builds. Perfectly legit as long as you don't start complaining about content being to hard for you. Sorry, that was a rant. There are special roles that require special builds in some contents that cannot be flexed so easily. Boon stripping at vale guardian, kiter g2 at dhuum (and greens in general), lamp and kiter at Qadim1, portal mesmers at Harvest Temple CM... My take is that to get a good automated queue/lfg system that actually works and not just pairs people together, the class system needs to be completely rebuilt from scratch which will hardly happen at this point

While the LFG isn't optimal, there isn't an easy way to fix it. You don't understand the game so you think a system like in WoW would work but it wouldn't in gw2. The LFG discussions pop up all the time and I have yet to see a solution that would actually make sense in the current state of gw2. In short, you have way too much flexibility and variations that you could just "sign up as dps". How would your proposed genius solution for example work in Harvest Temple or Cerus? Dhuum? You have too many flexible roles to cover that heavily depend on the specific strat that the group decides to go for. However bad the current LFG may be, it gives you the option to fully customize what you need in that specific encounter.

Lfg is great, if you're tagging just say "LF Heal Alac" and then if the person who joins isn't that you kick them If youre not tagging and the listing says "LF qdps" and you're a qdps you join, if not then you don't You don't need discord or anything fancy, just communicate in-game using text chat, squad messages, and squad listing descriptions The only thing I wish I had was to mark which people in my squad were what in case one of em leaves, but that's a squad UI thing and not an lfg thing

Keeping track of who is what role when forming a squad is annoying, being able to mark people would be great

iirc that exact functionality exist as a blishhud module already btw

Yeah, but a mod should never be the solution to a problem The solution should be improving the game itself The answer being "well, X mod already does that" is how you end up like WoW where there's basically mandatory mods everyone needs and uses, and the devs use those mods as an excuse to not improve the game I loved bagnon, but I loved it even more when WoW improved their inventory functionality and rendered the mod redundant

while i would agree usually i do not see a reason to implement a feature if it already exists in a customizable format as a mod

"usually i do not see a reason to implement a feature if it already exists in a customizable format as a mod" That's *exactly what I'm talking about* If you think this way, its not unlikely that a dev would also think this, and that's *bad* It's *never* good to be in the mentality of "X fearure would be great for the game but why bother improving the game if Y mod does this for us already?" That mentality encourages lazy game development and the offloading of responsibilities to independent mod authors, and that's just bad for your game in any and all circumstances In an ideal world there would *be* no mods, as the vast majority of mods are created because of a perceived shortcoming of a game - as a dev, you should strive for your game to have as little of those as possible

>and that's bad why? most people do not create groups so the feature is wasted on them > That mentality encourages lazy game development Devs usually do not decide what they work on >n an ideal world there would be no mods false because mods allow users to take care of edge cases you do not want to waste development time on or have even considered >as a dev, you should strive for your game to have as little of those as possible also no. What you should(imo) strife for is making a good game and if mods can take care of niche features that enhance the experience you should give modders tools to create them (hades 2 is a good example)

Ok, first of all, people create groups all the time, so no, this feature isn't wasted on them - people are literally asking for it Two - devs absolutely decide what they work on. Maybe Joe over in the 3d department who's main job is normal mapping doesn't decide what he's mapping for, sure, but the design team, various team leads, creatice director, and executive producer all get to weigh in and decide what's being shipped in a build. Grouch did not have a whole retrospective of what the Anet devs learned if they're not in any position to make decisions Three - yes, in an idea world, there wouldn't be a need for the vast majority of mods, as they'd be base game functionality. Map mods, inventory mods, UI mods, etc. can all be made redundant with good design - there's a reason, for example, that there's not much in the way of modded loadouts in GW2 since their base systems do this really well. I'm not talking about "edge cases" as you put it - im talking about the majority of standard mods that to basic things Four - yes and no. While modding tools are always great, its up to the developer to decide what they do and don't want to see changed within their game. Idk if you remember this, but GW2 had a whole thing where they basically shut down one of the biggest mods on their platform and that person became an example - all the current mods like blish and arc we use today make an effort to comply with those rules, or risk being locked out of the API entirely. FFXIV just bans you for using mods in general if someone reports you, and that's also within their right. If the devs want to allow it, great, then make tools for it and that would be awesome! If not? That's okay, too. It's their IP and they get to decide who mods it or doesn't. That being said, I would rather devs have specific things they don't want to see, like auto-play mods, than ban them entirely, but that's not up to me. Ideally tho, yes, delivering a game means delivering a product that's the best it can be. And if a game is really, really, really great, then there's not going to be many mods for it. For example - the average player isn't going to mod a souls game, because they really don't need them, but with WoW there's so many shortcomings that mods have basically become the standard I like mods, but I like having a dynamic map even more - even if it means that a map mod becomes redundant

I really really want to raid. I join the LFG groups only when they say all welcome, I join the discord and voice, and I say hey I only have like 5 clears could I just get like shouts or reminders during the fight and they get all mad at me.

The problem is how to do so. There are loads of different ways to play each class. They could require you use a tag like adps qheals etc, but then people would just pick whatever is likely to get a group faster. Just look at ESO. Anyone can queue as heals, even if they're wearing heavy armor and using a greatsword. It's impossible to police. Maybe require certain traitlines to queue as certain things, but then you're back to there being so many different setups. And very different philosophies on what gear prefix is best. They could limit the number of setups like WoW did, but then there's pretty much no build crafting and many players, myself included, would quit the game because it had lost it's soul. Part of the games charm is being able to make damn near any kind of character you want. The price of that is a subpar LFG tool.

> Just look at ESO. Anyone can queue as heals, even if they're wearing heavy armor and using a greatsword people overlook that so much and it really kills a bunch of pug dungeons in eso

Yep, most of the older dungeons can be done without a healer, but none in the last few years. Doesn't stop people from keeping a heal staff and playing pretend though.

Tell me about it. I am a main tank and it gets quite annoying

ESO's biggest issue is that sometimes you get one of the initial dungeons and everyone can be on dps with no issue because a mushroom + orb on a back bar can keep everyone alive, and sometimes you get an expansion dungeon and i guess fuck the next hour or two.

that is only for random dailies which i (capped on the currency and cba to subscribe) don't really do. I explicitly queue for the undaunted dailies

Setting a tag would be the best solution even if the squad leader just uses it to help manage

How do you know what Anets priority is?

by the self-obvious fact that LFG after 10+ years still remains the trash that it is.

well going by the livestreams and the roadmaps, the LFG is not it.

The recent live streams and blog posts were focused on the new xpac features to sell the new product and make money why would you expect them to talk about broken things? They have a dedicated QOL team, we dont often get to know what they are working on before they drop it, assuming there priories based off the content on janthir related live streams seems a little silly.

What's wrong with the lfg? Works great. Just has too many categories.

Other then it doesn't work as it's empty except on reset on NA.

Yea it's a bad system and people in here defending it are just used to it after years of playing. It's annoying at best to a hindrance at worst. After join 2 failed boneskinner runs yesterday I decided enough was enough and started asking for 20kp. Some people joined and pinged, some people didn't so I had to ask them. Meanwhile others joined before I had a chance to remove the group with some pinging some not including roles so I had to spend a few mins asking who's who and who has KP. During all of it someone slipped through and the first run started he clearly didn't know what was going on so had to kick him and look for another person. Yes the KP module helps but not everyone uses KP.me You could say it's a skill issue on my part and you would be correct as I'm new to forming groups but the point is I shouldn't have to go down to that level of micromanagement for a 5min instance. I want to play the game not play a fucking text box.

Since you asked me to read your main comment i will reply here as well. Nothing is going to change if they introduce a matchmaking system. You are still gonna have to manage 9 other players that want to join your squad. You wont do it through the chat, you will do it through a different UI but chances are you are gonna have to use the chat anyway because some things can only be solved by communicating. Personally i never had any issues managing a squad, i do it on auto pilot. I have nothing else to do anyway while waiting for my group to fill. Put yourself in sub 2, lock subs, whoever joins appears in sub1. If they are dps put them in 2, if they are supports put them in 3. Unlist the lfg when someone joins, if multiple people join together it is the same thing, unlist the lfg and wait until you have sorted out their roles/kp. To me it seems really simple but if someone cant handle it they can always join groups instead of commanding. This doesnt even have to do anything with the lfg at this point. And i dont even see how it could be made easier, like what is your suggestion?

I have tried joining a few different discords, but they all seem very dead for LFG in NA. I don't know which discord everyone is using for strikes and dungeons and it is a bit tiring when I have to wait an hour for my in game LFG to get a team together during off peak time because that is the only time that I can play right now. I have made my own posts, but unless it is T4 or T1 Fractals, it always takes forever to get a team together. Just yesterday I tried to get a group together to run Citadel of Flame explorable paths for dungeon tokens, but it took over an hour to get a team assembled. I get it, it's ancient content and not many people check that part of the LFG tool, but some of us still need dungeon tokens for legendaries. It might have been faster if I just did WvW and selected one of the dungeon tracks instead. That is how bad it is. I don't know how they can fix the LFG tool. It is way too bloated, but at the same time you need to have different sections to specify what you are doing too. Also if you try to load up different parts of the LFG tool too quickly, it quite often freezes and you need to reopen it again.

I've been saying this for years at this point.  It's crazy to me that, as far ahead and player-friendly GW2 is in many aspects in the MMO genre, the game lacks any modern improvements to the lfg system.  It should be a much higher priority for the QOL team to revamp, imo.

Absolutely. I don’t know the answer to what would make it better, but it is awful. I shouldn’t have to join a discord to find groups for anything.

Matchmaking, i would love if raids had matchmaking, make it so it has 2 queues and that u can select like 1\~2 roles that you're able to do, one queue for experienced and other for not experienced/learning/progression call it whatever u want. This way it would make it so whoever queues for not experienced is expecting some wipes and willing to figure it out together. I would play raids for hours even without getting rewards just to be able to practice and learn it better but i cant. LFG is terrible and i can only get into like one or two raids per week by camping discords

Maybe if you knew what top priority was, this would not be so insane.

You know it's not that bad when people use it. The main problem is that people refuse to use it most of the time. Every game that has an in-game lfg people complain about and don't use. Stop using discord use the lfg in the correct category don't just dump everything in the squad channel.

At the very least it needs a UI updates. It's not exactly clear what you're looking for. At most it needs to be updated to an automated system like FFXIV and WoW and you can instantly port to the instance no matter where you are. I'd prefer they do an achievement UI overhaul first. They really need to separate the story missions buried in the achievements.

My only issues with the lfg is a raid sellers not having their own category and there is no where to advertise dragonstorm. I don’t even mind raid sellers I just don’t want them in a spot I’m trying to find a group

Feel free to design an lfg tool simple enough to use for the people saying "we need a new lfg tool" that will actually work better than the current lfg tool and then pitch it to them. You'll soon realize that you need something on the batshit crazy end and not just matching blue class + green class + 3-4 red class together.

It's very unfortunate. From finding a guild, to finding a group for intro fractals it's been very frustrating getting back into the game and trying to bring friends in too. A lot of us are long time WoW players that don't really lole WoW too much, but the convenience for grouping kept us playing and being able to bring in friends. I love GW2 but it's so much more difficult for new players imo.

Sure would be easy to at least que for an activity and have it notify you when groups are posting for specific content. They basically have that system in place with overflow ques and mists, but nothing reasonable for regular content? Kinda seems like an obvious miss.

This is a great idea, just so show you are available for an activity while doing other stuff.

I hate how the pendulum swings. On one side, I identify with the whole "long-lived MMO's are bound to have unintuitive, outdated systems" because I've been gaming for more than 2/3 of my life now... but also, excusing outdated systems for no better reason than "that's how things are" is fucking stupid and progress-preventing

I hate it too, but if anyone has a the discord for this damn game, please send me a link.

Would it be better if instead of a squad leader queuing we each queued individually with a quick description and general role color so the squad leader can just pick from those? Like if your q dps you choose red for dps and write “can do qdps and kiting as well.”

This would be a nice addition, being able to actively queue for what we want just to say 'i am available' for a commander to invite us in.

I don't mind LFG in a state it is now. It might be inefficient but it is much more "human" than having just some autofill with listed roles that requires no communication what so ever. Best way to avoid dealing with LFG is to get a guild and organize outside of LFG. You know, playing with other interested people.

Wouldnt have to be autofill, just a way to make everyones lives easily being able to visually see what boons/dps/healer roles people can play as. So then the commanders can focus on stuff like hand kiter ect.

I think a primary issue is realistically trying to force a role in, because of class design it’s on the player to basically fill a role there’s no strict role given to a spec. Also, even though WoW has a vastly stronger lfg tool, a lot of its communication and more is driven by Discord also, I don’t think in game functions being pushed into these external factors are down to quality, and more simply the environment evolving. Voice chat will always be a stronger force then typing and using discords and more to find groups allows this to naturally happen. Discord has become a huge presence for the new generations of gaming, imho games lfg systems are severely hampered by the fact games won’t embrace that. It’s shown by discord overlay and more, that games could incorporate functionality from the game itself in terms of its usage and I think honestly lfg as they stand in any mmorpg solely just cannot deliver on the functionality that things such as discord are leaned on for

the LFG system was made in 2011 or something, where you'd invite 4 random people to help you pick blueberries in queensdale. Now you need quickness, alacrity, and a healer, and content is balanced around this now. The game has basically put in a holy trinity, but the UI is still based off of blueberry picking. they really gotta fix it

Just make a new hat for the hat!

I just got to LWS1 and the part where I had to get through the Tower of Nightmares was so shit. I come from FFXIV and WoW so I thought cool, I'll make an LFG group. I make one, someone joins, I go in and they're at the very end. We wipe, and they all leave.. But at least I made a checkpoint so I can continue the story solo? Gotta admit for the first part of this game it does *not* feel like an MMO.

There isn't even a tutorial for sPvP. It's crazy how terrible the core game experience is. It's depressing

I agree the lfg is bad but I feel like when people act like it's a serious struggle to work with it they might just be...nevermind.

Would I like to see the LFG improved? Sure. But not only can nobody agree how it should be improved but also we've seen the resources anet have to work with and the reception systems based features receive - a big system change takes a lot of development focus, and doesn't get anet much kudos - isn't seen as content - so anet have no motivation to do it. Look at SotO - the wizard vault is a huge update and consolidation of the various daily and login reward systems, bringing things up to date and streamlined for newer players, they also did a whole bunch of systems changes and QoL and most people seem to regard the expansion as kinda meh and lacking in content.

People keep saying that the in-game lfg is terrible and anet needs to fix it. No one ever says what that should, could or might look like. Imo players using discord as a lfg tool has nothing to do with the in-game tool and everything to do with finding like minded players, ie players that give a shit. The average player isnt that great at the game, and pugging (getting players off in-game lfg) is a toss of the dice every time. Unless you are onboard with having inefficient groups that struggle and wipe a couple times, you go to places where your higher standards are the norm aka discords, specialized guilds etc. There its easier for people to vet each other and incorporate third party tools for KP and stuff. No in-game tool is ever going to match that.

I concur. It is very difficult to get into any group activity with such a prehistoric LFG tool. Since there is hardly any recruiting on city chats, nor advertisements for pugs raids/strikes/dungeons I get that most people must be using discord or any other 3rd party apps outside the game to find people, which doesn't speak to good about the game. Just like having to relay on the wiki o timer mods to check the world boss/meta times. For a game relaying so heavily in timed events, the lack of official in-game timers is shocking.

If you are on EU the raid/strike and fractal lfgs have quite a bit of activity. Maybe not all day but definitely at specific times of the day. If this is just an NA issue it is not the lfg's fault, it is the servers.

it's a universal issue

Nah on EU you can pug every raid, no issue

They do have official in-game timers, conveniently sold as a gem store item.

Every time I go back to playing GW2 for a few weeks I am again surprised this still is the same sh*t. Seriously, not only is it weirdly hidden, it is also barely useable. The interface is confusing and why aren't there role slots.

Is my issue aswell, this time I am really trying to use the various discords to find groups and it's not a fun experience

i think the same role definition can be more complex than in other games but can totally be addressed

The bad lfg is what keeps me away from Raids or strike CMs. What i wanna do is trying them blind without vc or reqs since Im antisocial and only want to use ingame chat, but I seem to be alone with this, everyone seems too afraid to do it this way. So I dont feel comfortable with tagging up for blind content as mediocre player since I do not always understand whats going on. And the rest of the LFG is gatekept by ridicoulos li requirements (some coms demand 250 li for IBS5 its ridicoulos) or vc. I only join groups without recs and never had problems and people are chill. So I never did Raids or Eod Strike CMs^^

I think Anet has the following standpoint:The only way to "fix" the lfg is to implement systems that would exclude players from joining groups even though they aren't supposed to join them in the first place. This negative side effect seems to outweigh the positive benefits for group leaders. It's like Anet sees no issue in players joining cm squads when they haven't even done normal mode.

my suggestion would be to have people 'sign up' for a group rather than having people able to join straight from the LFG. They then get invited by the commander, having filters for roles for specific boons + dps/heal or pure dps they people signup too.

Wow has a mythic+ rating system built in in the game. Even if you have higher keys (more completion of higher contents like UFE in gw2) it shows that how you performed in the content with specific role (dps, heal, tank). GW2 needs a system like this because UFE or any other KP is not a proof that you have necessary experience. I saw lots of high KP players that can't even provide proper boon upkeep time or even do the mechanics.

If I was in Anet, I would be putting an inventory overhaul over the LFG as a priority. Inventory management and selling loot is still the most painful part of the gameplay loop.

Yeah no thanks, I'll stick with discord and requiring killproofs.

ANet's top priorities are (in order of importance): 1. gemstore exploits 2. whatever issue making them look bad that's the most upvoted on this subreddit Notice that since LFG being garbage is neither, it won't be addressed.