Night Market - Week One Notes

Tallon_IV · May 8

Please fix "Fatal Flask". I've searched every inch of the huge circles you provided for the "Deadly Concoctions" and can't find them, and I've seen other posts with the same issue.

nellonen · May 8

Some guild mates and I have been discussing the key grind constituting a major bottleneck for coordinating groups around offline lives.
Could a solution be turning the key fragments into a guaranteed consumable item drop every time you kill a certain boss? Using the old morphing collectible system as a template (and don't make them unique items)? That way, people can collect keys for a later time, allowing for more planning flexibility for the instanced group content?

virtus753 · May 8

nellonen wrote: »

Some guild mates and I have been discussing the key grind constituting a major bottleneck for coordinating groups around offline lives.
Could a solution be turning the key fragments into a guaranteed consumable item drop every time you kill a certain boss? Using the old morphing collectible system as a template (and don't make them unique items)? That way, people can collect keys for a later time, allowing for more planning flexibility for the instanced group content?

Could also just make them account-wide collectible fragments, so once you have the argents done you can access their respective pseudo-dungeons whenever, and when you have the pseudo-dungeons done, you can access the pseudo-trial whenever.

As much as there were things I really liked about New World, the requirement of farming consumables to get one-time access to dungeons and other group PvE content came across very strongly as an attempt to gate the content due to the extremely limited nature of that content. (That is, the design seemed intended to drag out what little content there was in the then-anemic PvE endgame.) It’s one of the many ways the New World team came across as re-inventing the MMO wheel at the beginning, and they changed course eventually. It’s disappointing to see ESO go backwards here and follow the model of an MMO that ultimately failed, in some part because of the lack of PvE content. I don’t mind earning access to content in theory, but once it’s earned it shouldn’t have to be repeatedly farmed, imo. If the concern is there’s not much of that content to do once access is permanently earned, adding an artificial gate in consumable keys is not going to address that. If anything, it highlights it, at least for me.

It’s especially frustrating because it exacerbates the extremely temporary nature of this content, when we were very clearly told a year ago that any new content in this new seasons model was *not* going to be removed after a temporary season—now it’s going to be removed in half a season instead.

Malprave · May 8

First I want to repeat what I've said in other posts, the Night market is fantastic!

Second, I don't have a huge issue with the way the keys are, but I understand why other players do. I get why the keys exist and don't think they should be a one and done type thing. But maybe they could have a limited number of uses so players that frequently group together will have more "overlap".

Three uses then you see an on screen message " You got through the door but unfortunately your key broke! Before you pass through this door again you'll need to obtain another key."

I don't know. I'm sure you guys can think of something more clever than that. But multiple use keys could remove some friction here while still keeping players in the districts helping other players.

Malyore · May 8

Elendildur wrote: »

People have spoken about the keys already. but the main problem for me is the quests. They are way too difficult to find for how bad the rewards are. I like the idea of finding gear sets from older content, but overland gear isn't very useful.

If the quests continue to give bad rewards, they need to be easier to find. Maybe put all of them on the noticeboard at the start of the district, so people can grab them quickly (and make them sharable)
If the quests continue to be difficult to find, they need to give better rewards. Maybe they should drop gear from any trial, with a small chance at perfected gear

I like that they make you look around, but I don't like that they make you look around in constant swathes of enemies with fast respawns. It felt nice having to actually use my eyes to look at walls for propaganda, but it ended up just being me running around in circles while getting bombarded with attacks as I try to ignore all of the gameplay around me.

Elendildur · May 8

Malyore wrote: »

Elendildur wrote: »

People have spoken about the keys already. but the main problem for me is the quests. They are way too difficult to find for how bad the rewards are. I like the idea of finding gear sets from older content, but overland gear isn't very useful.

If the quests continue to give bad rewards, they need to be easier to find. Maybe put all of them on the noticeboard at the start of the district, so people can grab them quickly (and make them sharable)
If the quests continue to be difficult to find, they need to give better rewards. Maybe they should drop gear from any trial, with a small chance at perfected gear

I like that they make you look around, but I don't like that they make you look around in constant swathes of enemies with fast respawns. It felt nice having to actually use my eyes to look at walls for propaganda, but it ended up just being me running around in circles while getting bombarded with attacks as I try to ignore all of the gameplay around me.

I don't mind any of the objectives, it's finding the quest in the first place I find problematic. The propaganda one seems to be a set spawn location, but the others in that district move their starting location, which makes them difficult to find

Mattymoo92 · May 8

Tidezen wrote: »

Event is awful. Socializers/Extroverts love it, predictably. They love coercing others to play with them, forcing people to interact with them, who don't want to. Won't take no for an answer, keep trying to force unwelcome stuff on you.

I've been playing MMORPGs since 1999, Everquest days. I played in farm groups in Dark Age of Camelot. Then WoW, grouped all the time, was a member of raid groups, even an Officer and Raid Leader at times. So it's not like I don't have experience with games that have forced grouping. Have spent decades of my life with them, in fact.

But I always loved MMOs despite the forced grouping. Not because of it. Never because of it.

Two MMOs that I loved, that did group events the "right" way, imho, were RIFT, and GW2. Neither of those force you to "sign up" for a group--you can come and go as you please.

Sure, there are still group dungeons, or raids. For those types of people who enjoy those specific types of activities. But for a limited time event? What in the nine Hells were you even thinking? Trying to force your entire playerbase into some forced grouping zones, through multiple dungeon-level tasks and trial-level events???

This is an awful, awful way to go about things. This is exactly why MMOs keep dwindling as a genre. Because they only seem to understand the "social" side of their audience, and keep actively alienating the other side of the MMO audience.

The "other side" of the MMO audience, is the people who play MMOs to GET AWAY from the real world...in lives and jobs in which they are forced to socialize, almost every day, often for long hours. People who play to exist in a persistent, immersive, and ever-changing world...but who DO NOT want to be forced to engage with other players...at all.

I have a lot more I could say, but...please, for the love of all things holy, please stop forcing social engagement on your entire playerbase, just because the social crowd wants it. It drives away the players who would want to play your game, but feel alienated and gatekept behind all your forced group content, for pretty much anything of merit.

Hey if Zos are forcing you to take part of the event please call ur countries police. It’s abhorrent that they are in your house forcing you to consume the night market content. Hope you are well?

Soarora · May 8

Tidezen wrote: »

Event is awful. Socializers/Extroverts love it, predictably. They love coercing others to play with them, forcing people to interact with them, who don't want to. Won't take no for an answer, keep trying to force unwelcome stuff on you.

I’m an introvert and do not want to play with people who aren’t interested in playing with me and I love NM. So… no.

Elendildur · May 8

Soarora wrote: »

Tidezen wrote: »

Event is awful. Socializers/Extroverts love it, predictably. They love coercing others to play with them, forcing people to interact with them, who don't want to. Won't take no for an answer, keep trying to force unwelcome stuff on you.

I’m an introvert and do not want to play with people who aren’t interested in playing with me and I love NM. So… no.

What do you mean? Obviously you secretly hate NM! That person said so, and they definitely know you better than you know yourself!

/s

AScarlato · May 8

Tidezen wrote: »

The "other side" of the MMO audience, is the people who play MMOs to GET AWAY from the real world...in lives and jobs in which they are forced to socialize, almost every day, often for long hours.

I feel so strange being an introvert with a life and a job where I have to talk to people who still enjoys Night Market lol.

anadandy · May 8

Tidezen wrote: »

Event is awful. Socializers/Extroverts love it, predictably.

Let me stop you right there. I'm the most introverted introvert to ever introvert. I loathe social interactions and avoid them whenever possible. My idea of hell is required voice comms and face to face work meetings.

And I'm really enjoying NM. It's obvious you don't and that is perfectly valid. But it's inaccurate to make a broad statement like that.

baldylox · May 8

Same as others. KEYS...omg. so much wasted guild progression time has been wasted because we are all out of sink. im fine getting keys, but long term. its gonna be crap. id rather get a key per my character then have it unlock permanately after first clear/kill

hope quest markers get fixed or updated to be more easily seen more than 1-2m away. i dont have them memorized and lots of running and dying to avoid mobs while searching the quest circles.

would love to see the oasis be traversable to each other. they are portals...

been enjoying it as dps and healer. not tried on a tank yet. thx for new content for causal groups that a challenge!

C_Inside · May 8

As someone who enjoys endgame group content I only engaged in the Night Market for a total of about 2 hours. There were 2 reasons why:

1. The rewards are mostly all garbage
Besides the Signet there is exactly nothing else I could possibly want. You get some garbage overland sets that have been made obsolete over the years, 3 monster sets that are made obsolete by the Signet itself, and a bunch of furnishings which I don't care about because I don't like housing. Please for the love of God make some better rewards for Night Market 2.0, particularly for endgamers. After I got the leads for the signet there was literally nothing else for me to work towards in the Night Market.

2. The whole event felt like mindless zerging
This mostly came down to the excessive trash spam tbh. The bosses were fine, but when in order to get to them you have to wade through a quagmire of constantly respawning trash packs that don't give anything, it just felt incredibly tiring. The trash packs don't drop anything, they don't give XP, they aren't difficult, and they don't have any interesting mechanics. They are completely pointless. A complete waste of my PC's processing power and a waste of my own time.

For Night Market 2.0 I really hope you fix these 2 things so I can actually have a reason to participate in it. There seriously needs to be some better rewards next time so we can actually have something to work towards. I understand a lot of people are OK with just doing the dungeons/trial for the sake of it, but it just feel meaningless to me and many others when there is nothing to show for it.

As for the trash, just delete them. Completely remove the trash packs and have the NM be a boss rush. The bosses are the main event as far as I'm concerned so there's no point in wasting time with meaningless trash. This would also help solve the issue where a lot of people are complaining about not being able to play solo. You can have the boss rush be for groups, and the puzzles/races/lore in the in-between zones be available to people that want to solo.

thechalkdust · May 8

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

• 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.

The problem with the population cap is not the number, it's the spread: one cap shared by four zones.

Exceeding 36 people in one district would be too many. (36 is already straining performance on console at skirmishes.) But 36 people spread across 4 districts is too few.

I'd suggest separate caps per district, with a soft cap at 24 with a hard cap at 36, meaning the game will not automatically fill an open instance with new players or groups exceeding 24, but groups can still pull in extra people manually, up to the hard cap (creating some flexibility).

The result: all instances will have healthy population (not too high, not too low, and none will be empty). Groups can still pull in more people up to the cap, and groups have the option to return to plaza if they're in a full instance and want to get everyone together. The design consequence of a per-district pop cap would be that instances get determined and reassigned each time you pass through the plaza (instead of once upon entering the plaza), so ungrouped players might not always stay together in the same instance when passing through the plaza. But groups would still be kept together, and ungrouped players are generally disinterested in staying together anyway. The plaza itself might be able to hold more players (especially with dueling disabled) to create a more populated feel.

wolfie1.0. · May 8

My complaints:

Its too easy to troll other players by dumping a boss or extra mobs on them. Someone did this to a group I was in early this morning in order to get help...and wiped the group.

I dont like that once you start the main quest on a character your stuck using that character until its done. Abandoning it doesn't do anything.

Favor earning is slow and grindy. Keys are a pain.

There needs to be a resurrection invulnerable period at least 1 or half a second. Ressing and taking 100k hit before I can block or dodge or anything stinks.

We need more respawn points.

The issue is that in night market the mobs respawn as fast as Cyrodiil, hit like late arc IA, and are packed like a public dungeon. While player restrictions are that of player deaths in cyrodill. If your supposed to be able to self res out of combat then please look at it.

Onomos · May 8

Given how this is a group oriented zone, especially for PUG groups, the skirmish timer bug on the scoreboard needs to be fixed. Today, the time said a skirmish was active in Skittering (it wasn't). The next area countdown went down to 0 in Sorrow (nothing happened). And then it finally stared in Parch. By that time, most people had fled the group.

I'd guess this might have something to do with groups forming across multiple instances, so it's breaking the timer. But it does need to be fixed soon. It's demoralizing getting a full group together for a specific activity and then it falls apart because the game is confused.

Psyphiman · May 8

I don’t understand the criticism about social interaction. In most of the groups I’ve been in many people don’t say a word. You can think of playing in a group as having 11 companions. They just help you with hit points and damage. And you can make them go away when the quest is finished.

Edit: The 11 Companions would be a great guild name!

Arunei · May 8

I would honestly caution hyping up engagement so early in NM's release, because EVERY big release goes this way. People pile in for about a month or so and then engagement starts to die out. People either get bored, get frustrated by X or Y grind, or get what they wanted and then don't mess with the content. I'd say it would be better to wait until the end of the cycle for the NM to get a better idea of how many people KEEP engaging with the content.

There's also something to be said about people needing to farm Keys, because that can make engagement seem like it's higher than it is. Are a majority of people doing the general content because they WANT to, or are they only doing it over and over because they HAVE to in order to do the content they'd prefer to (the Dungeons and Trial)?

And then there's definitely something to be said about making group content where grouping doesn't work as often as it should. Random groups can be hard to fill, especially if you're looking for specific things. Groups can fall apart quickly for a variety of reasons. Groups can be too weak and wipe repeatedly. Getting to a group that's further in can be impossible because of overtuned trash packs. Groups can consist of people in different factions but faction quests as I understand can't be shared to people in other factions. If the answer is going to be "just group" then grouping ACTUALLY needs to work and groups need to have an easier time at succeeding than it sounds like many have.

The biggest issue in regards to grouping seems to be trash being too strong, honestly. If you die and get separated from the group, it can result in not being able to get back to them. If the group is too far in you might not have any ability to even get to them. If enough people die and they get scattered around the map, people can wind up just giving up and the group winds up being too small to do much of anything else. Trash packs genuinely need to be tuned down to SOME degree so that getting to a group isn't so hard and getting separated from a group isn't so punishing.

Because as it stands, I 100% see the NM going to same route as big "group" things have time and again. Activity for a while after release, but then after a time too few people are doing the content for one reason or another and it gets to a point where a majority can't get a group together to run it. I would say it would be better to make things a bit more accessible so the NM actually sticks around for the long haul, then to keep it where it is and risk it vanishing after the initial three runs because interest and engagement dropped off too hard.

shadoza · May 8

Psyphiman wrote: »

I don’t understand the criticism about social interaction. In most of the groups I’ve been in many people don’t say a word. You can think of playing in a group as having 11 companions. They just help you with hit points and damage. And you can make them go away when the quest is finished.

Edit: The 11 Companions would be a great guild name!

I think some folks have had a bad experience because not every group is pleasant. Some are very selective and will kick you or avoid you if you do not meet their gear or skills standards. (gatekeeping is real)
Asocial people might find public rejection confusing or difficult to not take personally. They want to experience the Night Market and maybe they want the house, but they are loathed to risk that aggressive behavior that sometimes comes with dealing with strangers. (You can see the aggression in the fora. Imagine what it might be like for them in the game chat where the Devs don't see it.)

The house rewards are often viewed as a great reward by those that do not decorate because they give a quick access to various countries on the map for new characters that had not been there.

On the bad side, the Night Market was billed as an event for everyone when it was introduced. While that bill has been toned down, it still rings in the minds of the players that heard it. If the Night Market had been billed as a new approach to a trial dungeon, this whole scene would have been different. The controversy with solo players would not be.

Psyphiman · May 8

shadoza wrote: »

Psyphiman wrote: »

I don’t understand the criticism about social interaction. In most of the groups I’ve been in many people don’t say a word. You can think of playing in a group as having 11 companions. They just help you with hit points and damage. And you can make them go away when the quest is finished.

Edit: The 11 Companions would be a great guild name!

I think some folks have had a bad experience because not every group is pleasant. Some are very selective and will kick you or avoid you if you do not meet their gear or skills standards. (gatekeeping is real)
Asocial people might find public rejection confusing or difficult to not take personally. They want to experience the Night Market and maybe they want the house, but they are loathed to risk that aggressive behavior that sometimes comes with dealing with strangers. (You can see the aggression in the fora. Imagine what it might be like for them in the game chat where the Devs don't see it.)

The house rewards are often viewed as a great reward by those that do not decorate because they give a quick access to various countries on the map for new characters that had not been there.

On the bad side, the Night Market was billed as an event for everyone when it was introduced. While that bill has been toned down, it still rings in the minds of the players that heard it. If the Night Market had been billed as a new approach to a trial dungeon, this whole scene would have been different. The controversy with solo players would not be.

Maybe there is some gatekeeping in vet dungeons and trials but it’s an overreach to say there is gatekeeping in Night Market pickup groups. It sounds like the anxiety you are describing is from people’s past experiences or biases. Then they decide in advance they don’t like the Night Market.

dcrush · 12:05AM

Although many others have mentioned it, I also want to call for a way to collect or save the dungeon and trial keys.

I did the trial once, then had to do the boss farm again, did the dungeons again, then farmed the bosses again… and now I have a guild trial run tomorrow. I have the key ready and if it was a regular trial I’d probably run it again today before the guild run tomorrow because I want all the masks. But if I do, I have to do the dungeons again before the guild run and there’s no guarantee I’ll have enough time to do them. So instead of it encouraging me to play more, I’m playing less.