People do them for fun.
Powercreep is bad enough without adding to the problem.
There are achievements and bragging rights by doing them.

Hate to break it to you, but there's kinda no reason to play video games other than just to play it.

I also feel like most trials have at least 1 set that people want, so in that regard I think we are already having it quite good.

Many, like me, have little or no interest in doing trials and dungeons. For me mainly, because of toxic elitist players, who take away the fun of it.

However I do see your point. Maybe some cool housing-things? Pets? Outfits?

Better idea is to make sure content is fun and enjoyable. Locking things behind any content simply breaks the 'play how you want' concept that ESO claims.

Allowing those who enjoy a particular content to sell their spoils to those who do not, encourages those who enjoy the content to do it regularly while allowing those who hate that particular content to focus on the content they do enjoy.

U35 pretty much killed the PvE endgame. Vengeance is going to kill PvP. Two team BG's killed BG's.

Seems all that's really left is casual overland questing.

Lucasl402 wrote: »

U35 pretty much killed the PvE endgame. Vengeance is going to kill PvP. Two team BG's killed BG's.

Seems all that's really left is casual overland questing.

Unless one's standards are very low, then Cyrodiil has been dead a long time, there is nothing meaningful left for Vengeance to kill.

And BGs were never even really alive, hence even years ago when people wanted separate queues for this or that, the devs were reluctant to split the BG playerbase further because the BG playerbase was already small (there is a reason PvP games, sports, etc don't go with three teams, it is fundamentally flawed, so produces absolute trash PvP).

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Lucasl402 wrote: »

U35 pretty much killed the PvE endgame.

U35 lowered healing and damage output and people claim it killed PvE endgame.
Healing and damage output is currently at an all time high.

U35 did in fact kill end game PvE for the most part. NEFAS did a great video on it.

Subclassing has mixed things up a bit, but subclassing didn't introduce anything new to the game. It just made it so we can mix and match different class skill lines.

A suggestion I’ve heard occasionally is giving every trial a low chance polymorph like Asylum Sanctorium has. This both introduces farm runs for a new reason as well as gives new earnable rewards. As for dungeons, our replayability aside from enjoyment are motifs (no one likes that motifs take months to release btw zos…), masks, and pledges. I will continue to beg for challenger rewards, though, and think they should be even added retrospectively to get more people to do challengers.

no thanks.

the Dwarven Construct Repair Parts from Halls of Fabrication do not motivate me to run the trial even though i do want to be able to craft the dwarven target dummies

Endgame is a fun challenge. I never thought I'd do endgame, but once you start learning how ESO skills work and sets work, it's fun and musical.

There's the camaraderie, too. Pre u35, there were so many general trials guilds; you could hop in any day of the week and just run and play with others. It was TEAM PLAY and it was exciting! Yeah!

Then, as you practiced, you'd try harder modes. Yes, a person needs to be able to heal so much to get their team through Falgraven HM and that's exciting. It's something you build towards and achieve.

The recent trial, the most frequent complaint I've heard is that there are too many add pulls between these incredible boss fights. I hear the same thing about IA. The boss fights are fun. They're a team challenge. The add pulls add flavor and are needed, but they're not the meat of it.

ESO has a fun combat system; unfortunately, its UI doesn't explain it or reveal it. This makes it hard on new players. The crashing of trial guilds and groups after u35 also makes it difficult. Despite all of the teaching videos out there, there's so, so fewer places to just "drop in and go." There are fewer places to learn, and asking the few players remaining TO teach is...well. That's hard on everyone. It's incredibly hard.

But, why run trials anyway?

Trials are group content; it's about gaming together and as you get to harder difficulties, seeing how far you CAN go. If that's your thing, it's incredibly fun.

Just like housing mains like to see how far they can push a design, or develop one. Different interests, and MMOs are Big Tent Games. It's why they survive, and people play them consistently instead of tossing them after a few days.

One of the biggest things ESO could do to even things out would be to hire a usability expert, to make just subtle adjustments to the UI to make the game mechanics more apparent, yet not in-your-face. A trained usability expert can do that. 1000%. The other is to realize how much players love this game, and to listen more often. People get upset BECAUSE they love the game.

What made me move away from endgame PvE were mainly 2 things:

* The "copy + paste" design
Ever since Elsweyr every trial more or less feels the same (with exception of the mini trials which honestly grew on me the last few years). 3 bosses, 3 hard modes but with a different color scheme doesn't create any hype for me, especially when ZOS keeps recycling mechanics from older content (like why does every fight need a "backyard" mechanic?). I thought ZOS went in somewhat the right direction with lucent citadel with the runback where you've to juggle the artifact within your team, but haven't seen anything interesting mechanic wise since then.

Same goes for the DLC dungeons where aside from maybe the last boss, the rest of the dungeon is not that interesting.

* Trifectas aren't encouraging design
I've nothing against the concept that endgame content should be challenging, but I vomit on the design of Trifectas as the way of doing it. Spending (wasting) 30-40 minutes of your time just for someone to have a small slip up, hence throwing the achievement, is nothing but discouraging and from my personal experience it's what causes prog groups to disband eventually. I can only speak for myself but I loath on games or design choices that doesn't value/respect my time. It's ok for mmos/arpgs etc to have time sinks, which I'm not against as long as I don't feel like it only exist to waste my time or "isn't worth the trouble".

Trifectas for me falls into the category of this, and I personally would see zos move away from trifectas and instead add another difficulty tier (where just completing it gives you the best rewards), kinda similar to how WoW does it with its mythical tiers.

Idk man. I get the complaint. I really do. I wish there were cool paintings and other stuff that was bound for housing beyond a bust. Also cool stuff that's unbound for folks that like to sell stuff. More incentive. For myself, I love nothing more then getting together with my friends for 2 hours of laughs, fun and trials. I raid most weeknights. Some nights it's vet training trials for the social guild. We have kids and grandmas and in-between learning mechs and having fun. A couple nights it's my regular raid team (now on hiatus until the next trial is announced, which may be never) and a prog night. I do it for the love of the game. Im mostly sticker booked so more cool rewards would be nice, especially for us mid tier raiders who may not be at the level of vSE hm trifecta to get the ram ya know. The whole game, really, could use a reward shake up but I don't think it'll happen.