Normal Trials and Guild Participation

Gundug

I’m one of the co-founders of a long-running guild with a little under 500 members, and because I would think newer players would like a good opportunity to gain trials experience and farm gear, I run a Saturday normal trials run. There are no requirements to join, aside from joining our Discord channel to sign up for the event, and listen in on voice (and I am even pretty lax about all that), no one is permitted to insult anyone’s setup, and we always clear with a low-key, low stress run. My problem is that the best participation I get for the event is six to eight people at best, including myself, and many weeks are a bust, with four or less. I always do my best to make things fun, with enthusiasm in my speech and encouragement for the team. Every time we have completed an event, everyone seems very happy to have joined, and they show excitement for the next week’s event. Then, a number of them are never heard from again.

I have asked numerous times for suggestions for possible times and days that might be more agreeable, but hardly get any response. I have also welcomed any others in the guild to lead an event at a different time, but that receives a hard no. I can’t help but feel like I’m causing the event to fail, but have no idea what could be done differently to make it work. What I would like to know from other guild event leaders and regular normal trial guild run participants is: are you experiencing similar issues, or do you have healthy participation in your events? If you do have full, regular normal trials events with your guild, what is it that makes them successful?

fred4

Sounds like my friend list. You run a dungeon, you have a nice chat, you friend each other only to never talk again.

Seriously, though, if I want to do a normal trial I pug it via Craglorn at any time (more or less). Maybe that's the issue? I don't think it's you. I think organising normal trial runs is just not necessary. I have found the success rate of PUGs much the same as my casual guild. It only gets hairy when you attempt something like nCR+3.

FluffyReachWitch

It is always awesome to see someone trying to create a chilled out, welcoming environment for trial newbies. Kudos!

So, from late 2020 to mid 2021 I joined weekly normal trials with one of my guilds. Part of what the trials leader here did was coordinate with the guild admins, advertise the weekly trials through the general chat thread in Discord, and advertise through guild Message of the Day and mailings.

This was also successful in part because many of the guild were casual players who had never been to trials and wanted to go, but felt intimidated by the difficulty and the culture of endgame spaces. (Ironically, what ended up killing trials within the guild was the trials leader developing a bad attitude.)

Even during the best times, we had fewer than 20 interested members out of hundreds. I think this might just be the normal situation in large, multifaceted casual guilds.

One thing that helped was that some of our participants, myself included, brought a partner or friend to sign up with them on most weeks. In the beginning, half of our participation was made of couples. This was really useful while we were building traction.

Another strategy was running every trial, especially older trials that people didn’t have the opportunity to run before, whether it’s because they started the game more recently or because the trial no longer gets as much interest in PUGs because of a lack of BiS gear. We continued revisiting those older, more elusive trials from time to time.

When we were not covering older trials and their stories, we held votes. Sunspire and Cloudrest were very popular for their gear.

If I could make one suggestion, I think it might help to try some low requirements for interested parties. Nothing intimidating, just a minimum of CP 160 and a suggestion to wear at least blue gear. The reason is without some requirements, you might give experienced players the impression that they’d be carrying everyone. My partner and I were perfectly happy to carry, but we can’t speak for everyone.

AlwaysOnFire

I agree that it is a lot of work to foster regulars, or even initiate new players into trials runs. But I think that putting in the work may be key to creating something sustainable.

People don't talk about it much but the majority of the game actually doesn't prepare people for trials. There's no tutorial for it and what you'd need to learn (how to move across the arena, how to tank, how to heal, prioritization, sustain, etc.) goes way beyond what a canned tutorial could easily cover. So it really isn't surprising that bethesda itself struggles to push trials as regular content even with the coaxing of BiS gear as drops. Dangling incentives that involve the 'ceiling' of trials gameplay doesn't really help anyone get on the 'floor.'

When I used to run beginner trials as one of the carriers, looking at esologs revealed that several people who attended the raid were still using PvP gear, mismatched sets, or bars with only 1-2 spammables and no DoTs or buffs. Watching their combat actions they behaved based on a completely different understanding of 'how to play the game' than you'd think was normal for trials.

These people aren't worse at the game, many of them were great in PvP or focused on the crafting/harvesting aspect of ESO and found great success that way. But they ARE the people who don't have the achievements, do not already have prior trial commitments you'd be competing against. So they also would be the most interested in signing up to experience that content they couldn't access before.

Encouraging attendance and coaxing people into this part of the content may require teaching a whole new mindset, new habits, or just generally nurturing awareness in people who are interested in learning/would not be intimidated or too touchy about it. And that's a lot of work; it may take like, voice chat, 1:1 about their abilities and rotations, doing other 4-man dungeons with them first. Just expecting people to show up and already have not just the gear, moves, CP but also the 'mind' for trials isn't going to turn up a lot of people who aren't already committed to other groups and other runs.

Honestly the skillset for a raid leader and guild organizer must be something between project manager and teacher!

Soarora

Hey Gundug! I'm actually a part of your guild and got into trials through said guild some years ago (I think 2? or 3?). I moved on to other places for trial runs after a time of no trials and stopped paying attention after a time of no events. Honestly, I didn't even know that you guys are doing trials again, so I'm wondering if this is the case for any other members. You could try sending a guild-wide in-game mail about your event though I'm also not sure how many people read their mail haha.

What I've also seen in other guilds is that instead of having all the runs in one channel, a new channel gets made for every trial and then gets archived/deleted afterwards. I've also seen it where there are two channels: one for the sign-up and one for discussions to cut down on scrolling to get to the sign-up (or even just pinning the roster in the channel). In my experience, this keeps things pretty organized and makes it very clear when there's a new run and when there's not, along with when it would be and if I'm signed up for it or not.

With timing, a trial lead I know has been using a site called when2meet. People input their username and select what times they're open. It's pretty handy, though I have not seen how it'd work on a large scale.

Hope it works out! Glad I saw this post... maybe I'll join some runs

Gundug

Thanks for the responses and good ideas, everyone! I’ll keep working at it, and make some changes based on your suggestions. I think people enjoy these runs when they do join. I have had even some hard mode raiders that filled in and they mentioned how much fun they had.

Soarora wrote: »

Hope it works out! Glad I saw this post... maybe I'll join some runs

Awesome! I recognized your name right away. Hope to see you there!

Parasaurolophus

I don't want to sound toxic, but I think a lot of older players have already begun to notice that the game seems to live on in large but short bursts of casual players who don't stay long in the game and play mostly quests. And it seems that ZoS does not care at all about the fact that a stable player base has been formed in the game.
I have been in many guilds in 8 years. Almost all of them appeared to be dead.

Kusto

Anyone can go to Craglorn any time and pick a trial they want. Normals are literally spammed 24/7. And they always get cleared because they're so easy. Why would anyone sign up several days ahead for something that they can do anytime?

radiostar

I don't use Discord for normal trials, that means I have to bow out on some pugs. That might be part of it.

WrathOfInnos

I think normal trials are a tough long term commitment. It's a lot of coordination to get a group of 12 organized, and the rewards aren't great (low experience, no plunder, fewer transmutes than random dungeon). They are too easy to be fun more than a few times, and there are not enough trials to give variety like dungeons.

A lot of players will run them a few times for gear, but then go back to whatever content they prefer. Others will enjoy the trial experience, but normal won't hold their attention for long so they upgrade to the challenge of veteran trials. Vet trials are IMO much more fun and rewarding.

There simply isn't much of a playerbase that wants to run normal trials over and over. You'll likely have to continue bringing in new people every time, from Craglorn or large PVE guilds.

Gundug

Kusto wrote: »

Anyone can go to Craglorn any time and pick a trial they want. Normals are literally spammed 24/7. And they always get cleared because they're so easy. Why would anyone sign up several days ahead for something that they can do anytime?

Like I suggested in the original post, not everyone is comfortable grouping up with a group of complete strangers to enter content they may have little to no experience with, and for which they may not be well set up.

katanagirl1

I wish more guilds would host normal trials like this. I have had an opportunity to do a few of them with guildies, and it’s great to have someone teaching you as you go along. If you pug one I would suspect it would be a quick run through hardly stopping, just like group dungeon runs for transmute crystals. Plus, the hours hanging around in zone chat trying to find a group is a real turn-off.

Some of us will never be able to do vet level for various reasons but would like to at least have the completion on normal.

Funny how the advice for better group dungeons is to find a guild, but the suggestion for trials here is to pug, lol.

colossalvoids

From personal experience would say that to have a steady participation in normal content outside of social guilds you would need steady amount of new players coming in every month. Content like this despite being perfectly organised and fun lacks one key thing a lot of people are searching for - meaningful progression. Most will see it a s step on their ladder more of trying to get to the "cream" of it - veteran content which is way more replayable and can have its own progression ladders to different achievements, more appealing rewards etc.

Zyva

I agree with @colossalvoids here.

Speaking as a long-time player who has completed most content, the only time I run normal trials anymore in the last couple years, was when farming for sticker book content. There are a couple easy reasons for this.

You dont get the rewards in normal trials. The chests give you less, the quality is less, it feels like overland content in some cases. You also see basically half the mechanics of a trial, which makes it boring and almost weird once youve done harder content.

When it struggles, and takes twice as long as it should, the above fact (not getting good stuff) sort of hits home harder. Unless you are with friends to make it fun or give you some sort of satisfaction, it feels like a huge waste of time. Especially when you see people who dont care that they are essentially being carried. If you try to offer advice to the average person-who-dosent-care, you get ridiculed and called elitist names. I have gotten removed from a normal cloudrest craglorn pug simply because I was trying to explain the mechanics when we wiped a dozen times.

So why waste your time? When it might fail and take a chunk of your finite play time? At least on vet you get better quality stuff and it feels more challenging/satisfying. Another thing that hurts is account wide achievements. Once you have them all, you have yet ANOTHER reason to not go back, whereas before you might have farmed them on multiple characters.

Again, this is speaking from the viewpoint of someone who has played a long time and already done most trifectas. And I am not including trials run by friends for memes, or helping them get gear.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

This thread has been moved to the Players Helping Players section, as it is better suited there.

Thanks

Nestor

I think it is the time commitment to do a trial that is a big issue. Perhaps Saturdays are not the best time to run these are people are going out and doing stuff now. Maybe a weeknight or Sunday night would work better. Poll the players through guild motd or one of the email blaster addons.

fizl101

I run fun trials on a friday night, no pressure, no expertise required, won't be a full training trial just go with the flow. Giving them silly themes is pretty popular, such as dress like an 80's pop star, naked trials (just weapons and jewellery) or stuff like that. I also do non trial events occasionally like playing hide and seek in Rimmen.

Good luck getting a group together!