Wondering if V16 was really implemented to limit CP grinding

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I just had this thought last night as I was trying to level an alt to v16. Campaigns were all locked by the time I got home from work, and I had an hour to kill so i did a little testing. 2 people clearing Spell Scar faster than it would spawn with XP pots were getting about 300k an hour. This is a huge reduction from vet 10 zones where we could get close to a million an hour at V14.

Prior to patch, you could certainly get CP fastest on a lower level toon because by the time you hit V14 all the really good grind spots were below your level. Once you hit v14, there were a few spots in the Vet 10 zone that generated enough XP to make the grind reasonable if trying for more CP. At V16, all the grind spots seem to be below your level. At V16, the V10 zones will no longer be viable, anything in lower crag (V11) is no longer viable, upper crag and Cyrodiil I guess still could be. I did run around upper crag looking for a reasonable grind (delves, etc) and the enemies really didnt drop enough xp to be worth it, that and they seem to be a lot tougher after the patch. I have almost no experience grinding in Cyrodiil, so I wont comment on that.

For the record, I am not a CP grinder, but I have used grinding to get an Alt to v14. I am not advocating for grinding CP or anything for that matter, just wondering if this was perhaps part of the decision making process that I either missed or was not addressed.

Emma_Overload

I grind in Craglorn frequently, and I'm convinced that something weird happened to XP in Craglorn a day after the patch. The day OF the patch (Aug 31), I was getting really nice XP from both overland mobs and quests in Craglorn. The day AFTER the patch (Sept 1), was getting much lower XP from the same mobs and quests, in both Lower and Upper Craglorn.

See this thread for more details: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/212804/did-craglorn-xp-get-stealth-nerfed-since-the-2-1-4-patch/

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

I grind in Craglorn frequently, and I'm convinced that something weird happened to XP in Craglorn a day after the patch. The day OF the patch (Aug 31), I was getting really nice XP from both overland mobs and quests in Craglorn. The day AFTER the patch (Sept 1), was getting much lower XP from the same mobs and quests, in both Lower and Upper Craglorn.

See this thread for more details: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/212804/did-craglorn-xp-get-stealth-nerfed-since-the-2-1-4-patch/

I think the reason, and kind of my point, is that even at V15 you are overleveled for Craglorn. If memory serves, once you are 4 levels away, your XP drops hard, at 5 levels it drops way more, and by 6 or 7 there is no XP. So at V10, crag is great XP as advertised, at v15-16, not so much. Raising the level cap effectively limits CP grinding on maxed level characters at least in Vet 10 zones or Craglorn.

AlnilamE

The "no XP if +5 levels below" does not apply to Vet ranks. A V14 still gets XP from killing a V1 mob. It's reduced, but there's still XP.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Yes, but its a huge reduction. When I was bringing up an Alt in a V4 zone (where I found a great spot) I got like 655 xp per kill until V8, then it dropped to around 450-500 per kill, and by V9 it was down to like 150 per kill, at which point I was 5 levels away and it was no longer an effective spot to grind.

Take that forward, at v16 you do still get XP from V10 or V11 mobs, but it is no longer worth the grind. You wont be getting the same XP that a V10 does. Thus, CP grinding by max level characters was just removed from V10 zones and Lower Crag at a minimum.

Waffennacht

I understand exactly what you are saying and I honestly believe it was an unintended consequence of V16. I also believe that it would stay that way for a while as they will probably like the out come you just stated.

f047ys3v3n

You get 3 levels below you at full xp. 4 is xp -33% 5 is xp -66%. This used to put lower craig at full (for it post ninja nerf) xp and your alliances vet 10 zone at -33% which was still pretty good xp given that those zones had full overland xp, something craiglorn hasn't had since just after 1.6 dropped when the ninja nerf happened. That ninja nerf put all craiglorn at -66% normal overland mob xp. Together these changes make lower craig at 11% xp for a fully leveled character. Obviously that might as well be 0.

Meanwhile, Cyridiil delves were leveled to V14. They no longer yeild full overland mob xp as they did at 1.6 but their nerf was minor when it happened at -33% and they are still there so it obviously yields many times the xp of any normal content. Most grinding that I am seeing is taking place there. This is obviously sub optimal as it is a pvp grind and 1 gank takes 8 min of your psigic ambrosia in load screens and another 10 or so in riding at least. I lost 18min of mine getting ganked once yesterday in a campaign my alliance had lost leaving me long rides and because of the damndable new campaign rules and long load screens, no way of leaving. At that point I simply went off the juice as it is very expensive and, to my mind, not worth the risk in gold or crowns. I am not sure how this will effect sales but I don't expect it will be good.

As you did I messed around in northern craig a while yesterday as well but given the old ninja nerf reduction in xp (-66%) and the fact that some mobs hit for about 75% of your health I did not find anything worth pursuing. The mobs are simply too time consuming to kill for the xp they yeild and are too tough to pull together into massive aoe groups. Perhaps they are buffed, perhaps it is just me being nerfed.

Although there are a few other options that I have in mind it no longer seems unreasonable to me to simply kill toons and create new ones to grind CP on. When you think about it, the journey to V1 is only roughly 25% of the time to V16 making it a 25% XP nerf to kill a toon every 50 or so CP. That is far more efficient then dealing with the massive XP nerfs handed to max level toons with this update combined with the post 1.6 ninja nerf.

To answer your question, initially I thought that the increase in cap to V16 was about the expiration of last seasons gear and the hunt for new. It was only after the update went live that I realized that the effect on CP gains is far greater as the new gear is slow enough to acquire most will probably be using mostly old gear until Orsinium drops making the new gear more of a curiosity than a factor. CP gain strikes me as the big factor in the change now and that is a damn shame as with the 5 finger grind going unpatched for a month after post on the forums there are many EP players sit at well over 1k CP and some close to 2k. They are now effectively uncatchable for years pretty much telling you what the leaderboards will look like. Even in AD, the alliance that had the poorest grinds, most of our hardcore players are around 500. For new players, forget about it. Don't join this game folks, you will never be competitive as the rate at which you gain CP will be such a small fraction of what it used to be that it will take years to do what we did in months (or literally days in EP).

More nerfs, more mistakes, less future. Reducing CP gain now is the ultimate closing the barn after the horse is out. Once you guys missed the boat on the five finger grind it was all over for the champion system and the best course of action was to boost cp gain as quick as possible too restore balance and basically try to undue the bad decision and worse execution that was the champion system. To put it in economics terms, at this point all that is accomplished by lowering CP rate is permanently codifying an aristocracy and making sure potential immigrants choose a different destination as they will see little opportunity in Tamriel.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

You get 3 levels below you at full xp. 4 is xp -33% 5 is xp -66%. This used to put lower craig at

To put it in economics terms, at this point all that is accomplished by lowering CP rate is permanently codifying an aristocracy and making sure potential immigrants choose a different destination as they will see little opportunity in Tamriel.

This sounds familiar...

CaptainObvious

Guess what... The further increase of vet levels will make it to where new content has to be purchased period to get any form of xp. Stay tuned...

CaptainObvious

Additionally, most of the changes made were designed to drag out game play. Example, now typically 80% of the containers in the inn in Daggerfall are empty. They can't have a guard in there for questing reasons, so make the containers empty.

GaldorP

So if you want to progress in the Champion System with a VR 16 character now, it's either Cyrodiil delves or the Imperial City? (I know XP in Upper Cragorn is so terrible compared to what you can get with lower vet rank characters that I wouldn't consider it as an option.) Has anybody tested how much XP you can get in the Imperial City?

Edit: I'd like to point out here once again that I think it's a really silly design decision to add an endgame grind of several thousand hours to a game, which takes longer to complete than the most time-consuming grinds I have seen in Korean MMORPGs like Lineage II or Ragnarok Online, and then have no way (or only one very specific way that is only available to a limited amount of players and forces them to do PvP) how max level players can actually progress in that grind. In other games with similar systems, for example the account-wide Paragon level system in Diablo III, you progress at a decent rate by just playing the game normally in any way you want with any max level character!

Are players in ESO supposed to delete VR 16 characters so they can create new characters and do the good XP grind from VR 1 to VR 13 again to get beyond Champion Rank 450 (which is the approximate rank an account will have from getting the first 8 characters to VR 16)?

The system is deeply flawed in my opinion, and the only reason why there aren't more complaints about it on the forums is because the player-base is mostly split in two groups: group A, the relatively small group of "hardcore players", who always know about the latest glitch or exploit from their guilds and friends that allow them to powerlevel really fast, until that grind is fixed and they will have to find another one, they don't really care about how they progress, they will just search for the best XP grind and do that whatever it is; and group B, the majority of the players, who don't even have a single VR 16 character yet and mainly care about the Champion System because it creates a power gap in PvP.

At some point though, the way in which players aquire Champion XP will have to be redesigned or adjusted so VR 14+ characters also have reasonable ways of gaining Champion XP doing PvE or PvP content, playing alone or in groups, hunting monsters or doing repeatable quests, so everyone has a way to progress with their character beyond reaching VR 16 in whichever playstyle they prefer.

traigusb14_ESO2

GaldorP wrote: »

So if you want to progress in the Champion System with a VR 16 character now, it's either Cyrodiil delves or the Imperial City? (I know XP in Upper Cragorn is so terrible compared to what you can get with lower vet rank characters that I wouldn't consider it as an option.) Has anybody tested how much XP you can get in the Imperial City?

Edit: I'd like to point out here once again that I think it's a really silly design decision to add an endgame grind of several thousand hours to a game, which takes longer to complete than the most time-consuming grinds I have seen in Korean MMORPGs like Lineage II or Ragnarok Online, and then have no way (or only one very specific way that is only available to a limited amount of players and forces them to do PvP) how max level players can actually progress in that grind. In other games with similar systems, for example the account-wide Paragon level system in Diablo III, you progress at a decent rate by just playing the game normally in any way you want with any max level character!
Are players in ESO supposed to delete VR 16 characters so they can create new characters and do the good XP grind from VR 1 to VR 13 again to get beyond Champion Rank 450 (which is the approximate rank an account will have from getting the first 8 characters to VR 16)?

You aren't supposed to grind at all.

They don't want you to, and they don't expect you to.

Soonish, they will be adding Quarterly(?) seasonal caps on CP. They are going to be way lower than grinders wan them to be.

They aren't telling you to find the last 3 mobs in a corner you can grind on and forcing you to go there. They aren't telling you to delete chars so you can get more CP in a vet silver and gold treadmill... They are telling you to stop it and go back to playing the game,.


And now they have to put in a cap mechanic, because people have gotten it all so freaking backwards in their heads, it is the only way to stop people acting like jerks.

I_killed_Vivec

traigusb14_ESO2 wrote: »

GaldorP wrote: »

So if you want to progress in the Champion System with a VR 16 character now, it's either Cyrodiil delves or the Imperial City? (I know XP in Upper Cragorn is so terrible compared to what you can get with lower vet rank characters that I wouldn't consider it as an option.) Has anybody tested how much XP you can get in the Imperial City?

Edit: I'd like to point out here once again that I think it's a really silly design decision to add an endgame grind of several thousand hours to a game, which takes longer to complete than the most time-consuming grinds I have seen in Korean MMORPGs like Lineage II or Ragnarok Online, and then have no way (or only one very specific way that is only available to a limited amount of players and forces them to do PvP) how max level players can actually progress in that grind. In other games with similar systems, for example the account-wide Paragon level system in Diablo III, you progress at a decent rate by just playing the game normally in any way you want with any max level character!
Are players in ESO supposed to delete VR 16 characters so they can create new characters and do the good XP grind from VR 1 to VR 13 again to get beyond Champion Rank 450 (which is the approximate rank an account will have from getting the first 8 characters to VR 16)?

You aren't supposed to grind at all.

They don't want you to, and they don't expect you to.

Soonish, they will be adding Quarterly(?) seasonal caps on CP. They are going to be way lower than grinders wan them to be.

They aren't telling you to find the last 3 mobs in a corner you can grind on and forcing you to go there. They aren't telling you to delete chars so you can get more CP in a vet silver and gold treadmill... They are telling you to stop it and go back to playing the game,.


And now they have to put in a cap mechanic, because people have gotten it all so freaking backwards in their heads, it is the only way to stop people acting like jerks.

Unfortunately this brings in the law of unintended consequences.

If they bring in a seasonal CP cap then the people in front will ALWAYS be in front, it will be impossible for others to catch up.

Scaling XP gains off VR rank makes it easier for people with loads of CP to gain XP and therefore CP. Even with a cap, people with more CP will gain their allocation faster, leaving them more time to "play the game".

While at the same time, if you don't buy the DLC there will be no more "game" for you to play. You won't even be able to grind efficiently...

And all the while they do want you to "grind": grind CP (how else can you get it?), grind TV stones, farm VR15/16 materials, farm writs for glass fragments, farm chests for malachite, farm gold to buy the resin for glass fragments...

The latest "update" is all about grinding and farming.

GaldorP

traigusb14_ESO2 wrote: »

You aren't supposed to grind at all.

They don't want you to, and they don't expect you to.

Soonish, they will be adding Quarterly(?) seasonal caps on CP. They are going to be way lower than grinders wan them to be.

They aren't telling you to find the last 3 mobs in a corner you can grind on and forcing you to go there. They aren't telling you to delete chars so you can get more CP in a vet silver and gold treadmill... They are telling you to stop it and go back to playing the game,.


And now they have to put in a cap mechanic, because people have gotten it all so freaking backwards in their heads, it is the only way to stop people acting like jerks.

It seems to me, you have some kind of bias towards people that grind. I'n not sure why. Why not let them play the game the way they want to play it?

Also, the Champion System encourages progressing after you have reached the highest veteran rank with your character. The only way to currently progress at a rate that is about as good as the one you had questing from VR 1 to VR 16 is to grind. So I'd say the Champion System encourages grinding (or leveling alts, but that will only get an account to around Champion Rank 450).

Also, what exactly would that mean if they're telling someone who has several VR 16 characters already to "go back and play the game"? Does it mean "go grind in Cyrodiil delves, level more veteran alts or accept that you can't progress anymore in the Champion System (which you could at a decent rate while going from VR 1 to VR 13)"?

starkerealm

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

You get 3 levels below you at full xp. 4 is xp -33% 5 is xp -66%.

I want to say at more than 5 ranks difference it's -80%, based on the numbers I've seen. But I'm not 100% certain.

Merlin13KAGL

It effectively killed the somewhat decent XP available in Gold, which has been better (oddly) the Crag XP since 1.6 rolled over, even though the Crag mobs are higher level.

Cyrodiil delves are still your best bet, doing the 50 PvE dailies (if you can stand it and don't mind footwork) for a cool 1.5 million enlightened XP's + mob kills.

In short, they'd really like it if you'd buy the DLC.

GaldorP

starkerealm wrote: »

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

You get 3 levels below you at full xp. 4 is xp -33% 5 is xp -66%.

I want to say at more than 5 ranks difference it's -80%, based on the numbers I've seen. But I'm not 100% certain.

If it hasn't changed since March 2015, the penalty you get if monsters are 5 ranks below you is the maximum XP penalty you can get already. From an old thread:

GaldorP wrote: »

[...]

All Champion Point Exp values for a VR 14 character with
Enlightenment:

Spellscar group type 1			4620	(4x1155)
Spellscar group type 2			4032	(4x1008)
Spellscar group type 3			2888	(4x722)

An average of killing 104 monster groups at Spellscar is
required to gain 1 Champion Point.


Cyrodiil monster (VR5; 17'041 Health)	540	(4x135)
Cyrodiil boss type 1 (VR5)		1080	(4x270)
Cyrodiil boss type 2 (Barasatii; VR5)	756	(4x189)
Cyrodiil NPC guard (VR5)		1080	(4x270)

Cyrodiil PvE quest			19960	(4x4990)
Cyrodiil dungeon quest (Barasatii)	3508	(4x877)*
Cyrodiil Fighters Guild bounty quest	19960	(4x4990)

* The only quest from Vlastarus with reduced Exp reward.

Completing about 15 PvE quests from quest hubs in Cyrodiil
should grant enough Exp for 1 Champion Point and can be
done in about 1 hour with a fast horse.


Opening a Treasure Chest		3660	(4x915)
Completing a Crafting Writ		1996	(4x499)


Exp from killing regular enemies/monsters with a VR 14
character:

Monster-Monster-			Champion Exp
Rank	Health	Zone			w. Enlightenment

VR 13	21'614	(Upper Craglorn)	576 (4x144)
VR 11	20'139	(Lower Craglorn)	576 (4x144)

Exp from normal monsters in Craglorn has been greatly
reduced compared to how much it currently is on the Live
Servers (from 1656 [4x414] to 576 [4x144], so about 65%
reduction).

VR 10	17'557	(VR 10 main zones)	1240 (4x310)
VR 9	17'041	(VR 9 main zones)	496 (4x124)
VR 8	16'525	(VR 8 main zones)	"
VR 7	16'008	(VR 7 main zones)	"
VR 6	15'492	(VR 6 main zones)	"
VR 5	14'975	(VR 5 main zones)	"
VR 4	14'459	(VR 4 main zones)	"
VR 3	13'943	(VR 3 main zones)	"
VR 2	13'426	(VR 2 main zones)	"
VR 1	12'910	(VR 1 main zones)	496 (4x124)

VR 5	17'041	(Cyrodiil main map)	540 (4x135)
VR 5	17'041	(Cyrodiil dungeon)	376 (4x94)

VR 10	17'557	(VR 10 Public Dungeon)	244 (4x61)
VR 9	17'041	(VR 9 Public Dungeon)	96 (4x24)
VR 8	16'525	(VR 8 Public Dungeon)	"
VR 7	16'008	(VR 7 Public Dungeon)	"
VR 6	15'492	(VR 6 Public Dungeon)	"
VR 5	14'975	(VR 5 Public Dungeon)	"
VR 4	14'459	(VR 4 Public Dungeon)	"
VR 3	13'943	(VR 3 Public Dungeon)	"
VR 2	13'426	(VR 2 Public Dungeon)	"
VR 1	12'910	(VR 1 Public Dungeon)	96 (4x24)

VR 10	17'557	(VR 10 Solo Delve)	864 (4x216)
VR 9	17'041	(VR 9 Solo Delve)	344 (4x86)
VR 8	16'525	(VR 8 Solo Delve)	"
VR 7	16'008	(VR 7 Solo Delve)	"
VR 6	15'492	(VR 6 Solo Delve)	"
VR 5	14'975	(VR 5 Solo Delve)	"
VR 4	14'459	(VR 4 Solo Delve)	"
VR 3	13'943	(VR 3 Solo Delve)	"
VR 2	13'426	(VR 2 Solo Delve)	"
VR 1	12'910	(VR 1 Solo Delve)	344 (4x86)

Killing 323 monsters in an outdoor VR 10 zone will also
reward the amount of Exp required to gain 1 Champion Point.
That's one monster/enemy every 11 seconds to gain 1 Champion
Point in 1 hour (with Enlightenment).

[...]

Little side-note: As can be seen in the post I quoted, monsters in Public Dungeons only gave ~20% of the XP that monsters of the same VR in main zones gave. In the IC update the XP values in Public Dungeons have been increased by 100% so that monsters in Public Dungeons now should give around 40% of the XP monsters of the same VR on main maps will give. That might finally make Public Dungeons acceptable levelling spots again (though still not as good as some spots on main maps in the silver and gold zones).

Unfortunately, there's no Public Dungeons where VR 16 characters don't get a huge XP penalty for being too high level

Pangnirtung

ZOS has publicly stated that they were going to make leveling at the lower levels less point intensive.

Why? So that newer players could reach the upper levels easier. That wouldn't make any sense if people at the upper end could continue to level at the old pace.

So what does ZOS do? For some odd reason they raise the level cap to V16 which never made any sense to me. Well, now it does. I used to be able to log on and get my ONE champion point in an hour and a half of playing when using a Psyjic potion and when my character was enlightened.

Bangkorai was good for that at V10. I would still get decent points. Now it takes THREE times the amount of playing doing the same thing that I have done for months. This is stealth nerfing. We NEVER needed to have V15 and V16. It never made any sense before but now it does.

What ZOS has done uknowingly is KILL any interest in the game that I might have had waiting for Orsinium to come out. Increasing the new customer base by losing the old customer base.