Mage's Guild Advancement Suggestion

chrisw_63_ESO

Mage's Guild advancement stands out because it is not advanced by it's own quest line or any repeatable grind, and takes way longer than any other quest line, except maybe Cadwell's itself (though I think it's even longer!). It has been estimated elsewhere in these forums that it would take about ten zones, two complete factions, to finish. The books required are not repeatable. The only way to 'grind' is boring travel (though some books take a bit of fighting to get to) if that's all you're doing - and why would you? Mostly, you wait and do Cadwell's quests and grab the books as you go, making advancement in the guild drag on for weeks. It is inconsistent with every other form of advancement in the game, and really makes no sense. Before One Tamriel it made even less sense. It may be just a point of view thing - maybe if you didn't grind, Fighter's Guild would take just as long. But seeing all those books, especially when it's your third or fourth character and you know how long it will take... Disheartening doesn't really cover it.

To make Mage's Guild advancement a little more equal with all the other guilds, two ideas come to mind. One: increase the points you get from books in some fashion. Adding books in faction zones would work, but I'm guessing that won't jibe with either players or the developers. Increasing the points per current book could work, but better, I think, would be to give points for other books in the game. This could be some set fraction of a point for each non-mage's-guild book (repeatable/grindable???), or add rare books for a large chunk of advancement. Or possibly some combination of those. My second idea would be less developer work: Add the quest line experience to guild advancement. For the Psijic's, the main quest line advances you just so far, then the 'collection' phase finishes it off. For the Mage's Guild, just add a percentage of the quest line experience to guild advancement along with the books. Much simpler and easier to implement. For consistency you'd probably have to do the same for Fighter's Guild - not a bad thing, in my opinion. Grinding undead or daedra is a bit less monotonous than grinding books, but still a grind.

Please Note: Yes, I know I'm a consistency knob. While I do believe that such a change would enhance the game experience for everyone, I know the consistency bent is my view, and I don't expect everyone, or anyone in particular, to agree with me. I'm sure the developers that designed the Mage's Guild line had reasons (Who knows? They could have initially designed it to be completed in one faction, and someone else decided it was too many books for the database, and boom! Unintended consequences.) Whatever the case, it's a bit of a slog, and I'm hoping it can be shortened.

Khaleesi8688

They have shortened it for alts. If you wanna fork over $$$. I'm sure that's the only "improvement" we'll get.

Taleof2Cities

Your choice is simple, @chrisw_63_ESO:

Buy the level-up in the Crown Store if you don’t want to hunt for books.

ZOS is not going to change the mechanics of the guild line anytime soon.

If there’s a skill line to complain about, it would definitely be the Psijic one.

AlnilamE

1. There is a daily quest. You can share the quest with other players so depending on the size of the group you can do several a week. The quests send you to Public Dungeons, where there is usually at least one lore book there anyway.

2. Getting all the lore books in your home alliance zone should get you pretty close to 10. I remember having to grab a few in the first zone of Silver because I hadn't done the Cyro lorebooks.

Depending on how efficiently you go after the books, it probably takes just as much time as grinding Fighter's Guild.

And, of course, you can buy the skill line from the crown store.

FierceSam

Like the Fighters guild, the Mages guild wasn’t designed to be easily levelled in half an hour. And that’s a good thing. It makes you think about whether your character actually needs those skills in the first place.

The idea was that you would advance as you became more experienced, level by level, zone by zone. It was an inducement for the player to explore the entire zone before moving on to the next levelled zone. Its progression is totally linear, so you need the same number of points to go from L1 to L2 as you do from L9 to L10. It’s a throwback to the days when ESO was designed more like a single player game.

These days you still have to search out just as many books, although there are substantially more in the game so you’re not restricted in terms of which zone to look in. And, unlike previously, you can actually do it all quite quickly.

Looking for lorebooks along the way is one of the few things (along with doing dolmens along the way) that makes the Psiijic Order questline bearable. I found I can get around one level of Mages guild for each of the Psiijic Order ones.