Dancer Archive

Hi there,

one thing I was always curious about, why is the "looking for group" function isn't actually used?

From someone's , who wants to join an entertainer group in a place of entertaining, point of view it could be relatively simple to get a group it could be relatively simple to get a group by just typing /lfg. Even if they don't actually want to interact with anyone.
But you won't get a group this way, usually not that is.

That leads us to the point, why people who are marked "lfg" usually do not become invited.
Again, it could be relatively easy for a group leader. You type "/who lfg" from time to time and invite those who aren't listed. If there is more than one who isn't grouped but doesn't fit into your group you send this person a /tell that they should consider opening a new group. As the state of the art is, you still can do this by a recursive macro, so that people who are looking for group are automatically listed every five minutes.
But still it just isn't done that way.

So why not?

The only reasons I can think of are that 1. people don't know what "lfg" means, 2. they are not used to utilise this feature and 3. they know about the feature as is, but do not know about "/who lfg", which makes it far less valuable.

Assuming that you agree that stopping those shoutings or even kind questions to turn it into something natural and obvious among entertainers I could think of two ways, one for us one for the devs.

• We should just start using this feature. If one of us enters a place of entertaining and wants to join a entertainer group, she'd just mark herself "lfg". If one of us becomes leader she runs a macro which checks "/who lfg" every five minutes.
  Starting to use this feature would make more people wonder about it and learn to know it.
• The major flaw of this basically very nice feature is, that it isn't explicit enough. You may have tried to mark yourself "looking for group", but you didn't see the tag, or what it changed, so you took it away again. You may have seen the tag, but you wouldn't have recognized its meaning. So to improve it, it would be nescessary to change it to something more explicite. A "GroupSearcher" tag for example would be far more explicite. Or something that is shorter and still as obvious, what I didn't think of yet.

Any improvement wouldn't only be an advantage for the entertainers, but for other classes to. Someone who is marked lfg and hanging around the mission terminals in Coronet starport is obviously looking for a solo group. Someone who is marked lfg, displays a alliance pilot title and is hanging around in the starport hall is obviosly looking for a rebel pilot group.

This does not mean it will stop interaction or impersonise groups even more. You still can walk over to your friends and ask them if they may invite you. You still can walk over to some other people you find interesting and just chat with them, making it unnescessary to to even mention you are looking for a group since they while doubtlessly see it.
It just makes it something natural and obvious. Like a slight guesture, or the mere fact that you are already there and already taking part in the entertainment, so that is unnatural to not be technically part of the group.

/curtsey
Sharven

PS: While I think about it, it would be helpful to have a field in the status monitor that shows your own full name, title, guild tags, tags and name, off course.

Message Edited by Rabenschwinge on 12-21-2004 06:17 PM

Good post and good ideas. I think the biggest reason it isn't used is because it isn't well known or understood. I know the first time I saw it I thought it was some variant of LD. What we need is something that gets the knowledge out. I certainly didn't know you could /who lfg.

I think the biggest reason is people just don't care.

I wonder what percentage of AFKers/future buffbots don't even know what spam is in their macro? How many of them just cut and paste it from someone on another server, or from some website, and never look at what's in it?

It'd be funny to see if we could circulate a macro that spams stupid stuff like "I am an idiot!" and "I can't even proof read the macro I copied!" and "If you're watching me you're wasting your time!"

But I agree, a general use of LFG would be wonderful to have and would cut down on spam. If I'm group leader, though, I just send an invite to everyone who comes in and starts performing. /shrug

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MyT_Chicken wrote:

Thats to much work for the over exhausted AFKers....They would rather run into a cantina, start playing, then spam every second "If I'm not in a group, please invite me!!!" "Could you please heal my action, I'm working so hard to relieve your mind!" "Oh and don't forget to Tip, because I'm working so hard"

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If we put sarcasm away, you will find that the feature is even helpful for notorious afkers (I just didn't dare to mention it).

/startdance exotic4;
/lfg;
/join;
/flourish 2;
/pause 10;
/macro afkgrind;

The joke about it is, you can't be marked "looking for group" when you are actually in a group. No need to spam: "Please invite me to entertainer group if I am not in one."
(Personal remark: I don't use macros that last longer than two seconds, I just know how they are written. And if I used macros I would use something for more interesting than this.)

As a refugee from old EQ I always /invite someone with the LFG tag on, but to be honest it’s so very rare people bother using it, most rather spam “INVITE PLZ-THX” over and over even after they are already in a group till they go on my /ignore.
I definitely agree, it should be used lot more and to me it's more noticeable then a spam.
Only draw back is sometimes when lag-monster is worst then usual I do turn names off and in that case it’s not visible.

Deli'ah

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Petronela wrote:
Only draw back is sometimes when lag-monster is worst then usual I do turn names off and in that case it’s not visible.

Deli'ah

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That ain't a problem. Type "/who lfg" and you those in invite range, even those not in you field of view, who are marked lfg.
As stated above, you still can macro it to be done automatically every five minutes, so you don't even have to care to keep everything in sight.

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Rabenschwinge wrote:

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Petronela wrote:
Only draw back is sometimes when lag-monster is worst then usual I do turn names off and in that case it’s not visible.

Deli'ah

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That ain't a problem. Type "/who lfg" and you those in invite range, even those not in you field of view, who are marked lfg.
As stated above, you still can macro it to be done automatically every five minutes, so you don't even have to care to keep everything in sight.

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Sweet
Learn something new everyday....
Thank you

Deli'ah

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Rabenschwinge wrote:

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MyT_Chicken wrote:

Thats to much work for the over exhausted AFKers....They would rather run into a cantina, start playing, then spam every second "If I'm not in a group, please invite me!!!" "Could you please heal my action, I'm working so hard to relieve your mind!" "Oh and don't forget to Tip, because I'm working so hard"

---

If we put sarcasm away, you will find that the feature is even helpful for notorious afkers (I just didn't dare to mention it).

/startdance exotic4;
/lfg;
/join;
/flourish 2;
/pause 10;
/macro afkgrind;

The joke about it is, you can't be marked "looking for group" when you are actually in a group. No need to spam: "Please invite me to entertainer group if I am not in one."
(Personal remark: I don't use macros that last longer than two seconds, I just know how they are written. And if I used macros I would use something for more interesting than this.)

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Now that I didn't know. Interesting.

With that being said, I would still venture to say that most people just don't know about it.