Athory wrote: »

decreases their stats

How? What? Is that an addon? What addon? I am interested now. So there is some sort of stats addon that measures your overall dps across all encounters, overland and instanced? What's the name of this addon?

Most people i know who are willing to waste 8 hours teaching or helping usually already give up eso in u35 and play other games
because zos start concentrates on single player

GeneralGrundmann wrote: »

I agree on your description of people's behaviour, although I would describe it more to be a problem in general with today's players and not so much an ESO/ a NM issue in particular.

I agree that this is somewhat of a societal thing, caused by, among other things, social media and an instant gratification culture and a whole segment of people who came of age during the COVID era and didn't get to socialize for years, thus in many cases having more social anxiety overall.

However, the piece of this that is an ESO specific problem is that ZOS, in my opinion, mismanaged transitioning their mid-length players into long term players due to a series of decisions which alienated a lot of those people and caused them to bail, leaving a big gap in community leaders, content creators, etc. I'm talking about the U33/U34/U35 era.

MMOs have their own lifecycle. When they launch, if they make it, the early years are great, because the players in the community all mature together. They learn the idiosyncrasies of the game together, creating emotional ties and loyalty to the game, and then advance through power creep together, without it being an issue because the majority of the player base has done the easier stuff. At that time, players more often happily re-play content to help level their friends, or alts, because the community is strong and helpful.

As MMOs get older though, even if they make zero mistakes, people inevitably leave and there's a larger gap between new players and long time players. The game is more overwhelming to new players, because it's become quite large, and long time players are now extremely sick of the old content. They have their own language, their own abbreviations, their own short cuts, etc. The learning curve even culturally is much steeper. This is where it's really important for leaders to emerge for 'mid-length' community members, who still should have enough patience with older, starter content to help bolster the community of newer players, and the long time players encourage the mid-length players to continue forward, taking their place as end game leaders, content creators, etc.

We lost a lot of those players between U33 and U35, and we can feel it still today. I have been hopeful that the class updates will entice some people to come back to the community, but I'm not sure it will be enough. I am in a great guild, and I continue to personally have mostly great experiences in pugs and "public" interactions in ESO, but I've observed some of what the OP is talking about as well. I really think that, to a certain extent, the whole solo vs. group debate is a bit of a red herring. It more has to do with community leaders. But that's just my opinion.

Some of it is design choice as well - whether intentional or not, I don't know. There was some great feedback on PTS on how the Night Market was supposed to be group content but had certain issues that actively made it difficult to group up and play together. That stuff made it to live. There has been many other examples over the years of good or great ideas and new features being released that could have encouraged (but not required) group play, but turned that same feature into more of a solo thing. Another example is how the Tamriel Tomes redesigned the endeavors so we all don't get the same ones, which changes your thinking from what can "we" (the people in your friends list who are logged in) can tackle today to what can "I" tackle today? And when the list of stuff "I" need to do gets longer than the list of things "we" can do, players naturally exhibit more impatience for the "we" content because it doesn't integrate nicely with the "I" content. Even if they like grouping and playing with others. I'm a bit tired this evening but hopefully that makes a little sense.

Renato90085 wrote: »

Most people i know who are willing to waste 8 hours teaching or helping usually already give up eso in u35 and play other games
because zos start concentrates on single player

Not many games are all that compelling now.

The three bosses have to be killed within a certain amount of time, meaning once one is killed the others have to be killed within some small amount of time like 20-40 seconds, I can’t find a reference on which. Otherwise it is a wipe and you have to start again.

EDIT: this is a mechanic that is present in other trials as well

Darth_Foole wrote: »

Unfortunately, the event is almost over and I still haven’t finished the trial. I spent hours in it, though. Most of the time has gone to WAIT for a group to fill. Sure, a guild may have helped but I am in 3 casual guilds, 2 PvP and 1 trading. The one PvP doesn’t do trials, the other is basically dead, people just haven’t left out of nostalgia and, well, the trading guild may get a group every now and then but focus on more active players, so was told. I don’t have the time to regularly interact with a guild, anymore. Too much going on… and the group finder: forget it. 2 times we even got to the bosses, the 2nd time we even almost killed them but what did ZOS apparently do? Unless I missed something they must have put a timer on it because as the bosses had about 1/4 health left we suddenly wiped… WTH?
Really ZOS? I think you have no clue who your players are? A random group manages to do all the mechanics etc. and then wipes because they take their time? Sad thing is, the damage would have been there but people were too afraid to knock a boss down to quickly before the others… WTH, WTH, WTH… I’m just speechless. After hours of waiting, often for nothing… know where you can take that night market and stick it?

Oh, and by the way: the *** group finder may work better than years ago but it obviously wasn’t made for people constantly coming and going… almost every group in the last few days had to finally dissolve because it broke and you couldn’t change number of tanks, healers or DDs anymore! But, I can’t say, that surprises me….

on your unknown wipe 1/4 boss health it sounds like someone missed a mech that killed you all not zos changing anything on you , that or if you had killed one of other two bosses while 1s still 1/4 health you might just set off mec for killing bosses close together thats another group wipe , this whole thing is about groups doing mec's together as a team reason its so hard for many is they've been told so long to just forget the mec's and burn the boss that is coming back to kill everyone lol

I'm currently in a situation where I have done the majority of "fighting" achievements. However, most of the oddities (especially) elude me. Whenever I find a PUG it's for taking down a Brazen or an Argent or doing a Skirmish. And yes, mostly immediately thereafter the group disbands.

The few PUGs doing oddities and/or races I've had the pleasure to be in typically bungle the challenges. Then instead of waiting those 5-10 minutes to try again, the group disbands.

I don't know if I'm the only one having that experience or if I'm particularly unlucky. At this point I've mostly given up on doing the oddities in The Parch and Sorrow's Friend. TBH I still haven't been able to complete any of them once so far.

I had a nice time playing NM. I was leading groups every day for my dailies, just creating one with the description 'Parch/Skit/Sorrow Bosses + Skirmish'.

Most of the groups were just clueless, and I spent some time giving directions, but as a main tank, I'm quite used to that.

Furthermore, NM is not as hard as a vet trial. With a good tank and a decent healer to throw synergies to them, it's very doable, even the skirmishes (the Sorrow one is brutal, tho)

marcbf wrote: »

I'm currently in a situation where I have done the majority of "fighting" achievements. However, most of the oddities (especially) elude me. Whenever I find a PUG it's for taking down a Brazen or an Argent or doing a Skirmish. And yes, mostly immediately thereafter the group disbands.

The few PUGs doing oddities and/or races I've had the pleasure to be in typically bungle the challenges. Then instead of waiting those 5-10 minutes to try again, the group disbands.

I don't know if I'm the only one having that experience or if I'm particularly unlucky. At this point I've mostly given up on doing the oddities in The Parch and Sorrow's Friend. TBH I still haven't been able to complete any of them once so far.

Oddly enough: The oddities in Parch and Sorrows Friend are in fact entirely soloable. And in fact, more easy to solo than to do in a group, because of the number of people who might do something that conflicts with your efforts and foul it up.

For Sorrows Friend:

Start from the *top*. Look at the yellow and red lasers that point to the top-central brazier (the one on the left should point to the right, the one on the right should point to the left). Get these aligned first, these are the central two stepping stones. Then go for the green and blue ones, on the outside.

In each case, you get 4 attempts to get them right. There's a 1/3 chance that one of them (green or blue) may be in the correct position already, allowing you to ignore that one, and only adjust the other.

Note that the lines you need to connect, do NOT always go around the outside: sometimes the connection you need to make is closer to the centre.

Sometimes you will need more than one attempt, because the layouts are somewhat randomized.

For The Parch:

Again, they're more easily soloed. Take your time to walk around the layout and learn which steps you need to step on, to cause the barriers to rise at the right time (note that you can step on the stepping stone to cause the barrier to STAY up if it's about to drop again but you need it to be still there.)

Or you can team up with ONE person who knows how to do it, and just stay out of the way while they do the mech, follow them around, and be with them when they pot the boulder.

The biggest difficulty with both of these oddities, is getting TO them and not being under fire from trash while you do it. If this happens, die to the trash, respawn on the roof, and run back to the oddity while still in ghost form, if you get there safely then you can always navigate around them without aggroing the trash.

Darth_Foole wrote: »

The problem today is that people do not want to get involved and have no patience. I used to be in guilds and quite involved but, for quite some time now, that seems to be impossible. I still am on loose PvP and trading guilds which allows for the odd group and getting some help from time to time. But, when it comes to doing advanced content, especially trials, forget about it. Every trial guild I’ve been in lately lasts a few weeks, maybe 2-3 months and the breaks apart.

Bowling Alone, by Bob Putnam (2000). This is a general cultural trend that's been building for decades. Nothing new, and nothing to be done about it.