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Vanilla Maelstrom Arena experience (content theory)
Hollowman104
Soul Shriven
As I've spent a large amount of time (relatively speaking possibly around 800-1000 hours) playing ESO, once getting back into the game after a break to fill the void of no Borderlands 3 for months I realised that of course for newer players the quest bosses in each vanilla zone can be challenging if low level due to lack of access to abilities, etc. In essence what I think would beneficial to the game is "veteran vanilla" content such as a boss gauntlet or veteran versions of quests/zones etc. Personally I find Solo content the most difficult but rewarding aspect of ESO, one of these things being veteran Maelstrom Arena, once I got the weapons I needed I was both relieved and frustrated since I got the stuff I wanted but also wanted to perfect my play style within said content.
Boss Gauntlet
This concept for content would be a Solo dungeon, such as Maelstrom Arena but instead of zones/bosses being in sequential order it would be random to add some sort of variety. Reason being is within a Boss Gauntlet there would be little reason to have multiple waves in the same arena as the focus is on, most importantly, the boss fight.
Whether these bosses would be reused vanilla or new custom assets isn't really a matter of importance, the focus is on the additional content this boss gauntlet adds. For example, this Boss gauntlet and the bosses within it would have 3 or any other number of bosses, one boss per arena.
Loot dropped from said Arenas *could* be the boss helms, but I recommend or highly like the idea of either special Boss weapons or perfected versions of monster sets (similar to how Trial sets work with Normal/Vet - Imperfect/Perfected)
An example as to such a weapon that I theory crafted from the top of my head:
Dropping from The Whisperer
Any Weapon / No Armour
( The Whisperer's *whatever it'd be called* )
1piece - Circle of Protection's Cost is reduced by 10%, using Circle of Protection grants you Minor Fortitude and Minor Intellect for 20 seconds
2piece - Skill Augment - Turn Undead ( Circle of Protection ), Instead of fearing Daedra, Undead, and Werewolves for 4 seconds, Turn Undead will pull enemies that you have recently Taunted in the last 5 every 12.5 seconds towards the centre of the Area of Effect left behind. Pull range is limited to 5 to 35 meters away from the Area of Effect.
Of course it would only be relatively useful for PvE tanking, but the goal here is to allow weapons within the base game to affect abilities/trees that are, if anything, devoid of any usefulness or use. I personally like the idea that instead of the current dailies that the Mages Guild and Fighter's Guild maintain that this would either replace or be in addition to said dailies to allow the possibility for more niche utility of unused skills to fit countless more play styles that a character could have.
The item above could be from a Fighter's Guild daily or quest, though it is significantly more difficult to find more applications for Mages Guild skills as many of them are much better and provide useful utility.
Veteran Quest-Bosses
Balancing and designing completely new Bosses and their mechanics is without doubt a tedious and difficult task, as for that exact reason re-imagining the already existing Bosses within either the main story or zone quests and bringing them up to par with either Solo-Instanced difficulty or Four Person Dungeon-Instanced veteran scaling/difficulty, as realistically after playing through the story once it felt like these large build ups ( reminiscent of how much of a let down the Anduin fight is in Skyrim and the Mannimarco fight in Oblivion ) ultimately fall flat due to them being simplistic to allow all players to enjoy the content.
I'd love these Veteran versions of Quest bosses as there are many unique concepts built into these characters such as Molag Bal, Mannimarco and the other bosses I couldn't remember the name of because their fights were just easily rolled. Like above the idea of incorporating these bosses into some sort of daily system or reward system for crafting/set bonuses, the positive possibilities of just recreating difficult versions of Bosses are many fold ( maybe not that much but you get the point )
Reworking Old Sets ( Like the ZoS development team is already working on so this point is redundant )
Instead of them just giving you increased power to how hard you can breathe on a cobweb, give them some kind of identity. My personal opinion is create an internal development tier of sets and how they should be balanced, whether that be 'SIMPLE / ADVANCED / BUFF SIMPLE / BUFF ADVANCED / DE-BUFF SIMPLE / DE-BUFF ADVANCED / SKILL ADDITION SIMPLE / SKILL ADDITION ADVANCED', though this most certainly already exists within internal development.
Though I know with the recent development and almost release of the Elsweyr the development team will probably take a breather but it's just some food for thought, as along side of creating (although enjoyable and impressive new DLC experiences) a large amount of the vanilla content has potential that was realistically barely explored mechanically.
Feel free to share your thoughts on these concepts though, I hope i'm not the only one that thinks content that explores vanilla quest/bosses/lore would be interesting.
Boss Gauntlet
This concept for content would be a Solo dungeon, such as Maelstrom Arena but instead of zones/bosses being in sequential order it would be random to add some sort of variety. Reason being is within a Boss Gauntlet there would be little reason to have multiple waves in the same arena as the focus is on, most importantly, the boss fight.
Whether these bosses would be reused vanilla or new custom assets isn't really a matter of importance, the focus is on the additional content this boss gauntlet adds. For example, this Boss gauntlet and the bosses within it would have 3 or any other number of bosses, one boss per arena.
Loot dropped from said Arenas *could* be the boss helms, but I recommend or highly like the idea of either special Boss weapons or perfected versions of monster sets (similar to how Trial sets work with Normal/Vet - Imperfect/Perfected)
An example as to such a weapon that I theory crafted from the top of my head:
Dropping from The Whisperer
Any Weapon / No Armour
( The Whisperer's *whatever it'd be called* )
1piece - Circle of Protection's Cost is reduced by 10%, using Circle of Protection grants you Minor Fortitude and Minor Intellect for 20 seconds
2piece - Skill Augment - Turn Undead ( Circle of Protection ), Instead of fearing Daedra, Undead, and Werewolves for 4 seconds, Turn Undead will pull enemies that you have recently Taunted in the last 5 every 12.5 seconds towards the centre of the Area of Effect left behind. Pull range is limited to 5 to 35 meters away from the Area of Effect.
Of course it would only be relatively useful for PvE tanking, but the goal here is to allow weapons within the base game to affect abilities/trees that are, if anything, devoid of any usefulness or use. I personally like the idea that instead of the current dailies that the Mages Guild and Fighter's Guild maintain that this would either replace or be in addition to said dailies to allow the possibility for more niche utility of unused skills to fit countless more play styles that a character could have.
The item above could be from a Fighter's Guild daily or quest, though it is significantly more difficult to find more applications for Mages Guild skills as many of them are much better and provide useful utility.
Veteran Quest-Bosses
Balancing and designing completely new Bosses and their mechanics is without doubt a tedious and difficult task, as for that exact reason re-imagining the already existing Bosses within either the main story or zone quests and bringing them up to par with either Solo-Instanced difficulty or Four Person Dungeon-Instanced veteran scaling/difficulty, as realistically after playing through the story once it felt like these large build ups ( reminiscent of how much of a let down the Anduin fight is in Skyrim and the Mannimarco fight in Oblivion ) ultimately fall flat due to them being simplistic to allow all players to enjoy the content.
I'd love these Veteran versions of Quest bosses as there are many unique concepts built into these characters such as Molag Bal, Mannimarco and the other bosses I couldn't remember the name of because their fights were just easily rolled. Like above the idea of incorporating these bosses into some sort of daily system or reward system for crafting/set bonuses, the positive possibilities of just recreating difficult versions of Bosses are many fold ( maybe not that much but you get the point )
Reworking Old Sets ( Like the ZoS development team is already working on so this point is redundant )
Instead of them just giving you increased power to how hard you can breathe on a cobweb, give them some kind of identity. My personal opinion is create an internal development tier of sets and how they should be balanced, whether that be 'SIMPLE / ADVANCED / BUFF SIMPLE / BUFF ADVANCED / DE-BUFF SIMPLE / DE-BUFF ADVANCED / SKILL ADDITION SIMPLE / SKILL ADDITION ADVANCED', though this most certainly already exists within internal development.
Though I know with the recent development and almost release of the Elsweyr the development team will probably take a breather but it's just some food for thought, as along side of creating (although enjoyable and impressive new DLC experiences) a large amount of the vanilla content has potential that was realistically barely explored mechanically.
Feel free to share your thoughts on these concepts though, I hope i'm not the only one that thinks content that explores vanilla quest/bosses/lore would be interesting.
On me mum's guar! N'wah n'wah!
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