Dailies and their fomo are really souring ESO for my group and I

Wing

every day I try to log into ESO to a short laundry list of chores that just grate after years.

(ONE CHARACTER BTW, think of people with alts. . .)

-collect login
-go to a favored town to do my crafting writs
-turn them in
-clean up inventory afterword
-check endevours
-try to do 3 that are the least painful
-check and make sure i do/did the weakly that was the least painful
**or skip if it's just too uggggg**
-deal with master crafting writs (do/store/sell/whatever.)
-deal with surveys (usually do them in bunches like doing laundry)
-destroy the alchemist survey in malbal tor out of spite.
-recheck list fast

THEN

see if i feel like playing eso.

I spend over an hour a week playing ESO, split across several days, doing busy work and chores that i dont enjoy or want to perform because their rewards are just so heavily front loaded as to encourage THAT EXACT BEHAVIOR. let's not discuss the laundry list of popular mods that do their best to automate this process.

congrats, you got me to login every day at the expense of your game being enjoyable. . .


if you could do me a favor.


roll all that BS into ONE login reward, just lump my crafting rewards, my survey rewards, my endevour seals and my daily login into:
one
Big
BEAUTIFUL
-login reward-

I promise I will login every day to see what I get!

and then you will agree to get out of my way and let me play the game (as an aside I have not completed the expansion or the dlc yet. . .BUT I GOT ALL MY ENDEVOURS DONE RIGHT ZOS!)

festegios

Can help you skip a step.
Already been in your favourite town for writs.

Then learn not to stress about everything else 🤣

TaSheen

Huh. I find all that fun, not to mention spending the rest of my 8 hours or so in game doing quests etc. Sorry it's just chores to you.

Wing

TaSheen wrote: »

Huh. I find all that fun, not to mention spending the rest of my 8 hours or so in game doing quests etc. Sorry it's just chores to you.

don't feel bad I'm glad they're still more than just chores for you ^_^

Tandor

If it's a chore and not fun then don't do it, regardless of the rewards. It's a game, not a job.

spartaxoxo

Stop doing surveys each day tbh. They ruin everything.

TaSheen

Wing wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Huh. I find all that fun, not to mention spending the rest of my 8 hours or so in game doing quests etc. Sorry it's just chores to you.

don't feel bad I'm glad they're still more than just chores for you ^_^

I know that there are reasons people do things they maybe wouldn't do without some internal impetus. I'm not going to say "well, don't do stuff then!" because that's not very helpful.

I wonder if changing up the scenario would help you? Do what you find fun first when you log in, THEN do the leftover dreck if you feel like it? Maybe give that a try. If it's still not working, then try something else. Just because ZOS wants to force you into sweatshop mode doesn't mean you should allow them to do so!

kevkj

The only advice I can give is that if you have been doing writs continuously for years, you can probably stop doing them. I doubt you are going to run out of mats any time soon.

Kiralyn2000

Sounds like every online/live-service game of the last 5-10 years. Long lists of 'daily' stuff to do.

That said...

Wing wrote: »

-clean up inventory afterword

I just right-click on a few items in the 'new' tab to send them to the 'junk' tab. Takes a few seconds. I also do that with random sellable loot I pick up during play. When my inventory gets too full, I'll stop at a merchant and hit "sell all junk."

Apparently you can't do this on console. That sucks.

-check endevours
-try to do 3 that are the least painful

THEN

see if i feel like playing eso.

I check the endeavors, and see which ones I can do without going too far out of my way, while playing ESO.
(or, if I don't have a particular plan of what content I want to do that day, I'll shape it around the Endeavors. Oh, there's "kill X with Y" endeavors? I'll take my <class that does Y> to <delve that has X> as part of today's ESO'ing.)

-deal with master crafting writs (do/store/sell/whatever.)
-deal with surveys (usually do them in bunches like doing laundry)
-recheck list fast

Yeah, I don't do any of that daily. I'll save doing surveys or master writs for a day when I feel like doing them. Easier to do that as part of a dedicated "play ESO" session.

CrashTest

There should be a survey hireling, or a survey npc like a vendor where you give it your surveys and then it gives you your mats.

A big QoL improvement for those who don't want to slog all over Tamriel to dig up surveys, while still keeping the option of manually porting to each zone to dig up surveys for those who enjoy that.

Jaimeh

If you have some surveys saved you can give writs a rest for a while, as you won't run out of mats. But I know what you mean, the game sometimes feel like one big daily, and like doing a second job. I still think writs should take time because the gold/mats yield is considerable, but I generally stay clear from other dailies unless there's an event. I want to eventually get to the actual playing during my session

Amottica

I suggest to everyone that they play their game. Do not let the game play you. When all those daily rituals that are just maintenance tasks start getting to you, then dial it back. They are not necessary and detrimental when obsessive about them.

SilverBride

I do writs on 4 characters every day.
Then I do all the surveys I got that day and all the alchemy, enchanting and provisioning master writs. I sell the others.
Then I do the daily endeavors I still need.
After that I decon all the items I got from doing those things and put the crafting mats I got up for sale.

This all takes about 30 to 45 minutes total, an hour on rare occasions if I got a lot of surveys and master writs, or if an endeavor is more time consuming than normal. This leaves plenty of time for other things.

Paulytnz

Takes me just over an hour each day to do all craft dailies on 10 chars. I then do master writs on my main and bank ALL surveys. I will only do them once a stack in my bank hits 5. Some days I do ZERO surveys, others I can do 5 stacks. In the long run tho it REALLY saves time and a lot of frustration.

After that I check to see if any of the endeavors are super quick to do. If not, I simply ignore them. It's only really the weekly one I try to force myself to do.

In the end tho it all comes down to what your game goals are and where you get the most fun. Personally, for me I am into housing big. Thus, why I do so many chars for the craft dailies, the gold and mats are what I need.

Once I am done with my housing tho, who knows, I may never need to do craft writs ever again. So, to the OP, I guess, re-evaluate what your goals in this game are, if any at all. You don't HAVE to do this or that, just work towards your goals, I do and that works for me.

I often hear people in my guilds or in map chat looking for dungeon daily help. I guess these types of players are the opposite of me, they HAVE to do dungeons daily.

I even heard one or 2 people in the past say they still have xxx daily and xxx daily to complete. I got the impression they thought they had to do ALL dailies every day. I then asked them - you realise there are over 50+ different dailies, right? There is no way you can do them all. They were shocked to find out there were dailies they didn't even know about.

disintegr8

You need to focus on the things you enjoy doing and chill.

I used to do writs every day on 8 characters but stopped doing them when my ESO+ ran out a couple of years ago and paying bills became more important. Now I only do them during free ESO+ events. That stops inventory being an issue and I have no reason to even log on every day.

All 18 of my characters are level 50 in all crafts, have maxed out horse training and are kitted out in max level gear, so I have nothing to grind for. I also have 3k writ vouchers, about 2k vouchers worth of writs that I can do if needed and have never bothered about Endeavors.

SeaGtGruff

What I usually do is see what the daily endeavors are before doing anything else, then I decide what I'd like to do in ESO that day based on the endeavors if possible, hopefully doing 3 endeavors during the same activity.

For instance, yesterday I decided to go to Cyrodiil so I could do 1 daily quest for Cropsford, which involved riding a bit to get there since my alliance didn't control Cropsford or any nearby keeps and outposts. I took the time to grab any runestones I passed along the way, as well as on the way back to the closest friendly keep afterward, such that I got that endeavor done as well. And I fought a few mobs, goblins, and Imperials as well, such that I was able to use my ultimate and get that endeavor done as well.

I could have chosen a different activity, such as the endeavor involving the public dungeon, and rolled 2 other endeavors into that activity rather than going to Cyrodiil.

However, I enjoy Cyrodiil-- both as a PvE questing zone and for some occasional AvA PvE or PvP action, so I generally (but not always) like to choose any endeavors that involve Cyrodiil or the Imperial City.

I feel you as far as getting into a rut or daily grind, which is why I decided to stop doing the daily crafting writs on my alts. I'm now free to do pretty much whatever I want in the game each day, and since one of the things I want to do is collect the Seals of Endeavor for that day, I try to pick one that will give me the opportunity to do something fun that maybe I haven't done in a while, such as doing a Black Sacrament for the Dark Brotherhood or a Heist for the Thieves Guild, or heading to Cyrodiil or the Imperial City, or soloing a group dungeon or public dungeon or world boss. Then I don't feel like I'm stuck in the same rut day after day.

Supreme_Atromancer

Yeah, honestly? If its not fun, *just stop*.

Its not easy to see sometimes- I get it. And FOMO can be a powerful force on the personality.

But you have to realise this: you have X amount of time to play. You choose, one way or another, how you spend that time.

Do the things you enjoy. You don't *need* the other things.

rpa

It's not your paid duty to do the dailies. Use the free time you have for the stuff you find entertaining.

Indigogo

-destroy the alchemist survey in malbal tor out of spite.

Lmao I felt that in my soul

laurajf

I started feeling like that too, especially since I don't get a lot of play time each day because of life.

I had so many master writs in my bank and so many surveys that the thought of doing them all filled me with dread, and I kept ignoring them as they continued to pile up, which made things worse.

One day I realized a game shouldn't make me feel dread, so I went in and deleted every single writ and survey. Before I did it, I thought for sure that I would regret "wasting" all that stuff afterwards, but I didn't. It was just a giant weight lifted off me, and it felt soooo good.

Doing that finally made me realize I had the FOMO bug, which included the daily writs, daily login rewards, and endeavors. Just by deleting all those things and surviving (LOL) made me realize I didn't need to do any of it. Now I log in when I feel like it, play for however long I feel like playing, doing only what I enjoy and nothing that feels like I HAVE to do it, and log off feeling like I just played a game.

Not saying that would work for everyone, but I'm thankful that big deletion of stuff worked to set my mind right.

HedgeHugger

I used to do dailies on 16 characters.
Recently I have stopped doing that.

I log into my 4 different accounts (2 have ESO+), check my shops, do my endeavours, do a couple of dailies if I feel like it, or not if I don't.
I have a couple of characters sat on surveys, so pick up a few bits and pieces that way if I want.

A burden was lifted once I took the decision to relax a bit. I've been doing those dailies for 2 years! It does become habit forming, and time consuming.

I have time for other games again, as well as real life stuff.

I_killed_Vivec

I have managed to become more relaxed about both endeavours and crafting writs. I can now quite easily just not be bothered

I still log in to each character to get hirelings, and maybe loot the bank my characters wake up in (who cares about the bounty when I won't log into them again until the next day?), but I've managed to train myself to not obsess about FOMO.

I also save time by not doing surveys until I need to (they stack, so that's OK), and similarly with master writs - I only do those when I can max the XP return, and then do loads of them in one go.

And I spread surveys between characters so that there is an aspect of exploration to getting them. My main can go everywhere, and so only carries the surveys for places that other characters cannot go. Another character has the bulk of the surveys, a third has those for Vvardenfell and Wrothgar.

Though I admit I do hold onto enchanting surveys when I really shouldn't - they are always a disappointment... surely they should guarantee at least one kuta?

Klingenlied

Personally, I still do crafting writs rather often. Everything else? Only if I feel like it. Crafting writs are very fast and very rewarding.

You however manage to go through a LOT of pain points with the game.

#1: Trash rewards that only clutter your inventory to maybe sell (premium?) bag space to players. Really bad design.
#2: Bloated minor reward amount. What I mean with this: We get too many "rather small" extra activities (surveys) hat take quiet some time and hardly every feel worth it. Give them out 0,1 times the amount you do now, give 10x the rewards and people might be happy about it.
#3: Master Writs becoming more of a hassle with every update. Just think of newer players: They kinda have to give up on those indefinitely because they likely will never ever get all the recipes needed to do those without thinking too much about them.
#4: Dungeon related content feels very weird those days. I hate that I no longer have people to do vet stuff with, so whenever I do undaunted content, I am reminded how the game has been thrashed until only the husk I feel I am left to play on my own was left. Ahh >_< unhappy about it!

Anifaas

I just log in a do whatever I feel like each day. Some days I don't do writs. Some days I don't even log in. It's crazy.

Everest_Lionheart

What I did was to start the game completely over from the beginning and am attempting to play through everything in order to see how the entire story fits together including all side quests in all zones. The level of detail in some of those quests that are easy to miss are what’s makes the game much more fun to play compared to rushing parts of the story because you dislike a particular zone. It even makes certain zones much more bearable when you’ve uncovered all it has to offer. And it’s certainly an alternative to the daily grind.

Speaking of I still do the daily grind across 9 characters, mostly for the daily writs and to bank surveys for the gold crafting mats. I generally do surveys once every week or every two weeks depending on my life schedule. And that infamous Malabal Tor survey I saint until I have 5 or 6 of them before I go collect. I also tend to let the woodworking surveys pile up for months and the enchanting surveys accumulate for a year before spending a day grinding those out.

I do t really resell anything either, I give away a lot to new players in the form of gear. It’s one of the few things I enjoy most about the game, helping others with gear, dungeons and trials. I’m also an endgame trials player semi forced to chase the meta every few months and the gear grind is real sometimes and not nearly as enjoyable.

I would suggest doing the activities you enjoy the most and not feel obligated to the daily grind on days where either you don’t have the time to grind or feel like grinding. Missing an endeavour or skipping the crafting now and again isn’t going to affect the game. Go ahead and ignore your chores for a day and enjoy yourself, you’ll be glad you did!

FluffyReachWitch

It’s pretty easy to get burned out on a video game, especially when extrinsic motivation is a factor. (Pretty sure this is the case with event fatigue too.) These things are the nature of the MMO beast, though. A trickle of small rewards in exchange for a bit of extra time.

A while ago I realized I disliked the seals of endeavor mechanic. I was feeling this pressure like I “had to” do chores to save up for crown crate stuff, which I had initially accepted as a compromise for not buying and spending crowns. But it was turning into an “ugh I gotta do these things before I log out today” thing, which got old after a while. Especially when the daily activities started getting more specific and bothersome to go out of my way to do, and the rewards started getting smaller. So now I just ignore them, and if they pop while I’m playing it’s a nice little bonus.

But I’m currently doing research and writs on multiple characters because I’m the kind of person who finds that kind of repetition and the sense of progress satisfying. As they say, Your Mileage May Vary. I am certain, however, that I will get bored and move on to something else in the long run.

Mesite

I log in most days, but don't worry if I don't.
I don't do daily quests unless it's an event.
I only do daily crafting if I pass by the quest board and feel like it.
I have plenty of master writs and surveys in alts' inventories - not sure what to do with them.
I mostly get seals of endeavour by accident.
It's storing the materials that takes my time. I don't have ESO+ at the moment.

I am pretty sure they will introduce more daily tasks in future as the game evolves so I'm choosing what I'm not going to do now.

peacenote

OP, I hear you.

While I have drastically cut back on caring for a variety of reasons, part of why I feel it's not completely "fair" to "blame the player" with "if it's not fun, don't do it" sentiments is that... there used to be a lot less stuff back in the beginning of the game, such that if you've been playing for a long time, originally you could enjoy "doing everything" and as additional things were slowly added, folks that enjoyed "working through that checklist" have gone from a reasonable list to a bigger and bigger time sink. It used to be feasible. Now it's not, kind of leaving you with this un-done, yea-I-try-not-to-care-but-I-miss-when-I-could-do-this-stuff-quickly feeling.

For me, it's the inventory explosion that is the worst, as it is decision fatigue. They aren't hard decisions. But it just isn't a fun activity. The Western Skyrim event was painful because I'd do the dailies and would have to clear my inventory completely, again, just from those dailies. The little treasures. The companion gear. Recipes. Whatever. I just want to PLAY without having to constantly sort my inventory.

I wish I just got the gold equivalent of all those little treasures I have to locate in my inventory and sell. I wish we got a currency for companion gear such that we could buy what we need instead of constantly getting drops of things we don't. I know ZOS said no, but boy do I wish I had a furnishing bag as I'm sick of moving furniture pieces through my storage options to chill out until I'm able to decorate. And a motif bag. And a recipe bag.

Anyway I, too, have a pre-play checklist and I get where the OP is coming from. Mine is writs, endeavors, and then event tickets if there is an event going on. But it's the inventory mini-game that's getting me down the most. I really, really want more space so if I decide to quick do endeavors or writs I don't have to sort inventory again before playing. And not 5 slots from a pet. Like, double the bank space and bag space potential. Make it easier for inventory sorting to be done less regularly and not be a barrier to playing.

Tyralbin

I do a similar rotation to the OP.

Difference is if I get bored I jump into Cyrodiil for a few days or do a days worth of fishing or some stealing.

It breaks things up and game seems fresh again.

Hapexamendios

If the game is s chore, turn it off for a week or two. Then come back and see how it is for you.

boi_anachronism_

I only have 2 active characters. I do my endeavors and writs everyday and sometimes the rift ones so I can break down bastion gear for sprockets to make markarth structures for my house. That's basically it. Sometimes undaunted. mostly I've been farming the mask motifs for $$$ recently. Easy few mil but I don't feel required to do anything specific besides endeavors since I'm actively saving for a specific mount when it comes around hopefully in the next century 😂