ESO needs more challenging intermediary content

Mizaeron

People come to forum to complain about content being too hard (vMA, vet dungeons etc).

But I’ve not seen posts (or at least not as many) about asking content to be harder. I just want to counter the narrative a bit, since (I hope) there are many people who want more challenging content they are just less likely to go to forum and say “we’re happy with the difficulty”.

I hope that ZOS doesn’t pay too much attention to them. WoW reduced the difficulty of their MMO by making things more “accessible”. There was a period of time, not that long ago, where many veteran players quit, a lot of videos like “why I quit WoW” were popping up, common theme was, because they didn’t feel like it was challenging, like there was no sense of achievement, it was just spending time working on something and getting it without any sense of accomplishment.

I think Sunspire Trial was a step in a wrong direction. Veteran version of trial is too easy, it’s “pugable” and Hard-mode is not even that much harder. Few months ago when we first cleared Nahvi HM, we had almost whole group wipe at one point, 3 people were left, they ressed everyone, we carried on, one person disconnected for 5 minutes, came back on execute, nobody noticed. In execute 4 people instadied and stayed dead for the whole duration, and it was still good enough for clear. There was no hurray of any kind, just silence. I was disappointed, it was like “yeah whatever we cleared it”. It didn’t require any good organisation and people being on top of their game, it didn’t require skill (only for 3 portal people a bit).

In comparison, vCR+3 had much better feeling of clear, even 1 year after its release, with power creep and tactics refined, it still felt more challenging and you needed better performance from everyone to clear it, and it felt good, and it was interesting to go from one difficulty to another, from +0 to +1 to +2 to +3.

I didn’t play during its release, but I imagine people were really happy to clear it for the first time, and back then you must have needed everyone on top of their game to be able to complete it. How do you guys compare the two Trials? If there are some who cleared CR+3 way back, how did you feel about completing it? And completing vSS HM?

Some might say, there is “Godslayer” if you want hard content. Godslayer is indeed very hard, and only very dedicated people can do it. But there is nothing in between. The gap in difficulty between vSS HM clear and Godslayer is astronomical. It’s like playing a game on “very easy” difficulty and “Godlike” or whatever. For people who want something to progress in, which is not super hardcore, there is not much to do.

I hope I’m not alone in this. Maybe I’m nostalgic. But the raiding I’ve done in other MMOs years ago “Rift, FFXIV” was best raiding experiences I can remember. It used to be that a raid is released and groups progress for 3-4 weeks, less dedicate few months, before clearing and it felt really good to finally clear it.

vSS HM was cleared when? 1-2 days after release? So you go from something that takes 1 day to clear, and next difficulty is Godslayer.

Qbiken

Godslayer is a horrible designed achievement since the 30 min speedrun requirement is made with the assumption that most people will run necromancer (which is required for that achievement)

ZOS should make vSS speed run 40 min and call it a day (it also makes it more consent with the speed run of other chapter/dlc trials (vmol and vhof) which are all 40 minutes

Katahdin

It may have taken your group to clear vss HM in 2 days but that is not everyone's experience.

My group cleared the fire boss in 3-4 tries (days) and we almost got ice HM down before people went back to school and the group broke up. We never made it to the final boss HM.

There are groups that still struggle to beat it on vet. Ive been in them trying to help them get a clear.

So no, not everyone agrees with you.

Vapirko

My guess is that you should get used to ESO catering to more casual players. I don’t keep up with new trials anymore but if you say PvE is going that direction and I can say that PvP is definitely headed there, again I think ZOS is just looking to wring the most money out of this game in the time it has left and that means making it easier. Imo it’s no coincidence that that after three years of pleading and begging they’re finally going to invest a year into improving performance in PvP (or so they say) and it also happens to come around the patch where the raised the floor and lowered the ceiling more than at any time previously. I say get ready for ESO to turn into mush. Could be wrong though.