Discussion for v16 Trial rewards and the addition of Arenas

Fat_Cat45

Trials and the way to obtain new v16 items

Ever since the level cap was raised to v16 the amount of players who regularly completed trials has dropped drastically. My guess was that ZOS wanted to make Imperial City and Wrothgar the main source of v16 items to promote the sales. It got to the point where hundreds of teams were doing trials a week, and now less than 50 a week go for it. But now with the Thieve's Guild dlc the incentive to complete trials for leader board positions should be returning.

The methods which they implement these incentives is important, and also need to follow mmo standards for making the content replayable with a sense of progression mixed in there. ZOS has mentioned v16 items from trials, but have not revealed any details about the ways of obtaining them.

I propose the following:
• The weekly leader board mails have a loot table containing existing trials sets as well as the sets found within that weekly trial (all scaled to v16 max)
• The purple Undaunted Coffer, which can be obtained once per week per character, can also drop the current set items along with scaled up items from the trial it was earned from.
•Each of the trials now drop their own unique Undaunted Coffer, still with a 1 week cool down for each.
• No v16 items outside the leader board mails or weekly coffers (except the new trial with Thieves Guild)

An example of this would be receiving gold v16 Storm Knight set from an Aetherian Archive weekly leader board, or v16 Nikulas from earning an Undaunted Coffer from Hel Ra.

What are the positives to the changes?
• Promotes players to create alts to gain more coffers per week. Which will also let people diversify their playstyles.
• The v16 items will be uncommon enough to take time to earn in desired traits, but also not so rare it will take months upon months.
• Encourages player trading and interaction. For example, trading item sets from AA coffers for HRC coffers.
• Guilds will see a large increase in participation from their members for an extended period of time because the v16 items will only have 2 sources
• And more.

So why not just make the mobs and bosses in HRC, AA, and SO drop v16 items? The short answer is longevity of the game content. A typical mmo theme and a way to manipulate character progression rates. It also supports a healthy game economy where items are not too common to be worthless or to uncommon to be ridiculous prices (rings of agility).

Maelstrom Arena
I believe Maelstrom would be perfect if they reverted the change which gives a maelstrom 100% of the time from the weekly mails. I spoke to a good amount of players and that change alone was the only factor they stopped caring about doing the weekly for Maelstrom.

Plus, the chance of even getting a jewelry piece from a chest is so low that you will have gotten at least 3x the amount of Maelstrom weapons per jewelry piece you receive.

Weekly leaderboards for Trials
If Thieve's Guild dlc is successful for bringing life back to trials, and a change such as the one I suggested above gets implemented, then the leadboards must hold 100 teams instead of 100 players. The Orsinium update 'broke' the leaderboards for trials and removed any weekly reward mails from trials. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I will treat it as if it were.

There must be 100 teams per leaderboard and not 100 players, it would simply work better with the new v16 rewards system I am suggesting. 1,200 items sent out per weekly trial, half of which may end up being a set which normally drops in that trial, even smaller percentage would be from one specific set, and even less than that would be their trait diversity. This ends up being around 5 duplicates of any dropped v16 set piece per week for the leaderboard mails.

That's a short summary of my feedback/suggestions for trials in the next patch. If you all have any as well as other improvements then let us know.

PvP and structured arenas

Adding arenas to ESO has been a hot topic for a long time, and needs to be implemented carefully or else Cyrodiil will suffer. I have a few ideas which will promote players to enter Cyrodiil as well as strive to beat their competition in structured arenas.

So, how do you keep a healthy population in Cyrodiil when a good amount of those same players would only do arenas? There needs to be an equal incentive to do both types of content, as well as a way for both to support each other.

My suggestion is that reward for the worthy mails will contain an 'Arena Ticket' 25% of the time. This is the currency you will spend to enter the structured arenas (which hopefully have a ranking or MMR system and leaderboards). These arena tickets can be banked and withdrawn on any of your characters, but can not be traded to other players.

So why not allow the arena tickets to be tradable? The short answer is manipulation of the system. Guilds could start farming AP with cross-alliance characters in order to sell the tickets (think back to guilds who participated in emperor swapping). It also forces players to go back to Cyrodiil and earn more tickets once their supply has run out, helping keep population numbers higher.

But now more about the tickets and their functions. It is a universal ticket to any of the arena types ZOS will add, such as 1v1, 2v2, 5v5, and so on. Pretty simple stuff. Alliance Points can be earned from the arenas, and I'll explain my suggestion for implementation.

The amount of AP you may earn from arenas will not allow you to stay in there forever, implying you won 100% of the time. Here is how it would work:
• Winning an arena will earn you a reward for the worthy mail (which contains the arena tickets 25% of the time)
• Losing the arena kicks you out, and you earn 1 Arena Credits (AC).
• Winning an arena gets you 2 AC and presents you with a new option, cash out on your accumulated AC or risk it and earn more for your next win.
• Losing an arena after risking it for a greater AC on your next win will only get you 1 AC as normal.

So why the decision between the instant AC after winning or upgrading your AC reward on consecutive wins? Risk vs reward. Some players enjoy thrilling arenas knowing something valuable is on the line, some players would go for the largest win streak, and some players are trying to farm AC.

Here's an example of Arena Credits and a win streak. You win your first arena, and choose to bet your 2 AC on your next arena. You win that one as well, and now you earn (2 AC for the win) + (summed AC) + (# of wins in a row). Here's a small table of what it would look like:
1 win: 2 AC
2 wins: 6 AC
3 wins: 11 AC
4 wins: 17 AC
5 wins: 24 AC
and so on.

A 5 win streak would earn you 24 AC opposed to 10 AC from 5 individual wins.

And what can Arena Credits be spent on? Well I haven't though of something for that yet. Possibly new item sets, resources, costumes, mounts, and so on.

That's a fairly unrefined idea I had to make Cyrodiil relevant for players who wish to do arenas, and other suggestions are welcome.

I'll probably edit this later, ran out of time for the other points I wanted to bring up as well.

pilotfish

Fat_Cat45 wrote: »

• And more.

+1

Fat_Cat45

-

Flak

Good ideas. But I'm pretty sure they will bring new v16 Sets and only they will drop from the new Trial and other weeklys, I'm afraid the old sets will stay at v12/14. Of course it's nice to have v16 drops from weekly, but I can't see myself running HelRa/AA/DSA more then once a month, it's just way too easy and boring. I'd rather have v16 challenging content then the gear, so please ZOS, scale up the old trials.

TiberX

Flak wrote: »

Good ideas. But I'm pretty sure they will bring new v16 Sets and only they will drop from the new Trial and other weeklys, I'm afraid the old sets will stay at v12/14. Of course it's nice to have v16 drops from weekly, but I can't see myself running HelRa/AA/DSA more then once a month, it's just way too easy and boring. I'd rather have v16 challenging content then the gear, so please ZOS, scale up the old trials.

Couldn't say it better myself:)
+1

Dubhliam

I find this remarkably long post very well written and thought out.

Big +1 from me.

What I would suggest changing is the formula ofr Arena points: (current points)+(2*number of consecutive win)
1st win: 2
2nd win: 6
3rd win: 12
4th win: 20
5th win: 30
6th win: 42
...

Fat_Cat45

Flak wrote: »

Good ideas. But I'm pretty sure they will bring new v16 Sets and only they will drop from the new Trial and other weeklys, I'm afraid the old sets will stay at v12/14. Of course it's nice to have v16 drops from weekly, but I can't see myself running HelRa/AA/DSA more then once a month, it's just way too easy and boring. I'd rather have v16 challenging content then the gear, so please ZOS, scale up the old trials.

It was mentioned that the existing trials will not be scaling, but that doesn't mean it will not be changed before the next patch goes to PTS.

And if you want to participate in the weekly trials you will be doing AA, HRC, DSA, and SO very often. The new trial only accounts for 1 of the 5 available trials to rotate through the weekly. It would be foolish of ZOS to not allow some acquisition of v16 gear outside the new trial, no matter the form.

For challenging content, the new trial will have a veteran mode. So it won't be like AA, HRC, or SO where the 'hardmode' only changes the final boss. It will buff the entire trial.

Khaos_Bane

I agree, the solo content is ridiculous easy, not challenging at all. This is why you have to respect how well tuned some other video games are with combat, itemization, and skill acquisition. Diablo 3 may have lame content and graphics. However, Diablo 3 has to be one of the most well tuned games as far as scaling and itemization is concerned. I wish ESO could have more creative itemization and Tiers of content you could enjoy.

mrowmrif2

Khaos_Bane wrote: »

I agree, the solo content is ridiculous easy, not challenging at all. This is why you have to respect how well tuned some other video games are with combat, itemization, and skill acquisition. Diablo 3 may have lame content and graphics. However, Diablo 3 has to be one of the most well tuned games as far as scaling and itemization is concerned. I wish ESO could have more creative itemization and Tiers of content you could enjoy.

What you are looking for, and what satisfies the v16 items desired, would be a crafting method to upgrade item level. Such as some farmed and tradeable item like a legendary resin that would be needed in some number to take an item through each tier of mats. Like a level 1-14 piece might need 1 resin to go to 16 at the next tier... And a v7-8 would need some number (lets say the number corresponds to the tier - so 9 resins) to go to v9-v14. Leaving trials alone is fine for players who just want the items or to compete for leaderboard if you allow the lower level rewards to scale up. The seguay into removal of vet ranks would be easy in that the future level of the gear will be dependent on CP totals anyway... So ideally youd be able to scale all your old gear up by farming or buying these resins. The gear grind wheel turns on and on...

That does not address the need for challenge... I also wholly agree with boosting trials to v16, along with their drops. It just doesn't make sense to have some "endgame" content that is virtually meaningless to max level characters. There has to be some challenge and a reward justification. Having "dead content" in any game is very sad. I know i havent bothered with vDSA since IC launch even though i would love a master sword for my tank... It just isnt worth it.

Cuyler

Fat_Cat45 wrote: »

Trials and the way to obtain new v16 items

Ever since the level cap was raised to v16 the amount of players who regularly completed trials has dropped drastically. My guess was that ZOS wanted to make Imperial City and Wrothgar the main source of v16 items to promote the sales. It got to the point where hundreds of teams were doing trials a week, and now less than 50 a week go for it. But now with the Thieve's Guild dlc the incentive to complete trials for leader board positions should be returning.

The methods which they implement these incentives is important, and also need to follow mmo standards for making the content replayable with a sense of progression mixed in there. ZOS has mentioned v16 items from trials, but have not revealed any details about the ways of obtaining them.

I propose the following:
• The weekly leader board mails have a loot table containing existing trials sets as well as the sets found within that weekly trial (all scaled to v16 max)
• The purple Undaunted Coffer, which can be obtained once per week per character, can also drop the current set items along with scaled up items from the trial it was earned from.
•Each of the trials now drop their own unique Undaunted Coffer, still with a 1 week cool down for each.
• No v16 items outside the leader board mails or weekly coffers (except the new trial with Thieves Guild)

All great ideas. My only concern would be having two weekly coffers, plus a weekly mail for a leaderboard run seems like a little too much compensation. This obviously depends on how many sets and traits are included on the loot table. And if they are BOP or BOE. With my five v16 toons I could potentially walk away 15 (worthwhile?) pieces a week and if they are BOE selling them could potentially be very profitable, maybe even "unbalanced".

Fat_Cat45 wrote: »

An example of this would be receiving gold v16 Storm Knight set from an Aetherian Archive weekly leader board, or v16 Nikulas from earning an Undaunted Coffer from Hel Ra.

What are the positives to the changes?
• Promotes players to create alts to gain more coffers per week. Which will also let people diversify their playstyles.
• The v16 items will be uncommon enough to take time to earn in desired traits, but also not so rare it will take months upon months.
• Encourages player trading and interaction. For example, trading item sets from AA coffers for HRC coffers.
• Guilds will see a large increase in participation from their members for an extended period of time because the v16 items will only have 2 sources
• And more.

Again the rarity will depend on if we can trade these or not. I like the idea of trading them, but that also limits incentive to do the content. Other ideas could be titles, polymorphs and/or exclusive pets.

Fat_Cat45 wrote: »

So why not just make the mobs and bosses in HRC, AA, and SO drop v16 items? The short answer is longevity of the game content. A typical mmo theme and a way to manipulate character progression rates. It also supports a healthy game economy where items are not too common to be worthless or to uncommon to be ridiculous prices (rings of agility).

In our Council of Raiders (CoR) meeting with ZOS we bought up the idea of scaling all the trials, which IIRC ZOS said they don't have the manpower to implement at this time. In addition, support was there for keeping a "trials progression", for example, AA at v12, HRC at v14, SO at v16, etc. This way those without maxed characters can begin to get involved in the trial community at v12.

Fat_Cat45 wrote: »

Weekly leaderboards for Trials
If Thieve's Guild dlc is successful for bringing life back to trials, and a change such as the one I suggested above gets implemented, then the leadboards must hold 100 teams instead of 100 players. The Orsinium update 'broke' the leaderboards for trials and removed any weekly reward mails from trials. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I will treat it as if it were.

There must be 100 teams per leaderboard and not 100 players, it would simply work better with the new v16 rewards system I am suggesting. 1,200 items sent out per weekly trial, half of which may end up being a set which normally drops in that trial, even smaller percentage would be from one specific set, and even less than that would be their trait diversity. This ends up being around 5 duplicates of any dropped v16 set piece per week for the leaderboard mails.

Totally agree here, not sure what happened. The CoR requested that leaderboards account bound a players highest score in an effort to get more people on the boards and limit high level players with 8 characters on the boards taking up the positions BUT still keep track of alts making the boards and still provide a weekly reward mail for doing so with each. ZOS went the opposite direction atm, With 12 players on a team and a 100 spots, that's only 8 teams making the boards. That's like 0.001% of players. I think it maybe broken.

Flak wrote: »

I can't see myself running HelRa/AA/DSA more then once a month, it's just way too easy and boring.

Personally, I understand if you're bored with it, the rewards are non-existent. But "easy and boring" are relative. There are leaderboards and getting the #1 spot is not easy or boring. I do feel that those who try to get it and fail should still be rewarded with something and atm that is simply not the case, but man am I sick of hearing this.

Reverb

I absolutely agree that trials, and trial rewards need to scale to V16. But that's not the only reason participation has dropped.

The leaderboard change to list by player instead of group means its almost impossible to break onto it. Not even 10 full teams can be represented, only 9 and a partial. And those spots go to the same teams in the weekly, over and over. Between the low level drops and almost zero-chance of ranking, there's no incentive to keep running them.

Fat_Cat45

Reverb wrote: »

I absolutely agree that trials, and trial rewards need to scale to V16. But that's not the only reason participation has dropped.

The leaderboard change to list by player instead of group means its almost impossible to break onto it. Not even 10 full teams can be represented, only 9 and a partial. And those spots go to the same teams in the weekly, over and over. Between the low level drops and almost zero-chance of ranking, there's no incentive to keep running them.

The real reason is that placing on the weekly trials leaderboard does not give you items anymore, I don't remember if I mentioned that. No more gold items at the end of the week, they were at least gold tempers.

Maelstrom is the only content which may reward a gold item at the end of the week now

Yolokin_Swagonborn

They need to update trials and trial gear to V16. No excuses.

The fact that you have to buy theives guild to participate in dailies to get endgame gear from EXISTING content is disgusting and immoral. Couldn't be a more blatant money grab.


So you are going to fight all these V12-V14 enemies and get V12-14 drops off every trials boss you cant use only to turn in the quest (behind DLC paygate) and get ONE V16 item? Then you have to decon all the V12 stuff you got?

That is complete BS. And it shows that ZOS has no commitment to its Endgame. One day, IC, Wrothgar, and Theives guild "endgame" will also be obsolete, and you will have to buy whatever is next to have endgame gear. Endgame is constantly shrinking and that is bad for the game.

Fat_Cat45

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

They need to update trials and trial gear to V16. No excuses.

The fact that you have to buy theives guild to participate in dailies to get endgame gear from EXISTING content is disgusting and immoral. Couldn't be a more blatant money grab.


So you are going to fight all these V12-V14 enemies and get V12-14 drops off every trials boss you cant use only to turn in the quest (behind DLC paygate) and get ONE V16 item? Then you have to decon all the V12 stuff you got?

That is complete BS. And it shows that ZOS has no commitment to its Endgame. One day, IC, Wrothgar, and Theives guild "endgame" will also be obsolete, and you will have to buy whatever is next to have endgame gear. Endgame is constantly shrinking and that is bad for the game.

It's still too early to know what's going on. We'll all know once PTS hits, but I feel like the praise they received from Orsinium will make them more inclined to keep not take the path you implied

Fat_Cat45

Reverb wrote: »

I absolutely agree that trials, and trial rewards need to scale to V16. But that's not the only reason participation has dropped.

The leaderboard change to list by player instead of group means its almost impossible to break onto it. Not even 10 full teams can be represented, only 9 and a partial. And those spots go to the same teams in the weekly, over and over. Between the low level drops and almost zero-chance of ranking, there's no incentive to keep running them.

It is believed to be a bug when Orsinium released. Maelstrom uses a leaderboard for 100 players, and people think that the leaderboard for Maelstrom was copied over to the trials leaderboard by accident thus resulting in 100 players instead of 100 teams.