Finding it increasingly hard to find people to do DLC dungeons

lokulin

I'm not sure if it is just the guilds I am in or the time of day I play (late evening Australia) but it seems to me that it is harder and harder to get a group together for DLC dungeons even when they are the pledge. Getting a group together to try hard mode, speed or no death runs is even harder.

I've also noticed a steady decrease in the number of people on my friends list logging in.

I've asked a few other long term players and they say they see the same thing. Has anyone else noticed this trend or do I just need to find some new guilds and friends?

Mr_Walker

Diminishing returns. Probably because people started demanding harder and harder content, because they and their 2 friends want it, but the rest of the world doesn't want to be stuck in a dungeon for 3 hours trying to do ridiculously diffficult content. Plus anyone who contends with lag, like a lot of us Aussies, might as well not even bother joining the group.

I like moderately challenging content, but don't want frustration. If I want to be frustrated, I go to work, and they pay me for it.




And before it gets said, no, most people can't solo a group dungeon, even FG1, and they can't pull 40K dps.

Anotherone773

Mr_Walker wrote: »

Diminishing returns. Probably because people started demanding harder and harder content, because they and their 2 friends want it, but the rest of the world doesn't want to be stuck in a dungeon for 3 hours trying to do ridiculously diffficult content. Plus anyone who contends with lag, like a lot of us Aussies, might as well not even bother joining the group.

I like moderately challenging content, but don't want frustration. If I want to be frustrated, I go to work, and they pay me for it.




And before it gets said, no, most people can't solo a group dungeon, even FG1, and they can't pull 40K dps.

This. if i wanted to spend 1-3 hours in an instance, i would do maelstrom or a trial or something. I like my dungeon runs( not speed runs either) to be like my pizza, 30 minutes or less. It takes longer to do DLC dungeons but the number of bosses are the same and thus the rewards are generally the same. So dont want to run them unless i need gear in them and that is rarely.

flguy147ub17_ESO

its harder to find dungeons period now unless you already have your own "group". even with guilds. Was thinking the same thing tonight, i honestly think this game is holding on due to not much MMO competition. I have played on all 3 platforms since PC launch. I honestly would move on from ESO if there was another MMO that i was interested in.

Mr_Walker

Anotherone773 wrote: »

Mr_Walker wrote: »

Diminishing returns. Probably because people started demanding harder and harder content, because they and their 2 friends want it, but the rest of the world doesn't want to be stuck in a dungeon for 3 hours trying to do ridiculously diffficult content. Plus anyone who contends with lag, like a lot of us Aussies, might as well not even bother joining the group.

I like moderately challenging content, but don't want frustration. If I want to be frustrated, I go to work, and they pay me for it.




And before it gets said, no, most people can't solo a group dungeon, even FG1, and they can't pull 40K dps.

This. if i wanted to spend 1-3 hours in an instance, i would do maelstrom or a trial or something. I like my dungeon runs( not speed runs either) to be like my pizza, 30 minutes or less. It takes longer to do DLC dungeons but the number of bosses are the same and thus the rewards are generally the same. So dont want to run them unless i need gear in them and that is rarely.

Yup. I have a life. It may not seem like it, but I do! That's why I like the original dungeons, most of them you're in and out in 15/20 minutes. If you're with some mates you tend to do a few in a row, muck around, but they're all relatively quick, even if sometimes not so painless. My friends must not be awesome though, because we occasionally have problems with the old "II" dungeons.

lokulin

Sad to see I am not alone in seeing this trend. I really like some of the newer dungeons but totally agree that the risk vs reward balance doesn't seem quite right. I had a couple of friends spend eight hours one Sunday a few months back doing the Fang Lair hard mode and no death runs. I'm fairly certain that the burnout from that is what caused them all to one by one quietly drop the game over the subsequent weeks.

SakuraRush

Most players want the biggest reward for the least effort in the smallest amount of time. In addition to that many of the DLC dungeons are a nightmare to pug. They have actual mechanics sometimes and that seems to baffle a great many player.

This isn't an issue unique to ESO and is something you will encounter in any MMO. Players want a "gimme loot" button. The moment loot is behind a challenge those players will call for nerfs.

idk

It would be the guilds you are running with. Players that have the focus migrate to guilds that have more players that are interested.

Androconium

lokulin wrote: »

Sad to see I am not alone in seeing this trend. I really like some of the newer dungeons but totally agree that the risk vs reward balance doesn't seem quite right. I had a couple of friends spend eight hours one Sunday a few months back doing the Fang Lair hard mode and no death runs. I'm fairly certain that the burnout from that is what caused them all to one by one quietly drop the game over the subsequent weeks.

That doesn't sound like fun.

Vapirko

For me it’s just a question of why bother? PvE doesn’t do anything for me anymore. I’m over the grind. I don’t need more monster helms. I don’t care about parse numbers. I dont want to spend my hour or two running pledges. Imo the PvE mechanics are not fun. PvP combat can stilll be dynamic and fun but PvE is stale and boring and has been for some time. vMA was the last fun PvE content imo.

lokulin

Androconium wrote: »

lokulin wrote: »

Sad to see I am not alone in seeing this trend. I really like some of the newer dungeons but totally agree that the risk vs reward balance doesn't seem quite right. I had a couple of friends spend eight hours one Sunday a few months back doing the Fang Lair hard mode and no death runs. I'm fairly certain that the burnout from that is what caused them all to one by one quietly drop the game over the subsequent weeks.

That doesn't sound like fun.

I agree, and these were not noob players. They all had the Falkreath Hold, Cradle of Shadows and Ruins of Mazzatun achievements already. Too many one shot mechanics in these new dungeons that make the no death runs less skill and more RNG based perhaps.

Alaztor91

There isn't imo any reason to keep running dungeons if you already have the sets/monster helm or the skins/titles/etc associated with them. You can get pledge keys from normal mode and soloing 1 or 2 normal dungeons usually takes me less time than waiting for the vet queue as a DPS.

Even if you have a decent group and can farm motifs from the DLC HM dungeons, you probably can get more gold in the same time just running around open world harvesting stuff, picking nodes and looting chests which is imo complete bs.

SteveCampsOut

This is me on Play! This is me on Work! Non-DLC is play. DLC is work. It's really just that simple.

disintegr8

Agree with a lot of what has been said, the DLC dungeons are a time consuming grind fest for the most part and I play the game for fun. Making new dungeons 3 times longer or giving everything 3 times as much health does not make them more enjoyable.

I've completed vet Fang Lair, vet Scalecaller Peak and vet Falkreath Hold once each and may never do them again because there is no reason to do so. At least vet Bloodroot has some reward with the Earthgore set being decent, but I've even had more fails in there than I have had completes,

As for the 2 most recent ones - as yet I see no reason to run them in vet mode.

TheDarkShadow

Pug these DLC dungeons most of the time is not a good experience. Unless you have a small group of skillful players pushing the same goal. But after the achievement are done there is no reason to come back (maybe motifs but as someone said, you can make the same amount of gold picking up materials solo). And when a couple of these friends you play with quit the game for whatever reason, it leave you with this empty feeling and make you want to quit too.

lokulin

TheDarkShadow wrote: »

Pug these DLC dungeons most of the time is not a good experience. Unless you have a small group of skillful players pushing the same goal. But after the achievement are done there is no reason to come back (maybe motifs but as someone said, you can make the same amount of gold picking up materials solo). And when a couple of these friends you play with quit the game for whatever reason, it leave you with this empty feeling and make you want to quit too.

Yeah, definitely know that feeling.

Greysson

SakuraRush wrote: »

Most players want the biggest reward for the least effort in the smallest amount of time. In addition to that many of the DLC dungeons are a nightmare to pug. They have actual mechanics sometimes and that seems to baffle a great many player.

This isn't an issue unique to ESO and is something you will encounter in any MMO. Players want a "gimme loot" button. The moment loot is behind a challenge those players will call for nerfs.

So, you are one of these people who are saying that i have to work for my shiny items?
No, i dont. I am playing this game after work, to relax, and not to work again.
I dont want anything gifted or a "gimme all" button, i do vet hm dungeons, but it is rediculous, in my opinion, to spent time for learning mechanics and try and try over and over again to get some content done in a game i want to play.
I dont complain about trials and their hardmodes, i have never liked raids in any game i have played so far, i just hate the rediculous difficulty and the one shot mechanics of the most dlc dungeons and the fact, that ZOS keeps releasing only harder dungeons, nothing in sight for more casual players like me.

SakuraRush

Greysson wrote: »

SakuraRush wrote: »

Most players want the biggest reward for the least effort in the smallest amount of time. In addition to that many of the DLC dungeons are a nightmare to pug. They have actual mechanics sometimes and that seems to baffle a great many player.

This isn't an issue unique to ESO and is something you will encounter in any MMO. Players want a "gimme loot" button. The moment loot is behind a challenge those players will call for nerfs.

So, you are one of these people who are saying that i have to work for my shiny items?
No, i dont. I am playing this game after work, to relax, and not to work again.
I dont want anything gifted or a "gimme all" button, i do vet hm dungeons, but it is rediculous, in my opinion, to spent time for learning mechanics and try and try over and over again to get some content done in a game i want to play.
I dont complain about trials and their hardmodes, i have never liked raids in any game i have played so far, i just hate the rediculous difficulty and the one shot mechanics of the most dlc dungeons and the fact, that ZOS keeps releasing only harder dungeons, nothing in sight for more casual players like me.

Not at all. If anything I'm saying the majority of the loot worth getting is not behind difficult content at all. This is shown by how rare it is to find folks looking to do difficult content.

If my statement doesn't apply to you then it wasn't meant with you in mind.

That aside, challenge and difficulty don't equal work to some. I find it far more tedious to breeze through easy content countless times in hopes of a single missing piece to drop than I do learning harder dungeons.

FlyingSwan

New guild, new friends.

You'll tend to find that a guild as a whole clears the new content pretty fast and then returns to it less and less frequently. I think we'd all pretty much done the speed and no death runs for all the new Vet DLC within two weeks of release and, whilst we'll go do it if people specifically ask as they missed the achievements first time around, it's seen as something of a chore that gets in the way of the more interesting trials etc.

Same goes for pledge runs, because it's easy to get the mask you want in the first few vet runs and then transmute it, there's only a finite life for that content. I, and many others like me, have over 1600 unused keys now between my chars, so whilst I still do pledges from time to time, even a group of CP capped people will tend to run them on normal as they can be cleared in a few minutes and people can then go back to something more interesting. I do enjoy dungeon running, and I'll always run vet DLC with guildies who ask, but it's not often asked IMO, maybe the odd new member may want to mop up a few achievements, now and then.

I think to eliminate this issue, ZOS need to release dungeon content that is genuinely mechanically challenging, not just a HP slog with repetitive mechanics. I think vMHK and vMoS are good examples of how to make it more interesting for longer, but in the end of course, it's all learned by rote.

Just my experience here...

robpr

People tend to beat it once a short time after release then it's forgotten, because its taking too much time to complete. I pestered my guilds for two weeks to finally do Bloodrot forge just for Earthgore helm for my heals and we wasted around 1h of time. Doing vAA noHM is faster.

MartiniDaniels

Vet dlc drops expensive motif pages, so in day of pledges you may meet experienced guys giving this dungeons a shot. In other days it will be mostly random newbies aiming for a helm.. anyway I don’t have problems finding a group for them, though it is considerably longer then for base dungeons.

phaneub17_ESO

Horizontal progression can suck when doing harder content doesn't reward incremental power and you can get alternate set combinations elsewhere that can be equal or better.

Rungar

zos is stuck here because the dps system is broken. They are too easy for the hardcore 80k group dps groups and too hard for the average 30k dps groups. There is no gear in the game that can fix that chasm unfortunately.

they keep adding more challenging dungeons, which is ok, but i think players really wanted more fun dungeons with different themes and objectives.

for instance what would stop them from having a dungeon where you have to siege a castle? nothing.

Bajatar

lokulin wrote: »

Too many one shot mechanics in these new dungeons that make the no death runs less skill and more RNG based perhaps.

That's why I don't do the new dungeons: too many cheap mechanics.

Plus, whenever I manage to upgrade my char and progress to something harder they nerf everything back to hell, to keep it challenging for people with way more time than me. Why even bother when I'm not progressing? I lost interest in new group content after Fang Lair/Scalecaller.

Prof_Bawbag

SakuraRush wrote: »

Most players want the biggest reward for the least effort in the smallest amount of time. In addition to that many of the DLC dungeons are a nightmare to pug. They have actual mechanics sometimes and that seems to baffle a great many player.

This isn't an issue unique to ESO and is something you will encounter in any MMO. Players want a "gimme loot" button. The moment loot is behind a challenge those players will call for nerfs.

A very simplistic and 1 dimensional way to look at it. An argument usually churned out by those who have little or no desire to discuss the real issues many players encounter within the game. Undoubtedly there are players that fall into that category, but they seem to be in the minority. However, it's akin to saying everyone who runs weekly leader board runs are elitist pricks. Again, nothing could be further from the truth.

In the real world, finding a guild that realistically gives these guys the opportunities to run this content long after the dlc has been released is a task on its own. I mean, you see it regularly on these boards. People stating it's as easy as joining a guild and asking for 3 other folk, who all happen to have the tank/healer/dps on tap. The reality, you can spend days or even weeks asking in guilds before you come across people willing to help. I get there are guilds out there that people on here use without issues, but that isn't the norm. Most people either stick to a small clique or will only run it with very competent players.

It happened with Craglorn. The nay sayers come on here and paint a rosy picture of how easy it was to get others to quest with you. They are either living in the past or play an entirely different game. Next to no one wanted to do Craglorn pre nerf. No one. I remember when i first played this game, I spent weeks/months asking for others to run Craglorn with me and I could count on 1 hand how many people offered help during that time. Most preferred to just stand in Mournhold spamming their AoE's. That was the reality, not the alternative reality that is regularly painted on these very forums. Same happens with dlc dungeons. I see countless people asking for help in guilds, guilds that supposedly pride themselves in helping others with niche content and like Craglorn, they get little or no offers of help.

Not everyone has "mates" in game, many people just play the game for the sake of playing a game and leave the "mates" thing for real life.

AndrewQ84

The biggest issue I think with this is there really is no reward for doing all that hard content. Why should I spend forever in a hardmode dungeon when I get nothing for it? What's in it for me? Why should I subject myself to having to deal with pugs for no reward? No thanks. I don't have to measure my E-Peen against anyone. I don't care for it. I don't need to flaunt any of those "achievements" against anyone. Those achievement don't really mean anything. For all we know, you could've been carried. So what's the real reason for doing them? Why should we deal with all that headache?

lokulin

Rungar wrote: »

zos is stuck here because the dps system is broken. They are too easy for the hardcore 80k group dps groups and too hard for the average 30k dps groups. There is no gear in the game that can fix that chasm unfortunately.

they keep adding more challenging dungeons, which is ok, but i think players really wanted more fun dungeons with different themes and objectives.

for instance what would stop them from having a dungeon where you have to siege a castle? nothing.

That could be quite cool actually.

lokulin

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

SakuraRush wrote: »

Most players want the biggest reward for the least effort in the smallest amount of time. In addition to that many of the DLC dungeons are a nightmare to pug. They have actual mechanics sometimes and that seems to baffle a great many player.

This isn't an issue unique to ESO and is something you will encounter in any MMO. Players want a "gimme loot" button. The moment loot is behind a challenge those players will call for nerfs.

A very simplistic and 1 dimensional way to look at it. An argument usually churned out by those who have little or no desire to discuss the real issues many players encounter within the game. Undoubtedly there are players that fall into that category, but they seem to be in the minority. However, it's akin to saying everyone who runs weekly leader board runs are elitist pricks. Again, nothing could be further from the truth.

In the real world, finding a guild that realistically gives these guys the opportunities to run this content long after the dlc has been released is a task on its own. I mean, you see it regularly on these boards. People stating it's as easy as joining a guild and asking for 3 other folk, who all happen to have the tank/healer/dps on tap. The reality, you can spend days or even weeks asking in guilds before you come across people willing to help. I get there are guilds out there that people on here use without issues, but that isn't the norm. Most people either stick to a small clique or will only run it with very competent players.

It happened with Craglorn. The nay sayers come on here and paint a rosy picture of how easy it was to get others to quest with you. They are either living in the past or play an entirely different game. Next to no one wanted to do Craglorn pre nerf. No one. I remember when i first played this game, I spent weeks/months asking for others to run Craglorn with me and I could count on 1 hand how many people offered help during that time. Most preferred to just stand in Mournhold spamming their AoE's. That was the reality, not the alternative reality that is regularly painted on these very forums. Same happens with dlc dungeons. I see countless people asking for help in guilds, guilds that supposedly pride themselves in helping others with niche content and like Craglorn, they get little or no offers of help.

Not everyone has "mates" in game, many people just play the game for the sake of playing a game and leave the "mates" thing for real life.

Yep, I had the same problem with Craglorn. Ended up having to do pretty much the lot solo. I still think they could revitalise a lot of the group delves in Craglorn and add them to the dungeon queue somehow.

Everstorm

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

SakuraRush wrote: »

Most players want the biggest reward for the least effort in the smallest amount of time. In addition to that many of the DLC dungeons are a nightmare to pug. They have actual mechanics sometimes and that seems to baffle a great many player.

This isn't an issue unique to ESO and is something you will encounter in any MMO. Players want a "gimme loot" button. The moment loot is behind a challenge those players will call for nerfs.

A very simplistic and 1 dimensional way to look at it. An argument usually churned out by those who have little or no desire to discuss the real issues many players encounter within the game. Undoubtedly there are players that fall into that category, but they seem to be in the minority. However, it's akin to saying everyone who runs weekly leader board runs are elitist pricks. Again, nothing could be further from the truth.

In the real world, finding a guild that realistically gives these guys the opportunities to run this content long after the dlc has been released is a task on its own. I mean, you see it regularly on these boards. People stating it's as easy as joining a guild and asking for 3 other folk, who all happen to have the tank/healer/dps on tap. The reality, you can spend days or even weeks asking in guilds before you come across people willing to help. I get there are guilds out there that people on here use without issues, but that isn't the norm. Most people either stick to a small clique or will only run it with very competent players.

It happened with Craglorn. The nay sayers come on here and paint a rosy picture of how easy it was to get others to quest with you. They are either living in the past or play an entirely different game. Next to no one wanted to do Craglorn pre nerf. No one. I remember when i first played this game, I spent weeks/months asking for others to run Craglorn with me and I could count on 1 hand how many people offered help during that time. Most preferred to just stand in Mournhold spamming their AoE's. That was the reality, not the alternative reality that is regularly painted on these very forums. Same happens with dlc dungeons. I see countless people asking for help in guilds, guilds that supposedly pride themselves in helping others with niche content and like Craglorn, they get little or no offers of help.

Not everyone has "mates" in game, many people just play the game for the sake of playing a game and leave the "mates" thing for real life.

And if you actually want to use one of the sets that drops there you have to try and get a group together another dozen times if not more. ZOS likes the RNG way too much.

SaintSubwayy

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Vet dlc drops expensive motif pages, so in day of pledges you may meet experienced guys giving this dungeons a shot. In other days it will be mostly random newbies aiming for a helm.. anyway I don’t have problems finding a group for them, though it is considerably longer then for base dungeons.

Well no offense but the motifs are cheap af on pc eu.....scalecaller motif pages go from 18k up to maybe 70k (only that high for chests and legs)

The problem imo is that the motifs come out half a year after the content, and ppl are already fed up from those dungeons.

Some ppl i know now only run those dungeons after the motifs have been released, since they wont bother running them over and over for achievements and later run again just for the motifs.

Furthermore imo the difficulty became way over the top with dragonbones and wolfhunter dlc dungeons.
Horn of the reach dungeons had a good lvl of difficulty when they where released.
Dragonbones was ok on release for good groups, but if your goup was average or below it was horrible.

Malprave

Love the DLC dungeons. They are why I keep playing the game. I like that they are hard. I enjoy the challenge and for me doing them is it’s own reward. I don’t care about the loot. I don’t understand calling for a nerf on content that has a difficulty switch anyway.
I get tired of hearing criticism of the group finder tool. Sure I’ve gotten bad groups but I’ve gotten many, many good groups with great people. I have done all the vet DLC content and have only ever done it with a pug.
The four player dungeon is the heart and soul of the game and I appreciate that ZOS has increased the difficulty to the point where group composition and the trinity matter.