What Dark Anchors should have been

Blackwidow · May 2014

First problem with Dark Anchors: They are not random. They are always in the same place. They would be much more fun if they were a random event.

Second problem with Dark Anchors: Altars are prepped for these dark anchors. Why? Or more importantly, why does the world not destroy the altars? This makes no sense. Everyone knows where these events will take place. Why are there not armed guards ready for the attack, or miners destroying the altars all together?

Third problem with Dark Anchors: It's the same event every friggin time. Sure, there is a slight difference in monsters, if you are lucky, but it's just wack-o-mole with demons.

Fourth problem with Dark Anchors: These should be rare events that have meaning. We just saved the world, right? Does it feel like it? I mean these DAs were about to pull our planet into Oblivion. "Dark anchor is up, again...hum drum"

Fifth problem with Dark Anchors: No challenge. People should be afraid of these events. When they do happen, which should be super rare, they would have a greater impact if it took over a 100 people to stop it. There should be anti magic fields, summoning portals to close, giant Demons, many clerics helping their side. Many monsters should be attempting to take over the land. This should be an EPIC battle, not a tiny event.

Sixth problem with Dark Anchors: They should not be in far off places. They should be major attacks in towns and cities. Once or twice a week, there should be a demon army trying to destroy the the places we all live and thrive.

Seventh problem with Dark Anchors: They should not be treated like a grocery list to be checked off and done in the accomplishments section. People should want to do them because they are challenging and fun and RARE. Right now we see the dark anchors is up, check and go, "already did it" and move right along.

Eighth problem with Dark Anchors: There is no sense of real danger that anything bad can really happen to us. We need dark anchors to be really DANGEROUS for these things to be in the world. When anyone hears that noise, players should think, "Oh crap, a dark anchor is up! We better take that down ASAP or we are screwed!"

Maybe while a dark anchor is up, we are all cursed to be 20% weaker. So, there is an urgency to stop it. Or maybe demons start spawning all over the zone. So, it is not safe to be anywhere until the DA is gone!

Anyway, just my thoughts on the subject.

Have a nice day.

reignfyre · May 2014

Pretty much sums up the game for me. Zenimax was not interested in creating an imaginative game. Anchors are just one thing on their checklist of "what makes an MMO" a la Rift and it was implemented in the least creative way possible.

You mentioned lack of challenge, fun, rarity, danger-- these qualities are absent in the rest of the game as well.

jy82988ub17_ESO · May 2014

Preach!

Carnage2K4 · May 2014

Agree 100%...
Repetitive and boring as hell, they should be random, and the longer players let them gestate the bigger problem they become, Daedra should start accumulating and interfering in areas of the world. These should be epic, not the crap they are now.
Anchors could be really fun and daunting... but as with so many things in this game they are just another chore you can decide to participate in or just run past... I mean they could be a reason for high level players to return to lower level areas... but you get almost no XP for doing them, as far as I can tell bugger all loot... what is even the point of having them in game? I'm left wondering why I should care about doing them... currently I don't, they are a waste of time IMO.

Belrim · May 2014

As soon as everyone gets the achievements concerning the anchors, no-one will be doing them

Rift came up with the idea of zone events etc. that keeps people closing the rifts (plus the fact that you actually get decent xp from closing them in that game), remains to be seen what Zeni does..

pborerb16_ESO · May 2014

I agree that the anchors are not meaningful enough. I never bother with them - and regret that I can't find them more interesting. I like the game a lot, but the anchors just aren't the frightening threat they're supposed to be lore-wise. Imagine anchors as a very rare event that deeply affects the game world... e.g. if an anchor goes down near Daggerfall, life in the city stops, the citizens run around screaming, the market is deserted, the bank closed and so on, and a real effort of many players needed to get things back to normal. THAT would be an interesting approach.

Carnage2K4 · May 2014

The only scary thing about them is that horn as the chains come down, and you get a little excited... Then you remember you have done them 20 times previous and they are not interesting... Then that little bit of excitement is crushed out of existence by the thought of how good they could have been.

CheesyDaedra · May 2014

I think a good way to make anchors meaningful is to spawn several daedra in a wide area (which it already does, but it's really just some random mob pack), what i propose is that all mob spawns should be then replaced by them.

Belrim · May 2014

Carnage2K4 wrote: »

The only scary thing about them is that horn as the chains come down, and you get a little excited... Then you remember you have done them 20 times previous and they are not interesting... Then that little bit of excitement is crushed out of existence by the thought of how good they could have been.

Exactly. They sound and look nice, but thats it. Some early demonstration videos sure were promising, with cinematic camera angles and other dramatizations.. but its like movie trailers: Quick show of highlights that leave you wanting more, but unfortunately, the fihished product makes you realize, that you already saw and had it all with the short trailer.

Darrett · May 2014

I largely agree. I don't mind them being in the same locations, but I would like to see some scaling based on the number of players and escalation if they don't get taken care of, like an increase in the number of Dark Fissures that spawn in the area around the anchor.

Siliconhobbit_ESO · May 2014

Scaling definitely needs to happen. The other thing that needs to happen is once the cultists SUMMON the anchor, if no one shows up to start fighting Daedra, more and more spawn and start to spread out from the Anchor.

5 minutes go by, the lands within 100 yards are teeming with Daedra. Now you have to fight your way to the CENTER.

10 minutes go by, 500 yards around the Anchor is filled with Daedra. Now by this time, the areas closest to the anchor have the more powerful Daedra spawned and all of their minions are running rampant.

20 minutes go by and regular questing is getting impossible because so many Daedra have spawned they are threatening to occupy the entire zone. Questing is impossible as the Daedra have killed off the normal NPCs and are roaming through towns now.

Within 30 minutes its become a pandemic. Daedra are filling the zone at enormous rates and the most powerful are directing it from the Anchor. Massive amounts of players are required to stop the spread of the demons and calls should be going out across the ZONES for assistance.

As it is now...Dark Anchors are just a brief distraction...a pit-stop if you will, along the path to maximum level. They have no threat what-so-ever to the average player, let alone anyone else. They have no threat to the zone, and if you just flat out avoid them, no one is in danger of ANYTHING.

While I appreciate the IDEA of Dark Anchors, SO MUCH MORE can be done with them...

Syntse · May 2014

Agree on most of the points OP has made. I find anchors fun however not rewarding. It can be "dangerous" if you try to take one down only with couple of friends and the anchor is on your lvl. This rarely happens though.

Of course part of the fun there comes when you see people rushing to close the anchor. You start with 3 people trying and finish with 10 people obliterating everything that it throws down.

Added impact to the world would be really nice add. Like already suggested ones maybe wider area of daedric mobs appearing to bully other players on their travels, outdoor markets closed in nearby city when anchor is up would really encourage people to take that one down.

I'm quite sure random events will be added to the game, not necessary related to Dark Anchors. Something example bunch of trolls or ogres raid near by village.

Audigy · May 2014

Uff,

what you say would work in a Single Player Game, not however in an MMO. You cant let anchors spawn in towns.

First of all would this create a huge server strain and lag festival among players, there are tons of people who cant get more than 40 fps in towns already. With an anchor they will sit at 10 fps...
Besides that people would be really annoyed if they cant quest, visit the bank or do their crafting routine just because the town is under siege.

Every MMO that I know learned that lesson and so did ZO. You cant hinder players on doing their thing, just to please a few who will stop defending the town as soon they did it a few times.

At wow people killed quest NPC´s, large NPC´s raided Stormwind etc. it happened every day multiple times in major cities and outside of them. Thing however was, that the complaints were so big that Blizzard decided to kick this feature out of the release version.

Sure it was a hell of fun to see Infernals rain down from the sky, attacking SW while a brigade of Orcs tried to raid the bank - but this is something that the majority of the gamers don't want in MMO´s sadly. The moment that they cant access that bank, the moment their low level char is spawn camped by an NPC is the moment they quit.

concobar · May 2014

Dark anchors are really just poorly implemented Rifts.

Phantax · May 2014

Agree %100

Zeni should have looked at the rifts in Rift and improved on them. Instead they made them worse.
These should have been dynamic, random, escalating events that were challenging.
The anchors were/are probably the biggest disapointment in ESO for me. (And a lot of others too it would seem)

fiachsidhe · May 2014

Yeah Dark Anchors are embarrassing to be frank. If you're going to rip off something so blatantly, DO IT BETTER. Don't make a *** poor, half-assed copy.

Everything about them is laughably inept. From the set in literal stone spawning points, to the fact that an invasion never actually takes place, and if not interrupted they simply disappear!!
Are you kidding Firor? This is how a daedric prince acts? Opens portals, no one shows up, and then he just decides to quit? So it benefits Tamriel to IGNORE the anchors, as they and their monsters simply go away!

What kind of videogame logic is that? you don't even try to have it make sense, you didn't even try to make it exciting, or believable. These things should be colossal, world tearing events, not cheap little minigames to fill out a white mark on the map, and maybe scrounge up a paltry sum of FG rep.

I'm sorry, it just pisses me off so much. How much better these could have been if your team had better priorities.

How about instead of hiring a bunch of random borderline A/B celebs for voices we barely hear, you make the major selling points of the game GREAT. So much of this game is filled with great ideas, filtered through uninspired lead developers, or rushed by exploitative publishers.

Silowyi · May 2014

Someone beat me to it. Anchors should be persistent events until they get shut down and should pour evilness into the land and force people to have to deal with them. Let them affect questing. Make them rare, special, and offer decent rewards. Leave one unchecked for an hour and you better find some friends.. oh wait, wouldn't want to build camaraderie...

michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO · May 2014

Once is enough for these. And everything else basically.

✓ Knock it off my check list, then moving right along.

They are too easy. They are not randomly located. They always have the same monsters. The monsters never vary in strength. They are as predictable as a sunrise. They are incredibly dull.

Vordar · May 2014

Dark Anchors should be something like the Events in Rift, they affect the whole zone, and if they are not stopped the zone can get overruned to the point that you can't even quest, so several groups of adventurers need to step up and clean the zone.

That is my idea of what anchors should be.

niocwy · May 2014

I agree with most of what you say.

Dark anchors doesn't offer even a slight bit of challenge and are plain BORING.

Lazrael · May 2014

Audigy wrote: »

Uff,

what you say would work in a Single Player Game, not however in an MMO. You cant let anchors spawn in towns.

First of all would this create a huge server strain and lag festival among players, there are tons of people who cant get more than 40 fps in towns already. With an anchor they will sit at 10 fps...
Besides that people would be really annoyed if they cant quest, visit the bank or do their crafting routine just because the town is under siege.

Every MMO that I know learned that lesson and so did ZO. You cant hinder players on doing their thing, just to please a few who will stop defending the town as soon they did it a few times.

At wow people killed quest NPC´s, large NPC´s raided Stormwind etc. it happened every day multiple times in major cities and outside of them. Thing however was, that the complaints were so big that Blizzard decided to kick this feature out of the release version.

Sure it was a hell of fun to see Infernals rain down from the sky, attacking SW while a brigade of Orcs tried to raid the bank - but this is something that the majority of the gamers don't want in MMO´s sadly. The moment that they cant access that bank, the moment their low level char is spawn camped by an NPC is the moment they quit.

Valid point for sure. I think they need to spend a lot of time moving forward looking at a way to balance both sides. Because, yes players need to be able to do what they need to do in their routine, but anchors also need to be better implemented, as an interesting and exciting aspect of the game. They should be something that the player feels inherently motivated to do, not for an achievement, but for a sense of accomplishment, and excitement. They need to feel like they are thematically a part of the world then Zeni has set out to build, and that the threat that is so heavily referenced from the moment you start the game is actually somewhat tangible. Not to mention make the game feel more like what the advertising has hyped the public up for. Obviously no game plays exactly like the trailer, but the overall idea that was trying to be conveyed should still be present.
Of course you can't please everyone, and there will be limitations, but I think that on the wide and large part players will accept a degree of limitations as long as the experience feels rewarding (in more than just a swoosh sound and an achievement notification), and engaging.

On a personal note I barely pay any attention to the anchors at present, as most of the time, participation in the combat is a boring chore of trying to get a hit in on any given enemy, every event is the same as the last, and in game rewards for participating in them are paltry, at best. So if I happen to stumble on one and be in the mood I might spend a little time on it, but general opt not to waste the time in lieu of general questing. But that's just my experience.

Blackwidow · May 2014

Audigy wrote: »

Uff,

what you say would work in a Single Player Game, not however in an MMO. You cant let anchors spawn in towns.

I respectfully disagree.

First of all would this create a huge server strain and lag festival among players, there are tons of people who cant get more than 40 fps in towns already. With an anchor they will sit at 10 fps...

ZOS claims 200 people can be on the battlefield in Cyrodiil. So, why would this not work?

Besides that people would be really annoyed if they cant quest, visit the bank or do their crafting routine just because the town is under siege.

First, you can't please everyone, all the time.

Second, You can still craft and sell. If one town is under attack, go to a different town if you don't want to be involved.

Third, we are talking about once or twice a week.

Every MMO that I know learned that lesson and so did ZO.

Quite frankly, I don't think ZOS has learned much about MMOs. They have made so many design errors, I wonder if any of them have played a MMO before.

At wow people killed quest NPC´s, large NPC´s raided Stormwind etc.

That would not need to happen for this type of system to work. Besides, so far all the important NPCs are immortal in ESO, or had you not noticed?

Blackwidow · May 2014

concobar wrote: »

Dark anchors are really just poorly implemented Rifts.

I left Rift because of the bad rift system.

concobar · May 2014

I left rift because of the imbalanced character souls. Regardless it is hard to argue that Anchors are an improvement over Rifts.

Dogga · August 2014