My first month experience in ESO as new player almost ruined

Ixilduur

Hi all. I wanted to share some of my thoughts given that we have some time before servers go back up. This post is just my opinion and don't have to be the same for all new players. If the mods think this post should be in another location please do so as this is my very first post and wanted to share some of the ins and out as a new player.

Firstly, I have played many games and MMOs over the years but thanks to my friends deiced to give it a go. In general terms I really enjoyed my first month , game is full of content and story lines that is amazing how much time can be put into the game.

But,...after getting the ESO+ sub and getting the new exp and DLCS got finally to lvl 50 and low CP levels and decided to queue up for dungeons as the rewards seem legit as well as getting those undaunted pledges done. Little I knew after the first few days I noticed a decent amount of players quitting the party half way trough or just before the last boss and I didn't know why would that be, and always was either the tank or the healer. After waiting for sometimes 40+ min in queue and then not even finishing the dungeon I could not get my pledges or random daily's done as I have little over 1 hour of gaming a day.
This completely threw me off of the game and just continued to focus on questing and doing solo content around the map.

So I have a question for you out there, how many have this issue where you have limited time to enjoy the game and try to do daily group content for the rewards but get your experience ruined from the actions of some. One of the affected players even mentioned that this is commonly done by highly CP geared players that want to rush the dungeon and then quit if not done fast enough because they only get 15 min cooldown to wait for another!!

Do you think game devs should punish this behavior of those players and make it at least a full day cooldown for dungeons with all their characters? Why not? Why get into group content if you are not willing to play as a team, why not going solo if they are so confident?

I also wanted to thank you those that were patient enough to guide me trough the boss mechanics, because there are always helpful players, specially those from my guild. Not always we have guildies to do group content and we all want to enjoy the game.

So this got me thinking and wonder why would I invest into ESO+ or getting DLCS in the future if I am not going to be able to get those dungeons, rewards and gear to progress in the game.
I really hope this gets looked into it by the dev team and do something about it.
Thanks for your reading.

Sarannah

First off, welcome to the game! Glad to hear you are having fun.

At the moment, the normal dungeons(MMO part of the game), is having an issue where veteran players rush through only for the rewards. Meaning the MMO part of the game needs quite some work from ZOS, but I do not know if they ever will do this. As far as I know, ZOS has never really addressed the issues players experience in normal dungeons.

But don't let that stop you from playing or having fun, try to find a guild who wants to do the MMO parts of the game normally. This will also make your time in the game more valuable/fun.

Welcome to the game, and enjoy your stay!

PS: Don't feel bad if a group does not work out, it happens. Just go again!

Daoin

Welcome to the PuG club, yes it is extremely hard to find a real group of players in the random group finder to enjoy dungeons, especially in normal and quite alot in vet now too, my advice would be join a guild where similar like-minded players have experiencing the same issue and do randoms or pledges as a guild group, theres like 90% more probability you'll enjoy what you are doing more. try a few guilds at a time and if thats not what your looking for move onto the next until you have filled all your guild slots, this way when you get 4 from just a guild request (real healer/real tank/ 2dd's) theres no que time.

sPark101

Join a guild and do the dungeons with only them. They are far more likely to be helpful and friendly.

FrancisCrawford

One suggestion: Take the role of healer yourself.

If your problem is that people are overpowered and want to rush through dungeons, then they probably don't need you to be a very good healer.

What class is your first character? How far, if at all, have you leveled the Restoration Staff skill line? Destruction Staff? How about the guild skill lines?

Or, if you really like melee fighting, you could take the tank role. In that case just focus on keeping the bosses taunted and yourself alive, and don't worry if you can't do much else than an ideal tank would. (I can advise you on healing particulars, but not on tanking details.)

But don't queue for roles you're unfamiliar with in random dungeons until you're more familiar; just stick to specific dungeons you can handle.

Amottica

There is already a well-vetted punishment for players who abandon GF groups and it is similar to what I have seen in other MMORPGs. We do not need a heavy-handed full-day lockout and that is something Zenimax will not be considering.

The reason the tank/healer dropped the group is probably because the group was challenged following mechanics or the DPS was very low or a combination of the two. This is the reason I no longer run with GF pug groups.

The solution is running with our guild. In every MMORPG I have played it has always been superior to running with a guild group than running with a random group of players. So I suggest finding a nice active social guild to start running with. It may require kissing a few frogs before finding the one that works great but it is well worth that effort.

Good luck.

Grizzbeorn

John J. Rando will end up disappointing you every time.
Run with a guild, or other pre-made group; people with whom you've become acquainted, so you know what to expect.

Daoin

at this stage i would not advise fake roles as the fake role in the dungeon is just as likely to get a bad response at a random and the dungeon needs both a tank or healer, eventually once you have a few characters ( for example a tank a healer and 2 dd's) if the guild suggestion has not worked for some reason you can then be the one to leave group instead, queue with dd while your doing something depending on time of day queues can be around 5 minutes, if you didnt like it leave group change character and queue again with tank and healers getting in groups around 10 times faster than dd's (depending on time of day) then hop back on your dd after the dungeon and try again, at the moment it is the only way to overide the quing penalty we recieve if we want to leave a group at the very start of a dungeon, but not dd to dd as there a very large chance that way you will end up being put back in the dungeon with the same group.

mrfrontman

It's very common for players to leave a dungeon when seeing a very low CP level player in the group simply because it's easy to run through a dungeon very fast. Depending on the dungeon, it could take 5 minutes to 20 minutes with a high CP and well geared group. If they had low CP's in their group this time could multiply by 3 to 5 times depending on how competent the low CP player is at mechanics. Also because you don't have the CP slottables and CP 160 gear which means your damage would be next to nothing.

The easiest solution to this for you would be to either solo Skyreach or pay a carry to run you through it until you hit at least CP 600 (be sure to use EXP scrolls to level much faster than you normally would). After that, do some normal pug trials to get yourself some gear or even join a guild to get more trials done to farm the gear you need for your class. Be sure to complete vMA to get yourself a perfected PVE weapon. Save up enough mats or buy the mats to gold out your gear too.

It seems like a lot to do but in hindsight it's a lot quicker than what you'd imagine. You'd be doing yourself and the group you join a solid favor.

Unless you have friends that are willing to carry you through all the dungeons, you're pretty much stuck on the same path unless you get lucky and join a group that doesn't mind carrying you through.

Players shouldn't be punished for leaving because experienced players have done those dungeons hundreds, if not thousands of times over and don't want to run through repetitive content slower than what they normally would. You state that getting into group content is playing as a team and that is absolutely correct which means you should do your part too like the rest of us have and farm the necessary CP and gear like we all have so you can play your part properly in that team. I mean, you're not really being a team player if you're expecting everyone else to do the work for you, right? I'm not trying to put you down in any way, just stating facts that we've all had to endure in our time playing ESO and you'll understand exactly how higher CP players with good gear feel once you reach that level too.

Devote all your time on ESO into farming what you need, admittedly it can become very boring and repetitive but you only have to do it once. If you do nothing but farm CP and gear, you'll get to where you want to be in no time.

Keep in mind not to farm the gear until you've achieved CP 160 or you'll find lower level gear which will be useless once you hit CP 160.

markulrich1966

I play since almost 5 years, but never got really happy with dungeons.
Ended up in creating a tank on each of my 4 accounts, just for the situations where I "need" to run a more difficult one (e.g. to get a specific monster helm), or for fast queues.
I also cancelled my ESO+ so I no longer will have the more difficult DLC dungeons when I queue for a random dungeon (and for other reasons).
Normal basegame dungeons are not really an issue once you progressed a little, as they easily can be finished by 1-3 players, a companion makes it even easier.

In general, vet and especially DLC vet dungeons can be very frustrating unless you have reached 400 champion points. Because you will perma-die, or because other players leave as they realize that you are not yet strong enough for this content.

Rowjoh

This longstanding frustration is easily circumvented in two ways:

1) Re-spec as a basic tank (in-expensive and easy to do) then do the non-dlc dungeon daily pledges and any other dungeons you need to do. When you hit the queue button the 'ready' box will pop up almost straight away every time. Once you have everything you need then re-spec back

2) Organise random normals and/or groups for specific dungeons through your guilds (very easy to do as you only need 3 other players - usually takes no more than 5 mins or so, but obviously depends on what time of day/night it is and how many players across your guilds are online).

richo262

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

One suggestion: Take the role of healer yourself.

If your problem is that people are overpowered and want to rush through dungeons, then they probably don't need you to be a very good healer.

What class is your first character? How far, if at all, have you leveled the Restoration Staff skill line? Destruction Staff? How about the guild skill lines?

Or, if you really like melee fighting, you could take the tank role. In that case just focus on keeping the bosses taunted and yourself alive, and don't worry if you can't do much else than an ideal tank would. (I can advise you on healing particulars, but not on tanking details.)

But don't queue for roles you're unfamiliar with in random dungeons until you're more familiar; just stick to specific dungeons you can handle.

This ^

Most normal non-DLC dungeons don't even need a healer, pfft don't even need a tank, in fact Dark Shades has most of its bosses on rails and actually benefits from not having a tank.

I'm not saying join as heal and don't heal, I'm saying, it is fairly easy to pop a few heals on and away you go, if you meet some conditions. On Vet, this may be a different story.

IF MAG
1) be a mag focused character, if you are stam it is harder. Have all attributes in mag use food to boost hp. (blue bi-stat is good Hp and mag)
2) look at your class tool kit (templar has it easier) for a few heals
3) you may need to level out resto staff a bit and use that.
4) swapping back to from mag dps and mag heal is an easy gear swap.

IF STAM
1) put 20 in hp 44 in stam and see if you can buy tri stat food on a guild store for cheap or use the crown fort meals
2) sword and board, learn how to taunt, youtube it
3) as tank you somewhat lead the group (unless well, the team is rushing) so you should definitely take the time to prelearn some mechs via youtube especially on DLC dungeons.
4) swapping out from tank to stam dps is an easy gear swap and food swap. Tank - Tri stat purple food (can use the daily reward crown food or buy on guild stores, same stats), Stam DPS - Lava foot (pure stam to offset the 20 in HP and stam regen).

Alternatively, use the new armory system, save your present build, and just reroll everything to a tank or heal and save that as build 2, now you can just swap as you please entirely.

Daoin

its not the cp level now you can power level to 1000+ in under a week but experience and years doing random groups you'll have a feeling looking at the group in the 'group' section wether you'll enjoy the dungeon or not, instead of just steaming ahead, is there a blocked person there ? a person you dont really want to be in group with again ? right now theres nothing i know of to even narrow down a little who you'll end up in the random with and in all honesty over the last few months of doing randons and meeting alot of the same people in them i started wondering about how the player base was these days, i have even completed dungeons with around 3 of group 300 - 500 cp while some full groups of 1500 + - 2000+ cp are still failing. i often wonder how many of the good low level cp players are uctually just coming from the NA server with already alot of experience even so i have nothing against anyone of any skill level but there are just some that i guess we would all prefer and option about wether we'll be put in the same group as again. and if so we could then leave at the start instead of having to ask to be kicked and most of the time being told no, and be able to re-que again on same character without ending up in the same group.

richo262

As for punishing players that want to farm a dungeon for gear or do pledges as efficiently as possible, no. Unless you want the player base to simply leave, making your que time even longer.

A new trial finder is coming I hear, if so, that would absorb a lot of DPS from the que times, and dungeons may get quicker in the que, or it will just result in tanks leaving for that content instead, who knows. There is a chance that dungeons finder may get more efficient.

Daoin

and the last time anyone who actually enjoys playing falkreath hold enjoyed falkreath hold in a random group ? none existent, thats just one example of a dungeon if i pull it as random i have to ask to be kicked or just leave at the moment, as soon as the loader screen changes to the dungeon. as tank healer or dd

Monte_Cristo

Since the game treats your internet dropping out or any other server connection issue as you leaving the dungeon, extending the time penalty for quitting mid dungeon would be pretty unfair to those who didn't leave by choice.

HumbleThaumaturge

sPark101 wrote: »

Join a guild and do the dungeons with only them. They are far more likely to be helpful and friendly.

Yes, joining a great guild is the best thing. You say you belong to a helpful guild. That's is good to hear. You might look for another guild with more players who run group content. I belong to such a guild on the EU Server. Very, very helpful and friendly folks.

You can meet great new friends running in a pickup group. I found my new guild because 3 guildmates picked me (a non-guildmat) for a run of Dragonstar Arena when it first launched (I was VR7 at the time). They invited me to join afterwards, and I have had so much more fun over the years because of them. Guildmates aside, you can make "friends" with like minded people you meet during pickup-group dungeons runs. Then you can invite those people to group for dungeon runs. I do this a lot.

First, to answer your question: No, ZOS should not punish players.

I have only abandoned groups three times in nine years. But those times, the dps was so low, and folks were dying so fast, I knew the dungeon might take hours to complete, if it ever got completed at all.

Of course, guildmates can teach you and make gear for you. But guilds also have "target dummies" where you can practice to raise your damage (dps). Guildmates might even come with you to the target dummy to coach you on ways to improve your dps. You can even get in voice communications with your coaches via Discord. You can also do dummy-practice with someone who "buffs" you, as a healer would in dungeons and trials. Things like skill-tree abilities, CP, and gear are all very important, but your "rotation" is extremely important to raise your dps. Before target dummies, we used to use particular world bosses or first-bosses in Group Dungeons. You might try those also.

For "normal" group dungeons, your level and gear and experience should not matter much. However, it is different for "Veteran" group dungeons, especially when everyone wants to complete "hard" mode. Group members may also want to get the Achievements for: (1) Speed Run; and (2) No deaths during the run. Some folks just want to blow through the dungeon at very high speed and do not want anyone to slow them down. So, a lot of these pickup groups will only want to be in a group that supports their goals.

Personally, I think CP 300 is minimum to run "Veteran" dungeons, with CP 500 being more doable. Although I have run veteran dungeons with CP 40 too, but they were being "carried." These new DLC dungeons are much more difficult than the base-game dungeons. Success depends much more on knowing the tricks (the "mechanics"). In guild-groups, if 3 of us are advanced, then we do not mind taking someone who is even below CP 160. We understand it is for their training (to learn the "Mechanics") and we are willing to invest the time. But if you are grouping with strangers (pick-up group), they probably expect you to know the "Mechanics" and to be able to contribute fairly high dps. Again, I'm talking about "Veteran" dungeons, not "Normal" dungeons.

A word on "Mechanics": My guild runs new DLC dungeons on the test server. We have spent 2 to 3 hours learning the "mechanics" of a new dungeon. When the DLC goes "live" we then teach guildmates what we learned. Of course, many guildmates enjoy figuring things out for themselves (without "spoilers" from testers), which is great. I mention this because . . . if you go into a "Veteran" level DLC for a hard-mode run with strangers, you better already know the mechanics. If you do not, then get your guildmates to take you on a training run, with at least one experienced player. Such runs are best done with voice communications (in Discord).

Last thoughts: If you are running group dungeons for gear, then: (1) You can get the bonus sets in Blue quality by running dungeons at "normal" difficulty. It might be easier to upgrade Blue level gear to Purple than to run "Veteran" dungeon to get a Purple-grade drop; (2) You can get a dungeon's monster mask by running "Veteran" mode at not-hard mode. A pickup group is going to want to run hard mode to get the 2 keys (instead of just 1 key), but a guild group might be willing to run not-hard mode so you can get the monster mask more easily.

redlink1979

It happens too often.
Some players just want to run the shortest base game dungeon as fast as possible.
If the dungeon its a DLC and a long one as the Lair of Maarselok, the fake healer/tank just instantly quits - this is why I already completed numerous times DLC dungeons just with another dps and a companion as tank after the fake tank and fake healer quited as soon as we landed on the dungeon.

Maybe it's time the whole dungeon finder tool should be rebuilt/rearranged to embrace all the possible players intentions. (quest run, normal run, vet run, achievements run, rewards run, etc)
Something like how the Party Finder in Final Fantasy works.
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Party_Finder

Daoin

redlink1979 wrote: »

It happens too often.
Some players just want to run the shortest base game dungeon as fast as possible.
If the dungeon its a DLC and a long one as the Lair of Maarselok, the fake healer/tank just instantly quits - this is why I already completed numerous times DLC dungeons just with another dps and a companion as tank after the fake tank and fake healer quited as soon as we landed on the dungeon.

Maybe it's time the whole dungeon finder tool should be rebuilt/rearranged to embrace all the possible players intentions. (quest run, normal run, vet run, achievements run, rewards run, etc)
Something like how the Party Finder in Final Fantasy works.
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Party_Finder

same had to pull put a companion tank many times only problem there though is if its a situation where theres nothing to point your companion at (like an monster) to get it out of danger like ground aoe around a boss and go there instead the companion will stay in it and die (and i guess we all know that some aoe's there just cant be outhealed) and have to be resssed, and yes i agree a dungeon finder overhaul is a well needed thing now

Kite42

Quite a few issues would probably be resolved if they just scaled transmute crystal reward to roughly correspond to time and difficulty.

nathamarath

Don't give up

My experience over the years is that runners appear mainly before new content trying to accomplish their collection, in new dungeons farming for gear, after eso for free events attracting new players who try to level up as quick as possible regardless etiquette. In other words, it's wavelike, seasonal.

Dungeoning:

60%: taking it as it is. More experienced players help and sometimes assist in your role. Nice.
20%: key runs of players who join for pledges rewards or daily first dungeon run. Often fast runs where you get pulled through the content. Ok to nice.
10%: no one knows anything and you try together. You die often and learn much. Most funny runs.
7%: technical difficulites.
2%: running with [snip] who weighten everything with comments from what you should not or should, dps-mimimi, meta-gear-recommendations, unloading rl-frustration up to plain insults - often in combination with leaving early, diverting from their role, running pseudo-solo or disturbing role assignment.
1%: running with experienced patient players who team play regardless level and context. Rare and awesome.

The lower your level the more serious consequences for you group play is when running with [snip]. So the solution is easy: Put them on ignorelist, that means you won't run with those again until unignore. Don't be picky here.

Ignore players who:
- complain about your role even when you try best
- spam chat
- insult you or other group members
- kick vote you or other group members without announcing or discussing that before with the whole group
- hinder group members in their role, such as healers who don't heal to punish ..for reasons, tanks who let you die on purpose, dds who constantly pull enemies endangering the group because they can survive (but you don't), etc.

Stay fresh, have fun

[edited for profanity]

Deter1UK

Kite42 wrote: »

Quite a few issues would probably be resolved if they just scaled transmute crystal reward to roughly correspond to time and difficulty.

Or put the rewards in the dungeon as a guaranteed random drop from all mobs and chests so you have to kill everything in order to get everything...

(edit for typo)

Kiralyn2000

"Running random dungeons is awful! Fix it!"
- every MMO forum I've ever read.

Haenk

As a long-time player, I stil not have done the dungeons stuff (maybe like 1% or so).
I like questing and joining a random group makes that impossible, as this is only running with maximum speed and stopping nowhere.
Until some other system comes into play, I'm passing.

WhisperLFE

Sorry to hear you've had that experience. It'd be nice if they had a little option (similar to role selection) for people to choose whether they were doing a "relaxed/content" run or a "speed/gear" run, although unfortunately, that could easily be taken advantage of or ignored, or result in longer queue times than are already present for DPS. The idea to tie rewards to time/percentage completed seems like one possible solution, although I don't think it'll ever happen.

That being said, I've been playing the game off-and-on almost since launch and could probably count on one hands the number of times I've had someone drop from a dungeon in the way described. Admittedly, I don't run dungeons frequently, but I've run my fair share over the years.

One option, which has probably already been suggested, is to find a like-minded guild with many players on at the same time as you. It's almost always a more pleasant experience running a dungeon with guildies than pugs.

My only other advice is just to stick with it. Sounds like you've just had a run of bad luck lately, which should hopefully even out over time.

xclassgaming

Sarannah wrote: »

First off, welcome to the game! Glad to hear you are having fun.

At the moment, the normal dungeons(MMO part of the game), is having an issue where veteran players rush through only for the rewards. Meaning the MMO part of the game needs quite some work from ZOS, but I do not know if they ever will do this. As far as I know, ZOS has never really addressed the issues players experience in normal dungeons.

But don't let that stop you from playing or having fun, try to find a guild who wants to do the MMO parts of the game normally. This will also make your time in the game more valuable/fun.

Welcome to the game, and enjoy your stay!

PS: Don't feel bad if a group does not work out, it happens. Just go again!

tbh, i'm not sure what zos -CAN- do about this situation.

Elsonso

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

John J. Rando will end up disappointing you every time.
Run with a guild, or other pre-made group; people with whom you've become acquainted, so you know what to expect.

With normal PUGs, each group is different, and often it depends on the dungeon as to which mix of players will be in the PUG and how they will react. Not all of them need to be a disappointment. I expect that it ends up being a disappointment when players have different goals and are unwilling to accommodate the others.

As you suggest, running with friends or a guild will often times solve that problem, but that is only because the guild may have established expectations that match the player. Finding that guild may be a challenging task and may require trying out multiple guilds. The same types people who make, or find, PUGs disappointing can be found in guilds. It is a matter of player personality, and that spans a space much larger than ESO.

rpa

Make a new char with resto staff, setup CP as heal (mind the speed buffs!) and at lv10 que to random dungeons as a healer. I've tried that and nobody ever complained.

AzuraFan

The dungeons I can solo, I do solo. The dungeons I can't I do with guildies or skip.

If you want to run group content, find yourself a good guild. That way you'll avoid the jerks.

MissPan3024

I also have problems getting through 4 man. I have quit early in a dungeon as a tank. I built a tank because there are not enough out there. In order to get more skill points I like doing the dungeon quest. I always state “doing quest, will be as quick as possible “. If the dds ignore it and push past the first boss without me I quit. I know I won’t be able to get the skill point for the quest. And I’m not blowing stam running after them either lol. I know they don’t need a tank. So I leave.. There is no point in staying when I can’t get the quest done and the team doesn’t need a tank.
If dungeons had a que setting for “any role will do, let’s just burn and run it for the daily” setting this could be avoided.

mrfrontman

I forgot to mention in my previous post, if you're in a queue for longer than 10 minutes, leave the queue and queue up again because the dungeon finder can be a little inconsistent in terms of working properly. You shouldn't be waiting 40 minutes, if it took that long then it bugged out. Remember to queue up every 10 mins and you'll find a group much faster.