Phasing and Grouping

realcyberghostb16_ESO

Hello Everyone

While I am having fun playing ESO, I am still waiting for the phasing in a group to get fixed / improved.

The way I see it possibly fixed:
- Let everyone join the phase of the player with the least progression.
- Allow players that completed the quest to join the less progressed phase, but with no impact on his own quest progression.
- There should be a warning that if a player joins your group and has less progression in the quest, that the group phase gets reset to that earlier point, possibly your group get warped back to the entrance of the phase area.
- If at some point a decision has to be made, that decision is made by the group leader and everyone else has to follow.

I am trying to remember how LOTRO and SWTOR did it, because I remember first seeing phasing in LOTRO. WoW also uses it. But in these games I can't remember having these issues of not being able to play with my friends.

So perhaps go take a peak over there and check how they do it, before reinventing the wheel

Either way, this has to get fixed/improved.

realcyberghostb16_ESO

So after doing some more research, because I thought ZOS already stated somewhere sometime that they would look into this, I found that next patch they are doing some improvements:

"We have begun our grouping improvements, and have made more quest conditions group-shared and condensed/removed the number of layers for a particular objective. This will dramatically reduce or eliminate the amount of time you will be separated from your group or other player characters. This is the first of our ongoing effort to keep groups together as much as possible throughout the game. We have touched up the following objectives: ... "

While it is nice to see some action, I wonder, by going at it this way, they are gutting the questlines instead of tweaking the phasing system ...

If anyone else has some more info ( previous statements of the devs etc ), that would be nice.

Greywolf46

LOTRO allowed the group leader to reset the dungeon. What that did was reset everyone in the group to the same starting point in the dungeon/quest. That game did have a timer on you and the dungeon/quest combo to keep people from spamming a particularly lucrative dungeon. As I remember that timer run for one to 2 days…not sure there.

Nestor

realcyberghostb16_ESO wrote: »

While it is nice to see some action, I wonder, by going at it this way, they are gutting the questlines instead of tweaking the phasing system ...

Some quests have way too many stages than are needed, that is probably what they are streamlining. Since it is the Stage that causes the Phasing issues, making each stage larger (or longer by combing two) can help with keeping folks together.

But, we do need some way that someone can get help on a quest without finding the needle in a haystack that is the other person who is at the appropriate level, and has not done the quest before, and is nearby, and is not busy doing something else. By phasing the instance to the least quest experienced person in the group, this is accomplished. Quest experience here refers to someone's progress in that particular quest, not how many quests they have done over all.

realcyberghostb16_ESO

Agreed, we have to phase to the person with the least progress in the quest. If you go questing with a group it is only logical that you stay together as a group. People joining a group know they may have to redo some stuff here and there.
If one wants to be completely immersed then he can go solo ...

realcyberghostb16_ESO

So I only recently learned that ZOS is planning to let players join the phase/progress of the group leader ( from the Quakecon video ). I am not sure if that is the best solution, but it is a solution at least.

I see 2 problems with this :
- It would mean that you could get warped ahead in a quest, finishing stuff you haven't finished yet.
- And what if the leader has finished the quest already ... ? You instantly finish the quest as well? That's not really what we want -

So joining the least progressed player still seems the best solution to me.

Elf_Boy

City of Heroes had a really good system for this.

The group leader could see all the quests for every player -- including ones shared by multiple ppl.

The group leader could pick what quest - by what player - for the group to work on. At the end the player who's quest was being worked would get credit -- others with the same quest would get a dialog box asking if they wanted to "finish" and the game in options could be set to always yes, no or ask for group quests.

A system like this would eliminate the phaze issue and create an environment much more friendly to team/group questing.

In the case of a player that had already finished the quest - or didnt want to have it co-finished instead of getting the full quest reward/item a smaller XP bonus adjusted by level would be instead given. Thus doing a quest over with a friend still gave you a boost beyond the XP for kills and prevented some forms of quest farming/abuse.

COH also had a side-kick system that would allow any two -eight people regardless of level to team up and do quests. If you were lower level then the party leader your effectiveness (like for cyrodil) would be set to 1 level less then the party leader - if you were higher level then the party leader your effective level is set to the same level as the party leader.

It would be nice to see a system like the one in COH (hint devs hint) it would fix many of the concerns and issues we have about grouping and leveling. Of course just to be very clear -- if the quest selected by the party leader set everyone to that phaze then no other changes tot he game system would be needed to resolve this problem and make the game much more friendly to team questing.