I love the phasing in ESO, without reservation. But I'm not someone who tries to bring a group along when I'm doing content that was designed to be soloed, the same way I don't try to capture keeps by myself in Cyrodiil.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
SOME FEC phasing at crossroads of a personal story would make sense with phasing. But ESO has WAAAAY overused it. Example: a city in Daggerfall is overrun by Werewolves, you free it. Yes, afterwards you see dead Werewolves and some happy citicens. But you NEVER return to the city anyway. There is no reason to go back. So why do we even need phasing there? It's didn't really heighten my sense of accomplishment more than, say, a short cutscene would have.
I tried to duo and trio with RL friends over the past days, and it was horrible. We were cut apart so often, it was virtually impossible to do anything continually together.
And the irony is: on the other hand ZOS constantly places you with 100 others in some dungeon or area, where I feel like in Walmart sellout day, or like a group of thieves had thoroughly ransacked every house, dungeon and forest before me!
Yes, it's rather humorous when you're looting a random house with five or so other strangers.
What are the alternative solutions? Go full open world, and watch people complain about bosses being camped and interference from others? People are even crying about it now" "NOOO my mobs", when they're not being robbed of anything.
I agree it is a little frustrating but only on a group level. I don't like it at all. I could give 2 shits if a player I'm not involved with is swinging at air. If it's someone in my group THAT'S a problem.
I really don't know what the solution is. We can't have our cake and eat it too. We want our own experience, but we want to affect the world of thousands of other players who want their own experience too. It's a tough call for a developer right now.
MMORPG players are going to have to make up their minds on what is important to them. Right now it's either or:
Your world or Our world.
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
What are the alternative solutions? Go full open world, and watch people complain about bosses being camped and interference from others? That was never a problem in DAoC. There weren't a million quests that required you to kill certain mobs. The easy solution is just give credit to everyone that helps kill the mob, which is what they already do. People are even crying about it now" "NOOO my mobs", when they're not being robbed of anything. Then ignore those people.
I agree it is a little frustrating but only on a group level. And on an immersion level, and on a social level. Hey, that person is cool, I want them to be my friend, we should hang out! Oh we can't, we're in different phases and I'll never see you again. I don't like it at all. I could give 2 shits if a player I'm not involved with is swinging at air. Well the only purpose of phasing is supposedly immersion, swinging at the air kind of hurts that. If it's someone in my group THAT'S a problem.
I really don't know what the solution is. At this point, with the mega server, there isn't one. They put too much money into trying to make you think you're playing a singleplayer game. But the real solution is, no phasing, as it adds nothing to the game. We can't have our cake and eat it too. We want our own experience Some solo players might, but catering to them is exactly how you end up with a dead MMO. GW2's solution is the closest to an action solution I've ever seen. That game just lacked consequences. , but we want to affect the world of thousands of other players who want their own experience too. It's a tough call for a developer right now.
MMORPG players are going to have to make up their minds on what is important to them. Right now it's either or:
Your world or Our world.
I think, given the massive scale failure of singleplayer centric MMOs that treat you like the chosen one, we've made up our mind.
Phasing is a good solution to the problems faces in MMOs. It doesn't effect any of the serious group content and still enables the single player guy to have a good story. You can't win with some people... No phasing and lots of talk about how the quests suck and there is no story..
Originally posted by GuyClinch Phasing is a CHEAP solution to the problems faces in MMOs. It doesn't effect any of the serious group content and still enables the single player guy to have a good story. You can't win with some people... No phasing and lots of talk about how the quests suck and there is no story..
There, fixed that for you. A good solution would be not to have to use phasing in the first place.
Originally posted by GuyClinch Phasing is a good solution to the problems faces in MMOs. It doesn't effect any of the serious group content and still enables the single player guy to have a good story. You can't win with some people... No phasing and lots of talk about how the quests suck and there is no story..
Phasing has brought a huge stable of problems to my gameplay. Questing isn't any more fun than it is in MMOs with or without phasing. It all still feels fake because I'm not actually impacting the game world. Why bother.
phasing is the SINGLE MOST important turn-off factor to me; if I can't share the same environment with other players, I might as well play a SPG. Not knowing what other players are seeing is not going to increase my immersion, despite that being the intention.
but anyway, this is a core design decision, they can't just change it now...
I am not keen on phasing, but I personally prefer it to the potential alternative, not for myself, just for the impact it may have on today's players (wall of complaints)
If such a NPC that you had to interact with was already engaged in a further part of a quest than where you were at, you would have to wait for that chain of events to finish. And a queue of players would be madly trying to click/interact when it became available again.
Or think on a larger scale, a city was invaded by an enemy, but the NPC you require now does not spawn. You would have to wait determined amount of time to be able to progress.
Would the majority of the new generation of MMORPGers feel they are being blocked from there rush through the game (and the old 'I don't pay a sub to wait around' would re-appear)
Sadly there are probably very few who would still wait several days, if not weeks on end waiting for a single rare boss to spawn (EQ) - But didn't it feel damn good when it finally did.
Core i5 13600KF, BeQuiet Pure Loop FX 360, 32gb DDR5-6000 XPG, WD SN850 NVMe ,PNY 3090 XLR8, Asus Prime Z790-A, Lian-Li O11 PCMR case (limited ed 1045/2000), 32" LG Ultragear 4k Monitor, Logitech G560 LightSync Sound, Razer Deathadder V2 and Razer Blackwidow V3 Keyboard
Sadly there are probably very few who would still wait several days, if not weeks on end waiting for a single rare boss to spawn (EQ) - But didn't it feel damn good when it finally did.
That's not what we want back, not me anyway. I never had to wait hours for a rare spawn, because the MMOs I played weren't so poorly designed. It's not such ablack and white choice. If you don't have phasing you have camping! Just no...
I like how someone earlier in this thread mentioned that it's not a problem for PvP. If anything it's the PvPers mostly affected by this, cause in PvE you can add your friends, group with them, it's something solvable, but in PvP this system forces you to fight against random strangers each time. And that's where PvP becomes just another treadmill grind, instead of being a close and personal game.
GW2 did the same thing with server groups changing every week and enemies with no name plates...
Devs should understand that PvP is about fighting against other players, not against mobs with a human AI.
I think, given the massive scale failure of singleplayer centric MMOs that treat you like the chosen one, we've made up our mind.
You are going to have to define what you mean by "failure" in order for this statement to make any sense, because the conventional definition of "fails to turn a profit" certainly doesn't apply.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
I started beta session with 4 of my friends. we expected a great adventure together as soon as Coldharbour was done. within 5 mins after Coldharbour we could not do quests together. each of us had to scatter and went separate ways. it was terrible.
this completely destroy any chance of group content outside dungeons & may be ava. i hope this get fixed soon (before release). i have purchased the game but if nothing change i will play it as a single player game (and then decide if ava has enough substance to warrant a sub).
I started beta session with 4 of my friends. we expected a great adventure together as soon as Coldharbour was done. within 5 mins after Coldharbour we could not do quests together. each of us had to scatter and went separate ways. it was terrible.
this completely destroy any chance of group content outside dungeons & may be ava. i hope this get fixed soon (before release). i have purchased the game but if nothing change i will play it as a single player game (and then decide if ava has enough substance to warrant a sub).
So, essentially your complaint is that content that wasn't intended for groups is hard and/or impossible to do with groups? How is this any different than complaining that content that is intended for groups is hard and/or impossible to solo?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
I started beta session with 4 of my friends. we expected a great adventure together as soon as Coldharbour was done. within 5 mins after Coldharbour we could not do quests together. each of us had to scatter and went separate ways. it was terrible.
this completely destroy any chance of group content outside dungeons & may be ava. i hope this get fixed soon (before release). i have purchased the game but if nothing change i will play it as a single player game (and then decide if ava has enough substance to warrant a sub).
Riannes, i believe it's AvA that is getting the worst hit from this phasing technology. Cause you will be playing each time against different, random players.
I started beta session with 4 of my friends. we expected a great adventure together as soon as Coldharbour was done. within 5 mins after Coldharbour we could not do quests together. each of us had to scatter and went separate ways. it was terrible.
this completely destroy any chance of group content outside dungeons & may be ava. i hope this get fixed soon (before release). i have purchased the game but if nothing change i will play it as a single player game (and then decide if ava has enough substance to warrant a sub).
So, essentially your complaint is that content that wasn't intended for groups is hard and/or impossible to do with groups? How is this any different than complaining that content that is intended for groups is hard and/or impossible to solo?
do you even know what we are discussing about???
its nothing to do with difficulty. Phasing makes us unable to see friends so we cannot quest with them.
its nothing to do with difficulty. Phasing makes us unable to see friends so we cannot quest with them.
I understand exactly what you are saying. I am talking about the effect, not the cause. The effect of the phasing is that you actually have to solo much of the content that was intended to be soloed, rather than grouping for it. What I am asking is how complaining that a game is setup in a way that forces you to solo content that is designed to be soloed is any different than complaining about a game being setup in a way that forces you to group for content that is designed for groups.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
I think, given the massive scale failure of singleplayer centric MMOs that treat you like the chosen one, we've made up our mind.
You are going to have to define what you mean by "failure" in order for this statement to make any sense, because the conventional definition of "fails to turn a profit" certainly doesn't apply.
Constantly declining subscription numbers after the first month of launch is generally a good indicator. Server merges, layoffs, the works.
Pre WoW MMOs didn't peak until about 2-3 years into development, same for Eve, and other games designed to retain people long term.
Games like SWTOR, that play like a singleplayer game with optional COOP, had the biggest loss of numbers in record time.
TO the apologists, are you honestly saying that it is a good sound bit of game design to force you to solo IN A MULTIPLAYER GAME? Not to mention that it isn't consistent at all, so pretending it was intended to be that way is a farce.
its nothing to do with difficulty. Phasing makes us unable to see friends so we cannot quest with them.
I understand exactly what you are saying. I am talking about the effect, not the cause. The effect of the phasing is that you actually have to solo much of the content that was intended to be soloed, rather than grouping for it. What I am asking is how complaining that a game is setup in a way that forces you to solo content that is designed to be soloed is any different than complaining about a game being setup in a way that forces you to group for content that is designed for groups.
by your so called logic anything outside dungeons are designed to be solo contents?
and by solo contents i do quest A in area X and my friend does B in area X why cant i see my friend? its not like he/she is helping with my solo content quest A.
and then if i do quest A and my friend decide to do quest A too. we can then see each other and quest A become multi player content???
its really simple. i want to lvl with friends. but i cannot see my friends. so as mentioned, i will play it as a single player game. except for rare occasions one or two of my friends maybe on the same quest.
i believe in most mmo we are able to lvl with friends. some games even have content scaling with number of participating players. i love es serie & i want eso to be successful so i hope there will be some improvements on this. but seriously your counter argument does not make any sense.
Constantly declining subscription numbers after the first month of launch is generally a good indicator. Server merges, layoffs, the works.
Pre WoW MMOs didn't peak until about 2-3 years into development, same for Eve, and other games designed to retain people long term.
Games like SWTOR, that play like a singleplayer game with optional COOP, had the biggest loss of numbers in record time.
TO the apologists, are you honestly saying that it is a good sound bit of game design to force you to solo IN A MULTIPLAYER GAME? Not to mention that it isn't consistent at all, so pretending it was intended to be that way is a farce.
Last point first; multiplayer doesn't mean you have to engage in cooperative play with others, it just means that there are others around. I am just pointing out the fundamental hypocrisy of many proponents of grouping. They argue that they should be able to group for every single piece of content in the game, but get mad when people who prefer solo play want to be able to solo every piece of content in a game. Grouping is not a superior playstyle to soloing. Soloing is not a superior playstyle to grouping. They are simply different. If someone argues that some content should be exclusive to a particular playstyle, they should also support it when other content is exclusive to other playstyles. It's simply bad form to want a particular playstyle to receive preferential treatment just because it is the one you prefer.
As for TOR, how many players it lost really isn't relevant in the context of how much money it is making. It's still one of the most successful MMOs ever released, possibly the second most successful western MMO currently on the market. A game can afford to lose more players than other games when it starts out with more, TOR on it's worst day had more subscribers than many MMOs have had on their best day, retention rate is not the only important statistic.
And part of the reason it took so long for pre-WoW MMORPGs to peak is because there was less competition. Repeating content you have already experienced is less grating when there aren't a dozen other games out there with content you haven't seen yet.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Originally posted by Talemire Even if you are right, if enough players complain about it, it's gonna be addressed. I honestly wouldn't worry about it too much at this point until much closer to the release date. If the problem isn't fixed by release, then yeah, it'll suck for a lot of people, but I don't doubt something of that magnitude will go far under the radar. I say give it more time.
People have been complaining since early beta it's not going to change anytime soon. Phasing is an major part of the megaserver system.
by your so called logic anything outside dungeons are designed to be solo contents?
and by solo contents i do quest A in area X and my friend does B in area X why cant i see my friend? its not like he/she is helping with my solo content quest A.
and then if i do quest A and my friend decide to do quest A too. we can then see each other and quest A become multi player content???
its really simple. i want to lvl with friends. but i cannot see my friends. so as mentioned, i will play it as a single player game. except for rare occasions one or two of my friends maybe on the same quest.
i believe in most mmo we are able to lvl with friends. some games even have content scaling with number of participating players. i love es serie & i want eso to be successful so i hope there will be some improvements on this. but seriously your counter argument does not make any sense.
I don't know how much attention you paid to the narrative in ESO, but the PvE side of it is fundamentally single player. You are *the* chosen one who helped the Prophet escape Coldharbour. It frankly doesn't make any sense for you to be grouped with other players while doing most quest content. ESO is essentially two different games; a single player, narratively driven Elder Scrolls game in the PvE areas, and DAOC 2 with an Elder Scrolls theme in the PvP area.
There are dungeons for groups, but honestly they feel a little tacked on, they have nothing to do with the PvP side of the game and feel inconsistent with the rest of the PvE side where you are the One True Hero.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Don't try doing quests when you are at different stages, why do you think this would work? It doesn't make any sense.
You want impact on the world and at the same time, you wanna see it when another player starts the quest you just did.
There is no correct way....
Except it doesn't work..
My wife and I started at the same time, were on the same stages, made the same choices.. We were still having to constantly fight the phasing mechanism.
If you are grouped, with a friend AND a guildie, there is absolutely no reason you should ever be out of phase. The megaserver principal only works if you can actually get people who want to play together in the same phase.
Right now, it simply doesn't. Don't even get me started on instance dungeons.. Apparently, if I haven't run it before, I'll be out of phase with those who have because of the quests.. So I need to find first-timers every time I want to run a dungeon? Bleh.
Would have been much, much, MUCH simpler if they had used a similiar methodology for the PvE side of things as they had for the AvA - Select one, if your friends play on another, let people transfer. Keep the AvA just as is, so no matter what PvE servers you are on, you can join any AvA campagin.
I understand there is some phasing for the purposes of STORY, fine. But they need some sort of indicator to tell me when we are not SUPPOSED to be in phase, so we don't spend time logging in and out, grouping and ungrouping, travelling to player, etc., thinking we're bugged.
In my opinion, their phasing implementation is the only thing I do not like about ESO thus far. The principal is fine, but the execution has been flawed.
Comments
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Yes, it's rather humorous when you're looting a random house with five or so other strangers.
What are the alternative solutions? Go full open world, and watch people complain about bosses being camped and interference from others? People are even crying about it now" "NOOO my mobs", when they're not being robbed of anything.
I agree it is a little frustrating but only on a group level. I don't like it at all. I could give 2 shits if a player I'm not involved with is swinging at air. If it's someone in my group THAT'S a problem.
I really don't know what the solution is. We can't have our cake and eat it too. We want our own experience, but we want to affect the world of thousands of other players who want their own experience too. It's a tough call for a developer right now.
MMORPG players are going to have to make up their minds on what is important to them. Right now it's either or:
Your world or Our world.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think, given the massive scale failure of singleplayer centric MMOs that treat you like the chosen one, we've made up our mind.
There, fixed that for you. A good solution would be not to have to use phasing in the first place.
Phasing has brought a huge stable of problems to my gameplay. Questing isn't any more fun than it is in MMOs with or without phasing. It all still feels fake because I'm not actually impacting the game world. Why bother.
phasing is the SINGLE MOST important turn-off factor to me; if I can't share the same environment with other players, I might as well play a SPG. Not knowing what other players are seeing is not going to increase my immersion, despite that being the intention.
but anyway, this is a core design decision, they can't just change it now...
Don't forget to include it in the survey later today
/hatesesophasingsolozergguuuuuu
Ryoshi1 as Rikimaru
I am not keen on phasing, but I personally prefer it to the potential alternative, not for myself, just for the impact it may have on today's players (wall of complaints)
If such a NPC that you had to interact with was already engaged in a further part of a quest than where you were at, you would have to wait for that chain of events to finish. And a queue of players would be madly trying to click/interact when it became available again.
Or think on a larger scale, a city was invaded by an enemy, but the NPC you require now does not spawn. You would have to wait determined amount of time to be able to progress.
Would the majority of the new generation of MMORPGers feel they are being blocked from there rush through the game (and the old 'I don't pay a sub to wait around' would re-appear)
Sadly there are probably very few who would still wait several days, if not weeks on end waiting for a single rare boss to spawn (EQ) - But didn't it feel damn good when it finally did.
Core i5 13600KF, BeQuiet Pure Loop FX 360, 32gb DDR5-6000 XPG, WD SN850 NVMe ,PNY 3090 XLR8, Asus Prime Z790-A, Lian-Li O11 PCMR case (limited ed 1045/2000), 32" LG Ultragear 4k Monitor, Logitech G560 LightSync Sound, Razer Deathadder V2 and Razer Blackwidow V3 Keyboard
That's not what we want back, not me anyway. I never had to wait hours for a rare spawn, because the MMOs I played weren't so poorly designed. It's not such ablack and white choice. If you don't have phasing you have camping! Just no...
I like how someone earlier in this thread mentioned that it's not a problem for PvP. If anything it's the PvPers mostly affected by this, cause in PvE you can add your friends, group with them, it's something solvable, but in PvP this system forces you to fight against random strangers each time. And that's where PvP becomes just another treadmill grind, instead of being a close and personal game.
GW2 did the same thing with server groups changing every week and enemies with no name plates...
Devs should understand that PvP is about fighting against other players, not against mobs with a human AI.
You are going to have to define what you mean by "failure" in order for this statement to make any sense, because the conventional definition of "fails to turn a profit" certainly doesn't apply.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
This is ESO biggest problem atleast for me.
I started beta session with 4 of my friends. we expected a great adventure together as soon as Coldharbour was done. within 5 mins after Coldharbour we could not do quests together. each of us had to scatter and went separate ways. it was terrible.
this completely destroy any chance of group content outside dungeons & may be ava. i hope this get fixed soon (before release). i have purchased the game but if nothing change i will play it as a single player game (and then decide if ava has enough substance to warrant a sub).
So, essentially your complaint is that content that wasn't intended for groups is hard and/or impossible to do with groups? How is this any different than complaining that content that is intended for groups is hard and/or impossible to solo?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Riannes, i believe it's AvA that is getting the worst hit from this phasing technology. Cause you will be playing each time against different, random players.
do you even know what we are discussing about???
its nothing to do with difficulty. Phasing makes us unable to see friends so we cannot quest with them.
Tip: start with quests you both haven't done yet.
Problem solved.
Don't try doing quests when you are at different stages, why do you think this would work? It doesn't make any sense.
You want impact on the world and at the same time, you wanna see it when another player starts the quest you just did.
There is no correct way....
I understand exactly what you are saying. I am talking about the effect, not the cause. The effect of the phasing is that you actually have to solo much of the content that was intended to be soloed, rather than grouping for it. What I am asking is how complaining that a game is setup in a way that forces you to solo content that is designed to be soloed is any different than complaining about a game being setup in a way that forces you to group for content that is designed for groups.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Constantly declining subscription numbers after the first month of launch is generally a good indicator. Server merges, layoffs, the works.
Pre WoW MMOs didn't peak until about 2-3 years into development, same for Eve, and other games designed to retain people long term.
Games like SWTOR, that play like a singleplayer game with optional COOP, had the biggest loss of numbers in record time.
TO the apologists, are you honestly saying that it is a good sound bit of game design to force you to solo IN A MULTIPLAYER GAME? Not to mention that it isn't consistent at all, so pretending it was intended to be that way is a farce.
by your so called logic anything outside dungeons are designed to be solo contents?
and by solo contents i do quest A in area X and my friend does B in area X why cant i see my friend? its not like he/she is helping with my solo content quest A.
and then if i do quest A and my friend decide to do quest A too. we can then see each other and quest A become multi player content???
its really simple. i want to lvl with friends. but i cannot see my friends. so as mentioned, i will play it as a single player game. except for rare occasions one or two of my friends maybe on the same quest.
i believe in most mmo we are able to lvl with friends. some games even have content scaling with number of participating players. i love es serie & i want eso to be successful so i hope there will be some improvements on this. but seriously your counter argument does not make any sense.
Last point first; multiplayer doesn't mean you have to engage in cooperative play with others, it just means that there are others around. I am just pointing out the fundamental hypocrisy of many proponents of grouping. They argue that they should be able to group for every single piece of content in the game, but get mad when people who prefer solo play want to be able to solo every piece of content in a game. Grouping is not a superior playstyle to soloing. Soloing is not a superior playstyle to grouping. They are simply different. If someone argues that some content should be exclusive to a particular playstyle, they should also support it when other content is exclusive to other playstyles. It's simply bad form to want a particular playstyle to receive preferential treatment just because it is the one you prefer.
As for TOR, how many players it lost really isn't relevant in the context of how much money it is making. It's still one of the most successful MMOs ever released, possibly the second most successful western MMO currently on the market. A game can afford to lose more players than other games when it starts out with more, TOR on it's worst day had more subscribers than many MMOs have had on their best day, retention rate is not the only important statistic.
And part of the reason it took so long for pre-WoW MMORPGs to peak is because there was less competition. Repeating content you have already experienced is less grating when there aren't a dozen other games out there with content you haven't seen yet.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
People have been complaining since early beta it's not going to change anytime soon. Phasing is an major part of the megaserver system.
Lol, much closer than release date!
I don't know how much attention you paid to the narrative in ESO, but the PvE side of it is fundamentally single player. You are *the* chosen one who helped the Prophet escape Coldharbour. It frankly doesn't make any sense for you to be grouped with other players while doing most quest content. ESO is essentially two different games; a single player, narratively driven Elder Scrolls game in the PvE areas, and DAOC 2 with an Elder Scrolls theme in the PvP area.
There are dungeons for groups, but honestly they feel a little tacked on, they have nothing to do with the PvP side of the game and feel inconsistent with the rest of the PvE side where you are the One True Hero.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Except it doesn't work..
My wife and I started at the same time, were on the same stages, made the same choices.. We were still having to constantly fight the phasing mechanism.
If you are grouped, with a friend AND a guildie, there is absolutely no reason you should ever be out of phase. The megaserver principal only works if you can actually get people who want to play together in the same phase.
Right now, it simply doesn't. Don't even get me started on instance dungeons.. Apparently, if I haven't run it before, I'll be out of phase with those who have because of the quests.. So I need to find first-timers every time I want to run a dungeon? Bleh.
Would have been much, much, MUCH simpler if they had used a similiar methodology for the PvE side of things as they had for the AvA - Select one, if your friends play on another, let people transfer. Keep the AvA just as is, so no matter what PvE servers you are on, you can join any AvA campagin.
I understand there is some phasing for the purposes of STORY, fine. But they need some sort of indicator to tell me when we are not SUPPOSED to be in phase, so we don't spend time logging in and out, grouping and ungrouping, travelling to player, etc., thinking we're bugged.
In my opinion, their phasing implementation is the only thing I do not like about ESO thus far. The principal is fine, but the execution has been flawed.