This idea sprung in to my mind after playing retail World of Warcraft, in WoW there is a little checkmark next the dungeon finder where you can express your desire to queue with newer players, this way you willingly accept that the people you are queued up with are are newer / less experienced. This option is great feature and as someone who recently opened a new account the feature is really working, the queue times weren't long and the people I got with where all friendly.
I really think ESO needs a similar feature in the upcoming dungeon finder, my idea for how it would go would be as following:
The group finder matches 2 veteran players, and two newer players. "Now it could also just be one inexperinced if there are not enough queued up."
Both groups play a support and a dps role. This means any group composition can take place. But neither support or dps is completely behind.
People under lvl 50 and up to CP 160 are always using this queue method as "newer" player in both normal and veteran dungeons.
CP 160 - 300 you can choose to option out of this queue method in normal dungeons
CP 300 - 600, you can option out completely.
CP 600+ you can option in as a veteran player helping newer players.
This specific queue will feature no DLC dungeons.
If a queue option like this was introduced it would fix a lot of my gripes with the current dungeon finder. I am mostly playing a tank whenever I do dungeons as I really enjoy the challenges they present. But I rarely ever use the dungeon finder even though I don't mind helping newer players.
My first problem is DLC dungeons. I am not patient enough to do this content with players that have never done it before. While I don't mind spending another 30 minutes in veteran city of ash 2. Often even clearing a single boss with a complete pug group in a DLC dungeon will take hours. While I know some people like the challenge, I feel like most people are in my place.
The second problem with the current system is getting queued up with completely fresh players when trying to do daily pledges . Sometimes you just don't have the time on your hand to deal with a group that will take maybe two hours clearing a single base game dungeon. I have been there and had to just leave the group after first boss.
The last feature I think might help is to prevent kicking people that are not afk/ idle or offline, this is to prevent people exploiting the queue. The group will be registered as a friendly pug group if people from the "newer" group bracket are in the group. We can already not disband dungeon groups this should'nt be an issue
Now here is the thing I am a bit indifferent about
On one hand this feature could function like a completely new queue. so instead of a checkmark we have 2 more options in the dungeon finder, we now have 4 different player pools instead of two. This would increase queue times for everyone no doubt. But this would also encourage people to queue up specifically to avoid DLC dungeons. This feature would make the queue function a lot better even at the cost of queue times going up. You would be able to choose exactly when to queue up with newer players and when not to. This should decrease negative dungeon experiences across the board.
The other option would be a checkmark. This way a veteran player queueing would not be 100% sure if they got in a veteran group or one of the “friendly groups” when they queue for a random dungeon, or a specific base game one for that matter. What happens is instead just a change in the algorithm in which players gets matched. This would probably not increase queue times across the board. However it would take a few more calculations from ZOS server side. This should'nt be a problem according to the “Road Map”. Now I know this is not something the server would be able to handle at this time.
I know that most veteran players out there genuinely wants to help newers players, but right now there is no option to choose time and place. And this discourages a lot of players from ever using the dungeon finder. This would help pair the right players much better.
Let me know your thoughts!
Most OwOrated healer of all time