We haven’t gotten anything official.

The fact that ZOS has been trying to restrict it implies that PTEing during a trial should not be allowed and is on the exploit-y side. The problem is that those solutions punish players who get d/c’d or knocked through a wall though. We also have the respecs coming which are restricted as the armory assistant is, again suggesting it’s not a proper strategy.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to restrict it again, considering the upcoming IC queue changes (which is definitely exploity since it is intended people run back to base through the sewers). They may have to set it so that it only is restricted on an active PTE push to prevent d/c’s from triggering it, or allow /stuck if the group wipes and you cannot be rezzed.

I think its important to recognize the 2 sides of implementing a change like this (or not) and what merits/demerits they include. Terribly sorry for how awfully written this is, I've had this discussion so often that it's a bit tiring to just regurgetate the same points over and over without anything being done about it for years lol.

I want to bring up the context of this first because it's important.
The reason this is brought up is because the current top scorepushing team in the game recently used this to swap gear in the middle of fights with long immune phases, something I have been doing personally in casual runs, just for fun and experimentation for years and haven't seen any issue with. There has been disputes in the past in places like HoF to PTE when you have a certain mechanic on you to cancel it and clear the fight faster, which a lot of members of this team heavily disagreed with (2023 ish iirc), and more recently there's been more non-scorepush related disputes with PTE-ing to avoid the Xoryn HM mechanic entirely, and people getting trifecta's using it.


(also you did include it in your original post but the real reason its PTE specifically, is because of the keybindings: group = P, T = leave instance while in group menu, E is confirm. Another one is PXE X (or PXETE) which leaves the group and allows you to leave instance which was a way to get around the previous fix very easily especially with reinvite addons)


Currently, you are very free to use PTE and it is very nice for all levels of play, aka changing it would affect "the 99%" quite directly and in an annoying way. if you're bugged, or if you want to reset quickly you can PTE very easily. I massively enjoy ESO because of how free you are to use the tools provided to you, including the ability to freely leave and rejoin instances with no consequences aside from loading screens.

PTE also allows you to exit combat and swap gear if you're stuck on wrong setups which CTBee mentioned, which is common in endgame. Having to wipe, or reset the whole run if its a nodeath run because of such a minor thing, especially if the PTE would only be harmful to the group's speed and chances at clearing. it's a fair mechanic used in this way in my opinion. This is quite relevant to mention: PTE to leave a fight and rejoin (even on different gear) is more often than not a minor if not pretty major time/dps loss, and can even risk death when getting ported in (in the case of sunspire, porting back in on yolna for example at juust the wrong time can port you in in the middle of his fire engulfing the whole arena), or in most fights, you're often far away from the group and if there's aoes you spawn in (Bahsei abo slams RG, or Yaseyla firebombs SE, or just randomly getting run over by wamasus etc), you just die again. Basically: its not at all a guaranteed time save and in most cases its a time loss and sometimes even just a waste of time if you die instantly and unavoidably due to the location you get pulled into the fight on. basically: it's not remotely guaranteed to give you an advantage in most cases.


That being said, there is VERY real arguments against it. It is frequently used to negate death in difficult runs. I can attest I've used this in really bad/scuffed dungeon runs just to clear, even though everyone except the tank was dead for example (and in this situation, the tank can often not rez or barely rez/it takes 1-2 mins before mechs line up to rez etc). You can also make obtaining certain achievements easier with this, such as any HM especially dungeon HM fights, though I don't think no-death has much to gain from PTE unless it's planned beforehand (the reaction time needed to PTE in a situation where you're faced with certain death I would argue almost makes it harder/more deserved to get an achievement rather than easier lol but it's not like I don't see the issue obviously, you're avoiding intended gameplay). As I mentioned before, Xoryn HM current mechanic is very easily avoidable by just PTE-ing as it starts dealing any amount of lethal damage.


People feel cheated when they get achievements in the intended way, vs the avoidance of certain gameplay mechanics like Xoryn's mechanic or players clearing fights they really shouldnt have cleared if PTE didn't exist.



That being said, I also think this is a bit of unfair persecution and the words used to describe PTE as an exploit or unintended behavior is often a bit unfair. What is unintended/exploit anyway? This has been INTENTIONALLY re-added into the game, as CTBee said earlier after having a fix. Granted, the fix was bad so this is the likely reason, but the devs also clearly do not care enough at the moment to crack down on this as is seen by the fact that nothing has been done/said about it. Not to mention it has existed for years/the start of the game? (not sure on the last part).

There is plenty of "unintended usage of gameplay mechanics" such as gearswapping, prebuffing, certain ways players get around mechanics in certain fights (reef guardian). These are widely used in the endgame community and rarely frowned upon, especially prebuffing (which, to be clear, I am a huge preponent of keeping, though some slight adjustments could be useful and dev clarification). Many prebuffs have been cracked down upon and removed, with similar consequences of how PTE was cracked down on in the past (in combat requirements or just changes for many sets, and buffs being removed when you unslot their skill, reminds me of PTE fix making it so you lose vitality when you have a random disconnect, you cant pause anymore, you can't exit the instance if someone is holding you hostage on a fight maliciously in a pug group, or if you're stuck in an impossible spot the whole fight to revive such as bahsei, very possible) These things, while not considered exploiting/abusing mechanics, are still being more actively removed/considered by zos than PTE-ing. So in a way I'd argue zos's silence on this matter is confirmation that it's fine/intended/they dont care. Many people disagree however, so this is a very relevant issue I'd also like addressed. This is basically why the endgame community would really enjoy clarification on this matter. Because it is a recurring point of conflict on what's fair and what isn't.

I would recommend to best avoid all these issues the following fixes:

When you PTE, the game checks if you're on Veteran difficulty (dungeons, trials, 4man arenas, ma/vate are irrelevant cause pte doesnt help lol), a no-death run, and in combat. ->

If both are true (and only both are true), then it will have an extra dialouge that you have to accept saying "Are you sure you want to leave the instance? (red big text) LEAVING THE INSTANCE CURRENTLY WILL COUNT AS A DEATH (and if you're in a trial) AND THE LOSS OF 1 VITALITY"

If you're on vet, or HM, but not no-death, I think really nobody cares if you got the clear with or without PTE. Could also disregard HM clears for specifically that person that PTE'd if they left the instance, but this would incur a lot of extra programming and altering of the way the game tracks achievements which as I've heard is difficult (more difficult than most changes in the game).
If you're no-death, but in an instance where it doesn't matter (such as normal) or if it's on non HM and a pug run, you don't care so you say "yeah i dont care ill leave anyway" which keeps the usefulness of it in place, and the freedom. The previous fix had the issue of entirely removing the ability, which has very obvious workarounds and issues. One REALLY big stipulation is that it should be made in such a way where disconnecting does not count as PTE in this context, otherwise crashing and re-logging (even if you made the time limit easily) would still incur a "death" unfairly. If that isn't implemented something else woud have to be done imo. thanks for reading.

In my opinion, PTEing should be allowed, but should disqualify you from being able to reach the top scores if you do it. However, the previous way that it was implemented by ZOS (decreasing vitality) created a decent amount of issues like loosing vitality on disconnects, and a different limitation method should be used.

I think a potential solution would be to fully disable PTEing while the vitality is at 36 (or rather, when there is no deaths). The instant it goes below 36 then PTEing should be fine imo, since that will also allow groups to reset the instance faster if the tri gets wiped. The same code could then also be applied to respecs, keeping respecs and PTEing disabled out of high score runs/tri runs, but allowing it for better QOL for prog groups.

For examples of how this could be implemented, the CanExitInstanceImmediately() call could check for 36 vitality on the server side before returning true/false, and the UI wouldnt need much modifications that way. Then the respecs could also be bound to that same CanExitInstanceImmediately() check, so they function the same.
I made an addon to demonstrate this, with the code being below, and the video demonstration of it here:

local oldExitCheck = CanExitInstanceImmediately
CanExitInstanceImmediately = function()
	local vit = GetRaidReviveCountersRemaining()
	if IsRaidInProgress() and vit == 36 then
		return false
	end
	return oldExitCheck()
end
ZO_PreHook(_G, "ExitInstanceImmediately", function()
	if IsRaidInProgress() and not CanExitInstanceImmediately() then
		return true
	end
	return false
end)
ZO_PreHook(_G, "StartSkillRespecFromUI", function()
	if IsRaidInProgress() and not CanExitInstanceImmediately() then
		return true
	end
	return false
end)

Ugh don't ask them to comment on this, yall want a repeat of the stuck in combat dungeon fiasco? Wich is still an issue in a few.

This is such a non issue. In every game speedrunning community is using all the tools available and people painting it as some risk free options don't understand the game well enough I'm afraid. If half the group ptes, the other half needs to still play mechanics and survive. This in some ways increases the difficulty of strategy and adds additional depths to them. It's also usable in very limited number of encounters. If people are concerned about trifectas being cheesed with PTE, then just make it so if anybody leaves instance you lose the trifecta. Zos is already very unfriendly towards end game community, and this literally affects top of the top, like 100 players. In other games developers are proud of people finding a way to circumvent their game mechanics, in ESO community asks for bans

My view on it is once they allowed add-ons, they have no room to complain about leave instance use. Add-ons allow a lot of the "bad behaviour" of leave instance, like Wizard's Wardrobe is ok but whipping out an armoury assistant isn't. I know it was to prevent accusations of pay to win, but at this point should just be allowed.

Just adding in my personal thoughts, I don't personally mind abusing a games mechanics in these ways to a better score or faster speed run, the main issue here is the lack of clarity on the "legality" of things like this coupled with the fact that we have no true verification for trial records outside of the score that shows up in game has generated a lot of animosity, assuming what is and isn't allowed and assuming what other more secretive trial score pushing groups are doing to get records. We just need some clarification on how you want your game to be played, I would personally like to see a way to reduce the score if some of these things were to be implemented so they can at least be used for fun or speed run attempts in a different category (eg going for trial speed run in 'bugged' category).