Rant of a returning player

VarilRau

Hey all!

So, I played ESO a lot from the beta until like 1½ years, just before CP system came out i think.

A lot seem to have changed, some for better, some for worse. Mainly to the better, even if this post makes it look like your doing a bad job, no. The new content, thief's, brotherhood, orsinum are awesome! And so many quality of life small improvements that has happened, totally love the game again

First and foremost, no more champion levels, yay! I dont need to grind any more missing levels anymore!

Oh, you need to have 501 champion points to be competitive anywhere? WHY?!? What is the point of the champion points? Sure, they allow your toon to gain power after hitting that level 50. But why add 500+ champion levels as well? An extra thing you need to optimise. (Before we only had skills, ability points and gear)

I hate the fact that i have to more or less GRIND again, a lot. Getting from V10 to V16 was fater than CP250 to CP501, I think im at around 320 now, 3 weeks later.

Now, the main issue I have with this is, that the game is so easy now. Before you had random groups running the weekly Hellra and AA, some even tried SO, SO was hard. The first boss had us running all over and the boss actually had some mechanics. Spread, garther, run, stack at crown, block, spread.

Now its like: dps the boss, no need to move.

The serpent is even more so, no anyone know what lamia duty was? Magica bombs? the strange orbs that spawn when serpent dies had a purpose...
Veteran dungeons are the same. They used to be hard, now its just a pushover and all you need to do is stand still and nuke. At least imperial city dungeons are still somewhat a challenge.

The removal of vet ranks would have been a perfect time for eso to scrap that system for good, just have everyone be level 50 and balance stuff around that. Endgame progression would be all about gear and personal and team skill. Have the vet dungeons be hard. Heck, even have the silver/gold areas be as hard as they were on launch day.

At lvl 50 everyone is more or less equal, want to be better and full-fill more roles? Well, you need skill-points for that, so you can do the hard stuff and gather more gear and you can easily fill the tank/dps/healer role with a single character. Now you are either or. Okey, you can heal and magica dps on more or less the same build. Have the skillpoints be the defining factor of how effective you are to your group. Sure, at fresh 50 you can take the role of a heal, tank or dd, where an old toon would have gathered the skillpoints for more. However, if you are content with your toon you dont have to do the silver/gold. That was the main grief when ESO launced, the late-game solo content was hard, and you were forced to do it.

Its not like after hitting the hard end of 501 CP people suddenly quit the game and stop playing. Most of the guild i am in are full of people with 501cp. The endgame is still getting the gear and personal skill. It just takes a lot more.

If the content would be harder, i think we would see a definitive decrease in boss kills, in trials and vet dungeons at least. But, it would then be more rewarding. Less kills, could translate into better loot. Get rid of the drops, i believe this update is already addressing this problem of influx of training trait in every piece.. Even better if the dungeons would give out say a weekly reward mail, once per account giving it a token for one set piece from a vendor. (you would get to choose the trait and item and weather its heavy or light). Now, its still the same, make alts, roll through the weekly trials / daily undaunted with every toon you have, just to max out the loot income. Just. Because. It. Is. Training. Again.

Other small thing that annoys me is the moster sets, especially the shoulders. Sure, it was cool to have just one shoulder piece. But on every monster item set? Its just stupid.

Varil Rau

I_killed_Vivec

"Oh, you need to have 501 champion points to be competitive anywhere."

"I hate the fact that i have to more or less GRIND again, a lot."

"Now, the main issue I have with this is, that the game is so easy now."

Shouldn't have bothered grinding those CP then should you

JmJ

Wasent reading all but seems like you where playing So in normal mode, you cant compare that to what SO was before. Theres also veteran mode. Maybe try that next time.

Kas

ESO already has relatively little reward for those that want to spend an obscene amount of time in the game (imagine a DAoC-like system where AR50 would be significantly stronger than chars new to pvp, imagine uncapped CP, etc etc).
It's hard to allow progression for those that want to sink their entire youth into a game and those who don't want to put in as much time.

There already is a huge catch-up mechanic. For example, I'm pretty sure I could reach your initial 250CP on a new account within a week of excessive gaming (rather easily, I guess. However, i don't want to spend so much time, of course. Either way, I'd estimate roughly 60h of played time towards 250CP, ofc more if you want to do important quests, craft, collect skyshards and lorebooks, etc). Now in that light, your accomplishments from 1.5years ago already seem insignificant. I guess you can see how this can be frustrating / bothering a player. For this very reason, may people who are now at 501 don't want their progression taken from them / rendered meaningless.

It's just hard to balance and still keep everyone happy. If you think the solution would be not to keep excessive players happy, I'd like to point out that you being unhappy also works for me, tbh

LadyNalcarya

Speaking of trial difficulty, they have 2 modes now: normal (a casual mode, which you probably did) and veteran (where you certainly cant kill mantikora without moving out of popcorn etc).
In normal modes all the mechanics can be ignored, yes. But the difference between normal and vet is really huge.
For example, normal Maw of Lorkhaj can be done easily with pugs. While veteran hardmode is still not conquered and even a few guilds can get past the second boss on vet.

P.S. New patch adds normal and vet versions to Hel Ra and AA, and scales DSA to cp160. I tried them on pts and have to say that there wont be easymode pug weeklies for these anymore.

VarilRau

Hey all!

Yes, I did the SO in normal mode, good to know that the veteran mode still has mechanics.

Im more ranting about was the CP system needed? Why not then keep the old veteran ranks? What is the point of removing it when you still have to get the cp, at least for 160 until you can use the endgame gear, old VR16. Ain't it the same?

I agree that this system is better than the old one, at least I don't have to grind all the alts separetly anymore. Its more of a annoyance of stormhaven looking for 501+CP for even the random dungeons or whatever. Yes its not needed and i am getting groups with my puny 300cp. For me i need some 80 million xp to catch up to the 501, just so i can pull up the same numbers everyone else is.

Still, its a damn good game.

Kuningatar

VarilRau wrote: »

Hey all!

Yes, I did the SO in normal mode, good to know that the veteran mode still has mechanics.

Im more ranting about was the CP system needed? Why not then keep the old veteran ranks? What is the point of removing it when you still have to get the cp, at least for 160 until you can use the endgame gear, old VR16. Ain't it the same?

I agree that this system is better than the old one, at least I don't have to grind all the alts separetly anymore. Its more of a annoyance of stormhaven looking for 501+CP for even the random dungeons or whatever. Yes its not needed and i am getting groups with my puny 300cp. For me i need some 80 million xp to catch up to the 501, just so i can pull up the same numbers everyone else is.

Still, its a damn good game.

Agreed. It seems like its a 'substitute' for actual end-game content. Instead of creating a bunch of actual end-game content, I assume the intention was/is that you have to spend so much time farming CP points to get to max, that way there is less content they feel 'obligated' to create.

leeux

The difference is that now you only have to get CP160 once, and since CP system is per-account once you do that all your subsequent chars are automatically at gear-level cap when you reach L50. That's a big improvement, IMO.

EDIT: rephrasing

Kuningatar

leeux wrote: »

The difference is that now you only have to get CP160 once, and since CP system is per-account once you do that all your subsequent chars are automatically at gear-level cap when you reach L50. That's a big improvement, IMO.

EDIT: rephrasing

Its kind of intelligently designed though, is it not? At least it seems like it is.

Release VR at the beginning of the game to serve as 'end game content,' basically forcing people to grind ungodly times, which for most people were enough to keep them playing for quite a while unless they just got fed up with it. Then introduce CP as a means of 'easing' out of the VR , which more or less ensures that they have even more time when they have to deliver less content because now that the VR were removed the players who already grinded to VR 16 have to grind to CP 501 which for most people will take a ton of time.

It gives Zenimax a lot of time to avoid actually delivering on a decent and regular stream of content and just releasing occasional bursts that are relatively small comparatively.

Not sure what they are going for here, maybe they are working on something behind the scenes like an actual expansion.. but I kind of doubt it given their track record.

At this point I kind of hate the company, but I love the game. Its the only reason I keep playing.

Ojustaboo

Some parts of the game are really easy and dumbed down since release (think mages and fighters guild mobs for example)

But I still spent 4.5 hrs doing Vet DSA with friends the other night and didn't complete the last round, so other parts are certainly still a very good challenge.

I do sort of think that the vet system is simply there under a different name, but I prefer the way CP works.

I have recently returned after a longish break, just hit 300 CP, I'm loving it to be honest.

I also started a new character and re-running through the quests that were as buggy as hell on release, they play so smoothly now, its a real pleasure redoing them. I'm also impressed with how many other players there are in the lower levels, seems a lot of people are enjoying this game now.

Dread_Viking

i love the new system since it mean i have more to do when you hit 50 that is why i quit in the beginning ran out of fun stuff to do

SirAndy

VarilRau wrote: »

Oh, you need to have 501 champion points to be competitive anywhere?

No you don't ...

Ojustaboo

leeux wrote: »

The difference is that now you only have to get CP160 once, and since CP system is per-account once you do that all your subsequent chars are automatically at gear-level cap when you reach L50. That's a big improvement, IMO.

EDIT: rephrasing

Presumably you would still have to run through the other two alliances to get all the skillpoints though, which on release easily took you to max level.

It wasn't so much the grinding of vet levels I hated, they were very easy, just do the dailies in cyrodiil, it was me having to run my character through the two other alliances that I didn't like doing.

Shadesofkin

To address some concerns from the OP.

You don't like Monster sets? Don't wear them. You're already claiming the content's too easy, make it harder for yourself and ignore Monster sets.

Ok, I'm going to state this in bold lettters. I know there are people who disagree, but the mass exodus and the overall reason they were tacked on is enough anecdotal evidence to declare them wrong, so: Veteran Ranks were Bad for the Game.

The VR system was tacked on in an effort to prolong gameplay because they stupidly didn't realize we'd all want to explore all of Tamriel when they first invented the Faction System. This has been confirmed by beta players over and over and over again.
There was a huge wave of players who left the game before hitting even one VR10 character because of the constant grind it was, Veteran Points (the ancestor of modern Experience) were hard to get and required large amounts to increase your rank. To add to insult to injury, Silver and Gold were identical stories to what you'd just gone through little to no variation.

You may feel like CP is weird and you don't like it, but it's made for a far better post 50 experience and is an overall success/benefit to the health of the game.

As for difficulty, you won't be beating Veteran Hel Ra, Veteran AA, Veteran Sanctum, or Veteran Maw anytime soon. While you will eventually I'm sure, it's not the walk in the park you think they are now. Let me know how your Veteran Maelstrom runs go too.

The games overall difficulty has been reduced repeatedly to cater to the casual player crowd who absorbs some content, leaves, comes back absorbs some content, leaves, comes back etc etc.

The Champion System makes sure that those of us who stick around are progressing regularly. Sure, in some cases it allows us to min max, but it's not the end all be all. I know plenty of 501's who are total crap players, we give them the dps check for trial ranking and they fail it out right. It's not even as high as other progression guilds set theirs. 22k is all we ask.

Being a good player, having a good time, those are the things that you should worry about, because if you want to be competitive you'll figure out your way there, if you don't then you've got Normal Trials to do until the cows come home.

ScottK1994

I was really anxious about the grind to 501 until I realised that the gear was capped at 160. So 160 is end game and then it's just being able to use those CP in different ways..

I think there needs to be a dual spec option for CP

leeux

Ojustaboo wrote: »

Presumably you would still have to run through the other two alliances to get all the skillpoints though, which on release easily took you to max level.

It wasn't so much the grinding of vet levels I hated, they were very easy, just do the dailies in cyrodiil, it was me having to run my character through the two other alliances that I didn't like doing.

Yeah, that's true. But, you can have a fully functional character with less than 200 sp, and you can get that by doing only a few silver zones' main quests, and grabbing the skyshards from them while doing so.

My Sorc alt, for example, has ~180 (of the top of my head, don't recall exactly, maybe even a bit more.) and she already has fully unlocked class trees, plus 2 weapon trees, and all the important passives. And I just finished Shadowfen (third silver zone for me.)

That's enough to do end game content without troubles, mostly. Though, granted, it may not be enough for doing a vet mode trial comfortably.

EDIT: missing words

EölMPK

I agree with no more champs lvls, but I dont like the idea of endgame gear only progression. This is just WoW bs over and over. Lets burn vertical gear progression to the bones!!!!

VarilRau

My original post sounds like i'd have a problem with this, i really don't. More like i would have wished for the game to be more around skill-points than VR or CP "grind". Sure it comes to an end sooner and later and then your there.

Now, as for ZOS the scaling of the dungeons is a hard part. Having to scale a dungeon for players for cp 160 to 501 is a huge difference. A CP 160 party will have more of a hard time than a cp501. Still if 160 equals the old vr16, even then we were rolling the veteran dungeons with ease. Now the "old ones" are more of a pushover and the fights are more boring in my opinion. The whole champion system could have been scrapped before it came, now its too late for that, i agree.

Also my problem with the monster sets is not that i dont like them, i love them. Its that why does every shoulder part have to be just one, they dont mix too well with my other gear. Having some monster shoulder only have one part is ok, but most of them would be just better looking with both shoulders!