Dear ZOS - veteran levels are killing ESO. Please wake up to this.

Zero_Tolerance

Zaxq wrote: »

Apologies to everyone else, I was nice to him the first 2 times.

Zero_Tolerance?

Zero_Braincells would be more appropriate.

Why don't you read my first post again? Then read your dumb answer to it that had little to do with the subject. Then also notice the second leveling option that allows you to max in few days that I wrote about - Crag farm.

Zero_Tolerance

Zaxq wrote: »

Ive said specifically TWICE that THIS GAME ISNT HARD.

I did it solo to v10 as a bow NB.

Ive done it solo to v4 as a Templar as well.

I have never said its impossible.

In fact, all the crap you just posted refers to 100% of stuff THAT I HAVE NEVER [snip] SAID.

The game ISNT difficult.

SOLOING ISNT a problem.

THE. GAME. NEEDS. OTHER. LEVELLING. OPTIONS.

get that? OPTIONS. I.e. more than one way to do it.

Man, chillax, you gonna hurt yourself. I wasn't responding to you when I first posted in this thread. You responded to my post asking what's the correlation between questing and player skill - I gave you Storm Atronach example. Soloing VR9 Storm Atronachs will make you a better player.

You didn't understand my answer and asked what's the point I'm trying to make. I gave you my point and now you are nerdraging like a muppet that you never said anything about it.... Well OFC you didn't, you asked what's my point and I answered, that's all. I'm mental 'cos I answer your question? Or you forgot to take them pills this morning?

Most funny thing - I gave you another leveling option few times already. Please, go farm bosses in Crag, come back tomorrow and complain again about long and boring questing is as the only method, LOL

Moderator Edit: Edited quote from moderated post.

Singular

muze_ESO wrote: »

I just quit for reals this time due to the VR gameplay. I enjoy a challenge but not dying every other minute. The rollbacks were exciting too - makes me question if Zenimax has a quality control team.

See you all in WildStar, i just did my preorder. Bye.

Yes, you can mail me your stuff. Thanks in advance!

Singular

PhoenixWing wrote: »

Is it only me that I don't feel like it's a grind at all? I was alternating between questing and PvP, and before I know it I was VR4 already while I was still in the second zone of 2nd alliance (which is meant to be played with VR2).

Maybe because I was playing with a friend all the time. I guess everyone who say he is bored might be doing it solo, is that right? If that is so, I think we may see the problem more clearly.

Yes. I get bored soloing. A partner is more fun, but mind played all the time and ended up waaaaaaaaaay out leveling me - and then I dumped my sorta not super fun NB for a crazy awesome fun sorc

So I'm like still in the pre-vet levels and friend is V12. Sometimes I group, but sometimes no one answers the lfm - the randomness of the lfm/lfg sucks, is stupid and should be shot, beaten and hung, and not in that order.

Sendarya

daneyulebub17_ESO wrote: »

Could you imagine if this board was for EQ?

The levels are TOO HARD!! It takes months (months!) to reach max level cap---that's crazy--everyone wants to be end game within 3 weeks, tops!

Sony--you don't have a CLUE! Don't you see naked corpse runs are KILLING the game! Everyone's leaving!!!

And--losing XP with death???? Are you insane--Everquest is a game, it's not supposed to be difficult!

This game won't last a year!

This made me lol, then cry a little.
Yeah, I might not play EQ as it was at this stage in my life, and yet every single level felt like an achievement, every ability unique, dungeons were challenging, crafting was useful and not every person did it. Dying was a big deal, not a minor inconvenience. Overall, the amount of risk to reward was MUCH higher, so every... single... achievement meant something. Horses? lol. How hard were jboots to get, just for that little speed boost?

Here, people are mad that they can't get every racial motif easily in a month, and they actually request that all of these plus every purple provisioning recipe basically just be handed to them simply for playing the game.
The world of MMO's is now ruled by the instant gratification crowd. And then when they get everything they want in 3 weeks, they whine about lack of content and unsub.

MMO's are all in a lose/lose situation right now. I don't see a solution. They are dying, and it isn't companies that are killing the genre, it is the players. It is simply impossible to please us all.

sztartureb17_ESO

smokes wrote: »

i can't remember if i posted in this thread already, but i'm actually convinced that for the long term health of the game, zenimax need to roll back veteran ranks to VR2.

yep, that'll pee off a bunch of the playerbase that grinded their way to V12 already - however, all those rolled back would still have the gold, loot, achievements, skyshards and skillpoints to show for it.

rolling back gear/items might be more of an issue, but it's not impossible to do.

zenimax dun goofed - this is the only real way to fix it at this point and it needs fixing now, before it gets any worse.

roll veteran ranks back to a cap of VR2.
make craglorn level 50-VR2. (with the same XP requirement that was VR10-12)
make level 50 an actual level.
remove XP gain from the other factions quests altogether, but do not remove skillgains (questing through the other content should be an optional experience for gold, skill points, skyshards, ability levelling, etc - not mandatory as part of the grind to max level).
silver almanac mobs level 50, gold almanac mobs VR1 (or preferably scaled to player level, considering that more VR ranks will be added).
reset cyrodiil mobs to level 50.

give all players 5 days free playtime - including those who dropped subs. (to try and re-kindle userbase)

apologise profusely.

---

the benefits of doing this:
no mandatory grind to get into adventure zones.
other faction content that is optional from 50+.
cyrodiil pve content becomes optional VR levelling content.
pvp becomes more balanced - would only be offset by 2 VR levels and gear.

i also want to iterate that i am more than fine with the difficulty level of mobs, world bosses, delves, dolmens, dungeons and all that jazz - it's purely the VR levelling process that needs addressing, as it's currently a massive brick wall of grind and you'll be hard pushed to see anyone born in the 90's that's willing to push through it, without exploiting or finding a niche group willing to grind.

i'm VR4 at the minute and i am burnt out. i have quested my balls off and have resigned to the fact that unless i find a way to exploit, i'll be rolling multiple alts to 50 and waiting for changes to the veteran ranks. i picked up this game to get into the adventure zones, not to play the entire game through from 3 different angles before doing so.

Excellent idea. I am VR12 but is still sign this.

xwadirtydiggler

I quit on vet content no so much because it was a grind, I don't mind the time or grind at all if its rewarding. But what do you get at max level in this game? PVP is a borefest and seeing that I'm a pvper at heart, I didn't see the point doing a lame boring long grind to be better at a crap pvp system.

PhoenixWing

xwadirtydiggler wrote: »

I quit on vet content no so much because it was a grind, I don't mind the time or grind at all if its rewarding. But what do you get at max level in this game? PVP is a borefest and seeing that I'm a pvper at heart, I didn't see the point doing a lame boring long grind to be better at a crap pvp system.

I guess your issue is the game being boring more than bad VR rank system then. Maybe you could try Craglorn dungeons or something lol. (If you think Craglorn dungeons need high VR ranks, then it means VR ranks are rewarding, not just for PvP!)

Sakiri

hamon wrote: »

Catches_the_Sun wrote: »

Dralzen wrote: »

talking about EQ. they would have not survived the Hell levels. every 5th and 10th level required a ton more xp to level. i guess you are all used to having levels given to you on a silver plater. how do you survive in real life where you have to do hard work for little gain or none at all.

Exactly...I, for one, am ecstatic that a modern-era MMO has finally made us EARN something. This has been lacking since WoW started spoon-feeding everybody that they introduced to the genre. I recall playing games where you actually said congratulations when somebody earned a level, and you meant it, because it took effort. Games where you didn't *** & moan when you couldn't solo all the content because you weren't expected to...you needed help, you socialized, you found like-minded players & worked together.

i,m getting sick of all the nostagia mongers who keep harking back to the glory days of games gone by.. except that they invariably do so through rose tinted glasses.

i was there in old school games like EQ2 where pretty much everything you did required a group.. i remember standing spammming for hours trying to find a healer cos you couldn't do anything without them. Healers also knew thier own worth so some of them would abuse this and act like muppets knowing folk would either tolerate them or leave the group and go back to spamming to find another group.. yes these games were fun and you found some good groups. but they wern't all good and the players wern't all paragons of niceness.

it was actually refreshing when vanilla wow came out and you could do much more stuff alone and back then the community was pretty decent

EverQuest 2. GL getting a healer with the old shared xp debt system. Lol

Zarkaz

I love that crowd
Wow-> See you in WHO=failed->Se you in AoC=failed->get back to wow=failed->See you in SWTOR=failed->see you in GW2=failed-> see you in ESO=???-> see you in wildstar->see you in hell.

What a miserable people.

Sakiri

Darkro wrote: »

I soloed almost everything in veteran content, except the 4 man dungeons and some world bosses.
I even soloed ALL DOLMENS from VR 1 to 10.
This works 100% for NB,Sorc and DK as I have friends with specific builds that do this with relative ease...easiest obviously being DK.
No clue about templar as I only ever saw em as healers in dungeons or *** everyone with spear in pvp, but no clue about them in pve.

While I agree with OP that sometimes there is not a lot of incentive to level up, calling the game hard or slow to progress is an overstatement.

You can literally get from vr1 to 10 in around 25-30 hours played (and that's slacking), by just rushing trough the Points of interest (main quest, dolmens, world bosses, solo dungeons ).

My personal opinion is that people have been to indoctrinated with the WoW mentality, where you get showered in epics without much effort, where you basically get spoon feed every 10 minutes and where they even made 3-4 range of difficulty for every scrub out there to see end content and have something to whine about.

Remember this is an ES type of game, it's about the journey, not the destination, and so far the JOURNEY has been amazing compared to any other mmo out there, BY FAR. At least for some of us.

Being incredibly disgusted with boring, linear progression via mindless quest grind has nothing to do with wow.

I described vet levels to someone on the fence. He made up his mind there. "No, sounds like EverGrind" and this guy never played wow.

JoseDelgadoCub17_ESO

At least when I played WoW the world actually felt explorable.

I have done every dominon quest.

I doubt that I have done every alliance or horde quest in WoW. I guess idk I just felt ESO would be more explore promoted.

Fleymark

Realzyanya wrote: »

At 44 years of age, I just get disgusted with the instant gratification need. Fix it now or I quit! Fine, go ahead! There are some valid points. If you don't object to subpar performance, you add to the problem. Perfectly valid. I don't mind people saying that X issue is ****** up. But whining and crying and threatening to cancel...jeez, take your instant gratification elsewhere! I agree with a lot of the old schoolers - don't take my challenge out because you want to be V50 in 3 months! Difficulty makes you learn your character. It makes you learn when to group. The rewards aren't so tangible except a sense of accomplishment - wow, we finally killed that boss!We kick ***! Give me that any day!

Plane of Hate anyone?

Couldn't agree more. I'm the same age as you and this is the chief complaint I have about MMOs over the past decade. Specifically, that these hand holdy monty haul on a silver platter games have created a breed of gamer that, now, expects that in every game or they melt down like that kid in the reality show when deprived of bacon. The problem for old schoolers like us is that we can't just not play games like that to avoid it because the instant gratification crowd has infested every game and they, now, expect every game to be like that. There is one poster who actually stated, with a straight face, that an MMO should be a solo game with people to chat with. This is what we are dealing with, now.

The problem with this is it makes it harder to find out what the legitimate issues really are. I play a stamina build nightblade, both of which are supposed to be God-awful if you read the forms. As of V2 in pve, I've bot found that to be the case at all. I absolutely gut mobs solo, including most public dungeon bosses. It only starts getting dicey in situations where it's 3 or more mobs in a pack (or two or more namers) or its in a tight spot with no room to kite or easy to get adds. So, now, I can't tell if there is some virtual wall I'm going to hit at higher VR or if I'm reading posts from this new breed of chicken little whiner gamers who, apparently, can't differentiate between some classes doing some things better than others or not, and one of them sucking. Because if your standard for class viability is every class being as good as every other class in every situation you are probably going to find most classes in most games broken. And the rest of us have to figure out where a particular poster is coming from. In convinced, to use the EQ comparison, that these people would call the EQ Cleric broken and gimped despite being, arguably, one of the mist powerful healers in any game ever, because it doesn't solo quad kite as well as an EQ Druid. Along with another dozen classes.

I may have a rude awakening, but I suspect that the only wall that I hit will be bit being able to get groups when I need to because of the perception of my chosen class and build created and perpetuated by the sky-is-falling crowd.

My main and only toon just hit V2 and, if it scales consistently with what I've seen so far, I'm thinking the entirety of the vet levels will take roughly the same time level 59 took in EQ back on the old exp system. Except here it will be with something to do besides grind. I really don't see what the problem is.

I do think lack of end-game carrot is a legitimate issue. I find myself spurred on by a need to complete the game, get my skill lines maxxed out, get all the training points I can, complete my crafting, etc, not to mention complete achievements. But that's just me. If I weren't into all that, I'm not really sure what my motivation would be, besides having the best possible gear for PvP to go with max ability sets for that. In most games, there is an end game goal that keeps players stoked through levelling like raiding that will bring the best gear or PvP for better abilities... ESO doesn't seem to have that and that really should be addressed. Even DAoC, where end game was all about PvP and the best gear was crafted, had raid content with appropriate itemization. Maybe high end jewelry sets, since those can't be crafted, or costumes with stats from end game raid zones would be a happy medium.

Fleymark

Oh, and I agree that just piling new vet ranks on every 90 days with the assumption that that, alone, is enough to motivate people to complete them with no other higher goal demonstrates a fundemental lack of understanding of MMO dynanics on the part of the developers of this game, IMO.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Hey folks,

We want you to know that we've seen all your feedback and concerns about Veteran Levels, Veteran Content, end-game character progression options, and we're in the process of planning some changes and improvements. We hope to be able to share our plans with you very soon (maybe in the next Road Ahead letter.)

steveb16_ESO46

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey folks,

We want you to know that we've seen all your feedback and concerns about Veteran Levels, Veteran Content, end-game character progression options, and we're in the process of planning some changes and improvements. We hope to be able to share our plans with you very soon (maybe in the next Road Ahead letter.)

Thanks. This is very good to hear. For me ESO is so close to being a great game I could play for years.

The_Desert_Monk

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

For me ESO is so close to being a great game I could play for years.

Completely agree.

ESO is 95% awesomeness. If they could just fix that last 5% (broken quests, lag, VR leveling/content, and minor class balancing) then this will be the standard for MMOs.

acortner_ESO

Of the 17 people on my friends list, only 1 even comes online anymore. I see V1, V2, V1, V1 etc. all down my list. The person that comes online is an alt-aholic. She has 2 V1 toons, but basically stops after the main story completes.

I contacted two of the people on my list that I have previous gaming experience with to see what was up. They both said basically the same thing - "vet content was just a way for them to extend the number of gameplay hours until they could design a proper 'end game'. I have no interest in playing the game three times. One faction worth of quests was enough. Play through twice more? No thanks."

I can't help but agree.

gunsofdeschain

thats it, I'm done with this game. Got to VR9. I absolutely cannot tolerate the boredom anymore. I tried very hard to like it and get into the game. But as I was killing the millionth pack of mobs, trying to recover some idiots lost tools, I just shut the game down. Come the *** on, why did they have to *** put all the dungeons behind artificial levels? Can't they just have scaled all dungeons to 50 and left it at that. I'd have rolled a couple alts and been happy.

Anyway, kinda sucks coz the account page is under maintenance, so can't cancel for the moment lol. Need another game to sink my worthless life into.

gcalex5

GougedEye wrote: »

+1
And after 1.1 it's actually worse. Having a character go from Fun to totally useless between sessions is not my idea of fun. Tried to play a bit and just couldn't be bothered anymore.

Subscription cancellation doesn't even ask you why or any feedback. Kindof sums it up really.

This totally covers how I feel. I went from having fun and feeling like I was semi-powerful and getting a good challenge to '*** this shiz' frustrated with how under-powered I felt going from v4-v5 is where it hit me. This was geared out to v2-v4 gear and a build that has been battle tested with 7 days of play time.

-Resto Staff templar

smokes

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey folks,

We want you to know that we've seen all your feedback and concerns about Veteran Levels, Veteran Content, end-game character progression options, and we're in the process of planning some changes and improvements. We hope to be able to share our plans with you very soon (maybe in the next Road Ahead letter.)

thats great to hear, thanks for addressing our concerns - as i honestly love this game and i'd like to continue playing it for a very long time

1-50 was awesome
VR1+ through the other factions, not so awesome
craglorn, from what i've seen so far, also looks awesome.

it's that great big opposing faction quest grind between VR1-10 that grates me - leave everything else alone!

i also understand how hard to balance these things can be, it's also really hard to claw back a big design decision once it has been implemented.

Fleymark

hk11 wrote: »

daneyulebub17_ESO wrote: »

Could you imagine if this board was for EQ?

The levels are TOO HARD!! It takes months (months!) to reach max level cap---that's crazy--everyone wants to be end game within 3 weeks, tops!

Sony--you don't have a CLUE! Don't you see naked corpse runs are KILLING the game! Everyone's leaving!!!

And--losing XP with death???? Are you insane--Everquest is a game, it's not supposed to be difficult!

This game won't last a year!

At the time, EQ didnt have a lot of competition. I know it stole my soul for a few years, but if it released today I probably wouldn't play it.

Not that it has anything to do with this discussion, but I've said for years that we need another EQ. As in the original. With true class interdependence and no ability to solo anything but tradeskils, real death penalties complete with exp loss and corpse runs, and rewarding itimization where you have to earn good gear but your toon noticably improves once you do. It doesn't even have to be grindy like EQ but make it impossible to advance solo. And give classes specialization to the point that they have complete mastery of and ownership of specific roles.

I would absolutely play. With bells on. Because it would be a refreshing change of pace from any game released in the past decade. People constantly parrot the same advice to every question: "Make friends or join a guild.". Why? Except for a handful of circumstances you barely NEED a group in this game and the only thing you really NEED a guild for is trading. Great to have, of course, but not required at all. And that, IMO, is a sad state if affairs for mmos in general. But how is it a surprise to anyone that it doesn't occur to people to group or guild when they don't have to when they usually don't have to? And how ie anyone ever expected to understand that certain classes/builds will excell at certain things roles over others when every game, including, this one tells them that every player, at all times, should be able to do everything every other can? Especially when that kind of balance is impossible to achieve and never really has in any game despite the promises made by developers.

People reflexively recoil from things like class interdependence, not being able to solo, and true risk versus reward because there hasn't been a game that's had that in over a decade, but if you consider that true class balance is impossible to achieve, going for specialized classes in an environment of class interdependence really makes more sense than what all these games have been trying to do of late...Trying to be all things to all players at all times with every class and build when such a thing is next to impossible to actually achieve.

Sadly, I don't think such a game would ever get made in our current era. I can hear the crying about not being able to solo now.

Kingslayer

Well can you please hurry the hell up before i lose the will to live grinding 10 levels of pure boredom. 1-50 should of been adjusted xp wise to make it a longer grind not this vr content we are all stuck doing. I am at a point where i don't feel like logging in. Thats not something i should be paying for. Craglorn should of been 50 - 55

Iceman_mat

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Flaming]

LonePirate

If I had designed this VR leveling process which requires players to visit the other factions' zones, here is what I would have done.

1. Start the process at level 50, not VR1. Then progress then levels to level 60 (or VR10, whichever people prefer).
2. Put 5 and only 5 objectives in each zone's section of Cadwell's Almanac and make each objective equal 15% of the progress towards the next level. That is 75% of the total.
3. Make the 6 dungeon/delve achievements worth 1% each. That is 6% and 81% total. Make subsequent dungeon boss kills equal to 0.2% each.
4. Make the 6 skull boss achievements worth 1% each. That now gives us 87% total. Make subsequent skull boss kills equal to 0.2% each.
5. Make the 3 dolmens/dark anchors worth 2% each. We're now at 93%. Make subsequent clears of these events equal to 0.2% each.
6. Make each individual mob kill equal to 0.05% which means 2000 mob kills equals one level. Double the percentage to 0.1% for elite mob kills.
7. Make the other quest hub objectives in the zone worth 5% and individual quests outside of these objectives worth 1% each.
8. Make the two quests in the zone's public dungeon (the torch + dungeon) worth 2.5% each.
9. Make the group dungeon (two torch dungeon) achievement worth 15% for the first run and make subsequent runs worth 1.5% each.

These changes would give everyone various paths to reach the next level. I would also keep a fixed progressive point structure to the leveling for subsequent leveling to encourage leveling in each zone (zone 2 requires twice the points as zone 1, zone 3 requires three times the points as zone 1, etc.) but keep the zone specific percentages mentioned above so that the same number of tasks/kills are needed for each zone but you can't quickly grind mobs or quests in zone 1 to reach the max level in zone 10. It could be done, just not quickly or efficiently as quests or mobs in zone 10.

There would be a freedom of choice here while keeping the spirit of veteran ranks alive without requiring too much endless questing or grinding. This would also remove the psychological barrier associated with all of the 7 figure VP levels necessary to reach the next level.

steveb16_ESO46

gunsofdeschain wrote: »

Need another game to sink my worthless life into.

Keep an eye on ArcheAge then. While the story in no way compares with ESO as an adventure, it does have an open charm and a relaxed pace.

As well as skill bars that swap reliably.

And personal gliders. They are epic.

But like I say - ESO is a much better adventure experience.

ArcheAge is for people who both want more epic PvP AND want to spend hours crafting their first fishing rod.

Dublicious

My two cents:

1) You're going to get to the point where you run out of super exciting things to do. Should it be 2 months in? Probably not but seeing other lands is cool. It's no less exciting than the first time through.
2) If you're dying all the time you're doing it wrong. So far vet is really not that much more difficult than 1-50. Cold harbor is still the hardest zone I've played and I'm more than half way through the pact. That may change but I don't see it happening unless difficulty jumps out of nowhere.
3) Quest XP is not terrible (at least VR1-4). Do you get through a vet level slower than you get through a regular level? Sure, but you're also not going 1-50, you're going 1-12. You won't level as quickly, but neither do mobs.
4) Low XP for mobs really doesn't bother me. It's an MMORPG. The idea seems to be to discourage the mob grind and push you more towards questing. If they didn't, there would undoubtedly be more people on here complaining about how mob grinding is boring instead.
5) I would like more reward. But that might just be because any time I can get more reward at all I like it .

bean19

My problem with Veteran leveling:

- The combat is significantly harder and thus I feel like I'm limited in how I build my character. Everything has to be about surviving a fight with 3 normal mobs and bosses that are effected by CC. If a boss isn't effected by CC, then I can't kill it on Veteran solo, so forget about it. What I love about ESO combat pre-Veteran is all the choices I get to make. I often change up my build just for fun - to try new things out. . . but I can't do this in Veteran.

- Like the previous parts of the game, dungeons are only worth running once for the skill point. You get terrible xp in dungeons and the veteran gear starts at Vet 5 so no one does them more than once. Also, to be honest, even if they matched your level with the gear, I wouldn't run them often because gear isn't that important in ESO compared to other MMOs and absent progression it isn't worth trying to get slightly better gear while leveling. I'll do that at max level when tiny boosts of power from gear are the only thing left for character progression, but they don't matter now. While leveling pre-Veteran, I often go 5-6 levels before worrying about updating my gear. . . this makes dungeon loot far less appealing.

- There really isn't any reward for it. You get access to some better gear, but it's marginally better. Gear scales up so slowly in this game and the difficulty of veteran mobs is far, far above it. So the reward is a booby-prize.

gcalex5

I think we can all relate when I say the day I hit 50 I was so excited and felt like I'd made it this is it I can't wait to do all the veteran dungeons with my friends and really start being able to compete in AvA....then 2 hours later in tutorial island on the 2nd alliance it sunk in this is going to take awhile but you know that's okay I'm having fun and this is a challenge....then 3 weeks later I'm v4 and I was like well this is just feels like a job..why am I doing this anymore?

I don't say this as a way to just slaughter the game and like screw you guys I'm going elsewhere I say this because I care about the game and I really WANT to like it the same way I did as I adventured through 1-50

steveb16_ESO46

Mob grinding is boring. Doing the other faction 'story', which is by and large the same as each other for transparently specious reasons is also boring.