How Phasing works - this impacts PvE groups

Phasing has a significant impact on the grouping aspect of PVE gameplay so everyone needs to know how it works.

Zenimax's challenge when creating ESO was figuring how to combine the single player aspect of the TES series with the traditional aspect of MMOs (ex. group dungeons, PVP, raiding). End result is that pretty much all of the PVE content that you do to level up is designed for a solo player to complete. Just like the TES single player games, you are the hero of the ESO story and all of the quests are written to advance your individual story. There are exceptions in each zones (skull bosses, dark anchors, group public dungeons) but for the most part everything else in a zone is designed for a solo player.

A significant amount of this solo PVE content is phased. By phased I mean after you complete the quest, you are put into a different phase of the zone. For example, lets say you go to the village of OTGville and get a quest to determine why the residents of OTGville have been acting so strange lately. If you open up the map and hover your mouse over the map icon for the village of OTGville, you will see a message "Determine why the residents of OTGville have been acting so strange lately". During the course of the quest, you discover the leaders of OTGville are vampires and have the entire village of OTGville enthralled. While you are doing this quest, you end up fighting vampires and their minions. After you destroy all the vampires and save the residents of OTGville, you are put into a new phase. In this new phase, the vampires and their minions are no longer present. Whereas before everywhere you went you were fighting vampires and their minions, now there are no mobs present that attack you. When you go to the map and hover your mouse over the OTGville map icon, the message now reads "You saved the residents of OTGville from the vampires".

What is the impact of this on PVE gameplay? For the solo player, it helps increase the immersion factor because you get the feeling that your action are having an impact on the gameworld. Almost everyone I have played with in the closed beta liked this aspect of phasing. Phasing however can create some significant problems when it comes to grouping. Lets say I have already completed the quest and have saved the citizens of OTGville. Another guildmate starts the quest but is having problem defeating the final boss vampire so they ask for help in guildchat. Because I have already completed the quest and am in a different phase, I can not come to help them because they are in an earlier phase of the quest. If we join group and I come to their location, we will be invisible to each other with the only thing displayed is the group member icon over our heads. The ONLY people who will be able to help the person complete the quest are players who have not completed the quest themselves.

Another impact of phasing I have seen is in the group dungeons. For example, in Crow's Wood at the end you are presented with a choice of who you will side with, NPC A or NPC B. If you are in a group, the selection each player makes determines what phase you will enter. If I side with NPC A I have to defeat NPC B while if my groupmates side with NPC B they will have to defeat NPC A. When these choices present themselves, you need to make sure everyone is on the same sheet of music because if you side with NPC A and everyone else sides with NPC B, you will find yourself fighting the boss all by yourself and possibly unable to defeat them.

I saw in zone chat how to change phases. Open the "o" menu, right click the name of the character you want to join in phase and then "Travel to Player" ... Which would place you at a wayshrine closest to the player in question.

I remember all the issues phasing brought with WoW... even after questing it caused issues with mining and resource grabbing as well.

I hope this doesn't sound douchey, but I just hope this means I can blast through leveling and grinding content to get to end game and PvP. Don't get me wrong. I love lore. i love actualyl reading the books and questing in NORMAL ES games. But, I REALLY want to get to PvP and other large group adventures sooner rather than later.

Yes, some phasing does not allow you to help your group mate.  In some cases though you can manage to help even if your setup looks different.  Sometimes you can get back through something even if it doesn't look the same.  This ability to manage to follow the group member into what you already done tends to happen more with boss mobs at the end of a quest chain, but definitely not all of them.  It definitely makes things interesting.

Definitely make sure a group goes all the same way just so your play will be together on everything.

@CaptainYamerica - phasing won't impact your blasting through.  It will only impact your blasting through if you are trying to do it with someone else in order to be sure you play together.  Othere than that - just go with the flow and play the way you want.  It will let you.  I've done both grouping and solo and for the most part managed to get through stuff all right.

Even without phasing there are definitely areas that need a group versus going solo.  Anchors and some special boss mobs which are marked on the map (I did manage to solo some, but expect to die LOL).  There are some "open to all" in same instance dungeons that you must be overly brave and thrifty to even try soloing.  Then there are some quest lines you MUST solo no matter what.  No help allowed.  

Makes organizing play rather interesting, but definitely doable.

I found the phasing frustrating when grouped and doing quests that someone else had already done. Both of us found it frustrating. I'm hoping the "travel to player" option really works Pullo. It will make playing with friends in a party a lot easier, without us having to create characters that we only play when we're all on at the same time so that we can quest together and be sure that we're all at the same stage.

Just an FYI, travel to player does not put you in their phase. It just puts you at the wayshrine nearest to them... but you'll still be in your own phase.

Bleh, I experienced this in Beta and was hoping it was something that would change before launch. While I do appreciate the uniqueness that it gives an area that you've already been too, I'm not sure about the sacrifice it took to get there.

That's one thing that I did see a lot of complaints about. Reviewers who tried to meet up with each other and quest together had a lot of trouble doing so. One wrote that while grouped, the friend would disappear if they entered a phased area and he could still see the friend's health bar as it went down and the friend died. He knew he was dying right in front of him but he couldn't see or help him.

That's one thing I'm not looking forward to, though seeing as I normally level solo it may not be that much of an issue for me. For people that group while leveling (familes or friends wanting to run together) this could be an issue.

It's especially odd considering the Rings of Mara exist to benefit a pair of players working together. It sounds like they'll need to agree not to play their main character solo so that they can be sure to never get divided in their progression together.

I noticed this playing with a friend  on the last beta weekend. Took us a while to figure out how to phase to each other. But, I thought at the time it was overflow kinda like how AoC did it among other games). Didn't realize this was the reason until reading this post.

I shall be keeping a Star Journal - wait - wrong game... doh!  I shall be keeping  a journal with my choices as I go... If I don't find someone with my same RP style (which is how I make my choices) then it will be tough - as well as if they don't remember what choices they have made.   But similar to a few other games -your decisions impact your character and the world you see.  Which I think - at least for me - is a big draw for this game.  As there are drawbacks to phasing there are really good things making decisions do for me as the game progresses and I feel that "I mattered" to the world.

I am going to throw this out there also - that if you "burn" through content to get to end game (whatever that might be) you will miss a lot of great stories that are really well written.  I understand that there are people that don't care about the story content - but I love a great story that immerses me in the world and this game has some really good ones - maybe bordering on great.  That is all I can say.