XP Progression Across Playstyles - suggestions

UrQuan

I've posted about this in various threads about various related topics, but I thought I'd start a new thread to make it easy to find, and where we can hopefully consolidate our ideas about XP progression across different playstyles.

First off: ESO is supposed to be "play how you like." I know that gets trotted out all the time, taken way out of context, and applied to all kinds of ridiculous things. Still, I think it's relevant here. As far as I'm concerned, there are several broad categories of ESO players (with overlap between them), and I feel like each of these categories should be able to play their preferred way of playing without feeling like they are cheating themselves out of XP and progression. I think this is particularly important with the introduction of CPs.

Second, I don't think that the XP earned through all of these playstyles has to be completely even - that would be pretty much impossible to achieve, and there's nothing wrong with one playstyle earning somewhat more than another. They should all be comparable though. If you spend an hour doing X you shouldn't receive double or triple the XP that you would if you spent that hour doing Y, but it's OK if you still earn more.

So here are the broad categories of ESO players that I see (keeping in mind that there is overlap between them):

PvE: these players primarily play PvE, either solo or in groups. Most of their game time is spent questing, exploring, doing delves.

PvP: these players primarily play PvP, either solo or in groups.

Grinders: these players level up by grinding mobs, either solo or in groups. This is usually an intermediate stage, as they're probably just doing it to level up in order to be more powerful for another activity, but some people are actually just doing this because they enjoy grinding.

Raiders: these players primarily run group dungeons and trials.

If I've missed any categories, hopefully someone will point out what I've missed. Well, I know I've missed RPers, but I don't really see how you could have a system for gaining XP through RPing... If I'm wrong about that, feel free to point it out.

Currently it seems like, of those categories, the only ones that are really viable for gaining XP are PvE questing and grinding, with grinding spots frequently being nerfed. To my mind this is a problem. It's not really a problem for me personally as a player, because PvE questing is what I enjoy spending most of my time doing, but I still consider it a problem, because not every player feels that way, and if we make the other playstyles much less efficient ways of progressing in XP and CPs, then we're going to be driving away large segments of the player base who feel like they have to engage in activities that they don't really like in order to stay competitive.

So what's the solution? I don't think there is a single solution, but here are some suggestions.

Grind spots: Grinders gonna grind. ZOS seems to constantly nerf various grind spots. In cases where there were actual exploits involved, or where XP gains were vastly higher than they should be, there's nothing wrong with this. What is a problem is when places are getting nerfed across the board. Why should all of Craglorn be nerfed? Why should all mobs in delves be nerfed? Many PvE questers complain about grinders ruining their immersion and killing all the mobs in an area where they're trying to complete a quest, or a delve, or an achievement. I agree that this can be a problem, but the solution isn't to nerf the mob XP or spawn rate in those areas. The solution is to create a few designated grind spots (I think 2 per full zone) with good mob density and respawn rates. These grind spots would have no quests associated with them, and no achievements. There might be a note somewhere or something else that explains why those mobs are infesting the area, but otherwise there would be no story or anything in the area. This way grinders have a spot where they can go grind effectively without interfering with PvE questers. Anybody who isn't interested in grinding really has reason to go to these spots. It's win-win.

PvE Questing: when grind spots are added as in the suggestion given above, just un-nerf mob XP in delves and other places where they've been nerfed. I don't see that anything else needs to be done for this playstyle.

Raid XP on a sliding scale: OK, someone who knows more about the habits of raiders would have to add more detail to this idea, but I think everyone can agree that the XP rewards for the group dungeons and trials are currently way too low to make raiding a viable method of gaining XP and CPs. I can understand why ZOS doesn't want people gaining massive XP just running the same dungeon over and over, because at the same time they're grinding out top quality endgame gear. What if XP for group dungeons and trials was increased significantly for the first time you complete a given dungeon/trial, and then proportionally reduced each subsequent time you complete it within a certain time period? So (and these numbers may be way off from what would make sense - I'm just throwing something out there for illustration) maybe the first time you complete Dungeon A you get double the XP you currently get. The next time you get 1.5X what you currently get, then the next time the same as what you currently get, then 0.75X what you currently get, then 0.5X what you currently get, and so on. Every 24 hours you go back up one category. If you want to maximize your XP, you cycle through all of the dungeons before doing any of them a second time within a 24 hour period.

PvP: I don't know, PvP XP somehow needs to be increased, but as I really don't PvP I don't have any suggestions on how to do it without introducing exploits. Hopefully someone else can chime in on this.

Thoughts, criticisms, other suggestions?

DirtySmeegs33

Thank you for putting this together. Acknowledgment of this issue and some sort of info on what ZOS thinks of this viewpoint would be a terrific conversation starter.

Cazic

Good post UrQuan. You've summarized things pretty well and touched on issues that probably affect each type of player in one way or another.

I'm more of a PvE guy too and couldn't comment too much on the PvP and Group Dungeon stuff. But something really needs to change with public dungeon XP and XP nerfs in open PvE areas. As you said... Grinders gonna grind.

Why don't they just normalize the XP gains between PvE mobs in dungeons and outside, and then increase the XP from quests. So a mob outside right now gives about 420 XP and a mob inside gives 80 (rough numbers, just an example).. make them all give 200 XP instead, but then double the XP rewards from quests.

Kaynlor

I love your idea for grind spots. Even though I mostly quest, I don't mind the grinders. I do like to grind occasionally myself and having specific grind areas would be preferable.

UrQuan

Kaynlor wrote: »

I love your idea for grind spots. Even though I mostly quest, I don't mind the grinders. I do like to grind occasionally myself and having specific grind areas would be preferable.

See personally I hate to grind. I can stand to do it for about 30-45 minutes at most, and then only if there's some specific reason I want to grind (like just before 1.6 dropped I wanted to get an extra CP).

I have nothing against grinders, though, so I think they should have good options that allow them to go and grind without interfering with other people's enjoyment of the game.

helediron

Crafting is also one play style. Now the only XP income is writs and Welwas (for shadowhide). Writs give less than 500 and welwas 144. Doing all six writs take ten minutes but farming the mats and collecting surveys mean i actually spend an hour daily on them. I think max-level writs should give same XP as other daily Craglorn quests, 4990. And the welwa XP just makes me sad. Whoever decided that nerf, LOOK what you have done. The nerf is doing nothing good but pi5sing off players. The XP nerf must be reversed. Now the whole playerbase has moved to lower levels wreaking havoc there. Only farmers run in Craglorn.

Next we should look what is happening on the lower levels. New players are getting hit with the bat that was aimed against grinders and then they can't level up. And if ZOS really go and nerf everything all the way to wailing prison, who is left to play non-rewarding, non-levelable game? Every nerfed place is alienated, and you just keep pushing old players down to lower levels. When the XP drops to zero, we start creating dumb alts, which we simply grind at optimal XP area, then delete.

ZOS, you can't win the nerf race. Give up and restore the XP.

DirtySmeegs33

I would rather we talk about balancing than nerfing. There are enough nerf threads our there. if welwas lost xp cuz of grinders than it would be neat if crafters gained competitive xp for crafting not just inspiration. Can anyone give insight as to why the separation is needed between IP and XP?

UrQuan

I did consider adding crafting as a playstyle, but to be honest I'm on the fence about whether you should be able to get decent XP just crafting. I would support an increase to the XP rewards of the daily writs, but a ten-fold increase seems too high to me. I don't know, I'm undecided on that.

Rune_Relic

I don't differentiate between someone spending 10 hours of their free time crafting, roleplaying, grinding, questing or anything else. Its still 10 hours of their life lost to the game.

Is it important to show favouritism to 1 particular playstyle....or is it more important to reward those who invest time into the game ?
ie.....is ESO inclusive or exclusive ?

Jaerlach

Here's why this doesn't work as far as grind spots goes:

A public outdoor grind spot quickly become useless when people are aware of it. Take the humber of people who were grinding skyreach last week, they would not profitably share a public zone grind location.

Instanced grinding creates huge server burden as tpeople .and new instances every few minutes. The lag created last Friday by skyreach instances was overwhelming. This is the same issue rkundzelft created.

There's no winning path. A public grind spot will overflow and ruin the rest of the area when it becomes too full which would definitely occur with all capped players wanting to grind xp m. Instances create huge burden on the game and performance.

I ground the crap out of those spots but their Kong term game health issues are not easily overcome.

The answer is to increase dungeon, trial and pvp exp enough for it to e better to do them than grind, then mob exp will only be used by people with limited playtime or increasing new skills.

Fizzlewizzle

UrQuan wrote: »

I did consider adding crafting as a playstyle, but to be honest I'm on the fence about whether you should be able to get decent XP just crafting. I would support an increase to the XP rewards of the daily writs, but a ten-fold increase seems too high to me. I don't know, I'm undecided on that.

For leveling crafting they could keep it as it is. Each item has its own value for exp in the associated skill line.
As a second feature they could make a certain percentage of the crafting exp go towards your character level and CP.

VR 10-14 items should give around 5-7K exp (I know Crafting with Kuta's Give 25K exp). It might seem as a lot of exp for a single action, but it eats away resources. For the normal crafting Writs you already need like 1-2 hours daily scavenging to get all the needed resources. Getting 20-50K exp for 2 hours of work doesn't seem to bad. (if you compare, old spellscar could net you 250K in half an hour).


For the Grinding spots: They could nerf all the normal world "grinding spots", and add a few special instances which a player could only enter ones every X hours. In these instances could be lots of enemies (spawning ones or not, preferably the not type) which they could clear for a decent amount of exp. Ones they are done they would have to wait for X hours until they can do a new run (maybe something like a daily (group) quest), which shouldn't be to hard for the server unlike people creating X new instances every minute just to farm.

UrQuan

Fizzlewizzle wrote: »

For the Grinding spots: They could nerf all the normal world "grinding spots", and add a few special instances which a player could only enter ones every X hours. In these instances could be lots of enemies (spawning ones or not, preferably the not type) which they could clear for a decent amount of exp. Ones they are done they would have to wait for X hours until they can do a new run (maybe something like a daily (group) quest), which shouldn't be to hard for the server unlike people creating X new instances every minute just to farm.

Hmm, a daily grind quest. I like it. It could be a 4-person group quest given by the fighter's guild as an extermination mission they've been contracted to do. You grab the quest, go through the portal that they open for you, and slaughter everything in the instance (no respawning mobs - just a lot of them with good density, and it's scaled like group dungeons are). You exit the portal, and if all mobs are killed (there would be a kill counter for the quest that tells you when they are all dead) you turn the quest in to your fighter's guild contact and get your quest reward (probably just the standard quest gold & XP for your level).

There could be a bunch of different ones each dealing with different mob types, and it's random which one the fighter's guild gives out on any given day. One might be clearing out an infestation of undead from a large graveyard. One might be exterminating a goblin tribe that has taken over a valley. One might be wiping out a group of pirates who are based out of an island.

newtinmpls

Thank you, UrQuan, for starting this thoughtful thread.

While we are listing the things that various groups "want" (or "need" in order to support ongoing participation), I would also say we need to consider that ZOS exists in the real world of money, employees and debt and "needs" to make a profit. This is not a bad thing - heck it led to the development of a game that I really like. I bring it up, because I appreciated and wanted to support the wisdom of folks noting that "solutions" that clog up the servers are simply not going to be viable.

To your most recent point, about "daily grind quests" - as a player NOT yet into veteran levels, I don't see how this is different from daily pledges. And for that matter, there are plenty of group instances (and undaunted quests) that one can do over and over again with different companions. However, I know that the "final" rewards are only gained the first time. So maybe there could be a place for the lower level equivalent of "daily pledges" (or a non-Cyrodill version of repeatable quests).

Looking back at the "types" of players...

Grinding. I accept that there may be folks who just like this play style, but most of the ones who talk about doing it or having to do it mention the "need" for XP and CP that (if I understand correctly) will not be "done"/achieved until they are viable/ at max level (however that is defined). These seem to be folks that want to be playing PvP at max level, and do not care for PvE as a way to level up to "get there" (please clarify if I'm missing something/wrong). I suspect if crafting became the XP awarded equivalent of grinding - we'd have a LOT more crafters in the world.

The problem seems to me not to be that people want to grind, it's that they want to PvP and grinding is the only viable way to get there. While you can go to Cyrodill at 10th level, if you are jumping into actual PvP you will get smeared.

Lets consider something else.

While in Cyrodill, if I see another player (a PvP "on") they show red. Red means I can attack them, and they can attack me. So there is something toggled or enabled that changes that.

Is it possible to enable that toggle? Or even other types of toggles?

Justice system toggle: When on, you can be robbed, or attempt to rob other players who have this toggled. You will appear "white" to others with this toggle on. Players with this toggle not enabled will not see that "aura".

PvP toggle: When enabled, you can be attacked, or attempt to attack other players who have this toggled. You will appear "red" to others with this toggle on. Players with this toggle not enabled will not see that "aura".

Also - justice rules would still apply. Think of the middle ages - dueling was illegal - so you had to find private places (fans of the Three Musketeers will appreciate this) and run from the guards if/when they showed up.

Now before anyone argues that higher level characters would mop up lower ones; here are a few suggestions:

1-you get NO xp from robbing/dueling someone lower level than you are.

2-bounties from attacking/killing someone lower level degrade at a slower level, meaning that if you spend your time chasing poor newbies, then the guards will spend their time chasing you.

3-allow the lower level characters in question the option of "calling for help" (and summoning the guarde).

Anyway, some thoughts.

ElliottXO

I don't understand how it ain't their top priority right now. I mean this is killing for most people this game once they hit VR levels.

Give serious XP rewards for completing the daily dungeon, trial, PvP and crafting quests and half the people won't even look for more grinding spots anymore.

And for the 'I am outleveling my zone' whiners we just need a button to switch off XP gains.

Can it really be that hard to implement?

helediron

UrQuan wrote: »

I did consider adding crafting as a playstyle, but to be honest I'm on the fence about whether you should be able to get decent XP just crafting. I would support an increase to the XP rewards of the daily writs, but a ten-fold increase seems too high to me. I don't know, I'm undecided on that.

Just doing writs seems easy XP in five minutes for wimpies, right? Start your clock now. Stop it when you have 100 nightwood, void bloom, voidstone and shadowhide farmed. Do take some soulgems if you are not used to solo most of Craglorn, including upper.

newtinmpls

helediron wrote: »

Just doing writs seems easy XP in five minutes for wimpies, right? Start your clock now. Stop it when you have 100 nightwood, void bloom, voidstone and shadowhide farmed. Do take some soulgems if you are not used to solo most of Craglorn, including upper.

That sounds like a description of farming, not crafting. By crafting I simply mean the "daily writs" which take much longer/are totally unrealistic (deliveries in areas you can't survive) unless you artificially limit your characters progression in what they can work with.

helediron

newtinmpls wrote: »

helediron wrote: »

Just doing writs seems easy XP in five minutes for wimpies, right? Start your clock now. Stop it when you have 100 nightwood, void bloom, voidstone and shadowhide farmed. Do take some soulgems if you are not used to solo most of Craglorn, including upper.

That sounds like a description of farming, not crafting. By crafting I simply mean the "daily writs" which take much longer/are totally unrealistic (deliveries in areas you can't survive) unless you artificially limit your characters progression in what they can work with.

My view is end game crafting and i know what it includes. I do six writs daily on five toons. That takes few hours and gives 15k XP. I don't much care what the XP is from writs, but i'll rip it from somewhere. This is why after writs i go grinding on newest exploit or wreak havoc on lower levels with my mid-VR level toons. Because the legit play does not bring in XP i take it anyway with whatever means necessary. It might be "play as you don't like" because "play as you like" is not worth what it should be.