Endgame raiding incentives

Love Wizard

Right, time for another one of these threads. I've already written up two of them, without even a reply from zenimax, but I still have hope in you guys.

So, to the issues. Right now, PvE raiding, is at probably an all time low. There's multiple reasons for this, but it's something that needs to be fixed, and addressed. Thinking pushing new content will do the trick is sadly not gonna work, but you need to fix what is currently broken first and foremost. So, the major issue as of right now is the incentives to do trials, the rewards for completing a trial is sadly just dissapointing. You get rewarded with plunder for every boss, and the lastboss will reward you with a piece of legendary jewerly, and if done on hardmode, two alongside with the 10k item drop that can be vendored. In other news, for the magicka people atleast, buying spellpower potions, negates all profit you will actually make, and puts you abouts dead even, sometimes a loss, and to me this is absolutely absurd. There should be a reward in trials, that makes people want to farm them, not just trial sets (Don't get me wrong, the trial sets are great) but we need something alongst the lines of BoE gear that can be sold, like we used to have back in the days. People would farm hardmodes, normal modes just in hope to get for example, viper pieces they could list for alot of gold, and this was something that was helping the PvE community ALOT. The removal of this doesn't really make alot of sense, instead of having us get BoE gear, you reward us with liquid gold, which is something that is horrible for the economy of this game, and has probably had a massive impact already.

The second issue, is that being ontop of a leaderboard should reward you with something, if it was to be a temporairly title just like with emperor, or something alongst those lines, it would truly add an incentive for people to fight for the trial leaderboards, and it's not something that should be hard to implement. Other things could be end of campaign rewards you get in PvP, just for all the leaderboards, lets say theh top 3 or something like that. There's alot of possibilities to what can be implemented here, but the point of the matter stands, something needs to be implemented. Right now you have only a couple of guilds fighting for the leaderboards, and overall, there's a lack of interest coming from the majority of the players doing so.

At the end of the day, all im really saying is, make doing a trial PROFITABLE. Make it so that people would want to run a trial over and over.

DRXHarbinger

Thing with the title is...On switchover day it'll be changing all the time, some would have it for a few mins...( You Hodor guys for the rest of the week lol)

But yes we do need far better rewards and incentives to run it, Having a few K at the end of it great...But then goes and dumps like 40k on flowers... = not sure if economically viable. which is a killer to people new to the game or not used to having to do this and budget for it.

Personally I would like the weekly rewards to change a little, like make it weapons only. Ditch the gold jewels from it at least, anyone that's into it has these already, let alone the competitive guys with stacks of it all.

Or with more programming work...Weekly reward is now a token (yes here we go again with tokens) Token can be redeemed at vendor, so a Rakkhat claw (don't knock the name just thought of it in 10s) for ANY item of your choice in any of the MOL sets in any trait and the same for the others. Maybe even make them bankable...and it takes like 5 token for one item...

May seem long winded but it would enable people to see an end in sight for the eternal item grind.

Love Wizard

DRXHarbinger wrote: »

Thing with the title is...On switchover day it'll be changing all the time, some would have it for a few mins...( You Hodor guys for the rest of the week lol)

But yes we do need far better rewards and incentives to run it, Having a few K at the end of it great...But then goes and dumps like 40k on flowers... = not sure if economically viable. which is a killer to people new to the game or not used to having to do this and budget for it.

Personally I would like the weekly rewards to change a little, like make it weapons only. Ditch the gold jewels from it at least, anyone that's into it has these already, let alone the competitive guys with stacks of it all.

Or with more programming work...Weekly reward is now a token (yes here we go again with tokens) Token can be redeemed at vendor, so a Rakkhat claw (don't knock the name just thought of it in 10s) for ANY item of your choice in any of the MOL sets in any trait and the same for the others. Maybe even make them bankable...and it takes like 5 token for one item...

May seem long winded but it would enable people to see an end in sight for the eternal item grind.

We're beatable. And the only reason I mentioned the titles, is because I presume people would have a bigger interest in going for leaderboards then.

bloodthirstyvampire

We do raids twice a day

kylewwefan

Must be a PC thing. On PS4 there’s maybe 5 groups that can run MoL and the same names are seen over and over on different toons.

Turelus

I think the lack of interest comes from the fact the content is such a wall now.

If you're at the top and one of the best it's a breeze and you ask for more challenging content, but any up and coming guilds trying for veteran trials are then forced to meet expectations of the top guilds ability and then can't progress (as not everyone can be that good).

You can't tone down the challenge to let more groups compete though as the top players get bored due to everything being too easy again, so it's catch 22.

You also suffer the issues that as new top players rise, rather than stick with the guilds which can't compete they go to the ones that can, so all the top players get consolidated into a few guilds.

I think the idea of more appealing rewards is good and might help push some people, but I sadly just see it being the same guilds as it is now getting rewards on farm whilst other guilds don't actually get better to compete.

Kneighbors

The biggest problem of trials is the performance. Most people see 10-25 fps on 4th boss in vHoF. Same issue in many other places in trials. 10 fps greatly reduces FPS and makes combat sluggish.

Another problem is that many capable of vet trials players left the game. It's very much possible the issues raised in the topic are part of their decision. But personally I think the biggest push away from the game for hardcore players were big changes of tide and heavy attack combat. Hardcore player and slowass heavy attack style isn't coming together well.

Sixty5

I was working my way through the vet trials before morrowind and sorta lost interest post patch. After getting the IA and VO stuff I wanted there wasn't really much incentive to keep going, and with Maw being a distant dream with the sustain nerfs, I moved on to other stuff.

So yes, I would like to see some sort of extra incentive to run trials, but I'm not sure how much dumping random gear sets there would help.
Possibly a mechanic like tel var awarded based on run score that can be used at a vendor for stuff like alchemy satchels and such.

Izaki

I say Alchemy Satchels and Gold mats. Instead of making the Undaunted plunder be just gold, make that a currency that is exchangable for mats. I definitely think that there should be a title for top leaderboards and that leaderboard rewards should be much better.

Turelus

Izaki wrote: »

I say Alchemy Satchels and Gold mats. Instead of making the Undaunted plunder be just gold, make that a currency that is exchangable for mats. I definitely think that there should be a title for top leaderboards and that leaderboard rewards should be much better.

This again though doesn't solve the issue that it will still be the same old guilds getting said items every week. They need to find a way to help more guilds reach the levels to compete for a top spot before the top spot starts being a cash cow.

Otherwise it would pretty much be HODOR on EU PC reaping rewards for what to them is now little effort.

At the same time they also need to find a way to address the issue that top guilds are so good the content is becoming meaningless to them. Working out ways of closing the gaps without penalising the good players for being good and buffing the bad players for being bad.

Tasear

I am dork, but I swear I would run more trials with a real competitive spirit if it was a world annocement not a nofication that I made leaderboard. Just saying would be nice for pugs to know how awesome I am

Probably time to introduce some new gear or rarer and stronger gear to get in there. 1% difference isn't a enough. Good thing I am not dps. As healer gear from trials is at an competitive level.

Maybe a point system for rarer gear,or then again how about housing related items or tools. Maybe fuel to run x item in house, or build x item.

Maybe add some ridiculous achievements or medals like completely with all nightblades. Maybe have these be decorated those cloaks or just attach a icon next to name when scrolled over. - style and glory

Maybe some guild gameplay where we have to face against another team in a trial. Or maybe just say who tops guild are ( if majority of party is wearing x taberd)

Tl:Dr replayability of trials sucks

Izaki

Turelus wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

I say Alchemy Satchels and Gold mats. Instead of making the Undaunted plunder be just gold, make that a currency that is exchangable for mats. I definitely think that there should be a title for top leaderboards and that leaderboard rewards should be much better.

This again though doesn't solve the issue that it will still be the same old guilds getting said items every week. They need to find a way to help more guilds reach the levels to compete for a top spot before the top spot starts being a cash cow.

Otherwise it would pretty much be HODOR on EU PC reaping rewards for what to them is now little effort.

At the same time they also need to find a way to address the issue that top guilds are so good the content is becoming meaningless to them. Working out ways of closing the gaps without penalising the good players for being good and buffing the bad players for being bad.

I was just referring to the profitability of trials at the moment, with the undaunted plunder thing...

Love Wizard

Well, the point still stands. Something needs to change, and it needs to change now. If things keeps going the way it is right now, give it tops a year and most of the guilds are gone. Fps issues is something that I've gotten used to at this point, but it something that needs to be improved.

Rickter

I think a lot of players would love to do Trials, but the content is simply not accessible by nature and design.

Unlike say, PvP, you must have a specific group composition. Tank, Healer, DPS. Then those roles need to be geared a certain way. Even if your group lead doesnt require meta geared raid members, the pressure that you have to have certain gear is very real. Also unlike PvP, you must have a certain size (12). These two things make PvE endgame inaccessible.

DPS numbers matter. Tanking skill matters. Healer ability and skill matters. Its very unforgiving. People cant make it to raids on time. If you have a solid core of 14 people, and 3 people say they cant make it to the raid, youre scrounging. lets say you dont even have 14, you just have the 12 and 2 people "call out" - youre practically cancelling the raid unless someone can pull in a pug from your trade guild etc.

Coupled with the fact that Normal Mode HoF is just as hard as Vet AA and suddenly 60% if not more of the playerbase is alienated.


As to incentives: I humbly and whole heartedly disagree. The incentives are there. Down right THE two coolest and most sought after skins come from trials. Titles, dyes, achievements, leaderboard prestige - its all there. They did PvE right ALSO unlike PvP where all you get from your massive grind is a dye and a pvp title that doesnt make sense half the time.

IwakuraLain42

Turelus wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

I say Alchemy Satchels and Gold mats. Instead of making the Undaunted plunder be just gold, make that a currency that is exchangable for mats. I definitely think that there should be a title for top leaderboards and that leaderboard rewards should be much better.

This again though doesn't solve the issue that it will still be the same old guilds getting said items every week. They need to find a way to help more guilds reach the levels to compete for a top spot before the top spot starts being a cash cow.

Otherwise it would pretty much be HODOR on EU PC reaping rewards for what to them is now little effort.

At the same time they also need to find a way to address the issue that top guilds are so good the content is becoming meaningless to them. Working out ways of closing the gaps without penalising the good players for being good and buffing the bad players for being bad.

The problem is IMHO due to the fact that there still is no veteran content in difficulty between the Craglorn trials and vMoL/vHoF. I see groups all the time finishing the Craglorn trials and then try vMoL, but the difference in difficulty is to large that players either quit or are absorbed by premier guild leading to the end of these groups.

This is on ZOS, there really should be veteran content between these groups of trials and not more harder ones. Oh, before people mention normal trials like nHoF: those doesn't count, CP player want to play veteran content not normal content.

DPShiro

Agree with Mashie, it’s only gotten worse and worse for a long time now. And something really needs to happen.

Leaderboard and weekly rewards are really due for a rework, most people don’t even bother with score anymore.

Tasear

Turelus wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

I say Alchemy Satchels and Gold mats. Instead of making the Undaunted plunder be just gold, make that a currency that is exchangable for mats. I definitely think that there should be a title for top leaderboards and that leaderboard rewards should be much better.

This again though doesn't solve the issue that it will still be the same old guilds getting said items every week. They need to find a way to help more guilds reach the levels to compete for a top spot before the top spot starts being a cash cow.

Otherwise it would pretty much be HODOR on EU PC reaping rewards for what to them is now little effort.

At the same time they also need to find a way to address the issue that top guilds are so good the content is becoming meaningless to them. Working out ways of closing the gaps without penalising the good players for being good and buffing the bad players for being bad.

Maybe it's time to incentive them to do it another way like no potions or no rezing. Maybe with a nightblade tank.

I think the issue isn't that it's easy, but the game is lack of replayability and prediciabilty.

We do must of content for gear or motifs.I kinda miss the games where we needed gather feathers for arrows.Maybe at short power ups and materials have be collected in multiple places. ( Super potions?)

We morally good or questionable choices for quests that give out the same item out either way with same speech. Maybe we cold do something with npc AI and it gives starky evaluations to group. ( Think Halo we sure killed those trashy talking adds first or did better because of them). Speaking that what if these NPCs had updated and maybe more dynamic dialogue. ( Why does fighters guild and mage not attack werewolves and vampires) Also, You could add affection for NPCs where they give out new quests or sell you a new version of x item or super potions. Make world feel more alive still so much potential.

Might be better now with new trial design, but even with quests maybe make them a bit more effort to do? How about making a quests where it's a significant difference if you or group use gear for traps or can swim faster. Maybe have different routes?

@ZOS_RichLambert

getemshauna

And again thread about end-game raiding, and again I agree with OP. Leaderboards are keeping it somehow alive, but I feel thats not enough. Raiding in MMO is one of the most important part of the game, and in ESO I feel like I eat same dinner every day. I don't like comparing this game to the others, but do you remember Freya in Ulduar? You could open chest after defeating this lady with a lot of interesting items, herbalism material etc. You could atleast generate gold by raiding, and here - 170 gold per single sp potion doesnt let me buy anything except that. Raiding is big part of the game and imho ZOS should put a lot of more attention into point of it. We received amazing trial, Halls of Fabrication and I really appreciate this move, but still - you can complete it ten, maybe twenty times and you don't want to go back here at all.

phillyproduct

All raids need 2 be redesigned with 8people in mind instead of 12 thats simply too many people getting 12 people together to practice and learn raids is a chore before you even start raiding

code65536

Cost of raiding: The cost of alchemy (esp. when compared to something like provisioning) is always been disproportionally out of line. It's not just endgame PvE that feels the cost, but also PvPers--a common complaint is that the rewards from PvP often don't cover the expenses.

During the One Tamriel PTS cycle, there was the huge outcry over the loss of BoE gear, and ZOS responded by adding Plunder. At the time, I thought that it was just a sloppy bandaid that didn't address any core issues, and I still think that now. Alleviating the cost of alchemy to make it more accessible (there are two options: either make each node yield 3-4 instead of 1 or increase the yield of crafting by 4x, so one set of flowers with max passives make 16 potions or 64 poisons instead of 4 and 16 now) would take a lot of the sting out of both PvP and endgame PvE.

---

Rewards: The polymorph next patch will be interesting. It's gated behind vAS HM, it's not a guaranteed drop, and it's BoE. Given the difficulty of vAS HM, I would expect this item to be exceedingly rare and would sell for millions at a minimum. Though, I'm not really sure an incentive like that is really the best or most healthy solution, because it's so inacessible. But it'll be there next patch...

As for titles and such, they're an (over-)abundance of titles, and the skins are nice too. I'm at the point where I have too many good titles and I'm not sure which one I want to use. Nor do I think that adding more exclusive titles would do anything, esp. considering that there already is an insanely exclusive title (Tick-Tock, which this thread's OP has). A better progression of titles would be nice, though. ZOS locked three different titles behind vHoF no-death, yet no-death is by far the hardest thing to achieve. So all three titles are more or less the same in terms of accessibility, and there is no viable intermediate title between Coadjutor and Tick-Tock.

Gear could be a good reward, but it seems that the devs have no idea what players actually want in gear. Take for example Automated Defense and Inventor's Guard--absolutely nobody wants that trash. Automated Defense makes Lunar Bastion look good in comparison. And next patch, we'll get the Asylum Restoration staff which is about on par with the Maelstrom 1HS in terms of utter uselessness and bad design. This isn't a "numbers" problem that can be fixed by tweaking the size of the bonus. This is a problem of there being a complete and utter failure by ZOS to understand how people actually play the game.

---

Why are people leaving? I agree that there has been an exodus, but why? You only talk about rewards, but the current reward structure has been there since One Tamriel, yet raiding bloomed during that and the Homestead patch.

The decline that we're in didn't start happening until Morrowind.

The best reward isn't wealth or titles. The best reward is fun.

I'm one of the people who stayed despite Morrowind, but I didn't--and still don't--like the changes that were made. Combat needs to feel fun, instead of restrictive and tiresome. On top of that (and in part because of the sustain changes), balance was poorly done, resulting in magdks and magplars no longer being viable.

The design of the new content seemed more focused on "How many ways can we trip players up?" rather than "How do we make this instance enjoyable and fun?". In vHoF, all the resource-draining mechanics on top of the heavy-handed sustain nerf were simply egregious. At least Power Leech no longer drains resources--though it took them months to throw us that one bone. There's an overuse of CCs and RNG, and most fights just feel long and dragged-out. At least they removed the second boss immunity so that fight no longer takes forever. And I say this as someone who actually likes running vHoF--I like it despite each run feeling like a draining, punishing marathon. But there are many people who don't find enough redeeming qualities in that trial to overcome the general feeling of it being the most exhausting and player-hostile trial.

And then there are the longstanding issues that never get addressed. Maw saw the introduction of sets all centered around synergies, yet the synergy system has been clunky and unreliable for ages. So much so that when ZOS devs were asked to use synergies on their live stream, they joked about its unreliability. Well, if you know that it's broken, why not devote developer resources to fixing it instead of spending those resources gutting sustain from everyone? Invisible players that require people to port or run out of render range to fix has been an issue for over a year now, but instead of that getting fixed, we just see nerfs every patch to things that make combat fun.

Well-known longstanding issues that don't get addressed, each patch filled with egregious nerfing (e.g., on the current PTS, when someone points out that one morph is underperforming, ZOS responds by nerfing the desirable morph in hopes that it will make the undesirable one attractive), and content that feels like it was designed to punish players. All of these things take away the fun. And people who leave aren't leaving because they feel like potions are too expensive or that the raiding is not a viable path to becoming a multimillionaire--they leave because they simply stopped having fun, particularly after Morrowind.

Qbiken

For me the biggest issue is that I can´t bring the class I feel comfortable playing with (in my case a melee magplar) to a progressive raiding guild. There´s no way a serious guild will put me in a melee spot since the dps difference between a magplar and a stamDK/stamNB is so huge.

In the guild I`m currently raiding with the guildleader once said to me: "I would love to be able to bring the classes people feel comfortable with to the raids, but people wouldn´t think the guild is serious if the rest of the players saw a melee magplar build in a raid"


With exceptions this is pretty much how it is atm:
Melee spots: StamDK/StamNB/Stamsorc, and in some cases a stamplar
Range spots: Magsorc or Magblade

Warden´s are rarely ever seen in a raidenviroment on the DPS spots.
MagDK´s only gimp the group since they are forced to use heavyattack builds or powerlash (which lower group dps)
Magplar´s most prominent dps abilities (sweeps and RD) doesn´t do the correct amount of damage as they should.


I think if ZOS made the classes more equal to eachother in term of DPS, more people would be enjoying endgame PvE. Lately this is the only reason I´ve almost stopped doing raids, because it´s either: StamDK/NB/Sorc or magNB/Sorc or find another guild to raid with.

Raghul

gethemshauna wrote: »

And again thread about end-game raiding, and again I agree with OP. Leaderboards are keeping it somehow alive, but I feel thats not enough. Raiding in MMO is one of the most important part of the game, and in ESO I feel like I eat same dinner every day. I don't like comparing this game to the others, but do you remember Freya in Ulduar? You could open chest after defeating this lady with a lot of interesting items, herbalism material etc. You could atleast generate gold by raiding, and here - 170 gold per single sp potion doesnt let me buy anything except that. Raiding is big part of the game and imho ZOS should put a lot of more attention into point of it. We received amazing trial, Halls of Fabrication and I really appreciate this move, but still - you can complete it ten, maybe twenty times and you don't want to go back here at all.

I miss those days of naxxramas and ulduar, best raiding time of my life, and if you did all bosses in ulduar on HM you unlocked the true endboss Algalon the Observer and you would get an amazing title from defeating him.
If i remember correctly you could get like very nice unique weapons from certain bosses, even mounts, special recipes/ designs to craft special weapons and gear etc, you would also get tokens wich could be turned in for a special gearset with unique bonusses specific to your class, dam i miss those days

Love Wizard

Qbiken wrote: »

For me the biggest issue is that I can´t bring the class I feel comfortable playing with (in my case a melee magplar) to a progressive raiding guild. There´s no way a serious guild will put me in a melee spot since the dps difference between a magplar and a stamDK/stamNB is so huge.

In the guild I`m currently raiding with the guildleader once said to me: "I would love to be able to bring the classes people feel comfortable with to the raids, but people wouldn´t think the guild is serious if the rest of the players saw a melee magplar build in a raid"


With exceptions this is pretty much how it is atm:
Melee spots: StamDK/StamNB/Stamsorc, and in some cases a stamplar
Range spots: Magsorc or Magblade

Warden´s are rarely ever seen in a raidenviroment on the DPS spots.
MagDK´s only gimp the group since they are forced to use heavyattack builds or powerlash (which lower group dps)
Magplar´s most prominent dps abilities (sweeps and RD) doesn´t do the correct amount of damage as they should.


I think if ZOS made the classes more equal to eachother in term of DPS, more people would be enjoying endgame PvE. Lately this is the only reason I´ve almost stopped doing raids, because it´s either: StamDK/NB/Sorc or magNB/Sorc or find another guild to raid with.

This is very true. Right now for instance with Hodor, we most of the time don't accept one trick ponies. This meaning, that if you can only play only class, and only have experience playing one class, we most likely won't accept you due to the nature of balance changes. It's a shame, really. The balancing that has hit this game the past couple of years has been nothing but a joke. You can look towards the meta right now, it's literaly stack as many staminas as possible, and have two sorcs for offbalance for those staminas, and imo, that's just stupid.

Saint_Bud

I think the peak of raiding in teso was from one tamriel to the start of morrowind. The reason for this is simpl, people want to have a chance to clear the raid and this was possible with the damage boost in one tamriel and later in housing patch. Bevor moast of the groups wernt able to clear vmol ( dont talking about craglon trilas). After morrowind lounch many of them struggel in vmol and the new raid. Also the new raid feels to me as ZOS dont want to raise the dps from patch to patch like in the vmol time and tried to make it more difficult in adding more mechanics instead of dps checks like in the old raids. For moast of them this will be to hard also with a massive dps boost, because some of the group will make a mistake.

A big think is the combat systhem right now. All feedback of the morrowind pts patch was we dont want this *** heavy attack ***, but you dont care. This hurts the weaker playerbase much more than the elits ( funny of this is that in housing patch ZOS said that they will try to close the gab between them).

At last, the performance. It is absolut therible in hof. So much lightning effects, its just to much for many of the players pcs and eys. Having a diashow and dont see much of the stuff going around isnts funny.

sry for bad eng

Tasear

Jumping back ,someone tag guy in charge of dungeon design... isn't it Mike something?

Another issue is a lack needed a specialized member, or role. We kinda are started to feel a bit too similar. Maybe we need some design that celebrates our differences. Maybe we just add jobs or something like spy, trap master, baggage carrarier.

Could also add maybe a way to watch others adventures, because people might be lacking inspiration. For instance, I heard top team from vAA had a nightblade healer. As such maybe we need incentives to be creative or try new things.

P.S dps races are boring, and leave friends out. Also to reillerate I want fun not pain. Have the team play Mario party @ZOS_GinaBruno

Azurya

the fact is that in many guilds they only do this late at night, for whatever reasons, earlier then 22 o´clock never started.

in a guild with 460 members on the roll, it is hard to find even those 12 for a raid. Then someone comes online after 8 months pause from the game and gets instant a place in the raid, another one has to go for that night.
after the 3rd boss it shows that the old-new member hasn´t a clue what he is doing, nor has gear, nor skills, and his CP are allover the place and certainly not in the place they should be, he leaves for the night,
it is 23.30 now and we cannot find another member so we ask overland for someone, cauze our guildmember the raidleader kicked before is not interested anymore
at 24 someone joins who is known by someone from the grp, and this one is always so cool

after 3 trails on the 4th boss it looks like that the new member has no idea what he is doing,no rotation no dps no nothing

at 00.30 all members decide it is enough for tonight and leave, no endboss reached no loot

and such sh+t happens day after day, and after sometime you think, I go and pick rather some flowers around, that wears more off.

Turelus

Tasear wrote: »

Jumping back ,someone tag guy in charge of dungeon design... isn't it Mike something?

Yeah it's Mike Finnigan (forums tag is @ZOS_Finn )

NyassaV

I have been doing so much teaching, a attributed to all the new players. But as of now, all these new players go into RP or just vet dungeons. They have no reason to go elsewhere and I don't blame them. Trials need to do more for people. I've cleared vMA tons of times and every now and then I ADHD out and screw up on twins in vMoL and everyone looses it. Trials need to be worth the time, because it takes awhile to get it down perfectly

Tasear

Turelus wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

Jumping back ,someone tag guy in charge of dungeon design... isn't it Mike something?

Yeah it's Mike Finnigan (forums tag is @ZOS_Finn)

User not found

usmcjdking

Content exploration includes more than just walking into delves, discovering lorebooks and completing content. It includes how you actually do that as well.

Mr. Firor is under the impressions that robust raiding opportunities make for a better endgame, when that's not how endgame has traditionally worked in any MMOs.

Players do not play a game for 'end game content'. They play a game to play a specific character which they have designed (or followed build schematics hitherto) in the more difficult content. There are natural limitations to what end game content can support (i.e. you probably need a flush mix of healers/tanks and DPSers) but there has been no real incentive to explore the possibilities of mixing-mashing those roles to actually explore the capabilities of ESO build design.

Where's the 8 man WW raid to clear VMOL?
Where's the stacked multi hybrid raid?
Where, ultimately is the build and team variance that makes raiding a unique experience on demand?

This is why PVE raiding sucks. The requirements are too stringent and any deviation from the requirements may lead to a critical shortage elsewhere - so what you end up getting is the same likeminded people running the same trail with the same builds utilizing the same concept because success literally hinges on it.

Exploration of ESOs intracacies nowhere in PVE and that is an abject failure on behalf of the game's lead visionary. Granted, some of the very limited endgame opportunities are hamstrung by the players themselves, but only because ZOS has made it very clear that they don't care for content exploration and haven't given much room for the players themselves to explore the content.

PVP, suprisingly, doesn't suffer from this issue. There are so many potential builds out there, all of which can be made to work (some better than others), that keep PVP fresh for people like me who need to consistantly explore the content of the game.

TL;DR - there is plenty of endgame content in ESO to incentivize itself. ZOS has not put any significant amount of effort is changing the requirements to explore these places reducing the "how" and the "why" to completely trivial, nonflexible ancedotes.

FakeFox

I agree, currently there is zero incentive in loot as soon as you have everything. BoE was great, you allways had excitement when looting, because you never knew if you might get something good to sell. Plunder is always the same, there is no excitement what so ever.

The ranking system is stupid. It should rank accounts and not characters. Currently you have the same peoples alts over and over, I'm in some lists with five characters or something and just feel bad for those people that barely not make it into the list because half of it is ******* twinks. Some kind of reward would be great as well, maybe a custom skin or title for the top 120 players or something.

Apart from that I think they have made some improvements with Morrowind, having more as well as more difficult achievements is a great long time incentive i think. Rewards are somewhat lacking, I mean you just get nothing for doing vHoF HM.

However the current raid (vHoF) is such a torture that I don't even have the motivation to really try. There is so much random and unavoidable stuff in this raid it's just not fun. Mechanics involve mostly no skill as you can't do anything but heal through it. Everything slows you or drains your ressources, which again involves zero skill and has zero counterplay. You just have to take it, it's not even a danger, all it does is annoy you. That's a trend i generally don't like, with every new raid/dungeons mechanics are getting dumbed down, while more flashy and random ***** gets added in so that it appears difficult, however it's often more RNG then anything else. And don't even get me started on gamebreaking bugs like adds spawning already empowered or random onehits from feedback.