ZOS: Group Finder is Broken (Please Read)!

Phinix1

First of all, there is definitely progress being made. The addition of full cross-faction grouping and auto-teleport functionality is a big plus. That said, there is at least one very serious problem with the group finder at present.

The Problem

As most who have tried it know by now, you cannot sign up for a dungeon if you are already in a group. Correction: you can, but it breaks the finder. Here is an example that just happened to me: I signed up for a damage roll as solo, not in a group. HOWEVER, someone else must have signed up already in a group of two or three. What happens is, the group finder loses it's mind and forms a group of more than 4 (in my case 6 plus one more offline).

Of course no one can port in because the "instance is full." Even if you drop a couple so there are only a total of 4, the instance remains locked and there is no option other than disband and waste the (in my case 50 minute) wait time to either try again or give up.

The Fix

Obviously ZOS can address this in one of two possible ways. The first would be to simply do a check when signing up and if you are already grouped give some message saying "please disband your current group before joining the dungeon finder." Of course this would be totally lazy and would go against the whole "play with your friends" philosophy of the Megaserver.

The better solution would be to implement the following code (paraphrasing):

if pieces <= 4 then <group them> else don't

Not exactly rocket science there...

ZOS, I am sure you guys can figure it out, I have faith in you!

Phinix1

@ZOS_GinaBruno

I know you know this is not a "bash ZOS" thread. This is a legit issue that is actually happening to people right now and needs eyes on it please!

Hookgrin

I have received the "instance full" message even when joining a group of 3, where I was the forth. The group had already formed but had to kick someone. The tool successfully added me to the open slot, but something in the jump code was not seeing the empty slot and joining the group kept failing. I kept trying and got in on like the forth or fifth try. I can't say that in each group that this occurred the original group was preformed, but in looking at the group's composition and the way we parted after, I'd say they were random groups formed by the tool. The issue appears to be with the "travel to" code interfacing with the original group tool code. Last night I got a LUA error which was caused by the "travel to" code, so obviously some coding issues going on there. I submitted a /bug including a pic of the error code text.

I also joined a group where I was the 6th. After a few tries I was able to travel to the group, and shortly after I did, one of the 6 dropped off, they were already gone, just lingering in the list. One of the 6 was showing as offline, they kicked that one and all went well after that.

I don't think the preformed group is the issue. Appears to be more in the delay in the system clearing a slot after someone leaves or is kicked and the tool trying to add a new player before the prior one has cleared. In a preformed group of 4, the tool would be trying to add the next player in the list to the group, so if there are bugs in the code for adding a player to a group that has kicked one, then it could be related to problems handling a group of 4 that does not need any more.

Darkonflare15

Phinix1 wrote: »

First of all, there is definitely progress being made. The addition of full cross-faction grouping and auto-teleport functionality is a big plus. That said, there is at least one very serious problem with the group finder at present.

The Problem

As most who have tried it know by now, you cannot sign up for a dungeon if you are already in a group. Correction: you can, but it breaks the finder. Here is an example that just happened to me: I signed up for a damage roll as solo, not in a group. HOWEVER, someone else must have signed up already in a group of two or three. What happens is, the group finder loses it's mind and forms a group of more than 4 (in my case 6 plus one more offline).

Of course no one can port in because the "instance is full." Even if you drop a couple so there are only a total of 4, the instance remains locked and there is no option other than disband and waste the (in my case 50 minute) wait time to either try again or give up.

The Fix

Obviously ZOS can address this in one of two possible ways. The first would be to simply do a check when signing up and if you are already grouped give some message saying "please disband your current group before joining the dungeon finder." Of course this would be totally lazy and would go against the whole "play with your friends" philosophy of the Megaserver.

The better solution would be to implement the following code (paraphrasing):

if pieces <= 4 then <group them> else don't

Not exactly rocket science there...

ZOS, I am sure you guys can figure it out, I have faith in you!

The group tool was doing instance full thing and multiple players in the group before the last update. So the grouping tool has been broken for a long time.

phaneub17_ESO

One of the problems is that when someone leaves group or is booted, the game gives them time to linger in the dungeon regardless of whether you found another person to replace that one dropped player. What it needs to do is remove the person immediately instead of giving them a delayed exit, often times that person is either trying to reach an exit or is afk while the timer is going so the new player joining the group can't get in until the previous person leaves.

Another problem is when you boot someone who is offline/crashed, once they come back online within a certain time limit the game will automatically add them back to the group even while searching for new players to join. It will do this regardless of you finding another player already to fill the group, this is when you get instances of having 6 or 7 players in a dungeon group because the person offline came back while it found new players to join the group.