The Grind and Dev Question

Sprinkles28

So endgame grinding is rather... oh boring, lame, worthless. I apparently made it to veteran ranks right after they nerfed all the "best" grind spots. I just read a developer post saying they aimed for 20 hours per veteran rank. I can do it in about 6 per rank, but still find this ridiculous. It's completely boring grinding away mobs like a Korean MMO. So my question is, does ZOS have any intention of changing this?

Other issues and concerns.
If you are VR1, you get the same XP for killing a VR1 mob as you get for a VR11 mob.
Veteran Dungeons give you far less XP than world mobs. For example, open world mob gives about 400xp per kill, while veteran dungeon trash gives you 100xp.

I've seen a lot of post complaining and such, just wondering if ZOS has any intention of changing this or they believe grinding for hours for a veteran rank is fun.

badmojo

They're attempting to balance the grinding times against the questing times. If you don't like sitting there killing the same thing over and over, do some quests.

technohic

badmojo wrote: »

They're attempting to balance the grinding times against the questing times. If you don't like sitting there killing the same thing over and over, do some quests.

They have had complaints about how long the leveling process is, so the anwer is nerf one thing to force people to do the other that was even slower? Its decisions like that which add to my loss of faith in ZOS. They could have increased quest VR XP rather than chase grind spots

And OP; I know how you feel. You just need to find a spot as they will never get rid of them all together without hurting that same quest experience as well. Just hard to find one that is not already being farmed to death.

I found a dungeon that just running the actual quest was fun because it was it was packed with enemies. As I fought and moved around I would run into other groups of mobs and pull them in to where it was actually fun with how intense and fast paced it was. Was heart broken to see that enemies had been nerfed to 85 and 15 XP per mob.

I just don't get why a game maker would try to push you away from just having fun however you feel like, but ZOS does. Just try to level up even at half the speed of questing via PvP and see how that goes.

Joejudas

INB4 ZOS defense squad shows up to disagree

Theosis

badmojo wrote: »

They're attempting to balance the grinding times against the questing times. If you don't like sitting there killing the same thing over and over, do some quests.

there is no more Bleepin quests.. Im still at vet 12. My ONLY option is grouping in crag and killing the same 15 mobs repeatedly..

Garwulf

Theosis wrote: »

badmojo wrote: »

They're attempting to balance the grinding times against the questing times. If you don't like sitting there killing the same thing over and over, do some quests.

there is no more Bleepin quests.. Im still at vet 12. My ONLY option is grouping in crag and killing the same 15 mobs repeatedly..

What's the problem. You have been paying $15 a month for content. Look harder it must be there somewhere. When you find what you have been paying for please tell the rest of us because we would like to know as well.

badmojo

technohic wrote: »

badmojo wrote: »

They're attempting to balance the grinding times against the questing times. If you don't like sitting there killing the same thing over and over, do some quests.

They have had complaints about how long the leveling process is, so the anwer is nerf one thing to force people to do the other that was even slower? Its decisions like that which add to my loss of faith in ZOS. They could have increased quest VR XP rather than chase grind spots

And OP; I know how you feel. You just need to find a spot as they will never get rid of them all together without hurting that same quest experience as well. Just hard to find one that is not already being farmed to death.

I found a dungeon that just running the actual quest was fun because it was it was packed with enemies. As I fought and moved around I would run into other groups of mobs and pull them in to where it was actually fun with how intense and fast paced it was. Was heart broken to see that enemies had been nerfed to 85 and 15 XP per mob.

I just don't get why a game maker would try to push you away from just having fun however you feel like, but ZOS does. Just try to level up even at half the speed of questing via PvP and see how that goes.

You really don't understand why they wouldn't increase the xp from questing to the extent that quests were equal to the old craglorn grind spots? You must not have used those grind spots, they were broken, everyone knew it. You really expected them to go back over the whole quest line and rebalance it all towards those few "broken" craglorn bosses?

You say "I just don't get why a game maker would try to push you away from just having fun however you feel like, but ZOS does." except that was exactly their intent in fixing these craglorn boss grinds. Before the fix, those bosses were by far the best and therefore became THE way to level up in vet ranks. It was exactly what you say is bad, we were forced to stand on a rock healing or single target bittermaw over and over and over and over and over. Doing anything else was a waste of your time unless you were just trying to have fun. The UC grind was kind of fun at times where there weren't enough people, but then it quickly became impossible when you had too few.

The amazing grinds you guys want so badly, weren't that much fun, but the broken rewards made them the only real choice. The grinds that are remaining that I've used seem to be pretty balanced towards the questing gains, therefore there are now options for leveling up veteran ranks. Perhaps you want it all to be quicker, but you have to consider the amount of time it takes to run through the quests isn't something they can change, the amount of content takes X amount of time, the grinds need to take that same amount to get to the same spot, otherwise it's not balanced. If they simply raised the amount of XP per quest, players would out level the quests.

tiamak

Sorry if I don't get the point, but how exactly was grinding 14 veteran ranks ever supposed to be fun? Frankly, "funny grind" sounds like a conceptual contradiction to me. If you want to have fun on your way to V14, I'd say you do some quests.

P3ZZL3

V2 here - although recently jumped to v3 last night from doing 2 dailys with Undaunted. I did the Norm and the Vet (without added bonus).

I'm not sure how long it would take me out in the real world to earn in the region of 85,000 XP in 1.5 hrs? If there is somewhere, please do share

technohic

badmojo wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

badmojo wrote: »

They're attempting to balance the grinding times against the questing times. If you don't like sitting there killing the same thing over and over, do some quests.

They have had complaints about how long the leveling process is, so the anwer is nerf one thing to force people to do the other that was even slower? Its decisions like that which add to my loss of faith in ZOS. They could have increased quest VR XP rather than chase grind spots

And OP; I know how you feel. You just need to find a spot as they will never get rid of them all together without hurting that same quest experience as well. Just hard to find one that is not already being farmed to death.

I found a dungeon that just running the actual quest was fun because it was it was packed with enemies. As I fought and moved around I would run into other groups of mobs and pull them in to where it was actually fun with how intense and fast paced it was. Was heart broken to see that enemies had been nerfed to 85 and 15 XP per mob.

I just don't get why a game maker would try to push you away from just having fun however you feel like, but ZOS does. Just try to level up even at half the speed of questing via PvP and see how that goes.

You really don't understand why they wouldn't increase the xp from questing to the extent that quests were equal to the old craglorn grind spots? You must not have used those grind spots, they were broken, everyone knew it. You really expected them to go back over the whole quest line and rebalance it all towards those few "broken" craglorn bosses?

You say "I just don't get why a game maker would try to push you away from just having fun however you feel like, but ZOS does." except that was exactly their intent in fixing these craglorn boss grinds. Before the fix, those bosses were by far the best and therefore became THE way to level up in vet ranks. It was exactly what you say is bad, we were forced to stand on a rock healing or single target bittermaw over and over and over and over and over. Doing anything else was a waste of your time unless you were just trying to have fun. The UC grind was kind of fun at times where there weren't enough people, but then it quickly became impossible when you had too few.

The amazing grinds you guys want so badly, weren't that much fun, but the broken rewards made them the only real choice. The grinds that are remaining that I've used seem to be pretty balanced towards the questing gains, therefore there are now options for leveling up veteran ranks. Perhaps you want it all to be quicker, but you have to consider the amount of time it takes to run through the quests isn't something they can change, the amount of content takes X amount of time, the grinds need to take that same amount to get to the same spot, otherwise it's not balanced. If they simply raised the amount of XP per quest, players would out level the quests.

It's not jus craglorn. They nerfed mobs in about every dungeon as well. So the hardest mobs give you 15-85 xp per. They also make it to where PVP and I'm told group dungeons are way under paced.

You can justify it around how slow questing is supposed to be the pace but the fact is they lost a lot if not most of their players due to that system and have even acknowledged it as such in their long process to get rid of it all together. And once again they have taken too long or may not remove them at all so an entirety new group of players can do the same thing.

Sprinkles28

@badmojo‌ So you feel that 20 hours, as stated by ZOS, is acceptable amount of time for 1 veteran rank?

Quote from ZOS_Ginabruno "Clarification regarding experience gain within Veteran Ranks" November 2014

...When we introduced the changes to Veteran Ranks in Update 5, the goal we had in mind was that a typical player could gain a level after approximately 12-15 hours of play, whereas the Veteran Ranks earned by VP had a goal of about 20 hours ...

14 VR * 20 Hours (per level) = 280 Hours to reach end game.
I have a career and a family and average about 2 hours a night.
280 Hours / 2 Hours Per Day = 140 Days assuming I never stop to sell sh-t, repair gear, chat, etc when I log in. LOL. That's sound reasonable before I'm end-game. End Sarcasm.

I remember before launch how ZOS claimed how you "could" do the other faction's quest to gain more Skill points after you reach level cap "end-game." ZOS stated it as a way for solo-players to have more content.

It seems to me ZOS is forcing everyone to grind these other factions to reach true end-game and even so, there isn't enough quests. It's just a big time-gate because they have no more content to release imo.

It's a shame really, I see a lot of potential in this game. Though it sounds like they have no intentions of removing the epic grind. Even when they remove Veteran Ranks (IF they remove them) the grind will just become Champion Points. I'd just like to point out, grinding whether quests or mobs is not fun for me personally.

Sprinkles28

BTW, my personal solution to the problem is simple.

Remove veteran ranks completely and change level cap to 64. VR14 players would be 64, VR13 would be 63, so on and so forth.

After you do this, leave the leveling as it is prior to hitting veteran ranks. You can level up from 49 to 50 in under 2 hours by questing (my experience anyway). Or slightly increase the required XP per level from 50 to 64, but not this crazy million XP per level. Stay consistent with level 1-50.

It is extremely frustrating for players to have a consistent leveling process from 1-50, then suddenly be slammed by this vertical cliff of veteran rank levels.

Remove "veteran dungeons" until level 64. Actual end-game. Re-balance all veteran dungeons accordingly. This scaling dungeon crap is all out of whack anyway, but that's another topic.

badmojo

Sprinkles28 wrote: »

@badmojo‌ So you feel that 20 hours, as stated by ZOS, is acceptable amount of time for 1 veteran rank?

No, I feel that the old craglorn boss grinds advanced players far too quickly. I feel like grinding shouldn't be that much better than questing. That's it, that's all. I'm not defending ZOS's design, I'm simply explaining why they're doing it that way.

I haven't done a lot of grinding at spellscar in craglorn, but I can tell you it's certainly not 20 hours per veteran rank.

nerevarine1138

As always, the complaint here doesn't appear to be "I'm not leveling fast enough," so much as it's "I'm not leveling faster than I would by questing."

No one "nerfed" your playstyle. You just don't get to progress faster than other people via exploits.

ashlee17

Don't worry they will be selling you xp potions soon! Be sure to bring your credit card! Only poor people will have to suffer the grind- me

nerevarine1138

ashlee17 wrote: »

Don't worry they will be selling you xp potions soon! Be sure to bring your credit card! Only poor people will have to suffer the grind- me

You already pay for a subscription, so why wouldn't you have enough money for ESO Plus?

Bloodfang

I've reached VR12 at about 800hours /played. Then I just grinded those 2 VR levels at Spellscar in just a day.

Also the progression some of you people have in mind is dying, raid progression system is dying a horrible death. You can't release content for those 1-5% of people who bother raiding, and just turn your back to all others who rather do solo content.

Sprinkles28

@Bloodfang‌ I'd like to see where you get this statistic of 1-5%. Please list your source of facts for MMOs in general and for ESO specific.

Also, if you want to solo go play a single player RPG. There are plenty. This is not a SOLO game. it's an MMO. 800 hours is simply unacceptable for a modern day MMO. This is not the late 90s with 2 year grinds. Modern players / MMO expect more than mindless grinding.

Yusuf

badmojo wrote: »

They're attempting to balance the grinding times against the questing times. If you don't like sitting there killing the same thing over and over, do some quests.

Then they should increase quest-XP. It's ridiculous how long it takes to make V14.

firstdecan

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

As always, the complaint here doesn't appear to be "I'm not leveling fast enough," so much as it's "I'm not leveling faster than I would by questing."

No one "nerfed" your playstyle. You just don't get to progress faster than other people via exploits.

You miss the point entirely. Some people want to get to end game. They don't particularly enjoy the questing, they simply want to get to max level so they can be competitive in PvP or trials. They want a game they can play with their friends (which is not possible while you're levelling). They don't want to spend 300+ hours playing to get there just because there's a segment of the MMO player population that never leaves the basement and has nothing better to do.

And that's the real rub. Zeni replaced their tedious Veteran Ranks with an even longer grind system (the champion system), and every "improvement" they're making to the game is something designed to take hours and hours to do. They're not trying to market a competitive game, they're trying to design a game where the only path to success is having no life outside of the game.

There's a lot of people that want to like this game, it has the potential to be a lot of fun. But at 20 hours of game time per veteran level (280 hours), plus the time it takes to get a character from 1-50 (another 80-100 hours), it would take most people over a year to play a character to the point where they can get to the content they want to play (assuming 5-10 hours of play time a week) and be realistically competitive in it. Yes, you can technically do PvP at level 10, but how much fun is it to be a meat shield to people that don't have better skill, they simply have 8-10 hours a day to level a character more quickly.

I really hope Zeni turns this around, because I really liked the game when I was beta testing it, and I've been subbed since. I'm dropping my sub when this becomes B2P because Zeni doesn't deserve my money. I barely play anymore, I basically check my hireling mails and that's it. The only thing Zeni really has to offer right now is 300+ hours of monotonous questing that is not half as good or immersive as any of the single player games that have been released. At the pace this is going, the game will be completely F2P by its second anniversary, and the only people playing it will be RPers and die hard TES fans who just enjoy the environment. I'm not criticizing either of those categories, but it leaves out people who enjoy a competitive experience or who want something from a game other than just repetitive mindless experiences.

I'm sure Zeni will get a boost out of console sales, but unless they make some serious changes to playability it won't keep anyone's interest.