Official Discussion Thread for "Dark Brotherhood Guide: Skill Line & Activities"

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2016

This is the official discussion thread for the blog article Dark Brotherhood Guide: Skill Line & Activities. Learn all about the new passive skill line and activities in our latest Dark Brotherhood guide!

Woenprom · May 2016

More Daily quests...

Undaunted, crafting writs, Cyrodiil, Imperial city, Wrothgar, Abah's Landing, now this DLC.

After a couple of years we gonna need entire week just to finish off "this day" daily activities and finally enjoy the game.

Its already started btw, ppl doing yesterdays pledges.

Elsonso · May 2016

Woenprom wrote: »

After a couple of years we gonna need entire week just to finish off "this day" daily activities and finally enjoy the game.

I am not seeing this as a problem.

Woenprom · May 2016

It is not (yet). It is the common MMO template, I can live with that.

I've played many MMOs, and I clearly remember some where the daily content is enjoyable. ESO is not one of them.

I think the reason lies in the reward chances. Too many tries to get the desirable result. How many day/weeks/months we need to get right traits on monsters shoulders? How many to get Trinimac motifs?

Right now I am not enjoying the "daily activities". When I decide to do them, it feels like second job - boring repetitive actions+negative emotions.

dimensional · May 2016

Woenprom wrote: »

It is not (yet). It is the common MMO template, I can live with that.

I've played many MMOs, and I clearly remember some where the daily content is enjoyable. ESO is not one of them.

I think the reason lies in the reward chances. Too many tries to get the desirable result. How many day/weeks/months we need to get right traits on monsters shoulders? How many to get Trinimac motifs?

Right now I am not enjoying the "daily activities". When I decide to do them, it feels like second job - boring repetitive actions+negative emotions.

I feel the exact opposite. I enjoy doing the activities quite a lot, regardless of rewards. And I do feel like the rewards are fair, and I've been compensated for my time. Sorry to see you don't like them as much as me and many others

Slurg · May 2016

Well, people were complaining before about running out of content to do. With all these dailies it'll take a lot longer to run out of things to do every day. I guess next people will complain about it being the same repeatable content.

Some of these passives sound really nice to have though! I'd love to not draw aggro from every trash mob that I ride past that then follows me to a crafting station.

ShedsHisTail · May 2016

Yeah, I think daily quests are great, and having more of them means I can opt for variety.
I mean, yeah, if you're forcing yourself to do all of them every day, I can see where it'd get tedious really fast. But just doing a few here and there as desired and having a wide choice of which ones to do is great.

I think it would be nice if the rewards were something more akin to a token system where I could save up tokens to acquire the rewards I want rather than RNG rewards; but for now, just having a broad set of options is keeping me happy.

Would like to see more dailies added, honestly. Some fighters and mages guild dailies would be great. And I think having vendors which sell Guild Specific Gear and novelties would be cool. If you don't have a token system, maybe make guild rank a requirement for acquiring some of these items?

Pyr0xyrecuprotite · May 2016

If they are not fun anymore, don't do them... that's my take.

I did crafting writs on several alts until it was just too much of a grind - so stopped.
Craglorn dailies I did only once each, due to the difficulties of getting a group together. Once the level cap went to vr16 and other DLCs were available with better mats and loot, there wasn't any point in doing Craglorn repeatable quests.
Daily pledges are good - until you max out the Undaunted skill line, and have got the shoulder pieces that you want - no need to do them after that, other than as bonus XP for a random dungeon or maybe a helm run, if doing it on the right day.
Cyrodiil dailies - did them once each on 3 alts, to get the achievements.
Orsinium world boss and delve dailies - did them enough times to get the achievements, before the reward urns dropped motifs - eventually just bought the motifs; the grind is not worth my time once CPs are capped.
IC upper city dailies - most of these are too hard to solo, too dangerous for TV stone farming with enemy players around, and it takes too long to get a group together - never bothered other than if a guild event happened to include one.
Hews Bane (TG) dailes - very useful initially for levelling up your TG level, and might get you a motif as a side reward, but I stopped once I got the achievements - the loot (and that from most other dailies) is marginal. I do plan to repeat these on another alt in a while; they will be fresher and more interesting then.
Daily premium random dungeons are very good XP, and can be fun as a challenge, since you usually have to do them with a random group. The loot is marginal though.
Maw of Lorkaj trial is probably the most fun and rewarding daily at the moment, except for the nerf in loot drops after your first run each week (which is going away in DB). As with most trials though, it is hard to get 12 people together - but I jump if I have a chance to join.
MSA (nonvet) is a good XP grind, but really feels like a grind - not rewarding (so I don't). Vet MSA is even more of a grind and is a gold sink due to potion costs - you only do it (if you can) for the chance of a weapon and maybe the achievement.

NewBlacksmurf · May 2016

My only feedback or thoughts is that ZOS continues to build and deepen a solo based game and doesn't build a quest and instances game that 2-4 ppl can play together on regardless of quest progress. Faction limitations are fine but anything ESO TU should allow 2 players or more always.

Literally everything
There is a good focus on soloable content but there's a bad habit of solo-only content or being phased or locked out when playing with friends.

Woenprom · May 2016

What I want to add is that other MMO developers have found the "correct numbers" for their daily mechanics - when you finally got bored of certain activity, you are also finished/almost finished all possible rewards from it.

Zeni just do not know/want to do the same.

You will get bored of crafting writs & Nikolvara Kennel long before you get all glass & Trinimac motifs...

DHale · May 2016

Would like smiting dawn breaker converted back to magic. The percent reduction to skill cost passive does not impact either ultimate so if this is intended it should be in tool tip. Cost of circle of protection still to high even with the passive. Evil hunter should still restore Stam. The cost increase for roll dodge and break free is not good and will punish magic users but Stam users won't even feel it. You should be able to share old pledges with ppl even if you keep the limit to one per day. You should also get undaunted and Xp when you are doing any dungeon whether it's the first time or 100 th even five points. 6 second shields seem a little drastic maybe in half then revaluate. Let's be honest any good player gets through sorc shields in a few seconds without any shield breaker. Only four new character slots seems kinda arbitrary. Infinite crafting bags but only four slots, huh? That's my take but overall looking forward to the changes. I would like to complain about one thing no respec I realize ppl complained before. Offer 1 gold respecs at shrines for a week following the update. That way all will be happy.

Contraptions · May 2016

So I guess the passives on the PTS are confirmed for launch? Quite disappointing tbh. Most of them are pretty useless.

Farorin · May 2016

Only a couple of those passives seem like they would be of any good use, even within the DLC itself. Which is a shame.

I really wish they were able to add passives and active skills that were useful outside of the DLC specific box as well, without people crying pay-to-win. Maybe they could add skill lines independantly from the DLC, but the DLC just lets you level it quicker and gives you a couple of other small incentives?

KerinKor · May 2016

So yet more content which will simply mean towns and cities littered with NPC corpses, wasn't this facile feature un Justice enough for you?

staracino_ESO · May 2016

You guys really didn't try to make this any different from TG...

2 delves + 2 bosses
tip board/contracts
heists/sacraments
spencer rye/bounties
kari's hitlist/litany of blood
set of mostly useless passives

I guess we can look forward to having 2 new motifs on the contracts and sacraments next-next expansion... to keep things fresh.

Sorry to be so gloomy, but it is really depressing to see all of the new content be so 'paint by numbers' formulaic. The Dark Brotherhood really deserves better for its launch. The Thieves Guild did too, but it's too late for that.

Elsonso · May 2016

staracino_ESO wrote: »

You guys really didn't try to make this any different from TG...

2 delves + 2 bosses
tip board/contracts
heists/sacraments
spencer rye/bounties
kari's hitlist/litany of blood
set of mostly useless passives

I guess we can look forward to having 2 new motifs on the contracts and sacraments next-next expansion... to keep things fresh.

Sorry to be so gloomy, but it is really depressing to see all of the new content be so 'paint by numbers' formulaic. The Dark Brotherhood really deserves better for its launch. The Thieves Guild did too, but it's too late for that.

To be fair, it is somewhat expected that Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild will be very similar, mostly because they are very similar in nature. They don't really need a big zone as a base, so we expect the zone to be small. That pretty much limits bosses, dungeons and delves.

I am sure we will see certain mechanics again, like the heists, etc, as reuse is a tenant in any large game like this.

They have to be careful with passives since not everyone will have the DLC. They should not make an OP passive that people will feel required to buy the DLC just to get the passive. While that might sound cool to the business people, they still should not do that.

ParaNostram · May 2016

I am sooooo excited to play this!

ParaNostram · May 2016

Woenprom wrote: »

It is not (yet). It is the common MMO template, I can live with that.

I've played many MMOs, and I clearly remember some where the daily content is enjoyable. ESO is not one of them.

I think the reason lies in the reward chances. Too many tries to get the desirable result. How many day/weeks/months we need to get right traits on monsters shoulders? How many to get Trinimac motifs?

Right now I am not enjoying the "daily activities". When I decide to do them, it feels like second job - boring repetitive actions+negative emotions.

What, you want ZOS to just hand out the gear and make it easy mode?

WhiteCoatSyndrome · May 2016

ParaNostram wrote: »

What, you want ZOS to just hand out the gear and make it easy mode?

I think the issue is less 'it's hard' and more 'it's tedius.' There is no particular difficulty in the Trinimac dailies, Spencer's board etc.

MattT1988 · May 2016

The more dailies the better in my opinion. Adds variety, you can pick and choose, I don't do the same ones every day, some days I'll give Wrothgar a miss, some days I'll give TG a miss etc, keeps things fresh. I'd like FG and MG dailies as well for sure.

AntonioDePau · May 2016

If you're going to keep the 75% reduction in xp gained from Blade of Woe at least give us a passive that increases damage for 5-10 seconds, so that we can take out 2 other enemies after assassinating the first one...
Otherwise it's not really worth it. I'd be better off marking the target, going invisible, and surprise attacking it for a 2 hit K.O...

DorianDragonRaze · June 2016

The "sweet" mother disgusts my character. But I'd love to play a quest line of the Dark Brotherhood extermination. Skyrim has this freedom. Were you guys even talking about the possibility of such story implementation?