Why is grouping so bad?

Naustus

I have been playing ESO since Beta, and I was thinking it would get better. I don't really care about anything else except grouping with friends (or in my case family). I use this game to spend time doing something with my father that lives pretty far away, and I can not effectively group with him. We have to do everything individually, and that kind of defeats the purpose of being sociable and online doesn't it ? Are there quests that actually let you work as a team outside of dungeons, and PvP?

Evergnar

Totally agree. Group play should have been this games main focus. Still could be but I'm not sure how easy it would be for the devs to change this. Personally I'd love to see every quest group capable.

Naustus

I have been so hyped up for this game, and I feel let down with this.

Fenbrae

I would agree with the idea of making more quests group capable, but not all of them.
If you were able to do every quest with a group, it would remove the challenge in the game.
I love the quests which force you to fight a strong enemy on your own. It lets you think on your feet. With grouping, it would become yet another faceroll MMO like World of Warcraft: Kung Fu Panda.

Moiskormoimi

There have been a few reviews that said it best: 'It's like Zenimax wanted you to play your own epic adventure while watching other people play their own epic adventure, just never together.' A lot of my guild have unsubbed for that very reason.

c1r3gamerb16_ESO

This is the first game I've played where your quest is auto triggered completed by someone else grouped with you. It is so annoying and spoils the whole purpose of adventuring and following any storyline.

Tonight we were in a group as we quest together and were doing "The Innkeepers Daughter" in Redfur. All went well until the final part where we had to choose one of two options at the innkeeper. I decided one option and took him across the town but half way through the dialogue one of the group had decided on the alternative option and completed it. Result - my choice was taken from me and I was forced to complete the quest following the alternative option. This is not right - surely? We should be allowed to complete our quests as we wish regardless of whether we are solo or in a group.

This "fault" of ESO's linking other player's actions to the quest is spoiling our enjoyment. Now we have to all agree beforehand which option to go for and then complete the quest at the same time (so we all get a chance to read/listen to the dialogue). The only other way is to leave group, complete quest, rejoin group - not an efficient method for gaming in this day and age.

Regarding the solo instances/quest lines I enjoy the change of pace and it gives a good mix of solo and group action in the game itself.

VonMourn

This is the most frustrating thing about this game. I want to play it with my brothers and friends but it is basically impossible to quest together. Almost all the multiplayer mechanics seem designed to make you hate other players. Vamp/WW, non-instanced crafting nodes and chests, dungeon boss farming, quests that break if more than one person works on them, etc.

jaytin44

My husband and I complained constantly about the grouping problems months ago in the first Beta weekend, I have no idea why they kept sending us surveys but totally ignored all the feedback people gave them. I think they just assumed nobody would want to make groups outside of dungeons, it's like they have no idea why people play MMO's, they just assume people solo most of the time.
Grouping is the most frustrating thing about this game by far, for me personally.
I don't think they really thought things through before they implemented them.

Cadisha

Same to me, I want to play with my husband an some friends, but it is at this time no fun paying together, Hope they will change because with this it is no mmo.
Sorry for mistakes, but english is not my native language.

c1r3gamerb16_ESO

I also commented in their surveys after the beta weekends about this. I'm in a family guild and it is natural for us to group when adventuring together - for the simple reason we can track each other (chevrons) especially in public areas.

I don't know how easy it would be for quests to be locked into the character so group members don't accidentally trigger completion without it affecting the shared public dungeon/boss achievements.

Alpha_Protocol

My wife and I do all of our quests grouped. The only quests I've seen that are solo are the Mages Guild, Fighters Guild and main story.

Edit:after reading some replies... it's the quests with alternate outcomes that are bothering you OP? I agree they could have been implemented a bit better.

Jade1986

Alpha_Protocol wrote: »

My wife and I do all of our quests grouped. The only quests I've seen that are solo are the Mages Guild, Fighters Guild and main story.

Edit:after reading some replies... it's the quests with alternate outcomes that are bothering you OP? I agree they could have been implemented a bit better.

That's a large portion of the game right there.....

All quests should be able to be done in groups, that is the WHOLE point of mmos.

Malediktus

It botheres me during dungeons where people dont want to listen to the NPCs, I keep missing a lot of dialogue. And in groupfinder I cannot specify that I want to talk to all NPCs so its getting filled with all the rush to max lvl people

pjwrwb17_ESO

Yes, it definitely feels like a game that would have been better as a stand alone desktop game.

Public spaces are annoying, grouping is sometimes necessary, but rarely fun.

Pretty much everything that makes an ES game fun is incompatible with most groups:

- personalised experience
- admiring the setting
- collecting stuff
- immersion in story
- and even just building your own build from scratch

The addition of timers in Craglorn makes me think that the above points are not seen as relevant by the designers.

I hope thathope that I am wrong, and that my perceived problems can be solved, but I really can't see how, at this stage. I just live in hope for a stand-alone version (PvP holds zero interest for me).

vendettaxxiii

laced wrote: »

Alpha_Protocol wrote: »

My wife and I do all of our quests grouped. The only quests I've seen that are solo are the Mages Guild, Fighters Guild and main story.

Edit:after reading some replies... it's the quests with alternate outcomes that are bothering you OP? I agree they could have been implemented a bit better.

That's a large portion of the game right there.....

All quests should be able to be done in groups, that is the WHOLE point of mmos.

Between the mage's guild fighter's guild and story line....that really isn't that many quest at all. Mage's and Fighter's guild each only have five quest, and it makes perfect sense those are solo. Other than those, I've had no problem grouping to quest with friends.

Jade1986

pjwrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Yes, it definitely feels like a game that would have been better as a stand alone desktop game.

Public spaces are annoying, grouping is sometimes necessary, but rarely fun.

Pretty much everything that makes an ES game fun is incompatible with most groups:

- personalised experience
- admiring the setting
- collecting stuff
- immersion in story
- and even just building your own build from scratch

The addition of timers in Craglorn makes me think that the above points are not seen as relevant by the designers.

I hope thathope that I am wrong, and that my perceived problems can be solved, but I really can't see how, at this stage. I just live in hope for a stand-alone version (PvP holds zero interest for me).

Won't happen. The settings have a heavy RP value as well, there is quite a bit for all types of players in this game.

On the subject of group finder though. for the LOVE of god make it so I don't match up with 3 dps characters when I choose dps too. Ridiculous trying to find groups for dungeons right now.

esonlineub17_ESO3

Fenbrae wrote: »

If you were able to do every quest with a group, it would remove the challenge in the game. I love the quests which force you to fight a strong enemy on your own. It lets you think on your feet. With grouping, it would become yet another faceroll MMO like World of Warcraft: Kung Fu Panda.

So you want to force everyone to play the way you like to play? And apparently you cannot understand that other people want to play in a group? More choices are better for everyone.

If you are an elite player and want a challenge, then don't group up. Have fun with your challenging solo missions.

On the other hand, I'm a casual player, and I want to do all the missions in a group with my family. The solo missions are stupid because they separate us, and make us wait until everyone is done before we can resume questing together.

The solo missions are HORRIBLE and need to be changed to permit groups to enter.

Malediktus

The solo missions arent even challenging when you play solo. I usually finish them 5-10 level under suggested level with random builds to level some skills. If you find them hard you do something wrong.

Altissimus

This has long been on the list of "worst thins about ESO". It's been on that list since beta. It's probably the single largest contributor to unsubscribes [citation needed].

Still ZoS ignore it. They won't respond to this thread. They haven't responded up until now - have they @ZoS_JessicaFolsom? - which is a real sadness and reinforces the need for community communication, and the lack thereof.

Cernow

It's actually rather borderline as to whether this game should even be called a MMO. Much of the time it's like a single player game with other people running around like insects - many of whom are bots and the rest might as well be bots for all it matters.

Firstly there's the MMO basics - grouping and communication. Grouping is clunky and clumsy and phasing causes grouping issues. Communication features are rudimentary and again very clunky - it's very hard to message someone without running right up to them. Plus the megaserver system often means you don't see the same player twice, so it's hard to build up contacts.

Then there's specific design choices - the lack of nameplates and speech bubbles being two of the most obvious ones. I understand the argument that this creates immersion, but the reality is it creates isolation. Many players just don't respond to anything said in /say - perhaps they just aren't aware it relates to them, or maybe they are just bots. Either way it makes you want to stop bothering with attempts to co-ordinate, co-operate, roleplay or banter.

This all adds up to a game that does not seem to be developing a very strong sense of community, even in PvP. It just doesn't feel like a MMO. Perhaps this will improve over time, but it will be in spite of the developers best efforts not because of them.

jaytin44

I just thought of something else that drives me crazy. When you get one of those quests with a puzzle in it and you have to click objects in order or pull levers or whatever, of course it never works properly if 5 other people are all randomly doing it as well. Please for the love of my sanity make these darn puzzles instanced! My husband and I spent over half an hour doing a simple 4 click puzzle because it seemed to be impossible to do it while other players were interacting with it. Most MMO's have used instancing for years and it really helps with immersion too, why the heck does ESO not use it more?

nudel

@c1r3gamerb16_ESO‌ That definitely is not intended behavior. In fact, I would go so far as to report whatever quest that was as bugged. To submit a counter example, I was doing the quest Lineage of Tooth and Claw (at least I think that's what it was called)...

In that quest, my SO and I both chose completely different endings. He chose to make one sacrifice and I another. He went in one building and gave someone a cure. I went in another building and ended up killing the person he saved. It just so happened that he'd completed his portion of the quest while I was fighting off my portion and stumbled into the room to join me. So he ended up curing and killing the exact same person. @_@

Anywho that's how it's supposed to work. This isn't SWTOR. People should not be able to hijack your story and it is not intended. The only part of quests that complete for both of us are those that involve killing a boss or 'x' number of baddies. If something needs to be interacted with (light a flame, gather x number of crystals, etc.) or someone needs to be spoken to, we both have to do it.

nudel

@laced‌ It's actually not that large of a portion of the game. Main quest is only 13 quests, Mages Guild = 6, Fighters Guild = 5. That's only 24 quests in a game with over 876 quests (not counting starter island quests or PVP repeatables). I added those numbers from the achievement section so keep in mind the number is much larger because those achievements usually have a soft cap allowing some leeway for you to miss up to 4-5 quests in the zone and still get it. Even without counting all those quests, there's a serious amount of dungeons, anchors, instanced dungeons, and just flat out exploring you can do together.

I know the Main/Mages/Fighters Guild quests seem like a huge chunk of the game but they really aren't. It may seem that way early on because depending on how you play, they may be the first 3 quests you do in the game and I can see forced soloing from that perspective being extremely disappointing.

nudel

@pjwrwb17_ESO‌ Craglorn is an entire zone targeted at grouping. The only portion of that zone that is timed are the trials, essentially the equivalent to the 4-man instanced dungeons in each zone. They are there yes, but there is plenty of other content without a timer that you can feel free to explore with a tight-knit group of friends or family.

As for the overall hate on the grouping experience, I have had some really amazing grouping experiences overall. It's not because I was grouping with only people I know. In fact, I went out of my way to group with complete strangers because I didn't want to form a sort of clique so early into a new game. Did I get really lucky? Probably. But that also means there are good groups out there to be had for you as well.

There is one aspect to this entire thread that I do agree with and that is the overall frustration with phasing hindering grouping. My SO and I knew we wanted to explore and quest throughout the game together, so we deliberately made a set of characters that we only play with eachother. We'll occasionally craft or gather resources while the other is away, but we don't really quest. Is this a shame? Yes, it's not exactly intuitive for most people. I do really like the visual and immersive feeling to having the world phase and adapt to how you completed a quest BUT yes there should be some sort of mentoring system in place so that you can help those who have not completed it yet.

Anywho hopefully you didn't mind my intrusions here. Just thought I'd offer a different point of view to some expressed in the thread. Not trying to troll or demean your opinions in anyway.

SuperScrubby

I think everyone knows you can quest in groups in this game, and people do it.

However the way its done is incredibly clunky and one that would not pass in any other MMO. But since this game is an "Elder Scrolls" game they made grouping subpar in order to make the "single player" game experience #1 on an mmo. Where the logic is in that I don't know because usually games are MMO's first then whatever game 2nd. Otherwise they're just single player games.

epoling

It seems a lot of people are having a communication problem. If you ran into these situations in real life you would talk things through, not just take action. So before you select options on quests, talk to each other and come to a consensus. That should keep you in phase and keep the quest running right.

c1r3gamerb16_ESO

epoling wrote: »

It seems a lot of people are having a communication problem. If you ran into these situations in real life you would talk things through, not just take action. So before you select options on quests, talk to each other and come to a consensus. That should keep you in phase and keep the quest running right.

This is what my group has to do but it's annoying when we want to take different options offered in the quest and have to ignore the choice we would like to have made.

It's not just grouping - we're still getting problems with other players (not grouped with us) clicking on the same NPC and if they are faster than us whatever they do updates our quest automatically!

Most games will update everyone's quest if you have ALL hit the boss - but in ESO your quest can even be updated if you're in the next room!