Cross-faction Grouping

Scyantific

Please ZOS, please do yourself a favor and not make cross-faction grouping a Group Finder Tool exclusive. Let us toss out cross-faction group invites through guild rosters and friends lists.

I had multiple guildmembers flat out unsub when I told them about the "You can only do cross-faction stuff through the LFG tool" thing. How can you guys not make it a day 1 thing???

MrGrimey

Uhhhh, why not both?

Scyantific

I'm not saying "remove it from the LFG tool" I'm saying that we need to be able to toss out cross-faction invites through guild and friend rosters alongside the LFG tool. Because that's how most people group up. Locking it behind the LFG tool won't really make it appealing.

MrGrimey

Oops, read it wrong... I agree

Xendyn

This is just the start. Has to begin someplace right?

Rich has already said they will be expanding it, this is probably just the easiest place to get it going.

FireCowCommando

I guess just leave/join repeatedly until your with your friends? I mean i guess thats one way to get people to use it >.>

Scyantific

The whole point of cross-faction is to play with friends who picked a different faction and can't be bothered to re-roll.

This makes it difficult to do so. People are not gonna like it.

It should have been:
-Cross-faction through guild/friend rosters first
-Then fix the grouping tool

nimander99

This is the first iteration of the incoming fixes to grouping guys. They have stated more improvements will be coming.

sekou_trayvond

While I generally believe everything I read on the internet, this is the only applicable text I see in the Notes:

"Groups can now be formed across all three alliances. It is entirely possible for two Aldmeri characters to team up with an Ebonheart and Daggerfall duo to complete a dungeon."

Okay.. Very cool

And later on it clarifies that

"Groups may still be formed as normal."

Still cool. That statement seems to suggest cross faction groups can now be formed as they normally have been, e.g. friends list.

Has something been explicitly stated elsewhere that refutes the above logic?

UrQuan

Scyantific wrote: »

The whole point of cross-faction is to play with friends who picked a different faction and can't be bothered to re-roll.

This makes it difficult to do so. People are not gonna like it.

It should have been:
-Cross-faction through guild/friend rosters first
-Then fix the grouping tool

In some ways it makes much more sense to start it with the grouping tool, and then roll it out to other things (like friend lists and guild rosters) next after they know it works through the grouping tool.

• While it's confined to the grouping tool you can very easily have absolute control over where people can group cross-faction: you can set it so it's only available when queuing for the instanced group dungeons, and set it so that when the group is formed you teleport right to the instance with you and the cross-faction folks (which is what they did)
• Having all 3 alliances in the same queues for the grouping tool should immediately cause a significant increase in successful use of the tool, which will in turn cause more people to use the tool - this will create more individual cases of cross-alliance grouping than if it was first done through friend lists and guild rosters, so ZOS will be able to gather more info on whether there are any bugs in the basic functionality

Scyantific

sekou_trayvond wrote: »

While I generally believe everything I read on the internet, this is the only applicable text I see in the Notes:

"Groups can now be formed across all three alliances. It is entirely possible for two Aldmeri characters to team up with an Ebonheart and Daggerfall duo to complete a dungeon."

Okay.. Very cool

And later on it clarifies that

"Groups may still be formed as normal."

Still cool. That statement seems to suggest cross faction groups can now be formed as they normally have been, e.g. friends list.

Has something been explicitly stated elsewhere that refutes the above logic?

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2320900/#Comment_2320900

Gina said normal grouping won't be cross-faction.

sekou_trayvond

Thanks Scy. Yep. This is dumb. My friends and I were eager to roll out our "super group". Kinda like Temple of the Dog.

Alexium

It is bad news for me. Why?! Why they not implementing it for common grouping? Are they try stimulate ppl to use LFG tool?

UrQuan

Alexium wrote: »

It is bad news for me. Why?! Why they not implementing it for common grouping? Are they try stimulate ppl to use LFG tool?

Please go back and read the posts above yours in this thread. This is the first step in their plans for cross-faction grouping, and it makes sense to start with the LFG tool.

CromulentForumID

I would assume there are a lot of things in the game code that check your alliance membership. It will probably take quite some time to unravel all of those, and program the new checks that let you form the team but don't let you visit "unauthorized" areas.

Like UrQuan said, instanced areas would be the easiest to control.

AlnilamE

Scyantific wrote: »

Please ZOS, please do yourself a favor and not make cross-faction grouping a Group Finder Tool exclusive. Let us toss out cross-faction group invites through guild rosters and friends lists.

I had multiple guildmembers flat out unsub when I told them about the "You can only do cross-faction stuff through the LFG tool" thing. How can you guys not make it a day 1 thing???

They said it is coming. I figure that creating a group via guild roster/friends list doesn't tell the game "I'm grouping for an instance" as opposed to "I'm grouping to run around the world.", so they need to figure out how to make a distinction and allow cross-faction grouping in the first case, but not the second.

Of course, if they could set the Group Finder to first look for matches within your guilds when you queue for a dungeon, everybody who wants to run that dungeon would be grouped together.

wayfarerx

AlnilamE wrote: »

Of course, if they could set the Group Finder to first look for matches within your guilds when you queue for a dungeon, everybody who wants to run that dungeon would be grouped together.

Even better they could put a checkbox / drop-down on the LFG tool that allowed you to restrict the search to just guildmates or players from a certain guild.

AlnilamE

wayfarerx wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Of course, if they could set the Group Finder to first look for matches within your guilds when you queue for a dungeon, everybody who wants to run that dungeon would be grouped together.

Even better they could put a checkbox / drop-down on the LFG tool that allowed you to restrict the search to just guildmates or players from a certain guild.

Ooohhh... that's a good idea.

UrQuan

wayfarerx wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Of course, if they could set the Group Finder to first look for matches within your guilds when you queue for a dungeon, everybody who wants to run that dungeon would be grouped together.

Even better they could put a checkbox / drop-down on the LFG tool that allowed you to restrict the search to just guildmates or players from a certain guild.

I'm not sure if restricting it to only guildmates or players from a certain guild would be a good idea, but it would be nice if you could set priorities. So you can set players from Guild X to be priority 1, and players from Guild Y to be priority 2, and everyone else (whether in any of your guilds or not) to be priority 3, or whatever.

Helgi_Skotina

If there will be cross-faction grouping the players should have the ability to stab the enemy player in the back at any moment.

LBxFinalDeath

I doubt it'll do much to make people do group content more.

Sure you'll have people who have friends who will do group dungeons together finally but for the majority I can't see it changing anything since everyone in ESO does group content with friends most of the time which is prolly gonna mean people only in their faction for obv reasons.

wayfarerx

UrQuan wrote: »

I'm not sure if restricting it to only guildmates or players from a certain guild would be a good idea, but it would be nice if you could set priorities. So you can set players from Guild X to be priority 1, and players from Guild Y to be priority 2, and everyone else (whether in any of your guilds or not) to be priority 3, or whatever.

That would be even better, but given ZOS's aversion to adding features to the group finder I was trying to keep any proposed additions to the UI as minimal as possible in the hope that they might actually add them

UrQuan

wayfarerx wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

I'm not sure if restricting it to only guildmates or players from a certain guild would be a good idea, but it would be nice if you could set priorities. So you can set players from Guild X to be priority 1, and players from Guild Y to be priority 2, and everyone else (whether in any of your guilds or not) to be priority 3, or whatever.

That would be even better, but given ZOS's aversion to adding features to the group finder I was trying to keep any proposed additions to the UI as minimal as possible in the hope that they might actually add them

Yeah, that's a good point. From a programming perspective it would also be easier to restrict a search to a certain pool rather than tell a search "first look in this pool, then look in this pool, then look in this pool, then..."

Joy_Division

UrQuan wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Of course, if they could set the Group Finder to first look for matches within your guilds when you queue for a dungeon, everybody who wants to run that dungeon would be grouped together.

Even better they could put a checkbox / drop-down on the LFG tool that allowed you to restrict the search to just guildmates or players from a certain guild.

I'm not sure if restricting it to only guildmates or players from a certain guild would be a good idea, but it would be nice if you could set priorities. So you can set players from Guild X to be priority 1, and players from Guild Y to be priority 2, and everyone else (whether in any of your guilds or not) to be priority 3, or whatever.

Edit: misinterpreted the poster.

I still think it silly that cross-faction grouping is restricted only through the use to the group finder tool.

Nestor

LBxFinalDeath wrote: »

I doubt it'll do much to make people do group content more.

Sure you'll have people who have friends who will do group dungeons together finally but for the majority I can't see it changing anything since everyone in ESO does group content with friends most of the time which is prolly gonna mean people only in their faction for obv reasons.

It would for me. I have 4 Mains, my Tank is DC, my healer is EP and my DPS's are AD. Now I am limited by alliance as to who I can group with if someone needs help with a group dungeon, or I bring something that may already exist in the group. With Cross Faction grouping I can now group according to role, not alliance.

Besides, those of us who mostly PvE view the Factions and Alliances as something meaningless beyond where the starter zone is.

wayfarerx

Joy_Division wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Of course, if they could set the Group Finder to first look for matches within your guilds when you queue for a dungeon, everybody who wants to run that dungeon would be grouped together.

Even better they could put a checkbox / drop-down on the LFG tool that allowed you to restrict the search to just guildmates or players from a certain guild.

I'm not sure if restricting it to only guildmates or players from a certain guild would be a good idea, but it would be nice if you could set priorities. So you can set players from Guild X to be priority 1, and players from Guild Y to be priority 2, and everyone else (whether in any of your guilds or not) to be priority 3, or whatever.

Dude, why are you so afraid that friends in different factions might group together?

It is absolutely ridiculous that cross-faction grouping is restricted only through the use to the group finder tool. We went to the moon and back 45 years ago, don't tell ZoS is so incompetent that they could only manage this through the group-finder.

I will neither be using the group-finder tool nor making myself available from it because of this idiocy.

* looks confused *

How did you infer fear from that comment? We are discussing features that would enable exactly what you're talking about.

I won't defend ZOS's velocity on developing LFG features, but hopefully all our cross-faction grouping needs will be fufilled soon (tm).

gard

So factions are only going to be a thing in pvp?

Jura23

They probably want encourage ppl this way to actually use GF. Let's see how that works out first, then we can discuss changes.

Shad0wfire99

This was terribly disappointing when I found out how cross faction dungeons were actually going to work. I have almost all of my friends in EP. I have a healer that is AD, and has mostly turned into a crafting-alt. I was very excited when I thought that I'd get to heal my friends through some dungeons with this character. But, I guess it's back to chopping Nightwood and picking Voidbloom for him.

UrQuan

Joy_Division wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Of course, if they could set the Group Finder to first look for matches within your guilds when you queue for a dungeon, everybody who wants to run that dungeon would be grouped together.

Even better they could put a checkbox / drop-down on the LFG tool that allowed you to restrict the search to just guildmates or players from a certain guild.

I'm not sure if restricting it to only guildmates or players from a certain guild would be a good idea, but it would be nice if you could set priorities. So you can set players from Guild X to be priority 1, and players from Guild Y to be priority 2, and everyone else (whether in any of your guilds or not) to be priority 3, or whatever.

Dude, why are you so afraid that friends in different factions might group together?

It is absolutely ridiculous that cross-faction grouping is restricted only through the use to the group finder tool. We went to the moon and back 45 years ago, don't tell ZoS is so incompetent that they could only manage this through the group-finder.

I will neither be using the group-finder tool nor making myself available from it because of this idiocy.

Um, what? Did you reply to the wrong post? I want cross-faction grouping with friends and guildies. That's probably #1 on my wishlist at the moment. I don't see any possible way you could read any of my posts on the topic and come to the conclusion that I'm against cross-faction grouping with friends and guildies. Heck, a couple of the people in this conversation here happen to be friends and guildies of mine, and it's frustrating that I can currently only group with them if we happen to be on characters of the same alliance!

Joy_Division

UrQuan wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Of course, if they could set the Group Finder to first look for matches within your guilds when you queue for a dungeon, everybody who wants to run that dungeon would be grouped together.

Even better they could put a checkbox / drop-down on the LFG tool that allowed you to restrict the search to just guildmates or players from a certain guild.

I'm not sure if restricting it to only guildmates or players from a certain guild would be a good idea, but it would be nice if you could set priorities. So you can set players from Guild X to be priority 1, and players from Guild Y to be priority 2, and everyone else (whether in any of your guilds or not) to be priority 3, or whatever.

Dude, why are you so afraid that friends in different factions might group together?

It is absolutely ridiculous that cross-faction grouping is restricted only through the use to the group finder tool. We went to the moon and back 45 years ago, don't tell ZoS is so incompetent that they could only manage this through the group-finder.

I will neither be using the group-finder tool nor making myself available from it because of this idiocy.

Um, what? Did you reply to the wrong post? I want cross-faction grouping with friends and guildies. That's probably #1 on my wishlist at the moment. I don't see any possible way you could read any of my posts on the topic and come to the conclusion that I'm against cross-faction grouping with friends and guildies. Heck, a couple of the people in this conversation here happen to be friends and guildies of mine, and it's frustrating that I can currently only group with them if we happen to be on characters of the same alliance!

Apparently I did. I still think you are overestimating the amount of work involved in trying to make the group tool multi-faction functional and how this is fundamentally different that regular cross-faction grouping. I do not believe ZoS when they give out such reasons because most of the time the functionality they claim not to posses is already in the gamE and has been used (example, the inability to drop campaigns. They claim this would have to be worked on. No it doesn't. It's already there. With every PvP update, they are able to drop are campaigns. Even when they added the new Axe campaign, it wasn't even a patch and they were able to drop our campaigns. And other companies have figured out it isn't that hard to access the existing character creation menu to have a "barber shop.")

So when you say that you do not think it's a good idea to have a check box to allow you to restrict a search to your friends or guildmates, it doesn't sound like you want grouping with your friends to be a #1 priority. I see I was mistaken. Still doesn't sound that way.

I still will not be using the group finder tool though. Because it still does not do what I want it to do.