AScarlato wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

AScarlato wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It's amazing to me how a singular update not catered to solo players during the quarter that has literally never catered to solo players has suddenly become ZOS abandoning solo players. And it's not any one person, it's a sentiment being expressed many places. I have no idea where this is coming from but quarter 1 has literally not been solo content for like 10 years.

It really shows the power of ideas when they spread through groups.

Anyway for anyone worried about this, remember much of the rest of the year will be solo friendly content. And that quarter 1 has always been dungeons. I hope the sage's vault is as fun as it sounds on paper.

Could you be overly focused on this one event?

Could you?

There are thousands of hours of solo quests in this game and most events are meant for soloing. I think the rest of this year which are questlines and solo-dungeons are for solo players. Once in a while group and PvP players are thrown an event and the PvP events get complaints too.

I could be, but I am not.
Do you realize that there is very little content that a grouped player cannot access?
That PvP is unbalanced because of enhanced group dungeon rewards?

You have access to groups, you just don't want to. So don't. But that is your choice and MMOs can't design only content for solo players if they want to maintain interest. ESO has never ONLY had content for solo players and that's how it should be.

Also, just as there is casual and vet group content, there is also casual and vet solo content. Solo actually doesn't mean "requires a low power level," in this game. IA, VVH, and VMA are all solo content also.

ETA
When I say casual I don't mean interest, game time, or passion level in this context. A casual player might be quite invested into the game. It's just I'm trying to describe different levels of play that's respectful towards all parties in terms of power as the gap in this game in terms of ceiling and floor is extremely high and it impacts things quite a lot.

AScarlato wrote: »

AzuraFan wrote: »

There needs to be an incentive (beyond personal satisfaction, which will appeal to a few, but not others), to repeat story content, just like there are incentives to repeat group content.

What would that look like to you, also excluding solo arenas, IA, and soon solo dungoens that they are spending dev time on?

My point is about solo quests. That's what I'm addressing. People who say, "But look at all the solo quests!!!!" My point (again) is that there's no incentive to repeat them, so there's only a lot of solo questing content for new players. Yes, ZOS is spending dev time on other solo stuff, just like they're spending time on group stuff. That's got nothing to do with, "But look at all the solo quests!!!! You soloers should be happy with all the solo quests!!!!" (even though there's virtually no reward for doing those solo quests more than once)

My main problem with some arguments in this thread seems to be people that resent group content and think an MMO is a genre where no challenge should be for people that work cooperatively to overcome challenges. If someone is the type of person to get upset every time grouping is encouraged, rather than just deciding it's not for you, I'd believe they truly are in the wrong genre.

That's a different issue. I'm not one of the people who resents or is upset about group content.

AzuraFan wrote: »

My point is about solo quests. That's what I'm addressing. People who say, "But look at all the solo quests!!!!" My point (again) is that there's no incentive to repeat them, so there's only a lot of solo questing content for new players

This rings very true. Every character I create goes through all the quests, main quests alliance story, etc. I like doing this because I enjoy the stories and lore. Having said that however, I remember being very disappointed (and still am if I'm honest) when AwA happened. I used to enjoy setting up a new character and filling up all their achievements. Now, I'm still creating them, I'm still doing all the quests, but some of the enjoyment of doing it is gone. If I could set up a new character, get them all the achievements, take them on the journey through all the champion points, earn all the levels for the companions again, I'd be over the moon. But I can't.

The argument that 'solo players have tons to do' isn't quite the right statement, because the majority of players who have issues aren't new players. Suggesting that players can go and re-do stuff they have done a dozen times over without getting rewarded for it isn't really fair.

I also don't have issues with NM or group content (just ignore it if I don't like it, ESO isn't made just for me). As the poster above said, this is about the specific argument that 'solo players have tons to do already'.

AScarlato wrote: »

Yes I was asking what the incentive to repeat quests might look like. For many people the incentive for stories are for the lore and story themselves.

Rewards better than 20g and a piece of overland gear we got the first time around.

Sure, for some people the stories themselves are good enough to repeat the quests. Just like for some people, the fun of running dungeons and trials is incentive enough to repeat them, but that didn't stop ZOS from providing incentives for those who need one, and the same should be done for solo questing.

RemnantFantasy wrote: »

It is. As a starter for 10, maybe a new player title, fancy costume and skin for completing the MQ and Cadwells Silver/Gold on all classes, then another title and fancier costume and skin for completing all quests in all zones (including DLC) on all classes (not retroactively rewarded).

Why not retroactively? What's with people who have no character slots left and have already replayed the content on most of their characters?

Let alone some title, costume and random skin (most skins look horrible anyway, sorry) sounds like... not much, for that amount of content.

If I had to make one suggestion for general improvement, there are sand walls in The Parch which force an exceptionally long run from respawn back to where the fight is happening. This makes it extremely difficult for players who do not have the relic to get back to where they can (maybe) claim a needed fragment. A second one might be to reevaluate the boundaries between the oasis respawn zones. There have been times where dying on one side of a battlefield results in respawning at one oasis, but dying on the other side results in respawning at a different one. Keeping boss fights tied to one respawn point would be very helpful.

And a third: please turn off those blasted single-kill increments of "Blood on the Sands" displaying in the middle of the screen when I'm trying to keep from getting mauled by those same critters.

Hello ZOS, and fellow players reading.

Context. I have actively engaged with all aspects of the Night Market. I am far from the best players and sit somewhere in the middle.



I show rhese not for self-promotion or to gloat, but as a counter to the few but very loud and highly repetitive voices on the forums who heavily criticise NM, yet barely engage with it. This is feedback for the Devs and I want them to know that these thoughts and proposals come after having seen and sampled most, but not all of their work (Faceted Foe where art thou!).

First and foremost, I question whether the Dev’s decision making process for Group Centric content looks at the grouped player experience holistically. There are many examples in the current Night Market (and also outside of NM) with systems that run AGAINST grouped players and sets them up for failure and frustration, rather than success and fascination. I will come to these examples later below*, but I sincerely hope that moving forward, the Devs always conduct a Litmus Test on all decisions made in Group content - asking the non-negotiable question : does this incentivize or disenfranchise Grouped players. Does it cultivate “this is awesome, I want more of this” moments, or does it punish players - sowing discord, and slowly bake in layers of bitter aftertaste instead ?

Topics at a Glance
1 System: Argent & Gilded Keys
2A Content: Population Cap
2B System: Population Cap
3 System: Rewards from Drops and Faction Vendor
4 Content / System: Calimitous Boss is Too Disruptive
5 System: Grouped Player Experience for District Quests - Randomized Quest Start is Problematic
6 System: Daily Faction Quests
7 Content: Brazen / Argent Boss Difficulty
8 Blood on the Sand has Excessive Kill Notifications
9A System: Skirmish UI (Part 1)
9B System: Skirmish UI (Part 2)
10 System: Respawn Rate of Trash Mobs/Adds
11 System: Enemy’s Broken Leashing Range and Incorrect Out-of-Range behavior

1 System: Argent & Gilded Keys
It’s been said many times by those before me, and I join them to re-iterate the same. With keys being consumed upon dungeon boss complete, this by design causes established groups to fall apart, encouraging them to PUG via Group Finder or group with random players (of various skill, ability and build) outside of their core group. Once the Dungeon is done, and preceding Argent keys are re-obtained, it promotes self-preserving, selfish behavior as helping others with this same dungeon is punishment by forced consumption of these pre-farmed Argent Keys. Players will not join NM dungeons that they don’t need, as doing so will consume their Argent keys. 3 proposals: (i) allow perma-unlock of NM Dungeons (instantly or progressively), or (ii) allow storage of multiple Keys, or (iii) allow purchase of Keys via Favor at the Faction Vendor.
Litmus Test: fail. The current form causes friction, frustration, and disincentives helping others with their NM Dungeon.

2A Content: Population Cap
36 players / instance feels just right. Difficulty of mobs is ok for a 4 player group, difficulty of Brazen and Argent bosses is ok for 4+ player group, but the Skirmish should scale to match the number of players engaged in the fight. An average-skill 12 player group should feel moderately challenged at the Parch and Skittering Skirmish, but the Sorrows Friend Skirmish - 3rd Boss Phase - is hard even for a seasoned 12-player group (half who have done all Vet Trials, the other half all Normal Trials). Specifically, If all 36 players were at the Sorrows Friend Skirmish then it feels just right, not solely due to the burn but from a sufficient stream of rez-fight-rez-repeat to keep the Skirmish going. 36 players at the Parch and Skittering Skirmish is overkill.
Litmus test: 2 pass (Parch, Skittering), 1 fail (Sorrows Friend). It is unbalanced for Sorrows Friend Skirmish.

2B System: Population Cap
Hidden cap numbers should be revealed and stated clearly in Night Market UI. This is information players can utilize in many ways:
- Curbs fake news doomspeak of “NM is dead”. Hiding this from players is to ZOS’ own detriment as it perpetuates the misunderstanding that NM is empty and therefore dead-on-arrival. Hiding this cap number creates bad optics and feels bad, especially with players lacking basic game knowledge (but have very loud and highly repetitive voices, across all social platforms)
- Visibility on the ebb and flow of players allows effective decision making from group leads or solo players - whether to stay or go, depending on their objectives (eg Boss, Skirmish, or Oddity clear)
- Improved understanding of zone chat having no response as you now see you were alone in a 1/36 fresh instance - time to change instances. On the flip side, jumping into a Skirmish, asking for LFG inside a near-cap instance and having fun.
- More success with Oddities in a quiet instance, with less change for random players pulling mobs to your Oddity or ruin your Oddity attempt by spamming every Switch Plate they can step on.
- Low pop instances can depopulate quickly to zero, close out, and return resources back to the server instead of players hanging for hope to group up in multiple near-empty instances.
- I see little opportunity to abuse or exploit knowing instance population numbers. This is not a PVP campaign. Instances are transient so there is no way to estimate total megaserver population. There is already a precedent to show population in Cyrodiil & Imperial City via the 3-level gauge. As NM success and enjoyment is, to some extent, dependent on population, then no reason to hide this from players view (yes you can solo NM quests with a thief shadow cloak invis pot build but thats not the point of this feedback). Please add on to the discussion if you can think of any potential exploits if per-instance population numbers are revealed.
- Should the cap be raised ? Reason given is that doing so will impact performace in other zones. Proposed solution: when NM is active, close and block out all base game Undaunted group dungeon instances where no borrowed boss mechanics were used. Reason for this: allow newer players to go experience and learn these borrowed mechanics in a calmer environment if needed. AFAIK, none of the bosses in these group dungeons appeared in this NM, be it in derivative boss 3D model or mechanics: Banished Cells 1 & 2, Blackheart Haven, Crypt of Hearts 2, Darkshade Caverns 1 & 2, Direfrost Keep, Elden Hollow 1, Fungal Grotto 1, Selene’s Web, Vaults of Madness, Vollenfel, Wayrest Sewers 1 & 2. That’s 14 group dungeons worth of server resources potentially freed up without impacting the rest of Tamriel. DLC dungeons should be always available as gear farm may still be needed. But there is less reason to keep open 10-year-old base game dungeons that the majority have already 100% years ago. Maj and Gilrion can still offer their scheduled Pledges but the quick travel UI and enter dungeon can include a new unvoices note about temporary closure due to ‘disturbance from a market-like daedric realm of perpetual Night’.
Litmus test: non-visibility of population and cap raises many problems. Showing it eases & solves many of them. Need server resources ? Shutter old dungeons temporarily.

3 System: Rewards from Drops and Faction Vendor
- Drops of random style pages, style mats from a wide number of dungeons including DLCs like Scriveners Hall, and the occasional Gold quality gear to RNG-decon for gold mats is welcomed. But the Tamriel Reward coffer should exclude all base game overland gear drops. You already made a commitment to not impact zone performance. So let the zone perform - those who need them will go farm them where they belong - and I daresay should continue playing there instead. If they absolutely need gear from base zones, they are probably not yet ready for NM. Thie decision to drop base game geae is wasteful redundancy, is somewhat insulting to your long-established player base, and reinforces the impression that ZOS is out of touch with what your customers want. Mothers Sorrow, really !?! Try dropping TRAINEE Starter Zone gear next Night Market and see how well that tracks.
- Why are both drop and NM vendor curated gear not on a rotation basis like Zanil Theran, The Golden, Filer Ool and Tel Var weekly mechants Tumande, Kharzolga, Hears-the-Stone ? A missed opportunity to drive interest into NM. ZOS, you are already offering a limited selection of zone / dungeon / trial drops, and you have the full transaction data of Guild Store vendors - simply roster on weekly rotating basis the 28 most sought after, high valued gear, weapons, style pages and style materials using Favor as the currency (4 per week x 7 weeks). This will whip players into a frenzy to earn Favor and buy-buy-buy.
- Litmus Test: pass because of some good drops from DLC dungeons but can do better and make the Favor earned carry more meaning, utility and value.

4 Content / System: Calimitous Boss is Too Disruptive
- In general, its ok for Calamitous to gatecrash a lower stakes Argent / Brazen boss fight. We die, it resets, we rez, it leaves, no biggie.
- In general, its not ok for Calamitous to gatecrash a higher stakes Skirmish boss.
- Sorrows Friend Calamitous Wailing Bedina (Voidmother) + Skirmish Spiral Descender: not ok. Although Voidmother doesnt chase players and her superbowl yoga routine is easily avoided, the Skirmish Spiral Descender and Incarnate duo are terrrible enough to deal with. When the tank(s) go down, the group culling begins.
- Roksa + Skirmish Hordemother : not ok. Too many bright green AOE circles thrown everywhere getting in the way of boss mechanics (Throw Hot Coals to stop Enrage and interrupt re-webbing of brazier).
- The worst of all is the Parch Calamitous Dunegorger. This enters the Skirmish boss fight, eats half or majority of group, causing the remainjng to wipe, resets the boss and throws those Wayshrine rezzing back to south Oasis. Wow. How is this considered fun ? Should we blame the already overwhelmed group lead for not doing an additional call out for Calamitous ? Should we blame the group for diligently focusing on the lead’s callouts and not noticing the Calamitous ? Should we blame the entire group for not defeating the Calamitous first, and consequently expiring the Skirmish for taking too long chase-killing the Dunegorger? Should we blame the Dunegorger for glitching and having no Stalks to defeat, yet perpetually spawning other poison adds ad-naseum ? Should we blame players for upholding the gold standard of not using any mini-map, because of the sacred decade-old purist design philosophy of maintaining “environmental immersion” ?
https://elderscrollsonline.info/minimap
(therefore players are supposed to rely solely on the “superior” compass to avoid being continually eaten by the Dunegorger while in Skirmish). I would love to hear the Dev’s design perspective.
- A few proposals to improve the player experience: - Dunegorger Escape should always available if eaten at a Skirmish or desert section. Get eaten, dont panic, heal, look for Escape, back to Skirmish.
- Dying to Dunegorger - rez to Oasis Wayshrine should always be the closest one, not defaulting only to the South Oasis. It is trollish design to only allow South Oasis respawn. If eaten at North section, it is extremely punitive to split up grouped players who need their group to help navigate and cooperatively work through mobs to reach North section bosses.
- Have it in the lore that the Parch Skirmish Pylons are there to also ward away the Dunegorger. At Phase 1 (Attune) & 2 (Charge) Dunegorger can crash the party but Phase 3 onwards when Pylons are fully charged, Dunegorger should never enter but skirt or circle around it instead. This might even be a fun mechanic if Dunegorger is circling the Skirmish while Levinda is doing her huge 45 second AOE lightning channel - because players are focused on getting outside the ring and looking around rather than on the Skirmish bosses.
- A Skirmish in Phase 3 should not allow a Calamitous to enter the space. It is what it is in the current iteration and there is even an achievement for killing Skirmish then Calamitous boss in the same combined fight. I dont expect an undo of this setup but this combined fight is not fun or enjoyable when there are 12 or less players. It is not something to look forward to. But if can scale dynamically where if 18 are engaged in the same skirmish, then bring on the Calamitous - program it to enter the arena. If not, then please don’t punish a smaller group just for being small (small = 12). It makes it feel like it is designed to disappoint grouped players whose only fault is a lack of the critical mass to take down both in a reasonable manner. I’m not talking about zerging these in a 36-player fight. These do happen but dont happen often enough.
- Litmus Test: 0 pass, 3 fail. No, no, no.

5 System: Grouped Player Experience for District Quests - Randomized Quest Start is Problematic
- randomized quest starter design for Districts as a concept is ok. Unsharable is also ok to make players scour the district and gain familarity with the layout. But having every quest starter randomized for every character every day is not ok, this creates friction within the group, raising questions on why Quest Starter arrows are or arent appearing for players, perpetuating the stereotype of typical buggy spaghetti code. ZOS, you might be surprised to learn that instead of simply pressing forward, a group of friends will pause to spend considerable time and effort to share troubleshooting solutions, exhausting all known options (try RELOADUI, check quest journal, check notifications, did you already do quest today, are you carrying other District quests, are you at 25 max carried quests, logout-login, reset game, reset console) before giving up and moving on. This is time-wasting design. Ok, so the group moves on, picking up Quest Find markers for the half that did get the quest. As we navigate mobs to retrieve the last Find spot, the other half without the quest suddenly discovers a Quest Starter nearby for the same quest that the rest are just about to complete. At this very moment, can you imagine how the group lead feels, how players about to quest complete feel, and how players just starting the quest feel. It is 12x100% ‘feels bad’ for everybody, as we now need to backtrack the same quest again. This is just one quest - there are 5 per district, each needing re-treading the same routes twice or more if the group is to be fair to all.
- Theory 1: maybe the Dev intention is for group lead to enjoy an enhanced cat-wrangling challenge and test their patience with their group who constantly face/fight ‘oh squirrel!’ moments, drawing aggro, getting lost and sidetracked because their Find spot ‘its right here but I cant see it!!’. This on top of navigation and boss mech call out duties, it is any% ‘feels-bad’ for group leads, depending on their skill and tolerance level.
- Theory 2: maybe the Dev intention is to encourage group leads to keep all in a chokehold and demand ‘only follow me, no questions allowed’ compliance to get things done. This would be 11x100% ‘feels-bad’ for all hostages.
- A better, kinder way is megaserver-wide synchronized same daily District quest with same pattern of Starter spots, so that all are on the same page with quest progression. Repeated success cultivates familiarity and confidence in the group. This is not novel. Already at the Undaunted Enclave, Daily Pledges are by-design synchronized server-wide. Imagine if these Pledges are instead randomized daily for all player characters - would this be a step forward or back on player experience ?
- Apply the Litmus Test - be honest. Is the current design choice by any measure good for groups or not.
- * In my opening statements, I questioned the decision making process for Group Centric content and the grouped player experience. Here are some examples outside of NM with systems that run AGAINST grouped players, to show that this lack of care to design is not isolated to just NM:
- (i) Summerset’s (since 2018) Taming the Wild, Indrik WB: 4 Warding Stones around the WB will vanish from the group if any are picked up, crediting only the 1 player who picked it up. The Find spot respawn is about 1 minute. This is anormal quest behavior as all other WB Find pick-ups instantly share credit across the group. To get around this, we learnt the that group lead has to either (i) disband the group for all to do their own Find pick-ups to avoid cross interference, reforming group after all are done with Find spots, or (ii) instruct members to manually leave group when they are ready to start their own Find pick-ups, to reform group only after all are done individually.
- (ii) Harvest Time at Cropsford, Cyrodiil (since 2014). Quest Find spots despawn for the entire zone when picked-up, with a respawn timer of 2.5-5 minutes per node. There are 6 such spots needed for quest turn-in. The design is by nature a time-wasting exercise for all players, that has been complained about for years, but received no interest for fixing from the Devs, even though this quest behavior is also anormal to a majority of other Cyrodiil town quests.

6 System: Daily Faction Quests
If it is by design that they are sharable between Factions, why not go the extra step to INCENTIVISE this behavior - to award extra Favor points if you turn in a quest that came from ANOTHER Faction. This optional mechanic encourages socializing and cross-Faction quest trading.

7 Content: Brazen / Argent Boss Difficulty
- fine in a group. My rough gauge for bare minimum is 1 tank and 5 dps with self heals. For skirmish, 1-2 tanks, at least 1 healer with the rest Dps as a bare minimum to enjoy the fight without too much frustration on constantly rezzing to the Oasis Wayshrine.
- Litmus Test: pass. Its ok. There is an apparent bug with Argent Exarch Monolach infinite hunt phase which needs fixing but I have not seen it myself to comment.

8 Blood on the Sand has Excessive Kill Notifications
Given the very transient nature of these kills, there is no need for this. One might suggest to turn off the main menu toggle for general on-screen notifications. This is impractical as doing so breaks the momentum, and these messages remain useful for communicating Skirmish phase mechanics, Oddity announcements etc. So please find a way to either omit these entirely from Blood on the Sand or reduce the frequency of these updates eg mid-way or on full completion. Having messages flash across 1/3 of the screen with full lines of text 150 times (25+50+75) makes focus on current combat very difficult and intrusive. Find a middle ground please.
- Litmus Test: everyone loses, grouped and solo. Excessive screen clutter that violates the ZOS’ own UI design philosophy.

9A System: Skirmish UI (Part 1)
Please rethink the usefulness and repercussions of an always-on Faction score. This number is quite irrelevant as an updated score. It is better to either omit this entirely to keep it a fun guessing game for players, revealed either intermittently once a week, or bi-weekly, or vaguely hinted at on an Event mini-site “Ruckus seems to be leading, with Goad and Eyes close behind”, or daily numbers revealed only in the final 7 days. This prevents players from dog piling on the winning Faction to a guaranteed win from the first 24 hours onwards, and possible renewed interest in the final days of the Event. I thank CODE for his add-on that replaces the Faction score for Skirmish status. Which leads me to the next point -

9B System: Skirmish UI (Part 2)
The countdown timer for starting-in and current status of these are welcome. Please also consider adding more layers of visibility for “Skirmish deactivates in mm:ss”, and added status for “Skirmish in-progress” to inform of an on-going battle, similar to Keep, Outpost, Flag battles in Cyrodiil & Imperial City. The omission of this time-sensitive info penalizes players in the instance. The Skirmish could be already lost before it even began if groups were in process of leading lost group members to Skirmish or group lead was spending time to explain mechs to the group before beginning the fight. I have on occasion experienced the huge disappointment of a ready Skirmish despawning before our very eyes as our Navigator was still guiding new Relic-less players to site, group lead still clarifying mechs to the group, and players still swapping skills to fit the Skirmish eg Purge for bleed in Sorrows Friend. What a huge waste of time. The common response with PUG players is swift dropping from group. Yet another mechanic where a lack of visibility punishes grouped players trying to cooperate, and unfortunately encourages Leeroy-Jenkins behaviour in order to not lose the Skirmish entirely. Please afford us players the same respect we afford to the content.

10 System: Respawn Rate of Trash Mobs/Adds
- Currently at an insane speed and sustained high stress with no time to breathe. Why does it have to be this way for all adds ? Is reducing the intensity in any way detrimental to player experience? It is exhausting for dps and worse for tanks holding adds for the group. Proposal - the quicker respawn can be kept for the Skirmish site for those needing to farm ‘weak enemies’ for the relevant Splinter. Please tone down the respawn for other adds.
- Litmus Test: fails. No one enjoys this.

11 System: Enemy’s Broken Leashing Range and Incorrect Out-of-Range Behavior
https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Leashing
- The Leashing that is working well in almost all of Tamriel is currently horribly broken in NM. Everywhere else, when enemies wander out of their fixed spawn radius, one connecting hit is all it takes to send them back to their stations. In NM however these rules are broken and glitched, causing enemies to often behave like Imperial City Sweepers (flag bosses), but become imtermittently untargetable when pursuing players beyond their radii. They refuse to leave until they feel like it. This causes common complaints like “my light/heavy attack / skills / AOE / ultimates are disabled”, which the lead has to resolve by urging the group to move ahead (some players still refuse and continue swiping air) or shift positions. Worst of all, they get mixed in with enemies that are targetable, form a phalanx of sorts, shielding targetable enemies (needing to be killed) by their glitched untargetable state (deactivating reticle-aimed player attacks). This happens too often with players running in from Oasis, drawing aggro and forming a huge wall of glitched enemies in a Skirmish. The top right corner tiny error message “target out of range” is indication of this. If someone else has an alternative explanation, Im all ears.
- Litmus Test: fail. Please fix the bug, I cannot imagine how this is the intended enemy behavior.