ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

…all mobs have a credit list limit of 12 players. If you're in a heavily populated area, it's entirely possible that credit list cap is being hit and you aren't getting credit, and conversely the related quest item drop, as often as you would in a lower-populated area.

Have you guys thought about what, I hope, is an unintended outcome of this policy? That is, the 12 player cap acts as a chilling effect on popular events and activities. It’s like players get punished for participating. And I thought the whole point was lotsa participation? Besides, running in a Zerg killing bosses is grand, exhilarating fun. Talk about being a bunch of killjoys. Please rethink this.

I'd like to see everyone that participated get something like a collectible banner that could be displayed in all their houses.

[Edited because after reading other replies I agree that top players should not be rewarded more than others.]

k_8 wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

…all mobs have a credit list limit of 12 players. If you're in a heavily populated area, it's entirely possible that credit list cap is being hit and you aren't getting credit, and conversely the related quest item drop, as often as you would in a lower-populated area.

Have you guys thought about what, I hope, is an unintended outcome of this policy? That is, the 12 player cap acts as a chilling effect on popular events and activities. It’s like players get punished for participating. And I thought the whole point was lotsa participation? Besides, running in a Zerg killing bosses is grand, exhilarating fun. Talk about being a bunch of killjoys. Please rethink this.

I agree. It seems counter-intuitive for a massively multiplayer online game to actively discourage having more than 12 people in the same area at the same time. IMO in PvE meeting another player doing the same thing you are should always be a positive, but in ESO it's so often not. They're not a potential ally but competition and if I want to actually get anything done I need to avoid them, which is absolutely the opposite of how I'd like it to be.

I realise it would probably need several things to be redesigned to enable bosses to scale up to the number of players fighting them, but that would be a vast improvement because right now if a 13th player shows up to fight them they don't count who is already waiting and leave, they join in (as they should be free to do) and it guarantees someone will miss out.

I mainly play the game for PvP.
To be honest, I dont care at all about rewards and points and ranks, its simply the fun of battle that motivates me.

Khajiit has enjoyed the encounters, and the tough bosses in base game delves have been a real treat and should stay around.

But the loots? The rewards? Khajiit is embarrassed, terribly, terribly embarrassed, about these - 1 piece of overland gear for killing dozens of Molag-Bal's top lieutenants and foiling Manny's plans is insulting frankly insulting. Is like kindergarten art at Louvre museum.

Khajiit feels very strongly about this. If this is supposed to be such an important event, such a world-changing, once-in-a-lifetime experience, then why are we not being blown away by the loots? Remember the nested Matroyshka doll-loot rewards we had for Blackwood event that had gold companion ring in it? That was just for a run-of-the-mill chapter release, and those loots were extravagantly more sleek than anything we get now.

Is just lazy on their part. Seriously lazy. They could have made things really fun and exciting to collect - put real effort into the "once-in-a-lifetime" event, instead of just another event-of-the-month minimal effort that is evidenced.

Instead of one pet's pieces in loot, have multiple pets and/or mounts that are all just reskins of existing pets, where each has some number of pieces to retrieve to complete them.

Instead of just a few new furnishing plans, how about many plans of all racial and regional styles that are just reskins of existing plans with some Stirk-related or Wormy-related art/badge included in the texture?

Instead of fewer resources than are required to actually perform the quest, how about substantially more resources - 100 of each! - along with style and rare trait mats?

Why not have every existing loot table in the game opened up for possible rewards in the boxes? Wouldn't it be an exciting treat to not know what one is going to get, but to actually be excited for it? Instead of now, where the loots "are like a box of ..... cheap, nasty, fruit-centered, year-old chocolates - you never know what your gonna get, and you don't care either".

Why so stingy? Why not 1 of each of mats, collectibles, plans, some gear, etc. in every box? -talks over all the pearl-clutching-

This is supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime event, never to be duplicated (by definition). So why was this not truly blown out?

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?

Yes! I've spent HOURS farming these. I didn't really understand how these were dropping due to confusing event instructions... I have maybe 1 item per hour of killing to show for it. Do I want one from every lootable boss (~every 4 min)? No that's a bit ridiculous and would tank their value, but at the same time... who cares? It's not like these will be coming back and the joy of being here for this "once in a lifetime" event means I should be able to stock up if I 1) do the work or 2) have the gold to spend on buying up any and every one that I see. I love the witch event because I get to stock up on weird mushrooms and, if I'm lucky, RUBY FREAKIN TORCHBUGS. This event has very little of that level of excitement for me. If I farmed for an hour though, I'd like 5 greens, 3 blues, and 2 purples. There isn't even a new gold furnishing. YES there is the achievement soul trap thing, but I have to BUY IT. I'm sure it's too late to pop something cool in there, but 6 new furnishings that I'm spending FAR TOO MUCH TIME TO GET does *not* feel like a 10-year anniversary celebration to me. Goodness, even jubilee got new banners and bells.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?

Definitely a combination of the two. Many other commenters have had good things to say, and I particularly like what @Virenic said about treasure maps. Solstice has particularly low antiquity RNG from maps and myself and many of my friends do not have *most* of the furnishings in triplicate yet- despite having opened MANY (expensive) maps. We should have gotten maps. And while selfishly, I like the prices of Solstice blueprints to remain high as I make money farming urns in BLT... there is a new zone coming and the mid-year event almost always makes it so I am flooded with new blueprints that I can now happily learn myself. Not this year. I'm not sure if I'm happy that I will maybe still make ok money on urn farmed purples... or if I'm sad that I don't actually feel I can learn any of them myself. I also think that the haj mota pet should, rarely, drop as a full runebox item, UNBOUND, much like the New Life pets do. SURE it means their value is reduced, on the whole, but isn't this event supposed to be a celebration? It feels utterly stingy. Do you even like us? It doesn't feel like you like us

As far as the house is concerned, I already own it, but also have yet to see the special item you supposedly get for owning it and getting it again. My alt account has yet to get it and at this point I'm losing steam wanting to try. The furnishing dailies are abysmal and feel like some sort of a scam. They REALLY make me feel like you don't like us. Improving rewards would *start* to help to that end, but also the types of rewards- why aren't there random crafting motifs? Gold materials? Jubilee-level rewards at the very least. I like housing, and I think it is the housing community holding the end-game community together and in the game (perhaps personal bias but I don't care)- you could have included NOT JUST blueprints for the stirk camps... but also actual copies of the furnishing. I don't feel rewarded for doing any of this.

Plenty of people have touched on the manipulations to the progress bars and the effect that has on the players. On the ground level, in our guilds, it all feels arbitrary. The rules feel made up and the points don't matter. Let's play, who's wall is it anyways? I'd have loved to have more choice in the matter- if we're trying a new event style or content formula/rollout/whatever... maybe let us fight FOR Molag Bal? Or have your server's alliances actually be counted so you can see, on which server, who is fighting the most against molag bal and then if you were majorly fighting for that alliance, THAT'S how you get the title.. I don't know, something that doesn't feel redone and under-rewarding. People have also mentioned choice of reward- let me pick what type of animal I get as my golden reward worm animal... I don't ride bears but a wormwrithe guar? HOLY POOP YES PLEASE I'LL FIGHT EVERY DAY AND DO EVERY GOLDEN PURSUIT. I don't feel like I want to do anything with my server (pc na) to "beat" the other servers/consoles... it doesn't feel like we're working together. Could be loser talk because we're in last, but even on day one, it felt like a weird... "competition" to force on us. I miss the N. Elsweyr release days where, as a server, we worked TOGETHER to unlock some incredible and unique rewards that will NEVER come back... and saved kitties doing it. THOSE were memorable events. This one I'm already tired of and we're not even 1/3 through it.

The worst part of all this? There is little, if any, motivation to do anything in phase 2 or 3. If you save up enough boxes in phase 1, you'll get the needed fragments for the skill style in phase 2 without having to actually DO anything. What is my motivation to care? I couldn't care LESS about the 1-week fortress thing... are there unique rewards? I don't know because the communication about this event has been bleh. And everything I've seen so far leads me to believe that no, it won't get better. I plan on spending all my time farming plunder skulls for ruby candleflies and waiting for Eastern Solstice to come out so I can fish for the 6 new sunport pack furnishings. That's literally all I'm holding on to right now. Pretty sad.

I do not feel like this event was made with tender loving care. It was made sadly and sloppily and with little regard to good advice from PTS. Do you even like us?

It is somewhat disheartening to read that for non-Content-Pass players, Phase 2 and Phase 3 are, in essence, exactly the same as Phase 1. The single difference is which precise combination of crafting trades are used in the associated quest.

There seems to be a lot of focus here on the quality of the rewards, but from my perspective, the event design itself is just utterly boring after a few days. Even tripling the rewards of the gold boxes isn't likely to convince me to spend my time on more than a single crafting quest a day, and I may well drop that before the event ends. At most I'll hand in a Vitrified Souls or Supplies quest if I happen to be able to complete them while doing other non-Event activities, which is rare.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

So you have a system that means it doesn't matter if the DD outputs 150k dps, and another DD in the same group is deemed as insufficient if they are only outputting 100k dps, and worthless if they are outputting 75k dps (on pure parse).

Where is this idea that lower damage makes someone worthless coming from? I keep hearing people mention that on the forums when they are talking about the toxic minmaxing root of all evil raid leads who seem to be around every corner, but I've never ran into a single one despite thousands of hours of raiding in groups of varying level. Most groups are completely fine having someone dealing less damage than the top parse. Is this stemming from the fact that some groups have high parse requirements or something like that? Some people want a better score, simple as that. They want to play with people their level and that's completely fine. In those groups doing half the damage than other DDs might be a problem, but that doesn't mean this is a community wide problem which needs solving.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

The thing is, the boss fight, designed around a trifecta, has to be completed withing a certain number of minutes - lets say 5 minutes for this example. A group with 8 DDs outputting 150k dps each get the boss down in 2 minutes. So why is the 75k dps deemed worthless? It's enough to do the fight in the required time. That designation is a player choice based on the group then having to contend with mechs - the actual challenge in a fight (shocking I know).

Why do people want to kill the boss faster? Simple, it's much easier. The longer any fight lasts, the harder it is on the supports. The more mechanics will happen and the more risk there is that someone dies. After all the goal of every single encounter in the entire game is to drop the boss' HP to 0, not to complete every mechanic. Of course there is also score which is higher the faster you complete the trial. Doing half the damage compared to the top damage dealer can often come across as the player not pulling their own weight (Not always the case, they could be raid leading, calling ultimates, calling or doing other mechanics etc etc).
Again, not all groups care about parse and they manage to clear trifectas without any problems, those kinds of groups are usually found in social PvE guilds.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

There are several ways to counter that problem. ZOS could dispense with WD/SD and move to a purely % of max health for damage and healing system, which would flatten out the disparity. They could introduce some form of threat mechanic requiring DDs to self-throttle. Or (and my personal favourite) they could make the existing mechanics mandatory - meaning no matter how quickly you kill that boss, at each % of health that normally triggers a mech, a mech is triggered and not skipped over, and adjusting the time based mechs to become a x seconds or y health trigger.

They have attempted something similar in the past with having bosses go invulnerble, or require certain conditions to be met (LC - mirrors) but these have been sporadic. There are also some bosses (DSR - Twins on HM) where too much damage can vastly increase the risk of death or wipe. Having the mechs play out, and in-some instances making two or more play out at the same time, would force DDs to self-throttle, that 150k output would have to be reduced down to 100k or the risk of death/wipe would be too high.

I'd very much like to see more of these in game. It would mean having to do mechs, it would mean power creep (at least in Dungeons and Trials - Overland needs the CP scaling cap increased and the local player count forumla adjusting better but that will never be perfect) is brought under control. It would make for more interesting fights, and it would stop the trivialization of older content.

ZOS's answer to power creep has been "GivE bOSs MoRe heaLTh!". It doesn't work. Making the bosses DO their attacks and mechs would address it. All the way? Probably not, but it would take a large chunk out of it, and if done right would very much limit the problem, as well as several others with that one change.

Hell, if they want to be really nasty about it they could introduce an enrage mechanic wherein if the boss loses x% of health in y Seconds they go nuts - Occam's Razor and all that. I mean think about how mad you get when a player hits you and you suddenly lose 50% of your health.

More forced damage stops, and generally punishing people for playing better and optimizing more is a horrible idea. It completely kills the flow of the fight and it's not engaging for anyone, as well, everyone will be just waiting for the boss to do the one mechanic. Making players manage their DPS can be pulled off well, like making sure the bosses have to die within a certain time frame, like in vDSR first boss, vLC first boss and vOC second boss. Directly making the boss immune, so the group has to wait around and twiddle their thumbs is just lazy combat design. Limiting players ability to do damage and express their skill as a group and as a individual is a quick way to kill any resemblance of endgame community.

Thankfully there is a simple fix to all of this. ZOS needs to know what the players can, and can't do, and plan the encounters accordingly. Power creep needs to happen to keep the game interesting. If there wasn't any power creep, there would be nothing to look forwards to in a new update. The power creep needs to be controlled and within a reasonable margin and they need to design the encounters based on those numbers. The problem is that it's completely not the case with ESO and hasn't been for a long time now. The encounters being completely gutted with all mechanics skipped isn't a player problem, it's a ZOS problem. They are the ones who came up with, and are responsible of ALL the numbers, item sets and skills, not the players.
The solution isn't to turn every single boss into a snooze fest where you will have to wait for the boss to do the mechanic it was supposed to, because ZOS couldn't put the effort into thinking through their balance changes.
It's wild to think that the players are at fault that the encounters feel off and mechanics get completely ignored when the history of the game balance looks like this. U35 guts damage because it's too high → few patches later Arcanist gets introduced, a class on par with the power of the prenerfed builds, which makes it wildly over tuned in comparison → ZOS spends 2 years trying to fix the problem → They introduce subclassing which turns everyone into demigods.

It's very clear, now more than ever that the game direction is a complete mess. There is no clear vision, controlled power creep or grand plan at play, it really just feels like they slap on some numbers and then proceed to completely ignore the whole situation and move on to the next feature. They haven't even tried to fix subclassing, like come on...

TL;DR - Blaming the miserable state of the encounters on anyone but ZOS is just wild. They are solely responsible for creating this mess, as they are literally the ones who made it. Reducing skill expression and punishing playing well will not solve anything and will kill off what's left of the end game community.