Group Finder is STILL Awful for Low Level Non-Vet Players

aander91 · April 2016

The normal non-vet dungeons that are available for low level non-vet players are still terribly overtuned. Group finder unlocks at level 10 and offers a nice looking pot of bonus XP to players who simply don't have the skills and gear necessary to complete any of these dungeons in a reasonable amount of time. I'm really glad that dungeons are hard in this game, but the place for difficult dungeons requiring min-maxing is not level 10. It's not even level 40. It's in vet dungeons.

I'm sure these players would love to do these dungeons, they're excellent pieces of content, but they need to be seriously retuned at the group finder level, especially in the first tier of dungeons. The non-vet, Group Finder flavor of Fungal Grotto, Spindleclutch, and Banished Cells are absurd if anyone in your system generated group is below level 20.

Please, PLEASE, retune these. I and many other players want to play this part of the game in the way you are telling us we can (Group finder unlocks at 10 but isn't really playable until ~30). It's seriously frustrating to have an entire portion of the game be so horribly misadvertised to players.

CasNation · April 2016

There isn't much more to say. This is definitely a problem. However, it is also a hard one to solve. If you start parsing out subsets of the population, that slows down grouping for everyone.

My thought is maybe they attempt to separate out all players below vr1, and all players above. Then scale the dungeons to either level 49 or VR16 depending if the group is composed of entirely non vets or entirely vets. You then of course scale the players to either 49 or vr16 as well, respectively. If it is takin too long to find groups, then you start mixing the populations and see what happens.

Even this solution, which on the surface seems logical doesn't work very well since veteran ranks are going to be removed soon. How is that going to affect the tool? Will monsters scale to CP levels instead? Will the content be either hilariously easy for players with CP, or outrageously difficult for those without? We don't know.

aander91 · April 2016

I think the simple solution is just to nerf the numbers in these dungeons in particular. I just ran Crypt of Hearts at 38 and it was a breeze. Probably took us 20 minutes.

It really is just this tier of dungeons (it actually may affect the second tier as well, haven't ran those yet). The other dungeons are fine as players simply have more skills and the scaling is much better.

Slurg · April 2016

Perhaps they need to super-scale players under level 30, to give them a lot more extra resources to make up for the fact that they don't have a lot of skills that would help them be successful unlocked yet. Either that or stop letting people under level 30 queue in group finder for dungeons scaled to vet 16. I doubt they would want to lock them out of content though. I would feel better about being grouped with a level 10- 20 in group finder if they were scaled up to demigod mode and could be somewhat useful with their two or three decent spells.

CaptainBeerDude · April 2016

I ended up as healer on a random dungeon with my baby sorc. The Vets were not impressed with my lvl 10 mutagen spam...
My NB tank/healer just hit 20, and hasn't been having too much trouble yet, as a tank. Even pugged Fungal Grotto yesterday with 3 to start and switching between tanks and heals because no healer. Only left the crab *** at the end as not enough DPS.

vyndral13preub18_ESO · April 2016

I really dont know what you would do to fix this. The main issue is the skill lock out at that level. Do you make people do more damage! Then those that plan ahead and know what they are doing make the dungeons a cake walk.

And by plan ahead i mean plan knowing you are going into dungeons, selecting just the proper skills and weapons you will need.

This is always a problem in mmos. Who do you cater to. When is something to easy or to hard. Where is the middle?

And really im not really sure it is a problem. So the dungeons take awhile at low level. So what? So you fail and look at what you were doing and try to do better? Happenes to everyone. Besides it is usually the healers fault... I kid!

Burning_Talons · April 2016

Easy fix
Grind levels until Vet

Totalitarian · April 2016

The other day I did a random normal dungeon, and got put into Direfrost Keep. One of the players said he had been there for 3 hours and now they were stuck on the last boss.

This was normal Direfrost Keep, not vCOA, vICP, or vWGT. The players said that they couldn't clear the mobs on the last boss quickly enough.

As it turns out, that wasn't the problem at all; they cleared them quickly enough. My guess is that they got an inexperienced healer who didn't have the ability to heal while keeping up in DPS.

Generally this wouldn't be a problem with an experienced group, but when an inexperienced group can't DPS enough to counter a lack of healing, it causes failure.

I was matched with their group, and we cleared it with zero issue. The tank spammed chat with joy as he showed off the trash purple dagger that dropped from the boss, and he said it was his first purple weapon.

I wouldn't say that the dungeons are overtuned for DPS or tanks, but definitely for healers, because a new healer generally lacks the effective healing skills, and has yet to develop how to heal properly.

Thankfully I got matched with that group; I'd hate to have to take 3 hours to do Direfrost Keep.

aander91 · April 2016

]And really im not really sure it is a problem. So the dungeons take awhile at low level. So what? So you fail and look at what you were doing and try to do better? Happenes to everyone.

Then consider this: Dungeons at 40 are easier than dungeons at 10.

And I don't mean "the game gets easier as you get stronger," I mean "the game starts out really hard then gets really easy."

Now I can't back this up with any hard evidence, but I'm pretty sure ZO envisioned this game having a fairly linear difficulty curve, probably starting low and getting progressively harder as you play. You know, the way every other video game works.

CaptainBeerDude · April 2016

Totalitarian wrote: »

The other day I did a random normal dungeon, and got put into Direfrost Keep. One of the players said he had been there for 3 hours and now they were stuck on the last boss.

This was normal Direfrost Keep, not vCOA, vICP, or vWGT. The players said that they couldn't clear the mobs on the last boss quickly enough.

As it turns out, that wasn't the problem at all; they cleared them quickly enough. My guess is that they got an inexperienced healer who didn't have the ability to heal while keeping up in DPS.

Generally this wouldn't be a problem with an experienced group, but when an inexperienced group can't DPS enough to counter a lack of healing, it causes failure.

I was matched with their group, and we cleared it with zero issue. The tank spammed chat with joy as he showed off the trash purple dagger that dropped from the boss, and he said it was his first purple weapon.

I wouldn't say that the dungeons are overtuned for DPS or tanks, but definitely for healers, because a new healer generally lacks the effective healing skills, and has yet to develop how to heal properly.

Thankfully I got matched with that group; I'd hate to have to take 3 hours to do Direfrost Keep.

First time I did Direfrost was about 2-3 hrs. We made it eventually with our 3 man group. It has been easier every other time though.