My problem playing ESO: always preparing for something, not playing

myskyrim26

I'm not whining, I love ESO, but... I have a problem

I’m playing ESO since November, 2016. All this time I was preparing for… something.
First, leveling to 160 to start using sets. Done, but it is not enough for playing: now the crafted sets are not enough, I need to grind some dropped sets and Monster sets and some vMA/whatever weapons. It is hard. Not interesting at all.

Then, collecting motifs. Done! I collected all motifs except the Militant Ordinator! Am I happy? No. I can’t play with them as the cost of making an outfit is very high. I need gold. A lot of gold! So I’m farming mats. The most hateful thing to do for me.

Oh, I desperately need gold – I’m preparing to buy a house and furnish it. I’m buying Zanil’s furniture, crafted furniture and furniture patterns in guild stores. My Ample Domicile is an awkward warehouse: I’ preparing. Not enjoying housing.

So, what I have now: preparing to do dungeons in a proper way, preparing to enjoy housing and preparing to enjoy oufits. Is it fun to prepare for such a long time? No… What I have left, is only doing quests and enjoying the environment. All other things would love to experience are somewhere... ahead. Infinite time and a lot of hard effort grinding gold ahead. Is it fun? No.

Mettaricana

Do what i did play something else im on a dofferent mmo atm andnwhen i got back to eso i gave a lot less craps

Vostorn

Be aware that crafted sets are more than enough to enjoy PVP and vet dungeons/trials if you play right. Anything drop you'll get is a bonus.

There is no need to farm gear before doing that. If your guild/group asks for that, I recommend you to find another that is less elitist.

Danikat

What is it you're trying to do in the game? The vast majority of things can be played before you're CP160, definitely before you've got full monster sets and vMA weapons. You only really need to worry about that for hardcore trial groups.

IMO it's better to just do what you're interested in and use whatever equipment you get. Otherwise as you've found you can end up grinding some areas trying to get good equipment until you're sick of the whole game.

DRAGON_KILLER_HUNTER

try pvp its so much fun

phaneub17_ESO

Compulsory players like you will never ever be complete. You're just going to have to tell your brain to shut up and set limits for yourself on how far is adequate rather than aiming for exemplary.

I'm an altaholic and with that in mind, if I were to try to gear up all my characters to the extreme would take decades. So I set myself gear limits by going half crafted, half dropped. My 5 Tanks are Magicka all wearing 5pc Bahraha's Curse(Heavy Armor), 5pc Bloodthorn(Jewelry, Gloves, Belt), and Willpower weapons. My 5 Magicka Caster/healers wear 5pc Bahraha's Curse(Light Armor, Jewelry), 5pc Kagrenac's Hope, and Willpower weapons. My 5 Stamina DPS wear 5pc Syvarra's Scale (Medium Armor, Jewelry), 5pc Shacklebreakers, and Agility weapons.

I try to aim for at least Epic quality and upgrade whenever I can, while these are not great sets they are a standard minimum. I am not breaking myself going for super sets that will never finish with this many characters, it's just not feasible and will destroy me in the long run. As for outfits, I try to go as uniform as possible, all my Stamina characters are in Bosmer Medium Armor with different colors, I'm sure all 5 of them combined could form Captain Planet...

Waffennacht

Wanna make gold quickly?

Use all characters and do the daily writ quests. They make a 4k ish per character very quickly (even characters that don't have any crafting leveled) - I only do this on 6 characters but if you did 8 that's around 32k within an hour tops.

Steal - I only have 2 "thieves" which is plenty for me, I have a 6 min loop in Auridon bank of stealing/pick pocketing, I make 1-2k per run in 1 hour that's 10-20k.

Cyrodiil dailies, this may not be the best time to do these now (during the event) but Bruma, Cropsford and Chey are very quick taking about 15min to do each, making approximately 5k each (depending on loot too) so in an hour that's 15k

Without selling anything to players, solo, it's fairly easy to make 50k in 3 hours per day

Kingslayer513

myskyrim26 wrote: »

I’m playing ESO since November, 2016. All this time I was preparing for… something.
First, leveling to 160 to start using sets. Done, but it is not enough for playing: now the crafted sets are not enough, I need to grind some dropped sets and Monster sets and some vMA/whatever weapons. It is hard. Not interesting at all.

See this is a big misconception perpetuated by the meta-mindset.

You can pull 30k+ dps on ANY class magicka or stamina with a crafted set paired with a dungeon set. I've done it and posted about it before. Crafted sets like Julianos are still amazing for magicka characters. I will agree that vMA weapons make a sizable difference in dps, but 1) you can still definitely pull 30k+ without vMA weapons and 2) the gap between those with vMA weapons and those without will decrease after Summerset comes out (2H will count as 2pc in sets + jewelry crafting).

If you can do over 30k, that's more than enough for any content this game offers, including vet trials. People place way too much importance on "BiS gear" and think that they can't even play the game properly until they get it. There's really just not that much of a difference, and quite frankly for people at lower dps, they probably wouldn't even see a change if they had the BiS gear.

I see too many people doing like 20k dps and telling me that they're stuck and need trial gear to go higher. As if trial gear will magically double their dps to 40k. People should really be working with the basics, like a crafted set + a dungeon set and PLAYING the game to have fun/learn their character instead of being stuck on the treadmill that is grinding BiS gear. For people at the top of their game, completing all content and trying to push their limits, then going for BiS gear makes a lot of sense, but everyone else should be enjoying the journey and playing the game instead of feeling like they're playing catch-up forever.

KeiruNicrom

I must agree. I feel the same way. I find myself being frustrated about builds and gear more and more every update as new sets get added. They inspire me to make a new build but by the time ive already grinded the pieces out i no longer feel the same way about the build. Consider all this and how limiting the inventory system is so i cannot just hold onto one item of every piece of every set to play with them how and whenever i like.....i just feel more annoyed and unenthusiastic about ESO every day

This issue seems to show off a discrepency between what developers consider playing/having fun and what a player considers. The grind has us play for longer times as the developers want, but for alot of people that isnt fun. And to get to the fun parts one often has to grind for appropriate gear lest they deal with dying often or taking an obnoxiously long time to kill things, both of which can lead to no longer considering the game fun.

myskyrim26

Thank you all for clearing things up on sets. Will try to do dungeons as is.
As for the rest... outfits and housing, still there's a problem in making gold. Crafting with 8 toons is what I do. All the money were spent on motifs until the recent event. Now maybe I'll stop buying them, though the new will be coming soon. Stealing is fun, but I can do it about once a week, or I get dreadfully bored...

Kingslayer513

myskyrim26 wrote: »

Thank you all for clearing things up on sets. Will try to do dungeons as is.
As for the rest... outfits and housing, still there's a problem in making gold. Crafting with 8 toons is what I do. All the money were spent on motifs until the recent event. Now maybe I'll stop buying them, though the new will be coming soon. Stealing is fun, but I can do it about once a week, or I get dreadfully bored...

Yeah I mean honestly housing is really intended to be a massive endgame gold sink, so it'll be a long haul to get all the coolest stuff unless you're really efficient at making gold. As for outfits though, they're in the 10-20k gold range if you're using a lot of rare styles and changing everything. IMO that's not really that much unless you are constantly changing your outfit. You probably spent many orders of magnitude higher gold on acquiring all those motifs in the first place.

If you like to PVP, then you can convert your AP to gold by buying from the golden vendor and reselling later on. If you like dungeons, then you can do vet HM DLC dungeons to get motifs that sell for 30k or more gold. If you like overland content, there's still plenty of dropped set pieces that'll sell for over 100k if they're in the right trait. Don't throw away those treasure maps

Tannus15

myskyrim26 wrote: »

Thank you all for clearing things up on sets. Will try to do dungeons as is.
As for the rest... outfits and housing, still there's a problem in making gold. Crafting with 8 toons is what I do. All the money were spent on motifs until the recent event. Now maybe I'll stop buying them, though the new will be coming soon. Stealing is fun, but I can do it about once a week, or I get dreadfully bored...

I've been doing 6 writs on 12 characters for the duration of this event and in writ gold alone I've made more than 500k.
With 8 toons, you should be getting 224k a week without selling "anything" just from writs.

That's a million gold house in 1 month.
That's not too bad.
Hell, you can buy some of the smaller houses like the Cyrodilic Jungle House in 2 days!

Basically stop spending your gold on random stuff like outfits and motifs for a few weeks and you'll have plenty of gold without even trying.

DoctorESO

myskyrim26 wrote: »

I'm not whining, I love ESO, but... I have a problem

I’m playing ESO since November, 2016. All this time I was preparing for… something.
First, leveling to 160 to start using sets. Done, but it is not enough for playing: now the crafted sets are not enough, I need to grind some dropped sets and Monster sets and some vMA/whatever weapons. It is hard. Not interesting at all.

Then, collecting motifs. Done! I collected all motifs except the Militant Ordinator! Am I happy? No. I can’t play with them as the cost of making an outfit is very high. I need gold. A lot of gold! So I’m farming mats. The most hateful thing to do for me.

Oh, I desperately need gold – I’m preparing to buy a house and furnish it. I’m buying Zanil’s furniture, crafted furniture and furniture patterns in guild stores. My Ample Domicile is an awkward warehouse: I’ preparing. Not enjoying housing.

So, what I have now: preparing to do dungeons in a proper way, preparing to enjoy housing and preparing to enjoy oufits. Is it fun to prepare for such a long time? No… What I have left, is only doing quests and enjoying the environment. All other things would love to experience are somewhere... ahead. Infinite time and a lot of hard effort grinding gold ahead. Is it fun? No.

It's like life. The journey is as important as the destination. Otherwise, you're always preparing for the next step. Really, no one is ever "done" in real life. If that were the case, then the old curse of "may all your goals be accomplished" has risen. It's all about perspective and enjoying the journey.

Tannus15

DoctorESO wrote: »

myskyrim26 wrote: »

I'm not whining, I love ESO, but... I have a problem

I’m playing ESO since November, 2016. All this time I was preparing for… something.
First, leveling to 160 to start using sets. Done, but it is not enough for playing: now the crafted sets are not enough, I need to grind some dropped sets and Monster sets and some vMA/whatever weapons. It is hard. Not interesting at all.

Then, collecting motifs. Done! I collected all motifs except the Militant Ordinator! Am I happy? No. I can’t play with them as the cost of making an outfit is very high. I need gold. A lot of gold! So I’m farming mats. The most hateful thing to do for me.

Oh, I desperately need gold – I’m preparing to buy a house and furnish it. I’m buying Zanil’s furniture, crafted furniture and furniture patterns in guild stores. My Ample Domicile is an awkward warehouse: I’ preparing. Not enjoying housing.

So, what I have now: preparing to do dungeons in a proper way, preparing to enjoy housing and preparing to enjoy oufits. Is it fun to prepare for such a long time? No… What I have left, is only doing quests and enjoying the environment. All other things would love to experience are somewhere... ahead. Infinite time and a lot of hard effort grinding gold ahead. Is it fun? No.

It's like life. The journey is as important as the destination. Otherwise, you're always preparing for the next step. Really, no one is ever "done" in real life. If that were the case, then the old curse of "may all your goals be accomplished" has risen. It's all about perspective and enjoying the journey.

Life before death
Strength before weakness
Journey before destination

MLGProPlayer

That's become a MUCH smaller problem with transmutation, and will be made even smaller with jewellery crafting.

The grind is in a good place right now.

Doctordarkspawn

DRAGON_KILLER_HUNTER wrote: »

try pvp its so much fun

Your milage may vary.

Bobby_V_Rockit

I’ve been “preparing” for vMA for so long that when I went in and failed horribly I gave up on all vet content

DoctorESO

Bobby_V_Rockit wrote: »

I’ve been “preparing” for vMA for so long that when I went in and failed horribly I gave up on all vet content

It can take a long time to get your first clear, but if you set your mind to it and you believe it, and then you can do it. There are a number of videos and guides out there. Try watching them all. It also helps if you are max CP. Just take one stage at a time. And don't give up on other vet content - they are different and involve groups of people working together, which is different than a solo arena like vMA.

Doctordarkspawn

DoctorESO wrote: »

Bobby_V_Rockit wrote: »

I’ve been “preparing” for vMA for so long that when I went in and failed horribly I gave up on all vet content

It can take a long time to get your first clear, but if you set your mind to it and you believe it, and then you can do it. There are a number of videos and guides out there. Try watching them all. It also helps if you are max CP. Just take one stage at a time. And don't give up on other vet content - they are different and involve groups of people working together, which is different than a solo arena like vMA.

Or you could quit while your ahed, assess what you find fun, and stick to that.

Nothing wrong with that either.

TBH I dont do any vet content anymore because the constrainment isn't fun.

DoctorESO

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

DoctorESO wrote: »

Bobby_V_Rockit wrote: »

I’ve been “preparing” for vMA for so long that when I went in and failed horribly I gave up on all vet content

It can take a long time to get your first clear, but if you set your mind to it and you believe it, and then you can do it. There are a number of videos and guides out there. Try watching them all. It also helps if you are max CP. Just take one stage at a time. And don't give up on other vet content - they are different and involve groups of people working together, which is different than a solo arena like vMA.

Or you could quit while your ahed, assess what you find fun, and stick to that.

Nothing wrong with that either.

TBH I dont do any vet content anymore because the constrainment isn't fun.

Yes, agree, as long as clearing vMA won't be nagging at you in the back of your head or something that you'll regret not doing or really want to accomplish.

Klixen

Oh I know what you mean.

When I first started ESO, I found I couldn't play! Not without good gear!

So I actually stopped 'playing' for about a month while I did nothing but research and crafting. Then once I could craft some decent sets, I rolled a combat character and started playing properly.

It worked! I've just hit level 50 and now I'm working on earning Champion Points. But the preparation needed, just to start playing, was pretty extreme (I've never encountered anything like it in any other game).

But I will say this, I'm one of those people who need a goal to work towards. It doesn't really matter if it's tedious and boring, so long as I have something to strive for, I stay engaged.

It's when I reach those goals that I start to get bored and lose interest. In my mind, I've 'finished' the game and there's no reason to keep playing.

So there is that to consider, all this preparation may not be considered fun, but at least it gives you something to do

DoctorESO

Klixen wrote: »

But I will say this, I'm one of those people who need a goal to work towards. It doesn't really matter if it's tedious and boring, so long as I have something to strive for, I stay engaged.

It's when I reach those goals that I start to get bored and lose interest. In my mind, I've 'finished' the game and there's no reason to keep playing.

So there is that to consider, all this preparation may not be considered fun, but at least it gives you something to do

Exactly and well said!

Lysette

Hm, hm ... goal-oriented approaches are rarely delivering what one expects from a game - or what I expect at least - namely to have fun and to enjoy my time playing the game. So whatever is fun to play for me, is fine. And whatever isn't fun, drives me away from i. Then I play rather something else. So my only goal in gaming in a whole is to have fun and to enjoy myself.

This said, for some people grinding is fun as well - see all the asian MMOs for example, which are designed in a grind-oriented way, because asians like this kind of stuff, especially if they can grind in a group. Collectors and completionists are in the same group in a way, because they will have fun WHILE they are doing it, but when the goal is reached, just another goal can quench this urge. And I think the OP is of this kind and therefore unhappy once these goals are achieved.

As far as pvp goes - given that I am not pvp-ing in this game, but I did in others - there is a reason, why one can enter Cyrrodil at level 10. Simply because there are 2 stereotypes of players who do pvp - those, who start it as soon as possible - and they have a good chance to be successful in pvp - and the other type are those, who always think, they are not ready yet and so they keep WANTING to take part in pvp, but never really do it.

The thing is, no one is ready when entering the pvp arena for the first time - no one is, who enjoys pvp - pvp is learning by doing and dying a lot. Nothing can really prepare for it without to jump into it and just do it. So stop preparing, if you want to do pvp, just go for it. People will help you to get better over time and die less often. But you won't get better by just wanting to pvp and never actually do it. This is why one is allowed to enter pvp at level 10 already - it's in a way, now or never.

ekmcb

This is all by design, OP my friend. All by design.

My advice would be to lean back, close your eyes from the computer, take a deep breath, and resolve to only invest in time/effort what makes the game most enjoyable for you. Question what things you really *want* vs. what things you may have *been made to feel* you need.

Then, work toward the wants.

Take pleasure in the small things.


Change it up a bit (your routine) now and then.


Examples:

• Sometimes, for days on end, I do fishing. Yes, I want that stupid fishing achievement. lol
  
• Once I am sick of fishing, sometimes I might just go and randomly explore (that "pick a direction and run" thing). I take my time and notice the nice little details that the developers have lovingly and cleverly added to little nooks and crannies here and there, and I laugh, or think. Or might be prompted to go look up some lore for a TES historical reference I think I've found. (Those are the best, to me. Feels like finding special treasures.)
  
• Some days, I just want to take the time to have my character sit while I read some of those lore books in Eidetic Memory that my busy character's been too busy to pause and read while she's saving Tamriel.
  
• Other days, I'm keen on earning some more skill points so I can try out that new skill that looks cool, so I go skyshard hunting or leveling, a bit.
  
• Some days, when I have a chunk of gold built up, all I do is run around buying furnishings & patterns and working on one of my houses all day. Arranging, rearranging, trying out themes & wild ideas and constructions.

The point is, by design, the game developers' job and goal is to a) keep us endlessly entertained and busy with possibilities for as long as conceivably possible in order for US to have fun and b) for THEM to make money & to keep being able to do the jobs that we hope they love. Win/win.

If at any point you find yourself getting stressed about "getting/doing it all" - you've lost the point and the plot. Do that stepping back & taking a breath thing, & reset your priorities and approach to all the richness of "stuff" available for you to do & experience here. Much like real life, it might be near impossible to do everything, so do what matters to you most - as you can, with the time that you can.

ekmcb

Seeing replies in this thread, it strikes me that different gamer goals/motivations - gamer personalities - come into play when it comes to what frustrates or excites/motivates different players.

I'm not sure I can post this here since I don't own the content/concept, but since it's a Wikipedia link I figure it's public reference information, which I think should put it into a separate category as far as the rules about that go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types

This is a really cool "gamer personality" profile system that explains a lot of what I just said. You can Google for tests on the web that will profile you, if you like.

I come out as 93% "Explorer" - which might explain my response to this "problem" as well as others' differing responses. It seems to me that the people expressing frustration in this thread (perhaps including the OP) are probably "Achievers" - as they feel there's too much to try to "get done," and too large of a mountain to climb before they can "achieve" it.

What does everyone else think?

NyassaV

So you don't want to play ESO because you are a smart person? it's totally normal to prep for things

Nemesis7884

the truth is, this kind of "need for preparation" triggers all of the mmo "have to do that" buttons

FloppyTouch

Eh pve in a nutshell always grinding the new sets so you can do the same stuff again over and over.

Craft you a set of purple impen gear gold out a wep and kill players all day long with us in pvp. Barely any prep all fun. Best part is when you get bored and need a break you can go back to that pve stuff until you miss having fun again.

Klixen

ekmcb wrote: »

Seeing replies in this thread, it strikes me that different gamer goals/motivations - gamer personalities - come into play when it comes to what frustrates or excites/motivates different players.

I'm not sure I can post this here since I don't own the content/concept, but since it's a Wikipedia link I figure it's public reference information, which I think should put it into a separate category as far as the rules about that go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types

This is a really cool "gamer personality" profile system that explains a lot of what I just said. You can Google for tests on the web that will profile you, if you like.

I come out as 93% "Explorer" - which might explain my response to this "problem" as well as others' differing responses. It seems to me that the people expressing frustration in this thread (perhaps including the OP) are probably "Achievers" - as they feel there's too much to try to "get done," and too large of a mountain to climb before they can "achieve" it.

What does everyone else think?

This is fascinating! I've never seen this before.

I guess I fall somewhere between the Achiever and Explorer category

Anotherone773

The problem i see with a lot of gamers is they are in such a hurry to get to the end of the game, they miss most of the game. Its fine to have goals in a game but if you keep moving the goal posts all you are doing is setting yourself up for disappointment.

Here is how i look at it. I have a list of things i want to do:
* Furnish my current houses.
* Hit max CP
* collect my skyshards on each character.
* Run though all quests with at least one character.
* Get all achieves with one character.
* Etc. ( its a long list)

Now if i was to drive towards these, id go nuts. So i look at it from the perspective of if i make progress towards one of my goals today, then it has been a productive day. Having multiple goals allows me to do what i want and feel like im still making progress. It doesnt matter when i get there as long as i make progress. Working on multiple goals at a time keeps it from feeling grindy and boring.

I use to be a "hurry up and get there" person. But honestly, its to much unnecessary stress for something that is suppose to be fun. So i will get there when i get there and i might not even know where there is until i get there.

Its the journey that matters, not the destination.

MakoFore

its like life-

grind dungeons for gear > for pvp to grind for AP > to get golden > gear that will allow u to get into trials to grind for gear>
that ll make u OP in dungeons > so u can get better gear for maelstrom > that ll get you gear for vet trials > that ll give you gear for ......i dont know why i do it either...

but its fun