Hero of None's 2017 PVE Issues & Suggestions

HeroOfNone

Hello Tamriel!


As part of my 2017 ESO review here are some of my PVE issues and suggestions. This list is based on my own experiences and tempered with discussions with others, it is in no way a complete list. Many of the suggestions are also brain storming suggestions, they still require balancing and it would not be good without proper counter play.

Now, enough of the disclaimers, let’s get into it!


PVE Issues

• Over world fights are extremely easy except most world bosses, there is no ramp up.
• Questing with friends is way too easy. There is no scaling difficulty based on how many show up.
• There are no incentives to run dungeons multiple times once you have its set & if it's not a pledge.
• Base game veteran dungeons are too easy, players typically “fall asleep” farming them.
• Fights are lacking a "wow" factor, flashy or impressive attacks or finishers. Compare these to how awesome dark brotherhood stealth finishers look.
• Heists and Dark Sacraments never got any updates. Players have no reason to get the Dark Brotherhood or thieves guild DLC for these.
• We are lacking tradeable items for group content. This limits growth in the economy.
• End game trials are losing their fun. Many simply farm for time rather than the challenge.
• The base game does not have interesting or flashy scenes like the DLC. This does not giving a good first impression to players.
• Crafting is easy but tedious, with only 1 writ a day per character to help level it.
• There is low incentive reward to level up at top level. Players only level to gather new characters when they are maxed on champion points.

Suggestions based on PVE issues

• Increase the difficulty on delve, dungeon, quest, and trial bosses. Include more health and new abilities compared to normal mobs. If necessary, a new difficulty level can be inserted. New abilities should not be one shot abilities, but will lead to failure if ignored:
  - Block abilities that need to be interrupted
  - DOTs that require a purge (with purge factors in the room)
  - CC that requires another player to interrupt or activate something
  - Avoid one shot mechanics that do not have an obvious tell with delay
  - Make sure bosses with self heals have obvious tells or set percentages
  - Summon more adds to reward AOE builds in certain fights
  - For delve and quest bosses, boost up mechanics as the more players damage the boss
  - Standard Veteran dungeon end bosses difficulty should be hard for the average 3 players, and near impossible for 2 players
  - Trial bosses should have several more stages of mechanics, or more adds, to ramp up the difficulty as the health drops.
• Add in furniture drops into dungeon runs, guaranteed drops from bosses and low chances for plans and rare pieces as well.
  - Plans should match the respective zone’s base race; fungal grotto in stone falls drops dark elf, elden hollow in grahtwood drops wood elf, etc.
  - Chance for rare mercenary drops from bosses
  - Patterns to craft have a low chance to drop
• Add in special finisher abilities when updating abilities. These would be major attacks that occur when a monster is low on health. These might be something you toggle on through a synergy or be limited to boss fights, but something to put the finishing touch on a fight.
• Sell skill variants in the crown store, much like the different bear skin for the warden, to spruce up attacks. A general update to skills is needed, but this would provide more variety and custom flair for players.
• Allow for player designed heists & dark sacraments. Each one will require its creator can complete it and rewards for both designer and runner depends on how many complete it verses how many have failed. Rewards grow based on how many failed previously.
• Update some of the starting quests in difficulty& effects, especially the single player quest, base alliance quest, and guild quests. It’s important these sell the game as a good first impression so players will want to buy more. These quests are way behind on being representative on what ESO can be.
• Offer more radiant quests to combine questing and crafting together. Quests like create and deliver to dangerous locations, or others that offer to harvest materials in under populated areas would promote exploration. These wouldn’t need to give rewards like regular writs, but would be repeatable for those working up the skill.
• Offer reward and loot boxes for gaining levels and a CP rank. (Note: partly just announced for update 17!) Minor, level capped rewards can be given for the first 50 levels, while uncommon and epic rewards can be given every 5 CP points and 10 CP points. Additional rewards can also be given for completing certain achievements. Rewards can include:
  - Motifs & pages
  - Housing schematics
  - Recipes
  - Treasure maps
  - surveys
  - Crafting materials
  - Transmutation gems
  - Housing furniture
  - Older costumes, dyes, and pets retired from the crown store
  - Crown crates & gems

This is just a brief list of items to fix and ideas how to fix them. I think most of these can be addressed within a year’s time, so I look forward to what 2018 may hold.



Thank you for your time and Happy New Year

(Also apologies for any typos and formatting issues, doing this in the spare time on a phone)

ThinkerOfThings

ThinkerOfThings wrote: »

Extend the RPG aspect: Daily Quest Hubs w/ Tangible Changes

---

So one of the things that I would love to see improved is immersion. Don't get me wrong, it takes great strides and the developers have made a lot of effort to make every map feel like the Elder Scrolls Universe. However, especially with the new DLC, players can blow right through the content, making some of the characters and events feel more like set dressing than people in a universe.

To improve upon this, I would love to see content that is "locked" behind dailies or other content. Events like coming to a town and spending a couple of weeks worth of dailies, helping them rebuild after a Daedric attack. Someone needs to gather new wood, or iron and donate it to the town. Getting to help choose which shops become available to them by helping certain shop keepers collect wares, would be amazing. Taking a burned down wreck of a town and helping it rebuild would make players feel more invested in the quests they are doing for the town. Correct me if I am wrong, but during the course of Wrothgar, the city had visible changes as you progressed, why not expand on that.

Once a certain goal had been reached, say helping rebuild a portion of the town, a new quest driver appears, letting players in on the next part of the main story for the zone, while perhaps a new set of other quests, such as helping someone find their lost cat that has run off due to all the construction, only to find that it has run into a cave filled with draugher. Then on to another series of dailies, perhaps preparing fortifications for the town in advance of another attack, while helping rebuild the rest of the town.

Series quests like this, that are locked behind a spread of daily quests, would help the players become more invested with the areas that they inhabit and make it less possible to burn through content so quick. Ultimately this would lead players to feel that they are apart of the world and that the choices they make have tangible results.

I posted this elsewhere, but would be interested in others thoughts on the idea! Let me know what you think!

Stamden

I really hope they fix some of the mDK problems this time around. Specifically consuming off-balance, which kinda screws them in PvE.

HeroOfNone

Stamden wrote: »

I really hope they fix some of the mDK problems this time around. Specifically consuming off-balance, which kinda screws them in PvE.

I'll be covering builds, skills and sets a little generically later, lot of formatting to go D=

Phaedrathallassa

My experience is that the content is plenty hard when you're learning, especially without cp. Even for the best group vet trials and dungeons are challenging; each new dungeon brings new mechanics. Increasing the health and damage makes it more punishing for new players and possibly will take longer to learn the mechanics for old players, but does nothing for long-term interest except making it more boring and tedious to farm. One thing I like about ESO is that not everything is a damage sponge.

Here's some feedback from a slightly-above-average player (here, with cp means at least 300 spent).

I just leveled an imperial dragonknight as full magicka build, with crafted gear, *without cp spent*. I wanted to see how it felt.

I'm also leveling (level 30 now) a altmer warden, as full magicka build, with dropped gear, *and 601 cp spent*. It feels very, very different. I think fundamentally the problem is that cp makes the game too easy.

- Without cp, overland and normal dungeon content difficulty level is about right. You can kill normal trash just fine, although it takes much, much longer; delve and quest bosses require you to actually pay attention to mechanics. Dolmens and world bosses are almost impossible to duo. This is true even for an experienced player (that just didn't spend cp on that character).

- With cp, overland content difficulty and normal dungeon is trivial. You can literally fall asleep on the keyboard and your bear will take care of you.

- Without cp, veteran dungeons are very difficult or impossible. With cp, most of the base game veteran dungeons are trivial, and while I wouldn't try to two-man them, two players *can* easily carry pugs that aren't doing their job, as long as they're contributing a little. Perhaps the ability of strong players to carry contributes to the idea that dungeons are too easy? A group of people where three or all four have no clue how to play their roles or do the dungeon will not be successful on veteran mode.

- DLC dungeons are difficult even with CP. They demand respect for mechanics from all players, making them basically impossible for the average player on veteran mode.

I think that if people want more of a challenge and not just to score push, there is an easy way for them to get that for themselves. *don't spend your cp*. It really is the difference between leveling up being... interesting... and being trivial.

Keep in mind that it is *technically* possible to complete the game without cp. Paulingtons showed that when he did vMA with 0 cp spent. But he's one of the best players in the world, so this is far from a typical experience.

tl;dr I don't think making the game harder will do anything for the average player. Only one person of all the people I've gotten to try this game quit because it was too easy. The rest quit because it just wasn't the right game for them, or a few, because it was too hard (trying to quests 10 levels above them before 1T wasn't a good time, I guess). Many players quit because they think they need to grind to max level, and that's boring; if they would just relax and have fun they'd have made it a lot further... More encouragement to grind is definitely not needed.

I do like some of None's other suggestions.

I do think a bigger tell when bosses are at low health is needed. Right now, even as an experienced player, it's the one thing in my rotation that I struggle with - when to start executing. If abilities shifted slightly or the boss reacted differently at 20% health, that would be amazing. There are tells for everything else that's important to my gameplay.

I think the biggest update that would be nice for the starting quests is updating the visuals. If you could import some of those lovely morrowind hlaalu and redoran assets into the base game morrowind, that'd be a good start. Every time I go to the Gold Coast or Vvardenfell I'm awestruck by how beautiful it is. While Glenumbra and Grahtwood are my favorite zones in terms of visual design, I'd be lying if I said they were as beautiful.

New players also tend to be very confused by crafting. There's a lot of moving parts and it has to be explained slowly and carefully a few times before they get it. There is actually good dialogue in game that explains this, but for some reason they tend to skip it. Maybe more encouragement for players to not skip dialogue is needed.

In fact my biggest problem in questing in groups is that my groupmates skip the quest dialogue, then have no clue whatsoever what's going on. Maybe new accounts shouldn't be allowed to skip dialogue or something :P

I really like the idea of radiant quests. Special questing writs like the undaunted delve/fighter's dolmen/mage's dailies sounds fun. For a while master writs were like this, going to strange locations to craft sets that you'd normally never craft; nowadays everyone goes to the house of that one person in your guild who has all of the crafting stations... Of course for the experienced player this might just be one more thing to grind on out.

HeroOfNone

Part 2 dealing with builds, sets, and skills is posted

kiLLahweSPe

Stamden wrote: »

I really hope they fix some of the mDK problems this time around. Specifically consuming off-balance, which kinda screws them in PvE.

Stop spreading this misinformation please. While its true the flame lash morph consumes offbalance, thats not the issue of mag DK's right now. Every heavy attack consumes offbalance aswell, as in every stamina dd rotation and the occasional heavy attack of tanks and healers.

The main issue lays in the fact that heavy attacks deal 70% more damage against offbalanced targets, but as a proper mag DK you dont do any heavy attack to begin with. Further problems are the poisons, an overachieveing endless hail with the vma bow, the plenty group oriented debuff sets which only affect stamina and the braindead sustain you get just by rolling your head over your keyboard.

I main a mag DK now for 3 years, but consuming offbalance has nothing to do with the PVE issues right now.

Qbiken

kiLLahweSPe wrote: »

Stamden wrote: »

I really hope they fix some of the mDK problems this time around. Specifically consuming off-balance, which kinda screws them in PvE.

Stop spreading this misinformation please. While its true the flame lash morph consumes offbalance, thats not the issue of mag DK's right now. Every heavy attack consumes offbalance aswell, as in every stamina dd rotation and the occasional heavy attack of tanks and healers.

The main issue lays in the fact that heavy attacks deal 70% more damage against offbalanced targets, but as a proper mag DK you dont do any heavy attack to begin with. Further problems are the poisons, an overachieveing endless hail with the vma bow, the plenty group oriented debuff sets which only affect stamina and the braindead sustain you get just by rolling your head over your keyboard.

I main a mag DK now for 3 years, but consuming offbalance has nothing to do with the PVE issues right now.

^ What this player said. Sustain is magDK´s issue right now. Give them back Pre-Morrowind Battle Roar + Helping Hands and give them a cost reduction passive (so we aren´t forced to use Flame-Lash).

nCats

Good post.

An added difficulty level (even for delves and overland) seems like an inevitable necessity for me, given how far one can progress with the CP system these days. In principle, I do not see why we cannot have normal and veteran instances for delve content, Craglorn style, with the latter difficulty rewarding purple items in greater variety and maybe something more compelling, like a transmutation geode from the boss upon first completion.