Craglorn: Why all the + group content?

Morvak

Was ZOS trying something new with this zone, trying to force groups or something?

Either I’m entering overland group content every 3 steps I take or every delve is group.

Fortunately I’m high enough level and the zone is populated enough to get stuff done.

Curious…

Kiralyn2000

Yes, Craglorn was originally designed as a group zone.

It wasn't popular.

It was nerfed.

This was years ago.

trackdemon5512

ZOS’ first experiment with a VR only content zone and trials. It did not go over well and to this day you never see such group instances anymore.

E-Zekiel

I actually like Craglorn a lot in particular due to the challenge relative to other zones...lol

Sluggy

I miss the days where I'd sneak in there with a friend, woefully under-leveled and under-specced for the challenges that await us.

Red_Feather

I wasn't around for Craglorn's original release, but it sounds an awful lot like Southsun Cove in Guild Wars 2. Not a fan of the cove at all.

Southsun Cove was just hp sponge enemies that hit like a truck and it wasn't very engaging, it was just a time sink.
P.S. I think the Queen's Gauntlet was the first time difficulty that was engaging started being put into the spotlight.

Ishtarknows

It's all soloable now, the + icons are leftover from when it was hard.

Ive just been through and completed it on my trial-specced healer (with an added spammable) and it's been a blast! It's mildly challenging and interesting. I had to work out a strat to kill Shada with my low dps, but it was rewarding to finally complete. I wish they'd bring out more areas with a similar difficulty. Zos raised base health and dps recently so this should reflect the difficulty of new content.

SaintSubwayy

ah the good old days when aggroing a pack of welvas in upper craglorn was a death sentence in 80% of the times when playing solo....

sadly it was watered down, since it wasnt liked by most of the community

Danikat

Craglorn was the first zone added after release, it was deliberately made harder because it was designed for players who had completed their alliance, the main story and Coldharbour and because ZOS assumed that's what players would want. They also assumed that by that point everyone would be playing together with a group of people, in spite of the lack of grouping tools for overland maps, and so requiring a group for everything wouldn't be much of a problem.

It was changed years ago to tone down the difficulty because (in spite of repeated claims on the forum that the game needs to be harder) apparently very few people were actually doing it and many who did try were going in solo because for various reasons they didn't have a group to play with.

A lot of areas are still marked as group content but apparently even the delves and things can be done solo by high CP characters with the right gear.

Pauwer

And it didn't say "you are entering group area" anywhere. I guess you'd read about it on their website. I didn't. Soooo many times i went there to die, left to level up more and returned to die some more. Good times! Later on when it was changed i realised it was meant to be group content lol

FauxHunter

Craglorn was ridiculously hard to do solo when it was released. In fact there were several puzzles that required more than one player to stand on pressure plates to open a door, or some similar mechanic that blocked solo players in quests. I still loved it lol, I spent way too long soloing what I could.

The worst part imo was that when zos made craglorn soloable, they also completely erased all quest progress for everyone and basically reset the zone. Imagine spending 30+ hours in a difficult af zone to complete it. Then zos does that lol.. To their credit it was much easier/possible to complete solo after that, but they did kind of crap on existing players time.

Ronin37

I wish they would take the delve plus idea and apply it to at least one delve in all of the current zones. give some challenge outside of 4 mans and the trials. like 80% of the game is like being a hot knife moving through butter.

Parrot1986

Bring back original Craglorn wasps.

Loved the challenge of the zone and what Zos did but removal of it was start of making overland content something you roll through without thinking

Integral1900

What they did was create a gorgeous zone with great stories, fascinating law and marvellously realise characters including some of the best storytelling they’ve ever done but packaged it in a group centric delivery mechanism targeted squarely at an audience that didn’t exist.

Then, just to compound the error, when they finally got round to sorting the deserted zone out, deserted that is except for crafting material farmers and trials chat box spanners, they didn’t do the sensible thing which would’ve been to transform the entire zone except the trials into public dungeons...

...Instead we got this weird cut and shut which utterly mangled the main plot and where half the dungeons are a total cakewalk regardless of gear, while the other half are challenging enough for most players to require a group and include some of the best dungeon stories such as the exquisite Shadas Tear. A dungeon which has so little interest from the player base that you could literally delete it and it might be months or years before anybody realised they’d gone!

Ratzkifal

Craglorn was a good concept that was poorly executed never to be picked up again. Murkmire was originally planned to be an "adventure zone" just like Craglorn, but after the bad reception of Craglorn they scrapped those plans.
After the Wrothgar DLC ZOS had found their new way of doing things, dynamically scaling players to be the same level as the zone, which in One Tamriel they applied to the base game zones as well, which made Craglorn from a zone spanning all the veteran ranks from 1 to 14 into a slightly more challenging version of any other zone with elements clearly designed for groups.

I do think that ZOS should work on making a more difficult overland again, but the way they went about Craglorn wasn't the right one. Overland content should be designed with solo play in mind but offer actual challenges for optional rewards. These challenges should be able to be done solo, but also with a group. That way you can track your vertical progression by how you have improved at taking on these challenges solo, but as a group you can clear these even on a low level early on. Mechanics that require extra players or a tank don't make for a good challenge.