Quest progression updated by others?

Shemhazazi

This is really unsettling; I was completing a quest (I'll try to not include many spoilers) early in the Pact storyline to protect an NPC in the crypt under Devon's Watch... I get to the location and others have already finished the event that is supposed to happen.

My quest is immediately updated to enter a portal in the area, and I head through it, since the previous step no longer exists for me. The area on the other side is also 'complete' (area is completely 'cleaned up' of enemies etc). Now everyone is lined up cheering for me, and side conversations talk about how I am their hero.

This is ridiculous, since all I did was walk from A to B to C, all the in between steps had been completed by others.

Hopefully they'll make it so that individual progress instead of environment state updates quests, especially for the main story, but that might be a big ask (but I think it is a necessary one).

Jirki88

I agree with this. There is a huge lot of quests where I just haven't done anything whatsoever and just seen... Yeah, okay, everything is dead, quest objectives fulfilled... There's plenty of caves where you gotta go in and kill someone specific, so if you just head inside and someone kills it... Well yeah. It does take away quite a bit of the fun in it.

netodec

Welcome to mmos. On the bright side it beats having to compete with 50 others for the spawn... possibly taking hours.

adlplumbingb16_ESO

it will be the way for a while, at least the xp, is doing the quest not really the killing

Jirki88

netodec wrote: »

Welcome to mmos. On the bright side it beats having to compete with 50 others for the spawn... possibly taking hours.

Between a rock and a hard place.....

Shemhazazi

netodec wrote: »

Welcome to mmos.

This isn't even close to a common mechanic though. I don't think I've ever encountered a game where someone being in an area a minute before me completed my quest when I walked by. Sure there are instances of periodic content being missed, but that's far different than a main faction quest just up and completing itself.

At least with re-spawn timers and that kind of competition one generally knows what to expect.

Chirru

I call this solo-grouping...it makes questing
in public dungeons easy..I rather like it since
being a Crafter and Explorer, clubbing one less boss
is just fine with me as long as I get the quest reward....

SixVoltCar

I prefer missing combat once in a while to waiting for respawns and resets.

illipthgore

unfortunately not all of the side effects of this system are good, I have had quests that I never accepted start and skip to the point of someone else near me upon handing in a quest to a nearby NPC which in turn made all other progress gone as I was suddenly pushed up in the area to the end point at lvl 3 instead of being lvl 5 which I would have been when I did the rest of the area before moving on. its an old problem and was a hot debate in beta

Shemhazazi

It isn't consistent either; I was doing a quest in the area around the giant Brothers of Strife monument in Stonefalls the other day--one section had me kill two summoned enemies. As I start the dialog with the summoning NPC someone else clicks him/her, summons the boss, and that closes the dialog I was reading. At first I was upset, but the game let me either loot the item to complete the quest, or summon my own boss after reading the dialog, which I choose to do, and was quite happy. I helped someone else, had the option to gain their progress by looting, or could choose to read everything and do it myself.

Unfortunatly, this is far from the rule. Quest progression, phasing, and instancing vs open-world stuff all seem to be applied inconsistently.

Shemhazazi

Ha. The generic suggestion I get nearly a week later is to abandon the quest and do it again. Thanks for that~