The marriage of an MMO and Elder Scrolls quest systems did result in an inconsistent group questing and sharing experience, no question. But most of the time the division makes sense from a story line perspective. It can be wonky, but I would never go so far as to consider it "a barrier" as OP does.

I think questing together in this game takes some getting used to. It's not like GW2 where you are inside someone else's "Story" and they are the ones to make the decisions.

I get that some people get annoyed that all quests aren't shared, but there are advantages to that. You can see it in some of the group dungeons, if more than one player is on the dungeon quest, one person updating their quest will update yours as well.

If you are the kind that likes to listen to the full dialogue before progressing and they are not, you are out of luck.

That said, after you have completed the dungeon quest, going in for pledges as a group is super fun.

In other cases, like for some daily quests, for example, having all of the progression shared would make the quest too easy.

Consider the Ashlander quests where you have to grab 8 relics in Vvardenfell. There are two types:

1. You have to interact with a mound to collect a relic. This is per player, so each player has to interact with 8 mounds and they are not instanced (though they respawn ver quickly). If progression was shared, a group of 4 would complete the quest in all of 2 seconds.
2. You have to kill mobs and they have a chance of dropping the relic. Since loot is instanced, every mob your group kills has a chance of dropping them for each of you. You still need to kill a number of mobs, but it feels a bit more "shared" than the previous one.

There are also instances where your character has to make a choice that will affect the area you are questing in, so those choices are made individually, so the choice is not taken away from you.

There are different ways of arranging questing in a group for sure, but there are pros and cons to each of them.

That said, grouping up for daily quests and/or map completions is really enjoyable in this game.

Tandor wrote: »

If you're talking about quests being designed so they can be shared from the outset, well that's pretty much the case already other than in relation to those story-based quests where the storyline really dictates that you should be on your own. If you're talking about quests being designed so they can only be taken by a group then I'm afraid that is totally contrary to the way that MMORPGs have developed over the years and would lead to a forced grouping game that 90% of the playerbase would reject, myself included.

There are many ways of enjoying the multiplayer experience in ESO, but it wasn't designed as a fully traditional MMO and is in many ways a hybrid between that type of game and the single-player CRPGs which formed the basis of the Elder Scrolls concept. I think they've done a pretty good job in that respect, but it won't please everyone and other games are available!

I diagree, just because something has gone a certain route over the last X years does not mean it is good or should stay that way.

Also again I don't know why everyone assumes this "forced" multiplayer nonsense.

Let me give you an example

NPC: "Hello person"

OR

NPC in a grouped mission "Hello people, glad to see you and your friends are here"

Same mission but dynamic.

Content remains the same, perhaps scaled to amount of people in group. - Story remains uneffected.

(except where stories make you the singular hero - again I think this SILLY to design a game with a story that make A single person A hero - to the exclusion of others.)

Make the quests all dynamically adjust to whether or not there is a party and how big it is.
Rather than just allowing you to "share" mission and play them though together as if you are all the "hero" and just happen to have buddies from a parallel dimension who are also the hero.

Before you say "oh but that would be so much more dialogue to record, bla bla bla" Yes you are right.

Does this make sense? Im not advocating for "forced mulitplayer" which is ironic you are complaining about anyway given its an MMO. "Please kind sir, don't make us play multiplayer in an MMO, we don't know how we'd survive"

Sting864 wrote: »

ElderStorm wrote: »

Yes morrowind makes you start in the same place....but only if you both HAVE morrowind. So its another barrier players have to cross.

Ummm... thanks ZOS... even though we have two different games (I have ESO: Morrowind, my friend just has ESO...) We can actually play together after the tutorial... We can group together, and port to the same wayshrine, and go play together....
Even though our games are different, if there is a common area, we can both go there... I understand that if he doesn't own a copy of that content he can't play it...
Is that really confusing??

Confusing? possibly for some. and a barrier to play that a person must first overcome. In game design, you should always be aiming to minimise barriers.

I think the game has a few in regards to multiplayer and also to induction of players.

It is wonderful you were able to do all that with your friend. its almost as if you can do everything I can do in my game too! we must be playing the same game!

It would be less difficult if the Ring of Mara was giving more than 10% exp. Now it's not even worth the ceremony .

LordGavus wrote: »

Best way to quest with a friend, group with them, then travel to them.
Now you might not be able to share some quests but you can still fight together and complete the quest at the same time.

Almost, but not quite. Best way is to figure out what faction you want to start playing and create characters together. That's how a few of my alts were born before One Tamriel.

Versispellis wrote: »

I think OP may not have worded the point as efficiently as it could have been, which has led to a lot of confusion. I get what they're driving at though.

Here's my experience. I said this in another thread once recently, so I'm going to be repeating myself. I play most of the content with a friend. We've been working on those shareable overland quests lately--picking a map, and knocking out the chain of quests in an evening or two. Being able to group up and progress together isn't an issue. The disconnect comes from the fact that, as OP said, all of the quests are written very explicitly for one player. NPCs don't acknowledge that you weren't the only person in the room, and we're each having our own separate conversations. We can take the quests in completely different directions if we don't micromanage our individual decisions. It gets even sillier in escort situations, where we'll have two copies of a unique NPC following us around. Our characters aren't partners working together on a quest--instead, we're effectively playing alone, with the scant ability to see the ghost effects of one another's individual quests. It's bad. It's not as good as it could be. The fact that it's not unique to ESO and is seen in some other MMOs doesn't make it less bad.

Thank you, this is EXACTLY what I was trying to say You did a much better job of communicating my point than I could manage