I agree.
I lost interest when you began insisting that the devs encouraged farming.
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I lost interest when you began insisting that the devs encouraged farming.
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Whether intentional or not, they did. They enabled farmers and put a farm house in every zone. Not sure how that doesn't encourage the practice? Players are even getting so bold as to just come out and just /b "lf ae farm".
So let them... and make it easier for players who don't roll that way to filter them out.
Though even if you ignore that whole aspect of it, this is a workable idea that would make life easier for forming teams. The current system sounds nice on paper, but in practice it's backwards with no recruiting mechanism for players who are LFM.
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My AE Story Arcs:
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The Anti-Farming and Anti-PL'ing sentiments have been pretty well covered in other threads. So let's get onto this Improved LFT/LFM Menu.
What I would suggest:
*Keep the Not Accepting Invites option. Working as Intended. Clicking this option would unclick all others.
*Have options of Looking for Arena, Zone PvP, TF's, Missions, AE and Street Hunting. These would not be exclusive of each other, so you could have multiples checked.
*Have Not Looking for Team remain? Probably, but setting this option would unclick the others above.
*Remove Looking for Any. Too Vague and rarely true.
Create a LFM form for team leaders? Sure.
*Have the search menu (by default) not show people who are already on teams, with the exception of team leaders.
*Have Team Leaders show up on the search menu with a star by thier names, and a number showing the size of thier current team.
Example: HeroGuy----- *5 is leading a 5-person team.
*Have People on TF's (or otherwise unable to recruit new players) not show up on the search, as a default.
And somehow encourage people to actually set thier dang LFT flags, rather than stay "Not Looking For Team" while spamming "Blah Blah LFT!!" over Broadcast. 
Here's a list of search window enhancements I've been keeping:
<ul type="square">[*] Searches should never include players already on teams and solo players in TF mode (e.g. Ouroboros flashbacks).[*] Level range increments should be by 5's, not 10's. [*] Player ratings (stars) should show up in the search window.[*] GIgnored players should not show up in searches.[*] The Origin filter should be removed.[*] The window should be resizable.[*] The list should never be truncated.[*] When in a co-op zone, allow me to search for characters of the opposite faction.[*] When searching by name, match against any part of the name, not just the start of the name. [*] Remember my settings from my last search. If someone drops from the team, it'd be convenient to do a new /search and have the options already set for me from last time. It doesn't have to persist after I log off, but make it persist during a game session. [*] Make comments searchable. About to do the Nightstar Praetorian AV? Search for people needing her for the Portal Jockey accolade.[*] Add a "Looking for AE missons" flag. [/list]And here's the most radical request: a "team looking for more" capability. Several games already have something like this, for example WAR's "open party" system. I see so many people who don't want to own the star to build a team themselves, but they
aggressively try to get onto existing teams. Those folks are the ones broadcasting "lvl 30 scrapper lft" and even sending tells asking to join teams. With a Team LFM function, they could browse teams that had openings.
The team lead would use radio buttons like the normal search window to set allowable opt-inparameters; anyone outside the limits he set wouldn't see his team listed when they searched for teams. For example, if the team lead was OK with anyone joining he'd click the "All" radio button under AT, but perhaps he wants more support, he could click "Tank, Controller, Defender". If he did that, only those 3 ATs would see his team listed when they searched. Similarly he could set an acceptable level range; if the team had mentors he might pick a wide range but more often he'd want to filter to a narrow level range.
Lastly the team lead could type in a short comment so folks looking for teams could see that the team was doing; some people would like to avoid teams just grinding scanner missions so the comments would avoid unpleasant surprises. And just like some people reject blind invites, people would learn to be wary of teams that filled in nothing in that comment field!
A related suggestion: add $Difficulty and $Zone variables to compliment the existing $Level variable, to enable invite macros like this:
/macro Inv, "t $target, Want to join us running a level $Level $Difficulty mission in $Zone?"
Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.
In an effort to consolidate the farming discussion, we are directing further discussion of this topic to a single thread. Please continue all discussion on farming in this thread.
Thanks,
-Mod8-
If you are using Latin in your post you are probably trolling
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This idea is a result of the issue of farming that has grown even more pervasive since I 14. I mean, heck, the game practically encourages it now by having the farm house in the every zone, including the newbie zone. So now let's just accept that that's how a lot of people want to play... But try to keep them separated from the rest of us.
Finding a team would be easier and quicker if I can filter out all of the folks who have no interest in doing the same kind of missions that I do. The current LFT flags don't really cut it. "Not Looking" still includes people who might join if you ask. It effectively filters nothing because not enough people bother using this feature, not even to say "Looking for Any" even though they are.
It would be more accurate to describe the kind of player you are with a preference flag of "Farmer" or "Story Missions" or "Radio" or "Task Force" or "Hunting". Let players choose multiple flags, not just 1. "Looking for Any" is too broad because maybe they are not open to a TF (and on the flipside, being open to a TF does not have to mean that that's the only invite you would accept). And of course keep "Not Looking (decline invites)" as an option.
Combined with this, it would also help if the player with the star (or solo) could set a flag of LFM, not LFT... "Forming team for" Story Missions / Farm / Radio / TF / Hunting. That way you don't have to necessarily go through the list and send /tells. Players who really are LFT could contact you and maybe save you time.
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My AE Story Arcs:
Family Matters - 82136