PTS Update 18 - Feedback Thread for Psijic Order Skill Line

nessie3

Well, I for one hope they don't 'reduce the grind' as I found the quest fun. The maps aren't meant to be exact - irl most hand drawn maps aren't! As has been pointed out on many other threads the game is meant for everyone. I am not a pvp gamer and don't much enjoy the grind of killing everything in sight, so having treasure hunts that need a bit of effort makes the game more interesting. As was said...please respect the players...as I am sure that there are many people out there who would not put their heads above the parapet and disagree with a lot of similar sentiments to those against the difficulty of the quest level but who do like this aspect of the game. I suspect the majority of players who dislike this quest are into group combat, pvp, and daily trials etc....so they will still have plenty of content for them.

AefionBloodclaw

are you kidding, I finally finished all 9 rifts in the Illiac Bay region and I have to do the same the Ebonheart Pact? Seriously? This is such a joke, I bet you have to do 9 as well for the Aldmeri Dominion zones? I am not into pvp, group combat, daily trials or any of that crap, I am interested in story content and quests and exploration, and yet you guys at ZoS think its great to have insanely boring, tedious crap grinding doing the same thing over and over again for those of us who were looking forward to the Psijic quests.

Well I certainly won't be encouraging new players to do the Psijics as long as ZoS refuses to acknowledge or listen to player feedback, I know I'm not the only one who hates the grindy nature of closing damn rifts.

AefionBloodclaw

Footfalls wrote: »

Overall, the skill line is pretty reasonable, but the quest line doesn’t do the Psijic Order justice. It's nowhere near the quality of the base game or DLC Guild questlines, and doesn’t deserve to be labelled as one.

Part of the problem is that the reasonably reasonable (but still way too short) Staff of Towers quests are completely overshadowed by the “Press E to Continue” quests (quests which in and of themselves are only superficially relevant to the story, and really exist solely for levelling). The concept of the time breaches is a good one in theory, but the current implementation of that concept is really boring. It’s just artificially padding out what is actually a very short storyline (there are really only three quests with any substance, two of which are glorified “Press E” quests themselves). The provided maps are also way too vague for quest directions; when questing, if the UI map is not specific, the provided in-world directions must be. The provided maps are much more suited to exploration than questing.

The current Questing and Levelling path therefore goes like this:

1. Joining Quest – Find 9 breaches in Summerset
2. Levelling Quest – Press E in the Iliac
3. Tedious Levelling Quest – Breaches Again?: Frost and Fire Edition
4. Staff of Towers Storyline – Part 1: Breaches can Sometimes be Useful After All
5. Tedious Levelling Quest – Here We Go Round The Graht-Oak Tree, Please Press E
6. Tedious Levelling Quest – Haven’t we been here before?: Deja-vu in the Swamps
7. Staff of Towers Storyline – Breaches with Purpose, Part 2
8. Tedious Levelling Quest – Gotta love breaches, right mate?: Doomcrag Edition
9. Tedious Levelling Quest – Didn’t We Do This Already, Part IX: Return to Craglorn
10. Staff of Towers Epic Finale – WGT: Lost in Time (feat. The Augur of the Obscure in: “Once more into a Breach, eh?”)

The main focus of this is to move away from making the levelling feel such an integrated part in the story, and instead make it a nice and varied part of the game as a whole. Instead of completing one story quest, and then being given two levelling quests with fixed targets of nine breaches each, the breaches should be more dynamic with the rest of the world. There are 60 breaches across all of Tamriel (9 for each map including Summerset, except in Craglorn where there are only 6) – as soon as you gain the skill line and are able to ‘See the Unseen’ (which currently only applies to the Psijic loot portals), you should be able to see all 60 breaches as well, without needing to be on any quest. Going up to a breach at any time and closing it would grant 5 Rep towards the skill line advancement, and you could do that in any zone at any time. The Augur of the Obscure isn't even necessary for this; all the breaches show up when you're nearby anyway, without ever activating the Augur’s “Psijic Sight”. The quest-related breaches in The Shattered Staff and The Towers' Remains are present throughout as well, and only make use of that ability after finding the breach, in order to follow the trail of rifts to the fragment dig point.

Once a story quest is completed, you could still get a map or two of breaches in a particular area, but there would be no quest directly attached to that; they would be used for guiding exploration, rather than advancing a quest. As mentioned above, these maps are much more suited to exploration rather than quests anyway (like the treasure maps and crafting surveys). The maps for Rivenspire and Craglorn were a lot better than the others, but that’s likely because they were only covering one zone rather than three, allowing for a bit more detail to be shown. If that amount of detail can be added to the other maps, they would be more useful. This exploration-based approach would also be much more organic than saying “here’s 9 more breaches, go close them all right now”.

To complement this, there could be a daily quest available directly from one of the other Psijics, targeting one of the base-game delves (but not the ones used for the Undaunted dailies), where you would have to go and fix a localised temporal anomaly within, caused by the lasting effects of the Planemeld rather than the Staff of Towers. Right now there are no Psijic Order dailies, putting this Guild at a repeatability disadvantage compared to the others. Completing that quest would give you 15 Rep, and would be available again the next day. Rather than the tedium of just continuously searching for breaches across zones (although that would still be available to reward exploration), having 15 different delves to go to, with creatures inside to kill and a higher reward for completion, would make this process more engaging. Once enough Rep has been gained to unlock the next quest, Celarus could appear via Psijic projection to give it to you (it’s shown in the last breach-closing quest that this is something he can do).

Something else that would make the levelling process more engaging was suggested by someone here already – having some temporally-displaced creatures near each breach that require destroying in order to seal the breach itself (the presence of these creatures would also make the breaches themselves a bit easier to locate – they’re rather hidden by themselves). Josajeh says herself after the first quest that she hopes they aren’t getting more dangerous; the presence of monsters at all the open-world ones after the first set on Summerset would confirm her suspicions. Celarus mentions “time-storms” at one point, and those would certainly be more interesting if they actually existed. The breaches could continue to grow in intensity and change with each level gained rather than being the same thing over and over.

Beyond that, another potential avenue for levelling the skill line to break up the tedium of the breach collection would be to give a Rep reward for returning each of the Relicmaster’s stolen items from the Vault of Moawita. There are 20 relics, and at 10 Rep per relic, that would get you a good way through the skill line too. The Relicmaster himself appears at the end of the storyline to recover the Staff of Towers, so it would be good to tie together his relic collection with the skill line levelling.

The proposed Questing and Levelling path (keeping the Staff recovery quests as they are) therefore goes a bit like this:

1. Joining Quest – The Psijics’ Calling (The quest would end upon finding the Augur, immediately giving you ‘See the Unseen’ and allowing all the breaches to appear in the world)
2. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 30 Rep
   • Find breaches in Tamriel – 5 Rep each
   • Fix a temporally-dislocated Delve – 15 Rep per daily quest
   • Recover lost Relics – 10 Rep per relic
3. Staff of Towers Storyline – Part 1: The Shattered Staff (rewards 30 Rep)
4. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 30 Rep
   • Find breaches in Tamriel – 5 Rep each
   • Fix a temporally-dislocated Delve – 15 Rep per daily quest
   • Recover lost Relics – 10 Rep per relic
5. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 30 Rep
   • Find breaches in Tamriel – 5 Rep each
   • Fix a temporally-dislocated Delve – 15 Rep per daily quest
   • Recover lost Relics – 10 Rep per relic
6. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 30 Rep
   • Find breaches in Tamriel – 5 Rep each
   • Fix a temporally-dislocated Delve – 15 Rep per daily quest
   • Recover lost Relics – 10 Rep per relic
7. Staff of Towers Storyline – Part 2: The Towers’ Remains (rewards 30 Rep)
8. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 45 Rep
   • Find breaches in Tamriel – 5 Rep each
   • Fix a temporally-dislocated Delve – 15 Rep per daily quest
   • Recover lost Relics – 10 Rep per relic
9. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 45 Rep
   • Find breaches in Tamriel – 5 Rep each
   • Fix a temporally-dislocated Delve – 15 Rep per daily quest
   • Recover lost Relics – 10 Rep per relic
10. Staff of Towers Finale – The Towers’ Fall (rewards 30 Rep)

Total amount of Rep required (300) is equivalent to the total number of breaches from just the maps (60) at 5 Rep per breach, but is split differently, and also incorporates the other suggested sources of Rep mentioned above (relics and delve dailies), as well as direct rep rewards from the quests. The Augur, after collection, would remain technically in your bag throughout, to allow for his dialogue on the breaches to continue. All unclosed breaches would be disabled following the end of the final quest (since their cause has been rectified and the skill line is complete), but the daily delves would continue for incidental Psijic rewards, since the chronosynchronicity of delves remains a persistent issue, and can be considered unrelated to the breaches caused by the Staff of Towers.

Overall, the concepts of the Psijic Order storyline are very good, but the way it has been implemented doesn't put it anywhere near the other Guild storylines in terms of player engagement or replayability. It’s something you want to get through quickly in order to get the skills, rather than something you want to get involved in and enjoy for its story. Basically, it doesn’t feel like it sits alongside the deeply engaging Guild quests we’ve come to expect from either the base game Guilds or the DLC Guilds.

Credit must be given however for the final quest in White-Gold Tower, which was certainly going along the right lines of an epic Guild storyline; if there were a few other quests like that one, fully exploring the lore of the Staff of Towers fragments (and the other Towers themselves), it would be a pretty good questline.

On that note, there are a bunch of portal-type archways in the room where Celarus is found which are never used, and I wonder if there was originally going to be a more involved romp through time and space to recover the Staff of Towers which actually involved using all those portals. If that is the case (and indeed, even if it isn't), I would much rather do away with the current questline (keep the breaches to level the skill line, but scrap the quests completely) to allow ZOS to refactor the Staff of Towers story to something that is deserving of the label “Guild storyline” and is on par with the Thieves Guild or Mages Guild storylines, rather than two short quests of running around breaches and digging stuff up. The final quest can pretty much remain as-is, but it really needs a proper set of in-depth fragment recovery quests before it. Of course this couldn’t be done in time for Summerset’s release, but I’d be happy to forgo any PSJJJJ faction quests and wait for a fully-developed Staff of Towers storyline for release in a future update.

Proposed Questing and Levelling path (with full Staff recovery quests, using the Loremaster’s unused portals):

1. Joining Quest – The Psijics’ Calling (The quest would end upon finding the Augur, immediately giving you ‘See the Unseen’ and allowing all the breaches to appear in the world)
2. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 30 Rep
   Staff of Towers Storyline – Part 1: The Shattered Staff (First 4 Fragments)
3. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 30 Rep
   Staff of Towers Storyline – Part 2: (Fifth Fragment)
4. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 30 Rep
5. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 30 Rep
   Staff of Towers Storyline – Part 3: (Sixth Fragment)
6. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 45 Rep
   Staff of Towers Storyline – Part 4: (Seventh Fragment)
7. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 45 Rep
8. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 45 Rep
   Staff of Towers Storyline – Part 5: (Eighth Fragment)
9. Freeform Levelling and Dailies – Gain 45 Rep
10. Staff of Towers Finale – The Towers’ Fall (rewards 15 Rep)

That also breaks up the monotony of levelling a bit better, by giving a quest in between each levelling section. Again, the amount of Rep required is the same, but split so that in this version, nothing directly comes from the quests, except from the last quest still being required for Rank 10/Undo (basically meaning the remaining breaches would be disabled once you hit 9, and the relic recovery and dailies would be suspended until you hit 10).

On a side note, it seems no-one appears to know where the Iliac Bay region is. If they do remain as quests (and I hope there’s a convincing argument here for why they shouldn’t), it would be worth changing the quest objective to be specific; instead of “Seal Breaches in the Iliac Bay Region”, it should say “Seal Breaches in Alik’r, Glenumbra, and Stormhaven”. Valenwood is a much more well-known name, but the objective should still say “Seal Breaches in Grahtwood, Greenshade, and Malabal Tor” for consistency. Meanwhile, including Deshaan as part of the Black Marsh map is wholly incorrect; Mournhold is the capital of Morrowind, for Seht's sake. There isn’t really any appropriate region name that combines both Deshaan and Shadowfen. Of course if the levelling quests are removed and it becomes a general exploration-based levelling system with different daily delve quests, as suggested, clarifying these objectives wouldn’t be relevant anyway (although the map names would still need fixing).

I agree with you fully, the levelling experience in the Psijic Guild is a complete joke when compared to the other DLC guilds like the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood. The Psijics have the absolute worst kind of MMO quest - go to these 9 places and press X. Now do this 5 more times.

This is an incredibly mind-numbingly dull and boring grind even on one character. Simply put, the main problem is that the gameplay is not interesting whatsoever, and a major step down in gameplay compared to previous guild skill lines.

Just compare gaining ranks in the Psijic Guild to levelling up in the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood. The TG and DB dailies were actually interesting for a thief or assassin to do, you had to steal things, pick pockets, or kill people. You even had daily heists and sacraments. You had to stealth to avoid guards. You had bounty penalties if you were caught. This is what I'd call involving, fun gameplay.

My personal suggestion is to add time-shifted monsters to the time rifts. Reduce the amount of breaches to like, 3-5 per quest to keep the grind time the same, but have the player fight waves of random time-displaced enemies at each breach. We could have things like Oblivion guards leaving the breach saying "HALT! YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE LAW!" or just whatever monster models you have at hand (there's plenty of models you can use ingame, sand gargoyles, Haj Mota, vampires, anything you can think of really). Lore-wise these monsters could have become insane and can't be reasoned with, give them a line or two of dialogue as well for flavour purposes to indicate this.

Maybe physically time-travelling monsters aren't lore friendly, so have them be ghostly echoes instead, and give them a ghost effect. Run this by the Loremaster if not sure.

Please ZOS, you will be heavily criticized if Psijic time breaches remain as they are upon launch. They are without doubt a terrible downgrade in gameplay compared to the previous DLC Guild Lines you've done (TG, DB), which in comparison were fantastic. The skills themselves are great, but the questline (except for the end) is just awful.

I have to agree with this person. Going around the zones, hitting the key to seal a breach 3 times in each zone is just painful. IF you are doing that zone's quests AT THE TIME it might not be so bad, but if you've finished all the zones quests already, and are trying to just do the Psijic quests only, its a total utter nightmare, just absolute bollocks.

MourncallerTV

I'm newly returning and decided I would make a play on the pts in making a templar vamp psijic. I'm curious to what I am com up with and will most likely play with a lot of different combinations that works with my preferred play style.

One of the things I found interesting, either from my simply forgetting about it or it being freshly introduced to lore. Was Manimarco's residual influence on Artaeum. Am I understanding this correctly that He was once part of the Psijic order, as well as Vanus?

Eldartar

Just completed the Psijic Order quest line and thought it not as bad as I have heard tell. The maps for the locations of the 'breaches' were not that bad if you use your head a little, I didn't spend too much time having to look for them, I encountered no problems completing all the quests, everything was enjoyable to me.

I feel that as it is now is fine and shouldn't need any 'tweaking' as some have suggested. I like the fact that it isn't a 'breeze' to find them and you have to use a little common sense.

The only doubt I have is for a new char with a blank map (no wayshrines known) and little gold...... How are they meant to progress if they can not get to a specific area?

But overall I thought the experience was a good one and enjoyed the process.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Wolvalk wrote: »

One of the things I found interesting, either from my simply forgetting about it or it being freshly introduced to lore. Was Manimarco's residual influence on Artaeum. Am I understanding this correctly that He was once part of the Psijic order, as well as Vanus?

Yep!

Enodoc

nessie3 wrote: »

Well, I for one hope they don't 'reduce the grind' as I found the quest fun. The maps aren't meant to be exact - irl most hand drawn maps aren't! As has been pointed out on many other threads the game is meant for everyone. I am not a pvp gamer and don't much enjoy the grind of killing everything in sight, so having treasure hunts that need a bit of effort makes the game more interesting. As was said...please respect the players...as I am sure that there are many people out there who would not put their heads above the parapet and disagree with a lot of similar sentiments to those against the difficulty of the quest level but who do like this aspect of the game. I suspect the majority of players who dislike this quest are into group combat, pvp, and daily trials etc....so they will still have plenty of content for them.

There's nothing wrong with the grind as a concept, it's just completely inconsistent with the levelling process for the rest of the Guilds in-game. The levelling grind for the other Guilds is not part of the storyline, whereas here, it is the storyline. As I said, I like this concept for levelling, I just wish they'd put a proper Guild storyline with 5+ story quests alongside it.

JPcrazysquirrel3

Alcast has more accurate maps for the whole questline.

Also, yeah, I'm really hating the Borrowed Time nerf. It takes way too long to arm now, to the point where it isn't worth slotting anymore.

schattenkind

I'm sure someone will offer an addon for the psijic skill line grind, like there is for skyshards and lore books.
I would if I knew how to...

AefionBloodclaw

schattenkind wrote: »

I'm sure someone will offer an addon for the psijic skill line grind, like there is for skyshards and lore books.
I would if I knew how to...

Well I guess we have to hope someone does, now that once again there's been a pts update and ZoS has ignored the massive number of complaints about the Psijic grind, and they refuse to do anything about it and probably believe its great and awesome immersive content, even though its the worst MMO grind since vanilla wow.

schattenkind

AefionBloodclaw wrote: »

schattenkind wrote: »

I'm sure someone will offer an addon for the psijic skill line grind, like there is for skyshards and lore books.
I would if I knew how to...

Well I guess we have to hope someone does, now that once again there's been a pts update and ZoS has ignored the massive number of complaints about the Psijic grind, and they refuse to do anything about it and probably believe its great and awesome immersive content, even though its the worst MMO grind since vanilla wow.

I dont think they ignore it. I'm sure to them it is pretty clear, now, what it will end up in. My guess is, that there was not enough time / ressources to implement a better way, or, more likely, that there wasnt enough ideas to build from. If they only had asked the players before... So many good suggestions in here.
But, anyway, it was to late with pts launch already for such massive changes, I dont believe there will be any change for this.

See the (sad) positive: The grind can be done in one day, if youre quick and have tp points. Imagine it would be a thing like undaunted....

Fiktius

Some general feedback regarding Psijic order passives:

Concentrated barrier passive shield appears, when I'm blocking.
However if I get disconnected while using the barrier and login again, the barrier is still around me, this time permanently.
It won't disappear if I try to reload ui, it will not vanish if I re-log and it's still listed in active effects list.

Way to become a living discoball!

Carbonised

Just a final comment, the Undo skill is pretty much useless and void on any Dragonknight.

The whole point of Undo is getting your resources back like they were a few seconds ago, which completely nullifies the Battleroar passive for Dragonknights.
Essentially, if you use Undo you won't get anything back from Battleroar. So you get back some resources - which you would otherwise have gotten back with Batleroar with another ultimate, plus the effects an actual ultimate instead!

In no scenario whatsoever can I see a Dragonknight slotting this ultimate over any other.

It's just bad game design to lock out (or significantly hamper) a whole class from an ultimate like this. I can't believe this was overlooked/ignored at the inception of the skilline.

JPcrazysquirrel3

Fiktius wrote: »

Some general feedback regarding Psijic order passives:

Concentrated barrier passive shield appears, when I'm blocking.
However if I get disconnected while using the barrier and login again, the barrier is still around me, this time permanently.
It won't disappear if I try to reload ui, it will not vanish if I re-log and it's still listed in active effects list.

Way to become a living discoball!

Well, with a character name like that, what did you expect?

Fiktius

JPcrazysquirrel3 wrote: »

Fiktius wrote: »

Some general feedback regarding Psijic order passives:

Concentrated barrier passive shield appears, when I'm blocking.
However if I get disconnected while using the barrier and login again, the barrier is still around me, this time permanently.
It won't disappear if I try to reload ui, it will not vanish if I re-log and it's still listed in active effects list.

Way to become a living discoball!

Well, with a character name like that, what did you expect?

Something amazing and I got exactly what I expected.

Toc de Malsvi

Carbonised wrote: »

Just a final comment, the Undo skill is pretty much useless and void on any Dragonknight.

The whole point of Undo is getting your resources back like they were a few seconds ago, which completely nullifies the Battleroar passive for Dragonknights.
Essentially, if you use Undo you won't get anything back from Battleroar. So you get back some resources - which you would otherwise have gotten back with Batleroar with another ultimate, plus the effects an actual ultimate instead!

In no scenario whatsoever can I see a Dragonknight slotting this ultimate over any other.

It's just bad game design to lock out (or significantly hamper) a whole class from an ultimate like this. I can't believe this was overlooked/ignored at the inception of the skilline.

Agreed.