My experience using the LFG tool

I'm rather surprised that the LFG tool hasn't gotten much use, so I thought I'd take it upon myself to champion it... for whatever reason that may be, and I thought I'd post my experiences so far in a thread on the forums.

Attempt #1: My first attempt was on Virtue with my fire blaster. Since it is the most populated server, I had ran a pre-formed Lambda as my first trial and wanted to try out the BAF. I wasn't timing it exactly, but if I had to guess I'd say it took about 15-20 mins to put me into a BAF. Things ran smoothly for the most part, even though we weren't full. I think we were pretty close to the minimum. We made it to the end, but a couple people either quit or disconnected and we didn't have the manpower or firepower to take out Nightstar, Seige, and the reinforcements at the same time. We were at 10 members at that point.

My conclusion: a completely random LFG is not a great idea. Note: This was also only a few days after launch, so no one was +3 or even +2.

Attempt #2: Technically attempt #3 somewhere in there too probably. I realized that the LFG is probably not used at all on the lower populated servers since everyone I can see is making pre-formed teams. I also see complaints about having to navigate between RWZ1 and RWZ2 and any other zone to get everyone together before starting. So I thought I'd try to recruit people on Pinnacle, more or less what I consider my home server. Specifically [Pinnbadges]. Unfortunately, I was met by naysayers telling me that it can't work that way. You have to have at least the minimum and it will fill the rest from the LFG queue. Even after directly quoting the patch notes, I was still met with resistance and arguing. So I figured I wouldn't get enough interest and decided to try again later.

Attempt #3: Since I was met with resistance on Pinnacle, I moved onto Liberty, and the [LB] global channel. I sold the heck out of a "LFG Lambda" and even started sending out team /search /tells. I was getting a little bit of interest, about 5 or 6 people. After about 15 minutes I was starting to think it wasn't going to work when I saw the popup saying 0 out of 16 people have entered. It worked! Although it did hang for a long time on 15 out of 16, we eventually all zoned in. I asked if everyone there was from [LB] and got one person saying they were not (and he possibly could have been the 1 response I got out of the team /search) There were 2 empty spots in the League after I had zoned in. One of them filled after a minute or so, but the last spot never filled, even though I recieved a /tell from someone saying they were in the queue, but not in the trial, and definitely had the "willing to join in-progress events" checked.

I plan on continuing to try these on the servers I have 50s on and reporting my successes and failures here.

Some things I've noticed so far:

Plus side: You don't have to all be in the same zone, you can market while waiting if that's your thing.

Down side: You have no idea how many people are in the queue. I was asking for tells, but my count was at 6 when I got the popup saying that 16 were ready to go.

Down side: You have no control over who is going to be the leader. I'm pretty sure I would have been the first person in the queue, unless people are randomly entering the queue on a whim, but I was not the leader of either team.

Down side: We had an empty spot that wouldn't fill. I'm not sure if it was someone that managed to get into the league and DC'd on purpose, but the game held the spot for them, or if it was something else. More data is needed on this one.

Right now, it seems like there are more down sides than up sides. We'll see how that goes.

Well, unfortunately I found out what some people have probably been telling me. I tried again today on Pinnacle to form an LFG Lambda. It formed us together shortly after we hit 8 members, and would not let anyone else on our trial even though shortly afterwards there were 3 more people waiting in the LFG queue. I know this because 1: I talked to one of them and confirmed it. And 2: after about 5 mins of waiting at the start of the trial, we decided to re-form in RWZ and I found out that after we dropped below 8 members, it added those 3 to our trial.

My question: Is it working as intended that it only fills from the "in-progress" queue if you drop below the minimum, or is this a bug? I would hope that this is a bug, so that you can form an LFG team and wait at the start of the trial to fill to the maximum instead of using RWZ or Pocket D. I think I'm not quite done with this yet, but it's not looking good even from someone who sees this as a good idea, it's just not working well enough to use at all at this point in time.

Given the current limitations of the LFG tool, I've found the best use for it is to team up with a few friends and then queue. Our league gets filled with people that are often more casual than the crowd hanging out in preset teams, so it's more challenging and fun for us, and (I hope) rewarding for the other folks in that they get to complete a trial without as much trouble as on a complete PUG queue. Another plus is that there is no lag at the minimum team size.

I agree that as it is, it's really not suited for real pickup groups. The tool needs work to serve its intended purpose.

I haven't totally given up. Tried a couple times again today on Pinnacle. The first time, it didn't seem like I was getting any interest so I gave up until later. Then I started advertising again on Pinnbadges and sending tells using the team /search tool. After doing this for about 30 minutes, the popup window came up showing 16 members waiting in the queue. 1 declined, and 2 others didn't click in so we ran with 13 members. We cut it close on the warehouse side of things with the smaller team in there, but we managed to get all items from both sides and successfully defeated Marauder.

The biggest issue is still the fact that you are waiting in the blind. There's no way to know exactly how many people are in the queue, and how long before it starts you with less than the maximum players.

You are NOT talking about the LFG tool. You are talking about the queue.

Personally, I love the tool in concept and would like it to work beyond the incarnate trials. I'd queue up for basic mission PUGs.

In practice, though, I've had spotty luck with it thus far. I've spent hours going nowhere in the LFG queue when it professes that the wait time is less than a minute.

I've used the queue twice: once on the first day with a friend, and once more recently solo.

The first time it put us in a BAF which we failed during the prisoner escape. (It was the first day, after all.)

The second time it worked like a charm. I was the 15th person. I expect that omeone had built a 14-person league and gave up waiting to fill the last two spots. Everyone knew what they were doing and we trounced Marauder.

These were both on Pinnacle.

In the long term, I don't think that queuing solo for these will work very well under the current conditions, especially on smaller servers. Players want to exert a lot of control over team composition, and many of the better players actively despise playing on pickup teams. Playing with friends is more reliable, but I'm always willing to give PuGs a shot.

Random teams might work if the minimum is 16 players, but if it will start you with just 8, that just won't cut it if the players are less experienced, they're all just 50 or 50+1, or you're missing a couple of key roles.

If queuing for trials was cross-server, though, I think it could eventually become very popular. It would be very beneficial for small-pop servers. If it could be made to work cross-server with any task/strike force it would allow people a way to run them almost on demand. (I know that would be hard with most TFs because they're not single instances like the trials. But we can hope )

One thing that's missing, though, is some kind of interface that tells you how many people are queued for each event. If some of the logic of the arena interface could be adapted to the trials that would be really cool, especially if you could see that ATs of the people who are queued.

From my understanding, the LFG/queue system works like this.

X number of people queue either as a team, or solo.

Once X > minimal number of people for Y trial (be it 8 for lambda, or 12 of baf) an invisable timer starts. I think its in the ballpark of 120 seconds.

After the timer drops, then the queue system sends the number of people (assumings its over the minimal requirements) into the trial. If ANY TIME during the trial, the number of people drops below the minimal number, the LFG system will fill those empty spots.

If the number of spots drops below the max, but DOES NOT drop below the minimal, those spots will be left empty until the next time that league requeues.

Its much better to preform your league/team and queue that way, with the possibility of getting 'randoms' as i call them if your over the minimal, but under the max, then it is to queue solo, and hope you get a spot on a trial that hasn't already cleared all your iXP.

Regarding this topic...

I try and get on one trial a day after work. I'm grinding for my third Incarnate's slots, trying to be a bit more relaxed about things with this one.

I haven't been able to get on an event as a solo character using the LFG tool since the opening days of I20. It's quite frustrating. Typically, I will log in, queue up, and wait around for an 'event join' prompt to come up while I draw pictures or something. Average wait is always around five minutes or so according to the tool, yet I will often sit there for 30-40 minutes without a nibble until I give up and go do something else.

I always choose 'first available,' and I usually click 'willing to join In Progress events' when I remember. I just want to get on one and am not picky about which.

One of two things happens. Either all that time will pass, nothing will happen, and I'll eventually either give up or find a group organizing to run the things without using the LFG tool, or I'll get prompted to join an 8-man Lambda, one person will decline or time out, and we'll all be dumped back in line. Again, I have not been able to join an event this way since the opening days of the issue.

Am I using it wrong or something? Is the 'Average Wait' estimation bugged? Is the tool itself not working properly?

The average wait is "bugged" in that it seems to be including all the pre made leagues in it's equations. as has been said in other threads don't use it (except if you dc and want to get back in the event you left).

I've completely given up on the LFG tool, it really needs to go back to the drawing board as the way it currently functions it is rapidly becoming something that will be used by no one. I've been attempting to use it since i20 launched, and was able to get into 3 or so trial with it over hours of attempts (all of them 8 man Lambdas that failed). Those were all right after release as well. I was actually looking forward to the ease of the LFG tool as well, so its a bit of shame. I can't justify sitting in it for well over an hour when the "average wait time" is 5 minutes or less while I see multiple Lambdas/BAFs advertised, filled and started in the global channels.

I'd ideally like it completely retooled so a team/league leader could advertise his TF/Trial to the server. Ie... I would like to start an ITF. I open the LFG tool, click through some buttons to announce the ITF, the number of people I would like on it, whether it was a moITF, etc. Then that would populate out to the server, so other players could open the LFG tool, select like "Trials/TFs forming" and see a list of all the ones that are trying to fill. They could then select my ITF, be instantly added to my team if they met the criteria, and when it had filled to my specifications it would start, teleporting us all into the first mission.

They really need to do something like this, because I think the LFG tool is headed to the CoH graveyard at this point.

They could give an extra reward at the end for people who did not join as part of a full team/league.

Perhaps tier it so that if a league is
-- under X members (perhaps 30%?), it gets the best reward;
-- under Y members (60%?), over X members, it gets a second-tier, not-as-good-as-first reward;
-- under Z members (max), over Y members, it gets a third-tier reward;
-- if full, no extra reward.

Folks would game it by joining queue as several small groups at the same time, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee that everyone who queues will be in the same league.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

I wish we had an "advertisement system." It might work like this (please excuse low quality of mock up image):



Basically the reverse of the current team search tool. Instead of the tool listing people who are LFG, people could publish "advertisements" that list their name and a custom message. Right clicking the message would let you send a tell to the person who created it.

The message would remove itself if its creator exits the game. To avoid having it filled with useless clutter, players could also right click to report inappropriate messages (e.g. "I am awesome" or whatever spam people put in there).

Importantly (to me) the ad system would not have a lot of "automatic" logic. The message would not disappear just because the leader has a full team, for example. While this might make the system more cluttery than it could be, IMO it is better than the alternative.

To get me to use that useless tool you'd need to give completely queue formed teamed a bonus 5 Astrals and 3 Emps on completion.

Yes I'm serious, I find the tool that bad.