How to improve social aspect of ESO, your suggestions

ive_wonder

Hey!
I think this game provides very nice solo experience.
As for the MMO aspect, i think it can be improved.
From the top of my head, i can suggest 2 things.
1. Party finder
Basically you can copypast that feature from FFXIV.
It's a window, where you can post an information about your group, what dungeon you are aiming to complete, which party composition do you want.
Also you can type text description and requirements.
Althrough, i think one critical alteration should be made.
Parties can only be created, posted and seen only by a players in the same map, where instance the party is heading to is located.
It will eliminate "why should i venture into the outside when i can sit in the city for the whole day" problem and will make the world more alive.
2. Stimulus to visit player houses ingame.
Currently you can visit houses of guildmates or your friends without installing addons as i understand.
So would be cool if you could choose which house to visit.
Maybe also include some ways to advertise your house and host parties and such.
Maybe housing endorsement system.

Odovacar

I think its a bit more simple...just be or try to be more social. I understand many like SOLO gameplay but i challenge those players to step out of their comfort zone and just spark up some good ole conversation. You already have one MAJOR thing in common...you're both on ESO.

Also, I wouldn't count on ZOS implementing anything other than what we have for now..at least for a long while. This is an MMO and the more we venture out and give the community a chance the better your experience can be ...in my honest opinion.

Neoauspex

1 guild slot/guild v guild content/merchants in guild houses

Ashryn

For me, it would be having a better system for Chatting. I find it very clunky, at least on PC. I'm not a fan of voice, so don't want that. BTW...Second Life Virtual World's system for chatting is so much easier and this game could use it's method of basic building for housing as well.

KilianDermoth

Yeah, more guild slots, I second that. Already 5 of them are full, but I would enter some more if I could, especially non trader guilds.

Maybe split up trader and non trader guilds and limit trader guilds, while make it unlimited to join other guilds aswell (especially raiding and social guilds). Not sure about PVP guilds if they should be unlimited.

The difficulty is that guilds could change from trader to non trader and vice versa leading to members who will be in more than 5 trading guilds

My suggestion would be to add for example 500 slots more to any guild where those 500 members are non traders only, so that anyone who joins could choose if he joins as trader or non trader and guild leaders could move people from non trader to trader and vice versa (but only if that person isnt a trader in 5 guilds already). Maybe those non traders could at least trade internally.

This would even open the option to put absent traders to the non trader group list instead of kicking them.

ive_wonder

In other game i played ffxiv i remember bard system is a big point of interest (you can actually play your own music through the notes, by yourself or using an addon).
I guess we will never get music system as such in ESO, BUT, i remember that ESO collaborated with Trivium.
Maybe we could get some random scripted bardcore concerts around the world? From Trivium and from other groups that might want to collaborate.

Amottica

I think guilds are the best way to improve the social aspect of the game. Players just need to find a guild or two that work for them. We can join as many as five guilds. If someone has certain requirements they want players to meet for their group they can take care of that easily by forming their own group. Superior to FF14.

As for housing, it does seem odd that we can allow players to travel to only one house of ours. We should be able to give permissions to other players to visit any of our homes. It merely takes a pop-up window that shows the homes we have access to.

KilianDermoth

That reminds me a bit of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msLe3SyeO_0
If I remember right there were 4 instruments.

Stanx

On console, it would be nice to have an expanded 'quick chat' option. Haven't really thought this through properly but being able to cycle between a 'text chat' window, an 'action' window (ie saluting, praying, push ups) and a memento window so I can actually use them as I have no space on my quick slots for them.

Tandor

Back in the day, when I played MMORPGs socially a player's guild was always the heart of the social aspect of the community. However, you can't expect a focus on the social side of guilds if there are (a) multiple guilds per player and (b) a lot of guilds that are only focused on trading.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

• More granular control over Guild deposit/withdrawal permissions (number/quality of items, maybe with a specific list of things that can always be withdrawn regardless of quality, or can never be withdrawn)
• Guild slots to ‘sell’ items in exchange for other items (EX: I post a Skinchanger Legs Motif page, and instead of putting a cost of 10,000 gold on it I put a cost of Skinchanger Shoulders Motif page)
• Chat notifications for other people leaving/joining a group
• Make all the chat channel colors sync across characters when changed

Abnaxos

(I'm playing both FFXIV and ESO on PS5)

Chat notifications when people in the guild go on/offline. It's a small thing, but this small "XYZ logged in" encourages people to say "hi" and "bye". This does a lot.

Different nameplate colour for guild mates. Again, it encourages people to stop doing what they're doing and say "hi", maybe have a short chat.

Make the chat window always visible by default (maybe moveable and resizable). Keep it open and usable during loading screens and dialogs. I miss a lot because the chat window keeps auto-hiding all the time, I have to actively push option-square regularly to keep track. Add some do-not-disturb option which (optionally) also hides the chat, so people can quest for themselves when they want to.

Some kind of abbreviation expansion / auto completion (as it's already present for emotes). As a new player, if someone asks "anyone for vffgr?", I don't react. I'm too lazy to look up what "vffgr" is (some vet dungeon, I guess), so I just ignore the question. If this would be expanded to the full name (preferably even with a link), it would help a lot. This is similar to the auto-translate feature in FFXIV chat.

More prominently advertise that you can use a USB/BT keyboard also on consoles and how to use it. I think a lot of people don't know that. It's quite natural that people don't chat a lot using the virtual controller keyboard.

If the chat was as active as it is in FFXIV, we'd have a new issue: missing chat tabs and filters. Right now, it's not really an issue, but that's just because it's so quiet.

No auto-logout when idle. In ESO, if you're not busy, you get logged out very quickly. Consequently, everyone who's logged in is busy. I think that's bad for social interaction. Someone dancing on a table in the inn just makes the world feel more alive, even if that guy is actually afk-ing. This, of course, requires servers that can handle it, which is currently not the case, i.e. not an option for now.

FFXIV also forces people to do a group dungeon from time to time to progress the story. I hated this in the beginning, I just wanted to play the story, I wanted to play XIV like a solo game. Retrospectively, this is what socialised me in XIV. It taught me that all these other players are players just like me, that most of them don't bite and that it's fun interacting with them. It made me play FFXIV as an MMO with a story part, instead of the other way round.

ive_wonder

Abnaxos wrote: »

Make the chat window always visible by default (maybe moveable and resizable). Keep it open and usable during loading screens and dialogs. I miss a lot because the chat window keeps auto-hiding all the time, I have to actively push option-square regularly to keep track. Add some do-not-disturb option which (optionally) also hides the chat, so people can quest for themselves when they want to.

Everything except this imo, imagine if during dialogue in MSQ chat window forcefully appeared on the screen.

_Zathras_

Odovacar wrote: »

I understand many like SOLO gameplay but i challenge those players to step out of their comfort zone and just spark up some good ole conversation.

My comfort zone is..comfy. You do you, and I will keep doing me. Also, just because you're solo doesn't mean you're anti-social.

ive_wonder wrote: »

1. Party finder
Basically you can copypast that feature from FFXIV.

I'd be totally into that. It is a great feature, that is very convenient no matter where you are.

Abnaxos

ive_wonder wrote: »

Abnaxos wrote: »

Make the chat window always visible by default (maybe moveable and resizable). Keep it open and usable during loading screens and dialogs. I miss a lot because the chat window keeps auto-hiding all the time, I have to actively push option-square regularly to keep track. Add some do-not-disturb option which (optionally) also hides the chat, so people can quest for themselves when they want to.

Everything except this imo, imagine if during dialogue in MSQ chat window forcefully appeared on the screen.

True. If the chat window was visible by default, hiding it during dialogs wouldn't be an issue.