Difficulty: Challenging vs. Cheap - Why do we need "insta-kill" mechanics in normal mode?

srfrogg23

First of all, I would like to start off by saying that I am all about the philosophy: "the greater the challenge, the greater reward" and I firmly believe that there MUST be "off-the-charts" difficult content available in MMOs to keep the more Skilled Players engaged and happy (with equally "off-the-charts" rewards!).

This is also not intended to be a "ZOS sucks!" thread or anything like that (trolls beware), but is instead intended to be a "Maybe this needs to be adjusted" thread.

So, with the statement of purpose for the thread established, let's get into the meat-and-potatoes of what this thread is about:

THE BACKSTORY

Last night I spent the entirety of my Friday night basically banging my head against the proverbial brick wall because I was trying to do the NORMAL mode Undaunted Pledge (the Blackheart something or other dungeon) with a PuG group. To start off with, it took well over an hour to find a group willing to run the dungeon, and the people that I grouped up with were all really great people. We had two Vr2, one Vr3, and one Vr4 player - the leader was Vr2 and the dungeon was scaled to Vr2 as well.

Our group was made up of very patient, very intelligent, and very kind people and I made sure to send out my friend requests as soon as we decided it was time to call it quits 4 hours and 30 minutes or so after we started the dungeon... and there is the problem:

4 and a Half Hours of Wipes in a Normal Mode dungeon due to having virtually no margin of error because of the insane number of instant-death mechanics in Boss Fights.

Whether we're talking about a moment of Lag or a simple case of Lapsed Concentration of even 1 player equated to an immediate group wipe because the bosses spammed these instant-kill mechanics that came with less than a second's warning.
Wavecutter (optional) killed us more times than I can count and we eventually decided to sneak passed that boss to the Brood Mother (which was mandatory for the quest). The Brood Mother finally did us in.

Both of these bosses not only had charging instant-kill attacks but they also teleported behind random players and killed them, no warning, and no way to avoid the death. To make matters worse, these instant-kill attacks were consistently spammed in rapid succession.

At some point about 4 hours into the dungeon someone said, "I'm beginning to think that this isn't doable."

To which someone replied, "I'm sure it can be done, but I really don't think this is worth it."

Shortly after, we said our "goodbyes" and disbanded after sharing friend invites/guild invites.

THE DISCUSSION (a.k.a. "The Gripe")

I define "Challenging" as: An experience that requires a greater than average level of personal concentration, greater than average group coordination, a stronger understanding of the game's systems, as well as the practical application of that knowledge.

I define "Cheap" as: The "What the Hell just happened? I was alive, I blinked, and now I'm dead" mechanic. (I call it "cheap" because players should know, and should understand, exactly what it was that killed them and be left with at least an idea of what needs to be done to overcome the game mechanic that killed their character in the first place. And, they SHOULD SEE IT COMING! You can be straight forward and challenging at the same time! I personally recommend either Dark Souls or Demon's Souls for what I consider to be an excellent example of "Difficult Done Right")

As stated earlier, I firmly believe that only the best rewards should come from the most challenging content, and as a semi-casual player, I am only too willing to accept the fact that I will never have those rewards in my inventory. I won't take the time to tackle the most challenging content in the foreseeable future:

The Trials, the Dragonstar Arena, and (in all likelihood) the majority of the Veteran Difficulty Versions of the 4-man Dungeons, and I'm ok with not having those rewards and applaud those who do put forth the time and effort to tackle that content and reap the rewards (seriously, kudos to the people who do it, I don't have the patience).

BUT, I also firmly believe that there is a HUGE difference between "Challenging" and "Cheap"! And, I will absolutely classify Instant-Kill mechanics as "Cheap", especially when poorly implemented (like a boss that teleports behind you and hits you with and instant-cast/instant-kill attack...).

I'm not saying this mechanic should be removed entirely. Sure, it has its place, but does it really NEED to be in NORMAL MODE DUNGEONS????

No. Not even a little bit. If the Normal Mode is that hard because of these Cheap Kills, I cannot even begin to fathom how the ante can be upped for Veterans or the Trials, let alone how they actually are!

-Was this done by design?

Seriously, if Normal is that difficult, then how can there be a difference in the difficulty levels and what is the point to having them?

Or;

-Was this unintended? MMOs are big, complex, and finicky programs. If the introduction of the Scalable Dungeon System is somehow "not working as intended", then I absolutely understand and I will happily wait for the patch to fix the problem in the future, "no problemo, dude".

There are plenty of other things to do in the meantime (delves, public dungeons, Craglorn open-world, Cyrodiil PVP, etc.).

THE CONCLUSION (a.k.a. the whole damned point to this stupidly long post! Yay, we finally made it!!!)

I like to play casually and I am not concerned with having the BiS gear, but I do enjoy doing instanced dungeons because of the lack of interference by random players and the general structure available.

That is why I choose to stick with Normal Difficulty dungeons, and generally don't stray into the Veteran Difficulty stuff, and I sincerely doubt I will ever hinder a Trials or Dragonstar Arena team by insisting that I should be allowed to join them.

With all of that being said - Can we Please, Please, Please keep the "rip-your-face-off-hard-full-of-cheap-kills" difficult content where it belongs? (Veteran Difficulty, Trials, and Dragonstar Arena)

More importantly, can we please dial the Normal Mode Dungeons back down to a "PuG-able-in-under-an-hour" state?

Thank you for your time!

[Edited for Grammar/Spelling]

Audigy

I think we two do have a different opinion about what is cheap and what isn't.

To me cheap isn't a death ability by an encounter, as those you can avoid. There is a death recap which shows you exactly what happened besides that guides or video tutorials can be found everywhere in the net.

Not saying you need to watch them all, I am not a big fan of that either but its a way to see where you did wrong.

If we talk about cheap mechanics then I think about "tomb raider" acrobatics, where players need to jump from pillar to pillar and if one jump is too short goodbye and wipe. Another example are mechanics which consist of enrage timers, I always hated those in WOW as it ruins raiding based on a tactical and challenging task while turning it into a nuisance where stacking DPS and not intelligence is required.

Seriously, if Normal is that difficult, then how can there be a difference in the difficulty levels and what is the point to having them?

As far I can tell do Vet Dungeons require more gear which equals to dps and healing but the mechanics are also deadly there and not more deadly as you believe. Get hit and die this is the ESO philosophy


We can argue if death ability's should exist in the game sure but to me they are necessary. As soon people can afk in red zones again they will expect to be able to do this always and not only in normal dungeons or during quests.

Its actually quite funny to think about it. WOW introduced with MOP abilities which if you don't dodge them can kill you easily. These abilities do exist in quest zones already.

In my opinion everything that teaches people awareness is good. Since I wasn't with you in that dungeon I don't know what happened but if you were hit by those deadly attacks as you said then you need to try and dodge them next time.

I only play tank so I do know when I need to get out of the danger zone. The mobs to cast their heavy attacks or use an emote. The teleport boss that you described I don't know so I cant help you there.

Beakster

Very well said

nerevarine1138

Wow, that was long.

I think you're confused about how one-shot kill abilities work. Every single boss ability that can kill you in one go (or at least take away most of your health) comes with a warning. Any group worth their salt should be blocking or avoiding these mechanics with no trouble at all. There's nothing "cheap" about it.

Xjcon

Sounds like not enough health. Yes there are boss mechanics that can kill instantly but they usually are avoidable. The pledge quest is hard and ZOS has noted they are aware that something isn't right about it. But I have not missed a day yet that I couldn't get my gold key using pug groups.
There are however lots of nice people who are trying odd builds out in these that are not up to the challenge.

Lord_Kreegan

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Every single boss ability that can kill you in one go (or at least take away most of your health) comes with a warning. Any group worth their salt should be blocking or avoiding these mechanics with no trouble at all. There's nothing "cheap" about it.

Unfortunately, that's NOT true. If the animation leading up to the attack doesn't fire (and this seems to often be the case) -- or maybe the animation/warning effect is so minor as to be something you'd never notice even after umpteen tries -- you go from nearly full health to no health in an instant, followed by the summary sheet that leaves you wondering when the particular events (multiple) that killed you in that instant occurred... since you never saw them.

How many times have I had an insta-death and the summary sheet showed four or more effects doing damage? Almost every time.

nerevarine1138

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Every single boss ability that can kill you in one go (or at least take away most of your health) comes with a warning. Any group worth their salt should be blocking or avoiding these mechanics with no trouble at all. There's nothing "cheap" about it.

Unfortunately, that's NOT true. If the animation leading up to the attack doesn't fire (and this seems to often be the case) -- or maybe the animation/warning effect is so minor as to be something you'd never notice even after umpteen tries -- you go from nearly full health to no health in an instant, followed by the summary sheet that leaves you wondering when the particular events (multiple) that killed you in that instant occurred... since you never saw them.

How many times have I had an insta-death and the summary sheet showed four or more effects doing damage? Almost every time.

I have encountered zero (0) boss abilities that don't have a warning sign to let you know that a major attack is coming. If you're experiencing lag, that's a different issue, but you get plenty of opportunity to avoid boss attacks.

Or, to put it another way, if the boss mechanics are broken, why are so many groups able to complete the dungeons with no issue?

srfrogg23

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Every single boss ability that can kill you in one go (or at least take away most of your health) comes with a warning. Any group worth their salt should be blocking or avoiding these mechanics with no trouble at all. There's nothing "cheap" about it.

Unfortunately, that's NOT true. If the animation leading up to the attack doesn't fire (and this seems to often be the case) -- or maybe the animation/warning effect is so minor as to be something you'd never notice even after umpteen tries -- you go from nearly full health to no health in an instant, followed by the summary sheet that leaves you wondering when the particular events (multiple) that killed you in that instant occurred... since you never saw them.

How many times have I had an insta-death and the summary sheet showed four or more effects doing damage? Almost every time.

I have encountered zero (0) boss abilities that don't have a warning sign to let you know that a major attack is coming. If you're experiencing lag, that's a different issue, but you get plenty of opportunity to avoid boss attacks.

Or, to put it another way, if the boss mechanics are broken, why are so many groups able to complete the dungeons with no issue?

That certainly brings up a good point. There could have been a lag issue. There could also have been an issue with maybe just not seeing the "wind-up" to the attack due to not being used to how looking for them in that particular color palette (the Red Sparks and Yellow Sparks of a charging attack seem to blend in a little more with the background when in 3rd person mode and the camera is pulled back). I know I'm not the greatest player, so it certainly is possible that I just wasn't on-point when a lot of these attacks came, but I do recall the attacks coming rather abruptly.

I definitely don't want to see these mechanics removed from the more difficult modes (like Veteran) because I like the idea of players with a higher skill level also having something to work towards conquering, and because I'm obviously not the only one who wants to enjoy the game, but it certainly seems a bit over the top when it comes to a Normal difficulty dungeon.

I do like the Death Recap feature, it certainly helps to some degree. I think the best form of challenging content is less about abruptly ending the fight with a single attack as punishment for a single mistake, but if those kinds of mechanics must exist, then I think that perhaps increasing the amount of time that players have to notice and react, at least in the lower difficulties may be an appropriate solution.

Although, doing away with them in Normal wouldn't hurt my feelings - Veteran difficulty would still be an option for players looking for that *ahem* "challenge".

nerevarine1138

srfrogg23 wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Every single boss ability that can kill you in one go (or at least take away most of your health) comes with a warning. Any group worth their salt should be blocking or avoiding these mechanics with no trouble at all. There's nothing "cheap" about it.

Unfortunately, that's NOT true. If the animation leading up to the attack doesn't fire (and this seems to often be the case) -- or maybe the animation/warning effect is so minor as to be something you'd never notice even after umpteen tries -- you go from nearly full health to no health in an instant, followed by the summary sheet that leaves you wondering when the particular events (multiple) that killed you in that instant occurred... since you never saw them.

How many times have I had an insta-death and the summary sheet showed four or more effects doing damage? Almost every time.

I have encountered zero (0) boss abilities that don't have a warning sign to let you know that a major attack is coming. If you're experiencing lag, that's a different issue, but you get plenty of opportunity to avoid boss attacks.

Or, to put it another way, if the boss mechanics are broken, why are so many groups able to complete the dungeons with no issue?

That certainly brings up a good point. There could have been a lag issue. There could also have been an issue with maybe just not seeing the "wind-up" to the attack due to not being used to how looking for them in that particular color palette (the Red Sparks and Yellow Sparks of a charging attack seem to blend in a little more with the background when in 3rd person mode and the camera is pulled back). I know I'm not the greatest player, so it certainly is possible that I just wasn't on-point when a lot of these attacks came, but I do recall the attacks coming rather abruptly.

I definitely don't want to see these mechanics removed from the more difficult modes (like Veteran) because I like the idea of players with a higher skill level also having something to work towards conquering, because I'm obviously not the only one who wants to enjoy the game, but it certainly seems a bit over the top when it comes to a Normal difficulty dungeon.

I do like the Death Recap feature, it certainly helps to some degree. I think the best form of challenging content is less about abruptly ending the fight with a single attack as punishment for a single mistake, but if those kinds of mechanics must exist, then I think that perhaps increasing the amount of time that players have to notice and react, at least in the lower difficulties may be an appropriate solution.

Although, doing away with them in Normal wouldn't hurt my feelings - Veteran difficulty would still be an option for players looking for that *ahem* "challenge".

But those mechanics are in normal dungeons precisely because they teach players about tactics instead of forcing everyone into endgame content with no sense of how to survive a boss encounter.

If you're lagging and no one else is, that's a connection issue on your end. If you're not seeing the boss's wind-up, that's something you can fix.

Normal dungeons are not supposed to be easy. There is not a single one that I have had problems clearing with a pick-up group at any level, so long as the group actually pays attention to the fight. I am firmly against any change that would allow people to stand in one spot and spam attacks because they know that they can be healed through any damage that comes at them.

Xjcon

The mechanic you were speaking of was an ability that boss has where she randomly teleports to a random person doing some damage. Do you remember how hard it was hitting? I try to get as close to 2500 hp's as dps as I can. Also was the healer not keeping people topped off?

srfrogg23

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

srfrogg23 wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Every single boss ability that can kill you in one go (or at least take away most of your health) comes with a warning. Any group worth their salt should be blocking or avoiding these mechanics with no trouble at all. There's nothing "cheap" about it.

Unfortunately, that's NOT true. If the animation leading up to the attack doesn't fire (and this seems to often be the case) -- or maybe the animation/warning effect is so minor as to be something you'd never notice even after umpteen tries -- you go from nearly full health to no health in an instant, followed by the summary sheet that leaves you wondering when the particular events (multiple) that killed you in that instant occurred... since you never saw them.

How many times have I had an insta-death and the summary sheet showed four or more effects doing damage? Almost every time.

I have encountered zero (0) boss abilities that don't have a warning sign to let you know that a major attack is coming. If you're experiencing lag, that's a different issue, but you get plenty of opportunity to avoid boss attacks.

Or, to put it another way, if the boss mechanics are broken, why are so many groups able to complete the dungeons with no issue?

That certainly brings up a good point. There could have been a lag issue. There could also have been an issue with maybe just not seeing the "wind-up" to the attack due to not being used to how looking for them in that particular color palette (the Red Sparks and Yellow Sparks of a charging attack seem to blend in a little more with the background when in 3rd person mode and the camera is pulled back). I know I'm not the greatest player, so it certainly is possible that I just wasn't on-point when a lot of these attacks came, but I do recall the attacks coming rather abruptly.

I definitely don't want to see these mechanics removed from the more difficult modes (like Veteran) because I like the idea of players with a higher skill level also having something to work towards conquering, because I'm obviously not the only one who wants to enjoy the game, but it certainly seems a bit over the top when it comes to a Normal difficulty dungeon.

I do like the Death Recap feature, it certainly helps to some degree. I think the best form of challenging content is less about abruptly ending the fight with a single attack as punishment for a single mistake, but if those kinds of mechanics must exist, then I think that perhaps increasing the amount of time that players have to notice and react, at least in the lower difficulties may be an appropriate solution.

Although, doing away with them in Normal wouldn't hurt my feelings - Veteran difficulty would still be an option for players looking for that *ahem* "challenge".

But those mechanics are in normal dungeons precisely because they teach players about tactics instead of forcing everyone into endgame content with no sense of how to survive a boss encounter.

If you're lagging and no one else is, that's a connection issue on your end. If you're not seeing the boss's wind-up, that's something you can fix.

Normal dungeons are not supposed to be easy. There is not a single one that I have had problems clearing with a pick-up group at any level, so long as the group actually pays attention to the fight. I am firmly against any change that would allow people to stand in one spot and spam attacks because they know that they can be healed through any damage that comes at them.

Well, I'm not saying that it should be "roll your face on the keyboard to win" easymode.

There's pretty big difference between what you're saying and what I'm saying. A broad spectrum of difficulty exists between "I blinked, now I'm dead" and "I can drool on my keyboard until the boss dies".

You've also got to keep in mind that the people who are inclined to take that next step are also going to understand that there will be an increase in the difficulty as you go from Normal to Veteran, then from Veteran to Dragonstar/Trials. This, incidentally, also creates that greater sense of accomplishment for those who are seeking to tackle those challenges.

I think of Difficulty Modes in games kind of like I think of Football (hear me through, don't interrupt) :

(Veteran and on up) You've got the NFL -> the pros, the guys that are getting paid millions of dollars a year to play the game. You want to make it in the big leagues, you'd better be good, or you're going to lose your job.

(Normal Mode) Then you've got the "Sunday Afternoon" Players (Me ) -> the group of friends that go out and play our hearts out, with variable skill levels, and are ultimately just having fun... needless to say the overall expectation of skill level is pretty low and it's ok to make mistakes because your paycheck isn't riding on it.

srfrogg23

Xjcon wrote: »

The mechanic you were speaking of was an ability that boss has where she randomly teleports to a random person doing some damage. Do you remember how hard it was hitting? I try to get as close to 2500 hp's as dps as I can. Also was the healer not keeping people topped off?

The healer was trying her best, but she was usually the first one to get whacked. Once that happened, it all went downhill from there. Now, I play with a 6/7 light armor 1/7 heavy, destruction/resto staff setup so I can main as a DPS, but if the crap hits the fan I can swap to resto and hopefully keep people alive (but I don't specialize in it).

Even with that setup though, it was still pretty rough. After the healer went down, the other DPS would usually drop, then I would bite the dust when the boss broke aggro. And that was pretty much how things would go every fight. The Healer was also our Vr4 player.

nerevarine1138

srfrogg23 wrote: »

Xjcon wrote: »

The mechanic you were speaking of was an ability that boss has where she randomly teleports to a random person doing some damage. Do you remember how hard it was hitting? I try to get as close to 2500 hp's as dps as I can. Also was the healer not keeping people topped off?

The healer was trying her best, but she was usually the first one to get whacked. Once that happened, it all went downhill from there. Now, I play with a 6/7 light armor 1/7 heavy, destruction/resto staff setup so I can main as a DPS, but if the crap hits the fan I can swap to resto and hopefully keep people alive (but I don't specialize in it).

Even with that setup though, it was still pretty rough. After the healer went down, the other DPS would usually drop, then I would bite the dust when the boss broke aggro. And that was pretty much how things would go every fight. The Healer was also our Vr4 player.

Which boss was this?

srfrogg23

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

srfrogg23 wrote: »

Xjcon wrote: »

The mechanic you were speaking of was an ability that boss has where she randomly teleports to a random person doing some damage. Do you remember how hard it was hitting? I try to get as close to 2500 hp's as dps as I can. Also was the healer not keeping people topped off?

The healer was trying her best, but she was usually the first one to get whacked. Once that happened, it all went downhill from there. Now, I play with a 6/7 light armor 1/7 heavy, destruction/resto staff setup so I can main as a DPS, but if the crap hits the fan I can swap to resto and hopefully keep people alive (but I don't specialize in it).

Even with that setup though, it was still pretty rough. After the healer went down, the other DPS would usually drop, then I would bite the dust when the boss broke aggro. And that was pretty much how things would go every fight. The Healer was also our Vr4 player.

Which boss was this?

I think it was called the "Broodmother" or something like that. It was one of those Hagraven character models and she was in the Harpy area of the dungeon just after the big fat guy.

There was also the 1st Mate Wavecutter which gave us no end of grief

ferzalrwb17_ESO

We attempted this with our 3man and found it brutal.

The "insta-kills" you speak of aren't all insta-kill but close to for anything short of a 3k+ tank. Wavecutter's skill hits the entire group and is something like 2k damage. It has, however, a big "tell" and is interruptible which is basically the entire mechanic of the fight and pretty easy once you work it out (and deal with the nagging harpies).

The Roost mother's teleport was a problem for us. The tell wasn't consistent (not sure why). The problem isn't the teleport it's the fiery breath she sometimes does when instantly appearing behind you. That can hit well over 3k which should be considered instakill. With a little lag dodgerolling or moving out of the way of that is, literally, impossible sometimes. Rezzing is pretty easy though and she shouldn't be too much of an issue.

The last boss, for us, was impossible with 3 (due to the mechanic which effectively reduces the group by 1 for the entire fight). But there are no instakills there.

Again, this dungeon in our opinion is hitting VERY hard but should be doable with a competent group of 4. Is it too hard as a "normal" pledge quest? As much as I like challenges I'd have to say yes, without a doubt. It needs dialling back 15-20% to be classified "normal".

Drasn

I've DPS's and healed all the undaunted normal and vet so far and I haven't found one yet that isn't easy once you learn the mechanics.

For those two fights:
Wavecutter needs to be interrupted, simple as that.
Broodmother is a ranged mobile fight, keep moving and keep pew pewing.

Other things to note:
HP is your friend. All roles need HP not just tanks. I run with 2600 on my DPS
and 3000 on my healer.

With a few exceptions, the bosses friends should always be killed before the
boss.

Rezzes are important, DPS need to stop attacking and handle that. Tanks
and Healers should rarely be the ones rezzing.

Assume that RED=DEAD. Even if you think you can take the hit, do your best
to avoid it.

zaria

Weird, I found the normal dungeons to be pretty easy, probably as we had lots of people overleveling them.
The veteran dungeons are a bit too hard, you have to be very good to beat them at level, we did banished cells early but none of the others and I keept away until around VR9 at this time they was manageable. With some experience they was pretty easy.

Curragraigue

Since patch 1.5 the dungeons scale so it is harder to overlevel a Dungeon. I agree with you op I don't think a Dungeon should have a boss doing 2.5k to 3k damage on normal settings. Instant kill mechanics do not teach anything if there is no signal they are coming. I have found bosses in Veteran dungeons that drop large AoE 3k+ attacks that do not have a tell that I have seen I'm soft cap on health and spell resistance, one shots should not be killing me in either normal or Vet dungeons if I'm within range of the dungeon +/-5.

I dodge or block attacks if I know they are coming but if it has no discernible tell and I'm not given enough time to move, how am I learning anything about mechanics? Either the tells need to give more notice (taking into account people playing on the other side of the world and lag issues) or they need to drop the amount of damage that bosses are doing so that people can learn but not be instantly killed by one attack. A 75% health reduction teaches a lesson, wipes just cause frustration.

If people want Dark Souls I have no problem with a slider difficulty setting.

Phinix1

I completely agree with everything the OP says.

There is challenging, and then there is tedium. Especially for normal mode, such exclusive balancing will be the game's undoing in terms of end-game longevity.

Hopefully ZOS will get things re-balanced more realistically.

Also, the dungeon finder NEEDS to work, and it needs to work as well as the competition's. The current "fix" actually broke it completely, and the functionality is laughable, I am sorry to say.

There needs to be an option to select the level range of your target group and to auto assign leader to the lowest or highest level, to name just a couple.

Potentially a mentoring type system that allowed player levels to scale to fit in target groups (even if only allowed to scale down) might also be in order.

aco5712

dungeons are finally challenging and you wanna get rid of insta kill why? learn the mechanics, learn how to dodge them/survive them and move on and kill. If you were to nerf the normal dungeons that would cut half the fun out of pledges.

Gyudan

Just ask Eric Wrobel, he'll teach you how to play Blackheart. He showed promising skills on ESO Live#5 :wtf:

xaraan

As a guy that is from a team that has had no problems doing any of the content (normal or vet, gold or silver key) I agree with you completely.

ZoS needs to actually spend time balancing each dungeon and the boss mechanics. Whatever they did, perhaps they expected no work required once they unleashed whatever algorithm was involved, but every dungeon I've played doesn't feel quite right. Some achievements are next to impossible to get (like time). There is a middle ground there that they have rarely been able to find so far.

I said this in another thread, but both vet crypt of hearts and vet city of ash (v14) feel easier than any of the leveled to v12 vet dungeons. Or even if it's not easier on those power wise, the boss mechanics seem more manageable to where you are actually having fun in the fights.

Valymer

The way it is now:

Dragonstar Arena

- very entertaining, challenging, takes great coordination/teamwork

- when you die you know that you messed up and it is fun to plan how to correct it next time

- get a chance at nice set items in the chest after each phase; mobs also drop gold now

Veteran Dungeons

- range wildly in difficulty and fun factor depending solely on mechanics of each boss fight; some dungeons are still faceroll while others require specific classes or extreme amounts of luck

- when you die you often have no idea how to avoid it next time; many fights are more about stacking and spamming abilities rather than tactical movement and coordination

- gold and silver key loot is generally deconstructed; it isn't horrible but most people are not going to give up their crafted-armor set bonuses to use it

qwyksylver

The bosses you're talking about gave my group a hard time the first couple times till we noticed the telegraphs. Our group was 3 14s (tank and 2 dps) and a v6 heals. The wavecutter wiped us twice until we noticed she bows her head before her insta-kill and you can block that and take almost no dmg. The harpy will teleport, deal some dmg then do an instakill cone attk in front of her so just stand facing her back and you should be ok. end boss is another story

Goresnort

Valymer wrote: »

The way it is now:

Dragonstar Arena

- very entertaining, challenging, takes great coordination/teamwork

- when you die you know that you messed up and it is fun to plan how to correct it next time

- get a chance at nice set items in the chest after each phase; mobs also drop gold now

Veteran Dungeons

- range wildly in difficulty and fun factor depending solely on mechanics of each boss fight; some dungeons are still faceroll while others require specific classes or extreme amounts of luck

- when you die you often have no idea how to avoid it next time; many fights are more about stacking and spamming abilities rather than tactical movement and coordination

- gold and silver key loot is generally deconstructed; it isn't horrible but most people are not going to give up their crafted-armor set bonuses to use it

That's a nice summary. GJ.

Mostly enjoying the new scaled group instanced dungeons.
The added difficulty is generally also nice.

However their scaling mechanic seems to have been too dependant on a generalized procedure, instead of individually tweaking each principal boss encounter, as some bosses and their abilities seems to have had 'spiked' scaling.

Certain attacks are doing dmg way over the top, some previously high Health bosses now have skewed Health pools, and adds on some bosses also have errounously much Health.

Not many bosses have these issues, but a few require some additional tweaking.

Loot/reward/risk is utterly skewed for all the vet Dungeons imo.

I get better and more useable loot from my hirelings and by farming Resource nodes in solo pve, then I get from doing challenging 4 man veteran Dungeon encounters.

MornaBaine

I'm a pretty casual player and I spend a lot of time roleplaying and solo questing. I LIKE doing dungeons but I'm sure never going to get invited to the "leet" groups. I don't mind pugs, they are, of course, a mixed bag. I like to play with easygoing people who don't get all "dungeons are srs bsns" and that can be hard to find. However, when you do, it CAN be pretty impossible to get all the way through a dungeon and after the 4th wipe my fun quotient goes wayyyy down. The only dungeons I've ever made it through in what I found to be a time period that I felt was still fun was when I've been grouped with someone who has taken the time to study the fights and can tell the group what the boss does and give us the strat for defeating them. Sadly, that ALSO takes the fun out of it for me because then it just feels like I'm just clicking through and dealing with mechanics rather than being part of an actual fight against scary monsters. Frankly, I'm not really sure what can be done about it.

Gillysan

Playing in PvP all I have to say is how blissfully unaware so many people are to fight mechanics in this game. I have seen countless tanks again and again, even after I pointed it out "interrupt the Menders self heal", stand there and keep whacking the NPC healer. Again and again as a non-tank healer I have to rush forward and do it myself. This isn't something I see occasionally, I see this all the time and for weeks on end.

We need Natural Selection mechanics like this in the game.

Xjcon

MornaBaine wrote: »

I The only dungeons I've ever made it through in what I found to be a time period that I felt was still fun was when I've been grouped with someone who has taken the time to study the fights and can tell the group what the boss does and give us the strat for defeating them. Sadly, that ALSO takes the fun out of it for me because then it just feels like I'm just clicking through and dealing with mechanics rather than being part of an actual fight against scary monsters. Frankly, I'm not really sure what can be done about it.

It doesn't take that much time to watch a few fights on YouTube to understand the mechanics. It probably takes less time then it took to write your last post.
But you just said you don't like knowing the mechanics cause it takes the fun out of the fight. That makes no sense. It's not fun wiping to mistakes made due to lack of understanding of mechanics.
So many people want to play a part of a game that takes coordination but don't want to take time to learn the mechanics of it.

TheLaw

The difficulty is fine for an organized guild group. The chance of a casual group or pug group completing one is almost 0.

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO

thomas.k.grayb14_ESO wrote: »

I've DPS's and healed all the undaunted normal and vet so far and I haven't found one yet that isn't easy once you learn the mechanics.

This!
For those two fights:
Wavecutter needs to be interrupted, simple as that.
Broodmother is a ranged mobile fight, keep moving and keep pew pewing.
This!
Other things to note:
HP is your friend. All roles need HP not just tanks. I run with 2600 on my DPS
and 3000 on my healer.
This!
With a few exceptions, the bosses friends should always be killed before the
boss.
This!
Rezzes are important, DPS need to stop attacking and handle that. Tanks
and Healers should rarely be the ones rezzing.
This!
Assume that RED=DEAD. Even if you think you can take the hit, do your best
to avoid it.

most of the content is very easy. only problems I have had is when people are not focusing enough on their role, like things not being interrupted. if you dont want to be forced to play "traditionally" with the tank interrupting, that s fine, but you better agree someone else will do it, but then they wont be dpsing or healing so...
content should not be: walk in with whatever group and whatever gear and stand in a circle heal through any situation, that is so boring. If you cant learn to handle the normal mode content as it is you will never be able to handle any end game content or pvp.
try harder, discuss tactics and roles with your group/ join a guild so you can use their voice chat and be able to talk, experiment with gear and abilities. you cant just use the same setup as solo leveling or your pvp, you have to develop one for group dungeons and your role in them; it may be close to the same but honed for an encounter. unlock lots of stuff an change abilities for the situation, dont just do the exact thing that hasnt worked the last ten tries

Lord_Kreegan

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Every single boss ability that can kill you in one go (or at least take away most of your health) comes with a warning. Any group worth their salt should be blocking or avoiding these mechanics with no trouble at all. There's nothing "cheap" about it.

Unfortunately, that's NOT true. If the animation leading up to the attack doesn't fire (and this seems to often be the case) -- or maybe the animation/warning effect is so minor as to be something you'd never notice even after umpteen tries -- you go from nearly full health to no health in an instant, followed by the summary sheet that leaves you wondering when the particular events (multiple) that killed you in that instant occurred... since you never saw them.

How many times have I had an insta-death and the summary sheet showed four or more effects doing damage? Almost every time.

I have encountered zero (0) boss abilities that don't have a warning sign to let you know that a major attack is coming. If you're experiencing lag, that's a different issue, but you get plenty of opportunity to avoid boss attacks.

Or, to put it another way, if the boss mechanics are broken, why are so many groups able to complete the dungeons with no issue?

Hate to push you off your elitist pedestal, but it isn't a lag issue (I'm 50ms from the servers) and LOTS of people are experiencing the same thing. In any event, lag would not cause an animation not to fire; it would only delay it.

I ran an experiment earlier this afternoon; same fight (mini-boss) repeated multiple times (with the same result): the summary sheet showed three light attacks (doing minimal damage) followed by a heavy attack that killed instantly; the AI never changed.

Invariably, there were one to two light attack (melee) animations; but NEVER a heavy attack animation; in other words, no tell whatsoever to give a player an opportunity to dodge or counter the attack. What's more, the heavy attack appeared to occur instantly after the last light attack animation.

The summary sheet always showed the same sequence of events.

So, it doesn't matter if you're just a fanboi, an elitist, a shil, or an employee of the marketing department, it IS happening and people are going to notice even if you claim in the forums that it doesn't happen .