dear ZoS, any details or ETA on upcoming VR changes?

smokes · June 2014

i think it's been said plenty on these forums, that sadly, VR levelling content does not live up to the same quality standard as the 1-50 levelling process.

what changes are you planning to implement and when are you intending to implement them?

the snippet of info in the "road ahead" post (which i eagerly awaited) suggested additional attribute points for each VR level as well as repeatable scaling dungeons. whilst these are both positive changes, this doesn't really affect the current implementation of the VR1-10 quest content in opposing factions, which appears to be the largest complaint, in that it is a mandatory path to character progression, rather than optional.

feedback is important to your customer base - please give us some more info

temjiu · June 2014

I agree. sadly, adding a few extra points per level of "whatever" doesn't really fix in any way the horrible balance and killjoy of the VR levels. Its a good step...in not the exactly right direction. interestingly enough, I did really miss the concept of character advancement once i hit VR, but it wasn't one of the big things that "killed" it for me.

a few points of "whatever" will not make my 2h templar suddenly viable. or my archer. or my shield carrying melee brute of a DK. And it wont change the fact that VR killed any desire i had to level an alt in the other areas. And this is coming from a sever alt-er that had 2 accounts in this game. really. both full.

I would LOVE a Dev discussion where they do a "round table" and discuss (hopefully over a beer like decent Dev's do), various ideas that have floated across the table and their thoughts on them.

could be fun times. You know...actually talking to the players. And yes, I understand that it's a pretty hostile world out here in forum land. but it could have been allot less hostile. hostility tends to build when people think they are being ignored or sloughed off. communication usually fixes that (a great example was the forum change post and the responses from CSR's).

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · June 2014

It's something we're working on, but we're not quite ready to share the overall vision yet as it's still a bit in flux. We will as soon as we can! We know everyone is eager to hear what we have in mind.

SG_Celerrimus · June 2014

Couldn't some ideas that have been being tossed around and worked on be shared with us so that you can pick which one to go with based off of player feedback and desire?

Mujuro · June 2014

So long as it doesn't require that I run around in light armor + destro/resto, I'm looking forward to it. I'm getting really tired of Craglorn AA being exclusively for those folks ... if you want to stay alive.

valen741 · June 2014

Jay? Is that you mate?
I'd say the entire VR system has always been in flux.. Or made up as you go along?

My opinion is the VR system in it's current state has driven off more players than anything.
Let's make the entire game an endless quest grind \o/
*sighs*
Stop breaking your game...

bloodlanceeb17_ESO · June 2014

The only thing you need to do is to ramp up the experience and rewards from 4man dungeons , so people can level up doing dungeons in 4 man groups.

that is the thing you are advertising in your marketing adds etc, to improve and make 4 man content more more more.

the main point being, there is no point being in a 4 man group, until you are maxed out in level and only seek loot.

Levelling in 4 man groups is pointless (dungeons) the rewards are slap to the face when you compare how much you get from quests.

So when there is no point being in a 4 man group doing 4 man dungeons, why is there 4 man dungeons ? why is there a dungeon finder ?

Every problem culminates to the main problem, => 1st and best thing to level is to do quests.

Every MMO player does what is best for him, and the 2nd best option for a normal MMO player is the dungeons, and when you compare the quest exp and rewards and dungeone running exp and rewards, the gamers feel that SLAP on face.

the difference in rewards is so big, that its game breaking.

i could do 4 mans all day, but i cant.

why ?

as the rewards are so BAD (experience mainly) the end result is that NO ONE WANTS TO DO 4 MAN DUNGEONS SO THERE IS NO ONE USING THE DUNGEON FINDER => 2h+++++ lines to get a group.

And even when you get a group, WHY would you want to go to the dungeon ? WHY ?

there is no point or reason to do a dungeon more then 1 time.

?????????

Maotti · June 2014

Sooner rather then later please,

Many on my friendslist can't be bothered to play after defeating Molag Bal.

bloodlanceeb17_ESO · June 2014

i made myself to continue aftar that, i am now veteran 3 almost 4 and i cant do quest running anymore, nonstop questing and doing other stuff if i run near it, is tormenting to me after 50 levels of doing it...

i am all OK with questing, but the main thing i need is social aspect of the game and dungeon running AS MUCH AS I WANT, with as low que time as possible.

Meaning they need to make 4 man dungeon running very viable as a levelling alternative. So people do dungeons more.

Also ramping up rewards by type of player , like DPS classes get normal exp and loot, but tanks and healers have increased chance to get blues from mobs or something similiar. or more gold x 200% or more.

we really need a viable way to level up. MAINLY questing is bad developer decision.

Nazon_Katts · June 2014

I think everyone understands that reworking the Veteran Ranks does take it's time. What I and others just don't get is, what exactly is stopping you from upping dungeon xp gains again?

Not only would that be an interim solution for VR many could live with, but it would also bring back a good portion of group play to levels 1-50 and I just fail to see why it was so easy to essentially shut dungeons off as a viable leveling path and so incredibly hard to reactivate them again.

Kulrig · June 2014

First off, thanks for finally having us at the post we clicked the "Log In" button at once we log in. That was a pet peeve of mine, one I'm glad to see fixed. (*)

On topic, I'm with @temjiu when it comes to being an altoholic. My favorite thing to do in an MMO is to make characters of various classes and factions, and level them up to see what life is like on that side of the fence. My favorite thing to do in any Elder Scrolls game is to roll up a new character and progress through one of the guild story lines with it. Unfortunately I can do neither in ESO because each character will have to do every quest in every faction area, not to mention the guild quests are not built to allow for a level nothing to complete them like they can be in an offline ES game. Since the leveling experience will be mostly the same for each character, I find myself lacking the motivation to do anything with my alts other than make them a free 60 slot expansion to the bank. The only reason to level a character in another faction in this game is to have a different pool of players to group with, and I've been around the MMO block long enough to know that it's a mediocre benefit at best if the populations are balanced.

I can understand some of it; after all, it is an MMO with a leveling system and that means certain zones are tied to certain level ranges. I guess that means guild quests too. But having to go through every zone on every character? Another game I once played did that for their first expansion. They made two new continents, each the size of the existing one the game shipped with, and stuffed it to the brim with quests and stuff to do. Only problem was they decided that everyone should do it all, so they limited the EXP gained to the point where to hit the new level cap you HAD to do most of the quests on both of the continents (because nobody has alts or goes back to do old quests for rep grinding, amirite?). After I got my first character to the new cap, I was so drained that even a year later I dread the prospect of doing it again.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I love going through and experiencing the other factions, I love seeing the new zones and whatnot from another perspective, when it's entirely up to me if I do it or not. Being forced to do so is what really bummed me out.

joshisanonymous · June 2014

If they did that, some group of people would inevitably freak out and rage about how this or that idea wasn't implemented. It's much better for the playerbase to be unaware of the options being considered so that the only thing people rage about is the changes that actually go into effect.

The point is minimizing the number of things players can rage about, because it's sadly inevitable that literally everything will serve as the source for a complaint.

severite1952cub18_ESO · June 2014

Perhaps I am in the minority, but I just hope I casn go back to soloing through VR3, and continue moving through. The beating of head against the mob difficulty to tiresome, to say the least.

kevjon74_ESO · June 2014

Really glad to hear it's being looked into. I shelved the game a few weeks ago in favor of other recent releases, since I wasn't really having fun anymore in the VR areas. But will definitely keep track of upcoming updates and look forward to returning to finish maxing my templar!

Inco · June 2014

Thanks Jessica! You might want to publish something sooner than later. Forums are full of a lot of upset folks and guilds are shrinking in part due to VR grind.

Might be WORTH getting some input / feedback / POLL or whatever from your user community at large on OPTIONS before you commit to them. (Bonus Skill Points I doubt is going to win back many folks or keep existing ones much longer)

Me personally... will NEVER level another toon past 50 in the current game model. The designer should be taken out back and SHOT multiple times for suggesting that crazy grind and delay of reaching max VR level. I made toons in other factions so I could enjoy them later. Didn't realize I was going to be forced to do them in order to obtain VR10.

I suggested this in another thread, but maybe again here is needed. PUT BACK the system you had in place during BETA. When you got XP/VP equal to your level no matter WHAT zone you went into. GRIND problem FIXED, but at some cost folks will complain "Carebear" approach to leveling.

I'd like to see BALANCE myself. (Templar Healer VR12 - and not a single REAL BUFF to bring my DPS in line or near DK, SORC or NB even). WHY?

Audigy · June 2014

Upping Dungeon XP opens the world for bots and hackers (see WOW, SWTOR, WS).
Besides that it has the negative effect of nerfing any type of open world content which you can see very well at World of Warcraft where nobody is questing and everyone and his dog sits at SW waiting for the queue to pop.

Is this really the type of MMO you want to play?

While I cant speak for everyone, I am damn tired of these type of MMO´s and I enjoy the open world questing.

I say, leave VR´s in place and don't buff dungeons even more. There are dungeon crawler MMO´s on the market, I don't think ESO needs to be another one. I bought ESO because it wont be a dungeon crawler and I believe many others did so as well.

What ZO can do with VR´s is a companion system so that you can group up with an NPC, so that those who struggle with socializing can still advance in the game.

Cody · June 2014

once I hit 50, its nothing but PvP for me:/. If ZOS fixes some of it, I will try vet zones again. I do want to do them, but it feels like to much of a grind right now.

Kulrig · June 2014

@Audigy, simply put yes, I would like to play the kind of MMO where dungeons are a legitimate way to level. The point of it would be to have an alternative path for leveling for those who enjoy grouping with others and fighting big bad monsters. It is true that eventually, once people have done the quests they'll be less likely to go back and do it all over again if they can help it. The reason most won't, however, is skill points and queue times.

Many skill points are tied to quests, as a rough guestimate I'd say it's about equal to the amount granted by Skyshards in a given zone (if not more, at VR1 I have 110-ish, 49 of which came from leveling and 20-30 from shards). That adds up to a huge difference, so as long as skill points are still tied to quests there will still be very real reasons to go do them. Not to mention the skyshards themselves, a good quarter of which are placed near the end of the minidungeons scattered about the map.

As for queue times, let's face it if you don't like PvP there ain't much to fill the gap with other than questing or grinding mobs. If you're not a tank or a healer, you'll be sitting in queues for a very, very long time. Even when the queues are relatively short, I like to fill them in with a quest or two since it's better than grinding in my opinion.

The skill points thing is the primary reason I believe open world won't take a huge hit if dungeon EXP is buffed. As annoying as it can be sometimes, that's why I believe shards and quests ought to remain the primary method of gaining skill points.

I do like the idea of a companion system, though. I don't really struggle with tougher content because I'm always with my brother, but it's fun to get a little helper following us around. Perhaps a system where you can hire someone from the Undaunted, Fighters or Mages Guild for an hour or so? They'd go away in group dungeons, but otherwise fight by your side for as long as the contract lasts.

Ojustaboo · June 2014

As I have said a few times over the past week, up until two weeks ago I was one of the people saying how my entire guild was loving ESO.

I have mentioned this week how a few players since reaching vet are struggling to enjoy the game any more.

Only last night another vet2 said they were unsubbing as they were having zero fun with it, again this is a person that was really really positive about the game up until they reached the vet stages.

I understand Zenimax not wanting to give too much info out until they know what they are going to do, but they need to give something asap and an estimated time frame. For instance, are we talking 3 months or a year.

Otherwise, the more people that reach vet, the more people will leave and while some may come back, many others will get into new games and make them their home.

R1ckyDaMan · June 2014

More options to gain good xp is good. You could even go down GW2's path and make resource nodes grant a little xp.

Make daily quests in our "own" faction area's that grant xp for our level, anything just to break up the depressing stare at my xp bar.

Past few days I have been playing roughly 3 hours a day, I was vet 5 then and I am still vet 5 now, just questing, it is too slow.

Mystborn · June 2014

You're crazy!

I was getting ~300k VP each run of Wayrest Sewers and they took ~20 minutes with a good group.

To be honest it was my primary way of leveling from VR7-10.

Ohioastro · June 2014

And what would you do when you reached vet 10? More experience is only useful if there is a reason to gain it - e.g. you have some need to reach the level cap. I know that the MMO mantra is "the real game starts at the level cap", but if you step back and look at it, this is really just a pathology of the genre. For most games the act of leveling up itself is the game, and one of the things that I like about ESO is precisely that it isn't all about "endgame".

I do think that it would be great if PvP was even more viable at V1 so that people who preferred it could go straight there without having to do something that they don't want to do, namely questing.

TRIP233 · June 2014

I know people are eager to know, but take your time. We don't want it to be rolled out and not be any good.

R1ckyDaMan · June 2014

It is not about wanting to rush to level cap, no point as they have already said they plan to raise it further...

But more activities to do along the way, right now you can quest, do pvp or dungeons. 3 activities, that is it 3..

I like to be sidetracked in an rpg.

ZDavis_ESQ · June 2014

Given the amount of time this game has been in development and the amount of money and man-hours that went into the process, the fact that it's still "a bit in flux" concerns me.

draxredd · June 2014

The more i endure the veteran system, the more i feel like this game's developers didn't even played the game before release.

steveb16_ESO46 · June 2014

I believe this was their vision for the game all along. Get back your investment from box sales and initial subs then concentrate on retaining the element of the customer base that just wants a hard core combat grinder.

As we've seeing they're pretty easily satisfied in a way the customers who don't think that just applying a multiplier to mob stats and throwing you into a long quest grind for reasons that make no sense aren't.

Tavore1138 · June 2014

I am quite keen on the idea of doing all the quests, I think they did a good job with them overall.

What I have a problem with is the simplistic way they have made things 'harder' simply by adding HP and power to the mobs. It removes any feeling that you have progressed and become more powerful - in many ways dealing with larger groups but without the boosts could have been a better way of maintaining a challenge but also allowing the player to feel powerful... in the sense that being cut down by the last survivor in a group of 5 or 6 would probably make me feel more inclined to come back and try again that being cut down by a 1,000 damage attack from a couple of boosted trash.

Equally, making boss fights more interesting by adding new mechanics or better AI to the combat works better, for me, than simply boosting stats globally and making them 'too powerful' for my abilities to impact so all the skill points I have pumped into my build become somewhat pointless.

And as all mobs get more stats it might be nice to gain a few ourselves so it at least takes two hard hits coming straight through the block before we die

But they say they are working on it so I guess we have to give them time, at least they are listening.

Lithion · June 2014

Yikes... I'm getting depressed reading all these comments about the VR grind, and I haven't even hit VR 1 yet.

I've played pretty much every single day since the 3-day early access and I'm only level 43 right now. I like to search a lot of crates/boxes/barrels etc., I listen to every single line of NPC dialogue I can find, I explore and look for hidden chests, lorebooks, and minibosses, and as a result I level VERY slowly. I also spend quite a bit of time doing PvP in Cyrodiil, and that is just how I like to play. So far I've had a blast in ESO, and the pacing of the level 1-50 content has been perfect for me!

But I'm very concerned about VR content because my current play style will just result in excruciatingly slow progress. And most likely, I'll end up quitting long before I hit VR12. Just about everyone levels faster than me, yet they're still having issues with the VR grind... that just leaves me extremely pessimistic about my own chances of getting through VR content.

I just hope Cyrodiil PvP becomes really fun once I hit VR1, that might be the only thing that'll keep me going once I hit the level grind.

And I'm really hoping ZOS has some changes planned soon.

Zheg · June 2014

Going to agree with everyone about increasing the 4-man dungeon experience. On my main I went from v8-v10 by solely grinding Wayrest Sewers. You meet people, you're challenged by the game mechanics and become a better player, and it's not something you can do solo and as such should be rewarded more. It's unfortunate that there isn't a version of Wayrest Sewers for v1-8 that can either be completed quickly (and thus making the normally paltry experience worthwhile) or has increased experience per boss.

I don't think VR leveling needs a redesign, just increased experience from dungeons, pvp, and a little boost to exp from questing (this is the root cause of why you saw so many in craglorn farming anomalies, quests take forever, you get pwned by 3 man groups, and then you get barely a tick in a veteran level). Increasing experience should only require testing as far as balance to make sure the tweaks aren't out of whack, but this really shouldn't take long.

When you think about the various dungeon exploits from closer to launch that allowed many people to exploit their way to v10 insanely fast (looking at you Darkshade and Fungal), you'd think ZOS would be ok with with granting another 3-5% of a veteran level upon dungeon completion - especially when the v1-v5 dungeons take as long as they do.

phreatophile · June 2014

Take your time, what do you have to lose? Besides customers.

You need to let your customers know that there is some relief coming, and that it's coming soon.