LFG Tool with Mentoring and RNG Karma System for Loot?

tinythinker

[I've written before about getting people into group dungeons. I made a spontaneous comment in a more recent thread about the LFG tool/group dungeons and decided to clean it up and share it as a new post. For TL:DR, skip to the last section -- let people queue as mentors and novices and reward the mentors.]

A lot of what keeps people out of group dungeons and 12 person trials in ESO largely falls into two areas:

1. Some people have done it all 1000 times and see no reason to ever do it again.

The Undaunted didn't use to offer daily pledges or good loot in lock boxes. This was added fall 2014 to give such folks who had "been there and done that" a reason to go back. But eventually even that carrot wears out. There haven't been any new vet group dungeons added to non-DLC zones for a very long time even though there are still group dungeons without vet versions.

2. Throwing people together randomly is exactly as reliable as it sounds.

People of different skill level, game/group event experience, and maturity get thrown together with the LFG tool, which can be a fun way to meet people or it can be awful because someone without heavy armor or a sword and shield queued as a tank but doesn't know how to tank and can't do it anyway with their gear. Or a DPS joins who does less damage than the healer, cries about how he is taking too much damage while always standing in the red and never blocking/dodging, etc. And even if everyone is friendly, patient, and can do their job halfway well, some groups just don't work well together. Add into that how shy or anxious about screwing up/letting people down some players can be, and you have lots of people who are too frustrated, annoyed, worried, or outright scared to join, let alone run, with a group-finder pug.

My experience/perspective

I've had some great times with pugs and posted about it on these forums, but I've also seen petty, fearful, and lazy people ruin (or nearly ruin) basic runs. I have 4 VR16s, a VR11, a level 46, and a level 25 that I sometimes play. The eighth character is still strictly a mule. None of my character have beaten all existing non-DLC group dungeons on regular and vet. One has all non-vet and a chunk of vet, one is almost done with non-vet but still has lots of vet to complete, and the others barely have any of it done. I would like all of them to at least have basic completions for the non-DLC group dungeons. I don't see it happening because often the time it takes to find a group and run the dungeon is too long.

My dungeon-running guild, which had some great players and used to be very active, is frequently unavailable with too few on most of them time, so I am left with the group-finder or "LFG" in zone. Generally I would rather just enjoy my time doing other content rather than having one of those "takes 20-60 minutes to get a group, then someone goes AFK for 30 minutes, then someone quits, etc, etc" experiences. I do run pugs, but not as often as groups have become harder to find (for me at least). Nor is it just me. I've rescued people in all of my guilds from that kind of "how will we finish?" situation by sending in my templar or nightblade after requests for aid went out in guild chat. One time the group in question had been in a dungeon for 5 hours before I volunteered and helped them with the final boss using my healer. We left with a completion 10 minutes after I arrived.

Possible Partial Solution to Issue#2?

Others may have ideas on dealing with Issue#1, and if any occur to me I will suggest them in the future.

But for Issue #2? Add a mentoring system.

The simple version would be to let people queue as mentors and novices, and put them together. You would know that the people you were paired with were still learning too or there to help, not doing farms or speed runs. But there may be too few mentors without incentives. Which leads to the less simple version.

If there were a system to differentiate between likely experienced players who know their stuff and likely inexperienced players who need coaching and practice, a more reliable mentor system could be built into the group-finder tool. If you, say, had X% completions on dungeons and achievements for non-vet, you could queue as a non-vet mentor. People with less experience could queue as novices in need of help. Same for vet dungeons. Those who have the interest and patience to help inexperienced players could be paired with those who need it, and there would be no mystery. You know what you are getting into, so there is no reason to be nervous or annoyed. You could, of course, just group regularly as well if you weren't interested in being a mentor or novice.

The are many possible rewards for mentors in the less simple version, but here's one thought: what about a karma system in which you were rewarded with more or better loot at the end of the run? Just what "more or better" would need to be is up for the community to discuss, as well as alternative ideas for incentives. Additional ideas could include the following: Maybe DSA and Trials, for example, could drop VR15 and VR16 versions of loot for mentors, as an example. Or else whatever VR 15/16 gear is currently dropping for dailies in Wrothgar and Maelstrom Arena. For Undaunted Pledges, perhaps giving out gold keys to mentors on silver runs.

There may be many practical problems to deal with such a system, such as how to set it up and how to avoid it being abused or exploited, especially if there were incentives for mentors. But it could really help more people get it into and be comfortable with doing such content and increase the number of eager, competent people looking to group up. I once saw a group of people standing around outside of the entrance to Arx Corinium, I think it was late summer of 2014, and I was typing "LFG Arx" every 3-4 minutes in zone. No replies. I finally used /say to ask if the people next to me were hoping to run Arx. They said "yes". I invited them to a group, we ran it, the end. The need is real.