Dungeon Finder Etiquette

10 Rules for Using the Dungeon Finder in Elder Scrolls Online

So you decided to use the Dungeon Finder? Well, you know you might never meet those strangers that have grouped up with you again and this can be liberating – but there’s always a certain percentage of the human race who find it too liberating. So here’s some tips to get us all on the same page. A lot of this should probably be explained in more detail, and of course it’s all just my opinion, but 10 quick rules to start us off:

1. Be nice to your random team. Anyone can get frustrated, but bad manners or solo mentality only makes it worse for everyone. I have both seen and been guilty myself of ignorance, frustration, lack of communication, rushing things and disappearing from group for real life reasons, but I have never seen an intentional troll in a random group in ESO. (I may be lucky, I don’t know. If all else fails, see rules 7 and 8 below.)
2. Your random team mates will have random skill levels. Elitism has no place in dungeon finder random groups. We should think of clicking that queue button as signing a contract with the community: “I’m looking for a random group and, for at least fifteen minutes, I will try my best with the people I get, no matter their skill level.” Because for 15 minutes, you won’t be able to queue for another dungeon. If you can’t sign that contract, I suggest finding groups in your guilds instead, it might save everybody an unpleasant experience, yourself most of all.
3. Try to communicate. I say ‘try’ because sometimes communication is just impossible – might be because you don’t share any languages or people on the other end just seem to have the chat turned off. But you have to try. If you’re having difficulties, ask questions. If you get experienced teammates, try to learn from them. If you get inexperienced teammates, try to teach some basics, all the while following rule #1. If you want Hard Mode, or if you want to just rush through quickly, say so. Tanks who communicate are a great boon; tanks who rush the dungeon to keep ahead of their teammates may do silly things like forgetting to activate the Scroll of Glorious battle. (Yes, I’ve been there… repeatedly…) And if one player has said s/he’s doing the dungeon’s quest, for HEAVEN’S sakes don’t ALL leave the group immediately after the last boss. Let the player finish the quest first to get the skill point. It will only take you two minutes to wait; but it may well take the other guy half an hour to do the whole dungeon all over again.
4. If you’re using an ice staff, stay away from Destructive Clench skill unless you’re the tank, because the ice staff turns this damaging attack into a taunt – which will make you aggro the enemy causing you problems AND annoy the tank no end.
5. Resurrecting the fallen is part of the DPS’s job, not the healer’s. If you’re the DPS and you think differently, rules #3 and #1 ALWAYS APPLY.
6. Xynode’s guides are awesome. Feel free to both use them and direct others there. Knowing the mechanics of a dungeon makes such a difference compared to just blundering around.
7. Sometimes you may not be able to complete content with the team you got. That’s part of the deal with dungeon finder and there’s no shame in leaving a group if you realize either you or the rest of the team just aren’t up to it. Just remember, if you leave before 15 minutes, you will have to wait a while before queueing again. So long as you follow rules #1 and 3, voting to kick is rarely necessary IMO. But rarely is not the same as ‘never’; in particular, should you come across those rare people who can’t even follow rule #1.
8. Sometimes you can’t please everyone. This is particularly true of people who don’t follow rule #2. Some times you can’t even please three people and the group may decide to kick you. If so, cheer up! You just avoided the waiting penalty for leaving the dungeon. Yes, if you’re a DPS, you might have to wait in line for a while again. This is a good time to try and figure out whether you could have done something differently. In particular, did you follow rules #1 and 3? For that matter, did they? If not, shame on them – but you might never see them again, so who cares. And if you’re the one who didn’t, well, fix it next time.
9. If you’re going to vent and complain about your random team in your guild chat after the event, because they were just random people and they’re gone now… at least double check that one of your groupmates didn’t happen to be a guild member that you haven’t met yet. Nobody likes guild drama.
10. Zenimax should allow us to disable DLC we don’t want. Yeah, I know that’s not really a rule, but it’s insane of Zenimax to give us this idiotic reason not to buy the DLC on the first place! Furthermore, allowing this would probably fix 90% of “fake tank / fake healer” issues, because that’s usually caused by people queuing their DD for a random dungeon as tank to avoid the 15 minute queue that DDs suffer – and in non-DLC they can usually pull that tanking off and deliver extra group DPS to boot; but DLC dungeons are just much harder to tank. They should also fix the “someone declined” bug and the endless load screens… Yeah… I know… very likely… but… Yeah.