Grouping tool

chrissouza7ub17_ESO

It appears the grouping tool is still broken. Searched for hours last night with zero success. Any plans in the future to have an overhaul for this system. Makes it really difficult to find a group having to run all over the map spamming LFG. With consoles coming out I'd think you would want something in place that is going to work.
If you cant fix it, at least give us some searching tools we can use like /who all LFG, and the ability to flag our selves as LFG

fiftypercentgrey

that would be really nice. I'd appreciate an overhaul of the group tool window, too.
I don't like spamming or reading through the zonechat-spam to find a group. guilds are ok but sometimes I just want to go, group up and do a dungeon. :-/

b_archaonpreeb18_ESO

It's weird. The grouping tool worked fine in beta and it worked fine on release. I did all normal dungeons as I leveled up back in April 2014. (dungeons didn't scale to level then)

There were some hilarious moments (Group of four healers; Each of us was primarily a healer but had one more function checked. Group of four sorcerers; Fortunately one healer, one tank, one stam dps, one magicka dps), but it would actually FIND groups.

I left for a few months in summer and when I returned the tool wasn't working. My theory is people just don't use it...

C0pp3rhead

Who knows if they grouping tool works or not. Once people started thinking that it doesn't work, everyone stopped using it. On top of that, players have had the time to make friend networks that they can count on. The grouping tool may very well work now, but nobody uses it because they can't find a group. They can't find a group because nobody uses the grouping tool. It's a vicious cycle.

If they incentivized using the grouping tool, we might use it, but more often than not it seems broked.

Inactive Account

I would have to say it still needs some tweaking.

I have tried to use it multiple times since 1.6 and have still not found a group with it.

After 10-15 mins in the Que. I just stop searching with it.

Skjoldur

They just don't care about implementing a decent interface. Nothing is according to any standard, it's console-like and not intuitive at all. And most importantly: It lacks fundamental functions that addons have to provide... Just have a look at the guild trade posts.

The interface rarely gives the player any feedback, visual or acoustical. For instance the group finder: Why is there no estimate of how long the wait time is? Or what roles are missing, if this is even a criterion?

At the moment we just have to guess... and most guess it is not working. After 2-3 hours of waiting an almost reasonable assumption.

fiftypercentgrey

Every now and then I do find groups via the tool (as a tank or healer).
I wish it were easier to use so more people would use it. Maybe the problem is that no one uses it. Maybe it doesnt work. There is no way to know, really.

It should be a standard tool in MMOs and it pretty much is for every other MMO that is not too old to care. I can not understand why zenimax doesn't get this working. Are there technical problems? Is it a matter of principle? Why implement a half-assed clunky tool that doesn't really work?

TheVindelator

I think the tool could use more transparency. It just seems like it starts spinning and that's the end of it.

It'd be better to see some progress or information or something.

Even just a place for people to post their group in the tool would be nice so people could see what's happening.

fiftypercentgrey

I agree, that would help a lot :-/
I wonder if zenimax is working on this or if they just gave up on the group tool..

NewBlacksmurf

chrissouza7ub17_ESO wrote: »

It appears the grouping tool is still broken. Searched for hours last night with zero success. Any plans in the future to have an overhaul for this system. Makes it really difficult to find a group having to run all over the map spamming LFG. With consoles coming out I'd think you would want something in place that is going to work.
If you cant fix it, at least give us some searching tools we can use like /who all LFG, and the ability to flag our selves as LFG

I'm jumping off a limb here....
Maybe the completely different console UI LFG tool works and PC UI rework will hit in a working fashion around June

Or

Both will be broken

Natjur

I found a lot of people who use the LFG tool don't mark them on the LFG window as healer, dps OR tank, so they are marked as NO role and wonder why it never pops.

If I mark myself as ALL roles, I get a group fast (as a templar, I can heal, tank or dps) but I only use the LFG tool when doing the daily vet pledge and I don't want to do it any lower the V12, so the LFG tool needs to have more options, as it always groups me with V1's.

Also, most groups it pops are three dps (with me marked as tanking and healing). It appears most who use the LFG are DPS so if that is all there is using it, no wonder it never works.

So its better and faster for me not to use the LFG tool and just ask in chat. First find a tank or healer (with me doing the other role), and then when I ask for 2 dps, I get like 20 tells. I think more players need to have a valid tank or healer role and not only dps.

If the LFG window showed how many players are in the que marked as tank. healer or DPS, more would understand the issue and switch roles

LFG Vet Pledge A (in que 154 dps, 3 healers, 0 tanks)

NewBlacksmurf

Natjur wrote: »

I found a lot of people who use the LFG tool don't mark them on the LFG window as healer, dps OR tank, so they are marked as NO role and wonder why it never pops.

If I mark myself as ALL roles, I get a group fast (as a templar, I can heal, tank or dps) but I only use the LFG tool when doing the daily vet pledge and I don't want to do it any lower the V12, so the LFG tool needs to have more options, as it always groups me with V1's.

Also, most groups it pops are three dps (with me marked as tanking and healing). It appears most who use the LFG are DPS so if that is all there is using it, no wonder it never works.

So its better and faster for me not to use the LFG tool and just ask in chat. First find a tank or healer (with me doing the other role), and then when I ask for 2 dps, I get like 20 tells. I think more players need to have a valid tank or healer role and not only dps.

That's what hurts everyone overall. If really push that everyone use it correctly in addition to whatever other means

Sandmanninja

How about, oh I dunno, add a simple test and if no role is selected then you can't enter the queue?

Just an idea..

LIQUID741

I tried to use it today. It was the first day I have had off to get my grind on, so I thought let's try it out. 7+hrs and nothing. Talk about an amazing FAIL system. Boggles the mind that this isn't fixed with a incentive based LFG.

b92303008rwb17_ESO

What is the current status of the grouping tool? Is it even working? I have been in queue for BC and Spindle for 3 hours, from 19:00 to 22:00 (GMT+8 time) and nothing, yes I mean it, not even a partially group has been formed. I know it is not a prime time but there are supposed to be aussies, new zealanders and some other asian people out there. I just don't believe there are not even three other people that want to do some dungeon runs. Or people join the queue now to NOT get a group?

I am not even talking about an overhaul of this FAIL system. Just please make it work as intended, as what "grouping tool" literally suggests, so that people can actually find a group. What kind of MMO is it if there is not even a system with BASIC grouping function? Considering ESO has been in paid beta test for more than one year, this failure is even more intolerable. You can't expect console to succeed with this crappy grouping tool.

Please do something.

Shadesofkin

I've seen it work, but almost no one uses it and it's nearly impossible to find anyone with it. I'd love to see a thread started with scheduled times when people will guarantee to be on so we could see once and for all if it worked.

Shadesofkin

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

What is the current status of the grouping tool? Is it even working? I have been in queue for BC and Spindle for 3 hours, from 19:00 to 22:00 (GMT+8 time) and nothing, yes I mean it, not even a partially group has been formed. I know it is not a prime time but there are supposed to be aussies, new zealanders and some other asian people out there. I just don't believe there are not even three other people that want to do some dungeon runs. Or people join the queue now to NOT get a group?

I am not even talking about an overhaul of this FAIL system. Just please make it work as intended, as what "grouping tool" literally suggests, so that people can actually find a group. What kind of MMO is it if there is not even a system with BASIC grouping function? Considering ESO has been in paid beta test for more than one year, this failure is even more intolerable. You can't expect console to succeed with this crappy grouping tool.

Please do something.

Oh heads up, I seem to recall something like "the grouping tool doesn't assemble a group until four people are found" being done to it at one point.

Yakidafi

It does work, but nobody uses it. I get group from time to time, very rarely.

b92303008rwb17_ESO

Shadesofkin wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

What is the current status of the grouping tool? Is it even working? I have been in queue for BC and Spindle for 3 hours, from 19:00 to 22:00 (GMT+8 time) and nothing, yes I mean it, not even a partially group has been formed. I know it is not a prime time but there are supposed to be aussies, new zealanders and some other asian people out there. I just don't believe there are not even three other people that want to do some dungeon runs. Or people join the queue now to NOT get a group?

I am not even talking about an overhaul of this FAIL system. Just please make it work as intended, as what "grouping tool" literally suggests, so that people can actually find a group. What kind of MMO is it if there is not even a system with BASIC grouping function? Considering ESO has been in paid beta test for more than one year, this failure is even more intolerable. You can't expect console to succeed with this crappy grouping tool.

Please do something.

Oh heads up, I seem to recall something like "the grouping tool doesn't assemble a group until four people are found" being done to it at one point.

I am sorry but that is probably not the case. I did have a partially assembled group a few days ago, me and one or two more other people through the grouping tool during prime time and even that happened after a ten or twenty minutes wait. Anyway, the bottom line is, whether the grouping tool doesn't assemble group until four people are found or not, it takes only four people to from a group. Is it really that hard to find four people on the whole NA mega server? I don't buy it.

Shadesofkin

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Shadesofkin wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

What is the current status of the grouping tool? Is it even working? I have been in queue for BC and Spindle for 3 hours, from 19:00 to 22:00 (GMT+8 time) and nothing, yes I mean it, not even a partially group has been formed. I know it is not a prime time but there are supposed to be aussies, new zealanders and some other asian people out there. I just don't believe there are not even three other people that want to do some dungeon runs. Or people join the queue now to NOT get a group?

I am not even talking about an overhaul of this FAIL system. Just please make it work as intended, as what "grouping tool" literally suggests, so that people can actually find a group. What kind of MMO is it if there is not even a system with BASIC grouping function? Considering ESO has been in paid beta test for more than one year, this failure is even more intolerable. You can't expect console to succeed with this crappy grouping tool.

Please do something.

Oh heads up, I seem to recall something like "the grouping tool doesn't assemble a group until four people are found" being done to it at one point.

I am sorry but that is probably not the case. I did have a partially assembled group a few days ago, me and one or two more other people through the grouping tool during prime time and even that happened after a ten or twenty minutes wait. Anyway, the bottom line is, whether the grouping tool doesn't assemble group until four people are found or not, it takes only four people to from a group. Is it really that hard to find four people on the whole NA mega server? I don't buy it.

Yeah I swear I saw that at one point, but I could be wrong and am more than willing to admit that.
Either way, very few people use it and even fewer Tanks and Heals.

Naivefanboi

thats why we should remove zone chat from pc and only do voice comms! would make the game sooo much better and immersive.
maybe theyll take it out when they add voice chat to pc

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO

fiftypercentgrey wrote: »

Why implement a half-assed clunky tool that doesn't really work?

To put it simply: a lack of skill, or time, or quality assurance, or some combination of these. This is of course a mistake -- they didn't make it bad on purpose. Many signs in this game point to a portion of its programmers not being quite up to the task of writing professional quality code and designing professional level user interfaces, and the quality assurance and testing processes at ZOS appear to be insufficient. The product has classic software quality problems all over it, and many parts of it would have needed a lot more testing and redesign. The bad LFG tool is just one symptom of many.

From the result, it is evident that the person or persons who wrote the group finder wasn't capable of creating a good enough group finder with the provided tools and within the given time frame. Unfortunately, they didn't catch that problem in time to assign more resources to it, so they released the game with a grouping tool that was at least partly defective. A later attempt to fix it was badly managed and badly tested, probably rushed and possibly outright poorly made, and the patch resulted in it becoming more broken. The change was evident: something definitely changed for the worse overnight. They had a kind-of-working group finder, and by accident they made it kind-of-broken.

They should be working on a rewrite, but their work on the console versions seems to absorb every programmer they have. We can only hope for an improvement. It seems reasonable to expect that they will try retrofitting the group finder from the console version to the PC version. It's not as if they are unaware of the problem, nor of its severity.

Dear ZOS moderators: I took great care not to make this a slanderous or overly negative post. My aim was to objectively discuss quality problems of the game in terms of process problems, without pointing fingers at individuals who are entirely unknown to me. Should this post still violate your codes of conduct, feel free to delete it at your discretion.

Sandmanninja

It's almost as if they've never seen a working Looking For Group tool, to be honest.
I'm a ESO FanBoi but I'm truely saddened by the lack of a proper LFG tool.
I would live in dungeons if it worked.
Running dungeons is my fav past time.

nagarjunna

I've never used it. I have no intention of using it.

My experience with PUG groups has been so varied and mostly uniformally poor that I literally won't go there. I'll form a group from a guild with players I know or not go at all.

C0pp3rhead

Looking at this thread, it seems that 2 steps need to be taken:

1). Allow players to mark only 1 role when using the LFG tool.
2). Incentivize the use of the LFG tool (perhaps throught bonus XP gains) when running with a group found through the LFG tool.

Some might be opposed to step 1, but with the addition of champion points it is very unlikely that a character will be optimized for multiple roles. The group dynamic in ESO is centered around the classic Tank & Spank model, and it takes a group of skilled and well-acquainted players to use a different setup. If you have a group of friends that are skilled enough to run a dungeon without a tank or with 2 half-heals-half-dps players, chances are you have no need for the LFG tool. Moreover, there are many players who think they can fill different roles at different times, but are actually incapable (whether because of inexperience or hubris). Using the steps above will cater to the lowest common denominator, but it will provide an enjoyable experience for the most players. Plus, if you can fulfill several roles but can't get a group, just change your designated role.

Shadesofkin

nagarjunna wrote: »

I've never used it. I have no intention of using it.

My experience with PUG groups has been so varied and mostly uniformally poor that I literally won't go there. I'll form a group from a guild with players I know or not go at all.

I've had some really great ones and some really bad ones. Frankly, the bad ones gave me something to laugh about with guildmates later on and the good ones either ended up friending me or ended up in our guild.

Archivez

Still broke me and friend waiting for over hour and just gave up in the end...