Loving Night Market so far! It's been fun helping people collect all their fragments and complete dailies.

Having a way to see where people are in your night market instance (outside of your group) would be very nice. I think that would alleviate some of the solo player frustrations and be really nice for being able to jump in and join others without asking for invites in the lobby or going through Group Finder.

thedocbwarren wrote: »

Thank you for the follow up, it articulates my concern I was trying to express. I do like the market look and "lobby" scene but the playstyle isn't what I hoped we would get. Whatever is planned for the new "content" on its way later I am questioning if it's story content with lore, etc. I really hope this game doesn't transition to task-like, mobile game-like, and minimal story/lore investment.

I don't think they'll abandon story content altogether. The upcoming two questlines (Thieves Guild and Sheogorath) very much look like they're going to be like the main questlines we've seen in ESO chapters or story dlcs (when they still existed) before. Another question of course is how big they'll be in scope - we know one of them is going to have 8 quests and the other one 6 quests, but the numbers alone say nothing about the length, and of course it says even less about how deep into lore the stories will go. I really hope what we'll see in July(?) will be decent - I know there are many story- and lore-focused players right now who are rather wary.

A different thing are those new solo player systems they announced, and, yes, I've been wondering about those, too. How much actual story will the Sages Vault have, or is it just a puzzle location with not much else to it? How deep into narrative terrority will the Rumors go?

And for Favors, we know already that we won't actually even talk to the 3 characters we're going to do favors for, but these quests are taken from a writboard - which reminds me very much of how the majority of quests in the Night Market look like: You start them by reading some note, and you turn them in at some box. No npc interaction at all, no voice acting (I've also noticed since Solstice that most town npcs aren't voiced anymore - same at the Night Market now. Looks very much like cost-cutting). Since I'm someone who looks for an immersive story experience, using writ boards to get quests and throwing quest items into a box to get the reward isn't quite interesting for me.

Let alone that fetch quests are the most boring type of quest anyway. In the Night Market there's one with several letters where it sounded like it's a scavenger hunt, but in the end you still just run from one questmarker to the next one and click some item, and at the end, you get your reward from a box... No puzzle content, no actual search. It was super weird, to be honest, considering the quest description mentioned "solving riddles", and there were none! Also I've just looked up the English name of the quest - it's even "Scavenger's Riddles" (in the localization I play it translated to "puzzling letters")!

Add to that that the quests are all rather generic, too:
"I found a note asking for aid in freeing caged animals captured by poachers. If I free the animals, I can return this note to a collection box on a rooftop oasis to receive payment." - Why are there animals in that weird daedric realm? Whom do they belong to, who wants them back? Who are the poachers and what are they doing there?
"I found a note tacked onto a notice board telling me that the other factions put up horrible propaganda about my faction. For a reward, I can clean up the district and protect our reputation." - Details? What does it say? "Daedrat is a meanie?" Why would these outlaw-ish factions even care?
It feels meaningless, and of course it doesn't contribute to the lore at all.

I'm not saying the fights aren't fun - I get a little bored if there's no meaning behind it, but other people seem to like it, so fine with me. Also, I really like the visuals and the district designs. But from the perspective or writing/lore/narration, it's all rather disappointing.

It's as simple as that: Grouping is not fun for everyone. I do group during the current event (the first time in ESO, actually - I've only soloed before) because the Night Market is too tedious to solo. But grouping itself can be a just as frustrating experience (at least that's my observation from having been part of a whole bunch of group finder groups during the past few days). I still do it because I want specific rewards, so I have decided it's worth the hassle for me, but is it a particularly fun experience? Not for me. I won't complain though, because I have chosen to do it. But since the question of this thread is why some people are averse to grouping, here it is:

Sometimes it works well, then I'm fine with it. But too often I've seen a group leaders running around confusedly (sometimes 7 times around the same block...), not being able to find a boss, basically acting like they never used a map before (well, depending on their age they might actually never have - but unfortunately, ESO has no route planner for dungeons).

To avoid such frustrations, I have started just creating my own groups, since at least I know what to do, where to go, and how to navigate, but even then the experience can feel like herding cats/fleas/puppies (insert your language's common comparison here). Don't get me wrong, I don't expect perfection, and I try to help the best I can if I see someone struggling. I also understand very well that not everyone has the same skills or knowledge about the game. But I'm not even talking about combat skills here. You have people who run around who knows where, and don't react to chat either, so you can't really coordinate anything or tell them to stop if they make some nonsense - and sometimes I had the impression that I was already lucky if, from a group of 12, 6 people somehow made it to the boss we had agreed on fighting.

Not sure if I expect too much, but sometimes it feels frustrating. I've been in groups that clearly weren't super powerful (where some number of members had already left or there were several player characters with a lower level) - is it really necessary to tell people to tackle mobs one by one then instead of attacking all of them - plus the boss - at once? Or that it might be a good idea to wait at a boss until everyone has respawned to attack together, instead of having people run into their death one after another (and the boss resetting after each one of them)? And yes, if I see behavior that leads to nothing, I will say something in chat. Then we're again at the other problem I already mentioned: Some people never seem to read it.

It really sometimes feels like going on a field trip with young children: Has everyone eaten? Does everyone wear appropriate clothing for the activity? Has everyone been to the toilet? Some people might not mind that, but especially considering I don't have that much time to play, I rather progress more efficiently. I don't even mind struggling with a boss fight a bit and taking longer because of that, since obviously everyone tries their best at least, but things like people running off to who knows where or aggroing random mobs during a boss fight despite being told they shouldn't?

As soon as I have the rewards I want, I'm out and back to soloing.

Soarora wrote: »

Reading between the lines on some people’s posts, it’s clear to me that there are people unable to find groups who didn’t actually try to make a listing. They’re just looking in group finder and their guilds but not actually making a listing or asking people for a group.

The content I got stuck on was the 'easy-peasy' (haha!) first faction quest (fixing the wards or something). Usually in this game if you wanted help with something like that you'd post in the zone chat, no? And offer to share the quest? But the zone chat was completely dead when I was in there (presumably due to the 36 player cap) and apparently we can't share quests either.

As this content needs to be played differently from how we've been playing up to now, that should have been made clear from the get-go. Euphemistic comments like "many of the event zone’s challenges were designed for groups in mind" don't help.

Nearly a week in, this has all become apparent and I'll give the Night Market another go when it comes back again (and try to contain my embarrassment at having to make a GF listing for help with a daily fetch quest!). In the meantime, I'll enjoy other in-game activities that may or may not involve grouping or 'soft' grouping, depending on what comes up in this week's tome challenges.

The other professions have improvements for loot. I propose a skill line for fishing ending with three active skills of which you can only choose one. 1: use of a net 2: use of traps 3. Use of a harpoon for large sea catches more roe with slightly better chance to get perfect roe.

Passives to improve catches.
An option to catch more rare fish or to receive more resources from crab and a giant clam

I just have to give you Devs a Kudos to you. I and my wife, and friends all think the night Market is tons of challenging fun filled content.
You guys nailed it!
When We 1st went in the it was a bit of shock. We were like Damn this is a bit too hard. But after going there for a while and learning the mechs, Night Market is just fun with great rewards.
We all love the house, the furniture, the color and style pages.
You took the feedback from the community for harder content and you delivered! Great Job!

I personally did not like The Writhing Wall event at all. It was too much of a boring grind and buggy as all get out.

But the Night Market other than a couple of bugs, "I've experienced 2" The Wolf boss glitch were the light wont appear at all so he stays immune to damage. Also once in a while abilities wont work in combat from time to time.

Other than that this place is a rock solid win for most people I know and play with accept for a guildie that can never be pleased at all.

Thanks you guys! I'm looking forward to Junes Crown Crate. It looks Awesome! The best 1 I've seen in years!

I am very optimistic about the future of this game under you guys. With content like this I feel it's money well spent with great entertaining Value.

Soarora wrote: »

Feedback #8, this one's rather negative...

I made an attempt to put together a guild run to do the full gameplay loop -- Brazen, Argent, Gilded, and then Opulent...

So, for one, not everyone had the relics. Okay, that was on me for not making that a clear cutoff. Had to scramble to replace...

For two, we were all together for the Brazen -> Argent part... but for the Gilded, 2/3 of the dungeon groups ended up not actually doing the dungeons because people wanted to keep their Argent keys for other groups that require having the Argents done. This was incredibly complicated to deal with and very unfun. Keys need to be able to stack so that peoples gameplay isn't a competition between different groups that have different requirements, because not every group is going to do the gameplay loop in its totality due to the time it takes. I don't want to force people to have the gold keys for next week, I enjoy the concept of doing the full gameplay loop, but I'm probably going to have to just for simplicity's sake.

Edit: I also had a hard time getting people to fill because of people holding their keys. The relics is a hurdle and then the competition of group requirements is another hurdle, making it harder to find fills than it needs to be. The keys need to stack or the unlocks need to be permanent.

I feel this complaint so much. I love the night market. Last night my raid guild finally got everyone on the same page and we were able to finally (for 8 or 9 of us) blind run the trial boss. We got it completed, and having done the dungeon bosses on Monday, I was feeling really good. Until I read a desperate plea for a tank from a guild mate who has been really wanting to get into the dungeons. I was happy to help until I realized that now I was at zero keys.

What a terrible game design. This is ridiculous, that it can be this complicated to find a group member when there are ready willing and able people that would love to help out. This has to be the single worst aspect of the night market and it just screams lazy way to increase our engagement numbers and stretch the content. This needs to go. It oozes senseless grinding to make your numbers go burr. The night market appears to the unbiased mind, a great success. A week later I'm still seeing packed guild rosters and hundreds of players in the night market. I don't use group finder, I take guild groups, but last night on PSNA there were a ton of groups in there when I checked.

So it's a success but I hope you're hearing the feedback from the people that are playing this event.
We need some GF love, make it easier to relist groups.

The keys need to stack at the very least.

The warewolf boss is bugged. There are people that cannot get their splinter, either he doesn't drop it or when he's in hunt phase, the last light doesn't spawn in. This has thrown a huge roadblock.

There must be something wrong with instances. I'm not the only one seeing or saying this. With hundreds of just guildmates in there, imagine the population of people in there. So how is it that people are reporting empty instances? Is it mistakingly spinning up new instances, not at 36 but a much lower number?

Performance is bad. Sometimes in the market, skills like flail just don't work. Not you have to press the button twice but actually just don't work. Also sound is not playing then all of a sudden crashing in and trying to catch up all at once.

A success for sure, but definitely needs some help.

shadoza wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Athory wrote: »

• Does ZoS have plans to turn ESO into something like a Dark Souls-style game?
• Do they have any plan to push solo players out of the game?

To answer the core questions asked:

Q: Does ZoS have plans to turn ESO into something like a Dark Souls-style game?
A: No.

Q:Do they have any plan to push solo players out of the game?
A: No.

Just following up here generally. We hear the feedback from solo players about the Night Market content. We want to follow up with just few things.

We have no intention of pushing solo players out of the game. However, we started this year off by noting that we were going to try some new things. Night Market is one of them. While we always provide group players with trials, we also wanted to try something different. This was not to alienate solo players, but rather to add a new way to play. That being said, we do hear the feedback and have passed that on our teams for future consideration, especially for when Night Market comes back later in the year. Remember, part of the ethos of this event is to add to it over time.

As several have noted in this thread as well, we have a roadmap that is publicly available. The point of the roadmap is to showcase the content we have coming throughout the year. As is noted on the roadmap and current PTS testing, we have plenty of solo friendly content as well. Thieves Guild and Sheogorath Questlines, Favors system, Rumors system, Two Solo Dungeons, Sage's Vault, and the list can keep going. And that is all on top of existing content. We also understand that not every piece of content will be for everyone, and that is okay.

We know this may come off as a contentious statement, but it does bear repeating. While we are an Elder Scrolls game, we are also an MMO. Storytelling and the heart of solo adventure will always be an important part of ESO. However, some of our event/ event zone content will be focused on encouraging group play. It is the nature of the genre. Additionally, we know just like there are players who come for solo content, there are also players who come for group content and challenging group content. So we want to make sure we are providing new things for them as well.

We'll close with this. Last year, we saw many threads throughout the year asking us to address content and find new ways of renewing the gameplay experience, both in variety and challenge. We are in the first passes of this now with items like Night Market going live. But we will have content throughout the year to address both solo and group play within the community. The feedback is helpful to steer us on the right track. So thanks to everyone, both solo players and group players, who have given their constructive feedback regarding the Night Market. The team is taking a look at what can be done during this current running and what can be adjusted for the next run of the Night Market.

I just want to remind everyone, anyone, that MMO does NOT mean grouping. It never meant grouping. It meant shared map. It meant socializing. Using the term Massive Multi-player Online to provide an excuse to push grouping and guilds is trying too hard to validate attempting to change the way we play.

And outside of dungeons, some which can be done solo with a solo mode coming soon, and trial content, there is NOTHING that can be done specifically as a large group.

My guilds would run world boss events but those got boring fast, especially when many can be done solo.

Thats all there is for group PvE large group content.

Trials and "make your own overland event."
ESO features heaps of solo content, thats 80% of the game.

But has always featured very little for group play, with trials being the only dedicated group event limited at 12.

They add ONE THING for a more casual group approach...

And y'all won't let it stand.