ZOS, please consider incentivizing participation in veteran dungeon content more..

Caligamy_ESO · November 2023

I have recently got back into ESO again and brought a few friends over from another MMO and I have to say some (if I am being perfectly honest.. most) of our experiences with dungeon finder have been absolutely abysmal. It is a much much worse experience than it was when I played heavily just a year or two ago. We have sat in vet queues for half an hour as tank, as healer, as healer and tank, or dps + whatever more times than I can count only for us to eventually give in and just withdraw and queue for normal and instantly what do we find?

A tank, healer, or most often a dps with no taunt and a fake role assigned @2000+ CP speed running on normal without a care in the world for anyone else who may or may not be brand new to ESO and trying to accomplish undaunted quests within them. And it's not hard to see why.. as you can get in and get out with your same amount of transmute crystals and incinerate everything in your path practically holding left click the entire time.

I feel like veteran having its transmute reward bumped up a bit could help here ..maybe? What I'd really love to see is possibly a higher XP/Gold reward or heck even a commendation system of some sort applied to dungeon finder where achievements or rewards could be gained by being good at the role you are queueing for, assuming of course you can't just commend your friends or prebuilt groups. At the very least it really feels like something needs to be done to foster growth and participation in this huge portion of the game, so please consider throwing the community a lifeline here?

Thanks!

..and happy holidays to you and yours.

EDIT: To save time and my sanity trying to reply to some of these posts the message I was trying to convey here is that doing a veteran dungeon really lacks any sort of incentive to keep doing them. Which shows when you try to queue for one with a new player and you sit there forever until you finally give up and just queue for an instant normal where all the high CP players actually are. While the community experience in there IS definitely something that's lacking and could almost certainly be better.. what I would like to address with this post is that there is little to no reason that keeps players coming back to that Veteran content.

With that being said, I certainly agree with some of you.

EdjeSwift · November 2023

First of all your queue woes: refer to this.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/636122/dungeon-finder-known-issues/p1

As for the second half and normal: Normal has been "adjusted" to oblivion, and unfortunately it results in people who queue for it just wanting to be out ASAP. If you're trying to run the quest, let the person know and hopefully they'll slow down a little, but if you're talking about the Undaunted pledge, most speedrunners will clear those anyway cause it's the pledge, but they will most definitely skip nearly every piece of trash pack they can, probably cause it's their 100th+ run of the place.

Caligamy_ESO · November 2023

EdjeSwift wrote: »

First of all your queue woes: refer to this.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/636122/dungeon-finder-known-issues/p1

As for the second half and normal: Normal has been "adjusted" to oblivion, and unfortunately it results in people who queue for it just wanting to be out ASAP. If you're trying to run the quest, let the person know and hopefully they'll slow down a little, but if you're talking about the Undaunted pledge, most speed runners will clear those anyway cause it's the pledge, but they will most definitely skip nearly every piece of trash pack they can, probably cause it's their 100th+ run of the place.

Except we've been queueing as 2 person groups for the past couple months.. and I am definitely no stranger to running the dungeons as most of my sticker books are filled out in these. That post is also from 2 updates ago if I am not mistaken? Coming up on half a year of this radio silence which is..

not a good look for the new players who are trying to get into this.

On the second part of informing the speed runners, we have been there, tried that.. and for the most part have been vastly ignored. I just had a run the other night on a new character I was bringing up, and I am more than capable of clearing the dungeon on a newbie toon with all the CP applied and crafted gear. Yet this person would not stop for anything and I had to actively race to the dialogs to interact with them spamming E so I could get credit for the whole thing. I have even watched complaints in my guilds of people saying they were trying to complete the dungeon quests only to end up getting vote kicked out of the dungeon as a result. I am not a new player so I have an advantage here, I know I can enter most of these and clear them solo, but for anyone who IS new this is a mountain of a hurdle, or just a nuisance of an experience. Why would anyone in that situation want to repeat it?

The dungeon community right now feels like it is very toxic, and if you step outside of this game and see what others are doing it is very recognizable. In FFXIV for example I have maybe experienced 2 or 3 groups with players who behave like this in the entirety of my playtime (which has also been since its beta..), and they are not well received by the majority. For the most part the experiences there are courteous, outgoing, respectful, and encouraging if you're maybe not playing well. Players will actively offer up advice if they feel like it is necessary. They say hello, they say thanks for the group or the obligatory "gg" most of the time, while in comparison I rarely if ever see that in ESO, even though I try to engage in it when I am doing runs.

So what is the difference in the two games? One of them does incentivize good behavior and play in their queues, and one of them does not. At this point in time we don't even bother to try to queue for pledges anymore as most of them we can just run duo and I carry, it seems to be the only way currently to not have an awful gaming experience.

Billium813 · November 2023

Caligamy_ESO wrote: »

We have sat in vet queues for half an hour as tank, as healer, as healer and tank, or dps + whatever more times than I can count only for us to eventually give in and just withdraw and queue for normal and instantly what do we find?

There are a couple points here:

as @EdjeSwift pointed out, the queue is biased on roles and who the leader is. It heavily recommended that the leader be DPS when queuing in a group > 1 and Tank/Healer when solo queuing.
Random Normal Dungeon (RND) is VERY common and may explain when normal queuing pops very quickly. As you point out, it comes down to rewards and players weighting the options. Random Vet Dungeon doesn't really give better Undaunted Rewards (aside from purple loot) and may include a DLC dungeon.
There is a nice new Group Finder tool that just released! You can quite easily create a public group and look for players to join you. Maybe you make "Vet Pledge Group". Its new, so it's still catching on with players, but it should give you a good method to create a Vet group.

Trier_Sero · November 2023

Even though I can agree that there are some toxicity in dungeon community, especially tanks that leave as soon as they see that one or both dps are low lvl/cp, I can't agree that it's so prevalent as op states.
I like speedrunning rnds myself but usually slow down if somebody reaches out about that in respectful way.

Billium813 · November 2023

Trier_Sero wrote: »

Even though I can agree that there are some toxicity in dungeon community, especially tanks that leave as soon as they see that one or both dps are low lvl/cp, I can't agree that it's so prevalent as op states.
I like speedrunning rnds myself but usually slow down if somebody reaches out about that in respectful way.

Oh, I agree with OP's assessment completely. Normal Dungeons are a grimy quagmire a significant amount of time. I wonder how much you are understating your actions and are actually part of the issue you are downplaying.

It's quite common that the Tank and/or Healer roles are really just DPS roles. Taunts are commonly not used in that case. Dead allies are often not rezed either. If someone says "I need quest", or the rnd happens to be DLC, or if the DPS CP is sufficiently low (under 50), it's 50/50 odds that someone will leave immediately. The most common thing though is that one person will speed run the whole dungeon, aggro'ing everything and speeding to the boss. If you're a low level DPS, you will probably die to the aggro'd ads and be unable to rez since the speed runner is now fighting the boss. Rinse, repeat for each boss.

praxis · November 2023

The easiest fix would be for ZoS to make all the dungeon quests the same, so you can accept/share the quest at any point and just kill the final boss for credit.

It would also be cool if the pledges were all this way as well (at least in terms of the last boss being the only required condition for completion).

Seems more effective than trying to modify the behavior of lots of players by complaining on forums.

Elyu · November 2023

Just going to quote myself from an older thread to save me writing it out again:

(although an extra suggestion would be a 'story pace' sub-section of the dungeon finder (not the group finder!) to enable people who want to listen to/read the quest dialogue a space to find each other, and you are only queued for dungeons your character has not yet completed the quest for)

Elyu wrote: »

Another wall of text from me, seems to be becoming a habit....

Lots of interesting replies here about group composition etc, but as many are about 'people being bad at their chosen group role' I'll limit my reply to a different problem; people queueing as 'tank' or 'healer' for random dungeons when they're clearly a dd.

As someone who does does this almost daily myself, the motivation is obvious - transmute stones. If you're (like myself) planning a build and need transmutes in order to reconstruct a full gear set (200-300 transmutes) the only reliable way to get them in any reasonable quantities, in a reasonable amount of time, is via random normal dungeons.
Undaunted pledges? 10 transmutes for 4 key pledges vs 1 random normal, nor brainer the random normal wins every time.

And why wait 20 mins sitting in the queue as a dd when you can run the dungeon with 4 dd (because random normal is easy).

So, proposed solution; more effort should mean more reward, similar to how the undaunted pledges currently operate

Idea 1: upgrade pledges:

OG normal dungeons (Fungal I, Spindle I etc) slight nerf: (1/2/4 transmutes)
OG vet dungeons (Fungal II, Spindle II etc) remain unchanged: (1/3/5 transmutes)
Year 1-2 DLC dungeons (ICP, Falkreath Hold): small buff (2, 4, 6 transmutes)
Year 3 onwards DLC buffed: (3, 5, 7 transmutes)

More incentive to run more difficult content.

Idea 2: rework random dungeons:

Normal random to keep it's exp component, but have a nerf to transmute reward from 10 to 5.

Random veteran to be split into two new options:
Random non-DLC vet - 10 transmute reward.
Random DLC vet - 12 transmute reward

Idea 3: combine undaunted pledges and random dungeons:

With the upcoming upgrade (hopefully) to the dungeon finder in update 40, there's every reason to integrate this change into the system as a maximum more effort = more reward.

NEW DAILY RANDOM: random pledge queue.

If you complete without a pledge in your quest journal - exclusive with random normal / random vet / random vet dlc. Rewards are +1 transmute compared to the non-pledge random variants (to encourage those only doing the random to help those doing their pledge)

If you complete with a pledge quest in your quest journal:

1st complete: No extra reward but the daily reset is not triggered
2nd queue: you're not queued for the pledge dungeon already completed. Upon completion, rewards from random normal daily.
3rd queue: you're not queued for the 2 pledge dungeons already completed. Upon completion, gain rewards for random DLC vet daily

So there is 2 dailies worth of incentive to complete all 3 pledges using the dungeon finder!

EdjeSwift · November 2023

praxis wrote: »

The easiest fix would be for ZoS to make all the dungeon quests the same, so you can accept/share the quest at any point and just kill the final boss for credit.

It would also be cool if the pledges were all this way as well (at least in terms of the last boss being the only required condition for completion).

Seems more effective than trying to modify the behavior of lots of players by complaining on forums.

They did this for a lot of the later dungeons where the objective is "complete dungeon" or the dungeon quest adjusts based on the group's progress. I remember I hopped in a Dread Cellar run on a character I never did the story quest for, it popped as an option for the final boss and just killing it finished it.

The issue is a lot of the older dungeons have actual stories in them and require people to sit and talk with NPCs, kill NPCs at a certain time(looking at you Selene's Web), and so on. Sure, it would be nice to shift them all to the newer style, but in the base game, those dungeons and their lore were a backbone to the game at launch and I'd hate to see them changed.

kojou · November 2023

I agree that the both the reward from doing a Random Veteran dungeon should be different than the reward from a Random Normal and that the final boss for a DLC dungeon should drop more than the final boss from a base game dungeon.

The problem is that neither the Random Veteran Dungeon queue nor DLC dungeons respect your time and reward you appropriately. You essentially get the same reward whether you run Fungal Grotto 1 on normal, or Earthen Root Enclave on veteran which are obviously two completely different experiences.

Adding to that, if you run a Random Normal Dungeon then running a Random Veteran Dungeon gives half the reward, so there is literally no motivation to run a Random Veteran Dungeon from a reward perspective. If they would at least give a full reward for both then there would be a reason to do both.

If it were up to me, I would give ~200k Experience and 10 Transmute crystals for running a random normal, and 100k Experience and 20 Transmute crystals for running a random veteran dungeon, and I would make the final boss of all the DLC dungeons always drop 10 Transmute crystals on Veteran and 5 Transmute Crystals on normal to help with people who abandon the group as soon as they see it is a longer DLC dungeon they don't want to waste time in.

Trier_Sero · November 2023

Billium813 wrote: »

Oh, I agree with OP's assessment completely. Normal Dungeons are a grimy quagmire a significant amount of time. I wonder how much you are understating your actions and are actually part of the issue you are downplaying.

It's quite common that the Tank and/or Healer roles are really just DPS roles. Taunts are commonly not used in that case. Dead allies are often not rezed either. If someone says "I need quest", or the rnd happens to be DLC, or if the DPS CP is sufficiently low (under 50), it's 50/50 odds that someone will leave immediately. The most common thing though is that one person will speed run the whole dungeon, aggro'ing everything and speeding to the boss. If you're a low level DPS, you will probably die to the aggro'd ads and be unable to rez since the speed runner is now fighting the boss. Rinse, repeat for each boss.

I'm not downplaying anything.
I always try to stick to a group, unless it's dlc dungeon and I can just pull the group to the boss. And I always wait at the start if somebody is taking quest.
If I'm on one of my templars I usually try to rez people as I have 20% faster rez bonus, but on other chars I usually leave that to healer, unless the healer is dead of course.

YffresTrill · November 2023

I have stopped queueing for dungeons entirely, as this behaviour has grown progressively worse over time. The transmutes are no longer worth it for me. I just can't stand rushing, in any game; it is the opposite of fun for me.

I expected the new group finder to help alleviate this problem, but with the tiny character limit in the description, which it seems people applying to groups don't read anyway, it has failed in this regard.

Many people will always try to take the fastest, easiest route to achieve their goals, and while this is not a problem in itself, it becomes one when it leads to disrespect for others' experience.

Perhaps some sort of further incentive system to run vets instead might help, but I think it would need to be very beefy in order to encourage running vets over normals, as they just take so much longer and you are far more likely to die.

The best option remains finding a good guild with others who share your preferred playstyle, but that can be a challenge in itself...

Billium813 · November 2023

I think nerfing rewards is the best path forward, but I think that needs to be dependent on the player's level.

Either high level players need to be restricted from Normal dungeons, or there needs to be diminishing returns on rewards. For instance, a high level player should not be able to complete a daily pledge on Normal and RND should diminish rewards depending on the level.

Also, Veteran needs increased rewards. 1 Undaunted Key for Veteran and 2 for Hard mode does not capture the player's time investment or difficulty in completing the content. To say NOTHING about the disparity between non-DLC and DLC dungeons...

YffresTrill · November 2023

Billium813 wrote: »

For instance, a high level player should not be able to complete a daily pledge on Normal and RND should diminish rewards depending on the level.

I don't think this is a good idea. Some players have a really low skill cap due to health problems and such; they should not be punished for just gaining CP by playing the game normally.

Billium813 · November 2023

ComradeBiscuit wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

For instance, a high level player should not be able to complete a daily pledge on Normal and RND should diminish rewards depending on the level.

I don't think this is a good idea. Some players have a really low skill cap due to health problems and such; they should not be punished for just gaining CP by playing the game normally.

If you are over CP 1000 and you can't complete a vet non-HM dungeon, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you should step out of your comfort box and challenge yourself. What you call "punished", I call incentivized for growing and learning.

Xandreia_ · November 2023

Honestly. you're gonna hate my reply lol.

At this point in the game, mostly everyone who queues for pledges has ran the dungeon 834923461936419 times, either farming gear or just pledges alone. its only natural they would skip trash.

The new group finder is there for a reason, put the title as *vet pledges* and the description as *no skips*, if they skip kick them.

No one is under any obligation when using dungeon finder to wait on someone doing a quest. i would personally wait if told at the start. most of the time people don't say they are doing the quest then gets moody when no one waits.

Quite honestly, if people want to take their time through dungeons, make a discord/guild with people who want to do the same, if you don't like to use voice chat, then don't.

if people don't want to do that then they will either just have to cope with dungeon finder as is or find a way to solo everything

Dagoth_Rac · November 2023

There is also a bit of an issue with ESO's loose class roles. No class or race is any particular role. You can be a DPS or a tank or a healer or some jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none. ESO's flexibility in that regard is nice, but makes it a lot easier to get clears despite meh players, and a lot harder to filter based on role. The difference between a fake healer and an inexperienced but trying their best healer is not always obvious.

This would probably be a good use of AI! Instead of having the developers spend tons of time trying to come up with the parameters of a "real tank" and a "real healer" and a "real DPS", just feed the AI a bunch of ESO Logs of good runs, and let the AI figure it out!

Humans are pretty good at just eyeballing something and intuitively "knowing" that it meets our needs, but often really bad at understanding all the myriad data points that go into that understanding. AI is very bad at quick "gut feeling" analysis, but very good at cranking through lots of underlying data that can be confusing or overwhelming for a human. If you can feed it data that humans have already classified, it can do a good job of figuring out the commonalities at a much deeper, more mathematical level.

A lot of suggestions I hear about needing a taunt or needing a clear with tank role selected, etc., are a bit too easy to game. And people will game it to get their rewards faster and easier, even if it aggravates other people. But AI's ability to look at hundreds or thousands of data points, rather than the small handful of data points that a human can wrap their head around and manually code for, will make it a lot harder to game the system.

IZZEFlameLash · November 2023

Billium813 wrote: »

I think nerfing rewards is the best path forward, but I think that needs to be dependent on the player's level.

Either high level players need to be restricted from Normal dungeons, or there needs to be diminishing returns on rewards. For instance, a high level player should not be able to complete a daily pledge on Normal and RND should diminish rewards depending on the level.

Also, Veteran needs increased rewards. 1 Undaunted Key for Veteran and 2 for Hard mode does not capture the player's time investment or difficulty in completing the content. To say NOTHING about the disparity between non-DLC and DLC dungeons...

Sorry, but no. Rewards are fine as is. Rewards are not what is stopping people from doing vet dungeons using dungeon finder. Vet dungeons, in particular, DLC ones, require you to be grouped with people that are set up properly or else, you are in for a miserable time.

Have you noticed the staggering amount of people not knowing to bash-interrupt boss' interruptable mechanics that will otherwise kill a player when you try random dungeon finder? I don't want to deal with that. At least on normal, I get to carry them despite not being the bis trial dps. Imagine that in vet environment. You cannot single handedly carry unless it is an easy base game dungeon. And on vet, there are mechanics to contend with and I do NOT trust random groupmates to know how to deal with them. The day ZOS force me to do vet and make me deal with that stress because of my CP level is the day I will completely quit with no remorse.

YffresTrill · November 2023

Billium813 wrote: »

If you are over CP 1000 and you can't complete a vet non-HM dungeon, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you should step out of your comfort box and challenge yourself. What you call "punished", I call incentivized for growing and learning.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was referring to myself, but I suppose that is irrelevant.

Not everyone plays to "step out of their comfort zone" or "challenge themselves." This is a game, not a university course.

valenwood_vegan · November 2023

Billium813 wrote: »

If you are over CP 1000 and you can't complete a vet non-HM dungeon, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you should step out of your comfort box and challenge yourself. What you call "punished", I call incentivized for growing and learning.

It's fortunately not up to players to tell other players how they should be playing the game. I was over 1000 cp before I ever set foot in a vet dungeon. Because I initially came to eso to enjoy the quests and lore, and only later got sucked into the MMO aspects of it. CP is not much of an indicator of someone's actual combat skill level.

I'm not in favor of restricting players from choosing the difficulty level at which they want to engage with content, but if ZoS were to choose this route, I would hope it would be based on something more than CP alone. Like perhaps, whether a player has actually previously competed a pledge or a RND for said dungeon(s) on normal.

EDIT to add: Also worth repeating what was said in the post above mine - that not everyone is here to challenge themselves and improve at a pace deemed acceptable by another player. This is a video game. Although I have improved and challenged myself while playing, this was done at my pace and as my choice. I have a challenging job and I don't play video games to come home and simulate that experience all over again. It's great that eso offers challenges for players who want them, and I hope they continue to add more of those, but there's also nothing wrong with people just wanting to play at their own pace for their own entertainment.

Wing · November 2023

I personally only run dungeons using the dungeon finder below level 50, and normal only.

then its fun,
you dont get DLC dungeons, often there are at least 1-2 noobs also being chill and doing the quest.

once i hit 50 i dont use the dungeon finder anymore, DLC dungeons often feel 10x as long and not worth it, difficulty ramps up, still little to no rewards. just noise, no fun.

if something is not fun, why even bother?

vet dungeon and dungeon DLC to me always felt like it was designed for the elite 5% to make money off everyone else, sell carries, sell colors, sell motifs, sell monster sets, whatever.

for the 95% vet DLC dungeons especially on normal offer nothing outside of the experience, and the ESO DLC dungeon experience is not fun or interesting and I would not want to engage in it if it were free

even if you paid me 1000 crowns for completing it once

no

its not fun

as a baseline "gameplay experience"

there are no "5 seconds of fun" to be found, its just a chore for loot.

and that could sum up most of ESO's problems:

"a chore for loot"

Luckylancer · November 2023

When I que for normals I want it done ASAP. I que as fake tank with a taunt. I taunt the boss and kill it myself. I skip packs.

VETS:
When I que as healer: fake tank, fake DDs. Leave party
When I que as DD: after an eternity of waiting ................................................................................................................................................................................................................fake tank dies. I leave the party (I dont want healer, they are not good anyways). Also I deal more damage than other DD.
When I que as tank: fake DDs cant kill anything. I got bored. Leave.

There is almost no incentive to que vet. Game do not enforce minimum limits to Vet que'ers so all of them are terrible. Vet ques are stillborns. They born dead.

I want an incentive and standarts to veteran que so I and others like me can use it.

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Sorry, but no. Rewards are fine as is. Rewards are not what is stopping people from doing vet dungeons using dungeon finder. Vet dungeons, in particular, DLC ones, require you to be grouped with people that are set up properly or else, you are in for a miserable time.

Sorry, yes. Do you know what rewards are? Monster masks that need to be dropped just 3 times in order to collect them all and purple jewelery. Also motif pages just worth it for newer dungeons. So unless you want to save a little money, there is no incentive to clear a vet dungeon 4th time.

Actually it is not just about extra rewards. In actuality you get less rewards from veteran because you can complete normal mod faster thus you get more final boss drops with normal mode farming. Veteran is THAT disincentivised. Veteran mode should drop more set pieces to just even out hourly drop numbers.

Caligamy_ESO · November 2023

kojou wrote: »

I agree that the both the reward from doing a Random Veteran dungeon should be different than the reward from a Random Normal and that the final boss for a DLC dungeon should drop more than the final boss from a base game dungeon.

The problem is that neither the Random Veteran Dungeon queue nor DLC dungeons respect your time and reward you appropriately. You essentially get the same reward whether you run Fungal Grotto 1 on normal, or Earthen Root Enclave on veteran which are obviously two completely different experiences.

Adding to that, if you run a Random Normal Dungeon then running a Random Veteran Dungeon gives half the reward, so there is literally no motivation to run a Random Veteran Dungeon from a reward perspective. If they would at least give a full reward for both then there would be a reason to do both.

If it were up to me, I would give ~200k Experience and 10 Transmute crystals for running a random normal, and 100k Experience and 20 Transmute crystals for running a random veteran dungeon, and I would make the final boss of all the DLC dungeons always drop 10 Transmute crystals on Veteran and 5 Transmute Crystals on normal to help with people who abandon the group as soon as they see it is a longer DLC dungeon they don't want to waste time in.

This I feel could perhaps help a little bit, I do especially like the idea of having the bosses drop transmutes, perhaps they could just make it a geode at the final vet boss so there's that *chance* for 50 transmutes. Something or anything would be nice, ya know?

chessalavakia_ESO · November 2023

Personally, I think it would be a better approach to shift transmute gains to mobs from completion.

Essentially, each time you looted a dungeon mob when using the group finder you would have a chance to gain a transmute. (You would have a significantly higher chance if you queue for random than specific dungeons)

Getting a transmute would put a debuff on you to block further transmute drops until enough time passes to justify a further drop.

Thus, if you are running a dungeon that takes more time, you will get more transmutes than running a dungeon that takes less time.

You could then apply further buffs or debuffs to the drop chance/drop cooldown based on the content, group size, and the player's behavior.

RandomUser123 · November 2023

The key currency...oof.
I dislike the key system. Gambling keys to get monster shoulders is soul stealing.
Incentives need a bump, but I'm just here to complain and don't have a constructive solution to propose.

ZOS_Icy · December 2023

Greetings,

This thread has been moved to the Dungeons, Trials & Arenas section, as it is better suited there.

Thank you for your understanding.