Cross-faction vDSA

code65536

vDSA is the weekly for the second week in a row, and some friends and I decided to do something a little different: cross-faction vDSA.

• We did this on the Live server, and since we can't manually invite members of the other faction, we had to create the group via the Group Finder.
• Unlike doing dungeons with a Group Finder group, everything in vDSA is still VR14, and we are not all converted to AD.
• Members of the other faction will appear as neutral enemies.
  • Their health bars are red.
  • They have a yellow outline when we move our reticle over them.
  • We can target them with our attacks and spells, but we can't actually fire off attacks and spells at them.
  • Their AoEs (e.g., prox det, caltrops, etc.) do have red outlines around them, but they do not hurt us.
  • Healing and buffing do not cross faction lines.
  • We cannot rez members of the other faction.
• Everything else, though, works fine: the loot, the scoring, the fights, etc.

The biggest hurdle to cross-faction vDSA is the lack of cross-faction healing. We did this with our friend from AD (@zmobie_dementor), who played the role of a self-healing DPS (a magicka nightblade with a Healing Ward panic button).

The second biggest problem was with targeting. Because we can target members of the other faction (but we can't fire off attacks/spells at them), if they are near an enemy that we are trying to hit, we'd often have problems targeting that enemy, as the game will try to target our cross-faction group member and then refuse to cast. We ended up having Alevtina stay away from the group much of the time, taking care of things like the stranglers on stage 3 and dealing with stragglers that the main group wasn't engaging (since we had no DK chains).

It also took me a little bit to get used to not running away from friendly red circles (but still being mindful of the "real" red circles).

We made our first attempt at cross-faction vDSA after on Tuesday. It was a bit rough and we had a few wipes, hence a score of only 19K:

Spoiler

We had another run on Thursday. It was still a little rough, mostly because I (playing as the tank) messed up and died during a split on Hiath, causing us a costly wipe. Without that error, we probably could've managed 21.3K. We'll likely go again later this week and do better.

Spoiler

(Our healer had a 21.3K run with another group, so the scores were fragmented.)

And, much to my delight, I see that there has since been another group that has completed cross-faction vDSA:

Spoiler

Turelus

Interesting... +1 insightful.

Maotti

In ESO, the players cheat you(the game)!

Nice work!

failkiwib16_ESO

Nice, thank you for the information ....

I wonder about how you grouped up via the grouping tool though. I mean did you search for at specific dungeon, then cleared that dungeon and went to vDSA afterwards, or did you search for eachother through unassigned dungeon?

code65536

failkiwib16_ESO wrote: »

Nice, thank you for the information ....

I wonder about how you grouped up via the grouping tool though. I mean did you search for at specific dungeon, then cleared that dungeon and went to vDSA afterwards, or did you search for eachother through unassigned dungeon?

The Group Finder will continually kidnap auto-port group members into the dungeon that you queued for until everyone is inside at the same time, after which point, the kidnapper auto-port nuisance feature will be permanently disabled for the group until it is fully disbanded (it will remain disabled even if you requeue or add/remove members).

So queue for any vet dungeon (preferably one that is not the pledge and that few people will try to PUG), and once the group is formed, port into that dungeon. Once everyone is inside, the kidnapper auto-porter will be disabled, and it is then safe to port out and do whatever the heck you want. (If three people port in, and then someone ports out before the fourth has ported in, it won't work and the Group Finder will continue to kidnap helpfully auto-port group members, so don't port out until everyone is inside.)

We actually use this trick when trying to do cross-faction groups for pledges, because if we try to queue for the actual pledge dungeon, we would likely pick up strangers who we would then have to kick--this is annoying for us, but also unfair to them because it means that they are bumped back to the end of the queue. So we'd queue for a dungeon that's not the pledge dungeon to minimize the risk of picking up strangers, port into the queued dungeon, and once everyone is inside, we'd then port to the dungeon that we actually intend to do.

Grouping with the Group Finder is a hassle (I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to straightforward cross-faction invites in Thieves Guild), so we often try to re-use these groups as much as possible. For example, instead of disbanding and regrouping to reset a dungeon that we're farming, we'll just all port out and take a 5-minute break (clear bags, grab a snack, etc.) so that the dungeon resets on its own. In our case, we originally formed the group for pledges, and then decided to do vDSA afterwards using the same group.

NewBlacksmurf

U should get a reward for pulling this off

Enodoc

I thought this was only possible on PTS... regardless, here's a Dev post about this:

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Hey Folks,

Cross-faction Trials are not currently implemented. We’d suggest you avoid setting up a group that way until we message it's ready and available. That said, as you can see, some of that back end work has been done but it is still in internal testing at the moment.

Thanks for the feedback!

code65536

Enodoc wrote: »

I thought this was only possible on PTS... regardless, here's a Dev post about this:

show previous quotes

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Hey Folks,

Cross-faction Trials are not currently implemented. We’d suggest you avoid setting up a group that way until we message it's ready and available. That said, as you can see, some of that back end work has been done but it is still in internal testing at the moment.

Thanks for the feedback!

Oh, it's definitely not supported on either Live or on PTS, hence all the caveats and pitfalls I describe (the only improvement on the PTS is the ability to form the group via direct invite and not have to fuss with the Group Finder; it otherwise behaves the same).

But that's what makes it fun!

efster

This was super fun! And it taught me the greatness of Healing Ward (I'll never doubt it again).

Enodoc

code65536 wrote: »

show previous quotes

Enodoc wrote: »

I thought this was only possible on PTS... regardless, here's a Dev post about this:

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Hey Folks,

Cross-faction Trials are not currently implemented. We’d suggest you avoid setting up a group that way until we message it's ready and available. That said, as you can see, some of that back end work has been done but it is still in internal testing at the moment.

Thanks for the feedback!

Oh, it's definitely not supported on either Live or on PTS, hence all the caveats and pitfalls I describe (the only improvement on the PTS is the ability to form the group via direct invite and not have to fuss with the Group Finder; it otherwise behaves the same).

But that's what makes it fun!

Sure, I just wanted to point out that the Devs know about it and suggest that you shouldn't really be doing it, in case something breaks
It's great to hear that it works to some extent though, and I'm hoping that the fact that their alliance isn't converted to AD means that that particular "feature" of cross-faction grouping is a stop-gap they threw in while they work on expanding the system. In an ideal cross-faction situation, everyone will keep their own alliance but still be able to be healed/rezzed etc by anyone else.

failkiwib16_ESO

@code65536 thank you so much for this explenation. I didn't knew the kidnapper auto-porter would go off, once all 4 members are inside the dungeon!
...me and my guildies came tried to group for a different dungeon, to port into pledge dungeon after - but we kept being pulled back into the dungeon we quequed for, so we thought that we had to finish that dungeon first, before we could move on and do pledge dungeons >.< we tried for 2 hours, nothing we did worked and we gave up.

I'm in 2 very small cute casual social guilds, the members have alts in different factions. It's hard to organize a group within the guilds, without some of them having to log on a different alliance char. So we had to wait till 1-2 am to be able to group up, because less players use the grouping tool at those hours.

code65536

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

U should get a reward for pulling this off

Oh, we will. We didn't end up re-running it over the weekend, but our score turned out to be high enough to survive on the weekly leaderboard, so we should be getting a reward for that...

Anyway, I'm glad that I had a chance to do this novelty run before cross-faction vDSA becomes fully supported in a week. There was a certain fun in it precisely because it wasn't supported and there were extra hurdles that we had to jump over.

Enodoc

Hey guys, in case you haven't read the PTS patch notes yet, this is now supported and ready for testing on PTS, and therefore should go Live soon.

Edit: Oh, you did notice. For some reason the thread wasn't updated with the most recent post