Grouping Woes

Skallolf

I am writing this post not intended as a question and certainly not intended as an attack on ESO, but out of shear frustration when it comes to grouping in this game. It seems that most of the bugs that impaired grouping during the early beta stages of the game are still present and completely destroy my enjoyment when trying to play with my Fiancee.

I am currently on a different continent to my Fiancee and so one of the best ways that we can spend time together is by playing an online game together whilst talking on Skype. We have played numerous online games together and have never encountered the sort of frustrations that ESO continues to give us. We are both huge fans of The Elder Scrolls series and so we jumped at the chance to be a part of the early beta rounds, and continue to try hard to enjoy playing this game but are getting to the point where we are simply struggling to justify paying a subscription when the game's grouping mechanics are so broken. We both preordered and purchased the Imperial edition, specifically for the Rings of Mara so that we could play together and get a bonus, and right now I have to say I feel like I have been completely duped.

An example of this was yesterday evening. Our characters are currently questing in Deshaan, and we took on a quest line where by Almalexia asked us to cleanse the temple of three. My Fiancee was already outside the temple and so started to speak to Almalexia whilst I was emptying my bags at the vault. When I arrived outside the temple, my Fiancee's character was still in deep conversation with the NPC which surprised me greatly since all she had to say to me was a simple line along the lines of "Go inside and do my bidding". I asked my Fiancee if she was still talking and she confirmed she was, proceeding to tell me the whole backstory and objective of what we were supposed to do. It seems that because one group member talked to the NPC, it automatically skipped on the other group members quest without allowing me to experience the dialogue. If it hadn't been for Skype I would have been clueless as to what I was about to do. we continued with the quest and things just got worse.

Inside the temple, whenever one of us clicked on an NPC or Object it completely cancelled out the other player and skipped them onto the next part of the questline. In order to make sense of this idiocy, we started to read aloud each and every paragraph of NPC dialogue or item description so that both of us could understand what the hell was going on. What is the point in hiring voice actors when grouping players have to read aloud the dialogue anyway? Despite this utter stupidity, we managed to get into a tandem and started to almost understand the story behind the questline. That is until a 3rd player who was not in our group came into the temple. The player was at no fault at all, as they are simply playing the game that they paid for, but nevertheless their presence completely ruined the questline for me and my Fiancee as everytime the 3rd player clicked on an NPC or Object, our quest was ushered along and so now we completely skipped parts of the quest. At one point we were given two objectives to release two captured souls, but as soon as we entered the chamber the 3rd player was already attacking the boss and when he killed it our quest was over. This is maddening, infuriating and simply unacceptable. We are paying to PLAY the game, not to be skipped along by someone we don't even know. After this debacle of a questline, we simply stopped playing and logged out.

We have encountered this same problem on multiple questlines, though usually we are able to work out what we need to do or what is going on. Last night was a complete waste of time and effort though as I still have no real clue as to what we were doing, why and how we did it. It was the very definition of "riding by the seat of your pants" to get to the conclusion of the quest.

This was not the only issue we encountered obviously, as the usual grouping problems are always present. One of the most infuriating problems we constantly face is suddenly losing leadership of the group when entering an interior/exterior location or new cell. This seems to be constantly happening to us, no matter which one of us is the leader, and the only way to get the leadership back is by dropping group and starting again. This may not sound like a big deal, but when you have to do this 10 times in one gaming session it gets a little ridiculous. When we play we regularly allow other players to join our group when we are tackling a landscape boss, dark anchor or just when we want to quest in a public dungeon and this seems to happen almost every-time we group. It is more frustrating when you have multiple players in the group as they might not see the relevance of having a group leader.

We seem to have issues every time we play this game together, so much so in fact that we cancelled our subs a while ago for a month or two as we believed that maybe ZOS just needed a little time to correct the issues. It seems we were wrong. Many of these bugs were reported months ago back in BETA stages, and seem to have just been ignored. I've spoken to other players who have had the same issues and also claim to have reported them too, again they seem to have been ignored.

This is supposed to be an MMO and not a solo player game, which means it is supposed to be good for multiplayer gaming. We purchased the Imperial edition in good faith for us to play together with a group bonus, and yet when we play together we are only getting half of the game we are paying for. It is a very sad state of affairs that we can get a better multiplayer gaming experience by playing a Free 2 Play game or even a game that just has private server availability (like Age of Empires 3 etc) than this game that we are paying a monthly subscription for.

As I said at the beginning, I am not a doombringer nor am I trying to just be negative about the game. I truly love the Elder scrolls and I want to love this game too, but issues like this can not be continued to be ignored. I have written this post simply because in my last ticket I was told "I wanted to take the time to thank you for all of the feedback that you have submitted in the past. We really appreciate everything that you have to say about the game, and we take all of it into consideration." I want to believe you, and yet every time I have reported these issues they still remain. It's a vain hope that someone from ZOS reads this and actually looks into the grouping issues, specifically the one that makes group members skip dialogue as in my honest opinion this is a game breaking bug.

I want to love this game, please help me to do so.

Nestor

I have found that grouping for dungeons and delves and grinding, works great. Grouping for Quests, does not.

One thing I have to ask, did you both have the quest? By that I mean did one of you share the quest with the others in the group or did you both independently get the quest while you were in the group? I think it works differently depending on how you do this part of it.

I am not sure if one way is more successful than the others, but it seems that sharing the quest with the group tends to keep things in phase better. It could that I only shared in the simpler quests.

Skallolf

We both picked up the Quests independently, as we would in any other MMO. Either way, it is clear that Zenimax has alot of work to do to fix these issues. I only hope they care enough to actually do so.

Nestor

Try sharing out the quest with the group next time, just to see if it makes things better with the phased quests. Phased quests are the ones that have multiple "completion stages". They are removing some of these stages to help with the grouping, but not all quests have done this. I don't know if this would have helped you in this case.

Just so you know, if one person has done the quest, then they can not group with someone else to do the same quest to help them. That is a big issue too.

Audigy

Since I also struggle big time playing with others pre max level a few hints how to make it "better".

1. Don't equip very good items, I usually go for RP equip that is several levels below my char level
2. Start quests together and get on TS, Skype or sit in the same room
3. Try to pick the hardest mobs, avoid other players to keep a tiny bit of a challenge

The basic issue is as said above, that a lot of quest content is phased so that the NPCs & environment change during a quest line. Besides that mobs are all tuned for one "weak" player and not for one "good" and especially not for a duo so that it quite often happens that one player attacks a mob and the second only sees its dead body on the floor.

You will have it easier once you reach Craglorn, that said who knows how long this will stay a group zone, the old VR1-10 were designed for your type of player but sadly got removed due the vocal minority at the forums.

Skallolf

We only quest together - we never do anything without each other so every quest is picked up together. As far as sharing goes, we have done that in the past too and honestly, I dont think it made a bit of difference at all.

As for tips on how to play, no offence but they are not needed. The issue I have raised is an issue that needs to be fixed, not worked around. I cant sit in the same room as my Fiancee when we are 5000 miles apart, and we skype all the time. It still doesnt alter the fact that if the game skips you along because you dont press enter at the same exact moment, or even if a player who is not in your group does, then it ruins your experience.

Sorry if this sounds confrontational, but the way I look at it I paid to play with my fiancee. I did not pay for the rings of mara to quest solo and just be on skype with her. If we do that, nit renders the rings useless. I also did not pay for random other players to continue my questline either, something of which sharing or not sharing has no basis.

I wrote my post because I simply do not believe my bug reports, feedback and tickets are getting to the right people. I doubt this will either, but I would rather not walk away from a purchase I have made unless I know that I have done everything to get my point across to Zenimax.

In a nutshell, they need to fix this BS and not expect players to "workaround" because they are too lazy to do so.

starkerealm

Audigy wrote: »

Since I also struggle big time playing with others pre max level a few hints how to make it "better".

1. Don't equip very good items, I usually go for RP equip that is several levels below my char level
2. Start quests together and get on TS, Skype or sit in the same room
3. Try to pick the hardest mobs, avoid other players to keep a tiny bit of a challenge

The basic issue is as said above, that a lot of quest content is phased so that the NPCs & environment change during a quest line. Besides that mobs are all tuned for one "weak" player and not for one "good" and especially not for a duo so that it quite often happens that one player attacks a mob and the second only sees its dead body on the floor.

You will have it easier once you reach Craglorn, that said who knows how long this will stay a group zone, the old VR1-10 were designed for your type of player but sadly got removed due the vocal minority at the forums.

What got nixed?

Anyway, yeah, on #1 this is very true. My girlfriend recently got her level 19 through Hircine's gift. I managed to get a 16 through a couple weeks ago. When we took those characters out into normal level 16 content, we were one and two shotting enemies. With the right build, the game can get hilarious in groups, which might be what you're after, but for most people, it's not.