U50 PTS: Feedback for new Weekly Tome Challenges

code65536 · April 27

First, we have a brand new record for the lowest number of points that a challenge could grant: 250 points. Previous record was 350 points, so this didn't just beat the old record, but destroyed it.

I've confirmed on PTS that, just like the endeavor, this only works with manual picking, not with force-lock. So, thanks for punishing everyone who leveled up their legerdemain! And 30?! That's a lot and coupled with having to manually pick, this is another one that just feels way too grindy.

[Screenshot shows a doubled challenge] Here's one to make the lockpicking one above seem even more ridiculous in comparison: You can open 5 chests with lockpicking--or with force lock! And you'll get 375 points instead of 450 points. So, 83% fewer locks to defeat for 17% fewer points. Plus the option to defeat locks the easy way. This treasure chest challenge is fine. Very desirable, even. The lockpicking one above is just plain horrible in comparison.

[Screenshot shows a doubled challenge] Here's another bad one, 525 points for 15 safeboxes. These are much more rare than treasure chests, and yet we need 3x as many to fully complete the challenge?! You get 16% more points than treasure chests... even though you need to open 3x more things that are more rare than treasure chests and that carry more risk than treasure chests. These should be 3x1, not 3x5!

You need to complete 12 dynamic encounters for this. Incursions are probably the closest thing to compare this to, and incursions are 6x1, not 4x3. And incursions are more readily available, as they are in every major zone and there's always one that's active. And DEs are more time-consuming. So, let's summarize: more time-consuming, less readily available, and you need to do twice as many? WTF?

[Screenshot shows a doubled challenge] And another point in the "dynamic encounters need too many" column, if you compare against incursions, not only do you need half the number as dynamic encounters, but you have the option to progress twice as fast if you do Glenumbra Dolmens.

When we had guild dailies in the endeavors system, it was complete 1 for a daily. So even if you were to do a guild daily endeavor for every day of the week, it'd still be 7. Here, we need 18. This means someone dutifully doing the full MG/FG/UD daily set for 6 out of 7 days a week. In case you're wondering why people say that the new tome challenges are way more annoying and grindy than the endeavors that they replaced, here's an exhibit for you:

Ah, yes, the tooltip for the previous guild dailies did say that you get bonus credit for TG dailies. But how does that stack up against a challenge for actual TG dailies? See, this one for heists is way, way better and goes to show just how out of whack the guild dailies one is.

[Screenshot shows a doubled challenge] This is effectively pickpocket 75 items, which is just gross. Compare this with Blade of Woe, which is 6x5. Pickpocketing is more time-consuming, since you need to wait for that "green" chance, and it requires leveling a skill line if you want to succeed. Also, it would be nice for there to be a way to abandon challenges. You cannot reroll a challenge after claiming some of the points from it, but if you've pickpocketed 40 times and decided that you've don't more pickpocketing than you care to do, then that challenge will remain, taking up one of the limited challenge slots.

[Screenshot shows a doubled challenge] 20 quests of a specific type for a weekly. Grindy. Excessive. Etc. Why are these so much worse than the Heists?

And for people interested in how quickly reroll costs ramp up...

Editorial note: Some of these challenges were doubled. This doubling happens at the end of the season, when the bonus pages have been unlocked, so the doubling makes sense in that context. There was commentary surrounding the doubling that was made in ignorance of this context, and that commentary has been edited out, and screenshots that show doubled figures are marked as such. The current comments in this post are based on non-doubled amounts.

ninibini · April 27

I guess with these grindy changes, those tasks are going to become something I'm going to ignore.

Soarora · April 27

I’m already not having a great time doing surveys for what feels like 2 hours straight on live… some of these are so much worse.

LadyHermione · April 27

I agree with being able to abandon/delete partially claimed challenges! This is just disgusting. Challenges was supposed to be less time consuming/easier than Endeavors (less FOMO they said), but it's the complete opposite. The current ones on live are already annoying and not that easy to get done with real life, but mostly doable with the rerolls. If all these PTS ones goes on live, you practically have to live in the game to complete them for much less rewards. Gross. Which means I just won't do them anymore.

ESO_player123 · April 27

Looks like a lot of reroll candidates here. And if the gold cost ramps up so quickly, they will also become ignore candidates.

Edit : The main problem I see here is that many of these can be activities that people do rather often but may be not on this scale. So, the challenges will become partially completed. After that players will have two choices:
- claim points and potentially be stuck with this challenge till the end of the season (and may be running out of spots for new weekly challenges)
- do not claim the points and be stuck with the prompt to claim them in the middle of the screen.

Either way, not cool.

skinnycheeks · April 27

What a grind fest...Why not try and make things fun instead of just unnecessarily grindy? Doing these activities once is fine but the "claim 8" stuff or even some of the "claim 4" are terribly monotonous. This system would be so much better if we had like 5x the amount of listings but they were all claim once. Send me around doing lots of different stuff. Don't make me pickpocket 150 times lol. 15 would be fun. 150 I'm not touching and therefore I won't do the 15. Same with lockpicking and really most of them to be honest...

Mattymoo92 · April 27

Cmon Zos, we want less unnecessary grind not more… being asked to do 24 “dynamic” events makes it feel forced and not dynamic and fun at all

Freelancer_ESO · April 27

I believe on the PTS currently you have a chance to get "lucky" and get to earn more points by doing a task twice as many times.

Needless to say, as a fair number of people are driven to complete the tasks in front of them instead of feeling like getting "lucky" and being able to get more points if you want it feels like you are getting stuck with more work.

Looks like I'm mistaken

Alaztor91 · April 27

Double the chores double the free re-rolls, right? It's only fair when you can potentially get something like ''Pickpocket 150 times'' or ''Loot 30 Safeboxes'', seriously wtf is this lol.

code65536 · April 27

Ah, yes, the double challenges are indeed intended. There was a note about this during PTS 1, but because it requires unlocking the bonus pages, it wasn't really testable until PTS 3 when they unlocked the bonus page for the rollover test. And I just completely forgot reading that note during PTS 1.

With the next Weekly reset after reaching this, your new Weekly Challenges can be repeated twice as many times.

Okay, so with that context, the double challenges are totally fine since they're limited to the end of the season.

But even if we halve all the doubles and look at the base amount, some of them are still really grindy and requires significant effort and time and frankly feel like jobs.

30 lockpicks (the screenshot was not doubled) is still a lot. And even when the 150 pickpockets is halved to 75, that's still a crazy high number. Dynamic Encounters, which are less accessible require 12 (the doubled figure was 24) even though more readily accessible incursions need only 6 (12 was a doubled challenge).

Edit: I've also updated the original post to correctly note the doubling mechanism.

tomofhyrule · April 27

Oof...

I like the Challenges system since it gives me something to do, but I really think Endeavors were better. We got new tasks each day (so more variety over the week of tasks) and there were way more things in the pool.

But this? This has grind plastered all over it. I don't play this game to have a second job.

This just makes me more and more sure that the whole "we're trying to reduce FOMO" that we got in the reveal stream was code for "we'd like to reduce FOMO, but we're being told from above to increase it instead so that's what we're gonna do."

RicAlmighty · April 28

The "Challenges" portion of Tamriel Tomes is an abject failure. It smacks of a game designer that has no clue how players actually interact and engage with the game. These are lowest common denominator chore lists meant to waste players' time. There is nothing interesting or compelling here and the value proposition of time versus reward is virtually non-existent.

The entire Tome Points system needs to be completely revamped to reward players for "playing the game." Whether that is through XP earned, activities completed, or some other metric that actually reflects how people actually engage with the game, players should be rewarded for playing the game the way they want to play, not with a grindy chore list that takes them away from the things they'd rather be doing.

What difference does it make to Zos if a player is running quests or dungeons versus being compelled to track down and open 30 Safeboxes? Forcing a player to do something they don't want to do by dangling a reward over their head is a good way to lose player engagement. A player should earn Tome Points simply by playing the game the way that they choose to, and engaging with the content that they find interesting and fun.

This is not the way forward, and personally, while I will continue to play the game, I will not be spending a single cent on it until this progression system is reimagined and corrected to be something that is not an uninspired and lazy chore list.

AaronMB · April 28

This is awful, ZOS - awful! Seriously... Are the people coming up with these challenges even playing the game? Me thinks, not. Holy moly this is bad.
edit to add: this is NOT fun, NOT meaningfully engaging, and DOES NOT RESPECT our time. These are meaningless chores. As mentioned above, open up the variety to reward us for playing the game, not grinding boring activities so we don't 'miss out' on the Tomes. This is grindy FOMO.

code65536 · April 28

RicAlmighty wrote: »

players should be rewarded for playing the game the way they want to play, not with a grindy chore list that takes them away from the things they'd rather be doing.

Absolutely.

Something that I really hate is the game telling me what to do. I run dungeons and trials on a regular basis, but even after a number of rerolls I didn't get a trial one this week and instead got ones for harvesting resources. Sure, I'll harvest resources if I run across them doing other stuff, but I have zero interest in going out of my way and taking time away from other things that I'd rather do to harvest resources. It's insulting.

I especially hate tasks that are overly specific. Why is it "harvest logs" instead of "harvest resources"? First, by having 5 different harvest tasks, one for each of the resources, it makes it almost impossible to avoid some sort of harvest chore when rerolling. Second, what is the point of this resource-type restriction anyway, aside from frustrating the player? Maybe I'm doing something in Solstice, which has abundant runestones, but I have harvest logs instead of harvest runestones, so all those runestones that I'm getting are not counting for anything. Just completely get rid of the specific resources and replace it with just a single challenge for harvest resources in general.

Why is there a challenge for killing Bogdan or Lord Warden, when there is already a challenge for general group dungeons? Making it highly specific just frustrates players because you're taking choice away from them. Even if you want to funnel players into a smaller subset of dungeons to make grouping easier, why not use the existing pledge system instead? You should completely eliminate the "complete this specific dungeon" challenges and either not replace them (since there is a generic dungeon challenge) or replace them with a "complete pledge" challenge. (And in case anyone wants to say, "But what about the sub-45 players who can't do pledges?", you can't queue for a tier-2 dungeon [for Bogdan] or ICP [for Lord Warden] until level 45 anyway.)

And why do we have a "kill these specific world bosses" challenge instead of a generic "kill world bosses" challenge? Why are you telling someone who is trying to complete a zone and do the world boss dailies in that zone that "no, no, these aren't the world bosses you should be doing". Are you trying to annoy players?

The above are all concerns from Live. As for PTS (since this is the PTS forum), I do like some of the more generic ones that have been added, like complete quests or craft items.

But then there are some overly specific ones. Like complete guild quests (why force people to do a specific quest type when there's a new generic quest challenge? and why so many?) Or manual lockpicking (hey, we worked hard for that force lock chance). Or pickpocketing.

Alright, I get it, there's a theme here: you're releasing new Thieves Guild content so you want to encourage people to do that. That's fine. But, um, isn't that what seasonal challenges are for? Things that are "relevant for this moment" should be in the seasonal category and shouldn't be in weeklies. What if someone wants to engage in the new TG content but ends up getting trials and resource harvesting instead?

PoveusRonin · April 28

I think there should be some sort of check mark that we can use to exclude certain categories from our tome challenges. I don't do Trials or PvP so it would be nice if I could not get a complete a trial challenge reroll it to capture a keep, reroll again and poof back to a trial.

It just frustrates and I will not be using gold for rerolls. I'll just go play another game instead if I cannot have challenges that I would do.

Maitsukas · April 28

If the challenges can be done twice as many times, then some need to be revised as they are a hassle to grind for. Mainly the "Gather 15 XYZ Resource Nodes".

twisttop138 · April 28

Code, you are right man.

code65536 wrote: »

RicAlmighty wrote: »

players should be rewarded for playing the game the way they want to play, not with a grindy chore list that takes them away from the things they'd rather be doing.

Absolutely.

Something that I really hate is the game telling me what to do. I run dungeons and trials on a regular basis, but even after a number of rerolls I didn't get a trial one this week and instead got ones for harvesting resources. Sure, I'll harvest resources if I run across them doing other stuff, but I have zero interest in going out of my way and taking time away from other things that I'd rather do to harvest resources. It's insulting.

I especially hate tasks that are overly specific. Why is it "harvest logs" instead of "harvest resources"? First, by having 5 different harvest tasks, one for each of the resources, it makes it almost impossible to avoid some sort of harvest chore when rerolling. Second, what is the point of this resource-type restriction anyway, aside from frustrating the player? Maybe I'm doing something in Solstice, which has abundant runestones, but I have harvest logs instead of harvest runestones, so all those runestones that I'm getting are not counting for anything. Just completely get rid of the specific resources and replace it with just a single challenge for harvest resources in general.

Why is there a challenge for killing Bogdan or Lord Warden, when there is already a challenge for general group dungeons? Making it highly specific just frustrates players because you're taking choice away from them. Even if you want to funnel players into a smaller subset of dungeons to make grouping easier, why not use the existing pledge system instead? You should completely eliminate the "complete this specific dungeon" challenges and either not replace them (since there is a generic dungeon challenge) or replace them with a "complete pledge" challenge. (And in case anyone wants to say, "But what about the sub-45 players who can't do pledges?", you can't queue for a tier-2 dungeon [for Bogdan] or ICP [for Lord Warden] until level 45 anyway.)

And why do we have a "kill these specific world bosses" challenge instead of a generic "kill world bosses" challenge? Why are you telling someone who is trying to complete a zone and do the world boss dailies in that zone that "no, no, these aren't the world bosses you should be doing". Are you trying to annoy players?

The above are all concerns from Live. As for PTS (since this is the PTS forum), I do like some of the more generic ones that have been added, like complete quests or craft items.

But then there are some overly specific ones. Like complete guild quests (why force people to do a specific quest type when there's a new generic quest challenge? and why so many?) Or manual lockpicking (hey, we worked hard for that force lock chance). Or pickpocketing.

Alright, I get it, there's a theme here: you're releasing new Thieves Guild content so you want to encourage people to do that. That's fine. But, um, isn't that what seasonal challenges are for? Things that are "relevant for this moment" should be in the seasonal category and shouldn't be in weeklies. What if someone wants to engage in the new TG content but ends up getting trials and resource harvesting instead?

They probably rolled some endeavor challenges over and then realized it just wasn't enough. Also I think they will use these challenges to direct players to things they want to show good engagement on.

The system is grindy and I agree with everything you said but I wonder. Did anyone actually think it would be different? Did anyone believe them when they said less fomo or like endeavors but easier. A battle pass is to have us continue to play already produced content and pay for the pleasure. It seems like the least they could do is make it less grindy, but why. Sure some people say they won't engage with it, but it sure feels like tons of people are. You go to see knight commander panthius, right now or 2am, there's a crowd. The accursed nursery, hell even random side bosses in a public dungeon in coldharbor. It's doing what they want it to do. People are fearing missing out on rewards and are grinding away. Sustainable? Maybe.

kevkj · April 28

The issue with the highly specific challenges is that they are the only way to accumulate tome points. ESO is different from most other games that have a season pass like system in that it's a MMO that exists outside of closed, instanced activity lobbies.

In most other games, you accrue points simply by getting to the end screen after hitting the "Play" button. They also have challenges, but these only serve as a boost. Often it is literally impossible for a player who has played at least one match/round/etc to have not gone up at least one level in the pass. In ESO on the other hand, it's highly possible for players who have played several hours since the launch of Season 0 to still be stuck on the first page.

Much like how there's a low value repeatable login point reward, every season should also have a persistent repeatable reward for generic things like complete dungeon, complete BG, complete trial, complete IA arc, defeat x players, harvest y resources, loot z chests, capture cyro/ic flag, place w furnishings. You could even still cap these if your metrics gods demand you show evidence that the season pass is diversifying player activities as long as it's a relatively high number like 100 dungeons per season for example. To please the metrics gods, you could also lower the point reward for each completion down from their weekly challenge version.

This way, players will accumulate points over the season just playing 'relatively' naturally (I have no solution for the RP-ers) and will still participate in challenges to hit specific point thresholds to get their desired shiny.

As an aside, even from a business standpoint the grindiness seems counterproductive. Other games want pass progression to be frictionless so that they can tell you "You've unlocked GIGA BADASS MOUNT in the pass, but you need Premium to claim it". In ESO you get faced with a wall of highly specific and potentially nauseating challenges, so you immediately write off any thought of making sure you reach the last page to unlock the capstone shiny.

DoofusMax · April 28

I'll have to agree that some of this just looks like grind for the sake of grind. Unless these have been made repeatable, the 8 Guild Finder quests is 48 to get rid of it and there are only two per day to be had (one in Hew's Bane and one in Daggerfall after the Codex Caper). Without being made repeatable, that's 24 daily sessions to complete. Ouch. (EDIT: assumption is that these are Spencer Rye's Reacquisition Board quests).