same thing happend

"it attempts to find parties

"it attempts to find parties for you near your current Rank."

Oh, that is great.

Not only do they enjoy the fact that they have made missions mandatory for new players due to it being the only way to gain clearance and the HoH, they are embracing this.

Now, finding groups in the Arcade is going to be based on mission rank?

Dear Lord.

+9000

Can we get a 10 hour version with Trolliolololo mixed in plox?

~Luke the 5* Soldier

I get that too, but it never charges me. Even on non-terminal/town depths it shows up at 10 CE even though I have an elevator pass. I'm not sure if it charges people without passes for those depths, but I haven't been charged.

EDIT: If we got free elevators I would be so happy; got 60k CE to sell, and I could use a 100cr/ce ratio! ^-^

Had a chance to test this featured in the test server. Personally i like it, not everyone has a 250 friend list of a full guild to join so this a great way to open the windows for many people.

I stopped reading after the first 10-15 veteran players whining that it just tells them that everyone their rank is playing KoA.

This an awesome feature for new player retention, almost necessary at this point.

For all of your Vanguards out there, who don't see a purpose to this: Think of all of the players begging for help on early missions around Haven, or asking you to join them to beat a mission.

Now that we have missions and 99% of players DO NOT play the arcade any more, now players who are working through the missions have an effective way to party up, and to meet new people who haven't already finished the game.

Obviously, if you've beaten everything and know tons of people, this isn't much use to you. If you're starting out and know nobody, this button ought to be made of pure gold.

It's pretty interesting to see what parties are available, I'm a little suprised you can actually see their names (i feel like a stalker! o_O)

One thing I don't like; It leave the "!" on the notifications; Wouldn't this collide with party invites and trade requests? I suggest moving the "!" mark to the party finder button, not the notification one, for some more clarity.

Also, is this going to be implemented for missions as well?
Edit: It shows the mission in progress, got it. (but then, maybe 2 sections separating clockworks and missions)

Upon closer inspection this feature looks a little more promising then the patch notes led me to believe.

~Luke

A friend was unable to join through the social panel, and had to use the party interface.

That's annoying, and it's one of several areas where familiar existing ui elements (social panel, hide buttons on dialogs, etc) got thrown out for obscure alternatives that weren't quite described in the release notes. (to hide an invite, you now click on the tiny icon for that panel in the top left corner of the screen, which toggles the panel on/ off)

On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised at how many people were playing non FSC missions. I'm ranked as a vanguard, but got shown a good mix of parties in all tiers and gates.

I just hope that the insanity of the last few releases gets resolved- the download was cripplingly slow and failed several times for me today. This suggests either that they're stealthily slipping parts of other, much bigger releases out the door... Or that the download server can't support the load of a new release. Not sure which, and long term, no apology is as sincere as "not doing it again".

This is a classic example of why the devs act on their own accord most of the time.

From my book-

"More on cooperation. The missions kill it. We need some kind of help system, because right now we've got a reoccurring problem- no one to play the game with. Knights are split in a million and one categories, and these are all spread out everywhere to where no one is playing the same level at the same time. What if instead of this, we had a "find mission" button, that would locate the player to the nearest party on a random mission? If the levels all paid off, then it'd mean that T2 and T3 players wanting to replay a random mission would be able to do so."

Now obviously it isn't the end of the world if a T3 player encounters a terribad T2 player, but it isn't always going to come across too well when the T3 player yells at them about "playing the game wrong" because they don't know to use their shield properly. So in a way, sorting players by rank works all too well. Also keep in mind the number of parties that there are at any one point in time. If 50 people are starting parties, then it wouldn't make sense to advertise to the T1 players when half of them are just going to go run king of ashes.

Which brings me to my next point- Not all people are farming FSC. Most people get tired of doing FSC, and eventually figure out that the rest of the game is just as profitable if you play it correctly and sell recipes. They then abandon FSC and go towards recipe hunting and danger room farming in T2/3... or even replaying fun missions as they don't need to make 22K/100 en to have fun. This update is meant to help these people find parties, as soloing levels is quite awful. Also keep in mind that if FSC gets fixed, then there won't be nearly as many parties.

And finally, for those of you who say "THIS DOESN'T FIX ECONOMYYYYYY/other problems"- The economy is a bubble. And someone is buying it up. And when it crashes down, it will crash down hard. People will eventually give in and buy expensive CE w/ their crowns... but more people will give in and buy CE with their money than before due to how hard it is to get started. So if OOO even does something slightly crown sink related, it will suck all of the CR out of the economy and cause this entire structure to collapse. But- OOO can only do one thing at a time to make us happy, and I have a very small amount of faith that they'll eventually make a crown sink and fix everything.

This was very much a real problem, and OOO has very much given us a real solution.

When I've used it, I've seen OCH, several random clockwork parties, and a FSC party. I think it works quite well, really.

@Cryoworld: That's just what I saw! I am really glad they brought this in, makes the average run much less... barren.