Night Market - Week One Notes

ZOS_Finn · 6:21PM

Hey Folks!

Well, Night Market has officially launched, and we have been sharing in everyone’s trials, tribulations, delights, and despises over the past week or so. We felt it would be a good time to give a bit of an update to what we have seen feedback wise, share some of the results we have seen on server, and identify some key areas we will look to improve when Night Market returns.

First of all, we appreciate how much folks have embraced Night Market and the first foray into brand-new content within ESO that is experimental in nature. We took some big swings with Night Market in really pushing the challenge and group aspects of the game and you all have let us know your thoughts. Absolutely keep that feedback coming.

We have also spent some time addressing issues that cropped up that you can really only see at scale. Splinter Fragments from coffers are now guaranteed so you are not at the mercy of RNG to join your group tackling Gilded and Opulent enemies with the Relics. No one likes battling in a Skirmish along with a passing Calamitous just to die and not get credit so we adjusted the range for those to make sure you get credit after returning to an Oases (did you know Oases was the plural of Oasis? I know I didn’t until we had to write a patch note). Thanks to your reports we also saw fewer numbers of Faceted enemies than intended so we took a pass to beef up those numbers. Also, the Web Eater from Opulent Ordeal was very resistant to taxidermic efforts and we made sure the Trophy and Bust should drop from the Ordeal once complete. There is still a lot more feedback out there, some we will try to address soon, while others will have to wait for the next time.

Speaking of next time. We have looked at the feedback to create a backlog of potential areas we want to focus on when Night Market comes back. Here are some of the big feedback points we have written down. These would be issues we would look at first to see how/if we can address them:
• We identified the UI could be a bit cleaner as far as explaining the core loop so we will try and take a pass at that.
• Feedback regarding the faction points influencing faction choice (specifically seeing the scores before making a choice) is also heard and we will look at what we can do to address that.
• We have some new features you did not see in this iteration as well, but I won’t spoil those.
• Population within the Night Market has seen its fair share of feedback as well with folks noting they wished the population was a bit higher. We crafted the experience to fit within the current population limits and adding (or taking away) would potentially cause a detrimental experience in public areas. That said, for future iterations of the Night Market we will re-evaluate these population caps given the newfound data and feedback.
• There is also feedback regarding difficulty and balance. We knew that balance would be a key area for folks stepping in here. It was one of the aspects we wrestled with in development and testing. What we have seen is that players that come with a group or find one via group finder are generally having a much better time than those trying to go it alone. This is something we will dive into the data once Night Market is finished to see what, if any, adjustments we can (or should) make there. (For example, adding a pop-up to the districts zone-in similar to what we currently have for dungeons and trials that warns about the difficulty and suggests finding allies via the group finder.) We want Night Market to encourage grouping and reward players for those choices but there is something to be said about having some solo-oriented activities.
• Rewards are another area we have seen lots of feedback. We understand that folks may not be keen on the rewards for some of the aspects of the Night Market (overland sets?) so we can take a hard look at that for the next iteration too.

So, how is the Night Market? Glad you asked! So many of you have jumped in and tried your hand at what the Night Market has to offer we couldn’t be more pleased. Not only that but you are spending more time and been more engaged when you DO venture into the Night Market! We have seen a spike in played time for folks the past week which means those that have engaged are finding lots to do. The LFG system has also seen its highest usage ever! Finding and forming groups, playing longer, tackling the challenges within are at the heart of what we wanted the experience to be and we are happy it is resonating with players.

In short, the Night Market has seen impressive numbers and the feedback has been great to hear. The challenge of Night Market is something new to the game and how it has been embraced has been refreshing to see. While we know it doesn’t quite fit everyone’s cup of tea, it has scratched an itch and shown to bring players together in new ways. Cheers and see you in the Night Market!

- Finn

allochthons · 6:36PM

KEYS, FINN.
FIX THE KEY ISSUE.

DeathandDebauchery · 6:36PM

Finn,

Overall, this has been a homerun. Excellent work for the team. I think there is a lot of excellent feedback that has been provided in the Night market thread and I hope you are taking a look at it carefully.

One thing I want to urge is to continue down the path of keeping this as group content-focused / group-required experience. I run a very large casual/social guild where people do not have Meta builds, all we have is cooperation - and we were able to handily do every aspect of the Night Market (even the Trial).

Difficulty is, in our guilds opinion, perfectly balanced. Our issues are more related to rewards, time-to-effort ratio, and design (e.g. favor balls disappearing too quickly, bonus quests being hard to find inside zones, etc).

Thanks again for your teams hard work - we are excited to see what you cook up next!

Morvan · 6:47PM

Please keep the Night Market as group content, pretty much every other event on ESO can be done solo and grouping is generally optional, that makes it even more important for us to have an event that encourages grouping, and Night Market has been the greatest success you ever achieved in that regard.

If anything the Night Market is solid proof that you guys learned from your mistakes from the Writhing Wall event, since this is an event where cooperation is actually happening and the Group Finder has never been so popular before.

Thank you for listening to feedback, ZOS! I hope we get to see more cool stuff like the Night Market in the future.

allochthons · 6:48PM

Having said the keys need to be fixed, thanks for the update. It's good to know you're reading our issues, and looking at the numbers.

Now that I've gotten used to it (10K reputation, all achievements except trial completion and the various "do this neat trick in the dungeon" achievements. And the faceted kill.) I think it has a lot of potential. I love the laser and boulder puzzles, and the dune ripper boss is certainly unique, and fun.

But the main things that absolutely have to be fixed (now, preferably)
1) Once we earn the keys, we need to keep the keys. The amount of organization we need to do to get any of the dungeons or the trial complete is UNREAL. I'm retired, and can play pretty much whenever I want, and even I'm feeling this pain, intensely. For those with packed schedules, it's unmanageable. Every person posting here has said this. (No, they haven't, I'm totally exaggerating, but it sure feels like they have).

2) The mob spawn rate. And mobs spawning on top of the oddities. Leave a clear area around the oddities.

3) The Calamitous paths. Path them near the skirmishes, but not into. The number of times I've been in a skirmish and had it fail because Roksa aggrod or the Duneripper ATE THE TANK is scary.

This was a big swing. And I think it can become a really great part of the game. But those are the biggest misses, according to the people I play with on PS5 (I'm near-end game, in a near-end game guild, and a newbie learning guild, for context).

And I still have yet to see a faceted boss.

twisttop138 · 6:49PM

@ZOS_Finn

Man, thank you. Not just trying something different but for sticking with it when it seemed hard or loud. The data speaks for itself, night market is a success and rightly so. Just on my 5 guild rosters I'm seeing hundreds of players logged in and in there. Of course it won't be everyone's cup of tea but there will be stuff for everyone this year.

I feel I have to commend you and your team for the trial. It was new and fresh and exciting. Even my grizzled raid lead was excited as we figured stuff out. I hope we see more of this team work and innovative mechanics in this years trial. I know you can't tell us. The dune ripper sand worm is also a big hit with everyone I know. Something unique and unexpected. Good job all around.

I implore you though, I know you're processing the data and feedback, the keys Finn. For the love of jone and jode. The keys man. It's so difficult to fill spots because if I just did the trial, now I gotta do everything again. Make them stack at least. Please. Very famously, a fallout 76 player sent Todd a box of bobbypins to prove they didn't weigh as much as the game had them weighing. Do I gotta send you guys a big box of keys lol?

All in all though, good job. Let the success speak for itself. Stick with what you said on pts. There is obviously a market for this.

code65536 · 6:51PM

Do something about keys!

Sordidfairytale · 6:59PM

Clear up if people need to interact or just be near a group member completing an oddity in order to receive the buff. Requiring players to interact with the oddity in order to get the buff can cause the challenge to fail, leading to a great deal of frustration.

Onomos · 7:04PM

Overall, I'd say the Night Market is a positive addition to the game. It has some quirks that I'd take or leave, but as a whole it's fine. (I should preface that I have only done zone content, no dungeon/trial content).

A few things I'd like to see some improvements on:
-Faction points seem painfully low. I know there are people who are already at 10k and beyond, but a lot of us are seeing that ticker go up very slowly (we only have so much time to spend in the game).
-Non-combat quests are not very clear. I have a daring race quest and while I can look up information on the forums, the game itself is less clear about what to do with these. (I have tried them. I'm not a fan, but I don't like racing minigames in general.)
-Definitely do something about the faction "competition." I chose Ruckus even after seeing it was significantly behind Thousand Eyes because it sounded more fun. If it's just a matter of getting an extra gold box, that's fine, but it's a bad look for players who want to explore and try different things.
-Make the rewards worth it. So far, aside from getting lotsa gold for selling Ruckus recipe fragments, the rewards have been lackluster for the effort. Just something to consider.

Unrelated , please add some ways to spend tome points because they keep adding up and they're just goingto turn into gold in 2 months, which is less fun than having stuff to spend them on.

Treeshka · 7:07PM

Someone invited me to do some dungeons today in Night Market and i had to refuse because i was a bit tired to farm the Argent bosses again. Keeping the keys for my upcoming raid. This key issue is a bit not fitting into the spirit of Elder Scrolls Online if you ask me. I want to be able to do the content whenever i want.

Soarora · 7:10PM

Thank you for this statement. It’s encouraging to see how our feedback is being used to inform decisions and to learn more about the thought process behind the content, how successful the event looks from a backend perspective as opposed to… the forums and reddit, and what Night Market 2 might have changed. I’m excited for later this year!

I do hope you can make a statement on the key situation in the near future, I assume you didn’t have any information on it for this statement so I’m not mad about its noninclusion, but the key logistics is tearing some holes in my sails unfortunately.

helloelli · 7:11PM

i may be an odd one out, considering i dont entirely mind the keys themselves. maybe there could be a duration for how long they last, argent keys last a day, dungeon 3 days, trial 5, or something so there isnt so much grind for them, but still a grind. or possibly each key can be used x amount of times. especially considering the trial has achievements that require you to do it multiple times (no biggie, love that and creates replayability!). this would also allow us to plan guild runs for the dungeons and trial, on top of running with OTHER groups.

overall i love love LOVE that you guys stuck to your guns on this, this has been the most fun ive had with my friends and randoms alike in a very long time. my endgame guild is mixed with both newbies and trifecta carriers, and everyone is having a blast once they get in.

agree with other pain points here, some boss pathing could be better, but depending on the bosses i enjoy the extra challenge sometimes hehe. oh and i dunno if this is easily fixable or even easy to pinpoint whats causing this, but there is some terrible desync in timeless wallow with the scarabs! one of my only gripes with night market.

ALSO
I LOVE LOVE LOVE that you guys added mini games! please bring more of this to us, either around the world or continue this in the future iterations of night market!

BardokRedSnow · 7:13PM

Diddo on keeping the night market primarily group content, this is the main reason it’s so much fun. A challenge you have to overcome with others that’s less of a hassle to get into than actual trials and queueing forever for dungeons. If you add solo stuff please don’t make it a requirement for the core aspect of the night market, make it side quest dailies like the puzzles and races for instance. That said I would prefer the side quests actually go the opposite direction, as it is clunky when running a group and you pass an objective that’s best done alone, risking fracturing the group because of this.

Group oriented tasks that can be completed together not finished individually or progressed individually would be much more convenient, however if you feel you must add more solo objectives, this is where they should go.

spartaxoxo · 7:17PM

I am disappointed to see no acknowledgement of the quest markets being so difficult to find. The first time I did propaganda I ran around the same little area for like 30 minutes trying to get it to pop up. I was right next to it and couldn't find it. I initially thought it was because my eyesight isn't the best but I have since learned that they are also buggy, delayed, and in very small areas.

ETA
I hope one of things you consider addressing about difficulty is the respawn times. Killing trash packs feels unrewarding because they come back so fast that you don't even have time to help a teammate or search for an objective, and they don't even give you loot. They are the most frustrating part of an otherwise stellar experience and I really think there would be less complaints about difficulty if you could clear paths for your teammates to (re)join you.

Anyway, thank you so much for this breakdowns. It is much appreciated.

SkaiFaith · 7:18PM

On the topic of rewards... Favors: I find myself joining a group to farm Favors through quests shared, except it often happens that I can't get quests shared for reasons, and I end up helping others killing Brazens and Argents getting a mere 5 Favors reward while they get 75 due to having the quest.

I'm not asking to receive 75 Favors without quests, but something should be done to simplify sharing, or Favors rewarded should be a little more without quest, IMHO.

Furyous · 7:22PM

Finn and Night Market team,

Thanks for the update and the hotfixes so far. My guild is really enjoying the group content when it lines up.

Two main pain points from our guild:

1. The key system is making guild coordination pretty tricky.

Every dungeon or trial run consumes your key and locks you out until you grind the bosses again (8 per zone or all 27 for the trial).
This creates constant desync - people finish at different times and often end up PUGing while the rest of us are finally ready but have no group.

Suggestion: Get rid of the keys entirely and make them one-time completion flags. Once you are done, you stay permanently synced with everyone else who has finished. That would make grouping a lot smoother.

2. In-zone dailies (not the faction dailies, which seem fine) are great in concept but harder to reach than expected.

The quests themselves are simple and fun.
But getting to the objectives is quite challenging - even with full Vampire stage 1 + max stealth sets, enemies spot you constantly.
A lot of us have ended up using the "run in, die on purpose, ghost from the oasis" method more times than we'd like to admit.

Suggestions for the in-zone dailies:

Make them sharable so they actually encourage grouping.
Lean into the relic mechanic for safer solo paths: do it the hard way until you earn the relic, then use a relic-accessible path for the zone dailies.

A little challenge is fine, but dying should not be the easiest option.

These two changes would make a big difference. Excited to see the next iteration!

kilroy5250 · 7:25PM

Nightmarket is great overall. I've really enjoyed it. Echoing others, the keys man, the keys.

I am happy to help any player out to get keys, except... when it will ruin a run I have planned later that day or the next. It prevents me from helping because I don't have time to grind out the keys again.

Please make the keys permanent for that season. That will allow players to help others without losing group play elsewhere. New season can be a new grind for perm keys.

Averall, love it. Keep up the good work!

Aylish · 7:26PM

Include some battle icons on the map so we can actually find the other 35 people in our channel and join their fight.
And make rewards better in general. The blue boxes from dailies (district and faction both) are ridiculous and not worth anything after reaching the 10k favor…

coop500 · 7:27PM

I admit I've lost steam for the market already, it's too much of a slog and the novelty is wearing off. Tried to check for groups yesterday, on NA server, NA evening, there was barely anything outside of groups for the trials and dungeons

Blood_again · 7:54PM

Sordidfairytale wrote: »

Clear up if people need to interact or just be near a group member completing an oddity in order to receive the buff. Requiring players to interact with the oddity in order to get the buff can cause the challenge to fail, leading to a great deal of frustration.

Characters need to interact with an oddity at least once while a minigame runs in order to get a buff and an achievement record.
While it is not a problem for the spiders minigame, I saw players did "run in, press, run out" many times, and it really spoiled solutions repeatedly for both the lights and the boulders.

Alaztor91 · 7:55PM

Is there anything planned about rewards? After reaching 10k favor and completing your faction Helm/Shoulder collection I don't see many reasons to keep going to the NM except for finishing some Achievements like the ''Do Daily Quest 30x Times''.

Might become an issue in the future due to this particular zone being harder than your usual Overland map.

Emeratis · 8:28PM

Thank you for the feedback. I think it's a good start for the week one things. I do admit that I wish the keys were addressed this week but I suspect that also won't be a quick fix so I understand.

After reading this my biggest feedback/hope to hear about in week two's notes are:

Keys-this is quickly causing group friction and souring the event for many. It's physically impossible to replenish keys before some runs, it makes it difficult to fill if a person has an emergency, and it also is making some people feel left out/left behind. The keys as they currently are are unfun and stressful and causing a lot of social tensions that are undesired.
Rewards-reward discrepancy is real. For a lot of seasoned players most of the rewards feel meh but for the side quests/exploration dailies they are particularly bad. I suggested adding leads from other sources as a boon to lead/lore hunters maybe could help, also a small chance for rare furnishings/recipes/polymorphs/etc. Another thing I kinda want now is a stickerbook but for treasures. I admit I have enjoyed reading the vendor trash before I sell it and I've kept a few, given there are few up to date eso treasure records out there it would be cool to have a new system in game for them similar to antiquities and it could fit the theme of the night market and be something cool for Night Market 2.0 maybe?
The Parch Dungeon Desynchs-I've noticed many desynchs while trying to get the side achievement in the Parch dungeon. I have died at least ten times to crushing darkness despite on my screen and the screen of my allies being way ahead of it, we've had several times we've interrupted archers only for their taking aim to still go off and stun/kill someone, etc. Can someone take a look at it to make sure everything's working okay? I haven't experienced this desynch anywhere else in the Night Market and it's making going for the side achievement extra frustrating. I also don't know if this is on all platforms or PC NA but it's been a consistent problem whenever I've personally been in there with groups.

I think those are the three thinks I hope get addressed the most. Thanks again for the update and for the Night Market, I really love it and hope it continues to grow and thrive over time.

coop500 · 8:32PM

Yeah I've learned quickly that there's basically zero reason to do those little randomly found side quests, a blue coffer giving one overland weapon ain't exciting after spending 50+ minutes fighting spongy enemies.

Furyous · 8:50PM

coop500 wrote: »

Yeah I've learned quickly that there's basically zero reason to do those little randomly found side quests, a blue coffer giving one overland weapon ain't exciting after spending 50+ minutes fighting spongy enemies.

Pfft, don't fight them, just die, get a free port to the oasis and then run in ghost form to the next objective. Do this three times, you are done. Cheesy as hell but a lot better than the grind of killing/sneaking past everything just to pick up the stick you were sent for.

coop500 · 9:03PM

Furyous wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

Yeah I've learned quickly that there's basically zero reason to do those little randomly found side quests, a blue coffer giving one overland weapon ain't exciting after spending 50+ minutes fighting spongy enemies.

Pfft, don't fight them, just die, get a free port to the oasis and then run in ghost form to the next objective. Do this three times, you are done. Cheesy as hell but a lot better than the grind of killing/sneaking past everything just to pick up the stick you were sent for.

Literally not even worth the repair bill of the gear then for a blue mother's sorrow staff, I'm good lol.