A story of a vet DLC dungeon PUG

ZeroXFF · July 2018

So... I just queued for a random vet for fun. After an excessively long loading screen we get in and it's Falkreath Hold. Tank asks to be kicked because he has never done it and doesn't feel like learning it right now, so we do that. We requeue for a new tank and a minute later we get the same guy again. Kick again, get him again. Rinse and repeat. After the 4th time we got the same tank again, the healer quits. Because nobody seems to care any more, I ask to be kicked. No response. I leave and decide to write the story on the forums while I have the 15 minutes cooldown.

Moral of the story: @ZOS , please allow people to exclude DLC dungeons from the random queue, because getting in with people who are unwilling to do it is not fun for us or them. Also, it's quite absurd to put vFH with vFG in the same category. The difficulty difference is massive. Maybe make different tiers with different rewards? Would make life so much easier.

pelle412 · July 2018

I think the random dungeon works fine in terms of the selection of dungeons you are eligible to run should not be limited. You are awarded loot and a big XP bonus for doing one and any one player should carefully decide if they can fulfill their queued role on all veteran dungeons they are eligible for. If they aren't, queue for random normal. I do think if a player is kicked from a dungeon, don't put them back in the same dungeon instance again, that's just lazy design.

abigfishy · July 2018

It is silly that people would people would queue for a random vet dungeon when they can't complete lots of them, however people do queue for a random vet hoping to kill two birds with one stone and maybe "randomly" get their pledge. To get the daily reward just queue for a random normal and then do your pledges in vet. Or another great workaround is group with someone who doesn't have the DLCs then you still get the daily reward but don't risk the DLC dungeons. Even easier for your daily random group with a level 10 and you are guaranteed a quick and easy run.

From a design standpoint I have a few of suggestions for ZOS.

1) Keep making hard dungeons that are a challenge to test out new players.
2) How about creating the occasional faster and less difficult dungeon. When leveling new alts you constantly get the same old dungeons, it would be nice if there were a couple of new ones doable by low level groups.
3) Include a DLC dungeon toggle that does not reduce your reward. Lots of players just want to do their daily random and when a DLC comes up that will take an hour rather than the normal 15-20 minutes they just quit - even with the 15 minute penalty it is faster.
4) How about making new dungeons that are challenging, with difficult mechanics and hard hitting bosses that DON'T contain mountains of trash? Several of the newer DLCs just had way too much trash that made them far too long and didn't contribute to the fun. The new trial was an excellent step in the right direction.

VaranisArano · July 2018

Technically, vet Fungal Grotto and vet Falkreath aren't in the same caregory. Vet Falkreath requires at least 300 CP to queue for, in part thanks to many complaints about PUGing it. I mean, I understand your point, but ZOS has already taken steps to make sure that everyone queuing into it has a fighting chance.

The daily random dungeons arent the Daily Guaranteed Quick 'N Easy Random Dungeon. There's not much you can do when your group decides "Hey, this is too hard, we don't want to run it," however, the 15-minute penalty is designed to give group members a reason to NOT to quit hard dungeons and leave their group members in a lurch like yours did.

Its why I queue responsibly for the dungeons I'm willing to run. If I don't want to possibly tank Vet DLC dungeons, I'm not going to choose a random Vet dungeon run.

imnotanother · July 2018

This sounds about right.

redspecter23 · July 2018

I think the issue is the massive disparity in difficulty for the dungeons in the available vet dungeon pool. If they were all approximately the same length and/or difficulty level, people would know what they're in for ahead of time. What we have now does lead to situations like that described here. You could have a 7 minute vet Fungal 1 or spend an hour in a vet DLC dungeon and just quit it anyway. If a system penalty is designed in such a way that players will willingly take the penalty instead of running the content, they system is broken in some way and needs to be looked at.

Thorstienn · July 2018

I understand people saying "Random should be random", but I have my Zaan, SPC, Thruvokhan, Veli, etc (multiples of each), once I get a couple more Earthgore (weights and traits), my sub is going off.
No more DLC dungeons in my Random queues, have a metric tonne of mats in my Craft bag, new stuff can go to the guild crafters.
There should never be a "form" of punishment for paying for content!

ZeroXFF · July 2018

I get it that people should put some thought into whether they are able to fulfill the requirements, but I can't educate people before I ever talk to them. The difference between the dungeons that one queues for should be sufficiently small that they don't start asking for a kick while being annoyed at the game. A tier system would make perfect sense imo, but the ability to exclude DLC dungeons without having to think of creative ways to control the dungeons you get into would be a good start.

And for all the people giving advice on how to not get into DLC dungeons: I don't mind doing DLC dungeons (in fact I prefer them). You telling me is pointless, I just wanted a tank to join who actually wants to do it rather than the same guy whom we kicked 3 times because he didn't want to do it. Also, he was CP600+, so a CP restriction wouldn't do anything in this case. He just didn't want to try.

To expand on the tiers idea, say there are 4 tiers:
1. Most non-DLC 1 dungeons and some 2 dungeons that can be completed without any barriers aside from the obvious (don't stand in the fire, block heavy attacks etc). For example FG1, BC1, CoA1, Wayrest 1+2 etc.
2. Dungeons with some mechanics that can't be ignored and possibly some soft dps/heal/tank checks. For example CoA2, DK, FG2, DC2 etc.
3. Easy DLC dungeons. For example WGT, ICP, and possibly also RoM and CoS.
4. Hard DLC dungeons. FH, FL etc.

This way you know what to expect when you queue, and there won't be any people who ask for a kick because of the dungeons being much more difficult than what they wanted to do. And giving better rewards for higher tiers also makes sense and gives people a reason to strive to improve. The difference between rewards could be as small as going with green/blue/purple transmute crystal bags. And by allowing people to select multiple tiers the same way they can select individual dungeons now, without completely depriving them of the rewards, would still fulfill the purpose of speeding up the queue times (which is what I assume is the purpose of having a random queue in the first place).

And as time goes by, this makes more and more sense. Because despite both FL and WGT being DLC dungeons, the difference in difficulty between the two is massive. In WGT there is just one mechanic that could genuinely be considered a dps check, and you don't have to deal with 1-shots until last boss, and even there you have a lot of control over them, whereas FL is riddled with those and you can't really control anything, you can just avoid it. These two dungeons are definitely not in the same league. And considering that HotR vet hard modes only took me a couple hours to do for the first time on a magplar tank and for vSP hm I needed to spend a total of about 30 hours while vFL hm I still couldn't complete despite using a DK tank (otherwise there is no way to deal with those bugs), there is definitely a trend that makes the difference in difficulty between the dungeons you queue for bigger and bigger, and that will only make stories like mine more frequent.

ZeroXFF · July 2018

Another solution that I would consider elegant would be to give the daily reward not to just people who queued for all dungeons in a separate tab, but also to anyone who queued for more than say 16 (as in half of the existing) specific dungeons?

idk · July 2018

The moral to the story is do not kick the tank to begin with.

Tell him if he is going to do this to the group he deserves the penalty. After all it was his selfishness that put your group in that position to begin with which is obvious since he was dense enough to keep queueing even though he kept getting put into your group.

Enough said.

Kawall · July 2018

People shouldn't do vet dungeons before doing normal and learn the mechanics. Was doing ruins of mazzatun vet pledge, and got two magicka dd and healer. None of them knew the mechanics. It took us 30 minute to reach Zalnur and got stuck there. It was terrible.

psxfloh · July 2018

they should simply split the random dungeon reward into 3 instead of 2 categories
1. normal dungeons
2. vet dungeons without dlc
3. vet dlc dungeons

and add a guaranteed 1-5 chromium grains (for legendary jewellery) in the undaunted satchel on tier 3.

ayu_fever · July 2018

we all have had a bad experience on vet dungeons.
this might be a minor “check” to keep people from people going into content they have no business being in but my suggestion is you cannot queue for vet dungeons in any way until ALL dungeons (and their quests) have been completed on normal.

this change will ensure people are at least somewhat aware of the dungeon flow and basic knowledge of boss attacks.
yeah, boss fights can change in vet but still some knowledge is better than nothing and being in over your head and being dead weight.
it also means all players HAVE DONE THE QUEST which wont slow down the group.

people dont do vet dungeons for the scenery. we want certain items (read: jewelry sets in purple haha) and we dont want to be there all day in a single run.
get in, do the job you queue for, get out, and do it again if you still need an item.
its pretty simple.

jaschacasadiob16_ESO · July 2018

You can esclude dungeons simply by selecting the ones that you are willing to do. But of course, you want the gifts and decide which dungeon you do.