Party? What party!

michaeljones161b16_ESO

I am pretty much a solo player. Like many here I came to ESO via the single player games. I have played several MMOs before but always played solo PvE.
Anyway, to get to the point, I thought I'd try to start or join a group and get into the spirit of co-op play.
Using the grouping tool, I asked for group members.
I didn't get any for ages - I mean fifteen or twenty minutes. I was about to give up when one name popped up.
After a quick bit of chat, I decided to join him (or her?) so clicked on 'Travel to player'. I expected to materialise somewhere near my new friend - but no. I materialised at a wayshrine and then had to run to look for him. He met me halfway and I could see him jumping about as I followed him into the nearest city.
As soon as we arrived on the bridge into the city, he disappeared. I could only see his marker bobbing about. At first I thought he'd gone under the bridge so I looked there.
Anyway, I couldn't see him and he couldn't see me.
The whole thing was a waste of time.
I won't be bothering again.

isengrimb16_ESO

For questing, I find it's just a matter of "packing up" with people you see going your way. The group finder seems best suited for the instanced dungeons, I guess. As for dolmens and such, I just call on zone chat and wait a bit, people usually show up.

I think the formal grouping will be more useful for the things coming like Craiglorn; with the heavy phasing, it really doesn't look like normal questing was meant to be grouped (except perhaps temporarily) - but with open tagging and looting, yes, I do like the "pack of wild dogs" mechanic that just sort of happens; that way, other players don't seem like such a nuisance that they might do otherwise.
-
There had to be compromise somewhere; to get that "TES" feeling, for one thing, and the phasing - oh, the wonderful phasing. I'd rather do it loose and partly/mostly solo, just so that, yes, when I clean up an area, it STAYS cleaned up. The ghosts are calmed down, the conquered bandits are still being good girls and boys, the forest denizens are happy again. I can walk through that area without having to fight through the same things again and again. It's one of the things I find most irritating about WoW (and I've seen many people there complain about how the comparatively little phasing they've started using there screws up groups) - and now they won't even let me fly over those same crowds of forever-unhappy orcs I was supposed to have exterminated along with their boss while questing.

Act like a stray dog. See other dogs running, follow 'em. Might make a new acquaintance or two to chat with.

Sallakat

I haven't tried grouping up for normal questing ever, the phasing issue might make it a bit stupid at times, the issue that you experienced. Unless you're in voip together, I would say questing can be time consuming in a wrong way if you have to type stuff about the quest related things.

Try grouping up for dungeons, those are good fun and challenging too definitely, you can totally test your builds in there and also your ability to play in a group; you need to all do things according to the mechanics (tho on low level there are not that big mechanic twists, but still you need to kill the healers from mobs first etc, the basic stuff). You won't have the phasing issues in there at least.

zaria

Think lots of people are not used to the groping tool, you see lots of looking for tank and so in zone.

Other like me ask in guilds first.

Another issue with quests is that they are mostly pretty easy and its plenty of people around so its no reason to group up outside of social reasons to do quests at least before veteran level.

However grouping has is place, was in the public group dungeon in coldharbor without group jut tagged along with other players: mission failed repair bill 2000, problem is that this dungeon has multiple objectives spread out and people run in all directions, and yes idiots pulling bosses or groups of 8 alone.

blueline

Quick ad hoc groups can be formed in the over world to take down mini bosses, without actually grouping, simply by striking up a /say conversation - I've used that to great effect to get a few roaming players together, figure out a strategy and burn some baddy out of its lair.

Shiaxi

zaria wrote: »

Think lots of people are not used to the groping tool, you see lots of looking for tank and so in zone.

HAHAHAHA.. sorry that made my juvenile side play up.. the groping tool indeed

on topic: the normal non dungeon questing actually works pretty well with the ad hoc way of doing the quests. when I see another player struggling with a mob I'll always pitch in and I've had the same happen to me often enough.

It is actually quite a fun way to quest as far as I'm concerned.

KerinKor

michaeljones161b16_ESO wrote: »

Anyway, I couldn't see him and he couldn't see me.
The whole thing was a waste of time.
I won't be bothering again.

Yup, sadly WAI, that's phasing in all its glory that ZOS designed to be that way.

In the Reddit AMA they muttered about 'doing something' but gave no idea what or when.

Phasing is a great too IMO and can be used to great effect, however it seems ZOS totally failed to foresee its effects.

zaria

It looks like this is improving, currently I get an popup asking if I want to join an group quest many times even if not grouped with the ones I fights with.
This might be an simple solution to the problem, here only one has to activate the objective and so on, you can still get the dialogue but only one does the action.

Audigy

Grouping at ESO works different to other most recent MMO´s. You don't form a group like at wow, where one person has to spam chat and then invite those that reply so that you then again have to play "tag and run" with other groups for mobs.

ESO has an open world group system, so that everyone you come across is already in your group. You never need to hit an invite button there, just play along and kill together. I do this since level 1 and it works like a charm.


If you want to go to a dungeon, then use the grouping tool but it takes some time. Wow has queue times of about 40 minutes for a DPS, not sure how they are in ESO as I only tank and heal


In regards of phasing. Almost all MMO´s use it since many years, it never was a big issue for people, but its a trend to hate ESO for it. I say this, I played a lot wow and had to deal with the situation that I couldn't see my guild mates as they progressed further than I did. Everyone knows the "why cant I pick up the same quest as you? Where is the NPC? Where are you?" situations there.

This is sadly the disadvantage of phasing and something we have to accept if we want a dynamic world. ZO didn't do anything wrong there, its just how the system always worked. If you want to play in your guild, then make sure you are on the same stage of the quest, then phasing wont be a problem at all.

KerinKor

Audigy wrote: »

Grouping at ESO works different to other most recent MMO´s. You don't form a group like at wow, where one person has to spam chat and then invite those that reply so that you then again have to play "tag and run" with other groups for mobs.

Ah, the customary sneer at WOW, even though Blizzard's Group Finder was probably the first or one of the first to be seen in an MMO.

Also, since you're referring to mob 'tapping' (as it's called in WOW, othere games call it 'claiming', etc.) you seem to be implying you ever 'grouped up' to level in the open world in WOW, that's not been the case for most of WOW's life so if 'group /shouts' ever were a feature in WOW they've not been seen in nogh on a decade.

Audigy wrote: »

ESO has an open world group system, so that everyone you come across is already in your group. You never need to hit an invite button there, just play along and kill together. I do this since level 1 and it works like a charm.

You mean just like GW2 .. and LOTRO (mostly these days) .. and ...

However this isn't a panacea as you take a 33% XP hit of someone else damages the mob you're killing .. you did know that, didn't you? So in that respect ESO isn't as good as some other games with 'open tagging' or whatever you want to call it, 'open grouping' isn't the same as 'real grouping' when it comes to XP.


I 'get' you love ESO, and so do I, but trying to paint it like it's some kind of "it's not just another MMO" is getting very old, it IS "just another MMO" with some variation on character skills and not much else not seen before. There's nothing WRONG with being generic, if it's done well it's highly enjoyable and right now I'm enjoying it but please stop thinking it's significantly different from what we've seen before.

Rotherhans

Grouping is simply broken in this game.

You have to adapt by trusting the ´verse and only grouping with people that happen to already stroll your way. Which is pretty useless in the open world due to the open tagging.

AFAIK they promised a fix when the Cryodil update/patch comes.
We´ll see.
in the meantime..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJLnR7thpY

Audigy

Ah, the customary sneer at WOW, even though Blizzard's Group Finder was probably the first or one of the first to be seen in an MMO.

Correct.

They started with meeting stones and later moved to the group finder UI. I don't say its bad (I think its great for dungeons and should be extended to raids including HC & challenges).
I just like it more if you don't need to go through the hassle of asking others all the time in the open world

Also, since you're referring to mob 'tapping' (as it's called in WOW, othere games call it 'claiming', etc.) you seem to be implying you ever 'grouped up' to level in the open world in WOW, that's not been the case for most of WOW's life so if 'group /shouts' ever were a feature in WOW they've not been seen in nogh on a decade.

Also this is correct,

the open world seems pretty dead there right now Back in the days when I was still questing at wow, we often had 5 or more people standing at a spawn location waiting for the mob to spawn. This isn't the case at ESO with that "open group" system and I like this a lot.

The idea to just get damage on a mob or heal a player to get credit for the quest or kill is great in my opinion.

You mean just like GW2 .. and LOTRO (mostly these days) .. and ...

However this isn't a panacea as you take a 33% XP hit of someone else damages the mob you're killing .. you did know that, didn't you? So in that respect ESO isn't as good as some other games with 'open tagging' or whatever you want to call it, 'open grouping' isn't the same as 'real grouping' when it comes to XP

To be honest, I don't care much about XP but more about being able to get the quest done and having a blast with friends

Wow also lowers the XP in groups btw., if I recall you get 25% of the XP in a 5 men group that you would get solo.

So if you get 100 XP solo, you get 25 XP in a full group. Keep in mind though, that you kill faster in a group, so its necessary to have something like this in place.

There's nothing WRONG with being generic, if it's done well it's highly enjoyable and right now I'm enjoying it but please stop thinking it's significantly different from what we've seen before.

I do like the approach of ESO that's all. We will see which direction the game will take, Craglorn will offer something for the more dungeon focused crowd and they are also going to address some issue´s currently in the game.

ZO didn't make a new MMO; I don't think I said this. But they took things from other MMO´s and tweaked them to work in their favor.

Nothing is perfect, but its also not horrible like some people keep saying it is. Lower group XP, phasing, its all there in other games as well

Sallakat

Audigy wrote: »

If you want to go to a dungeon, then use the grouping tool but it takes some time. Wow has queue times of about 40 minutes for a DPS, not sure how they are in ESO as I only tank and heal

I guess it's a standard anwyhere that as a DPS you should expect to wait for group longer.

Audigy wrote: »

In regards of phasing. Almost all MMO´s use it since many years, it never was a big issue for people, but its a trend to hate ESO for it. I say this, I played a lot wow and had to deal with the situation that I couldn't see my guild mates as they progressed further than I did. Everyone knows the "why cant I pick up the same quest as you? Where is the NPC? Where are you?" situations there.

This is sadly the disadvantage of phasing and something we have to accept if we want a dynamic world. ZO didn't do anything wrong there, its just how the system always worked. If you want to play in your guild, then make sure you are on the same stage of the quest, then phasing wont be a problem at all.

In SWTOR it was awesome, coming to ESO from there I never even realised phasing is like this. Grouping in SWTOR was just bliss and perfection compared to this with the animations and the quest objectives etc. I hope they keep developing the system in the months to come to work a tiny bit better, if it's even possible.

Audigy

Sallakat wrote: »

Audigy wrote: »

If you want to go to a dungeon, then use the grouping tool but it takes some time. Wow has queue times of about 40 minutes for a DPS, not sure how they are in ESO as I only tank and heal

I guess it's a standard anwyhere that as a DPS you should expect to wait for group longer.

Audigy wrote: »

In regards of phasing. Almost all MMO´s use it since many years, it never was a big issue for people, but its a trend to hate ESO for it. I say this, I played a lot wow and had to deal with the situation that I couldn't see my guild mates as they progressed further than I did. Everyone knows the "why cant I pick up the same quest as you? Where is the NPC? Where are you?" situations there.

This is sadly the disadvantage of phasing and something we have to accept if we want a dynamic world. ZO didn't do anything wrong there, its just how the system always worked. If you want to play in your guild, then make sure you are on the same stage of the quest, then phasing wont be a problem at all.

In SWTOR it was awesome, coming to ESO from there I never even realised phasing is like this. Grouping in SWTOR was just bliss and perfection compared to this with the animations and the quest objectives etc. I hope they keep developing the system in the months to come to work a tiny bit better, if it's even possible.

Ya I liked grouping at SWTOR a lot as well. You got social points there for grouping and if you did a quest, the system waited for all group members so that people stayed in the same phase.

At ESO people enter a new phase independently of their group members completion, that's not so good It would be great if there is a tiny "check" if a new phase can already be started while in group and on the same quest.

This however wont fix the issue that someone who did a quest will be in a different phase to someone who still has to do it.

delphwind_ESO

I understand your frustration, but you have to understand that playing a multiplayer game takes some getting use too. In a game that is primarily instanced you have to work the system a bit to make it work. It is the same way in WoW or any other instanced game, if you are not on the same step you can not play together in a few select areas. Imagine you completed a quest where you had to stop a group of bandits from burning down a town. You succeeded. Then you join a group with someone who hasn't done that quest, what would you see when you both walked into that area? The town still burning as he/she sees it, or as you left it?

It's a shame to say it, but this game is likely not for you. If you are getting frustrated at the first time using the grouping tool, I would suggest playing the game solo until it is finished, then moving on. There are a lot of people out there that have a false understanding of what this game is. It is not Skyrim Online, and it is now WoW, it is somewhere in between and a niche game at that. I fully expect 2/3 of the playerbase to drop within a few more months and the game will be left with enough players to keep the content updates coming (which will likely be in the 750k range if I were to guess).

Thunder

Sallakat wrote: »

In SWTOR it was awesome, coming to ESO from there I never even realised phasing is like this. Grouping in SWTOR was just bliss and perfection compared to this with the animations and the quest objectives etc. I hope they keep developing the system in the months to come to work a tiny bit better, if it's even possible.

In SWTOR, phased content was instanced, so the world never changed for anyone. What's happening here in ESO is that the actual world changes for you when you complete certain quests.

They really had no way of knowing how much people were going to cry about being phased from a group member. I'm still amazed by it every time I come across it, like this thread. OP is like, "OMGZORZ! I was walking along and another person in my party disappeared!!! IT'S LITERALLY THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT! I WILL NEVER GROUP AGAIN!"

The first couple times it happened to me, I didn't really understand what was going on, I thought me and my friend got put on different shards of the megaserver. It was a bit of a pain logging in and out trying to get back on the same shard. However, once we figured out we were just phased because he'd completed a quest in that area, I just finished the quest and presto!, there he was.

If they'd known so many players were going to be like, "My friend went invisible in this very small phased area and I was forced to fend for myself for 2 seconds, this is the worst game ever created!", then I'm sure they would have done the phasing differently. They probably figured the opposite would be true. They probably figured people would be like, "Oh WOW! I just finished that quest and now peace has been restored to this area and all those NPCs that wan't to throttle me are no longer aggressive toward me." I bet they figured that would even be a bullet point in reviews, the dynamic world of Tamriel.

Instead it's, "OMG! INVISIBLE PEOPLE! Brain can not cope, must hide in closet."

Errrr..... just finished my coffee and starting to feel less grumpy, but I'm going to pull the trigger on this anyway.

michaeljones161b16_ESO

Thunder wrote: »

OP is like, "OMGZORZ! I was walking along and another person in my party disappeared!!! IT'S LITERALLY THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT! I WILL NEVER GROUP AGAIN!"

Hi Thunder

OP here. If you must quote me, please use the words I actually used. Don't try to make me look like an idiot simply because I have a different viewpoint to you.

Enjoy your coffee.