Make Questing Great Again!

twistedodean14 · July 2023

Hello all, So I'm probably one the few players that actually like or care about questing in the game. I find it pretty interesting that most of the players I interacted with do not quest or care about questing. It seems like more of a chore than being fun. Also, it seems that a large percentage of the game content are quest. And most players ignore them or just don't care. It would be nice to see players engage in the world of ESO outside of simply farming mats, gear and gold. The XP grinding, speed runs in dungeons and dummy bashing seem to be all players do in the game.

So here are some ways I think we can get more players to quest.

1. Questing together, when I first started playing ESO me and a friend used to quest together. It was pretty fun to experience the story and world of ESO with a buddy. And I think we should incentivize players to quest together by giving extra gold, mats and XP. I don't consider doing dailies together to kill world bosses questing. I mean actually engaging in with the story at hand.

2. increase the amount of gold players receive after completing a quest. Spending 15 to 30 minutes questing only to receive 200 gold is insane. And completing main quests should give way more gold. Here are some base line payouts I was thinking of. I'm not married to any of these numbers btw.

A) 10 min quests = 3k-6k gold
B ) 15-25 min quests = 8k-10k gold
C) 30 - 60 min quests = 15k - 25k gold
D) I also think some quests should give Mats and the amount and quality should be based on the difficulty of that quest.

3. Increase the amount of XP gained from questing. Power leveling is repetitive and not fun or engaging. I think it would make sense that players should have the option of leveling or gaining A good amount of XP from questing. Especially new players. I mean even after we reach CP, we should still get a good amount of XP from questing. So on this page It shows the amount of XP needed to level up. I think amount we get from quests should increase by 25% base. And the amount of XP from quests in trials and Arenas should be adjusted too.

4. Gold drops. Why am I running Vet DLC trials and looting mobs, Majors, mini-bosses and Bosses but getting 1-10 gold?... The hardest content drops the lease amount of gold? I get that we receive plunder. But come on that's just crazy low.

5. Mix it up. Making decisions in quests should affect how much of each reward you get. For example, if the end of the quest you decide to kill a particular character, you increase the amount of XP received. Where if you let them live you get more gold or Mats.

6. Increase quest difficulty. I think part of the reason questing is not fun is because everything is so damn easy to kill. Which is a shame. Especially when the main antagonist for a DLC region story is super easy to take out. Yes, the quest can start out easy. But it should get harder as you progress. Also, make main quests repeatable. Make delve quests repeatable. Even if it's just once a day or couple days. Give us the option to do quests on Normal, Vet and Hardmode. And the rewards should scale based on the difficulty.

7. Boss drops. I'm sure there are a lot of players that will disagree but, I think weapons should drop from All bosses in Dungeons and Trials and at the end of the quests in that dungeon or trial. Gear farming is crappy and its not fun. Especially considering how much sets are available for each role in the game. Maybe reduce the weapon drop rates on all bosses except the last boss to balance things out. But I think this can help with folks feeling the need to speed run every dungeon.

8. Use questing to teach roles. Alright, one of the major issues ESO has is that both new and experience players do not know the basics of other roles. So, I think we can teach players how to tank and heal using questing. By that I mean create specific quests where the player will need to have tank gear or healing gear to heal or tank during fights in the quest while the NPCs do damage. Also, just in case the player doesn't have gear. The game should provide that gear (temporarily) to the player. And adjust their bar with base skills needed (temporarily) to taunt, heal or CC. Again this is optional. Players now have the armory with two free slots. And I think every player should at least know how to tank, heal and DPS, and each character can use one of those slots to save a support role build. I think over time this will also fix the issue of long ques, fake tanking, fake healing and availability of tanks and healers.

9. The story telling is okay... But I think a much better job can be done on that part. I think it should be fine for story characters to actually develop romances or feuds. Not sure about with the player, but I think that can make things more engaging.

10) Bring back the ebony knight or his equivalents. Have them roam around. If you accept their quest to duel. You will have to do a few quests over time to show you are worthy to fight him/her. After the requirements are met. You face off in an arena. Solo. The specials reward could be gold materials or class specific weapons and jewelry.

11. Allow Players to pacts with Daedric princes. Which will obviously have perks and drawbacks depending on the prince. For example Peryites blessing will be a 10% buff to disease damage, but it reduces your healing and healing received by 7%. Or Even have Blessings of the divines, where Zenithars' blessing will give you a extra 25% chance of gathering double resources or gold. Players can't have more than one blessing at a time. And if a player removes a blessing, they have to wait 24 hours before they can get a different one. I'm fine with players even doing a quest to show their devotion to that price or divine.

So, is there anything you guys would change or add? What will it take to get you to quest more in ESO?

TaSheen · July 2023

Questing is what I do mostly in any game - so yeah, that's what I do here. I don't have any interest in the stuff you've posted - because I don't have a problem with just questing on my own.

katanagirl1 · July 2023

I admit I was skimming most of this, but I do not believe the quests are designed to be done with others. In fact, some of the daily quests since Deadlands tend to bug out when shared in a group.

I like questing, but I only do the story quests on one toon. I do not care to do them multiple times. I also don’t want to do them with someone. My hubby plays ESO, but we do our story quests at different times.

Alts have specific tasks for me, like some are PvP and some are trials. Those characters don’t do story quests after they hit Champion points. I level them up quickly and put them to work. This system would not suit them.

Good ideas, but I am not sure how many players would benefit from the approach you have outlined, and it would require work from the devs in a lot of areas already established in the game world.

Tigeracer · July 2023

I like most of your ideas.

The only two that I disagree with are questing together and xp for questing.

Questing is better on your own because you can take as much or as little time as you like to read and experience the lore.

Aside from dolmens, questing yields the highest amount of xp (unless this has changed somewhere).

Once again, I really like your other ideas.

Mayrael · July 2023

Personally, I loved overland questing in ESO. The quests in this game are really well done, not to mention the voice acting; ESO has taken quests to a whole new level, completely different from typical MMO quests where it's always about collecting X items from a specific mob and delivering them to an NPC.

Unfortunately, for me, character progression is also a significant part of any RPG game. When overland content became too easy, character development lost its meaning, and that, in turn, made all the "great threats" we have to deal with ridiculously easy, which ruins the immersion. I'm not saying I want every boss fight to be like in The Witcher, but when those "great threats" die in 2 seconds and I don't even have to stop to kill them, it becomes uninteresting.

The issue of rewards is also crucial. Depending on the type, quests can take from a few minutes to several minutes. While daily quests shouldn't give a large amount of gold because they are repeatable, I think one-time quests should be much more rewarding for completing them.

The rest of the issues discussed here are indifferent to me.

PS. Why bold text? Because I want to emphasize that these are just my opinions and they may not align with the experiences of other players.

Snamyap · July 2023

I think you're wrong about your assessment over the number of people that enjoy questing. There are a couple of issues with questing I would like to see addressed but overal I think it's fine. Like Mayrael said the "difficulty" is ludicrous for more veteran players, and the dialogue too often make my characters act like morons suffering from amnesia.

Danikat · July 2023

I don't know who you've been talking to but a lot of ESO players like quests and do them for fun, often multiple times on different characters.

I think you're too focused on gold as a reward, which is going to be counter-productive because long-term there's not a lot to spend gold on in this game and the kind of players you seem to be targeting here (veterans who power-level characters and focus on instanced content) are highly likely to have more gold than they need already. That means it's very unlikely they're put off quests because of the gold awarded and highly unlikely they'd do more quests if they gave more gold.

Other than that I'm not against your ideas but I'm not entirely convinced they would work either. Especially if your goal is to get players to actually pay attention to the quests and not just speed through them. Adding more rewards might get the kind of people who are inclined to do that to accept and complete more quests, but it's not going to change the fact that their only incentive is getting the reward and they want to get to it as quickly as possible. They'll click through text as soon as the option is available, rush to quest objectives and clear them then move on to the next thing like they currently do with dolmens, dungeons and other activities.

I'm not sure how you could solve that and to be honest I'm not sure it's a problem that needs solving given players are choosing to play that way. I doubt the people who do that are unaware that quests tell stories and tie into the lore and setting of the game, they're just not interested in it.

Imagine if there was a quest where you got better rewards for completing it more quickly: to get the best items and the most gold and XP you need to skim the initial dialogue (or ignore it entirely and just follow the quest markers), skip the optional objectives, don't talk to any NPCs in the area, just find and kill the boss as fast as you can. Would you enjoy doing that? Would you do it at all or would you decide slightly higher rewards are not worth skipping all the stuff you actually enjoy and you're just going to play the quest the way you want and take the 'loss' because you know you can get good rewards from other quests anyway? That's definitely what I would do.

Stanx · July 2023

Snamyap wrote: »

I think you're wrong about your assessment over the number of people that enjoy questing. There are a couple of issues with questing I would like to see addressed but overal I think it's fine. Like Mayrael said the "difficulty" is ludicrous for more veteran players, and the dialogue too often make my characters act like a moron suffering from amnesia.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly.

The whole thread starts with an incorrect assumption re what people enjoy in the game. I love questing, I have a lot of friends in-game that love questing.

I can see where OP is coming from with their suggestions, but at the same time, other content in the game exists for a reason. Seems to me the aim here is for someone to be able to achieve everything desirable in the game (gold, exp, mats, rewards, vet content etc.) from one singular source.

Some things already exist, too. Roaming bosses have been a thing since Imperial City and have been featured heavily in Deadlands, we've had one in Galen, and we've all been absolutely terrorised by the roaming seekers in Necrom.

I honestly believe discussions like this are much more productive when they don't make assumptions about the playerbase.

Maybe a poll, OP? Then you can come up with some more representative ideas. You're clearly good at thinking analytically so it might help.

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Veinblood1965 · July 2023

Well thought out post. I read it all and agreed with most of it. The new "Bastion" quest dailies in Necrom although a pain sometimes were a good start imo, although not a lengthy quest.

Tessitura · July 2023

I don't think questing was ever great in this game. The stories were never really all that compelling and the rewards for most of them were boring because thats just what mmo's do now. Kinda just how mmo questing is. Guild Wars 2 was the only game left that gave you actually interesting rewards for doing quests and stuff until recently when wow and eso woke up a bit to how bad their *** was.

Arizona_Steve · July 2023

I think one has to bear in mind that a significant portion of the player base are Elder Scrolls players who play ESO because Bethesda has dragged their heels over Elder Scrolls 6. I find it hard to believe that those doing quests are a tiny minority.

ghastley · July 2023

If you want to quest, you can. Quests are solo activities that don’t require the cooperation of other players. So whether other players care for questing should not affect you.

I suspect this is just a plea for more rewards for yourself. To me, a good quest is one I will do for the story, not the pay-out. I fight World Bosses for the victory, not the drop (except when they are the only source of an item I need), and run dungeons on much the same basis. And yes, I do the quests in the dungeons, not just run to the final boss.

Syldras · July 2023

I don't think there's a need for special incentives. Either people care for story content or they do not. I mean, if there were super rare useful items you only get by questing, then more people might quest, but only because they'd feel forced to do that to get the desired items. How would that be any improvement?! In the end it'd be the same problem some housing people have at the moment: You do content you actually don't care for (or even dislike) just to get an item you want. With housing, it's that some relatively basic structural furnishings require the completion of dlc group dungeons (if it would be just very specific fancy trophies, I wouldn't mind). I'll say the same as every time this topic comes up: Rewards should be related to the activity you get them for. No "forcing" players to activities they dislike. I know there's this weird idea that players should be "encouraged" to try everything by giving them rewards for it, but honestly: If I dislike something, I won't suddenly like it just because there's a nice gift in the end. It's a nuisance, nothing more.

What I'd find reasonable would be improving quest quality in itself: the writing, the dialogues, the creativity of the plot. More decisions, different outcomes. Better character recognition in dialogues (race, class, conditions like vampirism). Adjustments to difficulty would also make sense.

Btw, questing together is no fun when dialogue screens close automatically for every group member as soon as one group member closes his. Don't know if this has changed by now, but when I quested together with a friend several years ago, this problem was very annoying.

ZOS_Phoenix · July 2023

Greetings,

After review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic (Quests and Exploration, as this thread is for suggestions regarding questing).

Thank you for your understanding.

Supreme_Atromancer · August 2023

From the perspective of someone who's favourite thing to do in ESO is questing and exploration, I feel like incentivising questing might be a bad idea. Over the years I've met many who absolutely couldn't give a rat's about questing, aren't interested in the Single Player titles, and are just here for the content they like. Seems like it would be a bad idea to force them to quest.

I've also met some people who actually really loved questing in the SPTs, but thought that questing in ESO was a joke. And others who loved the stories in the SPTs but would never touch ESO. That's what's fascinating to me.

If questing alone doesn't incentivize people who would otherwise quest, that's what I'd be looking at.

colossalvoids · August 2023

To be honest only two things combined would make me want to pay actual attention to questing. That's the difficulty and writing, both are lacking severely and that's just getting worse when you're not having any choice whatsoever, which might be fine if stories were written so good that you don't need those, but as generic as eso quests go choices would be a great improvement making it at least somewhat interactive.

On a side note rewards for quests are kinda absurd to me, I want rewards for the challenges and good written quest should be a reward for itself already. Not against rewards as a plot thing, like you're getting paid for merc work but not as theme park'y as eso. Telvanni noble pays the same summ as a beggar next street, that's already makes me not want paying any attention to it.

endgamesmug · August 2023

I havent paid any attention to stories in quests for years, i just skip through to get the complete or the skill point difficulty is irrelevant to me and i might not be alone with that thinking. End of the day its other activities i prefer really which is very combat related.

Kappachi · August 2023

had to stop reading after point #2, but as a trader I'm against anything that will cause inflation in the game, giving mats or high amounts of gold for quests doesn't make sense, they already reward enough with the special RP items that are 1 of 1 and that some people are willing to buy for RP or collection purposes.

Luckylancer · August 2023

Questing is boring for me. Difficulty should be increased and it's rewards should be at least competitive with other content. With these you can see more people questing.

Also if you want to see very competitive guys questing, make a speed run challenge with extremely beefed up mobs every month. Then people will gear for questing and try their best. But at this point it will be a completely different content compared to casual questing. Just an idea.

Dokolus · August 2023

Luckylancer wrote: »

Questing is boring for me. Difficulty should be increased and it's rewards should be at least competitive with other content. With these you can see more people questing.

Also if you want to see very competitive guys questing, make a speed run challenge with extremely beefed up mobs every month. Then people will gear for questing and try their best. But at this point it will be a completely different content compared to casual questing. Just an idea.

Yeah, ngl, but questing in general feels far, far too easy, that even when starting out with new toons as low levels, I'm still able to take on multiple groups at a time, and because every class has a form of self heal, I'm able to just out heal the damage, snare, dot, weave in light attacks until everything is ash (also soul trap being morphed to give you magicka back feels kinda busted, in that I get magicka back on my own decently, but soul trap makes it so I never run out).

I really enjoy the questing and the stories being told, but yeah, the rewards don't really stack up (gold is basically a pittance compared to what WoW gives you atm), and the general difficulty feels less rewarding with the already watered down rewards.

I also wish there were quests like WoW used to do, where you needed to form a group of at least 3 to take down a few special mobs (not dungeon or raid related, but overworld quest related). I feel like that would not only get people being more social early on, but the challenge could be better for it and the rewards competitive.