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[Column] Elder Scrolls Online: Should the Faction Restriction in LFG Be Lifted?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Elder Scrolls Online has had one major problem that has been a major focus ever since Patch 5.0, unimaginable Looking for Group (LFG) queue times. When update 5 was released, with it came scaling dungeons and daily dungeon pledges. These two new features had players wanting to do dungeons more often and of course that meant more players putting themselves into the LFG queue, only to be faced with endless queue times
Read more of Ryan Getchell's Elder Scrolls Online: Should the Faction Restriction in LFG Be Lifted?
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The Pink Ranger Queuing For A Veteran Pledge
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I dont see how this will shorten the Queues..
Next to that, i dont see how this will influence the story... as since i travel all 3 areas allready, i have NPC friends in them too, why not player friends?
The war is only around the imperial province of cyrodiil
So basically by 1.6, people would level in their own 1/4th of the world... and as soon as you reach level 50 you end up in a full world of max level content... and it doesnt matter which zone you visit, you would allways be in a max level version of it with people from all 3 factions traveling there
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It won't.
If all areas are having long Queues then that means there aren't enough players to satisfy the Queues of any one area.
All that will be accomplished is getting a mixed group.
Having said that, wasn't the whole (horrible in my opinion) reason to segregate the world "faction pride"?
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The concept behind the decision to not cross factions, I believe, was to build back the old school guilds where they supported all their players. The sad truth is instead of guilds stepping up or people joining guilds we instead see the current trends of going it alone or guilds that only power level, being the norm and then these players complain that the issue is a design flaw.
The issue we are seeing is not a design flaw but a community flaw. If you are part of a guild and you cannot find help for quests then your in the wrong guild. If you are going solo, want to prove you can go it alone, then go it alone or find some friends to game with from time to time.
I think the devs should hold the line on this one, they have done to many compromises in other areas already.
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I have a soap box and I am not afraid to use it.
Before discussing whether to drop faction restrictions for lfg or not you should probably first find the reason why there are queues ?
On one side you say more people are using lfg, on the other you say queue times increase. Doesn't make much sense.
Maybe you could explain the reason for the long queues first ?
The reason there are long lfg queues is because not a lot of people use the lfg tool. (I never use it)
I just shout out in zone chat.
The lfg tool is one of the worst I've ever come across in a game.
They should fix the tool first. Then if that doesn't work - then you can discuss cross factioning. (which I'm against).
Could be a number of reasons. Who knows, maybe it is already so that the factions are not seperated...
Maybe there just isnt enough players on each server (likely1)
Myabe nobody really cares about the dungeons, at least not enough to use the LFG tool
Maybe there simply is a bug.
Another article reinforcing it's not time to resub yet.
This is so true. I find these LFG tools to be stupid. And thats because i played mmo's before Wow. We never needed these tools because players spoke to each other. As far as the whole faction thing..They should dump it all together its only in the game for pvp reasons and most of the players from what i'm hearing don't give a crap about pvp in this game. They should have the guts to just dump it. Take a page from lotro and do a numbers crunch and see how many players care about the pvp in the game. I bet its less than 5% of the playerbase. Why waste resources on under used game mechanics for a small % of the playerbase that will just leave when the next pvp mmo comes out.
The tool seems broken. A tank shouldn't have a problem finding a group. They have to fix the tool then somehow get people to use it again. No one uses it. At one time it did work. I used it for group dungeons leveling early in the game, then Craglorn groups later. After some patch one day I could never find anyone, now I go straight to asking in chat, guilds or friends.
Fix that then see if you need to expand to other factions. There should not be an issue finding a pledge group with the lfg tool. It's a pretty focused search that everyone is looking for. Right now it just isn't working. I do check it occasionaly and never found any member of a pledge group with the lfg tool.
If they want to keep lore important to the game, no.
If they want to prioritize gameplay over lore though, then yes.
Or they can make some bullshit lore up for why you can group cross-faction, that's always a thing too.
I guess it totally depends on how you view and play MMOs. If you take a casual and utilitarian approach and just care about running dungeons like in all the other lobbyish themeparks, then yeah, it would make sense to get the largest pool of players possible so you'd get groups quicker.
But from the perspective of emphasizing the factions and the conflict against each other, and creating a self-consistent world? It would make no sense and they should be going out of their way in the opposite direction trying to make each of the three factions more unique, distinct and isolated from the other two. The VR tour of the other zones and allowing any race to be part of any faction was bad enough already in removing any kind of alien mystique from the other factions, this would just be jumping the shark higher and farther.
There are developers out there who do get it still...this is Mark Jacobs talking about the same concept for Camelot Unchained:
"...we allow Viking players to be more immersed in the actual lore of their Realm as well as to have some very distinct and different gameplay options for the class. This will, we hope, help build Realm pride and further differentiate the three Realms. We want all their respective classes to feel not only different from each other, but also very much part of each Realm and its lore, mythology and stories, even if things have changed a lot due to the Piercing of the Veil."
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Sounds like the very definition of broken.
Also, some say it's the community that's the problem when the community just follows the rules-set created by the Devs. If people aren't social it's because there's no compelling reason for some to be. "Play the way you want." was the promise.
I'd like to see a companion system. Login grab a bunch of companions and have at it.
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I would, personally, uninstall the game if they went that route.
Correct.
secondly the dungeon scaling, players want to have more control over who they group with due to the scaling, vet players may want to run them at V14 for better loot & difficulty, or they may just want to take it easy in a scaled down dungeon for quick daily quest completion, which can be affected by how many alts a player has also. (first time ever in an MMO that a lower end of the bracket character was popular).
pot luck is just not appealing when making groups while scaling is concerned. so perhaps scaling and the loot range need to be measured independantly.
the next issue is about guilds and pugs or impersonal grouping. before patch 5 ppl would use LFG and pug albeit this could still be long wait times, although the population steadily increases increasing the chance of finding people at your same level and faction.
now from what I see is that guilds have become more relevant with grouping now but the curious thing is that because we can be in 5 guilds over 3 factions, the character you are playing obviously can't group with an opposing faction BUT your alts can. so now you see people posting stuff in guild chats like "LF healer for Vet BC in ebonheart pact" the theory being that the "wrong faction" guildie may have a healer alt in EP
so while zone chat grouping isn't necessarily impersonal (I was running with 2 others pretty much every day until I out leveled them and went to craglorn), and the community is quite interactive in pledge quest giver cities around peak times. (off peak, not so much) which in effect negates the use of guilds entirely as you can make friends to group with that aren't required to be guild mates.
this is why I belive cross faction LFG is a no brainer. the issue of "faction pride" is a moot point considering how the guilds are structured yet it's totally relevant when you talk about zone/quest grouping. (except in the case of craglorn where faction could also be ignored).
at this point I start to confuse myself considering the justice system and its upcoming pvp elements regarding "Vet" and lower zones.
the most positive thing about cross faction LFG is obviously less waiting times, but in summarizing it will only work for dungeons, trials and zones where everyone is within the same level bracket.
quick fix, open craglorn & Above zones to all factions at a particular level bracket (vet or champion) and add its own undaunted pledge quests. this would need its own cross faction LFG but also means it can be used for craglorn group questing. higher levels can still group with lower levels if they choose by doing non crag pledges. but lower players would still be taking a risk being in a higher scaled group.
But until it's clearer how the champion and justice systems will work all of this could be irrelevant :P