Oklahoman

Here's something you can try. I modified another script I wrote for this and it seems to work, but it also throws out some ugly errors that don't impact it's operation. You would leave this running in powershell while you play, and anytime any of they keywords you input on line 28 of the code show up in LFG it will put on your clipboard a response. In game, when you see one of those keywords pop up - say "DFB" - you would hit ENTER to start a message, Control+V to paste the message from the clipboard, and ENTER again to send it. There are wrinkles to this - if someone posts an ad for a "Posi" and before you can respond someone else posts to LFG "I'll join that Posi" - you could end up responding to the second person, not the first. In other words, the code can't distinguish between "I'm forming a Posi" and "I want to join a Posi" and will create a response either way. Use at your own risk. UPDATE: Updated and removed attachment and placed it here instead:

The issue I have here is the vagueness - "I'll join". If the person is sending a message to LFG that says "I'll join THAT BAF" or "I'll join THAT ITF" that's at least somewhat useful. A simplified version of "I'll join the thing with the people and the stuff" is not. I understand that on smaller servers where there could literally be minutes between LFG posts you could do that and it wouldn't be a problem - perhaps even welcomed. I am speaking from the Excelsior side where that will simply add unnecessary and unhelpful traffic to a busy channel. Technically, sure, "I'll join" is a valid thing to post to LFG, but it is also probably one of the least efficient ways to get what you want in this case. Agree to disagree, then. As me and one other league leader have mentioned, we are not looking to LFG for responses to an ad, so YMMV. Simply sending "I'll join" to LFG is saying that you would like to join... something. It's not saying or indicating what. That may be obvious on smaller servers where there could literally be several minutes between posts to LFG, but not on all servers. And I have not corrected you or others in any way on this as a response. It is a far superior solution to simply posting "I'll join" to LFG in all cases except those where the post specifically says something like "NO TELLS" or "Post in BROADCAST ONLY" or some instruction like that. OP was asking for a macro to send a tell to someone who just posted an ad, and there isn't a way to do that as far as I and anyone else can produce. Do what you want, but to be clear - I am against encouraging people to create a macro that sends "I'll join" to LFG. That's it, and honestly it feels a little crazy that I have to explain why that is a bad idea to anybody. I don't think we're doing a service to the players or the community to promote that as a solution to anything. I guess being added to your ignore list is supposed to be a threat, and I'm not really in the business of doing that myself here on the forums. What I will say is that if - emphasis on the word if - someone were to use such a macro as you propose in-game, get frustrated with still getting no response because leaders like myself aren't monitoring LFG for responses to our ads, and they maybe decide to hit the macro button 10 times in a row out of frustration, I and probably several others would probably add that player to our gignore list and report them for spamming.

Perhaps I am. LFG in general is a big pet peeve of mine. And maybe you are working too hard to defend a technicality. As I said earlier: OP is bemoaning the fact that: I don't think vaguely stating - really on any channel (except maybe on broadcast and local, in certain circumstances) - "I'll join" is going to fix this for them. At least not in my case, and other leaders who lead as I do. But maybe it will, I don't know. Usually when the waitress asks what I would like and I say "food" that doesn't seem to get me what I want. It's technically a correct use, but probably not the most efficient way to get what I am wanting. OP is asking: Unfortunately, there isn't such a thing, and I think OP recognizes that a direct tell to a leader is probably, generally, in most cases... more efficient in terms of getting on a team. Otherwise OP would have asked "How do I spam LFG most efficiently?" But that's just how I see it. It does occur to me at the very end of this long-winded post that you could adapt some of what I have written in Powershell to monitor LFG for you in the background while you play, and whenever a keyword appears (for instance, "BAF") the script could create the command line for you (/t {PlayerName}, "Hey, I'll join that {keyword} please!") and put it in your copy/paste buffer. In-game, whenever you saw a BAF advertised you could just hit enter, CTRL-V, enter and the organizer would get a direct tell from you. I'm sure there are much better programmers around who could do it better than I could, but that would be one way I could think of that might work.

No, not technically. I'll give you that. I gave a couple reasons earlier why I really don't recommend doing it this way, though. The other thing that could come of that, too, if people start doing this, is increased traffic through LFG that just makes it harder to actually form teams. I just finished playing a 2 hour stretch, and during that time there was an average of 3.25 posts to LFG per minute (assuming I did the math right). It was a good evening as far as I can tell - no conversations in LFG, so the communication there was pretty efficient and lite. But imagine posting "I'll join" to LFG and now 3.25 people are wondering if you're talking to them. So you accept an invite, but it's not who you wanted to join, and the other two gave up when they saw you were considering another offer figuring you didn't mean them. Now imagine this practice is pretty routine and 3.25 people per minute are posting "I'll join" alongside the 3.25 people per minute posting to form teams and leagues. Sounds pretty chaotic to me. We get that a lot in Ouro during busy times. People pop in to Ouro and say something vague like "I'll join" or "me please". Then we have to sort that out with the player, or just ignore it, or talk between the league leaders and do some version of rock, paper, scissors to see who wants to grab them. Anyway, I just think we shouldn't encourage people to be vague in this way, that's all.

I do like the idea, but as @Rudra mentioned I think it's problematic. To not be annoying, it would have to detect if you team was already full, for instance. As a frequent leader it would be a feature I would not have on. But I do like the path you are on. Anything to make forming teams and leagues easier is A-OK with me.

Please don't do this.

When you click on a player name, it would be great to have some "Quick Message" options, including "Invite me, please." Behind the scenes the game would just do a /t {PlayerName}, "Invite me, please." I'd also like to see an option there to email them, like you might send a prize at the end of an event. You would click the player name, select Email, and behind the scenes a new message would be started to getglobalname({PlayerName}) that you could complete and send.

Would be awesome if the NSA could share a photoshot from the offenders camera.

I don't know how other leaders feel about this, but I am not monitoring LFG for people to invite. And I also don't think we should encourage people to flood the LFG channel with messages like this, especially on busy servers like Excelsior. For one thing, when there are already several posts to LFG per minute, how would I know from this message that someone wants to join MY team/league rather than someone elses? A more generic "Level 50 Tank looking for anything" would be just as effective, I would think, and more useful to the channel. If I advertise something to LFG I am looking for a request to come via tell, broadcast, or local unless I've specified otherwise (like with an MSR where I only invite from broadcast). In some cases, like with iTrials, if I happen to notice in LFG that you've asked for an iTrial, I might invite directly from there, or if they happen to mention me. But that's not where I am actively looking for people to invite. To @grazerlor's point, in general, I don't think there is a macro that's going to help you in the way you want here. I think your best bet, unless the LFG ad says otherwise, is to click the name and Send Message. Some league leaders and I have commented elsewhere that we often get responses that say "sure" or "x" or even just a blank space. If you can manage something relatively polite that's always appreciated, but honestly I feel your pain and (with the exception of an MSR) I will go ahead and invite no matter what you manage to send. Also, saying things like "keep me in mind if you have an opening" or "if you run again, I'd like in if you can remember" work wonders. Many times when my league zones into an iTrial someone declines, and as soon as I can I invite the next available person.

Approved.

BTW: the /demorecord option doesn't actually create a text file until you /demostop it, so I'm not sure Splunk would help you there. Definitely could be used on the log file, though, to get kill shots. I have a powershell script I run while streaming (when I do it, haven't streamed in a while) that catches the kill shot info, as well as anything sent to the local channel, and embeds it into my Twitch stream. Also, updating the original post with some updated findings.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

Approved.

Approved.

I think there's been some recent discussion of this here, here, and here. Unfortunately, the best opportunity for change was during the beta window here. This page release really emphasized to me the importance of people participating in the focused feedback threads. It will probably be a personal mission of mine for future updates to try to steer people towards those threads.

Oh, I agree it's not an enormous problem, like people having conversations in LFG. 🙂 Was just curious how others handle it.

I may need a powerpoint or something with crayons to really understand what you put together there, but seems thorough. Here's my experience if I am in Ouro, for example: I invite Player A, who is not in Ouro, and they join the team but remain out of zone. I invite Player B, who IS in Ouro, and get the error message: "Could not Invite Player B, You cannot make a co-op team unless all teammates are on the same map." Same with Player C. Player A gets in Ouro, and now I have no trouble inviting Players B and C. This isn't a consistent experience, seems to depend on Player A's alignment. I can get around it if I invite Player A to LEAGUE rather than TEAM, since I think Player A is out of zone based on the fact they sent me a tell rather than posting in broadcast. If they are in zone, or once they get into zone, I can move them wherever I need. All of that seems like a bug to me.

If it's Siber, I don't mind. We have this whole schtick we do. 🙂

Ha! I'm getting a lot of "Sure" responses. Sort of a resigned, well I got nothin' better to do, response. Honestly, assume the team/league is always waiting on you to start and get there ASAP, perhaps even before you ask for an invite. There's an ugly bug that has to do with alignments somehow, and if someone on the team/league leaders team is out of zone they may not be able to invite others. I try to work around that by adding to LEAGUE anyone who sends me a tell (because they may be out of zone). But the bug can also pop up if someone on team 1 runs out of zone. It can put recruiting in a holding pattern.

Or just get rid of PAPs and award RMs instead, and let people use RMs to look like bad guys if they want.

It is an odd award schedule, and it is causing some people to ask why everyone else got one and I didn't. The only way I found to know when the CD period ends is to look through log files. Also, when I've stepped onto Brainstorm in the past there's, like, no one there, so it's hard to test what a regular "day" for me might be like. Anyway, more back to your original point, it has impacted my decisions on how I play. I've been rotating through alts and leading MoDDs more because it's a single run for Masters, and it awards 2 of those darned things which, up until several hours ago, were going for at least 20 million each. I resisted the urge to alt between each of the 3 runs necessary for MoLAM, though, even though financially that would have been a better choice. Now that they are trading at 10 million and probably heading south from there, it's easier to sort of not care. Honestly, how much influence does anyone need in this game, anyway? (Not talking about capitalism in general, but works there, too.) And I still haven't tapped into the extra Reward Merits I've been picking up along the way.

I run BAF, LAM, DD, and MAG, as far as iTrials go. I just don't enjoy playing in the other iTrials, so I don't even try to run them. TFJ and others do a wonderful job with those.

I appreciate the callout, but I have been really encouraged of late to log in and find new people running a lot of the stuff we tend to run. @BlackSpectre and I cross paths in Ouro a lot, too, both recruiting for different stuff. We have, and will continue to need, current and new leaders running everything from DFBs to sewers to Posis to ITFs to iTrials (and tours to unlock each zone on your Zone teleport) to keep the player base engaged.

I said in the beta feedback threads I think we need FEWER currencies, not more. This will almost certainly never again be a retail game, yet we seem to be acting like it. I doubt it goes away, but I honestly hope it does.

I'd like this, but also a column for "Last Online." That would make it a lot easier to purge when you do hit whatever limit there ends up being.