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Tuesday 22 April 2014

[GW2] Rediscovering the LFG System

As a replacement for the good old yell in general chat, the in-game LFG system has, in the past, had a rather uninspiring run. I've always been part of a reasonably active guild, so it usually isn't too much of a problem to gather 2/3 people together and then try to pick up (and ultimately probably carry) a PUG through a dungeon path or fractal run.

However, with the latest update requiring all accounts to run through the Story mode of each dungeon in order to unlock the attributed PvP reward path, I've been dusting off my little level 45 thief and turning my eye on a few of the story modes.
Even with this update encouraging at least one run through, there still isn't a huge influx of players looking to do story modes. Old players only need to run through it once more after all, and no-one is looking to the story mode as a means of repeatable content they can return to for a regular income. So, as is customary for me, when I came to do the content a few days after the initial rush, I had to turn to the LFG system to scrape together a rag-tag bunch of PUGs to get the job done.

And I have to say, I've been pleasantly surprised.
The system worked fine: I posted my advertisement, within about 15 seconds I had a team together and we entered the dungeon. That's it. That's absolutely all I needed. No bells and whistles, just "this is what I want to do" "That is also what I want to do, lets do it together".

Honestly, I don't know why I was so surprised - but I was! For a long time I've been floundering in this game, I completed my second legendary and turned towards yet another long-term crafting goal (Infinite Light) but that was just because I really didn't know what else to do. Any and all time spent afking in LA (or Gendarren) was time wasted, I've got a thesis to write after all. If I wasn't afk then I was hopping from meta-even to meta-event, doing the same 7/8 events over and over was becoming soul-crushingly tiresome  - if I'm going to waste it then I want to waste it doing something fun!
I think I started to think that there was nothing left to do in the game which lead to boredom and frustration, but with the LFG system I've been able to rediscover some of the early-game enjoyment I had in the very first few weeks of the game by re-exploring the story mode and explorable paths of the earlier dungeons. I'm hoping to progress this exploration of the world of PUGs into the more difficult areas of the game and whilst I recognise that this is riskier, I've never had a horror PUG experience (excepting PvP) and I really hope this good-PUG-luck can continue.

Having said all that, they could do with making the system a little more visible.

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