Suggestion - New Section for those seeking help & Grouping

I often see people making posts for Ubers, or New Ubers, or Dclone in the main forum section. And a few of these go without response for some time, other posts do get a quick response. For myself the only one I caught it turned out to be ladder (I was NL).

It got me to thinking if we could create a section devoted to gathering people that are asking & offering that would be a benefit to all. One section where we could refresh it more, or people could get familiar enough to know who to reach out to.

Another section devoted to those looking to create or join a group would be fun. A section devoted to posts like "TZ group for Friday NA" or other interests. Keep these sections separate, to also help promote people into joining for Uber help, or to find a group. I often just farm solo, but if I saw that "TZ group for Saturday" post I might sign up. I am almost 99% NL endgame meaning I love to do Ubers for the challenge, hardly MF running. I simply do not get enough keys or statues to supply my addiction of killing Meph. So would of course love an opportunity to help anyone else. I don't think I am alone on this, just as I know I am not alone in needing help (I came close to making a post before last Saturday to ask for help doing Uber Ancients).

Having these in their own section just cleans the forum up more, and provides two areas where player interests can be dedicated. Some may just not care to interact and post or reply on topics of discussion, but they may wish to participate in a dedicated section for specific purpose.

For DClone, we have a dedicated pinned post.

Maybe we should do the same for (usual) Ubers, or even Colossal Ancients.

I was thinking it would be cleaner to just have a sub section for individual posts. Especially for groups, possibility there could be multiple postings at the same time for different topics (i.e. one for TZs, another for XP runs, etc)

I agree with @sbn. Even though there are pinned topics, half the looking for help posts don't use them. They make new topics.

I will say, the pinned topic is a PITA to deal with. I actually had to remove my posts from 3 years ago (and quoted references..) because people still keep spam-adding me every time a dclone spawns somewhere.
I don't mind helping out when I'm around and have time and all but there's a limit to how many random adds without context a man is willing to deal with.

Solely thanks to that (still ongoing...) experience, I will never offer help in that sticky again. Ever. It really is a "that's why we can't have nice things" type of deal.

Ideally, I would say this idea could/should be split in two:

(1) A "helper" section. You can enter yourself as either a helper or someone in need of help, it'll ask you what you can/need help with (DC, ubers, ancients, whatever), ask for game mode/region so that's reliably included and - imo most importantly (see above...) - allow helpers to set an expiration timer.

E.g. say a walk is coming up.
You're a happy, friendly helper.
You enter yourself as a helper for that walk (DC, mode, region, ...) and set a say 1 hour expiration timer.
You will then remain visible in a (ideally filterable by mode and whatnot) list of available helpers until the expiration timer hits, showing not only your name and what you can help with but also your online status, trust and b.net tag for immediate reference/adding.
After the timer, your entry disappears.

That way, you can freely help people and people know exactly who to contact and how "new vs. trusted" they are.
But at the same time, once the walk you signed up to help for is done, you are removed from the list and you won't continue to be spam-added every bloody day just because you were naive enough to post in a sticky once.

In reverse, those seeking help would also end up in a list of folks needing help with ... in mode ..., also showing their b.net tag for quick adding/reference. Helpers could then equally actively browse that list and just reach out directly to whomever needs help with something they can help with.

Ideally, this would come with some sort of specific "helper trust" but since anyone can just add anyone else, without real prior interaction here, that'd probably be a bit harder to pull off reliably than the trade trust version.

If added, the section should ideally not need to be actively visited to see if someone needs help. E.g. add a link to the top nav bar but have that link not only be the name section name but include a "new" indicator so regardless of where you're browsing on this site, you'll always see whether someone new is asking for help or not (or at least after every page load of something). And/or add it as a widget on the right, listing the last 3-5 "asking for help" entries.
Both would only be for "asking for help", not "offering help" as the latter doesn't need immediate attention by anyone.

When asking for help in that section, it should be made very clear that it is solely for "immediate, special situations". So dclone, failed ubers, failed ancients, that sort of thing. Just to avoid the "need help" list inevitably getting cluttered immediately with "n socket rush!" type stuff that should be in the player services section instead.

(2) A good ol' "LFG" section.
In contrast to the "A needs/offers help with B" above, this'd be a more open, flexible and less immediate thing. Simply along the lines of "Would love to find some trustworthy people to do shard runs with!", including the things of interest for a(n ideally longer standing) group: preferred language(s), typical hours of availability, region, mode and so on.

Schnorki wrote: 3 hours ago

When asking for help in that section, it should be made very clear that it is solely for "immediate, special situations". So dclone, failed ubers, failed ancients, that sort of thing. Just to avoid the "need help" list inevitably getting cluttered immediately with "n socket rush!" type stuff that should be in the player services section instead.

And tags. Definitely tags softcore/hardcore, ladder/non-ladder, pc/xbox/psn/switch, and lod/rotw where you can't submit the post if you haven't selected each one.
I'm so tired of seeing 'need ubers - help' and no mention of anything.

Necrarch wrote: 8 hours ago

For DClone, we have a dedicated pinned post.

Maybe we should do the same for (usual) Ubers, or even Colossal Ancients.

Agreed, there should be a dedicated thread for "Ubers help". Would reduce cluttering up the forum with myriad of these threads. And rules pinned in the OP i.e. please specify region, ladder or NL, HC/SC, etc.

Edit: Knappogue beat me to it lol oh well