Is More Accessibility Important?

Ittrix

Accessing content has been one of the most cited reasons lately for changes. It was one of the driving factors behind U35, and it's been the driving factor in many other areas of ESO too.
Since it's cited as a reason so often, the question needs to be asked: Is More Accessibility Important?
To be more clear, is it important to change how current mechanics in the game work (boss fights, combat, sets) so that novices can do more content, or is it not?

I'll divide it into veterans and novices saying yes or no. Feel free to state why below.

katanagirl1

I believe the term “accessibility” means accommodating players with disabilities, like how the Oakensoul mythic ring enables some players who are unable to meet the high APM requirements of bar swapping and light weaving to participate in the game as it is designed. It does not require changing game mechanics at all.

If you want to talk about changing game mechanics to accommodate players who are not disabled, but are less experienced and less skilled, by reducing the difficulty of game content to help novice players, then that is another discussion, and one with which I would disagree.

Ittrix

[b]No, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]isn't[/b] important

Well. This has been a valuable lesson for me in where BBC code does and doesn't work. If a mod wants to edit my attempt at using it that'd be awesome. If not... ah well.

I guess I'll start.
No, as a veteran I do not think more accessibility is important. At least not with how the devs are using it now.

The game already has accessibility out of the wazoo, is why. The entire overworld was designed specifically with accessibility in mind. Every dungeon, arena, and trial has a normal variant which was also designed specifically with accessibility in mind. This also makes all of the sets* accessible for all of the players in the game too, provided they've bought the trial/dlc.
New veteran dungeons are also being limited in how hard they are. DLC dungeons are much harder than non DLC because of the time gap, but really the new DLC dungeons aren't really harder or not than the ones from a year ago.

If players want more challenge, then they have the option to foray into veteran difficulty, or if they want more, hardmodes and secret bosses. For something to be challenging, players will need to struggle beating it. If everyone could do it then it wouldn't be a challenge- which is why they should want to do it in the first place. If they don't want a challenge that's fine; every piece of content in this game has an accessible version for players.
In the same sense I don't see why players would be upset that they would need to be challenged to make and master a better DPS/Heals/Tonkiness set up if the whole reason they want to do veteran is for more challenge.


Back to that little asterisk. Monster helms are not available unless you can beat the veteran version of a dungeon. There's also perfected versions. Stats wise they're not too important, but not every player knows that or necessarily believes that.
The monster helms can be important, but I don't really think the perfected sets are. Between drastically changing the challenge of how you play and how encounters play out and just letting players have them, though... I'd rather we just let players have them.
The same goes for skins/mounts/titles, to a lesser degree.
They're really just meant to be a nod to players who rise up to the challenge and to show off their experience, so I don't think novices *need* them, but if it prevents U36 from being like U35 that's what I'd prefer.

Ittrix

[b]No, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]isn't[/b] important

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I believe the term “accessibility” means accommodating players with disabilities, like how the Oakensoul mythic ring enables some players who are unable to meet the high APM requirements of bar swapping and light weaving to participate in the game as it is designed. It does not require changing game mechanics at all.

If you want to talk about changing game mechanics to accommodate players who are not disabled, but are less experienced and less skilled, by reducing the difficulty of game content to help novice players, then that is another discussion, and one with which I would disagree.

It's why I made it clear what I was referring to in the post. Textbook definition? Yeah, accessibility is meant for people who physically or mentally are incapable of doing something, typically due to disability.

I don't think ZoS is only thinking about physical disabilities when they say accessibility, though. Arthritis may be part of what they're thinking about, but players who can't do something because of a lack of experience, skill, or know how are definitely included.

spartaxoxo

[b]Yes, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]is[/b] important

Yes, absolutely it's important. The normal content is far too easy to challenge a veteran player, but a lot of the vet content is aimed at the top like 10% for a while now. This leaves mid-tier vet players with a lot of content that is really dull (overland, normal dungeons, normal trials) or too difficult (vet dlc trials) for them to even get invited. The requirements to hit higher require a VERY steep wall to overcome, and the vast majority of them cannot do it. So, they give up and just stick to dungeons and being bored out of their skull in overland. Due to these mid-tier players largely NOT moving up, the high-end vet players keep seeing their ability to fill rosters get worse and worse as time goes by because the rate of replacement is abysmally low. And their problems to fill their rosters are exacerbated by every time the devs release a really bad patch that causes a big chunk of them to leave.

The end result is an ever-shrinking vet population, resulting in less nice things catering move rewards behind normal content, resulting in even more vets leaving because there's nothing interesting to work towards. This creates a negative feedback loop that is an absolute disaster for vet content. It's super unhealthy. The devs know the break points of the playerbase where they run into these walls, they need to make them a bit easier to get over, whatever that might look like. Personally, I thought Oakensoul was a good answer to this issue. Because that ring was not very useful for leaderboards, and still made it so people had to understand the mechanics of all the content to be successful. But obviously they decided they didn't like that solution.

Ittrix

[b]No, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]isn't[/b] important

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Yes, absolutely it's important. The normal content is far too easy to challenge a veteran player, but a lot of the vet content is aimed at the top like 10% for a while now. This leaves mid-tier vet players with a lot of content that is really dull (overland, normal dungeons, normal trials) or too difficult (vet dlc trials) for them to even get invited. The requirements to hit higher require a VERY steep wall to overcome, and the vast majority of them cannot do it. So, they give up and just stick to dungeons and being bored out of their skull in overland. Due to these mid-tier players largely NOT moving up, the high-end vet players keep seeing their ability to fill rosters get worse and worse as time goes by because the rate of replacement is abysmally low. And their problems to fill their rosters are exacerbated by every time the devs release a really bad patch that causes a big chunk of them to leave.

The end result is an ever-shrinking vet population, resulting in less nice things catering move rewards behind normal content, resulting in even more vets leaving because there's nothing interesting to work towards. This creates a negative feedback loop that is an absolute disaster for vet content. It's super unhealthy. The devs know the break points of the playerbase where they run into these walls, they need to make them a bit easier to get over, whatever that might look like. Personally, I thought Oakensoul was a good answer to this issue. Because that ring was not very useful for leaderboards, and still made it so people had to understand the mechanics of all the content to be successful. But obviously they decided they didn't like that solution.

I actually quit playing ESO awhile back, but I took a group with 60k parses through every veteran trial at the time and some of the hardmodes. I want to say the newest content at the time was... rockgrove? I don't want to count that one since most players just naturally got better than 60k. Still, you could pull 60k with a one button parse back then. Not even exaggerating. Here's a parse.




The issue isn't trial accessibility- it's what a lot of players *deem* the accessibility should be, which I find is a separate issue caused by DPSing letting you skip a butt ton of mechanics. If ZoS wanted to implement a kind of accessibility to find a group much easier... or punished overDPSing more often, like they do in the bahsei fight, I would be plenty happy. Doubling the duration of all DoTs though? Naw, man. Naw.

spartaxoxo

[b]Yes, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]is[/b] important

Ittrix wrote: »

I actually quit playing ESO awhile back, but I took a group with 60k parses through every veteran trial at the time and some of the hardmodes. I want to say the newest content at the time was... rockgrove? I don't want to count that one since most players just naturally got better than 60k. Still, you could pull 60k with a one button parse back then. Not even exaggerating.

The problem is that 60k is generally not enough to get invited to these things, because of how much harder it makes them. There are a few exceptions, and those people can get clears, but generally speaking you're not invited if you're pulling less than 75k. But, with some pretty narrow exceptions (like I think there's a stamblade build that can hit number with a heavy attack build iirc), the accessibility stuff tends to top out at 60k. If they made things a bit easier (not a ton) then you'd quite quickly get more people doing that content (which is what happened with Oakensoul). But, as I said, they didn't like that ring as a solution. I don't know what they want as the solution, but that's where the gap tends to lie.

Ittrix

[b]No, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]isn't[/b] important

spartaxoxo wrote: »

show previous quotes

Ittrix wrote: »

I actually quit playing ESO awhile back, but I took a group with 60k parses through every veteran trial at the time and some of the hardmodes. I want to say the newest content at the time was... rockgrove? I don't want to count that one since most players just naturally got better than 60k. Still, you could pull 60k with a one button parse back then. Not even exaggerating.

The problem is that 60k is generally not enough to get invited to these things, because of how much harder it makes them. There are a few exceptions, and those people can get clears, but generally speaking you're not invited if you're pulling less than 75k. But, with some pretty narrow exceptions (like I think there's a stamblade build that can hit number with a heavy attack build iirc), the accessibility stuff tends to top out at 60k. If they made things a bit easier (not a ton) then you'd quite quickly get more people doing that content (which is what happened with Oakensoul). But, as I said, they didn't like that ring as a solution. I don't know what they want as the solution, but that's where the gap tends to lie.

Despite my tag, I certainly agree it's a sort of accessibility issue. And I do think it needs to get addressed.
Whether you need 75k or not, people say you do and won't let you in otherwise. For all intents and purposes, that means to access the content you'll likely need 75k.
I just don't think the solution here is to help your average player who wants to do a veteran trial reach 75k- we ought to convince endgamers that 75k isn't needed and they oughta stop shutting the gate for anyone below it.

As an example to kinda show my point: If you have run hardmode vMoL before, did your group cover lunar phase and what they should do during it? Did your group even encounter it? I'm guessing it's no and no.

When vMoL first came out, lunar phase wasn't optional. The highest DPS of the best players in the world still had to do lunar phase because it wasn't enough to skip it in hardmode.

Now there's people saying the baseline DPS is so high to do vMoL hardmode that they'd never encounter lunar phase. Your average group aims to burn the boss by pad 3 to skip the running!
Just because they say you need that much DPS doesn't mean it's true- their predecessors proved it by having far less and getting world records, first clears, and no deaths. It's true that that's a kind of accessibility... but I don't think that the way ZoS is going about it is gonna help anything.

ZoS accidentally stumbled into a fix with bahsei. You ever been told you're DPSing too low in the bahsei fight? Goodness no! The only thing people are told about DPS for that fight is that they're pulling too much and the group can't handle 8 atronachs at once. A lot of groups won't even run logs for that fight to discourage parse monkeying!
If the entire trial was like that, do you think they'd care if a player was pulling 75k, or do you think they'd care that they were simply pulling enough and were willing to pay attention and learn so they didn't trigger 8 atronachs at once?

fizl101

[b]Yes, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]is[/b] important

In the sense of accessing more content, yes (not even talking hm here)

There is a big difference between a vet craglorn and the likes of VSS. To me smoothing that transition would be the stepping stone to getting many more people into vet trials at least

spartaxoxo

[b]Yes, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]is[/b] important

Ittrix wrote: »

I just don't think the solution here is to help your average player who wants to do a veteran trial reach 75k- we ought to convince endgamers that 75k isn't needed and they oughta stop shutting the gate for anyone below it.

There's nothing devs can do to convince endagmers to stop gating people and act against their best interest. That's completely impossible. People are always going to act in their own self-interest and making things harder for themselves and increasing their risk of failure is not in their self-interest. The only thing they can do is either leave it be and let it be content that's just not generally used, make it easier to hit 75k, or nerf content.

Ittrix

[b]No, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]isn't[/b] important

spartaxoxo wrote: »

show previous quotes

Ittrix wrote: »

I just don't think the solution here is to help your average player who wants to do a veteran trial reach 75k- we ought to convince endgamers that 75k isn't needed and they oughta stop shutting the gate for anyone below it.

There's nothing devs can do to convince endagmers to stop gating people and act against their best interest. That's completely impossible. People are always going to act in their own self-interest and making things harder for themselves and increasing their risk of failure is not in their self-interest. The only thing they can do is either leave it be and let it be content that's just not generally used, make it easier to hit 75k, or nerf content.

Right, I agree. It's hard to get anyone to act against their best interest- especially if they're putting that express interest up front.
So... I'm saying at a certain point, DPS numbers should stop being in their best interest. Bahseii does this extremely well because if the group drains more than 5% once every 20 seconds, then two big bad monsters show up and cave everyone's skulls in. They don't want that and they don't want the group to do that much damage. The only sense that people care about you reaching 75k in the bahsei fight is that you expressly don't. Too much DPS = bad unless the group really, really knows their stuff.

Make a boss enrage if it takes too much damage too quickly. Make it summon a bunch of adds at certain percentages. Make the fight have distinct phases that punishes crazy hard if they overlap. So many things you can do to make a 60k parse just as good as a 200k parse for your average clear.
If anything, that'd be extra fun to deal with as a speedrunner. Sort of like a mini hardmode if you wanna clear stuff fast.

renne

[b]Yes, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]is[/b] important

spartaxoxo wrote: »

show previous quotes

Ittrix wrote: »

I just don't think the solution here is to help your average player who wants to do a veteran trial reach 75k- we ought to convince endgamers that 75k isn't needed and they oughta stop shutting the gate for anyone below it.

There's nothing devs can do to convince endagmers to stop gating people and act against their best interest. That's completely impossible. People are always going to act in their own self-interest and making things harder for themselves and increasing their risk of failure is not in their self-interest. The only thing they can do is either leave it be and let it be content that's just not generally used, make it easier to hit 75k, or nerf content.

Project Vitality was literally all about end gamers not gating people and acting as you claim "against their best interest". End game raiders chose to do this themselves, to do what ZOS claimed U35 was about - getting more mid-game players into end game content - and it didn't have anything to do with the devs.

It's the devs themselves that have nearly killed Project Vitality with U35.

endgamesmug

[b]No, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]isn't[/b] important

I had accessibility before the update, now its just a slog to do those dungeons again. Ive lost interest as a result and im doing menial and easy things as a result. I tried vet trials in 2016ish it didnt interest me after trying it and it still doesnt interest me now so i dont need access. Dungeons are what do it for me, im quite certain in time things in the game will change again and ill be back into it. Im not advocating for nerfs and i dont have anything against the guys who like to push it to the limit, thats their thing none of my business.

deleted221205-002626

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Yes, absolutely it's important. The normal content is far too easy to challenge a veteran player, but a lot of the vet content is aimed at the top like 10% for a while now. This leaves mid-tier vet players with a lot of content that is really dull (overland, normal dungeons, normal trials) or too difficult (vet dlc trials) for them to even get invited. The requirements to hit higher require a VERY steep wall to overcome, and the vast majority of them cannot do it. So, they give up and just stick to dungeons and being bored out of their skull in overland. Due to these mid-tier players largely NOT moving up, the high-end vet players keep seeing their ability to fill rosters get worse and worse as time goes by because the rate of replacement is abysmally low. And their problems to fill their rosters are exacerbated by every time the devs release a really bad patch that causes a big chunk of them to leave.

The end result is an ever-shrinking vet population, resulting in less nice things catering move rewards behind normal content, resulting in even more vets leaving because there's nothing interesting to work towards. This creates a negative feedback loop that is an absolute disaster for vet content. It's super unhealthy. The devs know the break points of the playerbase where they run into these walls, they need to make them a bit easier to get over, whatever that might look like. Personally, I thought Oakensoul was a good answer to this issue. Because that ring was not very useful for leaderboards, and still made it so people had to understand the mechanics of all the content to be successful. But obviously they decided they didn't like that solution.

Majority of the problem though is not sets stats or abilities... Its people not able to AWSD out of red on the ground and do mechanics which is most of what you need to be good at doing for trials and vet dungeons.. If you can they're easy regardless of dps.

Are you suggesting they remove mechanics to the point one could just stand there and light attack with oakensoul? Or maybe they could enhance oakensoul even further by adding aoe immunity god mode?

What I see far to often in vet content is for example a boss has expanding aoe originating from them that takes 3-4secs to fully expand and explode 1shotting everyone in it, I'm seeing the same 2 dps explode and die in it over and over every30secs! 25x total while the tank/healer res repeatedly and kill the boss! Its not the tank and healer finding it difficult its the dps and they're likly complaining its too difficult. How do you fix this? aoe immunity? Have accessible options to auto roll out of red? Drive over to they're house and play for them? Or just remove the mechanics so its not even fun or challenging at all?

AoEnwyr

[b]Yes, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]is[/b] important

I chose Veteran as I'm a long term on and off player - not a super meta player, but I don't exactly fall under Novice either

If you are talking about accessibility in terms of content participation:

There will always be a hardcore segment of players who should have content options that both challenge and reward them. They are valuable and should feel like their skills and contributions to the community are recognised. These people provide valuable feedback and theory crafting which many novice players rely on.

That said, increasingly the majority of the player base across gaming, is moving towards a more casual engagement model. There are many more good games on the market compared to 20 years ago and players will use this choice to move around if they can't find a way to comfortably engage with your product. Do I think all difficulty and soul should be stripped out of ESO? Absolutely not. But if you want a substantial player base to remain then there has to be avenues into the larger portion of content for the average player.

Just because U35 may be a big mis-step in the eyes of many doesn't mean the pursuit of accessibility should be abandoned. How it is introduced, and how player feedback is handled can and should be reviewed but just saying there should be no attempts at accessibility is fairly short sighted.

If you are talking about accessibility in the more common terms of disability accessibility features:

Absolutely. Clearer text, choice of UI elements and control schemes, inbuilt audio queues, colour blind options and visual queues - all of it. So many people with disabilities play MMORPG's as a way to engage socially and the more tools available in-game the better. Everyone should be able to live their best life in ESO

SPR_of_HA_community

[b]Other[/b] (explain below)

I am veteran and I feel like More Accessibility is Important.

But not by makeing bosses more easy.

Game have to give option for exp players do solo party content for better reward (at least drop from bosses (take all drop solo like it was drop for all party).

May be - do solo or with not full group nRandoms - for removing speed runners from random finders.

It is accessibility to is it not ?

The rotation have to be more comfortable for play. Accesability can be achieved with more comfortable game.

With not making nerfs to not top DPS builds.

With no change in base game mechanics each update so people with less time can play the game and not rebuild character every 3 month to stay the same as he was before constant nerfs.

People with problems in hands - some trauma or carpal tunnel syndrome - need have for game to have option less click (because each click is hand hurt for such people) - so more channeled abilitys.

Options to play HA /LA /MA the same + / - effective in some builds based on what is harder - is a little better, but difference is very small in top builds for that. Near same damage - not 20-30% difference.

Different builds - not only stupid stick light attacking with no idea stat bust builds, but more unique builds with good ideas that do not get nerfs each update for no reason.

Less mythics for no-brain play like oakensol and vampire ring that heals from damage in future (it is the same accesability for RLs for more exp players in his raids in future)

No nerfs for arena weapons that people farm for hundreds of hours and that are now useless and such people may be have not so much time to play now.

No nerfs to old builds, so people with no time for farming tons of moneys each update can play builds that they made days before.

Different kinds of accessibility

tonyblack

[b]Other[/b] (explain below)

Better tutorial and content progression would be far better way to improve ability of the playerbase to clear vet content. You can nerf the celling as much as you want, make combat simplistic and boring or reduce mechanics of encounters where it’s just easy stack and burn but if average Joe don’t know how to block, bash or light attack weave while running mismatched gear and useless skills vet content would never be accessible and called “vet” at the same time. It’s on zos making the rest of the game so easy it can be completed naked without second thought what you doing right and what is wrong and in need of improvement.

Lykeion

Could you please define Accessibility in advance? ZOS using U35 makes me feel like this word has never been so foreign

SPR_of_HA_community

[b]Other[/b] (explain below)

tonyblack wrote: »

Better tutorial and content progression would be far better way to improve ability of the playerbase to clear vet content. You can nerf the celling as much as you want, make combat simplistic and boring or reduce mechanics of encounters where it’s just easy stack and burn but if average Joe don’t know how to block, bash or light attack weave while running mismatched gear and useless skills vet content would never be accessible and called “vet” at the same time. It’s on zos making the rest of the game so easy it can be completed naked without second thought what you doing right and what is wrong and in need of improvement.

Better tutorial ? [Snip]. Bad tutorial is possible to get from a lot of popular streamers. Exp players do not need tutorials.

So it just be skipped or ignored by any one. Or if it be to annoying just give more hate of exp players. Because not exp player will just ignore it the same way. And exp player do not need it and it is one more time lose thing for them.

More harder overland can be really the point. But the same time players do quests - it have some mechanics too. Do not it learn them ? May be more harder quests then.

But what about those who are not interested in dunguan and trial content at all ? Some people (about 55%+) care about story more. They do not even need dunguans and more harder content.

Now game strike a lot of exp players leave with U35.
You want to strike casual part now too

I as exp player do not need to waist my time for some thing useless as tutorial too. I already spend 100+ hours on running maelstorm to get weapon that I want, than the same arena to get perfected weapon the same as I farm before. And than it was nerfed and is not needed )

[Edited for conspiracy theory]

Sarannah

[b]Yes, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]is[/b] important

MMO's want as many players as possible to stick around. So everything should be done to make it easier to do anything, while at the same time being careful to not destroy the ceiling.

To go through your list, and to add some of my own:
-Bossfights: There are now so many dungeons, that even as a veteran player it has become impossible to remember every dungeon, every boss, and every mechanic. The game should tell before a boss is engaged, to watch out for xx attack. Example: (Scalecaller peak, text shown before engaging the first boss) "These twins are stonger together, and either one will wreak havoc when their brother is killed. Their throwing ice shards, following ground attacks, and rats will kill you if you are not careful. So make sure to hide, or freeze yourself before their attacks!" Something like that.

-Combat: In order to raise the floor, there should be crutch mechanics for every type of combat. Automatic light attack weaving, automatic barswapping, more skilldamage when not light attack weaving or barswapping, etc. Things that players should be able to enable if they want to, while not touching the high end. There should also be mechanics/gear for certain playstyles, like oakensoul did for one-bar builds.

-Sets: ZOS should keep all old sets relevant, while still creating new sets. But new sets should never be overpowered. There is a huge difference between doing 1-2% more damage and 1-2% more survivability, or being able to do 100% more DPS or becoming pratically immortal as some sets allow(ed). At the moment to me it feels like almost all sets are easily accessible, besides trial sets and the veteran monster helmets/shoulders. So for a new player getting those isn't an issue, knowing the sets even exist is an issue.

-Skills: The skillscreen in-game should show all morphs and how much damage those skillmorphs do for your character, before even speccing into them. As it is impossible to know which skills even exist and how they work, without spending quite a bit of gold. Even I haven't experienced most skills in the game, as I don't want to spend the time, gold, and effort to check all of them out. Imagine how that must be for a new(er) player without much gold to spend, they can't check anything out. Which might leave them stuck with no gold and crappy skills, while getting annoyed at the game as they can't do much or even anything. (Morphs for unleveled skills should also be visible!)

-Roles: ZOS should do more to enforce roles in groupcontent, to make for an overal better group experience. Speedrunners and fake roles take away so much of what a new player could experience in the game. While only leaving them frustrated, wondering if they should stick around. A first dungeon experience should be a good one and should allow new(er) players to be able to learn the game and their role, this should not be a follow the speedrunner or being dead 90% of the time run.

-Questcontinuïty: There should be an easy way to see which quests come when. Give all quests, DLC's, main quests, and zone quests different colors. Then have it show somewhere what the correct order in which to do quests in is. To follow the correct order go green to black for example(while showing all inbetween colors.). There are some quests where NPC's teleport around without telling you where they are, the craftingcertification quests are an example of that. Even I had a hard time finding the NPC which certifies you. But I knew where to look as I know where the crafting stations are everywhere, a new player does not and will be lost without knowing what to do. Questcontinuïty is a major factor to new players, and should receive much more attention. (The zonenames in the map interface could be displayed in the same colors as their main questline.)

Not sure what ZOS tried to achieve with U35, but it did not help the new player experience.

kevkj

[b]No, as a novice[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]isn't[/b] important

I think a significant portion of the playerbase would be forced to get better at the game if ZOS introduced more aggressive instancing (perhaps only in delves/public dungeons). For too many players, it's a struggle to even tag the boss for quest credit/loot before a veteran player annihilates everything. Their lack of combat ability is never shown to them and thus they see no reason to improve/change.

On a similar note, dungeon finder would be greatly improved if you weren't allowed to queue until you had at least completed Maelstrom/Vateshran on normal. Obviously this is highly impractical and would never be implemented but my point is that too many players simply coast by without ever really engaging with the 'combat' portion of the game. I understand that there are many aspects to the game and of course not everyone can become as good as UA. However, World Bosses are an impossible challenge for many despite having no actual DPS checks.

It's not their damage that is the problem, it's everything about combat. They don't block, they don't interrupt, they don't dodge, they don't step out of AOE, they cannot recognize when enemies are in an invulnerable state and an add needs to be killed, they don't have a selfheal, they don't even use the free Crown Meals to increase stats, they don't use the free Crown Pots to restore resources/health. Even if it looks like there are 10 players at a world boss, easily half of them are simply cosmetic teammates.

Kingsindarkness

kevkj wrote: »

I think a significant portion of the playerbase would be forced to get better at the game if ZOS introduced more aggressive instancing (perhaps only in delves/public dungeons). For too many players, it's a struggle to even tag the boss for quest credit/loot before a veteran player annihilates everything. Their lack of combat ability is never shown to them and thus they see no reason to improve/change.

.

Sorry I disagree

Anytime you force anything on the customer base you lose customers.

The notion of the only way I can have fun is watching everyone else struggle will never work in todays gaming community. Blizzard has yet to learn this and they are failing hard...harder than anyone actually knows.

Games today succeed when there are multiple paths to fun...because your fun isn't my fun and vice versa.

Sure you can get aggressive and force people to scratch and claw for everything...and watch the game go the way of Wildstar.

BlueRaven

[b]Yes, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]is[/b] important

Zos can’t keep spending a large part of their budget on an increasingly smaller and smaller subset of the players population. Either zos needs to get more people in those higher difficulty areas or they need to start making less of those areas.

The gap between the high end and the average is far too high at the moment. I think when they introduced companions they suggested that the average damage output of players was in the 5-10 k area (after complaints about low companion dps, they said they did not want companion damage output outstripping average players damage output, so you do the math) while top end is hitting over 120k? That’s just ludicrous and absolutely unstable to keep making content for.

Did zos do the right thing in U35? Probably not. They explained the why of the changes, but the how seems to be rather unfocused, and without consideration of the content players are doing. But they need to do something.

kevkj

[b]No, as a novice[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]isn't[/b] important

Kingsindarkness wrote: »

Sorry I disagree

Anytime you force anything on the customer base you lose customers.

The notion of the only way I can have fun is watching everyone else struggle will never work in todays gaming community. Blizzard has yet to learn this and they are failing hard...harder than anyone actually knows.

Games today succeed when there are multiple paths to fun...because your fun isn't my fun and vice versa.

I actually agree with you, I don't think ZOS needs to do anything about the supposed "floor". If those players wanted to challenge themselves or improve, they would. If they are currently content to have fun in the open world, let them continue. There is basically nothing ZOS or anyone else can do to force a change without also making them quit. They are not even close to having to worry about sets, or keeping buffs/dots up. They don't care and ZOS shouldn't either.

I didn't quite intend my above comment to be genuine suggestions but moreso an illustration of how different of a world a lot of the players play in.

I don't want players to have to struggle to have the 'nice thing' that they want. Example being the dye/furnishing related to Tales of Tribute. I don't want players to be upset at being unable to obtain those things because they are not good at the card game and cannot reach the highest rank. Let them have it just for playing a lot of games! ZOS making shinies easy to obtain does not impede my competitive enjoyment at all. I believe ZOS should apply this to other areas of the game as well. Then you will not have players demanding any competitive/challenging aspect of ESO be ripped out of the game.

Kingsindarkness

BlueRaven wrote: »

Zos can’t keep spending a large part of their budget on an increasingly smaller and smaller subset of the players population. Either zos needs to get more people in those higher difficulty areas or they need to start making less of those areas.

Agreed...Raids are the most expensive content to make they take the most planning, take longer to develop and only a very small fraction of the player base ever gets to experience them. The problem is that most developers really really love raids...so it's unlikely they will stop or even slow down no matter how much of the budget it eats up, or how few customers play.

A member of the stream team was just boasting about that a few weeks back, and that's cool I guess I certainly don't doubt him because he streams with devs regularly.

The thing is gating that "exclusive content" dosen't really help the community and it kills moral...it seems a lot more care went into the last couple Trials and DLC dungeons (all which are over tuned for the average player) than the last couple expansions, I don't know maybe that's just me...

The devs really don't have to take away anything...just stop gating it for everyone else. You can still have the uber hard modes for the favored players, and they will probably make more money to create more in the process.

I just don't know how that isn't painfully obvious.

carlos424

Ittrix wrote: »

Back to that little asterisk. Monster helms are not available unless you can beat the veteran version of a dungeon. There's also perfected versions. Stats wise they're not too important, but not every player knows that or necessarily believes that.
The monster helms can be important, but I don't really think the perfected sets are. Between drastically changing the challenge of how you play and how encounters play out and just letting players have them, though... I'd rather we just let players have them.
The same goes for skins/mounts/titles, to a lesser degree.
They're really just meant to be a nod to players who rise up to the challenge and to show off their experience, so I don't think novices *need* them, but if it prevents U36 from being like U35 that's what I'd prefer.

Monster helms are one of the few things that are not “accessible” to everyone, as you point out, they are not available on normal modes of dungeons. Maybe they should be, and the vet mode should give a “perfected” version with another stat line.
edit: Or maybe just take away the one piece bonus for “normal” monster set pieces.

colossalvoids

[b]No, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]isn't[/b] important

Isn't AS important. It's already accessible enough in my eyes to make such an Ill though out changes making reverse of their own claim. Oaken, pale order etc. were accessibility attempts, as some other stuff through out the years.

It sounds like their motto now but sometimes you need to step back and see the whole picture with all the past updates in mind.

TheForFeeF

[b]Other[/b] (explain below)

I'm on other because I am in both fields, and a veteran player.

Accessibility is important because that is how you bring new players into the game and keep it thriving. However, there should be content that you have to work hard and put effort in to get to. That is what brings back players. I wouldn't have put over 80 days play time in the game if all the content was available to me from the start - I've had to exp grind to get decent CP. I've had to practise my rotations to get them near-perfect, as well as my mechanical ability in the game. I've had to run dungeons/trials over and over to get the gear I need. I've had reasons to come back to the game. If you don't like that, MMOs aren't for you, as this is part of MMOs.

There is a right balance for this, because too much "effort content", and not enough of the game is too accessible to bring new players in and make them repeat players. But, too much "accessible content" and you'll find players quitting left and right, and bad word-of-mouth because the game "has nothing to work towards". I wouldn't say its exactly 50-50, its probably somewhere more like 65% accessible content, and 35% effort content.

Honestly, anyone who wants full accessibility just wants stuff handed to them on a plate, to put it bluntly. Its a harsh truth.

Kingsindarkness

TheForFeeF wrote: »

Honestly, anyone who wants full accessibility just wants stuff handed to them on a plate, to put it bluntly. Its a harsh truth.

Respectfully

That is the prevailing thought in MMO's over the past Fifteen years, but it isn't a truth, it's an opinion, everyone has them...these days there are a lot of different types of players, not just Raiders and those who make their materials, and those new type of players leave a ton of money on the ground, and marketing shows that end game vets usually spend the least and actually play the least.

It's just not sustainable, Zenimax may stay strong and keep the old ways, but another developer is just going to come along and pick up that dough and those customers they will happily give full access because statements like "Wanting things handed to them" dosen't really mean anything to a corporation or a customer anymore ...folks want to have fun and being gated by some dude they never even met is silly.

Fifteen years ago a game like ESO would have made hardcore gamers lose their minds...today it's average. In five more years I doubt you will see gated content in any game. Things change, and life to short to get upset about things you can't control; at least that's what I believe.

blktauna

As to monster helms, just visit the golden vendor in cyrodil on the weekend. Sadly their rotation of goods is archaic but you can still get some useful things in there. I bought Balorgs so I never had to set foot in March of Sacrifices again! lol.

INM

[b]No, as a veteran[/b] I feel more accessibility [b]isn't[/b] important

I think the game does fine work at accessibility. It fails with difficulty progression and with design of recent trials.