Does no one ever queue for normal dungeons?

Jayman1000

I wait for hours to get into normal dungeons, but veteran usually comes fast, as in a few minutes up to 20 minutes. But normal usually take at least 30 minutes, if not an hour. What is going on here? Im not quite ready for veteran yet, but I don't think I have any choice if I actually want to play dungeons...? Well I could join a guild (but I don't have the interest in that at the moment) or respec as tank or healer and I would guess that I could get in fast with normal too. But as DPS if I want to play dungeons I have to select vet.

EDIT: and then when I finally joins one there's a cp660 player that just nukes the frog out of everything in no time while running super fast at the same time; I can't even run fast enough to get to participate in the battle before it's over, let alone take and complete quests. Then people leave the dungeon so fast the game removes me from it before the quest giver has even got half way through their quest complete speech.... on vet I at least get to experience the battles as they were meant to, and get to try to use my abilities lol (why does the game remove you from the dungeon anyway when you are the only one left in it? I really don't understand that game mechanic?)

Balamoor

I play them all the time.....

with my guild.

Warraxx

if i'm just farming for weapons and not jewelry...

Inarre

I duo queue normal dungeons every few days. Not all of the time though

Jayman1000

Inarre wrote: »

I duo queue normal dungeons every few days. Not all of the time though

Duo-queue? What does that mean?

Jayman1000

Balamoor wrote: »

I play them all the time.....

with my guild.

I should have typed "queue" instead of play. Changed the title; I don't play in a guild so I use the dungeon finder.

Magdalina

Well you could try pledge ones, though most people probably still more likely to run them on vet. If you're not trying to run a specific dungeon, you could also try a random - this queue generally tends to pop the fastest(it seems to work in some weird ways too - like many a time would I queue for dungeon X, be unable to find a group for 20+ minutes, give up, queue for random...and get dungeon X within 30 seconds) in my experience.

That aside, you have already mentioned the 2 options you have - re-spec to tank/healer(for normal dungeons that's super easy. You can easily tank all of them as a dps with ranged taunt if you're at least vaguely familiar with the place and game mechanics) or join a guild.

Also, far as removing you from dungeon goes, the idea is that if you're no longer part of your team, you have no business being there. So for example if you suddenly have to go in the middle of the run(or you get kicked for whatever reason) your team is going to need a replacement but they won't be able to get the replacement into the dungeon until you leave since group dungeons are capped at 4 people(the new person will get "instance is full" message). So there's a timer in place(one they shortened too) that makes sure you free the place for new team member. I guess it wouldn't harm anyone if this timer turned off after the last boss dies, but currently it doesn't.

You won't get removed from the dungeon if you enter it without a group though. You could actually try soloing some normals, it sounds like you're in your cp levels so you should be able to pull it off, a lot of them are really easy

Jayman1000

Magdalina wrote: »

If you're not trying to run a specific dungeon, you could also try a random - this queue generally tends to pop the fastest

That's exactly what I am doing, Im choosing random dungeon. I tried specific dungeons once, but no one ever joins that, so that is just even worse (not too surprising really, limiting the search to specific narrows the possible dungeons an awful lot of course).

Magdalina wrote: »

You won't get removed from the dungeon if you enter it without a group though. You could actually try soloing some normals, it sounds like you're in your cp levels so you should be able to pull it off, a lot of them are really easy

True, I could try soloing them when Im strong enough, and it's probably what I will end up doing. But that would mean I have to avoid taking any quests in dungeons to save them for a later solo run... That sounds counter intuitive to what the devs must have had in mind.

Magdalina wrote: »

Also, far as removing you from dungeon goes, the idea is that if you're no longer part of your team, you have no business being there.

That doesn't make sense. As I said all the others had left the group and the dungeon; that's when the game decides to remove me from the area. Im not leaving the group or getting kicked, it's the others that have left and that triggers the game to remove me. It doesn't only happen upon the last boss dying. If everyone leaves the dungeon but me, and there are bosses left I still get removed. That makes no sense. Especially because it's perfectly possible to go solo into group dungeons, so why is it removing me when I am the only one left in the group and in the dungeon? Why not let me decide when I want to leave? Doesn't make sense and it's annoying because sometimes I'd like to actually hear the quest person talk to the end; or I like talking to the NPC to hear everything they have to say (which often takes quite some time). All that effort on part of the devs with the voice acting and the storytelling, right down the garbage bin as far as dungeons go. I rarely know why the hell Im even murdering these poor sods to begin with, no time to read/listen to quests/notes/books. Everyone is in such a hurry, or they may have already done these quests before, thus they leave and the game for no good reason kicks me from it.

It may seem Im nitpicking but really Im not: one of the things I really enjoy about the game is actually taking my time to immerse myself in the quests and the areas. Im a slow leveler, but I don't mind taking my time, it's a lot about the journey for me, not just about the goal (of course random dungeons people will be in a hurry, but it doesn't sound at all like the dungeon designers considered this one bit). This falls in to the same category of weirdness as the fact that many books and notes, some several pages to read, is placed right on top of fast mob respawns or even boss respawns. Sometimes when reading some of these notes/books I am only 1/3 through the note before the boss respawns and I have to kill him again; so often I have to rekill boss three times before I can read the note fully. I'd like to talk to the person(s) at ZoS who designed this, hear what they had in mind? Because it's a pretty consistent occurrence throughout the game, it's very common.

Well, this sounded like a rant lol, didn't mean that to begin with . It just annoys me. It's like whoever wrote the quests and stories didn't really talk or corporate with the dungeon/delve designers, as if the designer just see a note/book pertaining to this boss and smacks it down somewhere near the boss, not considering whether players would actually have time to read 3 pages in 1 minute...

akl77

Ok, weeks ago it was the opposite, now the newbies and noobs finally left for destiny 2 or other games. So what's left are the hardcore ESO players, they are all max cp, so of course they won't be queuing normal dungeons.
So the answer is not enough newbies or people at low levels right now.

Jayman1000

akl77 wrote: »

Ok, weeks ago it was the opposite, now the newbies and noobs finally left for destiny 2 or other games. So what's left are the hardcore ESO players, they are all max cp, so of course they won't be queuing normal dungeons.
So the answer is not enough newbies or people at low levels right now.

I guess I just have to wait to I get strong/good enough to solo normal dungeons. This would imo be a good argument to allow players to start dungeons on easy difficulty (as in a difficulty level below normal) with greatly diminished rewards, drops and xp. Just so you could take your time actually experiencing the content (which of course works fine for Solo dungeons, delves and public dungeons, because they are easy enough to solo most of the time; but not normal group dungeons because they are too hard until you get high level).

Magdalina

Jayman1000 wrote: »

That doesn't make sense. As I said all the others had left the group and the dungeon; that's when the game decides to remove me from the area. Im not leaving the group or getting kicked, it's the others that have left and that triggers the game to remove me. It doesn't only happen upon the last boss dying. If everyone leaves the dungeon but me, and there are bosses left I still get removed. That makes no sense. Especially because it's perfectly possible to go solo into group dungeons, so why is it removing me when I am the only one left in the group and in the dungeon? Why not let me decide when I want to leave? Doesn't make sense and it's annoying because sometimes I'd like to actually hear the quest person talk to the end; or I like talking to the NPC to hear everything they have to say (which often takes quite some time). All that effort on part of the devs with the voice acting and the storytelling, right down the garbage bin as far as dungeons go. I rarely know why the hell Im even murdering these poor sods to begin with, no time to read/listen to quests/notes/books. Everyone is in such a hurry, or they may have already done these quests before, thus they leave and the game for no good reason kicks me from it.

Well it does make sense from the game's point of view. When the last person(other than you) leaves the group the group disbands which for the game is an equivalent of everyone leaving the group, therefore you will also get removed from the dungeon even though you technically never left the group. Funnily enough if the last person just logs off and you end up being in group with an offline person you won't get removed.

Even if you enter the dungeon alone, if you group with someone else while in the dungeon and then they leave you'll get removed. I guess the system simply has it in it to kick you out of the dungeon as soon as you stop being in group, whatever the reason for that, but it has no such check upon entering the dungeon.

They'd have to re-work the system to turn a simple "if <group dropped> then <remove>" into something more complicated that'd also check if there're bosses left, if there's anyone else left in the instance or it's just you now etc. It's definitely not impossible but I don't imagine it to be high on ZOS' priority list.

With that said, I'm absolutely with you on npcs' lines etc, first times I did all my dungeons was with friends for whom it was either also first time(and they also liked npc lines) or they didn't mind waiting for me to read every single conversation line possible(and even lorebooks and notes ). Tbh this is what I'd suggest you do - try to find a social guild that'll be happy to run the dungeons without rush, because otherwise you're stuck with randoms(most of whom just want to speedrun everything, either because they'd already done it 58739224 times or because they only care for the skillpoint in the end and not the story) and ESO's grouping mechanisms' imperfections. A guild doesn't have to be like an op dedicated kind of thing but just an easy way to get some like-minded individuals to do (group) game activities with really

Well, this sounded like a rant lol, didn't mean that to begin with . It just annoys me. It's like whoever wrote the quests and stories didn't really talk or corporate with the dungeon/delve designers, as if the designer just see a note/book pertaining to this boss and smacks it down somewhere near the boss, not considering whether players would actually have time to read 3 pages in 1 minute...

This issue actually does have a solution All the notes/books/journals/etc you see throughout the world go into your Eidetic Memory library, that's like a book collection tab you can access after completing Mages' guild questline. So you can later find the book there and read it in peace. I agree it can be annoying(I sometimes just let the things kill me when I'm reading lorebooks lol...death doesn't close the lorebooks XD) but at least you have that option.

duagloth

why would i do a normal with group when i can just solo it? unless its ICP or direfrost which requires a second person(which is absurd at this point in the game)

Jayman1000

Magdalina wrote: »

Well it does make sense from the game's point of view. When the last person(other than you) leaves the group the group disbands which for the game is an equivalent of everyone leaving the group, therefore you will also get removed from the dungeon even though you technically never left the group. Funnily enough if the last person just logs off and you end up being in group with an offline person you won't get removed.

But how does it make so much sense that the game just has to remove me from the area? I mean explain to me the reasoning that the game is reaching for here. The game removes me from the area because.... what? because what? Removing me from area because Im the last one in the group which is equal to the group disbanding... how is that a good reason to kick me out of the dungeon? Letting me stay in the dungeon wont break anything, won't annoy anyone, wont give me an unfair advantage, wont give me any advantage at all in fact (well except the advantage of having fun). I can even enter a group dungeon alone, that won't get me an "Access denied, lone wanderer detected!" message popping up on my screen. I have played other mmrpg's and I don't recall any of them doing this; they only do it when you get removed from a group that is still in the dungeon. It usually works such that when others leave a party, you get to be the party leader, however the party isn't actually disbanded and you are not removed from the dungeon.

Magdalina wrote: »

They'd have to re-work the system to turn a simple "if <group dropped> then <remove>" into something more complicated that'd also check if there're bosses left, if there's anyone else left in the instance or it's just you now etc. It's definitely not impossible but I don't imagine it to be high on ZOS' priority list.

No they wouldn't, no need to check if bosses is left; they just have to not remove lone players in dungeons. The only thing they would have to do is to delete the code that is responsible for checking whether Im the last player in the dungeon. if(numPlayersInDungeon == 1){removePlayersInDungeon()} <-- delete this pointless piece of code. Yes, it is most likely this simple. If not, and it is way more complicated to make this tiny change, it's crappy coded (which I highly doubt it is). It's much more likely that most players don't care about the quests and just speedruns through everything (so most players don't complain about this because they don't care), and those that do care, don't complain, because they just choose to do it solo, so why should ZoS care to change it? Guess Im pretty alone with this issue, and will choose to solve it by soloing group dungeons instead.

Magdalina wrote: »

This issue actually does have a solution All the notes/books/journals/etc you see throughout the world go into your Eidetic Memory library, that's like a book collection tab you can access after completing Mages' guild questline. So you can later find the book there and read it in peace. I agree it can be annoying(I sometimes just let the things kill me when I'm reading lorebooks lol...death doesn't close the lorebooks XD) but at least you have that option.

Yes, and I appreciate the devs taking time to make a complete library collection of not only all lore books but also all notes and books in general. This is one of those features that just make me love the game

jaws343

Here's what I think you are missing: if there are two players left in a dungeon and one leaves group or the group is disbanded, there are now two solo players in a group instance. The game isn't going to pick a player to keep in the dungeon so it removes both.

I also imagine the reason for this is that group dungeon loot is shareable for your group. It probably requires some difficult coding to tell the game to ignore that sharing mechanic in an already instanced dungeon for the last player left in a group, on the off chance you had a boss left to kill or a chest that went unopened.

And I will echo the repeated runs sentiment. I have only had this game since November and I have run the dungeons too many times to count. The story for them is just background noise at this point.

OrbitStorm

Came here to post this very question. It's quite discouraging as a new player to be stuck in queue for hours on end, two hours and counting on my latest attempt. Despite averaging a few hours per day the last two weeks, I've done just two dungeons.

If this really is the norm, and despite how much I'm enjoying ESO overall, I'm going to find myself looking for a new game rather quickly. I shouldn't feel obligated to find a guild to do random PUG queues.

Beardimus

Use the random daily for XP only, if you want to enjoy dungeons run with mates / guild mates

Or roll a healer and get in instantly.

OrbitStorm

Beardimus wrote: »

Use the random daily for XP only, if you want to enjoy dungeons run with mates / guild mates

Or roll a healer and get in instantly.

I just don't get this argument. Assuming I find a guild that isn't filled with high-level players, I also have to hope it has a reasonable number of active new players. Suppose I get past both hurdles, I'm now left to do the work of the Dungeon Finder, which is finding the roles, synchronizing schedules, etc.

An arduous workaround for a system that is virtually defunct because this game struggles to retain new players is silly. Telling new players to make up for the shortcomings of poor early-game design is absolutely ridiculous and probably one of the biggest factors in why this game doesn't have very many new players at all.

Mancombe_Nosehair

My guess is that you are queuing as a dps, which almost everyone else does. Try learning how to tank; it is actually great fun. You will only queue for a few seconds then.

A word of warning though, if you don't bother to actually tank, you will likely get kicked. There's nothing worse than a fanker.

Jayman1000

jaws343 wrote: »

"I also imagine the reason for this is that group dungeon loot is shareable for your group. It probably requires some difficult coding to tell the game to ignore that sharing mechanic in an already instanced dungeon for the last player left in a group, on the off chance you had a boss left to kill or a chest that went unopened."

No it wouldn't be difficult, and it isn't. The game already makes the boss loot etc shareable with only group members. But since we already established that Im the only group member left that loot will automatically be sharable with no one. No new coding is required here.

jaws343 wrote: »

"The game isn't going to pick a player to keep in the dungeon so it removes both."

Why isn't the game going to pick though? Why would it not pick to remove from dungeon those players that actually left the group? Clearly people who leave a group in a dungeon has made a choice to not be in the group, so removing them would very much make sense. Why remove the last player that didn't leave group and that hasn't left the dungeon?

jaws343 wrote: »

"The story for them is just background noise at this point.".

I haven't experienced them, so it's not noise to me. I fully understand that there are people who are not interested in quests, lore and story, or they may have already done it and therefore don't want to wait for me to read and experience the quests; I got no problem with that.

Jayman1000

OrbitStorm wrote: »

An arduous workaround for a system that is virtually defunct because this game struggles to retain new players is silly. Telling new players to make up for the shortcomings of poor early-game design is absolutely ridiculous and probably one of the biggest factors in why this game doesn't have very many new players at all.

I think you speak the truth here. And even if it is not the biggest factor to this it doesn't exactly help.

Jayman1000

OrbitStorm wrote: »

Came here to post this very question. It's quite discouraging as a new player to be stuck in queue for hours on end, two hours and counting on my latest attempt. Despite averaging a few hours per day the last two weeks, I've done just two dungeons.

If this really is the norm, and despite how much I'm enjoying ESO overall, I'm going to find myself looking for a new game rather quickly. I shouldn't feel obligated to find a guild to do random PUG queues.

This is "only" an issue for normal dungeons. On veteran as a DPS I rarely wait more than 20 minutes, and often I don't wait more than a few minutes. It's hard not to conclude from this that only very few players must be doing normal dungeons... When you get strong enough you should not have problems getting into groups for random vet dungeons. I wouldn't want you to ditch the game thinking that it's impossible to to random PUG queues: you "just" have to do veteran. I actually join veteran dungeons just so I can experience dungeon play, even if Im not strong enough to contribute much. It's a bit sad that it has to be this way, but there's no way Im waiting hours upon hours to join normal dungeons.

OrbitStorm

Jayman1000 wrote: »

This is "only" an issue for normal dungeons. On veteran as a DPS I rarely wait more than 20 minutes, and often I don't wait more than a few minutes. It's hard not to conclude from this that only very few players must be doing normal dungeons... When you get strong enough you should not have problems getting into groups for random vet dungeons. I wouldn't want you to ditch the game thinking that it's impossible to to random PUG queues: you "just" have to do veteran. I actually join veteran dungeons just so I can experience dungeon play, even if Im not strong enough to contribute much. It's a bit sad that it has to be this way, but there's no way Im waiting hours upon hours to join normal dungeons.

It's great to know that queues for Veteran dungeons are quickly filled but it gives me no solace that I'm missing a significant portion of the early-game experience because of either a dead community or broken queue system. Other, much older, MMOs have found creative ways to keep the early-game experience fresh for everyone, including those rather late to the party. Speaks volumes of ZOS that they're the only ones who have not.

zaria

OrbitStorm wrote: »

Came here to post this very question. It's quite discouraging as a new player to be stuck in queue for hours on end, two hours and counting on my latest attempt. Despite averaging a few hours per day the last two weeks, I've done just two dungeons.

If this really is the norm, and despite how much I'm enjoying ESO overall, I'm going to find myself looking for a new game rather quickly. I shouldn't feel obligated to find a guild to do random PUG queues.

Has done random normals daily on my warden healer for two weeks now, a few times I have had to wait up to 3 minutes.
If I want to do specific dungeons I tend to check multiple,
In short learn to tank or heal or just quest while waiting problem is far more DD than tanks or healers. This is common in all mmo but might be worse in eso because 2 dd rather than 3
And yes its an issue for low level players who don't have skillpoints to spare.

zaria

Think its rater more dd queuing compared to tank and healers.

OrbitStorm wrote: »

Jayman1000 wrote: »

This is "only" an issue for normal dungeons. On veteran as a DPS I rarely wait more than 20 minutes, and often I don't wait more than a few minutes. It's hard not to conclude from this that only very few players must be doing normal dungeons... When you get strong enough you should not have problems getting into groups for random vet dungeons. I wouldn't want you to ditch the game thinking that it's impossible to to random PUG queues: you "just" have to do veteran. I actually join veteran dungeons just so I can experience dungeon play, even if Im not strong enough to contribute much. It's a bit sad that it has to be this way, but there's no way Im waiting hours upon hours to join normal dungeons.

It's great to know that queues for Veteran dungeons are quickly filled but it gives me no solace that I'm missing a significant portion of the early-game experience because of either a dead community or broken queue system. Other, much older, MMOs have found creative ways to keep the early-game experience fresh for everyone, including those rather late to the party. Speaks volumes of ZOS that they're the only ones who have not.

Think part of the problem is that lots of low level or causal players queue as DD as they has not had skillpoints or time for tank or healer builds. For veteran you get more tank and healer builds.
And its not a lack of players doing normal dungeons, as healer I have pugged nWGT many times for farming without it beeing pledge and get in in minutes.

Mithoron

Something is indeed borked....twice this weekend I sat in the normal queue for over an hour and just on a whim, removed myself from the queue and re-queued and got in to a group within a minute or two...I think the "being placed at the top of the queue" message is extremely misleading....

Nestor

For Random Dungeons, I only que for Normals. Vets have too much of a range of difficulty, and I always seem to get City of Ash II or one of the DLCs as a Vet. These are not dungeons I want to Pug.

OrbitStorm wrote: »

I just don't get this argument. Assuming I find a guild that isn't filled with high-level players, I also have to hope it has a reasonable number of active new players. Suppose I get past both hurdles, I'm now left to do the work of the Dungeon Finder, which is finding the roles, synchronizing schedules, etc.

Something tells me you have not tried to find a guild yet. Most guilds are not full of hardcore lets clear this as fast as possible type of players. The ones that are, are very clear about that upfront, avoid them. Find a nice guild that has people you like to hang out with and finding groups does not take that long. Or, you can sit on the sidelines and complain.

But, queuing in GF as a DPS, yea, it's going to take a while. It always will in a game where 90% of the players are DPS or DPS Wannabes. This is not the fault of the group finder, but the fault of all the DPS's using the Group Finder. Until that goes away, it can't be fixed.

Find a Resto Staff and level it*, healing a normal dungeon is easy peasy. You don't need to change your Magick DPS gear other than the stick. You can even sneak in some DPS. Tanking is fun too, but requires a different gear set and mind set than DPS or Healing does. However, those two roles will get you in a 4 player dungeon in seconds, if not minutes.



*As long as you have Resto Staff skills on your bar, your leveling the skill line. No need to even equip the resto staff. Put a couple Resto skills on the bar, and go grind mobs with a 3 damage skill rotation. Resto will be leveled to 40 or so quite quickly.

zaria

Mithoron wrote: »

Something is indeed borked....twice this weekend I sat in the normal queue for over an hour and just on a whim, removed myself from the queue and re-queued and got in to a group within a minute or two...I think the "being placed at the top of the queue" message is extremely misleading....

It was an bug with putting you in front of queue did not queue you, think this is mostly fixed but think it can still be there, anyway if in front of queue you should get in very fast at least on random dungeon, you are in front of queue after all.

jaws343

OrbitStorm wrote: »

Beardimus wrote: »

Use the random daily for XP only, if you want to enjoy dungeons run with mates / guild mates

Or roll a healer and get in instantly.

I just don't get this argument. Assuming I find a guild that isn't filled with high-level players, I also have to hope it has a reasonable number of active new players. Suppose I get past both hurdles, I'm now left to do the work of the Dungeon Finder, which is finding the roles, synchronizing schedules, etc.

An arduous workaround for a system that is virtually defunct because this game struggles to retain new players is silly. Telling new players to make up for the shortcomings of poor early-game design is absolutely ridiculous and probably one of the biggest factors in why this game doesn't have very many new players at all.

You don't need to find a guild with low level players. (Why is that even a concern?) You just need to find a guild with active players and post in chat that you need players for the randoms, pledges, quests or specific dungeon runs. No need to coordinate schedules and the group that you end up with will have all agreed to be on-board with following the quest line or whatever else you wanted to do in the dungeon. It's people in the dungeon finder who just want to get it done for the most part, and I don't blame them.

People over-think guilds way too much. Most of the time I use the finder tool to get into a dungeon. But all it would take is a simple message in guild chat and I would have a group within a few minutes at most hours of the day.

Defilted

I queue for the dailies and for gear I want. I do know that if I am not queuing for the daily or a popular gear set dungeon I am going to be waiting for a bit.

If I can I prefer to farm gear with my guild mates.

Integral1900

It’s a game where most players are dps, therefor as dps roles make up only half of each group you get a huge que, so when some dps ques as a healer or a tank they get in instantly... shortly followed by lots of dead low level players who find their squishy little charecters constantly dying...

OrbitStorm

zaria wrote: »

In short learn to tank or heal or just quest while waiting problem is far more DD than tanks or healers. This is common in all mmo but might be worse in eso because 2 dd rather than 3

So, to experience normal dungeons, I have to forego playing my Nightblade and play a class/role that I have no interest in?

Logical.

No, no other MMO is quite as hung up on awful queues as ESO is. Closest comparison would be WoW and their queues don't last half a day for DPS, sorry to inform you.