Where are all the people?

brmoffatt_ESO · June 2014

So here I am Sunday around 4pm EDT. I decide to get into a vet dungeon group. I attempt to go in all 3 VR6-10 dungeons. I sit there alone in all of them. I am flagged for tank and dps. It took about 45 minutes to get another person paired up with me.
What I'm trying to wrap my head around is this. We are playing **everyone** on ONE (1) server, you're telling me out of the thousands of people out there, 1 person out of everyone decided to go into the group finder?
Why can't there be a worldwide channel for LFG? Obviously the populations have dropped so much or the apathy to group has risen so much it has become very disheartening.

Axer · June 2014

1.
There are 6 servers.
The whole mega server concept is essentially a lie. You can only play with other servers in cyrodil, which has player limit caps.

2. No one uses the group finder as it's random only. Random only tools never result in good groups.

3. This game is designed to be an anti social solo mmo.

While it has lots of fun group content. It can really only be enjoyed by friends/guilds, not the general public.

The pop hasn't dropped much. There are still tons of players, they just get wiser and wiser to the whole issue with the game design, so stay with there guilds/friends more and more every day.

So build up a friends list or join a guild, no other way atm.

brmoffatt_ESO · June 2014

The guild thing is an issue all together. Most of my old guild has stopped playing. So much so we had to create a new guild of the few left that wanted to play. Now its like pulling teeth to get the right people you want in the guild.

So how do you get on "the cool kid populated server" as it relates for pve fun? I go to Akir desert and every dungeon is a ghost town. You'd think this game is 8 years old trying to visit old content people moved away from.

Mazra · June 2014

I've no experience with Veteran level dungeons, but I can see a number of reasons why people in the lower level brackets have issues with the queue times.

Note that these points are about low level dungeon running.

1. Experience per hour is crap.
Once you've done the quests in there, the dungeons give almost no experience, which means that once you get your gear, there is no incentive to running the dungeons ever again.

2. Dungeons are very unforgiving.
If you stand in fire, you die. If you stand in the way of a charging Clannfear, you die. If you don't block the boss, you die. The healer has very little direct influence over the survival of the group, because people get one-shot left and right if they don't prevent the damage by blocking, dodging, or using CC. Likewise, the tank has very little influence on the flow of the fight, because there are no AOE taunts, and some bosses are immune to taunts. And this is entry level PVE content.

4. CC or bust.
Running a dungeon without CC increases the difficulty tenfold. I've had to tell some of my group members - who were total strangers, mind you - to equip and use certain abilities, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to finish the dungeon run. I don't want to have to tell people to equip certain spells or get out, but that's how it is. No CC, no dice, even at lower levels.

Considering these points, I can see why Veteran dungeons would have problems attracting people. While I'm sure the dungeon running experience stabilizes (god, I hope it stabilizes) at some point in the leveling process, and while experience points don't matter at VR12, I'm sure a lot of people are scared out of running dungeons - permanently - by those lower level experiences.

When you can't fulfill the role you signed up for due to shoddy design, and you get next to no rewards for your trouble, there's just no damn reason to do it.

Dungeons in Elder Scrolls Online remind me of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Not good memories, by the way. Stand in crap and you die. No warning. No mercy.

SirAndy · June 2014

Axer wrote: »

2. No one uses the group finder

qft ...

Audigy · June 2014

Most people are not yet at VR territory, therefore you cant group with them. I meet players every time I play and dungeons don't take long as a tank or healer either - never tried as DPS yet.

That said, ESO isn't a dungeon crawler like WOW so of course less people are interested in that type of content. Personally I support that as I cant stand these dungeon only MMO´s anymore.

brmoffatt_ESO · June 2014

This thing is though, dungeons equal grouping. Like it was said above, it is an anti social mmo and I agree with that. But, when trying to use the tools given, it saps the life out of you when you go around and you don't see anyone.

Elloa · June 2014

I usually do not use the group finder. I make my own group by using the zone chat of the instance I want to run.