...would you mind sharing some of your experience(s)? Without meaning to do so, I've talked a friend into buying and playing the game, but I'm concerned about things like phasing, cross-alliance communication, and party management features.

Could somebody shed some light on the strengths and weaknesses of the party system in ESO?

it seems to work fine, up to a point atleast

with 2 people you will be able to do most content, 4 man dungeons you will need more

you will get to a point though where the guildquests and classquests have to be done solo, which i find to be very much against this being a mmorpg

so lets say one of you for some reason cant finish those boss encounters, then you suddenly find yourself on different steps of the the quests

the easy fix is to come back later i just find it to be poor design in a multiplayer game

you will be able to teleport to eachother if you are in different phases, or at least to closest wayshrine

that being said i love the game and also love grouping in it

Regarding the phasing: they've tweaked it with each beta, although last beta I still sometimes had to "travel to player" when first grouping my friend to get to their phase. You also have to try to stay on the same step as your group mates while questing or you may temporaryily find yourselves in separate phases. If you do just try to get to the same point in the quest and it should correct itself.

There are also a tiny few quests that seem to force you to do solo, like a certain early Mage's Guild quest, but I can't be sure if that was a bug or not.

Aside from that group questing with my roommate was a blast, although it feels like overkill until around level 10 when the enemies finally start to grow brains.

Well from my experience with the game, I may be wrong on some things I may be wrong on a lot of things. Some players will not appear to you because they're within their own seperate instance it does seem as though the game has seperate layers, They may be a different level than you or on a different part of the questline to you I don't think it matters, Cross alliance communication may be endgame only but it may also apply to PVP enviroments I'm not sure I didn't play any PVP as for party management features there are plenty to utilize it's just as robust as any party management feature in anygame, The Strength would obviously be that if they have passives that give bonuses to parties that's a strength as well as the rings of mara if they have them or the fact you can't take on heroic mobs or party dunegons alone, It's also worth noting that PVP is guild or party orientated.

Thank you for the responses. The phasing issue seems odd, I have not had a problem with phasing and quests in other games.

How about being able to find/keep track of party members on the map? How are the party UI features?

That's in the game already even if they're not in the same instance at you they'll have an icon on top of their head displaying where they're at all times even a huge distance away.

Other party members have a tracking arrow above their head, which can be seen from long distances and through solid objects. Though sometimes it can be hard to spot.

The phasing mainly happens when a part of the map changes for a dynamic quest. Such as a town being attacked as part of a quest. It can't be being attacked and not attacked at the same time so phases keep it split up.

If you and a friend have 2 characters exclusively used for leveling with each other, then you'll have a great time. If one gets even a little bit ahead of the other though, phasing totally ruins the grouping experience. Big fail IMO, but I'm usually flying solo myself so it's not a terrible big deal for me personally.

I suppose as long as the main or phased questlines can be completed solo, it's not a major issue, but yeah, I think he expects us to be grouped more than is really necessary for either of us to progress. At level 50 or during PvP it probably isn't a problem either.

I love this game but they have dropped the phasing ball. They handle people being at different story positions such as may make a location an NPC-free ruin for one and thriving for another by phasing the players. What would work better would be phasing the location like in LOTRO. You stay together but see different things. Both are compromises but IMO the current way of making group mates vanish is the most annoying one.

Also - when in a group quest objective achievements should be shared. You should not each have to do the objective to get the completion. That's just silly.

Anything that puts off people who habitually like to play as a duo or whatever should be discouraged. I know people who are sticking with their current game precisely over this one issue. That's a lot of lost money over time.

For all three betas I played with friends and for all three betas grouping was bugged and frustrating beyond belief.

Some examples. Me and my friend start a quest where we have to sneak behind this NPC, tailing him. My friend is like RIGHT up next to the guy and I am telling him to drop back, he's gonna spook him! But then my friend tells me that he doesn't know what I'm talking about and the NPC is way further ahead. Because we both have our own, phased NPCs that the other can't see, because the designers forgot what grouping is, apparently.

This is one of many instances where phasing overrides grouping where it should be the other way around.

Another is if you and a friend or multiple group members are travelling across a phase-line then your friend might disappear from view for a moment or for a long time.

Also quest objectives are completely schizophrenic. The game can't make up its mind whether it wants to encourage or discourage grouping. Some quest objectives take groups into account. Collecting item X for quest A might count for all group-members whereas collecting item Y for quest B might be individualized and each member needs to collect their own.

Then of course there are quest objectives that make NO sense to be phased. Me and my group-member are in a dungeon together and we both have to hit a switch to progress the quest. The quest objective is not "both of you have to each hit the switch" it's just "hit the switch" but if I do it and my friend does not then he can't progress whereas I can. I literally WATCH him pull the lever and the action does not count for me. This caused a lot of counter-intuitive frustration and even caused us to get completely stuck, having to drop the quest, suicide and start it over.

Lastly, the final straw when we finally all said "screw it" and started questing alone was our first solo-only dungeon. We went into a dungeon for a fighter's guild quest and were surprised that the other members of our group weren't there. We went back out and back in hoping the bug would fix itself and then we asked and were told it was a solo-only quest. A what? A solo-ONLY quest? In an MMO? Madness...I'm all cool with most things being solo-able but locking out my friends from being able to quest with me is never under any circumstances a good idea. It was just so frustrating that we simply gave up trying to quest together and only came together when others needed help with a group quest or boss.

So, to answer you're question, it is broken and awful and needs to be fixed before launch. So far "TES with friends" this is not. More like "TES in spite of friends."

It was pretty bugged. I had to add people to my friends list to invite them the previous few betas, but now it's better. Some quest functionality is impaired though.

My experience was, making a group was a little difficult.

To use the "smart function" (F) which opens up an interactive menu, you can invite to a group etc. But this becomes difficult when someone is moving.

You can quite easily use the "contacts" menu and invte someone thats on your friends list to join a group.

Phasing happens often....and is a little annoying as you cannot interact with that player in any way. But in saying that, it may have been a little bit bugged, because if you used the "travel to player" function, it sometimes resolved itself and allowed you to see & interact with them.

There are also quests where elements are not shared with group members. For example...rescue 4 NPCs, you must all individually rescue 4, which seems a little wrong. There are quests that ask you to collect a certain amount of items, which makes sense to separate the quests to individual collections, as these are items to be put into your inventory.

Grouping for dungeons isn't such a big issue with phasing, because once you enter, you will all be grouped properly.

Although, with Dungeons, it can be difficult to use the group finder to find a set-up that works. You will often find that 4 dps are put together, and this will rarely work for bosses....and yet, there are no settings to determine the requirements you want for a group set-up. And you may also have people labeling their own abilities incorrectly......they may have a little element of healing, and claim to be a healer/dps, yet cannot heal a group at bosses. Its a complicated scenario, and I don;t know if there is a complete solution for it.

Its not terribly bad, but it definitely needs some work ....but then, the beta is likely an older build and these little bugs may have already been remedied.