They have no way of checking what accounts are "new" and implementing something like that would likely take a LOT of work. How do you tell new account from new character? When is an account no longer considered new?

Instead of a system that would be a heck of a lot of time and work to introduce, they should just either WAY lower the price of rerolls (the easiest and imo best fix, make rerolls cap at 5k or something instead of 10k) or give us the ability to select specific tasks we want to be excluded from the list so it doesn't get slapped in our faces fifty times while we try to get something else.

This is probably true (lots of work), but it's also self-inflicted. I give ZOS a lot of credit for doing a generally good job with the evolution of the game. The ESO we're playing today is radically different from the ESO which released 12 years ago and it's even a radically different game in many respects from the game I started playing five-ish years ago. Some of those changes I like less than others, but I think ESO overall moves in a positive direction. But I'll qualify that by noting that ZOS has repeatedly said that a major problem is hanging onto new players. Many new players come in, play around for a bit, leave, and don't come back. This tells me that there are some pretty serious pain points for new players. While ESO is not everyone's cup of tea (no game is), the constant new player churn must be attributable to something in the game. Since I just started an alt account , here are a few of the pain points I've noted in the first couple of hours. They're in no particular order other than how they came to mind.

1. Player starting inventory space is limited. This is a design decision which has been called out often (and sometimes loudly). I tend to agree with the complaints, but I play the game I have rather than the game I want and have learned how to work around that problem. New players can't/don't. Yes, they can now upgrade Pack space from within the UI instead of having to visit a Pack Merchant but note that now it's a choice between a Pack upgrade or being able to dispose of an unwanted challenge (yes, having to burn through all 12 rerolls and then spend gold really chaps my hide).
2. Now that Thieves Troves are a base-game feature, why is there no Outlaw Refuge or otherwise accessible Fence in the starter zones? There are Thieves Troves in the starter zones, there is plenty of stuff to steal in the starter zones, and there is no method of clearing out that inventory space short of wayshrining into some other zone to make use of the Fences there. I know about that because I've been playing for a while, but new players won't. They can't sell stolen goods and the inspiration penalty for stolen gear makes it not worth the bother of deconning, either.
3. The new pursuits for new (and returning?) players now award a mount upon reaching Level 5 (used to be a Level 10 level-up reward). Players enter the starter zones around Level 3 (maybe 4 if they farmed Coldharbour for a while), so one or perhaps two levels before all players have a mount and anyone who started out with Deluxe Edition starts with a mount. Why are there no Stables in the starter zones? In spite of the shortening of the upgrade time, mount upgrades are still one of the longer grinds and there's nothing to be done about it until outside the starter zones.
4. Players who start with Deluxe Edition and/or ESO Plus will start with Summerset access. Why are there no Jewelry crafting tables in the starter zones? I started from a Collection was asking that question five years ago, btw. It's not like Jewelry crafting is a new system that ZOS somehow didn't include in some zones. This is a system which has been in the game for about eight years.
5. Returning somewhat to the original gripe about weekly challenges, "Kill 5 citizens with the Blade of Woe" requires leaving the alliance zones to get the Blade of Woe (and start the Gold Coast zone story), yet one of the more common new player complaints on Reddit for years has been some version of "I'm sooo confused! There is so much to do, but I don't know what I am supposed to to be doing or where I'm supposed to be going! Help!" The usual advice of "start with the starter zones and follow the quest markers" works pretty well until they run into stuff like this.
6. Because I like Khajiit, I started a Khajiit character on the alt account. And then I stopped and cursed a bit because I can't get "Any Race, Any Alliance" until character creation is done (lots of Khajiit means I've done Dominion to death by now). So I had to make a throw-away to get out of character creation, have them spend the crowns for the upgrade (I'm not playing without the craft bag, btw, so I had crowns), log out, delete the throw-away, and then log back in so I could put my Khajiit into another alliance and avoid doing Khenarthi's Roost for the umpteenth time. That's mostly an old-player problem rather than a new-player one, but new players are stuck with the defaults because they can't access some options until they have a playable character.

There are others, but I hope you kind of get the idea.

As for "how would they know?" and "when is an account no longer new?" Those are pretty darned easy. Thanks to account-wide achievements, there are Level 10, Level 20, Level 30, etc. achievements. If an account hasn't proc'd the Level 10 achievement, then PvP and dungeon stuff should not be in the pool of possible challenges. The challenges for some of the specific dungeon bosses could use the same cutoffs. Bogdan the Nightflame, for example, is in Elden Hollow II, which is recommended Level 37, so it's not there until the Level 40 achievement has proc'd. If the achievement is there, then it's very good odds that at least one character can do the challenge. It's not that it can't be done (it absolutely can), but more that someone or several someones wanted the challenge system out the door and in the game without stopping to consider that the same system of unlocking group dungeons as as levels are earned could be pretty easily adapted to the challenges. I still think that a "no means no" on rerolls needs to be added, but categorizing challenges based on level suitability could have easily been part of the design process.

EDIT to add some others:

7. Crafting certifications unlock at Level 6 (Level 7 for Jewelry, I think), yet the certifiers can only be found outside the starters zones. Considering the XP scrolls which are rewarded as part of the new/returning pursuits (and I think there was one as a level-up reward somewhere early on), is there any particular reason why those certifiers are so far removed from where their unlock is likely to be happening?
8. Jewelry certification. One of those things that probably made sense when Summerset released in 2018 (kind of like the Scribing starter in Skingrad or the Antiquarians in Solitude), but why is there only one instanced Jewelry certifier in 2026, why is that certifier only instanced in Summerset, and why is that certifier clear on the other side of the zone from where players are able to enter? Unless a player knows some of the travel work-arounds (like using Home Tours get to Alinor Crest and avoid the cross-country trip), Felarian's single instance in Alinor pretty much says "your playing time has no value."
9. Resource harvesting. I griped about this some time back, but my new alt on Stros M'kai left no resource unharvested as they ran around the zone (Level 12 now, btw, and still not done with that zone). Another of those, "your playing time has no value" when you have to rely on RNG to give you the additional reagents for the daily Alchemy writ (20-ish minutes later I threw in the towel and paid an overpriced guild trader for a few) in spite of the starter zone harvesting and the trip between Belkarth and the Elinhir wayshrine. For that last bit, I needed the piggy next to that wayshrine for Teleno's White Meat since I hadn't managed to loot any and also combined the trip with the Zeal starter and daily. While that piggy is a small annoyance, I knew what I was looking for and knew where I was almost guaranteed to find it. New players are not-so-much.

EDIT to add one more: Mount upgrades are now done in units of three to speed things up (a good thing), but the Riding Lessons are still 1-unit upgrades. Pick up the 10 for each stat from the Golden Pursuit (used to be only for returning accounts, but it's there for new accounts, too), the 10 each from the Tome, and the one from the Level 29 level-up reward, and the last upgrade on each stat will still cost 500g, but will only give one or two upgrades. I'm not griping about the gold as much as the idea that Riding Lessons don't align with the multiples of three from the Stablemasters. A better approach might have been to hand out the Riding Lessons in multiples of three (rather than one or five) and avoid being 59/60 in one or more stats when players get to the end.

I'm not bringing these up to say "Bad ZOS!" A lot of those design decisions probably made sense at the time they were implemented, but just like ESO is a radically different game from what was released in 2014, the average player is a lot different from what they were in 2014, too. If you want to retain new players, then one of the first things I'd strongly recommend taking a look at is the various ways in which the game tells players that their playing time has no value. That 18-year-old who might have no-lifed the game in the summer of 2014 would now be a 30-year-old with all of the time demands that go along with that. The fact that they are trying the game at all is a gift of their time (accompanied by an opened wallet in some form, but that's a business model and not a design feature). Maybe show players that you appreciate that by not wasting it with petty stuff like these.

Arunei wrote: »

They have no way of checking what accounts are "new" and implementing something like that would likely take a LOT of work. How do you tell new account from new character? When is an account no longer considered new?.

They certainly can. They know the date of when the account was made. Down the the second. And they pull that from the database any time they wish. It wouldn't be hard to implement that part. The real work would be in deciding on what the cutoff point for 'new' would be, deciding on a list of acceptable challenges, and then applying that filter to anyone that is considered new. Not really difficult per se. Just kinda... grindy, if we're to borrow gamer terms.

Buffy121 wrote: »

What was that slogan again? 'Play as you want' I think. Make all rerolls free. Then there won't be a problem for new players or older players who keep getting stuff they don't want.

Paying for rerolls is pointless for this system. It lowers engagement, is frustrating and annoying for everyone.

AzuraFan has it right. Get rid of the cost of rerolls.

I'm going to disagree a bit on this one because with unlimited rerolls in place, you might as well just present the player with the full list of all ~30 challenges each week and say "pick 5, but you can duplicate if you want." I don't mind the pseudo-randomness, but some system which implements a "not this week" by removing a rerolled challenge from the pool until the next weekly reset would be fine. I'm using "pseudo-randomness" advisedly because some of those challenges seem to be weighted. My experience shows that "Complete 1 Trial" is by far the most likely challenge to show up in the initial offering and to also show up after a reroll of something else. I think Arenas and Battlegrounds enjoy similar weightings.

AzuraFan wrote: »

DoofusMax wrote: »

[
I'm going to disagree a bit on this one because with unlimited rerolls in place, you might as well just present the player with the full list of all ~30 challenges each week and say "pick 5, but you can duplicate if you want."

That would work too, and it's been suggested by others here.

During the reveal stream for the tomes, they talked about how if players didn't like any of the challenges they got, they could reroll - an improvement over endeavors! The reality turned out to be different. Sure, you can reroll, but because of unwanted duplicates, you can quickly burn through the free ones, and the gold cost ramps up quickly to 10,000 a pop.

Why is there even a cost? Why is there a system actively working against giving players challenges they want to do? I'm always amazed at how often this game gets in the way of letting people do what they enjoy - by design!

Agree with you. Why is there a problem with that? They want people to grind, you still have to do that so what is the problem? Why the friction?