When playing you want to be able to catch a player running past or battling next to you and immediately ask for an invite, invite them or both create a party and invite them. You also don’t want to sit next to a boss spawn area and spam requests for every appearing solo player. Moreover, people are often not really as responsive as one might naively guess. So saving a request as a macro is a valid method but not really effective and even with a shortcut most people are generally not that fond of investing their time on such pitiful tasks.
Note, that the suggestions follow the current scheme of not allowing players to request invitations.
So the first thing to do is to add a tag you can activate via a shortcut while you’re without a party. It should either appear where the party name would be or if it’s just a small symbol then next to your name. In case it is a text tag, e.g., “Looking for Party”, the letters need to be colored distinctly (e.g., orange). Also, to inhibit players from abusing the function to get more attention there should be a cool-down of some sort and a finite duration so that players won’t simply forget to turn it off, e.g. 120 secs.
Additionally, when activated in party settings, players with such a visible tag should also have their level shown next to their name. This is particularly important to those without a party who intend to create one and immediately invite someone, read below.
Next, the right click player option menu label “Party request” has to adapt based on your and the other player’s state. Meaning, if you aren’t in a party and the other player isn’t either the function needs to switch to “Create party and invite” or just “Invite player”.
This may be a translation issue but the current “Request party” isn’t proper English as it implies you want to ask for an invite to someone else’s party while its function is the opposite. Change this to “Invite player”, too.
Inter-channel, Inter-map party finder:
When the above suggestions are implemented the following is partly redundant but still necessary to provide more comfortable management of coming and going members.
When a party is set to public these following visibility settings need to appear: channel-only, map-wide and globally (naming can of course be changed). By default, parties remain non-public. Public parties have by default global and map-wide enabled.
When set to channel-only players will see a party-info tab or an entry in the party finder only if the party leader is on the map, the same channel and similar area of the map. Map-wide works the same but independent of your current channel while global means your party can be found via the party finder wherever you are. As implied, the latter can be set together with either channel-only or map-wide. To help players easily recognize these combinations, the first two should have a dot-selection while “global” a check-mark.
It is also very important that the map name and channel number for all members of a party is indicated below their respective character name or at very least when hovering with the mouse over their tab.
Since party settings are by far more frequently used the default shortcuts should be set to F4, friends list to F6, companion to F7 and adventure journal to F9.
Search for party members:
To concentrate on this system, the option “Search for Party Members” should be limited to those with an active “Looking for Party” tag. Otherwise divide the option to all and only those with the tag.
Also, instead of an annoying huge tag for a single character, party leaders should see tabs similar to those from the “Party info” list. There should usually be room for one to three tabs based on the display resolution.
Party info tabs:
In combination with the above system, by default party info tabs should only appear for such public parties. In other case player will rely on the “Looking for Party” tag or change the preferences themselves to show all nearby parties.
These bubbles need to show what channel the party leader is located at. Let us also whisper to the leader via right-click->whisper. That takes less time and you won’t be troubled with weird or complicated names.
Public party list:
In addition to the channel and character info the current map name has to shown.
Search and filter by level range, class, closeness, quests and events has to be implemented. Currently this list is absolutely useless.
Recommended player list:
Add a setting to look only for those with a tag, otherwise see the paragraph “Search for party members” above.
Party invitation window:
Increase the invitation window to include the class names, levels, map name and channel number of the party you’re being invited to. Either on hover or right away the party description should be included as well, although the size might have to be limited.
@STAFF_Shawn @STAFF_Marikim @STAFF_J I wanna see a “We’ve notified the devs!” post 