Friends, it's what ESO is all about... right?

Thunder

If we didn't have friends, we'd play Skyrim. That was the point of ESO, so many people playing Skyrim were like, "But, I want to play with my friends!" Yet the developers of ESO seem to have bent over backwards to make it difficult for friends to play together. In my opinion, playing ESO without friends is like eating a peanut butter an jelly sandwich without milk. The first bite or two is delicious and satisfying, from there it is a chore to go on, and ultimately becomes nearly impossible to swallow. Playing with strangers in ESO is like drinking a glass of water with PB&J, while it certainly makes it easier to swallow, you will never find yourself saying, "I could really go for a PB&J sandwich with a big glass of water right about now!"

Three factions was a really bad idea. Three factions with virtually no distinguishing features was an absolutely awful idea. There's absolutely no point what so ever to the factions beyond splitting the player base into thirds, ensuring that every single player is completely unable to play with 2/3 of the player base. While you certainly need to split players up into teams for PVP, and factions is one way to do that, the factions in ESO do absolutely nothing for PVE. It's like they said, "WoW has 2 factions, we'll have 3!!!", but then stripped out every single reason behind the factions in WoW. In WoW you can travel to the lands inhabited by the other factions, in ESO you never, ever see a player from another faction outside of PVP zones. In WoW the factions are diametrically opposed antagonists/protagonists (which is which depends on who you ask), in ESO it's difficult to tell one factions lore from the next, which is exacerbated by the fact that most players can play as any race in any faction.

WoW may have 90+ levels now (I haven't played since level cap 80), and that might seem like a lot, but in ESO there are really like 150+ levels. It takes 50 levels to complete your starting faction's quest line, and then you complete each of the opposing faction's quest lines so that's the equivalent of 100 more levels and calling them ranks doesn't change that. 150 levels is a lot of separation in your player base, especially when you consider the player base has already been split into thirds by factions.

Questing/leveling is irreparably damaged by the 3 factions and 150+ levels. There's really no way to take a VR10 Ebonheart player over to the Dominion starting zone to play with a level 10, any way that would make sense anyway. However, there's no reason at all why anyone, from any faction, can't group up and play dungeons together at any time. Especially since it already works that way for PVP.

I stopped playing a couple months after launch because I got tired of choking down PB&J sandwiches without anything to drink. I tried drinking water, and while that helped, it wasn't long before the desire to log in each day completely evaporated. Here we are a year later, there's no longer a subscription, so I buy my brother a copy. He swore to never again play another subscription game, so there was no talking him into it back at launch. (I even debated paying for his sub at the time.) As a new ESO player, he's having a great time, as you would expect... didn't we all. He's sneaking off to Tamriel every spare moment, subsequently he's out leveling me by leaps and bounds even though I'm playing a well geared sorc that can nuke through quests with his eyes closed. This means more and more I find myself solo grinding quests trying to play catch up... which is the exact opposite reason I started playing again!

Of course, as luck would have it, the characters I played last year are all in Ebonheart and my brother installed, created, and leveled to 12 in the Dominion before I had a chance to tell him. Not only are my Ebonheart characters basically nothing more than crafting mules now, but now I also have to solo grind a new character just to try to keep up with my brother. If there were cross faction PVE dungeoning in ESO, I wouldn't be worried at all about "questing" with my brother, because I could play my Ebonheart characters with him in dungeons, which are by far my favorite part of ESO anyway.

Ideally, the developers would read this and immediately assign a crack team of coders to implement cross faction dungeoning with player level scaling by next patch. I think we all know that's not going to happen, just as I think we all know it will more than likely never happen at all. I have a compromise. A cross faction Veteran Rank PVE Zone with quests and dungeons, with ALL PVE content from hence forth being added into this ever expanding zone.

I just want to play with my friends, is that so wrong?

Tankqull

nah immershun! is what its all about.

Shunravi

Because 'immersion'

DenMoria

TC: so I guess you're telling me to go back to playing Skyrim. I have no friends.

Shunravi

DenMoria wrote: »

TC: so I guess you're telling me to go back to playing Skyrim. I have no friends.

Make some friends! Thats what mmos are for!

Thunder

Shunravi wrote: »

Because 'immersion'

Yes, it's very immersive grouping up with a Nord while playing in the Dominion faction, and then teleporting to a dungeon located in the inaccessable land of Ebonheart. Cross faction dungeoning would break that immersion because someone in the Dominion could group up with a Nord and teleport to a dungeon in Ebonheart... err... wait a second...

Tandor

If you want to spend the whole time nattering with your friends, use social media. ESO is a role-playing game in which you interact in many diverse ways with other players, it's not a friends' meeting place.

BigM

You should go play Dark Age of Camelot! Great game made by one of the great devs in this game.

Shunravi

Thunder wrote: »

Shunravi wrote: »

Because 'immersion'

Yes, it's very immersive grouping up with a Nord while playing in the Dominion faction, and then teleporting to a dungeon located in the inaccessable land of Ebonheart. Cross faction dungeoning would break that immersion because someone in the Dominion could group up with a Nord and teleport to a dungeon in Ebonheart... err... wait a second...

I see you get the point

Thunder

Tandor wrote: »

If you want to spend the whole time nattering with your friends, use social media. ESO is a role-playing game in which you interact in many diverse ways with other players, it's not a friends' meeting place.

What happened to the LOL button? This post is screaming for a LOL.

MMO's are NOT for playing with friends! I guess ya learn something new every day.

Iselin

Why do I get the impression that when you socialize most of the time would be spent nitpicking?

Thunder

Iselin wrote: »

Why do I get the impression that when you socialize most of the time would be spent nitpicking?

Who is the "you" in that question? Me? If it's me, I don't know why you would get that impression, more importantly, I don't know why you would care what the topic of discussion was in a private conversation between my friends and myself.

waterfairy

Thunder wrote: »

Of course, as luck would have it, the characters I played last year are all in Ebonheart and my brother installed, created, and leveled to 12 in the Dominion before I had a chance to tell him. Not only are my Ebonheart characters basically nothing more than crafting mules now, but now I also have to solo grind a new character just to try to keep up with my brother. If there were cross faction PVE dungeoning in ESO, I wouldn't be worried at all about "questing" with my brother, because I could play my Ebonheart characters with him in dungeons, which are by far my favorite part of ESO anyway.

So start a Dominion character and hustle up to level 12 or tell your brother to start an Ebonheart one...much easier then asking for the impossible. Be thankful that they let you have up to 8 characters so you're not stuck with 1 or 2.

Tandor

Thunder wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

If you want to spend the whole time nattering with your friends, use social media. ESO is a role-playing game in which you interact in many diverse ways with other players, it's not a friends' meeting place.

What happened to the LOL button? This post is screaming for a LOL.

MMO's are NOT for playing with friends! I guess ya learn something new every day.

That would be worth a LOL itself if it actually reflected what I'd said !

MMOs are certainly for playing with friends, but they are not a friends' meeting place. Perhaps it's just my age, but in my day friends used to meet in pubs, they didn't sit alone at a computer and turn role-playing games into social events - mostly with people they've never met.

MMOs are about interacting with other players, be they friends or strangers. Friendship is certainly a part of it, but it isn't the sole or even primary part of it.

PBpsy

Tankqull wrote: »

nah immershun! is what its all about.

Rosveen

Thunder wrote: »

If we didn't have friends, we'd play Skyrim.

I don't have friends, your argument is invalid.

IrishGirlGamer

Thunder wrote: »

... Ideally, the developers would read this and immediately assign a crack team of coders to implement cross faction dungeoning with player level scaling by next patch....

Krombie

MMOs are certainly for playing with friends, but they are not a friends' meeting place. Perhaps it's just my age, but in my day friends used to meet in pubs, they didn't sit alone at a computer and turn role-playing games into social events - mostly with people they've never met.

MMOs are about interacting with other players, be they friends or strangers. Friendship is certainly a part of it, but it isn't the sole or even primary part of it.

Bold section:
Well as I understand the OP, he means he wants to play with friends, not to meet them in ESO instead of the pub, he (OP) may also meet them at the pub or whatever but the time that he used for gaming (Not at pub) he also want to enjoy it with his friends, Like when we all played skyrim; that didn't stop us from going to the pub to meet friends, ESO is like a play with friends after/before meeting them in IRL. But that's just my opinion.

Italics Section
I do believe MMO's main purpose is friendship, if it weren't they would only be online games like, Borderlands, Farcry, CoD, all those games that also have a multiplayer but it's not their main purpose
And I totally agree with OP

Humble48

Wall of text crits for 1 million damage!

Anyways, while splitting the player base into thirds vs by half is matter of opinion. One of the issues with a two faction system is that one side can easily become overpowered. When that happens, it truly sucks. While this is still possible in a three faction system, it's less likely to occur.

In regards to the statement of a VR10 playing with a level 10, there are only a handful of MMOs that support that wonderful model. It would be nice to have that, but it's a rare element in games. The only ones that I know that allow that are GW2, City of Heroes/Villians and Rift. In every other MMO, a level 90 can totally hang with a level 10, but the level 1 will not get any XP and the 90 will one shot everything. I'd also note that every time I've done that with friends, it's enjoyable for a little bit but becomes boring that one person is doing all of the work and the other isn't getting anything out of it anyways.

It sounds like a sidekick system that you're looking for. That would be nice but most MMOs don't implement such things, unfortunately.

SirAndy

Thunder wrote: »

Friends, it's what ESO is all about... right?

Nope ...

Tandor

Humble48 wrote: »

Wall of text crits for 1 million damage!

Anyways, while splitting the player base into thirds vs by half is matter of opinion. One of the issues with a two faction system is that one side can easily become overpowered. When that happens, it truly sucks. While this is still possible in a three faction system, it's less likely to occur.

In regards to the statement of a VR10 playing with a level 10, there are only a handful of MMOs that support that wonderful model. It would be nice to have that, but it's a rare element in games. The only ones that I know that allow that are GW2, City of Heroes/Villians and Rift. In every other MMO, a level 90 can totally hang with a level 10, but the level 1 will not get any XP and the 90 will one shot everything. I'd also note that every time I've done that with friends, it's enjoyable for a little bit but becomes boring that one person is doing all of the work and the other isn't getting anything out of it anyways.

It sounds like a sidekick system that you're looking for. That would be nice but most MMOs don't implement such things, unfortunately.

Plus EQ2. Its chronomancer system is superb, both for accompanying lower level friends but also for being able to complete earlier content either because you missed out on it or because it's more entertaining than the high level stuff which tends to be more of a chore.

DDuke

It isn't all about friends, not with any multiplayer game.

Sure, it's good if you make friends while playing, but ultimately any game with multiplayer component in it is about competition for me.

Counterstrike, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Civ5, WoW, SWTOR, LoL, DOTA, Hearthstone... you name it, it's all about competing against other people, not becoming friends with them (not a bad thing, though).

In fact, I'd say you make more enemies than friends, playing half those games I listed

DenMoria

Shunravi wrote: »

DenMoria wrote: »

TC: so I guess you're telling me to go back to playing Skyrim. I have no friends.

Make some friends! Thats what mmos are for!

But I'm so terribly unpleasant! Hold on! GET OFF MY LAWN YA DAMNED KIDS!

Sorry - I'm back.

Unfortunately, none of my friends play TESO, or even MMOs for the most part (well, except for DA:I multi-player and that sucks).

Humble48

Tandor wrote: »

Plus EQ2. Its chronomancer system is superb, both for accompanying lower level friends but also for being able to complete earlier content either because you missed out on it or because it's more entertaining than the high level stuff which tends to be more of a chore.

I never got that far with EQ2 but was that available at the start? Rift's sidekicking didn't come out for at least a year or two. I know that CoH/CoV had it from the start but god, it needed it to keep the monotony from killing the players.

nimander99

Did you just compare Elder Scrolls to peanut butter, jelly and milk?

Sindarious

Hmm I don't know...I feel like there are too many Aholes everywhere getting in my way killing everything everywhere, taking all the updates and so on, at least on the Xbox. It makes me want to go back to the PC where there were barely enough people to make a difference so I might get something done lol

Thunder

Humble48 wrote: »

It sounds like a sidekick system that you're looking for. That would be nice but most MMOs don't implement such things, unfortunately.

From your wall of text comment I understand that you find more than a few sentences strung together to be a nearly insurmountable obstacle. That's not what wall of text means, by the way, it means an unpunctuated block of text devoid of paragraphs. Literally a wall of text, which would be understandably difficult to discern. My original post is merely 7 short paragraphs, properly formatted and punctuated, hardly insurmountable even for someone with an elementary reading level.

At any rate, had you found yourself up to the task, you would have found precisely what I was looking for in the original post, as it was expressly stated. You would have also learned that although I think a level scaling system for PVE would be an excellent addition to the game, a scaling system similar to the scaling system that is already in place for PVP, I do not hold out any hope of such a system ever being implemented.

The goal of this thread was to illustrate the difficulty 3 factions and 150+ levels present to grouping with your friends in hopes that one day the developers might address the issue. Any suggestions and recommendations are just that, suggestions and recommendations. It is obviously up to the developers to implement their own plan to address the issue if they feel it warrants change. It is up to the players to inform the developers of areas of the game they would like to see addressed, as I have done so with this thread.

SanderBuraas

We all have different reasons for playing, and in the case of the opening poster it is to play with friends.

Although I quite like the split alliances, I think a lot could be altered to enhance the multiplayer experience. It should be possible to see, interact and play together with players of other alliances in pve. I also think there should be more features in the game that allows for or requires teamwork, as this will bring players together and create positive experiences.

Blutengel

I for one enjoy playing eso alone and not being forced into groups. But party finder still needs fix..