The Search engine and You!Follow

Hey,
This is a small guide for the Search engine in FFXIV. Hopefully, it should clear about some confusion about this tool that can be darn useful! I take no credit in this. Asulamur on Eorzeapedia came up with this. The original thread is here:
http://www.eorzeapedia.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10206

That being said, read it and abuse of it in a near future!
Enjoy!
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As I've yet to really see any sort of guide for the Recruit/Search function, I figured it was high time to make one. More people need to make use of it. Japanese players seem to have it figured out; they're almost the only people ever making use of it on Melmond. I don't know why English players can't seem to figure it out. Its not all that complicated.

Now, let's break this down Barney-style:

Recruit- Brings up a window where criteria can be set.

Purpose - Display what the goal of the group is. Currently only options are Regional/Local Guildleves and the like. No Skill Point grind option.
So, that being said, if you're wanting to form a SP party, leave it default.

Location - Pretty self explanatory. Select the location where the group will be fighting/questing. I'd say, initially leave this default as well until you get
a group going and decide on a location, at which point you can simply redo the Recruitment message.

Box Below Purpose and Location - This comes into play if you set your purpose to, say, Regional Leves. A list of leves will appear here and you can recruit for a
specific levequest.



Conditions - This is where you decide who you want to recruit. Be sure of your criteria because it will determine who can see your recruitment message or not.

Target: Set what class categories you are seeking. Seek specific classes or the entire discipline (ie. Disciple of War). Selecting the entire discipline will open
recruitment for any class within that discipline. So, seek DoW and Arch, Pug, Glad, Mar, Lan can all join. If you only want a few specific classes, set
them individually.

Rank: Once again, pretty self-explanatory. Set the minimum and maximum rank you want to allow into your group. Ex. 22-27 will only allow people in that range
to join.

Number: Set the number of people to recruit for a specific condition. Ie. 10 DoW, 3 Conjurer, etc.

Message: Sadly, auto-translate doesn't work here. So, essentially, English and Japanese are segregated from each other with the recruitment system. But,
just put a message here (orly?). I tend to put a message saying that my group is doing SP grind and a specific location where, since only camps are
listed in the location box.

Now that all that is said and done, start recruiting. Recruitment will last for 60minutes or until you close it.

The cool thing about this, and why I actually like it even though there is no /sea function or seek flags, is that once the recruitment message is set.. thats it. Instead of a party leader sitting around searching for members to join the party, sending /tells to each person they find and asking them to join, players who want a party search for the leader/party itself instead. In essence, its flip-flopped from FFXI. Another neat thing about this is that if you're seeking a group of 15 and at the moment have only 6, you can go ahead and head out to a camp and start grinding. Meanwhile, recruitment is still running in the background and players can join at whim. That being said, as long as a player meets the criteria set in the recruitment message, they can join your group regardless of where they are in relation to you. Basically, someone in Limsa can join a group that is currently in Coerthas. No /tells are sent, no permission is asked. If the criteria is met, the person hits Join and is automatically in the group. Which bring me to the Search function.

Search:
Name - If you know who the leader of a group is and know they're recruiting, type their name here.

Purpose - Same as with Recruit. I say, leave this default. That way you'll see every Recruit message.

Location - see: Purpose

Target - This is what I think is getting people. The target is YOU. It is automatically set to whatever class you are currently playing. Now, remember, if you do
not meet the criteria someone set when recruiting, you will not SEE the recruit message and thus, cannot join. What does this mean? If you're on a
Disciple of Land or Hand job and don't set the target class to a War or Magic job and the people recruiting are only looking for War or Magic, then you
will NOT turn up any results. So, either be on the job you want to use in a party, or set the Target to the job you will be playing.

Thats basically it. It isn't a bad system. The problem is, no one uses it. Once people start, group battles will happen a lot easier. I hope this helps. If you have anything to add, edit, or if I forgot something.. feel free to let me know.

Edited, Oct 28th 2010 12:27am by Dralid

Nice post Dralid. Explained very well.

The other day I went to use this, and discovered that I might actually like it more than XI's system (Although I believe we still do need /search and seek functions). They pretty much fixed XI's auto-party with this system IMO.

--
Saeros Torne
Mysidia

Not yet. They said that would be out in either the November or December major updates.

And where have you been? :O I haven't seen you on in a while.

Yup, I see a lot of Japanese parties forming up using the system. It does offer a good deal of customization in the process like what role still need to be fulfilled, etc.
It's a nifty system once you get the hang of it.

There is a great video giving further detail on the search fonction:
http://www.eorzeapedia.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10346

Edited, Oct 30th 2010 2:44am by Dralid