Made a New Alt to do Leveling with Friend and...

Mashille · February 2016

I am shocked that so many quests do still not share progress and many grouping problems aren't fixed..

Rich Lambert said how they were fixing the grouping issues where people would share progress and be able to actually play together. Nope, even for some simple collect quests where you need to 'Collect 10 Shalk Thingys' don't share.

Match this with Quest items vanishing after 1 person uses them making you have to find another causes you to get irritated with other players being around, which should not be the case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jk7LrLgRfg
Skip to 17:30 for the Grouping talk.

This is the video showing how they said they would fix the grouping problems. As well as be able to sync to your Group leaders phase. It's almost been 2 years and this hasn't been implemented. Has it been abandoned or what? If you have a high level character, you can't go back to help a friend for a quest because they simply fade out into nothing due to being in a different phase or part of the quest.

In addition to this, still not being able to complete Fighters Guild, Mages Guild and Main Story quest lines with a friend, which causes even more separation making it feel like a much less social experience.

Thoughts? And do you believe that these issues will ever be tackled?

jkolb2030 · February 2016

Interested in a response to this, as a buddy of mine will be picking up the game in the next couple weeks.

Mashille · February 2016

I cannot be one of the only people who disagrees with this?

Evergnar · February 2016

I never thought ESO should have had so much solo content. It can't compete with single player TES games. It is what it is though. 2-4 player content is where I think ESO's nitch is.

I don't think Zenimax' focus is on improvements to existing content anymore. It's all about the crown store & dlc's now.

Hope499 · February 2016

Good post, its a social MMO, lets make it social lol.

Silly that some of these quests act the way they o....

Lirkin · February 2016

If someone can join a group and be updated to where the group is in the quest a lot of content can be skipped and that could be abused.

I would not want that for myself. In fact I hate it when I am on a quest and someone does a step and my quest gets updated when I haven't done that step yet. An example is kill a boss mob and I am near and I get updated and I am not grouped with them.

Divinius · February 2016

I've played though the whole game (all three alliances) twice now, while partnered with another person the whole time. Once with my brother, and once with my wife.

I can definitely say that the biggest annoyance with the way quests handle people in groups is the complete lack of consistency. If progress was never shared, that would be fine. If it was always shared, that would be fine. But what we have now is a mess where some quests handle things one way, and others handle it in different ways, and there's no apparent rhyme or reason to which way it's going to work.

Some quests share everything. One player can sit AFK at the quest giver while the other person does everything, and then just turn in the quest once all objectives are completed. Other quests, both players need to click everything and talk to everyone individually for them to get credit. While many other quests are a combination of both.

Quests where you have to collect items on the ground are another good example. Sometimes one player can collect the item, and it disappears for everyone else, and other times a single item can be collected by everyone. Add this to the issue above, and there's now 4 combinations of items counting for both players when collected or not, and items being one-use-only or not. I've seen all 4 possible combinations used.

These inconsistencies, added to the phasing issues which are still present in some cases but not others, quests where one person completing an NPC dialog will boot the other out of the dialog and auto-progress before the other person can read what's going on, and other similar issues, are just completely ridiculous.

Quests in this game are a total mess when it comes to handling groups.

Voxicity · February 2016

Divinius wrote: »

I can definitely say that the biggest annoyance with the way quests handle people in groups is the complete lack of consistency.

Agreed completely. Even the way daily quests are handled in Cyrodiil for example. My partner has to wait for me to share the quests or else we'll be given random ones. Surely it should just give both players the same quest, or at least give the option to share without me having to go into my journal and ask her every time ''Did you hand the other one in yet?'' before I share it.

Tandor · February 2016

One of the great things about the game in my view is the fact that you can do plenty of things with other players without having to be formally grouped to do so. Games that require grouping often need you to be at the exact same stage in a quest and that inevitably leads to frustration not to mention lengthy delays while someone runs off to complete the stage he's missing. Clearly, however, there are lots of quests that can only be done solo and again I like that because there's only one hero character in the story.

Also, playing together in order to socialise is one thing, and I welcome that, but too often it leads to people playing together purely in order to rush through everything and trivialise the content, which I'm not so keen on.

I don't think that ESO sets out either to compete with single player TES games or to compete with the more group-oriented MMOs (of which there are very few these days as it's not what the market wants), I think it sets out to be complement both styles of game and it will be a purely subjective assessment as to how well it succeeds. I personally think it does it pretty well, but I can foresee some of the issues the OP raises being addressed in terms of the overall balancing of the game as it continues to evolve down the line, including the addition of a group-centric DLC.

Mashille · February 2016

@c00lmon

If you're not grouped with someone then a quest step cannot be completed unless you contribute. If there is a step where you need to kill the boss, you must have at least hit it once for it to count, otherwise it doesn't count. So, I'm not sure what your saying.

DHale · February 2016

Yes did Craglorn or part of us had to go back and walk along them doing old quests they would even go out of phase for parts of the quest. We got little loot but was ok could have been fun if we could share quests etc....

Mashille · February 2016

@c00lmon

Also, you do not have to make it so content can be skipped. If your group leader is further ahead than you then you will not get credit until you catch up to that point in the quest. The point of Phase sharing is so if you have already done a quest but want to help a friend, you can make them group leader and help them complete the quest instead of seeing an invisible floating arrow because the town has already been saved for you.

Danikat · February 2016

keybaud wrote: »

@c00lmon

If you're not grouped with someone then a quest step cannot be completed unless you contribute. If there is a step where you need to kill the boss, you must have at least hit it once for it to count, otherwise it doesn't count. So, I'm not sure what your saying.

That is how it should work, and how it does work in some cases but not in others. It's certainly not as common as it was during the betas where it was sometimes hard to participate in quests at all because so many of them counted other people's participation and there were so many people in the same areas that often simply walking into the general area caused you to get quest completion.

But for a specific example of this still happening I was doing Teldur's End (final quest in the chain to save Silsailen in Auridon) about a month ago and I got to the story step where you have to kill the boss. As I walked up the stairs to the floor he was on someone else killed him and my quest updated to tell me I'd done it and sent me to speak to the quest giver for the reward. I hadn't fought anyone since entering the building and hadn't even seen the boss, and I wasn't grouped with anyone.

It's happened on other occasions recently, but I can't remember the exact quests.

I think this is a bug and reported it as such, but I'm not completely sure as I seem to remember before launch they talked about wanting to enable people to play together without being in a party and used other people being able to help you with quests as an example. But even so I doubt they intended it to work like this.

Whatever the case it means that if I enter a room or building and find a fight with the boss already in progress I leave again and wait until I think they'll have finished to try to avoid getting credit without actually fighting them.

J2JMC · February 2016

Tandor wrote: »

One of the great things about the game in my view is the fact that you can do plenty of things with other players without having to be formally grouped to do so. Games that require grouping often need you to be at the exact same stage in a quest and that inevitably leads to frustration not to mention lengthy delays while someone runs off to complete the stage he's missing.

Clearly, however, there are lots of quests that can only be done solo and again I like that because there's only one hero character in the story. Also, playing together in order to socialise is one thing, and I welcome that, but too often it leads to people playing together purely in order to rush through everything and trivialise the content, which I'm not so keen on.

Had zero intention on commenting on anything today. Really didn't want to because I know my posts can get negative but this post really got to me. Seperated your quote into two parts so I could more easily respond to it.

I don't agree with the first part of your post at all. I honestly think this whole "allow everyone to solo everything" mentality is the reason why class balance is garbage and people find certain content more difficult than it really is. That being said, I understand the desire to be able to complete events when it's convenient for you and others may not be on. Plus, with ESO's shoddy grouping mechanics, and ZOS blatantly showing they don't want people to level together by reducing xp in large groups and giving crap dungeon xp, It's important that people are able to play a large portion of the game solo.

The second part is completely ridiculous though. If I can do something by myself, and a friend groups with me, naturally that something will be easier to do. Regardless, that is NOT a reason to prevent people from grouping. Majority of the solo content in this game isn't even good after you run through it once. How does me supposedly "trivializing" MY experience with the game have any effect on You whatsoever? The only solo content in this game where grouping should not be allowed is vMA because of its competitive nature. Everything else, from Harborage quests to basic find crocodile teeth quests, should allow for grouping. Especially considering all the solo only quests now are currently instanced, so it's not like allowing them to be done by groups will have an effect on you.

Why do people insist on limiting others on something that has no effect on them? It's the same issue with grinding. I completely understand preventing open world and delve grinding because that does have an impact on others. But making group dungeon instanced xp completely worthless is absurd.

IrishGirlGamer · February 2016

Evergnar wrote: »

I never thought ESO should have had so much solo content. It can't compete with single player TES games. It is what it is though. 2-4 player content is where I think ESO's nitch is.

I don't think Zenimax' focus is on improvements to existing content anymore. It's all about the crown store & dlc's now.

When I bought the game, I was stunned how much solo content there was. And I didn't buy it because it was an MMO; I bought it thinking I'd play the solo content and move on, but there is a ton of that in this game.

And I mostly don't think it's a good thing. The grouping for quests has always been strange and the distance between solo and group content grows wider by the day. And I won't even start with the effect it has on balancing issues, and how that has effected the overall game design. But I doubt if anything is really going to change now because Zenimax really has moved on to other things.

Inarre · February 2016

Umm idk i just picked up the game late last year and levelled with my friend, we did tons of questing together and lots of times we shared a counter for drops or kills. I even killed a boss inside a house (that one in the first province in EP) while my friend couldnt get in because he ran out of lockpicks to pick the door and he got credit for my solo kill

we shared many quests and the only questing we had to do solo were the main story line quests. We even shared quests in "solo dungeons". We did the group dungeons together but it was also nice because when he was at work i had plenty of other quests to do alone as well... Theres lots of variety to satisfy everyone. I guess i dont understand your plea.... But im also on mobile and cant watch your video now <. <

Edit: @J2JMC Pretty sure @Tandor was just commenting with his own opinion on how eso coordinates with his playstyle. He never said omg zos noes you cant please anyone else cuz i am pleased.