Grouping by Playstyle?

LadyNerevar

Way back before the game came out there was a lot of talk of instancing players by their prefered playstyle. Having people fill out a little survey about whether they want to RP/raid/PvE/etc. so that like minded players would be playing with like minded players. I personally loved and was really looking forward to this feature.

As far as I'm aware, it didn't make it into launch, did it? Or is it somewhere where I'm not seeing it? And if it's not in, has there been anything said about it since 2012? It feels like this would fix (or at least help) a lot of the grouping and harassment problems people have been having.

Gidorick

That would be cool. it could take the form of that character selection process of earlier tes games where they ask you a series of questions.

AlnilamE

I've never heard of this before and I've been playing since the open Beta weekends, so it never made it.

I'm not sure what grouping harassment problems you are talking about?

phermitgb

I too remember that discussion, although it's been so long I can't even guarantee it was in reference to ESO in particular. And, I think it was a discussion about server assignment at the time. I seem to remember a game that was going to subdivide it's player population into servers based on particular playstyles/preferences, although again, I may just be mixing that up with some dream I had one night

anyway, I'm still behind such an idea - I think that having compatible mindsets make up your local community makes for a much more satisfying game-play experience overall - put the pvp'ers in with other pvp'ers so they don't have to see the rp'ers rp'ing that they hate so much for whatever reason - the pve'ers will be able to share their space with other pve'ers, the rp'ers can find a strong present community or rp'ers where their harassers are limited to the oxygen-thieves that deliberately created characters on an RP server solely to harass rp'ers...

it wouldn't be perfect, but it would probably be *somewhat* nicer than what we have now.

However, it's probably too late for that - I imagine you'd be looking at a huge mess of server/shard re-assignment, which would be weeks (if not months) of people getting shoved into wrong servers, characters being unavailable, and people getting shoved to the back of a line for a que for a shard that matches their type, only to discover that this *shard* got all the leftover #'s and is nearly empty, etc etc etc...que the whine!!

Also, it would create some other issues - pve'ers that want to TRY OUT pvp would find a relatively stale pvp community - RP'ers that also enjoy PVP would probably have similar problems - and dedicated PVP'ers would have little/no reason to experience any other kind of gameplay that they might find satisfying...etc

so, in short, adorable dream - but probably just as fill of problems as solutions, and probably ultimately un-implimentable at this stage of the game

still, if there was ever any assurance that ESO/ZOS would be willing to make large scale code changes to the game to create more...compatible player communities, I'd LOVE to get in on that discussion...

dawnhawk

AlnilamE wrote: »

I've never heard of this before and I've been playing since the open Beta weekends, so it never made it.

I'm not sure what grouping harassment problems you are talking about?

Back in 2012 Sage and Firor did an interview where they explained "how they were thinking about" the megaserver technology. As with everything related to this game it seems that immediately got interpreted by bloggers, gamers and armchair developers everywhere as a "this will happen or death".

It is a cool idea, but it never really made it anywhere.

The interview is here: http://tamrielfoundry.com/2012/10/interview-matt-paul/

LadyNerevar

dawnhawk wrote: »

Back in 2012 Sage and Firor did an interview where they explained "how they were thinking about" the megaserver technology. As with everything related to this game it seems that immediately got interpreted by bloggers, gamers and armchair developers everywhere as a "this will happen or death".

It is a cool idea, but it never really made it anywhere.

I was one of the bloggers to whom they presented it. While they've never said that it was a life or death thing (just like they've never said that about anything), the impression I remember getting was that this was the backbone of their megaserver strategy and half of the point of having a megaserver. Just having one big server isn't that big of a deal - having one server and then instancing it based on your playstyle and who your friends are, is. @phermitgb up there is probably right that it might be too late to implement it now (though I have no idea how characters are currently stored on/moved between servers), but I remember it being one of my favorite ideas to come out of that early reveal stuff.

AlnilamE wrote: »

I'm not sure what grouping harassment problems you are talking about?

Not really anything I've experienced myself, but threads like this one is what I was thinking of. It's actually what made me remember that this feature used to be on the table.

Nestor

Probably back in the more conceptual time of development, this idea was bandied about. However the reality of the install made this problematical. It's probably doable, but not practical. Especailly if they are dynamically load balancing the servers. The first question would be, what would the minimum population be to maintain that shard or instance? What would happen if that minimum is met, do the players get kicked from the server? Those and other questions were probably looked at, and the problems outweighed the benefits.

The best we can get is a PvE area and a PvP area like we have now.