merevie wrote: »

Came home to find the Night Market empty and 1 group in group finder that promptly wiped and disbanded. It's Day 1 -half the player base should be in there?

Very disappointed as I thought on the first day at least there would be groups.

Only empty instances.

Going back to Windrose until you people fix whatever reason the entire player base decided it wasn't worth doing. Once again the ESO hype team is full of hot air and content is rubbish. Utterly sick of getting let down over and over again by ESO.

*And yes, slot Pale Order and you can spend millions of hours of soloing content without dying. But why? There are more fun games to play.

The timing with D4 and a new POE league couldn't be better far as I'm concerned. It's baffling that they would implement group content in this way, and it's not so much the difficulty, moreover the fact that in 2026 they still haven't added tools to properly complete group content. Almost no one will be playing this content in a month. I can guarantee.

decaffeinated wrote: »

The biggest issue seems to be grouping is REQUIRED yet quests can't be shared, and with everyone on different quests coordination is hard. The Skittering is much harder (interestingly The Parch is easy).

Wait! Where have I read this before? Let me think, let me think....... PTS feedback thread? Is it possible?
Sample of the many posts on this topic below.
And? Was this issue around sharing quests fixed? eeeeeeeeeeeeeee nope!

Now that I finally had the chance to try the Skirmish in the Skittering Precinct, I return with another bit of feedback: I'm not sure if we just happened to be an ineffective group, but it really just felt impossible to do.

We had a group of 12, but the last phase with the boss has so many overlapping mechanics - the spiders slow you down, the casters spawn quite far away and deal significant damage, on top of the actual boss which someone has to manage. Roksa can wander by at any moment and numerous times it happened that someone accidentally backed into its aggro range and the two bosses wiped us. Maybe we just had an exceptionally bad group composition, but we did not manage to complete the boss phase, and the group dispersed out of frustration.

I'm sure it is doable with a well-managed group, but for an activity required for one of the dailies, it was just too much for me and many others.

@Akskad you goat, made me irl lol 🤣

I don't play NM, nor plan to it, but I'll type a feedback as an average and mostly solo ESO player who is heavy into lore and RP.

It's totally fine that content can't be for everybody. There are many parts of ESO which I never played for a second:
- Writhing Wall event
- card game
- Battlegrounds
- Dragonstar Arena
- Vateshran Hollows
- Blackrose Prison (technically played only once for ~10 min, and never again)
- 80+% veteran DLC group dungeons
- heck, I didn't even play at least 3 DLC group dungeon on normal difficulty
- I played several times, and never finished any veteran non-Craglorn trials (I play normal one)
- I only "played" IC to pick skyshards

I have multiply personal issues with NM, but still, I think it's fine as there are obviously players who enjoy it.
I actually like that my favourite farming spots are now totally empty so I can farm in peace.

1) I don't know which faction is worse lore (?) wise. Yes, yes, it's in a Daedric realm, so it should. Still, no thank you from me.
2) I read eso-hub several times, I'm still confused about event loop, nor don't get it what's about.
3) ...But I was excited for possible rewards which includes overland, dungeon and trial curated gear drops + you can buy them. However, my excitement didn't last long as there are only 9 sets (3+3+3). Even if it's on weekly rotation, it's a no no.
I thought the whole pool of gear would be in.
I don't care about new mythic, and it will be available after event's over anyway. Monster sets are laughable.
Overall, rewards are one big meh.
4) I actually watched streams: hyperioxes and skinnycheeks one.
Skinnycheeks played with ninjapulls on PC EU, and they have a trouble to fill 12 players. He even called players in on his stream.
I admit he managed to "sell" me event. It was some "puzzle" where you have to sneak or jump above lightning wall.
Jumping in this game is one of the worst aspects. He failed for 5+ min, and was dead last to manage to pass it.
People commented in chat how they would never pass it. I'm sure I won't either as every time I have to jump in game, I'm super stressed how clunky is, and I fail most of the time.
5) Playing video games is not my job, I play to have a fun. I'm fine with hard but less fun content if rewards are proper.

TL; DR
I ignore event as is not targeted for me, and it's fine as there is plenty of other content I enjoy.
It's also fine that hard core / end game players, streamers, and similar have something new to play.

The puzzle respawn timer is driving me crazy, how are we supposed to even figure this out if we have to wait 15 min between less than 30 sec of actual puzzle....

The coffer fragments for the achievements should be a guaranteed drop. I almost completed two fragment achievements but still need the coffer fragment. What am I doing if I want to play with my friends and go to the dungeons but one of us won‘t get the coffer fragment?
You want us to group up but we may not choose our friends as group members because of the bad RNG of the fragment drops from simple quest reward coffers?

Uninstalled and cancelled my subscription. Night Market was the final nail. Do yourselves a favor and do you instead of feeding the smirks of all ZOS developers enjoying every second while we suffer with the garbage content they expect us to be a part of. Remember the most important thing, we the people hold the real power, down your tools and instead watch them suffer.

So here's what it is. I did multiple different types of playing.

Solo. Lol, no. Can I do it? Yes. Do I wanna torture myself? No. But Zos was very very very clear that this would be very very tough to solo. They did tiptoe around flat out saying this is for groups and that was a disservice.

Joined random guild group saying x up for NM. It was 6 people and no one had a damn clue what to do, where to go, what this or that meant. How to do the mini games. Burn the spiders with the flame thrower carnival game, but I didn't have a quest and it's on a timer. Then you gotta burn nests. No clue. No one had any clue, same with the void things in the patch or whatever. No clue. But no longer difficult. Died a few times and no soul gem usage is STUPID.

Then the main event. I'm leading groups for my casual social guild tonight and tomorrow. I wanted to get the lay of the land. I went in with my optimized raid team. And we did optimize. The roster had a group comp with what subclasses and gear to bring with boss and trash setups if we wanted. (I didn't) Then we split down the middle. 6 and 6 and took different zones. I'm gonna tell you. This is where the night market shines. It was such a blast running around with my friends. Such a good time. We encountered some bugged bosses. Specifically the hunt phase from...the warewolf dungeon. Sorry it's 630am lol. We had a great time though and I look forward to leading my casual friends into the fray tonight and tomorrow.

That said. I understand the complaint. It's not just abstract. While I am a vet and hm player with an optimized raid team, my wife is a solo quester that loves to just beat up overland stuff and pick flowers and putter around her house. She has never done a trial or a vet dungeon. The only dungeons she's ever done are duo with me. She is effectively locked out of this area unless I'm there with a guild group. She will not group with strangers. She said she would try to follow a pack but I know this will lead to frustration. There should have been a very mode with more rewards or something.

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Feedback.

- remove the need to "claim favor" from the gold orb: it seems to spawn randomly during quests and I never understand if I am not seeing it or it has not appeared. Just make it a normal auto-loot added to our account.
- increase favors from daily quests.

Yes! That's what I was trying to remember. I know I missed some favors because the pace is SO hectic I didn't have time to futz with claiming. I'm old, I play with a controller and the targeting to get that sweet spot while a dozen other things are going on was a pain in the butt.

And yes, increase favor gain. I played for 2 hours with the pug and got maybe 200? That's a pretty low ROI considering the challenge.

Had an absolute blast.

I managed to complete the initial quest you get in each district solo, although I did immediately die in my overland set-up and had to switch to my solo arena set-up I use in IA to get things done and move around the zone. I also had to sneak past most bosses, many have mechanics which require a second player to interrupt or do something (putting aside pure number-based difficulty).

However as others have mentioned, many people in one of my guilds were having some issues (it's clear this is NOT a solo experience, and to suggest it could be done solo was not correct), and we decided to create an impromptu guild group - people came and went through-out the evening, but we always had at least 4 people (including a tank, and a healer). We managed to get many of the dailies done, kill all the bosses in a couple of the districts before most people had decided to log off, and even completed one or two of the skirmishes.

So overall it was fun. That said, some points/feedback from our experience (some of which many other people have noted):

1. The intro quest was bugged for some people in the group, and trying to understand/help other people with their bugged quest was near impossible when the quest worked fine for yourself. (For info, it does seems to be related to whether people spoke to the Curator outside the zone/portal first, whether the picked up the quest from the Crown Store, how they ported into the zone, and whether they'd switched characters after choosing a faction because they decided they needed a better equipped character from the one they took inside originally - seems every possible combination hasn't been tested correctly.)

2. Many people didn't understand that you could group with people in any faction - that wasn't clear. In fact, faction choice makes no difference other than to the quality of your rewards, the dye colour, etc. I've lost count the number of times I've had to explain this to people in game, on discord, etc. We managed to figure stuff out as we went along - as a group - that was enjoyable. I can certainly understand why people are asking for improved guidance/FAQ or something. There's still stuff I don't understand and will need to read the detail of certain achievements to figure some things out. (And a thank you to somebody on this forum who told me how to unlock the wings in the house - that wasn't clear at all!) Overall, you really do need to get better at providing guidance (and not just filling the dialogue with instructions either - proper in-game guidance, e.g. through event specific help pages, FAQs, pop-ups, tool-tips, and everything else people can use ... and have that in one place not scattered throughout achievements, etc.).

3. The faction competition is a joke. Personally I'd just get rid of the faction v faction "fake competition" element, instead just allow us to choose a faction (the choice really doesn't matter), contribute to our faction in an RP sense, maybe use it to unlock rewards, etc. but put the focus on everyone (regardless of faction) working together without muddying the waters with some leader board element. (It's not a true competition in the sense of PVP, nor in the sense of tackling vet and HM content - all of which require an element of player skill to gain ranks on the leader board.)

4. The daily quests being scattered everywhere was annoying. I lost count of the number of times we had to circle back to where we're just been (with everything having respawned again!) because we found another daily en-route to somewhere else. Why are all the dailies not just in one place on a notice board outside the door (or inside at the entrance), like in Cyrodiil to allow guild groups to more easily coordinate activity. It's even worse than having to run up/down the ladders in Imperial City to get the daily quests for everyone. PLEASE PLEASE consider coordinated guild groups when designing the daily quests - and it's a complete oversight considering this was supposed to be a group zone.

5. I don't have an issue with content being pushed for specific types of player, and more hard content in general - i.e. I have no issue with this not being able to be solo'd by most of the ESO population (much like many people don't like PVP, or HM vet dungeons, and HM trials). That said, there's obviously a lot of effort gone into creating this zone, and it's only temporary (and yes, it may come back, but may not). I do have to question whether the economics stack up - that is, spending time/effort/resource on creating these types of experience, which are in effect targeted at a very small portion of the overall player base, and for it to be only temporarily available, seems to be a high cost for the size of the ESO population that would enjoy it.

More generally, I don't understand why this (and also the Writhing Fortress) are not followed-up and made available after the initial "event" as either some form of public dungeon (with appropriate difficulty and rewards) or as a "guild play zone" with more consideration for the casual and non-sweaty players. As others have said, a normal/vet switch would perhaps help alleviate some of the issues in difficulty and open the content to more players - but either way, I like the attempt but many of us feel it's just another 201x Craglorn 2.0 - which as we know ended up dying in its original format.

6. You've pretty much removed the need to rez people. It's far faster when you die to respawn immediately at the nearest spawn point, then drop down in the direction of your group (if you had one), and in the 15 seconds of immunity run as fast as you can to get back in the fight. That's generally quicker than trying to rez somebody, which is often interrupted, or results in your own death when the fights are messy. This seems to be at odds to the group collaboration you're trying to promote. I also saw plenty of people waiting on the ground - are they expecting a rez? - because not everyone had figured out it's quicker to rez themselves, and immediately run back to the fight when immune.

7. If you're good/lucky enough to be able to solo/duo some of the trash packs (and some bosses), it becomes a bit of a chore and a bit tedious to get the quests done. Conversely, if you're in a large enough group, the bosses are pretty easy - probably too easy for a "hard" zone. I've said this about the challenge difficulty before, and my view applies here also - simply adding health/resistance, and reducing player damage/healing, etc. does not make things more difficulty per se, it just drags out the fight for those that can do it, and prevents people completing content for those that cannot. In fights where there are mechanics (you DO NEED TO INTERRUPT some bosses), the game still lacks in-combat prompts to teach/nudge people that red sparkles mean you need to bash, or use a range interrupt - and that the gold sparkles mean block or dodge. (Assuming you can see those sparkles in the neon disco wash that now fills our screen with all the effects and beams going on, and keeping in mind that not everyone in these types of zone are using the necessary addons outside of coordinated groups to get the in-combat nudge.)

8. You've virtually made it impossible for guilds to run dungeons and trials from the zone. The need to collect keys, for everyone to have "opened" the dungeon or trial before the guild group can enter is a problem. I don't mind the requirement to do it as a one-off exercise (which we can schedule as an event in itself the week/days before), but to have to do it every time you want to go into the dungeon or trial means that coordination will become a huge nightmare. Let's be clear, after our run last night, many of us now have the keys - but that took A LOT of time - more time than we normally spend in a vet DLC trial itself! Some people will be able to go straight in, but if people who ran last night can't run on our trial night, it falls apart. Some people won't have enough keys, maybe people who got their keys last night will use them in another guild tomorrow, and it raises questions whether we need to incorporate a zone boss run to get the keys before the trial. It's bad enough coordinating 12 people for a trial as it stands, without this added hassle.


So overall I'm fairly positive about the experience I had last night - we didn't see any of the population issues other people have mentioned until it got quite late and people had started logging off.

That said, I do have concerns that this will be a flash-in-the-pan experience, and like 201x Craglorn, will be dead in fairly short order. When that happens, I really do suggest that you revisit the zone (the zone itself is pretty good layout wise, and the variety of bosses is fine) along with the Writhing Fortress zone and find a way to bring them back as permanent features that everyone can make better use of (whether that's as a public dungeon, extra large group dungeon, guild play zone, or whatever). Such a shame to see all the development effort miss the mark in terms of difficulty/play format, and then go to waste.

Some thoughts from last night:

Went in solo on trial build. Was managing first mob fine then got one shotted by a large add. One shotted, by an add? Not fun.

Slotted invis pots and skulked around all the other mobs trying to do dailies. Tedious.

Found other players killing Big Bad. Joined in. Killed it but wasn’t helped by players running in to join dragging the trash mobs with them so you suddenly realise you are being attacked from behind.

Did first quest in all zones, then left.

1) Mobs are too hard & too often. And nothing for killing them. So what is the point except frustration?

2) Respawning at a certain point rather than where you died so you have to run back id rubbish.

3) The ‘rewards’. Wow. Fantastically underwhelmed.

4) Fragments/splinters/keys - no clue as to what drops from what & what I need.

5) Finding out here that quests can’t be shared in your group in an area that encourages grouping. Again, wow. Just…..wow.

6) Also finding out here that if you actually manage to get a group together, kill the correct bosses in the correct order and have all group members have the correct number of splinters/keys/whatever to access the dungeon or trial, you then have to do this process all over again if you want to go back in

7) No explanation in game as to how this place works. Players should not have to research to find out.

8) Forcing grouping on a playerbase that is mainly solo. Fantastic idea. Craglorn worked <so> well doing that in the past.

To those who like the place & have had fun, have you done the dungeon or trial, or are you just running around killing whatever with no real purpose?

I am sadden by this, as it could be interesting, but it is just badly executed and just a grind, not fun.

I do have a guild group event on Sunday for this, so maybe it will be different then, but not holding my breath.

Favor takes WAY too long. Even in large groups where I've killed a handful of calamity bosses, argents, etc. I still only have about 700 favor. It should be rising much faster since we can't share quests. I can't do the quests solo because every single enemy is holding hands across every inch of a pathway and nukes me before the animations even come through half the time. I like harder difficulty, but I am finding it to be a little absurd

I did see some favour orbs but don't understand how they work. I know you have to claim them manually, but sometimes it seems like they can be claimed by more than one player and sometimes not. I also don't know if they're drops from enemies or if they appear randomly. The interfaction competition is one thing, but then why create this random bit of additional competition among your own faction members? Because we also want favour for the Golden Pursuit and the achievements and whatever, not just to make sure our faction wins the event.

After two hours of slaughtering everything with wild abandon I only had like 435 favour. Because of the previously mentioned inability to share quests and have everyone work toward the same goal, all we could seem to agree on was to kill everything we saw. But the rewards for doing that are slim to none. For those of us who did not explore things on PTS, the finer points of this event have not been explained well.

Akskad wrote: »

decaffeinated wrote: »

The biggest issue seems to be grouping is REQUIRED yet quests can't be shared, and with everyone on different quests coordination is hard. The Skittering is much harder (interestingly The Parch is easy).

Wait! Where have I read this before? Let me think, let me think....... PTS feedback thread? Is it possible?
Sample of the many posts on this topic below.
And? Was this issue around sharing quests fixed? eeeeeeeeeeeeeee nope!

Huh, that name in the screenshot looks familiar.

@Akskad @decaffeinated So, I think it's worth clarifying something here that I didn't know back during PTS when I first wrote that bit about sharing.

There are basically 3 types of quests...

• Intro quest, which is not repeatable and which you do only once per account. It sends you to all 3 districts to do a simple task. It's not shareable, and there's no shared quest progress with others in your group. But for a one-time-only quest, that's fine.
• Minor repeatable quests that you pick up inside each district, by interacting with something on the ground or something posted onto a board. These quests are not shareable and there's no group quest progress. These are the quests that I complained about during PTS. But... these quests also don't matter. Their reward is just a piece of overland gear and a small amount of faction favor. None of the good rewards that people actually care about comes from these quests, so while they are not shareable, you can also ignore these quests if you don't feel like doing them.
• Major repeatable quests that you pick up outside of the districts. There are 6 of these quests, and these are the quests that actually matter. These are the quests that can drop splinters, furnishing plans and other desirable rewards. One is Blood on the Sands, picked up in the plaza, and the other 5 are from your faction leader. Each character will only be offered only 1 of the 5 faction leader quests each day (so two quests total: Blood on the Sands and your one faction leader quest). But it is possible to do all 5 faction leader quests, if you share them with other players (just like how it's possible to do all 6 overland world boss quests in a zone if you share with others). You can share with anyone, even people outside of your faction, since all 3 faction leaders offer the same 5 faction leader quests.

I have another post with more information and the names of all of the "major" daily quests.

So there IS sharing for the repeatable dailies that matter, and sharing is encouraged in the same way that the sharing of overland dailies are encouraged. The minor dailies picked up from within the districts cannot be shared, but those quests don't really matter anyway.