ESO rant - Dungeons

Eagleheart

Hello, this is my 2nd rant trying to figure out why I can't seem to convince my friends to join ESO with me.
Here I'd like to talk about dungeon difficulty and some improvements that I think would make dungeon runs more enjoyable.

There are many great things about the dungeons in ESO. The different NPC "roles" make plowing through mobs more fun, the esthetics of many of the dungeons are great (really really like Vault Of Madness), and the game mechanics make them quite enjoyable - where the team doesn't have to count on only one single player being able to tank, or taking ALL the damage. This part is great.
The part I have issues with is the difficulty. To put it briefly, NORMAL DUNGEONS ARE BORINGLY EASY.

So here I am, trying to bring new friends into ESO and show them how fun the game can be. We make a group and join a random dungeon. For the sake of the story, imagine Fungal Grotto. We go in, and we start fighting. We kill the ads, no problem, ok we can't just fight bosses and ads are easy because normal. We get to a boss, some excitement, and the fight is basically a tank and spank with a minimum amount of "step out of the read area". Some letdown, but ok, that was just the 1st boss. Sure it was easy. More mobs, get to the 2nd boss, exactly the same story. A bit of frustration starts to arrise. By the time we get to the last boss, we're thinking "ok well this one HAS to be more challenging". Exactly the same tank and spank, killing some mobs on the side that you don't even need to target because they basically just die away on their own in all the fighting, avoid the read area and... boom, done. Without figuring that some of the bosses did something special, because if they did the damage was ignorable, and with a feeling of "that was it? " we leave the dungeon. After a few more of these, my friends decide ESO is boring and leave.

This story is not a one-time thing, I've had this happen at least 4 times. I understand normal dungeons should have lower difficulty, but this is ridiculous. I sometimes join random dungeon as a healer with a stamina nightblade just to get into dungeons quicker. Once inside... I don't heal . Every character has a bit of self-healing, and unless the group is bad everyone can keep themselves alive with no problem. Yes, some dungeons do require healing and then I have to adapt. But usually I can just fake my way in as a healer and then ignore my healing responsability completely and no one cares. This isn't right.

Normal dungeons should be harder. They SHOULD be more challenging. If you win without knowing what happened you don't feel proud, it's not rewarding, it's just... boring. And telling my friends "well this is cooler on veteran difficulty where you really have to dodge that skill because you can't suck it up" isn't an acceptable workaround.

Besides simply higher damage (or percentual damage, that could also be a cool thing - make an ability deal X% damage instead of a fixed amount) it would be nice to have more (and more complex) boss mechanics too. The new DLC dungeons are doing a great job here. But since I can't play those with my currently base account friends, it's hard for me to convince them there's actually cool and challenging PVE content to do in this game. I'd love it if Zenimax could help me out with this :P.

TLDR:
- Normal dungeons are trivial, boring. They should be more challenging
- I'd love to have more complex/challenging mechanics in the base dungeons too

Jeremy

Eagleheart wrote: »

Hello, this is my 2nd rant trying to figure out why I can't seem to convince my friends to join ESO with me.
Here I'd like to talk about dungeon difficulty and some improvements that I think would make dungeon runs more enjoyable.

There are many great things about the dungeons in ESO. The different NPC "roles" make plowing through mobs more fun, the esthetics of many of the dungeons are great (really really like Vault Of Madness), and the game mechanics make them quite enjoyable - where the team doesn't have to count on only one single player being able to tank, or taking ALL the damage. This part is great.
The part I have issues with is the difficulty. To put it briefly, NORMAL DUNGEONS ARE BORINGLY EASY.

So here I am, trying to bring new friends into ESO and show them how fun the game can be. We make a group and join a random dungeon. For the sake of the story, imagine Fungal Grotto. We go in, and we start fighting. We kill the ads, no problem, ok we can't just fight bosses and ads are easy because normal. We get to a boss, some excitement, and the fight is basically a tank and spank with a minimum amount of "step out of the read area". Some letdown, but ok, that was just the 1st boss. Sure it was easy. More mobs, get to the 2nd boss, exactly the same story. A bit of frustration starts to arrise. By the time we get to the last boss, we're thinking "ok well this one HAS to be more challenging". Exactly the same tank and spank, killing some mobs on the side that you don't even need to target because they basically just die away on their own in all the fighting, avoid the read area and... boom, done. Without figuring that some of the bosses did something special, because if they did the damage was ignorable, and with a feeling of "that was it? " we leave the dungeon. After a few more of these, my friends decide ESO is boring and leave.

This story is not a one-time thing, I've had this happen at least 4 times. I understand normal dungeons should have lower difficulty, but this is ridiculous. I sometimes join random dungeon as a healer with a stamina nightblade just to get into dungeons quicker. Once inside... I don't heal . Every character has a bit of self-healing, and unless the group is bad everyone can keep themselves alive with no problem. Yes, some dungeons do require healing and then I have to adapt. But usually I can just fake my way in as a healer and then ignore my healing responsability completely and no one cares. This isn't right.

Normal dungeons should be harder. They SHOULD be more challenging. If you win without knowing what happened you don't feel proud, it's not rewarding, it's just... boring. And telling my friends "well this is cooler on veteran difficulty where you really have to dodge that skill because you can't suck it up" isn't an acceptable workaround.

Besides simply higher damage (or percentual damage, that could also be a cool thing - make an ability deal X% damage instead of a fixed amount) it would be nice to have more (and more complex) boss mechanics too. The new DLC dungeons are doing a great job here. But since I can't play those with my currently base account friends, it's hard for me to convince them there's actually cool and challenging PVE content to do in this game. I'd love it if Zenimax could help me out with this :P.

TLDR:
- Normal dungeons are trivial, boring. They should be more challenging
- I'd love to have more complex/challenging mechanics in the base dungeons too

Normal dungeons, especially the non DLC ones, are boringly easy.

But why not just do Vet Dungeons?

profundidob16_ESO

do AT LEAST vet mode if you want to see mechanics and fun challenges. Normal is made for aliens who visit earth 1 day only

karekiz

It kind of depends entirely on the dungeon. Fungal grotto is a T1 of a T1. It is the Ragefire chasm of ESO, granted in vanilla WoW ragefire/mines were harder, but that could have been for a number of reasons.

You are allowed to take them into CoA2. That will definitely be a boost of difficulty comparing to FG or VoM <Vaults being one of the easier too>. Even Banished cells 2 you would probably find a bit more challenging.

Now if you walk in there with high amounts of CP on one of the DPS + crafted twink gear + full purple enchants, I don't think much of them will be hard.

Classic dungeons might one day get boosted in HP/Dmg output, but I doubt they will alter the encounters themselves. It is kind of a waste of time compared to just making a new dungeon with new mechanics.

*Edit: I also don't know what to say, it sounds like they never hit 50 to get into harder vet dungeons. Direfrost is super easy, but sometimes people can't CC break and makes the mob brutal. CoA2 with low DPS is a chore definitely. BC2 if you don't know whats going on for pugs will easily kill them <Not knowing you can block/dodge flame spit or curing the curse>.

Another thing you can do is wait for the Sub week for all. Get them back in and they will have access to all DLC. Show them normal DLC then. If you want more difficult ones I would point towards Bloodroot normal or even FH normal with a team ***Of level players***. 3 mid CP <300+ is mid> will still tear thru those.

Also there is nothing really stopping you from taking them on normal trials as long as its setup with people who know a level 30 might come <AKA Don't pug it>. So you do have the option of jumping them into NSO or NHRC.

Apache_Kid

That is what veteran is for.....

Normal dungeons need to be stupid easy so even the most dirt-worst casual player can complete them. They should be accessible to literally everyone. I have had to help lower level players in my social guild kill quests bosses before because they were so bad. Some people come here from Skyrim and have never played an MMO before and literally only use light attacks and don't heal or anything. This game needs to have stupid easy content for them. I would argue that because of the games that this game was based off of, it probably has the most casual player-base out of any MMO on the market and ZoS needs to cater to them to an extent. There is plenty of difficult content in this game i promise you.

Sheezabeast

Normal dungeons have a few purposes, like skill points for the quest, farming non jewelry gear, but sadly, a challenge is not one of these purposes